by J. T. Edson
‘He comes to our villages with his. men and women and takes the people.’
‘Don’t your men stop them?’
‘The hunters sometimes say they should, but the Elders put them away before the People-Taker comes so there won’t be any trouble,’ Joar-Fane explained. ‘I don’t know what happens to those who are taken. None of them have ever come back.’
‘You say that you escaped,’ the blond giant prompted, drawing the headless arrow free from the capybara and standing up. ‘Did anybody come after you?’
‘Three of his men and a woman,’ the girl replied.
‘Where are they now?’
‘I don’t know. They followed me across the Big River after I had fallen in, but I haven’t seen them today.’
Although Bunduki was interested in the girl’s story, he decided that they would postpone continuing with it until they had crossed the stream and left the Mangani behind. So, having fitted the head back on the shaft, he returned the arrow to the quiver and swung it across his back. Taking the bowie knife from its sheath, he used it to sever a hind leg from the capybara.
‘This ought to be enough meat for us,’ he told the girl as he cleaned the blade of the knife with a handful of grass. Sheathing it, he went on, ‘If we leave the rest for the “Hairy People”, they won’t trouble us.’
‘Very well, Bunduki,’ Joar-Fane assented. ‘I’ll carry the meat.’
‘There is food,’ the blond giant announced in Mangani, indicating the remains of his prey. ‘We go. If you follow, Tar-Ara kill!’
Having delivered the warning, Bunduki took his bow from the girl and strode towards the stream. Collecting the bloody leg, she glided after him. There was pride in her sensual, graceful posture and she darted a triumphant glance at the big female who had attempted to attack her. Seeing the other bare her teeth, Joar-Fane hurried to the blond giant’s side. Although encumbered by their meat, she attempted to take hold of his empty right hand. He avoided being trapped and, after a warning that he wanted the hand free in case they should be attacked, she desisted.
With its bed consisting of firm, clean gravel and a depth of no more than three feet, the stream presented no difficulty for the girl or Bunduki. Its waters were clear and the current mild, allowing him to make sure there were no dangerous creatures or fish.
‘Shall we take off our clothes and let them dry?’ Joar-Fane inquired hopefully as they reached the opposite bank and walked ashore.
‘No,’ Bunduki said, hiding the grin which was caused by knowing what prompted the suggestion. ‘We’ll keep going. The sun will dry them.’
Ignoring the girl’s disappointed pout, the big blond looked back across the stream. The Mangani were eagerly approaching his kill. Moving stiffly, Bul-Mok let out a furious bellow as one of the younger males tried to precede him. Although his son backed away, Bunduki guessed that the dominant bull would have to reassert his ascendancy after suffering his defeat.
‘Where do you live, Joar-Fane?’ the blond giant asked, putting the Mangani from his thoughts and starting to walk towards the north-west.
‘Beyond the Big River,’ the girl replied vaguely, trotting at his side.
‘Where is that?’
‘I don’t know.’
Striding along, Bunduki looked down at the girl and silently admitted that she might be speaking the truth. In the jungle it was too easy for an inexperienced person to lose all sense of direction. That did nothing to reduce his predicament. He did not want to postpone his search for Dawn while trying to return Joar-Fane to her village. So, he concluded, he must take the little girl with him. Once they had found his adoptive cousin, the pair of them could escort Joar-Fane to her home.
‘Something tells me that I might need a chaperone,’ the big blond mused, glancing at the pretty girl as her hot little hand closed on his. ‘Or a bodyguard might be better.’
Allowing Joar-Fane to retain her grip, much to her delight and satisfaction, Bunduki guided her through the jungle. The warmth of the sun soon dried their garments, as he had said it would.
Although the girl claimed that the area through which they were passing had always been notorious for the numbers and ferocity of the ‘Hairy People’ who occupied it, they neither saw nor heard any more of the Mangani. There were plenty of other creatures, but nothing that posed a threat to their safety even though Joar-Fane behaved in a frightened manner no matter how harmless a beast they saw. After a short time, Bunduki suspected that her behavior was merely an excuse to nestle up to him.
From her comments, the girl clearly knew little about animals. In fact, she confessed that she had very rarely left her village. When forced to make a journey it had always been accompanied by older people. They had stuck to clearly marked trails and never ventured into the jungles.
There was, however, little conversation as they walked along. While Bunduki would have liked to learn more about the land in which he found himself, the girl had something very different in mind as a topic of conversation. It was one which did not meet with his approval under the circumstances. So he instructed her to keep quiet until they stopped for a rest. When she began to protest he warned her that some wild beast or the ‘Hairy People’ might stalk them and take them by surprise unless he could hear and prevent it. The ruse served its purpose. She stopped her chatter, but continued to cling to his hand and stare nervously about her.
After they had covered about six miles, Bunduki was satisfied that Bul-Mok and his family were not following them. They were descending into a wide valley, through which ran a small stream.
‘I’m hungry and tired,’ Joar-Fane hinted, breaking her silence.
‘Then we’ll eat and rest,’ Bunduki answered.
Hurrying to the banks of the stream, Joar-Fane set down the capybara’s leg and knelt to drink. She was genuinely tired and hungry, but had another idea in mind when she mentioned the fact. After they had fed and rested, she felt sure that she could persuade her rescuer to take a much greater interest in her than he had been doing so far.
If she could not, the little girl told herself grimly, then she had no right to the name, ‘The Loving One’.
Chapter Six – I Want To Catch That Girl!
‘Tomlu has her!’ Dryaka enthused as he watched his adherent charging towards Dawn Drummond-Clayton. ‘She’ll soon be mine!’
Hearing the excited chatter of agreement from the other members of the High Priest’s faction, Charole darted a glance filled with disappointment and bitter animosity at him. From the moment that Ragfbuf’s mount had fallen, she had been aware that Tomlu was almost certain to make the capture. What was more, the way in which he had turned the butt of his lance to the front had warned her that he was intending to take the prisoner alive.
Watching Dawn swing around, raise and start to draw the bow, the Protectress of the Quagga God found herself torn between two conflicting desires. While she would have liked to lay her hands on the beautiful stranger—towards whom she had formed an instant and implacable hatred—she wanted it to be on her own terms. Certainly she did not wish Dryaka to gain the satisfaction and—if, as seemed likely, Dawn should prove an entertaining sacrifice—the acclaim of the population for having brought in such a prisoner.
Charole found herself on the verge of hoping that the girl would escape. However, even though she guessed that the High Priest could read her thoughts, she knew better than to voice them aloud.
Making an effort, Dawn managed to hold her breath. She had the arrow drawn to its anchor point, with the fletching brushing against her cheek. With the man so close and the need for haste, she aimed in the style known as ‘gap shooting’. She concentrated her full attention upon the centre of his chest, although still conscious of, and taking into consideration, the amount of space between the arrow’s point and its target. The size of the space, or ‘gap’, became a guide to the angle of elevation that was required and she could if necessary adjust her weapon accordingly.
The necessity did not arise!
In fact, Tomlu was so nearby that time that the tip of Dawn’s arrow was sighted straight on its intended mark.
He was at her point blank range!
Even as the girl relaxed her fingers, she felt disconcerted by her attacker’s attitude. He was leering at her and showing neither fear nor concern for his safety, despite the fact that he could see she was aiming the arrow at him. Either he did not know what a bow was, or for some reason he clearly felt that he was in no danger.
There was no time for Dawn to ponder on the phenomenon. Released from her restraint, the arrow was sent on its way.
Tomlu was still grinning when the missile struck the centre of his breastplate, sent there with the full propulsive power of the bow’s draw weight of seventy pounds. Instead of bouncing back, or being deflected, the point passed through the rhinoceros hide as if it was so much wet, soft paper. Shock and amazement mingled with the agony that was distorting the burly mans brutish features as the arrow’s quadruple blades cut deeper and deeper into his chest cavity.
While the Man-Gatah scout had been correct in his estimation of the point at which the girl was aiming, all of his other calculations had been woefully, completely and fatally wrong. Yet it had been an understandable error, born out of his ignorance of the full facts regarding her weapons.
The archers against whom Tomlu had previously been brought into conflict all used primitive wooden bows of, at most, a forty pounds’ draw weight. No all wood ‘self bow could match the tensile strength of a unidirectional fiber glass precision implement such as the Ben Pearson Marauder. xxix That was particularly true when, as was the case with the Mun-Gatahs’ usual enemies, it was discharged from a chest draw.
Nor did his previous foes possess arrows to equal those used by the girl. The exceptionally fine temper of the steel used to manufacture the four-blade head was far superior to anything that Tomlu had come across. So, instead of being halted or turned aside by his erstwhile protective breastplate, the girl’s shaft had been able to slice through it and into his torso.
Although the burly scout did not remain in error for long regarding his assumptions, the lesson he learned was of no use to him.
An involuntary jerk by the stricken man’s left hand caused his fast-moving zebra, trained to be instantly obedient to such signals, to swerve in that direction. With its rider already starting to lose his balance and allowing the lance to slip from his grasp, the alteration toppled him from the saddle. Slipping out of the stirrup-irons, his feet did nothing to help him retain his seat. Falling, he landed on his right shoulder and bounced three times before coming to a halt on his back. It had been such a close thing that Dawn was compelled to leap into the air to avoid being struck by his body.
Turning, the girl started to reach for an arrow from the bow-quiver. While doing so, she dropped her gaze to Tomlu. He lay supine, with the arrow buried almost to its cresting in his chest. There was, she realized, nothing more to be feared from him.
Staring down, Dawn sucked in a long and deep breath as a full understanding of what she had been compelled to do struck her. For a moment she felt close to nausea. Slowly the sensation ebbed away. Common sense told her that there had been no other acceptable course left to her. She was no longer in the civilized world which she had known all her life. Wherever she might be, it was a primitive environment in which a person had to be prepared for defense against human enemies.
The remorse which the girl had started to experience faded away all the more rapidly as she recollected the events that had preceded the killing. Her assailant had meant to capture her and that might, probably would, have resulted in a fate worse than death. Even if he had not raped her, she did not doubt that she would have been badly treated by his companions; particularly the beautiful owner of the harpy eagle. So Dawn considered that she had been completely justified in protecting herself, even to the extent of taking her assailant’s life.
Lifting her eyes from the dead man, Dawn turned her attention to his companions on the other side of the chasm. They seemed to have formed into two distinct groups behind the tall man and the gold-clad beauty. All of them appeared to be interested and perturbed by what they had seen. However, the girl had run so far before halting to deal with her remaining pursuer that she could not hear what was being said.
As Dawn suspected, the death of Tomlu had caused considerable consternation among the rest of the Mun-Gatah hunting party. They had shared his confidence in the immunity from the arrow offered by his breastplate. So none of them had been expecting his death.
‘Wh—!’ Charole gasped, watching Tomlu sliding sideways from the fast-moving zebra. What’s happened?’
None of the others replied, for the very good reason that they were all as surprised as the Protectress and were asking each other similar questions. Also they were all staring at Dawn as she leaped over the scout’s body which was bouncing along the ground. The zebra galloped by her.
‘She killed him!’ Elidor gasped, watching the foreign girl jump and turn. ‘Lord Dryaka, she killed him!’
‘But how could she?’ asked Sabart, Charole’s half-sister and supporter. ‘He must have fallen off. Or his grar-gatah xxx threw him when it swerved.’
‘Fallen off!’ Elidor snorted, more because the statement had been made by a member of the rival faction than out of any respect for Tomlu’s capabilities. Being a banar-gatah rider herself, she would normally have regarded him as a social inferior and beneath her support. ‘He’s never been knocked off, much less fallen or been thrown. I tell you that she killed him with her bow. Didn’t she, my lord?’
‘She certainly hit him with it,’ Dryaka confirmed, automatically corroborating one of his adherents against a follower and kinswoman of the Protectress.
Even as the High Priest was speaking, he began to realize the full implications of what he was saying. A skilled warrior in his own right, he had ridden against and watched Tomlu taking part in training sessions or competitive jousts with the lance. So he could visualize the scout’s method and posture during his attack upon the dismounted and, apparently, not too dangerous enemy who was to be captured alive.
Leaning sideways, so as to make a thrust downwards with the lance, Tomlu would have presented only his head, torso, right arm and leg to the foreign girl. Being an experienced fighting man, he would not have offered himself in such a way unless he had felt confident he could do so in comparative safety. Which meant he had believed Dawn would miss, or that her arrow was going to strike something upon which it would have no effect. There was only one part of his body that he would regard in that light.
Unless Dawn had been aware of how futile such an action would be and had changed her target at the last moment, giving the scout no indication of her intentions until it was too late for him to counter the motion, she must have been aiming at his chest. So, unless she had sent the arrow into his head, it must have struck and penetrated his breastplate.
Dryaka found the latter prospect both disconcerting and alarming, particularly in view of the grandiose plans which he was formulating. The superiority that the Mun-Gatah had over their neighbors was founded in the main upon the protection given by their breastplates. So, if Dawns nation—whoever they might be—had a weapon that was capable of penetrating the erstwhile inviolate garments, they would be very dangerous enemies and a serious threat to his scheme.
‘Come on!’ the High Priest barked, his normally harsh tones made even sharper by the urgency of the situation.
‘Where are you going?’ Charole inquired, noticing his agitation.
‘Across the river,’ Dryaka answered, setting his mount into motion and turning it upstream. ‘I want to catch that girl!’
Starting her quagga moving, Charole rode alongside the High Priest and covertly studied him. However, she was drawing the wrong conclusions regarding his motives for pursuit. While he still wanted to take Dawn prisoner and use her in a bid to depose the Protectress, he was now more interested in learning the full
potential of her bow and arrows.
The rest of the party set off after their leaders. Giving a last furious shake of his fist at the girl, the eagle’s attendant vaulted astride his grar-gatah and followed.
Watching the riders, Dawn guessed what they had in mind and knew that the danger from them might not yet be over. The man had told her that the river could be forded above the chasm, which suggested they were intending to cross there and take up the chase themselves.
Having reached that decision, Dawn directed her thoughts towards escaping. From what she had seen from the edge of the chasm, the crossing place was not too close. So she ought to be able to reach the woodland before they arrived on her side of the river. However, while they were showing no indication of taking precautions against her, they might send one of their number to a point of vantage and keep her under observation until the others were over. There was nothing she could do about it if they did and so she must take her chances on outdistancing them.
Deciding that there would not be time to retrieve the arrows which she had expended—in Tomlu’s case, she felt disinclined even to try—the girl swung on her heel. Being a skilled horsewoman, she had hoped that she might be able to make use of the man’s zebra to carry her away more swiftly than on foot, but it had kept running after losing its rider and there was no hope of catching it.
Setting off at a fast walk, Dawn found herself wondering where Bunduki might be. With him at her side, she would have little to fear from the zebra-riders.
Was her adopted cousin feeling as lonely as she was, finding himself in this strange land and confronted by such inexplicable circumstances?
What conclusions had Bunduki drawn regarding their whereabouts and the means which had brought them there?
Had he too made contact with inhabitants of the strange, alien land?
Thinking about the blond giant was helping to divert Dawn’s mind from the memory of Tomlu’s evil face as the arrow had driven into his chest.