Gladiators Of Hapanu rb-31 Read online

  On the third platform they found a tall man lying across the middle of it, head raised on one hand and the other hand lying across a spear. The man was about the same size as Swebon and looked like a slightly younger and much worse tempered version of the chief. Possibly the bad temper wasn’t natural-one thigh was heavily bandaged. The expression on his face still made Blade look at him carefully-and then wish he had a spear of his own.

  «Hail, Swebon,» said the man. «So this is the one they all cheer.»

  «They should cheer him, Guno,» said Swebon. «So should you. You know what he has done, or if you do not, I will tell you.»

  «I know what he has done.»

  «Then why did you not come to meet us on the path?» He pointed to Guno’s thigh. «There is pain in it, I know, but-«He broke off and said only, «It would have been good for you to come down and join us in honoring Blade.»

  «I know, my brother,» said Guno, sitting up. «Blade, forgive me for this foolish wound that has kept me from doing you proper honor. I would not be your enemy because of this ill luck.»

  No, but you’d gladly be my enemy for some other reason, Blade thought. «I’d better find out what it is, too. If the chief’s brother became hostile while Blade was living in the chief’s house, things could get awkward.

  «No, certainly not. We shall not be enemies at all, if I can do anything about it,» said Blade. He gripped Guno’s outstretched hand and patted his hair with the other hand, then let Guno do the same. After that Swebon led Blade on to the next platform.

  It seemed that they’d been wandering among the branches for an hour when Swebon finally stopped at the end of a narrow bridge. At the far end was a platform completely enclosed in a beehive-shaped tent of leaves. Through a gap in the leaves Blade could see a small fire burning on a stone slab in the center of the platform.

  «There is your place, Blade,» said Swebon. «Food and drink are already there. Is there more that you wish? A woman, water, fish, or sticks to honor your gods, flowers-?»

  Blade shook his head. «I would be greedy to ask the Fak’si for more tonight. I will pray to my gods tonight, but I can do that alone.» He pretended to hesitate. «I would also like to join the prayers of your warriors and hunters. By the laws of the English I am allowed to do this when I travel. If the laws of the Fak’si permit me…?» It was always possible to win friends among a people by joining in their religious rites.

  Sometimes you could pick up important information as well.

  «I understand,» said Swebon. «I am sure you may join in some of our sacrifices to the Forest Spirit. The priests must say which ones, though.»

  «Of course,» said Blade.

  «Then be at peace this night, Blade, friend of the Fak’si,» said Swebon. He patted Blade’s hair, then turned away as Blade crossed the bridge to his sleeping quarters for the night.

  Apparently the Fak’si were going to start honoring Blade by stuffing him like a Christmas turkey. Wooden plates and bowls were laid out on the floor all around the fire, along with wood-plugged gourds and bulging leather sacks. Blade sat down and started his meal.

  There was fruit, porridge, and stews of leaves, roots, and herbs. There were several kinds of fish and two kinds of meat, one tasting rather like pork and the other tasting like nothing Blade had ever eaten or wanted to eat. He stuck to the pork. There were several kinds of fruit juices, two of them fermented until they were almost wine, and an overflowing sack of sour beer: There was enough food and drink for three men as hungry as Blade was, with enough left over for a few midnight snacks. When Blade lay down to sleep, he’d eaten all he could hold and drunk as much as he thought was safe.

  His bedding was a thick mat of leaves held together by a net of woven-grass rope. There was a smaller pad for a pillow, but nothing like blankets. In this damp heat they were hardly needed. There were no insects inside the shelter. Blade noticed that some of the leaves woven into the walls had a peculiar odor, rather like overripe lemons. He wondered if they acted as a sort of bug repellant.

  Blade moved his sleeping mat to the side of the shelter farthest from the door. Now the whole width of the shelter and the litter of empty dishes on the floor lay between Blade and any possible intruders. Anyone who barged in during the night was certain to make enough noise to wake him. Even if he couldn’t fight, he could always break through the wall and drop to the ground. The woven leaves were no tougher than light cloth and the drop to the ground was less than fifteen feet.

  Blade trusted Swebon, and perhaps Swebon’s guards would do their duty. But if Swebon let his brother Guno live in the chief’s house, and if Guno already saw Blade as an enemy or at least a potential rival-It might not be tactful to repay Swebon’s friendship with suspicion, but Blade would rather be tactless than dead.

  With this thought in his mind, he stretched out, rolled on to his side, and fell asleep.

  Blade’s instincts brought him awake, and his fighter’s reflexes kept him motionless on his sleeping pad. The fire was dead and inside the shelter was utter blackness, but Blade knew he hadn’t been fooled. There was someone in the shelter with him, standing by the door. He continued to lie still and resisted the temptation to challenge them. If he stayed quiet, they were likely to have more trouble finding him than he would have finding them. No doubt the Fak’si could hear and see in the dark much better than any civilized man, but so could Richard Blade.

  The silence dragged on, broken only by the night birds and insects and by the faint scrape of the intruder’s feet on the floor. He seemed to be a small person, moving slowly and cautiously around the edge of the shelter and only very gradually approaching Blade.

  Suddenly there was a clatter of wood on wood, as the intruder tripped over a bowl and sent it rolling against another. A hiss of indrawn breath followed, then a sigh. Finally Blade heard fumbling motions, and then all at once a dim white fight filled the shelter. Blade sat up and stared at the intruder.

  Like most Fak’si women, she was only a little over five feet tall and built on generous lines, to say the least. This was usually obvious even in daylight, since the Fak’si women wore only a knee-length skirt. This lady wore even less-a flower in her hair, a bracelet of grass on one wrist, and a gourd on the other hand. The gourd was filled with something luminous-perhaps a phosphorescent moss-that gave off the white light.

  Blade looked at the woman more closely. At first glance the pale light on her blue skin made her look like a long-dead corpse risen from its grave. A second glance showed that she was not only young but quite attractive. Her breasts were high and firm, the large nipples barely visible against the darkness of her skin. Her waist, unthickened by childbearing, flowed down into smooth thighs. Her hair was shorter than usual among Fak’si women, but heavily decorated with bone ornaments. A reddish jewel gleamed just above her left ear. Her skin shone as if it had been oiled, and she smelled faintly of flowers.

  At last she giggled and looked down at the floor. Blade realized he’d been staring at her in silence for several minutes. She sat down, folding her legs under her, and Blade laughed.

  «All right,» he said. «You know who I am. Who are you, and why are you here?»

  The woman laughed. «I am Lokhra. Why I am here-Blade, do you not know the ways of women?»

  Blade nodded. «I see. Yes, I know the ways of women. In fact, it is not wise to ask that of a man of the English. He might think it an insult.»

  «Good,» said Lokhra. «We hoped the English were that way. The warriors of the Kabi must be lovers of men for three years. We would not have been happy to find you like them.»

  «Who is this ‘we?’» asked Blade.

  «Oh,» said Lokhra. «It is I and the other three women.»

  «That doesn’t tell me as much as you think,» said Blade. «Remember that I’ve only been among the Fak’si for two days. Most of that time I spent among the warriors and hunters. So perhaps you should treat me as a child who must be told everything.»

  Lokhra wriggled
across the floor to Blade and rested one soft-fingered hand between his thighs. «Blade, I do not think you are a child in all things. Or my eyes and hands are telling lies.»

  «They are not,» said Blade, putting an arm around Lokhra’s shoulders and resting one hand on a breast. «But I would like you to tell me the truth. You and the other three women-who are you?»

  «You fought the Horned One and killed it,» she said. «When such a Horned One attacks hunters, some of them always die. The men who saw you fight the Horned One met tonight. They decided that four of them would certainly have died if you did not fight the Horned One.»

  «Did they decide which four?» asked Blade.

  «No. They only knew that four of them live who would otherwise be dead. Now, when a man of the Fak’si saves another, the man he saves must give him a woman for one night. The men cast the bones, and four of them were chosen to each send you one of his women. I am the first.»

  «I see,» said Blade. It seemed a sensible way of showing gratitude and one he wouldn’t find it at all hard to accept. While she’d been explaining why she was here, Lokhra’s fingers were moving gently but steadily. Blade was finding it harder and harder to keep his mind on what she was telling him or keep his own hands from tightening on her breasts.

  Now Lokhra’s story was finished, and there was no more reason for Blade to hold back. He raised both hands to her shoulders and turned her until he could kiss her. Apparently kissing wasn’t the most common gesture of affection among the Fak’si, because she was clumsy at first. Apparently she also had the right instincts, because the clumsiness didn’t last long. Her lips turned warm under Blade’s, her tongue crept out to join his, her free hand ran up and down his back. Blade found his breath coming harder, and felt Lokhra’s nipples hardening against the palms of his hands.

  Blade didn’t know what Lokhra might expect, but he knew what he wanted, and also knew that he couldn’t wait much longer for it. What Lokhra was doing to him was both marvelous and painful at the same time.

  Blade released his grip on the woman, then pressed one hand against her forehead and the other against her stomach. Lokhra went over backward, wriggling sideways so that she lay on the sleeping mat. Her legs spread apart, then rose to lock around Blade.

  After the excitement of what had gone before, the actual joining with Lokhra was almost a disappointment for Blade. She didn’t carry him to any breathtaking, delirious heights. She didn’t rise to any herself. She simply held him against her and within her until his body arched in the final spasm and all his breath went out in a choking cry. She went on holding him with his head nestled between her breasts, although most of his weight must have been on her.

  She held him until he found the strength to enter her again. This time her cry echoed his own, and he felt the warm solid flesh under him writhing and twisting wildly. Again he relaxed, head between her breasts and the sound of her racing heart pounding in his ears. Again she held him until he found his strength returning. This time when they were finished he felt much too comfortable to even think of moving.

  After a while Lokhra wriggled off the mat and crawled over to the remains of dinner. She returned with a gourd of fruit juice and a platter of sliced fish, then held both out to Blade. He ate and drank to please her, although he was more thirsty than hungry. When he’d finished, he reached for her again. She held him off with one hand while she held a drinking gourd with the other. She drank, and as she drank she seemed to be listening for something in the darkness outside.

  Blade was beginning to get annoyed, and he was about to ask her what the devil she was doing when suddenly she jumped up. Stark naked, she walked across the shelter and pulled open the curtain of leaves which served as a door.

  «Come in,» she said to the darkness outside. Three shapes moved there. Blade started to rise-then three more women were standing in the doorway. All three of them wore the Fak’si skirt, but before Blade could recover from his surprise they started pulling them off. By the time he’d recovered, the three newcomers were as naked as Lokhra.

  Blade was amused at the prospect of having to satisfy three more women tonight. He also found himself looking forward to it. Lokhra was the best-looking of the four women, but the other three were hardly ugly. All were young, well-fleshed, and firm-breasted. From the way they were looking at him, they were also looking forward to the rest of the night.

  Blade threw his head back and laughed, until his laughter drowned out the night sounds outside and the four women were laughing with him. Then he stood up and walked over to the first of the three newcomers.

  Chapter 6

  Blade never could remember much about what happened during the rest of the night. He only knew that when he woke up, it was well after dawn and all four of the women were gone. The mat under him and the floor of the platform were soaked with sweat, and all the leftovers from dinner had vanished.

  He suspected that whatever he’d managed to do had been enough, although he never learned any of the details. He only knew that Lokhra grinned openly at him whenever they met, and several of the men who’d seen him fight the Horned One always slapped him on the shoulder and patted his hair. «You have skill with other weapons beside those sticks, yes, Blade?» said one man.

  Other than that, no one mentioned Blade’s first night among the Fak’si. He was quite happy to let it be forgotten. There was just too much else to do, if he was going to learn about this Dimension and its people. He was also going to have to learn about them without as much help from the Fak’si as he’d expected. It wasn’t that they were hostile, or even reluctant to speak when he asked them questions. It was just that he had to think up all the questions himself, find the people to answer them, then put the answers together into some sort of reasonable picture.

  It wasn’t really surprising that the Fak’si weren’t experts at explaining themselves to outsiders. They probably didn’t have much practice doing so. But it meant some delay, and it would have meant even more if Blade hadn’t been a fairly good rule-of-thumb anthropologist. He wouldn’t have been alive otherwise. He was better than any college professor at looking over a primitive people and learning their ways, particularly the ways which might be dangerous to him. It didn’t take him long to learn his way around the Fak’si and learn about their world.

  Exactly how large this Dimension was, Blade could never even guess intelligently. The question always nagged at Lord Leighton, and also at J and Blade. Was each Dimension X something the size of the whole Earth, with many lands beyond the one Blade found? Or were they each only a partial alternate reality? Certainly some of the Dimensions were complete alternate Earths, or even complete alternate universes. But with many others there was no way of telling, and that was the case in this Dimension.

  What Blade did learn about was what the Fak’si called the Forest-as though there were no trees anywhere else in the world. It spread many days travel in all directions, with mountains to the west, ocean to the east, and no man knew what to the north and south. Through the Forest the Great River flowed from west to east, fed by the rains and by dozens of tributary rivers and streams.

  In the Forest lived the four Great Tribes-the Fak’si, the Yal, the Banum, and the Kabi. There were also minor tribes, mostly founded by men who’d fled from one of the Four Great Tribes. No one took these seriously. There were so many of them that no one could keep count from year to year, let alone from generation to generation. Also, some of them had the habit of changing their names whenever the whim took them, apparently so that the Forest Spirit shouldn’t know who they were.

  «I do not know if they confuse the Forest Spirit,» said one warrior, explaining this to Blade. «But I know they confuse us. Think no more of the Little Tribes of the Forest, Blade. A warrior and friend of the Fak’si has nothing to do with them.»

  So Blade abandoned any hope of learning about these odd-men-out of the Forest and concentrated on learning about the four Great Tribes. The only one he had in front of his eyes
every day was the Fak’si, but apparently the other three were very similar.

  Each tribe lived in a part of the lower valley of the Great River, with villages scattered along the tributaries. No one lived permanently along the Great River itself, and only brave men with urgent business traveled on it at all.

  «When it is in flood, Blade, no man can see from one bank to the other,» said Swebon. «It rises so that trees higher than those where I built my roofs vanish beneath the water. We do not fear much in the Forest, but we do fear the Great River in its anger.» Other descriptions of the river agreed with Swebon’s. To Blade, the Great River began to sound more and more like the Amazon-vast, powerful, and deadly. However, the Forest gave a good life to those who kept their distance from the Great River. Each of the tribes had at least a dozen villages, and each of the villages could send out two hundred warriors without leaving itself defenseless. The Forest People had domestic animals and fowl for meat, plenty of fish, small garden plots in most villages, and everywhere around them the Forest with its leaves, fruits, seeds, roots, and game animals. Food was so plentiful in the Forest that a child might grow gray-haired without ever knowing an empty belly.

  The tribes added their own skills to the Forest’s offerings in making a good life for themselves. They were masters at working any sort of wood their tools could handle, as well as leaves, grass, animal hides, gourds, and anything else that came to hand. Blade was sure they could have built much more substantial dwellings than they had, except for the danger of flood and the need to keep cool.

  Their weapons were adequate, though not particularly sophisticated. There were the shields made from the hides of Horned Ones and smaller reptiles, the spears, the bows, and the clubs Blade had already seen. The quality of the iron in the spear points was surprisingly good, but the bows were weak. Blade guessed they had perhaps a twenty-five or thirty-pound pull, half that of a Home Dimension hunting bow and a third that of an English longbow. The clubs were really beautiful pieces of work, perfectly balanced and weighted with stones or chunks of pig iron. They were the most popular weapon in the wars against other tribes.