Casca 17: The Warrior

by Barry Sadler

  Quite apart from these noble sentiments, Casca was also pretty sure that if he reneged on the deal, the game among the women might take a different turn, and he could find himself without a woman at all.

  Setole proved to be as pleasant in bed as she was in conversation. Her enormous body was mainly muscle, and her agility and flexibility were really extraordinary. She was able to open her great legs as wide as any skinny little girl, and her superb musculature enabled her to use her sexual equipment as tightly, ingeniously, and excitingly as any of the thousands of women Casca had known.

  Which was fine in the dark, but in the morning he awakened to a distinct shock to find himself lying like a pigmy alongside the huge upholstery of her body.

  It was a further shock to discover that he had moved in.

  Setole prepared his breakfast and gave him a fresh sulu, taking his other one to launder. She brushed his jacket, oiled his sandals, and most ominous of all, set aside almost half the hut for his exclusive use, laying fresh grass mats and spreading upon them Casca's personal possessions— his duffel, shaving gear, toothbrush, and comb, all of which had somehow materialized from the hut he had shared with Vivita.

  "Great Hector's asshole," Casca cursed, "I don't want a fucking wife. And if I must have one, I'd rather have Vivita.”

  With the passing of each night the problem worsened. Neither Vivita nor any other woman now made any attempt to pry Casca loose from Setole. They were regarded like a married couple.

  Casca still enjoyed the giant woman's company, and indeed enjoyed her in bed enormously. But he chafed at the situation and began to plan seriously toward his departure from the island.

  He might wait for years before another ship called at the island, and then it might be a heavily armed slaver that would be difficult to capture and even more difficult for him to sail, with his more than likely reluctant crew.

  Certainly none of the islanders knew anything of schooner sailing, and he felt sure that now that he was "married," they would vigorously oppose his departure. Clearly he would have to make his own way from the island which meant stealing one of the village boats.

  So Casca began to bend his energies to learning everything he could about handling the sail canoes.

  His sudden passion for fishing caused neither comment nor suspicion, even though he made a point of going out in all the worst weather to be encountered.

  His status as war chief had been further exalted by his role as Semele's virtual deputy, and further again by his marital connection with Setole, a powerful woman herself in the village hierachy, and Mbolo's sister.

  Even without these advantages he might not have been troubled much. Every villager virtually organized his own life, farming or fishing, building or diving, more or less as his own circumstances and whim dictated.

  Casca became an expert sail handler, then a proficient helmsman, and then he set himself to learn all he could of navigation.

  He especially liked to join those fishermen who worked in the depths of the night, and he questioned them endlessly about the way through the stars.

  In time he came to know that he would be on course for the distant island of Lifou if he kept Orion—to Casca a Roman legionnaire, to the islanders a beautiful woman dancing—behind him. He should also steer between the Giant Shrimp, which he knew as Scorpio, and the Albatross, which sailors called the Southern Cross.

  Casca decided upon the boat that he needed—a small sail canoe with a single outrigger, one triangular sail, and a small covered area protected by thatch and tapa cloth. He was confident that he could sail this vessel single-handed, and he seized upon every possible chance to practice with it.

  As the fishermen became accustomed to Casca's presence among them they gradually lost interest in which boat he sailed in, where he went, and what he caught. Some days he would linger on the beach until all the fishermen had left, and then set out by himself in whatever craft happened to be available. There were plenty of boats, and different ones were used on different days, according to the weather and the type fish being sought.

  The small sail canoes were mainly used in the hunt for big-game fish way offshore, and when these fish were not plentiful Casca was often able to spend the day sailing alone.

  A huge school of grouper arrived off the reef, and almost all of the fishermen preferred to hang by the reef in the paddle canoes angling for the large fish that bit readily on any sizable bait. A number of other fishermen worked inside the lagoon, seeking bait fish.

  Several sail canoes were unused, and Casca took the smallest and sailed it to the western end of the island, where he ran it into the quiet backwater below the place of refuge.

  He climbed the cliff and returned to the village, arriving about sunset.

  In the chief's house that night Dukuni and a few other fishermen greeted him, boasting of their catches of giant grouper.

  "Maybe I should have gone in your boat today," Casca responded. But he did not volunteer, and was not asked, just how he had spent the day.

  Several days passed before the boat was missed, and then, as with all such events, the theft was blamed on a sneak thief from the enemy village of Lakuvi.

  When he was not out sailing in the small craft Casca spent a great deal of time carrying coconuts, breadfruit, and sweet potatoes to the place of refuge.

  He became very adept at racing along the narrow cliff path, juggling a heavy tapa sack on one shoulder as he looked down hundreds of feet to the rocks and waves below, or up the sheer face of the cliff to the peak above the refuge.

  To get to the cliff edge above the backwater he had to pass Tepole's body, now a stinking, pulpy mass that would yet take some time for the benign jungle to consume. There were on the island no jackals or dogs or cats, and the only rats stayed by the villages, where they had come ashore from Clevinger's ships. It fell to the insects to clean up what was left of the mess that Tepole had made of his life.

  Farther away he could see where Sonolo still sat in his self-imposed exile, waiting for death. Or was he already dead? Casca couldn't tell from this distance, and chose to ignore the stonelike man.

  He enjoyed stepping down the near precipitous cliff face to where he stashed his supplies on the lee shore of the little backwater sheltered by the expanse of flat rock which rose several feet above the sea. The rock was always dry, and it seemed that only a freak wave ever broke across it to enter the little backwater.

  In a week he accumulated a huge cache of food and coconuts, including a crock full of pickled grouper flesh and several more crocks of fresh water. He also cached a musket, a powder horn, shot, and his bottle of whiskey.

  The moon was waxing fast, and Casca planned to sail on the night that it filled. He hoped to be off to the island of Lifou four or five days later.

  He was, by dint of great experience, a capable navigator. He had already been practicing the craft, albeit mainly on land, for a thousand six hundred years, when the British Navy turned the craft into a science with Greenwich Mean Time, standard nautical tables, meticulously accurate chronometers, the sextant, and eventually the detailed Admiralty charts that showed almost every headland, cape, island, islet, reef, and known depth on the surface of the planet.

  But now he was introduced to the practice of navigation as an art.

  The islanders used only one instrument—song. There was a song for every possible destination, including even the land where the yellow people live, although none of the islanders had ever sailed to China and only a few Chinese traders had ever visited the island.

  Every islander knew every one of the songs, and at the appropriate times of the day, according to the season and the winds and the weather, they sang the appropriate verses of the song that recorded the way that led through the stars, the changes of wave patterns caused by islands and reefs, the sorts of landscapes to be looked for, the known dangers, and every other piece of information a seafarer could put to use.

  And now Casca knew the song that would take h
im to the island of Lifou. He had learned the hard way—by doing—but he learned well.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The day finally arrived when the farmers of Navola had delivered the necessary materials to erect the temple.

  Justly proud of the enormous strength that had won him the roles of pole lifter, Casca climbed into the new hole, the carvings on the pole providing footholds as he made his way down the length.

  Standing on the bottom, he grasped the pole and hugged it to him, struggling to get it vertical. The task proved more difficult than he had expected. In the narrow confine of the bottom of the hole he could exert little purchase, and it took him some time to get it into the upright position.

  As he did so there was a resounding cheer from above ground, and a slow chant commenced.

  At the fourth beat Casca recognized the same chant that had launched the canoe, and an inkling of unease entered his mind.

  At the fifth beat there was a mighty roar, within which Casca heard his own protesting voice, and a great cascade of sand poured into the hole from every side.

  "Great Jupiter's balls," Casca shouted, "what the fuck's going on here?"

  The rapid rain of sand continued falling and Casca could feel that it had already reached his knees. He strove frantically to move his legs, but could not even wriggle his toes.

  Now the sand was rising a little more slowly as the taper of the hole widened, but inch by inch it moved up over his thighs. Buried to the crotch, wedged between the pole and the side of the hole, he could move nothing but his arms.

  He reached as high as he could, found two handholds in the carvings, and tried to drag himself free of the imprisoning sand—a useless effort that accomplished nothing but his exhaustion.

  He had been tricked.

  Or had he?

  He recalled the blunt answer when he had inquired about the stench at the bottom of the hole of the old temple. He had assumed some spiritual reason for the burial of a doubtless revered man with the pole of the temple. It had not occurred to him, as it did now, that a live man provided a very practical means of keeping the pole vertical while the hole was filled around it. And yes, he was doubtless considered worthy of the honor.

  The sand was now up around his chest, and he was pouring forth every curse and oath and imprecation he could lay his tongue to.

  Then his breath began to falter, his chest constricted by the pressure of the sand.

  For one of the very few times in his long life Casca wanted to beg. But he quickly realized that it was pointless. Nothing he could say could possibly be heard through the chanting and drumming above ground. So he went back to cursing.

  The sand continued to fall. Now only his head was free, uptilted along the pole toward the daylight.

  The chanting stopped.

  A single frangipani blossom came floating down to settle on his face, and he heard Vivita's voice: "Vanaka, vanaka—thank you, thank you."

  Then a roaring chorus from the entire village: "Vanaka! Vanaka!" He gulped a great breath of flower-scented air, and a great rush of sand buried his head.

  He would die once more—but for how long this time?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The whole island trembled. The mountain steamed, sprayed out ash and sand, and finally spewed forth a great river of boiling mud and rock.

  The stream of molten lava coursed down the mountainside to the sea, where it plunged in amidst tremendous clouds of steam.

  By night the river glowed red and the mountain shot brilliant glowing colors into the sky.

  The ocean raged and the waters of the lagoon heaved up and inundated the land, big waves rushing up the hillsides and swamping the village. Then it retreated back to the lagoon and beyond, back over the reef and into the ocean. It scoured out the village as it left, sucking along with it everything it encountered.

  The wave retreated outside the reef, leaving most of the lagoon dry behind it. Huge fish, giant squid, and enormous rays such as the villagers had never dreamed existed, lay panting on the dry bottom.

  Then another giant wave came booming over the reef, refilling the lagoon as it raced to the shore, where its towering height crashed down upon the village like a great hammer, flattening everything before it and then retiring again, sucking whole houses, people, canoes, even the sturdy palisades into the lagoon and beyond, over the reef and out into the ocean.

  Over and over the cycle was repeated. Great sharks and groupers, never seen inside the reef, were dumped inside the remains of the village. For two days and nights the volcano spurted fire and lava; the island heaved and the ocean raged.

  Then on the third morning all was quiet.

  The village was devastated. Not a house was standing and all three palisades had disappeared, as had the great chief's house. Where the new temple had stood surrounded by its gods, there was now nothing but a great hole. The huge roof pole had disappeared along with most of the stone idols.

  Semele had disappeared along with about a hundred others. Ibolo moved about the ruins of the village, tending to the survivors, doing what he could for the many broken arms and legs and heads.

  Suddenly the ruined village was filled with the excited shrieks of the children. Unconcerned with the death and destruction all around them, the little ones were gamboling about on the beach, marveling upon the wonders that had been washed up from the depths, when they came upon Casca.

  Their yells brought the whole village running, to cluster about the dead man whose arms still obstinately clutched the carvings of the post, as he had in his last desperate attempt to heave himself free. Locked to the pole like this, the corpse had ridden the pole back and forth a dozen times from the village to the ocean and back to the beach.

  Ibolo moved to gently pry loose the clutching fingers, and started back in alarm.

  The rest of the villagers retreated several paces and waited.

  Ibolo gingerly approached again and touched Casca's arm. It was unmistakable—the corpse was cold, but nowhere near as cold as it should have been. Fresh blood showed around the body's many bruises and cuts. Ibolo laid his head to Casca's back and listened. There was no sign of breathing, but Mbolo thought he detected life. He turned and shouted.

  "Fire, fire, make fire here. Quickly, quickly. Big fire here. Another one here." He pointed to places on the ground to either side of Casca's body as he squatted beside him and commenced a powerful massage.

  In the hole Casca's breathing had shut down as he exhaled his last lungful of air through his nose in his last conscious act. His next attempt to breath blocked his nose and mouth with earth, and suffocation quickly followed.

  Or rather, something between hibernation and suspended animation, as the curse of the dying Jesus took effect and the process of cell decay was arrested, the heart and lungs and other organs lowering their activity to virtually zero.

  The first gigantic heave of the earth had thrust the pole up out of the ground, and the first of the tsunami waves had floated the pole and Casca out to sea. The many trips back and forth had sluiced out his nose and mouth with seawater, clearing the air passages.

  Now Mbolo's vigorous massage and the heat of the fires reactivated his body's systems, and he drew a short, shuddering breath.

  The watching villagers ran away in terror as Mbolo continued the massage, but crept cautiously back as Casca drew another, longer breath. The huge islander continued the treatment until Casca was breathing deeply and regularly. Then he moistened Casca's lips with water, covered him with tapa cloths, squatted beside him and waited.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The earthquake knocked over the squatting Sonolo, awakening him from his deep trance.

  He picked himself up and looked around in wonder. The whole world was rocking back and forth, trees were crashing to the ground, there was deafening noise, and ashes and glowing cinders of rock were falling from the sky.

  Sonolo watched in wonder. His wonder increased when he glanced down and saw his own bod
y. His skin hung in empty folds, the huge muscles and the layer of fat having wasted away. Through the slack envelope of skin Sonolo could see his bones. He looked like a dead man.

  How had this happened? Why was he here on the rock of refuge? Had he been exiled from the village? For what crime? What had he done?

  Slowly, in tattered fragments, pieces of his experience came back to him.

  He suddenly recalled the modem English city Levuka, with its paved roads, and great, four-legged beasts that men rode on, and other four-legs that ran at these beasts' heels making a fearful noise.

  Then he remembered the only four-legged animals he knew, the rats casually imported in the holds of Clevinger's ship, and he recalled the days when he was a little boy and Clevinger had been trading from the island.

  He had fond memories of the defrocked New England parson who had not only taught him to speak English, but also to read and write, and who had especially impressed upon him the evils of whiskey.

  With an awful, wrenching shock Sonolo recollected his drunken murder of his life-long friend, comrade, and rival, his cousin Sakuvi. He looked down at his wasted body and assumed that he, too, was dead, and was glad of it.

  A sweet memory came to him of his wife and his three children, and then of his old mother, and of his dead father.

  He looked around. Clevinger, preacher turned rationalist, was right. There was no life after death, or else his father would be here to greet him.

  He wondered how long he'd been dead, how old his children might now be, and whom his wife might have married?

  He had no qualms about the welfare of his family. He did not even have a concept of need, nor of loneliness.

  The awful thought struck him that, as there was no life after death, he was stuck here forever by himself. Forever, whatever that was. But if there were no life after death, what state was he in?