Gladiators Of Hapanu rb-31 Read online

  It took him less time than he’d expected to find what he needed, and almost no time to put the pieces together. Within a few minutes he had a length of wood, roughly straight, about two inches thick and two feet long. With lengths of vine he tied two more shorter pieces of wood crosswise to the longer one, about four inches from each end. He’d have liked to put a point on each end of the long piece, but there weren’t any sharp stones in sight.

  There was his defense against any crocodile. He would wait until the creature opened its mouth, then shove the jawbracer inside. As the creature tried to close its mouth, the ends of the longer stick would dig into the upper and lower jaws, holding them apart. The two crosspieces would help hold the longer stick in place.

  At least that was the theory, and Blade couldn’t see anything wrong with it. In practice, the jawbracer was going to need great speed, nearly perfect timing, and a certain amount of luck. Blade knew he had the first two, and could hope for the third. After that he wasn’t going to worry. With its jaws braced open, the crocodile would have to chase him and try to knock him down with its tail. Blade was fairly certain he could outrun any of the crocodiles.

  Blade made a belt of a longer piece of vine and hooked the jawbracer over it, where the weapon would be ready to hand. He considered making a second one, then decided to wait. He could pick up the pieces for the second one as he moved along, and he certainly wouldn’t need more than two. It would take some luck to meet one of the crocodiles with the jawbracer, and really incredible luck to survive two of them. If he was attacked by three-well, his luck was going to run out, and there wasn’t much he could do about it.

  Blade ate two more of the fruits, threw away several which had started to go bad, and drank some water. Then he started off along the bank of the stream.

  Swebon was the son of Igha of the Two Spears, chief of the Four Springs village among the Fak’si. Igha’s wives bore him four sons who lived to manhood, but of these one was killed in a raid against the Yal the year before Igha’s death from the Stomach Eater. Another was eaten by a Horned One in the very moon of his father’s death. This left only Swebon and his brother Guno to be chiefs of the village, and most of the warriors felt that Swebon was much the wiser of the two. Guno was held in great honor for his strength and swiftness, but he had a hot temper which had made him enemies. In fact, his temper was so hot that some of the warriors who voted for Swebon also urged him to have Guno put to death.

  «No,» said Swebon. «Guno is a mighty warrior, as you have said. He is also wise enough to know that he can now do nothing against me. Since this is so, I will not kill him simply because he might do something. The Fak’si need all their warriors.»

  No one could deny that, with the Yal, the Banum, and the Kabi all seeming to make two raids for every one they’d made in years past. Not to mention the Treemen, and the slave-raiders of the Sons of Hapanu, who were worse than the other tribes and the Treemen put together! Swebon would have had to think hard before killing Guno, no matter what he might threaten against his brother and leader.

  So Guno lived, and so far he’d done nothing to make Swebon regret letting him live. In the last seven months he had defeated twelve warriors of other tribes and taken three of their women. He’d also killed a Treeman and rescued a woman of the Fak’si from him. He’d even killed one of the Sons of Hapanu, although in doing that he’d taken a sword wound in his thigh which nearly killed him. But he was healing now, and he would go with the Fak’si on the next raid. The warriors praised him, some were proud to call him friend, and all now thought well of Swebon for letting such a man live.

  So Swebon was very much at peace with not only his brother but the rest of the world as well, as his canoe glided down the Yellow River. The sun was warm and bright, so the Horned Ones would not be out. His belly was full of meat and fish, and all the hunters with him were also well fed. They were bringing back much food, much stone, some metal, and even the hide of a young Horned One. Swebon decided that part of the hide would be made into a shield for Guno. He deserved the honor.

  Best of all, out of the four canoes they’d only lost two men. One had died from the bite of a snake-what kind, no one knew for sure. The other simply vanished into the jungle like the smoke from a fire vanishing into the sky. That usually meant the Treemen had carried him off and eaten him. Swebon could only hope that the man killed at least one of the Treemen before they killed him.

  They hadn’t met any of the slave-raiders of the Sons of Hapanu, and that was almost unfortunate. Four canoes full of warriors might have been enough to destroy the raiders. Certainly none of the warriors would have been captured, to be taken as slaves to Gerhaa the Stone Village at the mouth of the Great River.

  On the other hand, perhaps it was still good, not to meet the Sons of Hapanu. Their swords and bows, the metal they wore on their bodies and heads, and the way they stood together in a fight always gave them great power. Many warriors would have died or been wounded so they would not fight again, even if all the Sons of Hapanu died also. So much death and blood could never be good.

  Swebon cursed under his breath. Nothing could ever be truly good, until the Sons of Hapanu were beaten-beaten so that they would never again come into the Forest or along the Great River, to take the firestone from the bottoms of the streams and the strong men and women from the tribes. When that day came every man and woman of the Forest People would be happy. But would it ever come? Swebon did not have much hope left. The Stone Village had squatted at the mouth of the Great River since the time of his grand father’s grandfather or even before. It would probably be there in the time of his grandson’s grandson.

  But such thoughts might bring bad luck if he let them go on too long. Swebon forced himself to stop thinking of the Sons of Hapanu and looked at the banks of the Yellow River passing on either side. There was the tree struck by lightning many years ago, when Swebon had just been given the Hunter’s Gift and become a full man of the Fak’si. That meant they were not far from the River of the Six Dead Hunters, and would be well past it before they had to stop for the night.

  Good. Along the River of the Six Dead Hunters the Horned Ones were so thick that no wise man ever spent the night within half a day’s walking of it. A large party such as Swebon’s might not be in danger, for the Horned Ones seldom attacked large groups of men. Yet one could never be sure, and it would be foolish to lose men to the Horned Ones when they were no more than two days from home.

  Swebon leaned back on the pad of leaves and rushes in the stern of the canoe and stretched his legs. From the rear canoe he could hear the Paddlers’ Chant, but in the other three canoes they paddled silently, with no sound but the ripple of water alongside and the dripping from the paddles.

  Suddenly half the hunters seemed to be shouting at once, in surprise or even in fear. Swebon remembered that he was in a canoe just in time to keep himself from jumping to his feet and falling overboard. He sat up, to see that men had picked up spears and were pointing them toward the bank.

  A man was standing on the bank, where the River of Six Dead Hunters flowed into the Yellow River. At least he looked more like a man than anything else, although he looked like no man Swebon had ever seen before. The man’s skin was almost hairless, so he could not be one of the Treemen. He was almost as tall as one, though-taller than any of the Forest People and most of the Sons of Hapanu. For a moment Swebon thought he might be one of the Sons, and reached for his bow. Then he got a closer look at the man, and realized this could not be.

  The man’s skin was covered with dirt and dried kohkol sap, but underneath it was pale, almost white. It was not the skin of any tribe of the Forest People that Swebon had ever seen or even heard of. It was certainly not the skin of any of the Sons of Hapanu, who were all dark brown, like the mud from the bottom of a river. Perhaps he was the son of a Treeman and a captured woman of the Forest People, who hadn’t grown a hairy coat and so been turned out into the Forest?

  Or perhaps he wasn’t
a living man at all? At the thought, Swebon’s shout made all the paddlers bring their canoes to a stop. If what they saw on the bank was the spirit of one of the Six Dead Hunters killed by the Horned Ones here, what could they do against it? And what had they done to bring it forth now, in daylight? Swebon was not only confused, he was frightened-so frightened he might even have admitted it if anyone had asked him.

  Then the «spirit» spoke. He put down the branch he was carrying as a club, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted, «Hallooooo! You people in the canoes! I am Richard Blade, of the English. I come in peace, and I want to speak to your chief.»

  He spoke the language of the Forest People as if he’d sucked it in with his mother’s milk, although the accent was strange. Swebon had never heard of a tribe of the Forest People called the English, but perhaps they were so far away that they no longer met or spoke with the other tribes. That would explain why this Richard Blade of the English sounded strange.

  Swebon waved at the English man. «Ho, Richard Blade! I am Swebon, chief in the Four Springs village of the Fak’si. I will listen to any words of peace you speak.»

  The English man laughed. «I speak only words of peace when there has been no war. I wish to ride in your canoes with you to your people, live among them, go where they go, and perhaps help them. Will you take me?»

  Swebon frowned. He could not be sure that it was wise to bring a man of no known tribe among the Fak’si, but would it truly be dangerous? He looked at Blade again. The man had the body and muscles of a warrior and hunter. He wore only a belt with sticks hanging from it and a hat of leaves. The club and a sack of wisdom-fruit lay on the grass at his feet. That was not much to bring into the High Forest. Blade was either mad or very brave. He certainly did not sound mad, and he seemed to be ignoring all the spears and arrows pointed at him. He stood many paces from any shelter, and if Swebon spoke a single word he would look like a spinefish from all the arrows and spears sticking out of him. Yet he was speaking as calmly as if he were sitting by the fire, picking his teeth with a fish bone. This had to be courage.

  So here was Richard Blade, a strong, brave warrior and hunter of an unknown tribe called the English, who spoke the speech of the Forest People. He wished to come among the Fak’si, and said he might be able to help them. How? Swebon almost wanted to ask that out loud, but decided not to. He did not trust Blade enough to tell him about the troubles of the Forest People.

  He would take Blade home to the village, though. The man was strange, but he did not seem dangerous. If he was watched carefully he could do no harm even if he wanted to.

  «Richard Blade!» shouted Swebon. «One canoe will come to the bank for you. Get into it. Leave your club behind.» The sticks hanging from Blade’s belt looked somewhat like the spirit sticks the Yal tied to trees when they made sacrifices. No doubt Blade’s sticks were used in the sacrifices of the English. It would not be proper to take them from him.

  Blade nodded. «Thank you, Swebon. I will be happy to come among your people.» He picked up his club, tossed it into the water, and stood with his arms folded on his chest, watching the canoe heading toward him.

  Chapter 4

  Blade wasn’t quite as happy among the Fak’si as he told Swebon he’d be. So far they hadn’t done anything openly unfriendly, and they seemed willing to follow their chief’s lead in dealing with Blade. On the other hand, there were more than forty warriors in the four canoes. They carried either a spear or a bow and a quiver of arrows, most of them had heavy wooden clubs hanging at their waists, and all had crocodile-hide shields ready to hand.

  They weren’t particularly pleasant-looking, either. They all resembled the dead man Blade had seen in the jungle about five and a half feet tall, stocky, well-muscled, and blue-skinned. Most of them had spectacular white tattoos all over their chests and arms, and a few had their faces tattooed into grotesque masks. The sides and backs of their heads were shaved, and the rest of their hair was fastened into a topknot with elaborate bone pins and ornaments.

  The leader in the canoe made a space for Blake in the stern and he sat down. The paddlers backed water and the canoe slid out into the river again. Blade noted that the paddles were long, narrow, and balanced at the upper end with stones tied in place with vine. With nine pairs of muscular arms working steadily, the canoe rapidly gained speed.

  Blade’s canoe fell into line immediately behind Swebon’s, giving him a chance to look at the chief more closely. Swebon was a trifle taller than most of the others, and his tattoos spread down onto his thighs. Unlike the others, who wore only plain hide loinguards, Swebon wore a loinguard of reptile hide and a bone bracelet around one ankle. Several scars crossed his chest and shoulders, and another cut across his forehead, stopping just above his left eye. At the moment he was leaning back almost lazily on a pile of leaves and rushes, but Blade sensed alertness and leashed power in the man. Swebon would clearly be formidable, either as friend or as enemy.

  The day grew steadily hotter and the paddles splashed monotonously. Blade felt himself growing drowsy and fought against it. He was a long way from being safe enough among these people to risk going quietly to sleep now. If they were really determined to kill him they could probably do so whether he stayed awake or not, but if he was awake they’d have a fight on their hands. The prospect of that fight might keep them from planning any hostile move in the first place.

  All four canoes were heavily loaded, but with the current behind them they seemed to be making a steady six or seven miles an hour without the paddlers really breathing hard. Their construction helped. From a distance they looked like ordinary dugouts, each hollowed from a single log. Seen close up, they turned out to be built in sections, the seams between each section calked with bark, grass, and some sort of dried sap. A line of branches bound end to end ran down the center of the bottom, linking all the sections together.

  These canoes were remarkably ingenious craft, Blade realized. By building them up from a series of sections, they could be built in whatever length the Fak’si needed-twenty feet, thirty, fifty. If one section sprang a leak, it could be thrown away and replaced without having to dispose of the whole canoe. If a canoe had to be hauled across land for some reason, it could be dismantled into its sections, moved to the next riverbank, and put back together there. By accident or skill, the Fak’si had managed to reach something rather close to mass production for their canoes amazingly close, considering the tools they had to work with. Blade’s respect for them went up quite a bit.

  The Fak’si paddlers seemed almost as tireless as machines. They made no stops all day, eating and drinking as they paddled and relieving themselves over the side when they needed to. The long shadows of twilight were beginning to reach out across the river before they even slowed down.

  After that, they headed for the bank the minute they saw a clear spot for a campsite. The canoes were unloaded and each crew took a share of the campsite. Then all forty turned to and pulled each canoe in turn completely out of the water.

  By this time twilight was turning into night. With strokes of an iron-headed hoe, Swebon cleared a patch of ground, chanting to himself as he did so. When there was a large enough patch of bare ground, two of the hunters used flint, dry grass, and twigs to get a fire started. Then wood was piled on the fire until the flames shot up six feet high or more.

  Blade noticed that the men worked in silence, with almost military precision. He also noticed that those with spears kept their weapons close to hand, the archers kept their bows strung, and everybody left his club hanging at his waist. He even caught one or two of the men casting doubtful looks at the fast-darkening waters only a few feet away, when they thought no one was looking at them.

  «Swebon,» said Blade. «I see that your warriors seem to be on guard against an enemy.»

  «This is so,» said the chief. He didn’t seem interested in saying more, but Blade wanted to draw him out.

  «Are these enemies men, or are they-? I do not hav
e your name for them, but-«Blade squatted down and with a twig drew the outline of one of the horned crocodiles on the ground.

  Swebon smiled. «Yes, we watch for the Horned Ones. They are thick along the Yellow River at this time of the year, and they are always hungry. So we watch, but I do not think we will see them coming against us tonight. They do not often come against so many men, and the-fire also protects us. The Horned Ones hate light.»

  Blade nodded. «I learned this quickly, after I met them.»

  «It is well to learn quickly, about the Horned Ones. Those who do not learn quickly seldom live to learn at all.»

  «I am sure of that,» said Blade. «We have such creatures in England and in other lands where the English have traveled. But our-crocodiles, we call them-are not so large, and they have no horns.»

  «Did you see many of the Horned Ones as you came to the Forest?» asked Swebon. His curiosity seemed to be getting the better of his caution about Blade.

  «Enough to learn much about them,» said Blade. He thought of mentioning his jawbracer, but decided against it. The jawbracer might be considered a weapon and be taken from him, and in any case it hadn’t been tested in action. «I reached the Forest by land, so I did not spend much time close to the rivers. When I spent the night close to one, I climbed a tree and slept in the branches.»

  «A strong one, I hope,» said Swebon. «The Horned Ones can knock down trees with their tails if they are angry.»

  «Thank you for telling me that.»

  Swebon seemed to hesitate, then went on. «Did you meet any other-any others of the Forest People-as you came toward the Yellow River?»

  No doubt he meant other, perhaps, hostile tribes. Fortunately Blade could not only reassure him but tell the truth at the same time. «No. I saw no other living men of any tribe or people, and only two dead ones. One was of the Forest People, the other-I do not know if he was truly a man, but-«