Casca 17: The Warrior Read online

  Then the men with the muskets came out from cover and gleefully dispatched Cakabau's men, each of whom clutched at himself somewhere to indicate that he had been hit.

  They clearly had no real idea of the efficacy of gunfire, as the defenders also made great show of clubbing the shot men, who presumably were merely dazed by musket balls through the stomach, ribs, eyes, genitals.

  Casca enjoyed the show immensely, and so did everybody else. But Sonolo was not finished.

  At a signal his crewmen produced a number of other crates, which held all manner of trade goods. There were cheap, gaudy lengths of cotton from Manchester, vastly inferior in quality and design to the tapa cloth made on the island; mirrors, beads, some shovels and hoes and other farming tools; a few axes and several knives.

  The goods were gleefully passed from hand to hand around the room, and within a few minutes there was blood all over everything as one after another they cut themselves on the sharp edges of the steel tools. It didn't at all dampen their enthusiasm or spoil their fun but rather added to it, each new wound being greeted with shrieks of delighted laughter from both victim and those around him.

  Sonolo had one more surprise, and at first Casca was as delighted as anybody to see it. His crew men dragged in one more large crate and opened it to reveal several dozen bottles of Scotch whiskey.

  The first bottle was opened, poured a cupful at a time into the bilo, and passed back and forth as if it were kava. Casca was the fourth to be treated, and downed the several ounces of whiskey at a gulp, as was the custom with kava.

  He clapped his hands happily as he passed back the bib, saying "matha," it is empty, with gusto.

  But somewhere along the line the ceremonial distribution of the liquor faltered, and soon bottles were being opened all over the house and passed from hand to hand, everybody gulping the whiskey greedily from the neck of the bottle.

  Semele saw what was happening and had the good sense to quickly secure half a dozen bottles for the chiefs. Indeed, Casca wound up with a bottle to himself, which suited him very well.

  It was Casca's first drink since leaving the railroad camp many months earlier, and he savored each mouthful, pleasurably feeling it warming his gut all the way down and then rising back up to his brain. By the time he had consumed about a quarter of the bottle he was starting to feel pretty good.

  A number of the villagers were even more enthusiastic, and quite unaccustomed to the firewater, were soon reeling more or less senselessly about the room, giggling and stumbling and having a great time.

  Sonolo especially was very quickly the worse for the liquor, and Casca reflected what a stroke of luck it was that the man's sense of duty had brought him home before he had opened the case. Had he done so on Ovalau, it was clear the muskets would never have left that island.

  Around the room the liquor was taking more and more effect. The young girls were all very quickly affected, and left the back of the room to dance lewdly before the chiefs. Several young men jumped up to dance with them, the dance quickly degenerating into hugging and fondling. The normally modestly behaved girls responded willingly to the pawing, and several couples only managed to make it outside through the intervention of the older women, before coupling.

  But soon some of the older women were up there dancing, too, and being pawed, and in turn dragged off.

  Casca was amused and highly entertained. Numerous girls danced before him and tried to drag him to his feet, in spite of Vivita's manifest disapproval. But Casca was in no mood for coupling with a drunk. He was enjoying his first drink in many months and was content to sip away at his bottle, and be entertained by the antics going on around him.

  Semele and Mbolo seemed to have the same idea, and so did their women. Ateca and Duana sat alongside their men, talking to Setole, Mbolo's sister, and taking an occasional appreciative sip from their bottles, but clearly with no intention of getting drunk. Casca was pleased (he couldn't quite understand why) to see that Vivita, too, behaved in this dignified, chief's wife fashion.

  Most of the chiefs' wives were similarly abstemious, and by no means due to their men's example. All of the minor chiefs were making pigs of themselves, like Sonolo.

  Sakuvi, the farmer chief, a quiet, dignified man, became surly and glowered at Sonolo. Casca had been told that the farmer was a formidable warrior who had fought with considerable distinction in many battles throughout his life. It seemed now that the firewater had brought out some deep-seated resentment toward the warrior chief.

  Sonolo sensed Sakuvi's temperament and reacted similarly, the two sneering and snarling at each other, striking aggressive poses in which they mimicked and ridiculed each other.

  Casca had seen a thousand situations like this result in murderous fights, and he glanced at Semele, expecting the wise old man to ameliorate the situation. But either he, too, had been affected by the alcohol, or possibly a fight between chiefs was nobody's business but their own.

  Casca was furious. The battle with Cakabau's force might be only days away, could happen tomorrow, and if the men from Bau arrived in force, the village would not have one man too many for its defense. Yet here were perhaps the two best warriors about to try and kill each other. His anger grew at his powerlessness. Hell, he was Casca, the war chief, but his limited knowledge of the customs and the language made him a powerless onlooker.

  Sakuvi and Sonolo were now quite close, within arm's reach of each other, muttering insults, sneering, snarling, but so drunk that much of what they said was meaningless mumbling, their threatening poses becoming absurd as one or the other of them would stumble and almost fall.

  Suddenly they were grappling. For the moment their drunkenness was overcome by their exertion as each strained for the advantage.

  To Casca it was pretty poor wrestling. There were no recognizable holds or subtle use of leverage, but merely a push and pull dispute between two very strong men.

  But what the contest lacked in sophistication was made up for in drunken malice. In a moment the two were on the ground, kicking, biting, punching, clawing at each other. Sakuvi grabbed Sonolo by the balls, Sonolo butted him heavily in the face, and he let go. Sonolo brought up his knee to catch Sakuvi in the same place, and he doubled up in pain. Then Sonolo had him in a strangle hold, Sakuvi too drunk and too hurt to get out of it.

  Sakuvi's eyes bulged from his head, his tongue protruded; there was little chance that Sonolo could break the great, columnar neck, but he could certainly crush the windpipe and keep it closed.

  Which is just what happened. The primitive hold worked for Sonolo, his opponent drunkenly incapable of countering it. Very soon Sonolo was strangling a corpse, too drunk to realize that the fight was over.

  And it wasn't. All over the house new fights were breaking out as partisans of the two chiefs attacked each other. And then people were attacking each other for no reason at all.

  Casca saw a number of men who were not drunk striving to break up the fights and only succeeding in getting involved in them.

  The axes and knives, forgotten while everybody was drinking peaceably, now began to appear. One shambling, stumbling drunk with an axe falling about in every direction, flailing with it as he went, slicing off an ear here, a hand there, a few fingers somewhere else, didn't even realize what he was doing. People were stabbing each other, gouging out eyes, hacking off arms and legs. Their nervous systems, desensitized by the unaccustomed dose of the second most powerful anesthetic known, caused them to be not only unaware of the extent of their own injuries, but totally disinterested in the pain they were inflicting. The entire room was one gigantic bloodbath.

  Casca looked at Semele and Mbolo, but neither of the big chiefs made a move.

  Then Ateca was on her feet, Duana beside her, each of the old women with one of the ceremonial clubs in hand.

  They charged into the thick of the lighting, laying to left and right as they went, every swing connecting with a head, every head crashing to the ground.


  Vivita, Setole, and some of the other chiefs' wives grabbed clubs, too, and followed. Casca watched, half astonished, half amused.

  Vivita smashed her club into the back of the head in front of her and the body fell, the opponent left facing Vivita with an axe in his hand. He raised it, but started back at the fury in the woman's face, and that was the last he knew for a long time as her club crushed his nose into a pulp.

  In a few minutes there was nobody standing but the women and a handful of men who were not hopelessly drunk and had helped in separating the last of the brawlers.

  The evening's celebrations were very definitely over.

  Casca picked up what was left of his bottle of whiskey and headed for his hut.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Casca lay on his grass mat, looking into the darkness, taking an occasional sip of his whiskey and doing some bloody-minded thinking.

  If Cakabau were to attack on the morrow, or anytime within the next few days—while half the village was recovering from its wounds—he would certainly be victorious.

  Clearly Sonolo had no real idea of how to use the muskets. Ten musketeers and at least ten replacements must be trained to use the weapons. They would have to learn how to load the charge of powder, then the wad, ram home the ball, another wad, then the firing cap. Then they would have to learn how to aim, how to fire without losing aim, and how to reload. For any hope of real effectiveness they should also know how to dismantle, clean, and reassemble the guns.

  Perhaps he could manage to train ten good men in a day—if Sonolo would let him. After the events of this evening he no longer had the same confidence in his fellow war chief. If he had so little self-control that he could be provoked into killing another chief over a slight to his role as war chief, how would he react when Casca attempted to take charge of the muskets?

  And what if Cakabau now had more than the six muskets? And what if he did manage to join forces with the Lakuvi? Not too difficult, Casca reasoned. By now the Lakuvi might be interested in avenging their recent defeat rather than being frightened off by it, as Sonolo and the others so optimistically thought.

  He had just had the right amount of whiskey and was sliding drowsily into sleep when Vivita slipped onto the mat beside him. He guessed she'd been tending to the wounded and cleaning up the mess.

  He put one arm around her and nuzzled her neck. "Good wife for a chief," he mumbled.

  He sat bolt upright. What the fuck was he saying? He didn't want to be chief of this tribe, didn't want to settle down here with Vivita and run this fucking little shanty village. Gotta watch what I'm thinking. He slid back down onto the mat, let his arm fall back around Vivita, and fell asleep.

  In the morning Vivita was surprised when he refused to go to the chief's house. He was certain that there was an unavoidable confrontation with Sonolo coming up, and he preferred that Sonolo fuck up as much as possible before he was forced to make his move to take control of the use of the muskets.

  Just at that moment Sonolo certainly was fucking up, but in a way that would bring no joy at all to Casca.

  When they first landed in Levuka Larsen had gone with Sonolo to the gunsmith, had selected the weapons and negotiated their price. The gunsmith had explained that gunpowder could only be purchased from the government stores and was only supplied on receipt of a written order signed by a suitably respectable person.

  "Such as a ship's captain?" And Larsen had made out the order for a keg of powder and given it to Sonolo.

  The gunsmith had shown Sonolo how to charge the weapons and had also told him that he must buy the gunpowder from the government store a little farther along the waterfront. But on the way there Sonolo had been distracted by the gaudy prints in another store, and then by the axes and knives, and finally by the whiskey. And the matter of the gunpowder had quite slipped his mind until this moment when he realized that the powder horns were empty.

  He sat down in consternation. He had a terrible hangover. Last night he had killed a good friend and a blood relative, and now he was confronted with the fact that he had sold a hundred of his tribesmen into slavery and death for nothing. The shiny new muskets were useless. They would not even make good clubs.

  Sonolo got up and walked out of the chief's house. He walked across the square and past his house without stopping, without looking inside where his wife was playing with his youngest son. He walked out of the village and into the jungle.

  In the chief's house Semele looked unhappily at the muskets. He did not need to be told that Sonolo had screwed up. He didn't know just what the problem was, but he knew it was a big one. He sat down beside the guns and waited for the problem to show itself.

  Within a few minutes the news reached Casca's hut. He didn't understand what it was about, but it seemed that Sonolo had left the village forever and that Semele was left with a big problem with the new guns.

  Casca went to the chief's house and saw the old man sitting unhappily beside the muskets. He picked up one, and then the powder horn that lay beside it. Semele saw the same shocked expression on his face that he'd seen on Sonolo's, and he winced as if in pain.

  Casca sat down. He had expected a problem, but nothing like this. A hundred of the best men in the village had paid for these guns with their freedom. And they were useless, completely useless. Worse, the village was a hundred young men short for its defense. He looked around, but there was no whiskey in sight.

  He looked at Semele. The old man looked deeply wounded, as if something had been taken out of him. He looked up at Casca, waiting to know what he already knew would be the very worst news.

  Casca didn't know how to tell him, didn't quite know how to say it himself. He looked around the village for something he could use as an example—something that needed something else to make it work. Even a canoe without a paddle was far from useless.

  He grasped himself by the balls. "Sometimes with a woman, you don't have fire inside for this woman, and nothing happens?"

  Semele nodded.

  "Is the same with this gun. It needs fire. The fire comes in a powder. No powder, no fire—no fire, gun doesn't work."

  Semele nodded again. He didn't understand, but he understood that the guns were useless. It had been his decision to sell men for guns. His decision to sell a hundred men for ten guns rather than ten men for one gun. One useless gun and ten men gone might have been bearable.

  Casca searched his mind for some scrap of good news, anything that would go toward alleviating the gloom he could feel growing. It was useless. He felt within himself a despair, a hopelessness that he hadn't felt when he had first faced the necessity to fight Cakabau's guns with wooden clubs.

  He shrugged. "Well, we still have clubs."

  "Yes," Semele said, "we still have clubs."

  "And my .38," Casca added under his breath, "should be great against six muskets."

  Semele turned around, and for the first time Casca became aware of the two bodies lying on the ground wrapped in tapa cloth. Obviously one would be Sakuvi. The other, it turned out, was a fine young man, one of the few who did not get drunk on the whiskey, but had stepped between two who did.

  The cost of the muskets now stood at a hundred two men. And a few arms, several hands, countless fingers. The axes and knives had taken an enormous toll in the hands of people who had never experienced sharpened steel, and drunk people at that.

  Normally, men who had been killed in combat, even this sort of internecine combat, would be eaten, but Semele literally didn't have the stomach for it and ordered that they be buried.

  Casca was surprised to see how difficult it was to bury somebody on the island. To bury the bodies in the soft sand on the beach would be pointless—a high tide would uncover them and the whole task would have to be done again. But there was very little clear land, every bit of it was used for farming.

  At least a constructive use had been found for the implements that Sonolo had brought from Levuka. The burial party tackled a piece of jungle a
djacent to a vegetable patch. They first hacked away all the vines and undergrowth, and then set about felling the several, mainly small trees, and eventually grubbing out the stumps and the roots. It took all the men in the village working for most of the day, but by late afternoon there was a patch of freshly cleared ground and a hole about six feet deep.

  The bodies were lowered into the hole on some vines, Mbolo said a few words, a few flowers were thrown in, and the hole was filled.

  The people headed home, and it seemed to Casca the two dead men had been virtually forgotten by the time they reached the village.

  Certainly they were not the topic of discussion in the chief's house that night. Perhaps that was because there was a more pressing matter to discuss.

  When Casca arrived at the chief's house he had already heard something of the matter from Vivita. In fact he had already heard all the details of the sorry story, including the background of Tepole, the one accused of the crime, and about the closest thing to a moral degenerate that the village could boast of.

  Tepole came from a respected family and his life had not been significantly different from that of any other young man in the village. Except that from early manhood he had been a nuisance and a menace to everybody, including himself.

  Several times in battle he had disgraced himself. He'd stolen personal possessions from other men. And he had a lust for other men's women that repeatedly caused serious trouble, although marital relationships in the village were almost infinitely flexible and two consenting people could do just about whatever they wished. In one of his attempts at unwelcome adultery there had been a fight with the husband, who was killed.

  The previous night he had gotten very drunk, but not in the chief's house with everybody else. He'd sneaked away two bottles of whiskey, to get drunk by himself in his hut. Then, this morning, badly hungover, he'd used what was left of the whiskey to get drunk again.

  He'd then gone on a lustful rampage through the village, attempting unsuccessfully to get into bed with some of the women who were recovering from wounds received in the melee the night before. By the time he got to the hut of Sala's family, most of the adults in the village were away at the funeral on the mountainside.