Chapter 4: Caged
“Ansen Grost!”
If the Viking could have leaped to his feet in shock and alarm he would have; however, the small prescribed space of the cage’s interior prevented that. He’d been distracted upon awakening by the sight of his men being hauled up the cliffs to no one knew what end, and then started suddenly when he heard his name called from behind. Turning he discovered the actress, the vibrant blonde cast to play the part of the goddess in the jungle movie that now seemed destined to never be filmed.
“Ansen!” the distraught girl cried again from a similar prison.
Turning painfully about, for he’d not come through the previous night’s battle unscathed, he found the beauty close by to him. Her startlingly blue eyes were brimming with tears, and her Cupid’s bow lips – so petulant, soft and infinitely kissable - were drawn up in a worried pout.
“Miss Desyre!” he replied. “Have you been harmed?”
“Please, call me Eva. No, they haven’t harmed me. I think I must have fainted as that terrifying native carried me through the trees. The heights were dizzying. I would have screamed in shear fright but my voice caught in my throat!”
She closed her eyes briefly, as if reliving those moments of horror. He could imagine how it must have been for a socialite such as she – the proverbial Christian maiden thrown across the withers of the Saracen’s horse, so to speak, carried away by force like the spoils of conquest to suffer some unknown and hideous fate – a fate worse than death to some.
“Do you know what their intentions are?” he demanded then.
He knew they needed to come up with a plan of escape, and quickly. He began by sizing up the structure in which they were imprisoned. The branches were thick, tough and green. The braided rope seemed indestructible sans the presence of a knife or other sharp implement. At the thought, his hand went immediately to his belt.
Gone!
Oh no, he thought furiously. I’ve lost the talisman of Owejiwa!
Ansen had been given his traditional Arapaho name when the people adopted him into the tribe, that of Owejiwa – the name selected by the medicine man who raised him. Per custom the talisman assumed the name of its bearer the day fate decreed Owejiwa (or Ansen as the white man knew him) carry the ancient token of power. At one time the talisman had borne the name of the medicine man, Tahnaktaka, foreswearing the name of its previous conveyor, until Ansen was chosen to carry it while still but a brave.
Now, to the people, the tomahawk and Owejiwa were spiritually joined – Owejiwa the talisman, Owejiwa, bearer of the mighty token; they were one and the same. He had kept it safe by his side for years, and it had repaid him in kind. It had protected and provided for the tribe, slaying by his hand leopard, bear, wolf – and man.
The last conversation he had with Tahnaktaka - the name the talisman had lain aside when Ansen inherited the axe – came back to him involuntarily.
Ansen had crouched low to enter the sweat lodge, being at least a head taller than were most men of his tribe. Tahnaktaka, the most ancient and revered medicine man of all the tribes of the Arapaho nation, had been in the lodge for three days without emerging. Ansen had returned only that morning from the hunt and received word that the medicine man awaited him.
As he entered the hot, confined space the pungent scents of smoke and sweat immediately assailed his senses. Great beads of water stood on his brow and shoulders, and rolled down in rivulets across his back and the contours of his muscles. The old man greeted him, and bade him sit across from the pit of glowing coals. Without preamble Tahnaktaka passed him a simple and well-worn pipe filled with the aromatic blending of strange herbs and premier tobaccos. While Ansen smoked Tahnaktaka spoke, the drifting tendrils causing the old man’s face to appear as a mirage drifting over the fire beds of Hell.
“Soon you will leave for the great water,” he announced.
Ansen nearly choked in disbelief.
He had told no one of his plans to leave the tribe and head west to the ocean. In his youth he dreamed of the sea. His father’s stories of the voyage at sea that brought his family to America’s shores always fascinated him; his people were a seafaring people. It was practically the only thing he could remember of his parents; that, and that his mother was lovely – and kind.
The old man let out a dry, husky laugh at Ansen’s apparent startlement. Then he reached down beside him and passed Ansen the tomahawk of ancient and curious make. Ansen had seen this weapon before, many times. Typically, Tahnaktaka only brought it out for the most sacred of rituals - the direst of needs.
Once, a war chief had come from a more easterly tribe and begged the medicine man to allow him to use it in revenge against the horse soldiers of the white man. Tahnaktaka denied his request. It was a token, the medicine man had said, of unbelievable power and not be used basely. It was a defender of the tribe – and more, it was a defender of all the human race against the tide of supernatural powers and entities that would enslave all mankind, given the opportunity.
“But- Tahnaktaka! I cannot take this!” Ansen exclaimed in disbelief to the man whom the tribe knew as their medicine man, but whom Owejiwa knew as his adopted father.
“Father Sky protects his people and says you will need it,” Tahnaktaka replied in a tone that brooked no argument.
But Ansen was a stubborn lad in his youth – one who at all times was unwilling to follow the dictates of authority, or to allow others to direct his destiny.
“But I am not of the people,” he denied flatly, starting at the talisman.
“Ansen, it is the time that you must bear this burden, not I. I alone now shall bear the name to which I was born – that of Tahnaktaka. Now the talisman’s true name shall be - Owejiwa!” the medicine man proclaimed.
Seeing it useless to argue with his father, the youth at last acquiesced with a terse nod. Tentatively, Ansen extended both hands into which the wise, old man placed the scarred haft of the ancient weapon that stood as a sigil against darkness, a destroyer of wickedness and a standard bearer for humanity.
“You have filled the cook pots of the widows and orphans. You have stood with the tribe against its enemies. You are of the people,” Tahnaktaka finished with finality.
His tone had been such that it caused Ansen to bite his tongue against any further arguments he might have.
Now, imprisoned in a wooden cage in the midst of an unknown island chain off the coast of Africa his thoughts came back to the present.
How might the token aid him if he no longer possessed it, he wondered. How might it combat evil if it falls into the hands of evil-doers?
He looked to the girl again. She stared at him – an odd stare from which he could fathom nothing. He knew she depended on him to save her – all of them did.
One after the other his men were carried to the base of the black cliff and hauled upward. Already, a dozen men hung in their cages, suspended over a nearly three hundred foot fall should the wooden structures give way, or a hand-braided rope, woven of jungle grasses and lianas, snap under the pressure of the swinging cage it held aloft. Ansen had yet to make the journey – he and the girl still awaited their turns, wondering anxiously what would be their ultimate disposition once they reached that apex at the top of the cliffs.
While they awaited their fates a war party exited the forest into the clearing with the porters and the camera crew in tow. They were tied by the neck and daisy-chained together to prevent flight. The faces of the porters were long, and the whites of their eyes showed plainly in their fright. The camera crew – white men from Hollywood – appeared to be in a daze, as if they could not believe this was happening.
This wasn’t the first time Ansen had found himself in such straits – but it might be the most serious, he conceded. Once, during the Great War, the Germans captured him and announced his execution to be held at dawn. But during the night he managed to chew himself free of his bonds and slay two gu
ards along with the Hun captain who had condemned him to death. He managed to sneak back to his own lines in time for breakfast with a map case full of important documents and the Prussian officer’s Luger pistol stuck in his belt.
But this time… He shook his head contemplatively, and watched as the new arrivals were caged, one of the cameramen being immediately carried toward the black cliffs. The man screeched in fear. These modern day city folk did not know how to control and calm their fears – or how to face their final moments in peace and tranquility, with honor and integrity.
They are not of the people, he thought, his smile grim.
Eva stared at his handsome profile while he sat silently, and she noticed the smile on his Scandinavian features. Although raised as an Arapaho the man’s straight patrician’s nose, high cheekbones and the slight tilt to his eyes easily betrayed him as being of northwestern European descent.
“You’re bravery is not an air you put on like a smoking jacket, Ansen Grost. I saw you just now. You literally smile in the face of death! Bravery like that cannot be feigned,” she stated flatly, admiration in her tone.
“I am unafraid to perish, if such is the wish of Father Sky,” he stated simply.
He was a man of few words (unlike his narrator). When the time came, he would fight like a panther. He would literally kill himself in his attempt to escape this cage and whatever fate these savages had planned. He would kill or be killed; he would slay these wild-men until his heart ceased to beat, and but bided his time for an opportunity to do so. He would sense when the moment had ripened - and then he would strike!
“They come for us, now,” the girl said, interrupting his train of thought, watching over Ansen’s shoulder the approach of the natives who had been assigned to carry the prisoners to the foot of the cliff.
Looking away from her stunningly beautiful face, he saw that she was right.
Ansen’s turn had come. Two husky warriors stooped before his cage, bent their backs to the burden of his own weight combined with that of his cage, grunting as they did so. He found himself jostled as they made their way across the precarious, rocky terrain to the foot of the cliff, where they tied a braided rope to a point at the top of his woven cage.
Soon he began the dizzying trip, the cage swinging pendulously back and forth slightly as they hauled him upward. The wall of the cliff looked to be some eight or ten feet from his cage. After several minutes they finally raised him above the level of the top of the cliff. The vantage point offered a magnificent view for several miles across the verdure of dense jungle vegetation. Rivers could be seen snaking through the forest, with steam rising here and there from the water as it reached sea level elevations from the mountainous heights visible in the distance toward the center of the island.
The heights offered him nothing to fear, however, and so he spent part of the time watching as they brought the girl’s cage to a position adjacent to that from which his own cage left the ground. Before he reached a point a quarter of the way up the savages had begun hauling the girl upward, too.
It started to get on towards evening. The sun, a bloody red disk in the distance, shaded the cumulonimbus in shades of pink and lavender as it dipped into the horizon. Visible all along the cliff were the hanging cages filled with porters, askarii, the camera crew and the rest of them - Eva, Cecil and Ansen. It was, perhaps, one of the most peculiarly weird and deadly scenes he had ever witnessed.
The Norseman began to tense.
This is it, he thought. Whatever they intend to do, it is going to happen – now.
The Blonde Goddess of Tikka-Tikka Page 5