"It cannot be? Who says it cannot be? Who dares stand out and challenge me?"
"I, H'yemba, the man of iron and of flame!"
Stern faced him, every nerve and fiber quivering with sudden passion. At realization that in the exact psychological moment when success lay almost in his hand, this surly brute might baffle him, he felt a wave of murderous hate.
He realized that the dreaded catastrophe had indeed come to pass. Now his sole claim to chieftainship lay in his power to defend the title. Failure meant--death.
"You?" he shouted, advancing on the smith.
His opponent only leered and grimaced offensively. Then without even having vouchsafed an answer, he swung toward the elders.
"I challenge!" he exclaimed. "I have the right of words!"
Vreenya nodded, fingering his long white beard.
"Speak on!" he answered. "Such is our ancient custom."
"Oh, people," cried the smith, suddenly facing the throng, "will ye follow one who breaks the tribal manners of our folk? One who disdains our law? Who has neglected to obey it? Will ye trust yourselves into hands stained with law-breaking of our blood?"
A murmur, doubtful, wondering, obscure, spread through the people. By the greenish flare-light Stern could see looks of wonder and dismay. Some frowned, others stared at him or at the smith, and many muttered.
"What the devil and all have I broken now?" wondered Allan. "Plague take these barbarous customs! Jove, they're worse than the taboos of the old Maoris, in the ancient days! What's up?"
He had not long to wonder, for of a sudden H'yemba wheeled on him, pointed him out with vibrant hands, and in a voice of terrible anger cried: "The law, the law of old! No man shall be chief who does not take a wife from out our people! None who weds one of the Lanskaarn, the island folk, or the yellow-haired Skeri beyond the Vortex, none such shall ever rule us. Yet this man, this stranger who speaks such great things very hard to be believed, scorns our custom. No woman from among us he has taken, but instead, that vuedma of his own kind! What? Will ye--"
He spoke no further, for Allan was upon him with one leap. At sound of that word, the most injurious in their tongue, the fires of Hell burst loose in Stern.
Reckoning no consequences, staying for no parley or diplomacy, he sprang; and as he sprang, he struck.
The blow went home on the smith's jaw with a smash like a pile-driver. H'yemba, reeling, swung at him--no skill, no science, just a wild, barbaric, sledge-hammer sweep.
It would have killed had it landed, but Allan was not there. In point of tactics, the twentieth century met the tenth.