Casca 17: The Warrior

by Barry Sadler

  Semele looked around him. There were dead bodies all the way along the beach.

  "How can we eat so many?" he asked in dismay.

  Duana looked at him shrewdly. "Perhaps the Lakuvi would help us."

  Semele nodded. "Perhaps they would."

  He called two warriors to him and told him to run to the Lakuvi village and invite the entire village to the feast.

  The banquet started as soon as they returned to the village.

  Casca munched his way unconcernedly through a set of genitals, a liver, a heart, and some kidneys before starting on a buttock steak.

  Everybody in the village had enjoyed some of the meat by the time the Lakuvi villagers arrived, and they pressed various delicacies upon their guests.

  The first of the people from Lakuvi had arrived at a run, the messengers who had been sent for them barely managing to stay ahead of their eager guests.

  They had news that cheered the whole village and put an end to Casca's worries. He had a horrifying mental picture of Savage's schooner sailing into the lagoon to rake the village with cannon fire, an aspect of warfare that had little attraction for him. In all his experience he had never found a practical defense against a cannonade. Neither running nor hiding was effective.

  But the news from Lakuvi eased his mind. The messengers had arrived at the village shortly after Cakabau and his few survivors. The story of the battle for Navola had lost nothing in the telling.

  In Cakabau's version the entire Navola village had been armed with muskets, scores of them. And muskets very much superior to those supplied by Savage, in that they could be reloaded in the blink of an eye. And Casca's three almost harmless mortar bursts had been described by Cakabau as coming from more and bigger guns than there were in the British fort at Levuka.

  On hearing the news, Savage had cut free his anchors and raced away from the island with all possible sail set.

  Casca smiled hugely as he clapped his hands to receive the bib of kava.

  The feasting went on all night, one earth oven after another being opened until everyone of the defeated enemy had been cooked.

  By the time the sun came up every last morsel of the cooked meat had been eaten and the inevitable orgy was in full swing. By the time the sun went down again every man had enjoyed five or six or more women, and every woman at least a like number of men.

  The orgy took some days to get over.

  The bilo passed endlessly, the seductions proceeded apace, although with less and less frenzy, and perhaps even more enjoyment.

  Casca reflected on his buried bottle of whiskey, wondered if Semele and perhaps some others had one hidden, too, and prayed by all the gods that grew that they would keep them hid.

  The two tribes of hereditary enemies were locked and intertwined in an embrace that would last for hundreds of years—as it already had for hundreds of hundreds of years.

  But the only fights that Casca saw were amongst the children, who brawled like drunken sailors, formed little armies, laid seige, set ambushes, and generally so enjoyed themselves that Casca was frankly envious.

  But the ladies of Lakuvi were a great consolation for the loss of the joys of boyhood battlegrounds.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  After several days some semblance of normalcy began to return to the everyday lives of the two peoples.

  Husbands and wives gravitated toward each other. Casca found himself walking Vivita home past the little clusters of young women who put themselves in his way. In couples and in family groups the people of Lakuvi drifted back to their own village, and after another few days it was as if the great battle and the enormous feast had never happened.

  Except for the songs. The entire history of the attack— the tactics of the defense, the sabotage of the canoes, the massacre and the feast that followed, the friendship with the village of Lakuvi—was recorded in a series of songs which would be sung in the village for many decades, maybe for centuries, and certainly for as long as their lessons remained valuable.

  In all of these songs Casca was the mighty hero, the powerful Valangi who had come to the island at the behest of the gods to preserve the village and its people, to vanquish its enemies.

  Casca accepted without demur his role as an emissary of the gods, but had been careful to ensure that he was taken for mortal and not himself held to be a god. He'd taken his share of blows and cuts in the fighting, and had been seen to bleed, although he'd been careful to conceal the speed at which his wounds healed.

  His status in the councils of the village had risen. He now found himself almost always in a position of honor, along with Semele and Mbolo. He seemed to be brought into most of the discussions of village problems, his opinion sought in matters of building, farming, fishing, and other topics in which he had no real knowledge or interest.

  But to decline giving an opinion would be rude, to offer a trite one would be absurd, so day after day he found that he was in fact applying more and more of his energies and intellect to management of the village.

  If the realities of a farming problem eluded him, he would join the farmers the next day and help to implement whatever solution had been agreed upon, learning in the process just why the particular approach had been accepted and reappraising its effectiveness in light of what he learned.

  In building matters, especially the vital fortifications and water storage, he was already adept, and he effected numerous significant improvements in these areas, and even small ones in the building of huts and the construction and drainage of steps and pathways. In addition he became an expert fisherman and a good diver, although he could not develop the phenomenal capacity to stay underwater which seemed almost natural to many of the villagers.

  One night he looked up from an intense discussion to catch an amused half smile on Vivita's face. He looked at her questioningly and her glance flitted to Semete and Mbolo and their wives, the ultimate authority in the village.

  Casca saw that they were sitting back in a sort of contented withdrawal, and he suddenly realized he was running the show. Imperceptibly Semele had led him to this point where he was in fact functioning as deputy chief of the tribe.

  "Hold on there, boy," he mumbled to himself, "this job is not for you. You could be stuck here forever."

  At the same instant the thought struck him that the island was not such a bad place to be stuck, and that unless something extraordinary happened he well could be stuck on it for a damn long time.

  "Gotta get myself organized to get the fuck out of here," he mumbled again.

  For the rest of the evening he strove to ensure that he didn't get drawn further into Semele's role.

  Certainly it was time for him to be moving on. Most certainly he did not wish to become supreme chief of the village and spend the rest of his life as Semele did, mediating disputes between neighbors, guiding village discussions of farming, fishing, building, and the most mundane matters, playing host to visitors, being the butt of the children's unending pranks—and incidentally, preserving the village economy and seeing to its defense.

  The scope of the job and the detailed, tedious, endless involvement appalled Casca. And the rewards—occasional deference, once in a while a special feast of turtle meat, the tastiest parts of defeated enemies, first access to most of the village virgins—fell a long way short of making the job attractive.

  Nor was there any way that even the most astute operator could increase these rewards. Even Cakabau received little more. Money was almost unknown, and there was no way to spend it outside the city of Levuka.

  If, say, Cakabau were to leave the islands, taking with him all the available cash, he might manage to spend a few riotous weeks in London, then return to find he'd been forgotten, his empire broken up, his palace occupied or in ruins. The power and prestige of a chief in these islands depended entirely upon the continuous use of that power for the benefit of his people. A chief could enrich all his people, and so himself, but it was not possible for himself to get
rich at their expense.

  It was this lack of sensibly civilized reward that convinced Casca that for all their sophistication in some things, the islanders were but simple savages, and that he should look elsewhere to spend more time of his seemingly endless life.

  He could see now that there was real danger he might be made chief. No matter what the topic under discussion, Semele always made a place for him closest to himself.

  The present topic was the erection of a new temple, a matter of total unconcern to Casca, yet as happened more and more frequently, he found himself at the center of this discussion too.

  The old temple had been destroyed in the same hurricane that had brought the Rangaroa to the island, and until now more pressing matters had prevented the application of the necessary time and thought to its reconstruction.

  Casca went to study the ruins of the temple, and stared at the idols lying scattered about. Most of these belonged outside the holy structure and were in their more or less normal position, except that several of them had been knocked over by the collapse of the temple framework.

  The great central pole still stood rigidly vertical, its elaborate carvings rising about forty feet above the ground. Around it there had once been a thatched roof and walls that completely concealed the carvings and some stone gods now exposed to view. The hurricane had torn away the temple walls, the thatch roof, and the great, long poles that formed the forty-foot-high roof frame.

  Around the outside of the temple there were numerous other carved idols of stone, of the wood used for war clubs, and of the soft tree ferns found in the depths of the jungle.

  The ruined temple received scant attention from the villagers, and the gods little respect. Since the idols lay conveniently on their sides they were used like park benches. Friends who happened to meet near them would sit on them and chat, and the village children played on them. Had there been dogs, Casca didn't doubt they would have pissed on them.

  Casca gathered that once completed, the new temple would be similarly ignored. The village gods, it seemed, were simply there, and that was that. They played no part, and were not invited into the ordinary affairs of the village.

  Nor did the villagers presume to concern themselves with the affairs of their gods.

  Casca sat down on a great carved head. No, he thought, this doesn't look like the place for the Messiah to make his next call.

  The temple became the main topic of the meetings in the chief's house. From here and there around the room came scraps of information, practical and impractical suggestions, jokes, banter, and idle, irrelevant gossip.

  One man said that his share of the roof thatch would be cut and delivered into the village before the moon was full. But various others—there seemed to be many—said they could not deliver the thatch until the moon had waned, some said to half. Various other men gave varying times for delivery of the poles for the framework for the walls and roof.

  Semele listened with equal respect and attention to every speaker, and asked his usual slow, casual, but pointed questions.

  Lanata, the new farmer chief, was sitting next to Semele, and he gave a little speech that brought laughter from all around the room.

  It seemed the farmers who would be late with their share of the thatch were those who, during the planting season, had preferred to spend their time fishing, as a school of large grouper had appeared just outside the reef. Lanata wagged his finger at these farmers, holding them up to ridicule before the rest of the village as a bad example and a warning of how neglect of duty by a few could inconvenience or harm the whole village.

  The offenders laughed as readily as any as their dereliction was paraded, but Casca got the impression that it might be some years before they again let the early part of a planting season slip by.

  Dukuni, the fisherman chief, suggested that if they really enjoyed fishing so much, they should join the fishermen when there were no fat, lazy, easy-to-catch grouper. Every tiny fish had to be worked for, and any sort of came only after long hours of tedious waiting and repeated disappointments.

  The demolition of the old temple now became a matter of paramount importance, for reasons Casca didn't know. A huge hole was now excavated all around the central pole, and as the hole deepened, all the huskiest men—including Semele and Mbolo— would jump down into it and try to free the pole from the remaining earth.

  Casca joined in the competition. At first the efforts were playful, merely ceremonial, the dislodging of the great buried length being nearly impossible. But as the diggers exposed each new carved head, the efforts became more serious, and eventually Casca discerned that they were getting to the point where it might be possible for a man to heft free the post's length of something like sixty feet.

  There was à frightful stench in the bottom of the hole, which grew stronger as more and more of the pole was exposed. Casca's inquiry about it was met with a blank stare and the simple reply: "Te kanaka —the man."

  So, a dead man was buried with the pole. Well, that didn't surprise Casca too much. But he wondered if the building of the new temple would wait upon the death of somebody in the village. Presumably it would be an honor to be so buried, and such an honor might be reserved for someone of importance. Mbolo, for example, was certainly honored, but he was clearly in the best of health and spirits as Casca watched, him heaving mightily at the pole from the bottom of the hole.

  Casca was pretty sure that he himself was the strongest man in the village, as he normally was wherever he went. It also seemed to him that luck would play a considerable part, since once there was little enough of the pole still buried to make its removal possible, each successive try would be of assistance to the next in freeing up the earth's hold on the pole. .

  He wanted to win, as he would have wished to win any such test of strength, but he had a deeper reason. In his determination to avoid the job of chief, Casca had now adopted a pushy, ambitious sort of demeanor, seeking preferment and self-promotion wherever it was offered, making it evident, he thought, that he was of that unreliable type, the kind easily corrupted by a small taste of power. He hoped to win this contest of strength and then strut and swagger about the village so insufferably that the villagers would not only not consider him for Semele's job, but would be pleased to assist him when he announced his intention to depart the island.

  Luck was on his side. The great carved pole was now teetering slightly in the imprisoning earth, each successive tryer easing it slightly more as he strove to wrench it free.

  Casca liked the imagery of the shouts of encouragement for each contestant. As he climbed down into the sinking hole people shouted to him: "Take it away from him, Casca. Make him let it go, Casca." And as he felt it move at its base, everybody roared: "Let it go, dead man, Casca is stronger than you."

  To Casca, in the bottom of the fetid hole, it almost did seem that he was wrestling with the dead man for possession of the pole, and with a mighty effort of arms and shoulders and back and legs he lifted it free of the earth and held it erect for a moment, to let it fall against the slope of the other side of the hole.

  There was an enormous round of cheering, and Casca saw Mbolo where the pole rested against the side of the hole, beckoning him to climb up the carvings.

  Casca was only too pleased to do so. The now open grave emitted a stench as foul as any he had ever known, and he was pleased to escape it.

  Mbolo greeted him at the top of the hole and placed his arms around the pole as high as he could reach, seizing it himself a little lower while Semele grabbed it behind him. All the other contestants were leaping into the pit. When everybody had a firm hold, the drums and a chant started up, everybody heaved, and with a great rush the length of the pole came up. Many more hands grabbed for it above the ground, and in a few minutes all sixty feet of it was lying alongside the hole. This part of the job done, the actual building of the temple would not occur until the farmers could deliver the promised materials.

  Casca, followed by a
ll the others, ran for the cleansing ocean and threw himself into the shallows, scouring his flesh with handfuls of the dense, black sand, washing away the horrible odor of old death.

  When they came out of the water there were women waiting with vessels of fragrant oils. Once annointed and sweet smelling, Casca began immediately upon his new campaign of strut and swagger. But when he saw Vivita's glance of contempt and disgust, he modified the act a little. It was not part of his plan to make himself a figure for ridicule.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  That night Setole sat opposite him, grinning pleasantly, and Casca reflected how much he enjoyed the company of this placid, jolly woman. She was a fountain of good sense, and even among people as fun loving as the islanders, her happy enthusiasm for life was outstanding.

  Now that he had some real command of the language, Casca found he enjoyed her company more and more. She had a fund of witty anecdotes about everyday life in the village, and was an unfailing source of wry and amusing stories.

  But Casca was taken severely aback when he realized that Vivita had perceptibly withdrawn from their usual intimacy, that none of the younger women seemed to be trying for him tonight, and it looked as if Setole intended to take him home with her.

  More than ever Casca felt like a pawn in this game amongst the women, and he cast about for some way to avoid being carted away by the fat woman like some fairground prize.

  "Dammit," he said to himself, "I'm a fucking big wheel in this town, a hero, the war chief, damn near supreme chief. How come I get stuck with this fat old broad?"

  But short of holding Setole off with his .38, Casca knew there was no way out. He considered rudely insulting her by brutally declining to accompany her, but he liked her too much to do that. She was honoring him, she had asserted herself to win him from Vivita, he had unwittingly gone along with that part of the game, and now he was stuck with the result. There was nothing for it but to put on the best face possible, suffer through the night, and be more careful in future.