No longer now were some of the Yellow Knives riding about, back and forth before their lines, moving their lances about, preparing their parties for combat, exhorting them, doubtless, to boldness and bravery.
The kaiila of the enemy were now aligned towards us.
"Make ready your lances, make ready your knives," chanted Mahpiyasapa, riding before our lines. "May your eyes be keen. May your movements be swift and sure. May your medicine be strong!"
"They will be coming soon," said Cuwignaka.
"Yes," I said.
"What are they waiting for?" asked a man.
"The Kinyanpi," said another.
I glanced over to Hci. I saw his shield move, as though by itself. Then he steadied it. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck. I felt goose flesh.
This movement of the shield had not been unnoticed by Mahpiyasapa. He rode to Hci.
"What is wrong with your shield?" he asked.
"Nothing," said Hci.
"Fall back," said Mahpiyasapa. "Do not fight." Then he rode from him.
Hci, however, did not leave his place in our lines.
"Perhaps the Kinyanpi will not come," said a man.
"The Kinyanpi!" cried voices to our rear, the shout being relayed from man to man.
I looked back.
"It is the Kinyanpi," said Cuwignaka, looking back, too.
"Yes," I said. They were coming in two flights, two darknesses, one from the east, one from the southeast.
We then gave our attention to Mahpiyasapa, awaiting his signal.
Mahpiyasapa, before our lines, lifted and lowered his lance.
We had little doubt as to what the tactics of the Kinyanpi would be this time. They would not repeat their earlier mistake of a direct, low-level attack against our defenses. They would either keep their height and rain arrows down upon us or act in support of the Yellow Knives. As we could protect ourselves reasonably well with shields from simple, distance archery it seemed obvious, then, that our two enemies would act in conjunction. If we warded blows of Yellow Knives we could not, at the same time, protect ourselves from aerial fire. Similarly, if we attempted to protect ourselves from aerial fire, by lifting our shields, we would be exposing ourselves to the Yellow Knives' plane of attack. Presumably we would await the attack of the Yellow Knives under the ropes and netting. This would make overhead archery more difficult for the Kinyanpi but would also give the Yellow Knives the momentum of attack.
As soon as Mahpiyasapa had lowered his lance we placed about our bodies yellow scarves and other strips of yellow cloth. It was in this way that Watonka, the Yellow-Knife war chiefs, Bloketu, Iwoso and others had been identified as personages not to be fired upon by the Kinyanpi.
Again Mahpiyasapa raised and lowered his lance, and then he pointed it toward the enemy.
As one man, kaiila squealing, warriors howling, feathers flying, lances lowering, our lines leapt toward the enemy.
We struck them, they milling, startled, wheeling about, kaiila rearing, a full Ihn before the turf was dark with the wild, swiftly moving shadows of the Kinyanpi overhead.
The engagement was brief, perhaps only four or five Ehn, and the Yellow Knives, howling and whooping, in full flight, speeding away, forsook the field. I lifted my bloody lance in salute to Cuwignaka. The Kinyanpi, too, had withdrawn. Scarcely a dozen arrows had fallen amongst us. Of these, of those that had found targets, they reposed in the bodies of Yellow Knives. In what consternation must the Kinyanpi have viewed the plethora of yellow signals beneath them. Surely they would have understood that most of such might be worn by Kaiila, but, in flight, moving swiftly, uncertain of their desiderated targets they had, for the most part, restrained their fire.
"They will not be back!" laughed a man.
"See the signal of Mahpiyasapa," said another. "Let us return to our lodges."
We turned our kaiila about and, slowly, not hurrying, well pleased with ourselves, tired, but quietly jubilant in our victory, made our way back toward our camp.
"Look!" said a man, pointing back, when we had reached again our former lines.
"I do not believe it," said another.
We looked back, those three or four hundred yards, across the field. At the crest of a rise, once again, suddenly emerging, silhouetted against the sky, were lines of Yellow Knives.
"They have regrouped," I said. This was evident. Yet I had not expected it. This manifested a type of discipline that I would not have expected of routed red savages, and certainly, in any case, not this soon.
"I thought they had gone," said a man.
"I, too," said another.
"Surely they have enough women and kaiila," said a man. "It seems they should have left long ago."
"There seems little enough for them to gain in further fighting," said a man.
"They would have to pay dearly for anything further," said another.
"Yet they are there," said another.
"Yes," said another.
"It is not like Yellow Knives," said a man.
"I do not understand it," said another fellow.
"Nor I," said another.
I, too, wondered at the reappearance of the Yellow-Knife lines.
It was dusk. This, too, was puzzling. Red savages, on the whole, prefer to avoid fighting in darkness. In the darkness it is difficult to be skillful and, in the absence of uniforms, friends may be too easily mistaken for foes. Some savages, too, prefer to avoid night combat for medicine reasons. There are many theories connected with such things. I shall mention two. One is that if an individual is slain at night, he may, quite literally, have difficulty in the darkness in finding his way to the medicine world. Another is that the individual who is slain at night may find the portals of the medicine world closed against him. These beliefs, and others like them, it seems clear, serve to discourage night combat.
One may, as in many such cases, then, wonder whether night combat is discouraged because of such beliefs, or whether such beliefs may not have been instituted to discourage night fighting, with all of its confusions, alarms and terrors. On the other hand, there is no doubt whatsoever that many red savages take such beliefs with great seriousness. The life world, and consciousness, of the red savage, it must be clearly understood, is quite different from that of, say, a secular rationalist or a scientifically oriented objectivist. One of the most common, and serious, mistakes that can be made in crosscultural encounters is to assume that everyone one meets is, in effect, very much like oneself. Their personal world, the world of their experience, their experiential world, may be quite different from yours. If it is not understood in its own terms, as he understands it, it is likely to seem irrational, eccentric or foolish. Properly understood, on the other hand, his world is plausible, in its terms, as is yours. This is not to say that there is nothing to choose from amongst life worlds; it is only to say that we do not all share the same life world.
"Why are they not going away?" asked a man.
"It will soon be dark," said another.
"They must have very strong medicine," said another.
"Perhaps," said another, uneasily.
I saw Hci struggle for a moment to again control his shield. Then, again, he had steadied it.
"What are they waiting for?" asked a man.
"Their ranks are opening," said a man.
"Something is coming through them," said another man.
"It is a sleen," said one man.
"No," said another.
"It is on all fours," said another man.
"Surely it is a sleen," said another.
"It is too large to be a sleen," said another.
"Aiii!" cried a man. "It is rising to its feet. It is walking on two feet!"
"It is a thing from the medicine world!" cried a man.
"It is a medicine helper of the Yellow Knives!" cried another.
Almost at the same time, from behind us, there were cries of consternation. "Riders!" we heard. "Riders!"
We w
heeled our kaiila about. At the back of the camp, there were screaming and the sounds of numerous kaiila, squealing and snorting, their clawed feet tearing at the grass. At full speed, pennons flying, lances lowered, bucklers set, in sweeping, measured, staggered attack lines, waves of riders struck the camp.
"They are white men!" cried a man near me.
I saw a woman, running, caught in the back with a lance, between the shoulder blades, flung to the dust, the lance then withdrawn. It had been professionally done.
"White men!" cried another man near me.
I saw another man toward the rear, an archer, discharge an arrow, and leap to the side, to avoid a rider. He was hit by the next rider, one of those in the succeeding wave, its riders staggered with those of the first. In this type of formation, given the speed of the charging kaiila, the distance between successive waves is about forty to fifty feet. This is supposed to provide the next rider with a suitable response interval. If the first rider misses the target the second, thus, has time to adjust for its change of position. From the point of view of the target, of course, which may even be off balance, it is difficult, in the interval involved, to set itself for a second evasive action. Its problems are further complicated, also, of course, by the imminent arrival of even further attack waves. The primary purpose of the staggering of the attack-wave riders is to bring a target which may have escaped from the attack lane of one rider almost immediately into the attack lane of another.
Certain psychological factors, also, in this type of situation, tend to favor the attacker. As a target's attention tends to be absorbed in avoiding one attack it is less prepared to react efficiently to another. Also, the elation and relief which tends to accompany escape from one danger tends to result, often, in a reduction, however brief, in the target's capacity to cope with another. This is a moment within which the target may find itself within the lance range of the next rider. This type of formation is generally not useful against an enemy which is protected by breastworks, pits or stakes, or a settled infantry, its long pikes set, fixed butt down in the turf, the weapons oriented diagonally, the points trained on the breasts of the approaching mounts. It is also generally ineffective against another cavalry for it permits a shattering and penetration of its own lines. It tends to be effective, however, against an untrained infantry or almost any enemy afoot. The archer, struck by the rider, was carried a dozen feet on the lance, before the blade, twisting, with the weight of the kaiila behind it, was dragged loose.
"White men!" I heard.
"Turn about!" cried Mahpiyasapa. "Fight! Defend the camp!"
The lines spun about and the men of Mahpiyasapa, whooping and crying out, dust scattering, sped back under the ropes and between the lodges to engage this new enemy. I held my position.
The white men were undoubtedly the mercenary soldiers of Alfred, the mercenary captain of Port Olni. With something like a thousand men he had entered the Barrens, with seventeen Kurii, an execution squad from the steel worlds, searching for Half-Ear, Zarendargar, the Kur war general who had been in command of the supply complex, and staging area, in the Gorean arctic, that which was being readied to support the projected Kur invasion of Gor. This complex had been destroyed. Evidence had suggested that Zarendargar had escaped, and was to be found in the Barrens. Once Zarendargar and I, in the north, as soldiers, had shared paga. I had come to the Barrens to warn him of his danger. Then I had fallen slave to the Kaiila. A wagon train of settlers, with which Alfred had joined forces, had been attacked. A massacre had taken place. Alfred, however, with some three to four hundred mounted men, leaving most of his command to perish, had escaped to the southeast. From the southeast, I remembered, the kailiauk had come early. From the southeast, too, had come the Kinyanpi.
Earlier I had conjectured that Alfred and his men had returned to civilization. I now realized that was false. Somehow they had come into league with the Kinyanpi and, perhaps through them, and in virtue of some special considerations, the nature of which I suspected I knew, been able to make contact with, and enlist the aid of, Yellow Knives. A fearful pattern had suddenly emerged. The discipline of the Yellow Knives now became more meaningful. So, too, did their apparent willingness to fight in the half darkness of dusk. Suddenly, too, starkly plausible, became such untypical anomalies of the Barrens as the meretricious proposal of a false peace, the spurious pretext of a council in order to gather together and decimate the high men of the Kaiila, and even the unprecedented sacrilege of attacking a people at the time of its great dances and festivals. These things spoke not of the generalship of the Barrens but of a generalship alien to the Barrens, a generalship of a very different sort of mind. Even so small a detail as the earlier, small-scale attack of the Kinyanpi now became clear. It must have been indeed, as I had earlier conjectured, an excursionary probe to determine the test defenses, before the main force, held in reserve, was committed. The generalship again suggested that of the cities, not of the Barrens, that of white soldiers, not red savages.
I looked wildly back toward the Yellow Knives. As I had expected they were now advancing. Their feathered lances were dropping into the attack position. Their kaiila were moving forward, and gradually increasing their speed. By the time they reached the camp the kaiila, not spent, would be at full charge. The Yellow-Knife lines were now sweeping past the creature which had emerged earlier from their ranks. It stood in the grass, the warriors sweeping about it. It was some eight feet tall. It lifted its shaggy arms. It was a Kur. We would be taken on two fronts.
Behind me there was fighting. I turned about. I saw soldiers cutting down portions of the ropes and cloths.
"Kinyanpi!" I heard. "They are coming again!"
"It is the end," I thought. "The Kurii have won." The Kurii, now, allied with the Yellow Knives, and supported by the Flighted Ones, the Kinyanpi, could systematically search the Barrens, unimpeded in their search for Zarendargar, and if an entire people, the nation of the Kaiila, should stand in their way, then what was it to them, if this nation should be destroyed?
I heard the whooping of the Yellow Knives growing closer.
I then turned my kaiila and rode toward the back of the camp.
29
How It Came About that Grunt Survived
A slave girl screamed, buffeted to the side by the forequarters of my kaiila. She turned, struck, from the animal, her hands tied behind her back, lost her footing and fell. I saw the frightened eyes of another girl, her wrists lifted, bound together with hair, thrown before her face. The hair that bound them hung free before the wrists, dangling from them, in jagged strands, marking where it had been hastily cut free from the hair of the girl before her in a holding coffle. Her own hair, similarly, had been cut short, closely, at the back of her neck, where the girl behind her, with swift strokes of a blade, had been freed.
"Run," a free woman was screaming. "Run! Seek your safety!"
I saw another free woman cutting at the hair of other kneeling beauties, freeing them from the cruel hair coffles, that they might flee as best they might.
Another woman was cutting the bonds at the ankles of another lovely slave. That slave's ankles had been bound more conventionally, with tight thongs of rawhide. When the thongs sprang apart, leaping from the knife, I saw deep red circles in the girl's ankles I doubted that she would even be able to rise to her feet for a few Ehn.
I pressed my kaiila forward, through the crowd.
I saw Oiputake to one side.
"Where is Cotanka?" a girl was crying out. "I am the slave of Cotanka! Where is Cotanka!" It was she who earlier, in effect, had functioned as a lure girl. I had captured her. As Cotanka had accepted her as a slave, she had been spared, at least for a time.
I heard a girl beneath me scream as the paws of my kaiila passed over her. I could see another girl, too, ahead of me, to my right, lying on the ground, trembling. There was the mark of a kaiila paw on her back. Other riders, earlier, had passed this way.
To my left and forward, a
great section of the overhead netting had been cut down. Some slaves were there, standing or kneeling in the fallen mesh. It was not a capture net, of course, but a mesh designed, in effect, to provide a camouflage against, or a distraction for, overhead archers. The slaves, thus, were not entrapped. I thought it might be a reasonably safe place for them to be. The Kinyanpi, presumably, would not be likely to fire on a nude white slave any more than on an unmounted kaiila. Both would fit not into the category of enemy but rather into the category of booty. It would be a greater danger, presumably, for a girl to hide in a lodge where, perhaps being mistaken for a free person, she might be struck by arrows, the skins of the lodge cover perhaps being riddled from above by the swift, flighted riders. I thrust with my lance upward, through the netting, driving it through the body of a soldier, cutting at it. He fell across the netting, then tumbled through it. Then I was beyond the area of the slaves.
The battle, I saw, at an instant's glance, was hopeless.
I heard the heavy vibration of a cable of a crossbow. A Kaiila warrior pitched backwards off his kaiila.
I heard the screaming of a free woman.
"Run!" cried a man, riding past. "Run!"
I looked back. The Yellow Knives would have to make it through the confusion of slaves.
"Yellow Knives are coming!" I cried out, pointing back. "Yellow Knives, to the west!"
Mahpiyasapa looked about, wildly. Then he fended himself from a lance attack.
I heard the beating of wings. My shield lifted, I deflected an arrow from above. A dark shadow hurtled past.
A child ran past.
"Form lines," cried Mahpiyasapa. "To the east! To the west! Women and children between the lines!"
I saw Hci, with an expert thrust, past the buckler of a soldier, drop the fellow from his saddle.
The whooping of Yellow Knives was then upon us. We were cut into small groups, our lines shattered. The battle became a tangled, bloody melee.
I saw Cuwignaka rolling in the dust, his kaiila gone. I turned my kaiila against the forequarters of a riderless mount, pressing it toward Cuwignaka. Cuwignaka was on his feet, blood about his head. A Yellow Knife, afoot, rushed upon him, knife raised. They grappled. Then the Yellow Knife fell backward, blood at his throat. Cuwignaka, a knife run with blood in his hand, blood on his hand and wrist, too, stood in the dust. I lost sight of him as two warriors passed between us. Then I had my hand on the jaw rope of the riderless kaiila and dragged it, snorting and squealing, to Cuwignaka. He yanked free a lance from the body of a fallen Yellow Knife. He was then, in an instant, on the back of the animal I had brought him, and in command of it.
Blood Brothers of Gor Page 31