Casca 17: The Warrior Read online

  He had taken the opportunity to rape Sala, a child of about ten. Her brother Vuki, a year or two younger, had come upon them and attempted to help his sister. In the fracas that followed Tepole had, more or less inadvertently, broken Vuki's neck. He had then tried to strangle Sala and clumsily tried to bury the two bodies in the sand at the top of the beach.

  "Teeth of Sirius," Casca muttered, "is there no end to the price of these muskets?"

  Sala, recovering while Tepole was digging the grave, escaped. But her brother Vuki was dead.

  Tepole's chief accuser was himself. He sat before Semele, but with his back turned, and recited his story of the day's macabre events. Semele interrupted a few times with a searching question, but otherwise all the information came from Tepole of his own accord.

  When he had completed his own indictment Semele picked up his great ceremonial war club and paced back and forth behind the seated man, reciting the story of his previous wrongdoings, all of which Tepole agreed with.

  Semele then summed up, saying that Tepole was a disgrace, a nuisance and a menace to the village, and that he refused to modify his ways although he'd been given many opportunities.

  Semele then pronounced sentence, which was that Tepole was henceforth exiled from the village to the place of refuge, where he must stay until his sins were exonerated. If he were captured before he made it to the place of refuge, or if he should return to the village before it was time, he would be executed.

  Casca was incensed. His hut was close to that of Sala's family, and she and her brother Vuki were little rays of sunshine he liked to come across in the village. They were two of the merriest pranksters at spooking Semele unawares. Casca felt that he would gladly strangle Tepole if Semele would allow it.

  Tepole immediately left the house, and the kava bilo began to pass. Casca inquired about the place of refuge and learned that it was a rock outcrop on the far western edge of the island, all but inaccessible and virtually waterless. If Tepole made it there he would have a very hard, lonely, uncomfortable time.

  "But when he returns he will be forgiven?"

  "Of course, yes."

  "But if he returns too soon, he will be executed?"

  "Of course, yes."

  "How will he know when it is time?"

  "He will know."

  Further discussion revealed that Semele's sentence was not quite as lenient as it at first appeared.

  Very few exiles made it to the place of refuge without being captured, and the few that did generally returned to the village after only a few days, thus sentencing themselves to death.

  This behavior was quite incomprehensible to Casca, who was quite fond of extended periods of his own company, which for the islanders was a condition so extraordinary and intolerable as to make death preferable.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Next morning, he couldn't quite tell why, Casca joined the pursuit party, which consisted of most of the young men in the village.

  Vengeance was not a large part of it. Little Sala's death had now fallen into the wider perspective of the hundreds of thousands of deaths in which Casca, one way or another, had been involved. Of itself, the matter of death no longer loomed large in his consciousness or his sensibilities. In fact he envied the dead, so why pretend to mourn or avenge them?

  The hunt.

  Yes, that was it. Primarily, way back in his psyche, Casca was a hunter. Before he was a warrior he was a hunter. Perhaps he was a warrior because he was a hunter. And of all quarry worth hunting, only man provided what the true hunter really sought—a partner, albeit an unwilling one, in a game where each player is staking his life.

  Sure, the odds were unfair, the hunter almost certain to win. But Casca did not play any game for any reason other than to win. If the odds were not in his favor, then unless he had to, he simply didn't play. Those who did wound up cold and lonely in the fields known as cemeteries.

  Doomed though he was never to die, he could nonetheless suffer death, and it invariably hurt, and yes, frightened him. He had no wish to do it any more than was absolutely necessary.

  Casca did not know how much danger there might be in the hunt after Tepole and he didn't care; it came well inside the odds he was prepared to risk. But as an opponent, even as mere quarry, Tepole sadly disappointed him. Casca seethed with frustration at the man's inadequacies as an adversary.

  Although he'd had a clear ten-hour start, Tepole had used hardly any of it, skulking on the edge of the village until just before dawn because he was afraid to venture into the jungle in the dark.

  The hunters were even more of a disappointment to Casca. Having found the spot where Tepole had hidden to wait for first light, they returned to the village for a hearty breakfast before setting out in pursuit.

  By the time the hunt was joined again, the trail was growing cold and the signs of Tepole's path were getting harder to distinguish. The signs might have been gone altogether had Tepole, in his panic-stricken headlong flight, made an effort to disguise his trail. Casca was disgusted with his lack of enterprise toward the preservation of his own life.

  Nor were the hunters at all imaginative in their pursuit. They merely headed in the general direction of the place of refuge, now and again running across some sign of Tepole's passing.

  The trail grew progressively colder, and Casca grew more and more bored as he saw that Tepole was easily outdistancing his pursuers. He was tempted to hurry ahead of the hunt and bring down Tepole on his own account. But the chase was so devoid of any real interest for him, and Tepole so easy to track, that he simply couldn't be bothered.

  He would have turned around and returned alone to the village, but felt that this might appear somewhat rude. He had made the mistake of joining the hunt, and resolved to stay with it and see just how it ended.

  It also occurred to Casca that it might not be a bad idea for him to know exactly where the refuge was and how to get there quickly. For all he knew, there might yet come a time when he might need such knowledge. More than once he'd seen hospitality turn to hate, and it was far from impossible that he could wind up in the same situation as Tepole.

  They came to a narrow neck of land that led out to a broken headland. The trail narrowed until there was barely room for one man to inch his way along, the sheer cliff rearing unclimbable above, the rocks waiting hundreds of feet below.

  "How much farther to the refuge?" Casca asked.

  "We are in it already," was the reply. "The refuge starts back there where the trail first narrows."

  "Then Tepole is home free already?"

  "Of course, yes."

  But they continued on along the narrow trail, each man risking his life for no sensible reason. The narrow trail came out onto the headland—a rugged, rocky piece of land dotted with small, fruitless trees. A desolate spot.

  Tepole had not stopped when he came to the headland, but continued across its width until he was on a projecting spur of rock, with the whole of the refuge between him and his pursuers.

  In a far corner of the refuge another man sat. The terrified and confused Tepole did not see or hear or smell him. But even a good hunter like Casca would not have sensed the presence of this man.

  Sonolo sat like a figure of stone. Perhaps he heard Tepole—it would have been strange if he did not. But Sonolo had no interest in Tepole or any other mortal man. He had not eaten or tasted water since he left the village; he'd been sitting, as still as an idol, from the moment he arrived at the refuge. His breathing had slowed to a point where it was as imperceptible as the respiration of a stone fish.

  He sat staring out to sea, but with his eyes unfocused and unseeing. He was dying, shutting down his body's activities. The process would take many more days, perhaps another week, or even longer.

  Tepole sat in the shade of a small tree and looked out to sea. The refuge was at the far western tip of the island, and there was no land to the north or south of the promontory. From where he sat it seemed to Tepole that he could see h
alf of all the world. Even more. When he looked behind him, back toward the world from which he'd been exiled, he saw only the slim, rocky promontory running back to the narrow trail, and beyond it the sea stretched again endlessly to the east around the island. No matter where he looked there was not another person. He was entirely alone.

  He leaped to his feet and ran back to the narrow trail. All of the pursuers had by now crossed back out of the refuge and there was no sign of them. A terrible, sickening sensation of loneliness overtook Tepole. Never before in his life had he been alone.

  He sat down again, but after a moment was on his feet, pacing restlessly back and forth. He was safe, yes, but what was the good of that? What can a man do alone?

  Think.

  Tepole sat down, but he could not order his thoughts as he wished. He wanted to think of his wife and of all the other women that he had enjoyed in his life, but it was little Sala who came to his mind, and her brother Vuki, whom he had killed. When he did succeed in pushing these two from his mind, he found himself thinking of Lascoa, whom he'd killed when Lascoa had caught him trying to rape his wife. These thoughts were replaced by memories of his cowardice in battle. He couldn't manage to think of anything from his past life that afforded him any satisfaction:

  And here there was nothing to think about—no women, not even any man. Nothing that might amuse him. True, he should be thinking about food, but he was too much in turmoil to be hungry, much less think about finding something to eat.

  He sat and stared at the blue void before him. The featureless sea ran flat in every direction. There was no horizon. At some point that couldn't be distinguished the blue sea merged with the clear blue sky.

  "Moana," Tepole muttered. The word included both the sea and sky, all that he could see to the west. He turned to look back to the east. There was only the towering cliff, girt by the endless Moana to the south, and if he were to walk but a few hundred paces north he would see again the endless Moana extending to the eastern horizon.

  The only land in all the world, it seemed, was the small space of the refuge. To find anything more, any sign of his own kind, he must go back across the narrow trail by the cliff. And that meant death.

  Nonetheless Tepole found himself constantly drawn back to this trail. Once he thought he heard a faint sound, like a voice carried to him on the wind. But his ears were not adept at distinguishing sounds. There were no animals on the island, and Tepole had never acquired any of the attributes of a hunter.

  Perhaps it had been a bird. Nearby he heard a small bird and saw its movement in a tree.

  But he lingered and listened, heard more sounds like the movements of men, and crept out a little onto the narrow neck of the trail to listen more.

  A better hunter might have seen Casca lying, thoroughly bored, just beyond where the trail opened out into a broader space.

  As far as Casca could tell the whole morning's effort had been pointless. They had never really tried to catch Tepole or head him off from the refuge. He had outdistanced them without any real effort and was now safe in the refuge. Why then, Casca wondered, did they still linger, sprawled about in the shade in the broad, clear space just before the cliff and the trail that led into the refuge? Only politeness and a sense of consideration for his hosts' ways of doing things prevented Casca from leaving the clearing to return to the village.

  He rolled over on the ground to look at the entrance to the refuge, and as he did so he thought he saw something moving. He concentrated his gaze and made out the shape of a man, undoubtedly Tepole, crouching amongst some bushes just at the edge of the clearing.

  Was the man mad? Tepole was already back outside the refuge and therefore a legitimate target for anybody in the pursuit party. Casca could easily shoot him from where he lay. Perhaps one of the others could hit him with a well- thrown rock. Maybe one of them could creep close enough to tackle him.

  But none of the others gave any sign that they had seen Tepole, and Casca guessed they were unaware of their quarry only a few yards away.

  Then Tepole moved, the sounds unmistakable, his movement revealing him clearly among the bushes. Still nobody gave any sign of awareness of his presence.

  Casca watched as Tepole crept closer and closer, coming farther and farther from his only place of safety. He stumbled clumsily and almost fell, making a great deal of noise, at last alerting the others to his presence.

  Dukuni, the fisherman chief, who seemed to me more or less in charge of the hunt, laughed and flung a stone in the fugitive's general direction. Tepole sprang up into full view and ran for the refuge.

  Casca chuckled. "I’ll bet he doesn't stop till he gets to the far side of the refuge," he said to himself.

  He would have been surprised, even astonished, had he seen Tepole come to a stop a few paces along the cliff trail.

  Dukuni got to his feet and the others did likewise. They left the clearing and headed back toward the village. Casca was pleased. The boring business of the pursuit of the condemned man seemed to be over.

  But at the next clearing everybody stopped again. There were bananas and papayas growing, and Casca picked some fruit and lay on the ground to eat it.

  He heard Tepole before he saw him. The fool had come almost into the clearing, trying, it seemed, to get close enough to the men to hear the scattered snatches of idle conversation.

  Casca watched Tepote as he came closer and closer. He moved clumsily, waving branches and bushes, betraying his position long before Casca could see him clearly. The man's lack of jungle craft amazed Casca, who had grown up in the streets of the city of Rome and had already been a battle-scarred veteran when he first saw jungle.

  He'd learned about it damned fast in order to stay alive. But in this jungle there were no ferocious cats, hyenas, snakes, pythons, or alligators. Nor was there any game to be hunted, so Tepole had never learned to hunt or to hide in the jungle.

  As he had got closer he made more and more noise, and finally aroused the attention of Dukuni and his men.

  "I should shoot the dumb bastard now," Casca muttered, "but I don't want to show this gun. The fool will probably follow us all the way to the village anyway."

  He probably would have, but Dukuni had other ideas. Perhaps he, too, had become bored with the game. He gave a signal and the warriors stood up. Casca realized that less than half the men had come into the glade.

  The warriors began to move slowly toward where Tepole was hiding, and he got up and ran. After only a few steps he let out a yelp and stopped. His way was blocked by another line of warriors, who had stayed behind along the trail.

  Tepole turned and ran a few useless steps toward where Dukuni waited, spun around to run away once more but again stopped short of the line of warriors. For a few moments he hesitated, shuffling a step or two toward one party of his pursuers then back toward the others.

  At last he gave up and sank to the ground.

  All the warriors squatted where they were. After a few moments Tepole stood up and started to walk, heading back toward the village.

  Nobody spoke to him or obstructed his way or acknowledged his existence Tepole walked at his own pace and they simply accompanied him, spread out behind him in a half circle cutting off any possibility of retreat to the refuge.

  When they arrived back at the village nobody acknowledged his presence either. Tepole did not go to his hut, and his wife and children did not come out to see him. He moved about the village like a lost soul, speaking to nobody; the people, even the small children, behaving as if he were not there.

  Casca noticed that Dukuni now carried a club, but he made no move toward Tepole, who seemed to be free to wander the village as he wished, drifting aimlessly here and there, making no effort at communication. He moved about like a sleepwalker.

  Suddenly it was over.

  Casca happened to be looking in Tepole's direction at the time, but he hardly knew what happened. Tepole was lying on the ground, blood pouring from his ears, and Dukuni, his
great war club on his shoulder, was walking away.

  Half a dozen warriors picked up the body and carried it out of the village, a score or so more following. Casca followed too.

  They headed west again, and Casca guessed they were carrying the corpse back to the place of refuge.

  Along the way they changed porters several times, but without stopping, so that they came to the refuge a little before sunset.

  At the narrow neck of the trail leading into the refuge, one of the warriors slung the body over his left shoulder and moved quickly along the path,, leaning into the cliff face as the weight tended to pull him away from it.

  Casca shook his head in amazement. "The fucker's dead or dying anyway, why not drop him in the sea?" he muttered.

  The warrior negotiated the dangerous trail and at the other end handed the body over to four others, who earned it all the way across the small sanctuary and threw it onto a pile of bones where a point ran out over the sea.

  Nobody took any further interest, and they began to leave the refuge. Casca lingered to look down the cliff.

  At the bottom there was a large, flat expanse of rock jutting out into the ocean with a small patch of calm water on its lee side. Casca saw that it would be just possible to climb down the cliff to this area of flat rock.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  As the bilo passed in the chief's house that night the conversations were all about Sakuvi, his life, his achievements, and his amiability, and about the little boy, Vuki, the fun he had enjoyed in his short life and his stout defense of his sister.

  Casca listened attentively to all the conversations but could not pick up any reference to Tepole, the days hunt, his death, or the disposal of his corpse. He had expected the usual ritual of repeated recital of all the events of the day until every detail was known by everybody.