Casca 17: The Warrior Page 5

  Casca was surprised to find that he'd fallen into some carefully set traps in the old man's questions, more surprised still at the subtlety of the process. He was also pretty worried. He knew only too well that people do not lie without reason, and now that the chief had realized he was lying, he would surely start questing for the reason.

  There was no reason other than the impossibility of explaining the truth, but suspicion would cast a cloud over the entire crew of the Rangaroa.

  At the next question Casca fell back on a device that he had often found of use—the truth. Or part of it. "Forgive me, Semele, but as you see, I am not one of the ship's crew, and I have a confusing history. I am a professional warrior and I have lived longer than my years indicate. I do not wish to deceive you, for I am an honest man, but it is not possible for me to explain more."

  Semele nodded several times, then smiled and turned his questioning to Sandy. Casca breathed a long sigh of relief.

  Gradually Casca realized that the men sitting around them were being replaced by women, and lovely young women at that. He looked around and saw that each crewman had two or three lovelies sitting near him and concentrating on him, smiling, occasionally saying some small thing in their own language, now and again a single word of English.

  There were three such women next to him, and as the evening went on he discerned that there was some sort of unperceived competition going on amongst them, the one who told him her name was Alesia seemingly winning.

  Casca couldn't tell how it happened, but eventually there was only Alesia, the other women having tactfully withdrawn. People were leaving the house without any special ceremony, and Casca found himself being led away by Alesia.

  She took him to a small thatched hut and lay down with him on a grass mat.

  Just before dawn the next morning she woke him. It seemed to Casca they had made love just about all night and now it seemed she wanted to do so again. Very pleasant, and very flattering, but Casca wanted to sleep.

  Alesia very gently but insistently maneuvered him awake and into her arms. The intensity of her passion completely, overwhelmed Casca, and when it was over he was puzzled by the fierce, hungry energy of her last kiss as she leaped to her feet and ran from the hut.

  For a moment Casca thought of running after her, but sexually oversated, overfed, and still, it seemed, somehow affected by the kava, he fell back into a deep sleep.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When he awoke much later in the morning he went in search of Alesia and found her at the chief's house. There, together with nine other beauties, she was being garlanded, robed in a gown made of cloth from the tapa tree, and perfumed in readiness for a ceremony—the launching of a new canoe.

  She was delighted to see him, and with signs and gestures introduced him to her mother, her aunt, and her sisters, who were attending to her.

  When it was time for the ceremony Casca went with them to the beach.

  Once again the whole village seemed to be present. The canoe was a splendid vessel, dug out of a forest giant from high on the mountain. Many months, the greater part of a year, had been needed to sled the canoe down the mountainside, the craftsmen hollowing it as they moved it day by day. At last, completed and elaborately carved, they had hauled it to the beach.

  A glance told Casca that the huge vessel could not possibly be moved by the few men who could get a handhold on it, nor could it be sledded across the soft sand to the water, and rollers of logs would merely be pushed into the sand by the canoe's great weight. He was interested to see just how this launching was to be accomplished.

  Twenty husky warriors took up positions on either side of the great canoe. Each of them seized one of the carved handholds along the gunwale. The wooden drums started up, the warriors chanted, and on the fifth beat a great shout came from every throat in the village. The twenty men heaved with all their might.

  And the canoe moved a few inches.

  Casca looked down the broad expanse of beach and quickly calculated that the effort needed to get the canoe to the water would exhaust not only these twenty warriors, but the entire village. As far as he could see, this method simply wouldn't work.

  Alesia danced lightly forward to a different rhythm from the drums. She was a vision of delight, her beautiful little bosom vibrating in time to the beat.

  The drums stopped, then started again. Once more the warriors grasped the canoe.

  A horrible idea came into Casca's mind as Alesia gracefully sank to the ground, to lie on the sand in front of the prow of the canoe.

  Of a sudden Casca knew that his horrid a idea was right. The chant had reached the fourth beat. Casca leaped to his feet.

  An enormous shout erupted from every throat. Casca found himself screaming, too, and the twenty warriors heaved.

  Alesia's hips and her lovely legs twirled in a macabre dance in the air as the canoe's great length rolled over her, the elaborate robes of tapa cloth torn away.

  Now her feet pointed together to the sky and her pelvis struck the sand, her luscious buttocks vibrating as if in orgasm. Now she lay again on her back, legs spread wide apart so that despite his horror, Casca's eyes were glued to the small, black bush where the legs met.

  The legs writhed and kicked, the knees opened and closed in spasms. Then the canoe was turning her onto her belly once more as the warriors shouted and heaved.

  The beautiful legs kicked skyward as her back broke, then crashed limply to the sand. The canoe moved faster, the now blood-drenched legs flailed about limply as the body was turned over and over, the pushing warriors dancing nimbly to avoid them.

  Then the stern of the canoe was clear of her body, the men still pushing, the canoe sliding farther, greased with the girl's body fats, the sand finned with her blood.

  The canoe stopped and the exhausted warriors fell to the sand alongside it, their chests heaving, mouths sagging open as they gasped for air.

  A great groan escaped from Casca.

  From all sides there came the same sound.

  Then everybody was moving slowly toward where the body lay, almost severed in two parts. Though he couldn't tell why, Casca was moving with the others. He didn't want to look at the body, yet felt impelled toward it.

  First to reach the mangled corpse were some old women carrying calabashes of water and tapa cloths. In a few moments they had washed the body clean and redressed Alesia as she had been just a few minutes earlier.

  With a long, sad sigh Casca lowered himself to the sand. All the villagers squatted on the sand too. They sat and the drums started up again. The people clapped slowly and everybody sang.

  Casca found himself singing too. He had no idea of the words nor their meaning. The bodies of the singers swayed as if in time to the paddle strokes of a great canoe carrying a loved one to some far off pleasant place. The song went on but would be interrupted nine more times by the continuing sacrifices.

  When the second girl stood ready for the ceremony it had occurred to Casca to intervene. But the man of action was stayed by his own considerable confusion.

  By now the Roman had known some tens of thousands of women, and killed perhaps that many men and not a few women by his own hands, and ten or maybe a hundred times that many by his orders.

  So why such concern?

  He had hardly known Alesia. Her cousin, who was now dancing before the prow of the canoe, he didn't know at all. But his mind revolted at such a waste of beauty. Of lovely, desirable, usable women.

  In his loins Casca felt the stirrings of a vague, undefinable desire. Another emotion was replacing the horror. Now he wanted to see the girl lie down, and as he recognized the thought she did so. The warriors seized the canoe. The chant quickly reached its climax.

  And Casca was on his feet with everybody else, screaming.

  Again the tapa robes were torn apart. This girl had lain with her head toward Casca, and the sight was truly horrible as her eyes bulged, her tongue protruded, her arms shot out, the fingers extended wi
th tremendous energy. Her bosom heaved and the nipples sprouted erect.

  As the moving canoe turned her onto her belly her back arched, her arms above her head as if she would rise from under the boat's great weight.

  Then it rolled her once more onto her back and she did rise, almost as if to clutch the gunwale of the boat with her hands. A torrent of blood vomited from her mouth.

  The canoe moved on relentlessly, and once more she was on her belly, her beautiful body arched backward, her breasts pointing with fierce energy at Casca, her upraised arms reaching for the sky.

  The canoe turned her over again, her back broke and she flopped to the sand. The canoe slid on and on, and she rolled with it, lifeless now, her arms turning loosely, the hands softly patting at the sand.

  Then it was over and Casca was on his feet, moving once more toward the body with everybody else. And a few minutes later he was sitting with the others, clapping slowly and singing, the girl lying at peace, washed clean and redressed in fresh robes, as if she'd died comfortably.

  What monstrousness, Casca was thinking once again. But he also saw that the canoe was closer to the water, and he searched his experience for some other way to accomplish this.

  Clearly log rollers would not work. The weight of the canoe would simply bury the first log in the sand. The sand could, perhaps, be firmed with water from the sea, but how to carry so much water so far and quickly enough? And how to keep the sand wet in the broiling heat?

  He abandoned this thinking. With the sacrifice of each new girl he grew more and more carnally excited; excited, too, to see the canoe getting closer and closer to the sea. Now he was cheering on the pushers; applauding in his mind the twirling of the girl's body; waiting, when her feet were toward him, for that moment when her legs would shoot wide apart; desire surging through him as the young cunt stretched open, and then again, when she was turned over and her ass pounded her pussy into the sand like a frantic young girl riding a lover to her own orgasm.

  And as the back broke he felt something very much like orgasm, and his raging, conflicting emotions of horror, excitement, pity, and desire, were replaced by feelings of sympathy, affection, and gratitude.

  He was grateful, and knew that all around him this was the climactic emotion of all the people. Sacrifice by sacrifice the great canoe was getting closer to the sea, moving toward the end of its year-long passage from the mountain-top where the tree had grown to maturity.

  For many more years now, for countless years, this canoe would serve the village, provide it with fish and turtles and the beautiful things that came from the sea— corals, and great, lovely shells, and sometimes pearls.

  And in war this canoe would carry its warriors into battle to protect the village, or to attack another village and carry home the spoils.

  By the end of the day, at the cost of ten beautiful women, the canoe was in the water, seeing people killed was no new experience for Casca, and he'd seen women killed much more horribly. He had even seen women he loved die horrible deaths, tortured, torn apart, chopped to pieces, eaten by wild animals. But for some reason that he couldn't explain to himself, this day had affected him more powerfully.

  Perhaps, he reasoned, it was the calm way each successive girl took her place in front of the canoe as her turn came. And the placid acceptance of her mangled corpse by her relatives. The whole ceremony impressed Casca as disgustingly barbarous, and yet there was something highly civilized about it.

  If Casca was badly affected by the launching, the rest of the company of the Rangaroa were all but destroyed. Young Sandy had fainted when the canoe first rolled over Alesia. Liam had become hysterical when he saw his lover of the previous night about to take her turn before the bloodstained prow. Larsen had been reduced to a sobbing heap of unhappiness. Ulf simply sat in the sand, occasionally opening his eyes to see a few moments of one or the other of the grisly deaths, then shaking his head, gritting his teeth and closing his eyes again.

  The bodies of the ten girls were laid in the great canoe, each one's head resting in another's lap. The twenty warriors waded alongside the canoe, then swam with it, pushing it toward the opening in the reef and through it out into the open sea.

  The sun was just setting, and in the fading light Casca could just see them overturn the boat, then push it back inside the lagoon.

  "Damn fools," he muttered to Ulf, "why the fuck don't they get into the boat? Right on sunset there'll be sharks aplenty out there after those bodies."

  Ulf shrugged. He had quite recovered his normal cold cynicism. "In these parts you got to take your fun as you find it. You got to admit it keeps life interesting."

  Casca snorted the contempt of the professional for thrill seekers. "Just bloody stupid. They're not even hurrying— coming back slower than they went out. Nothing on earth would get me—or you—out there with those idiots."

  "Me, no," Ulf grunted, "you, if you stay here a year you'll be competing for a place in the team."

  "The hell I will," Casca snapped, wondering at his concern as he realized that he was straining into the growing darkness with every fiber of his being, as if he could drag the twenty men to safety.

  At last, still upside down, the great canoe slid onto the beach and the warriors lay beside it, recovering their breath.

  Casca let out his own breath in a great long sigh which was echoed all around him. A drum beat and a new chant commenced, and Casca realized that this was the first sound since the bodies had left the beach two hours earlier.

  In the song Casca repeatedly heard Alesia's name, and guessed that he was hearing a new song that might be sung for years into the future—certainly for the life of the canoe. The song named each girl over and over, describing her and telling the story of her life and of her part in the launching of the canoe.

  The song went on all night. At sunrise everybody walked into the lagoon and washed in the salt water, then turned and walked back to the village, talking quietly as they went.

  The Rangaroa crew did the same, but lingered on the beach together, a little dismayed and overwhelmed by the day's events, and wondering what might come next. After a while they, too, walked up the hill into the village.

  For the villagers another ordinary day was already in full swing. Women were cooking, men working, children playing.

  "Dis bit I understand," said Ulf. "In Greenland when we launch a new boat, everybody get drunk. Next day just work like normal."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The next day Casca felt better. He walked through the village and discovered that for the villagers it was as if the ceremony had never happened. He visited Alesia's house. Her mother and her aunt were chatting as they made tapa cloth, laughing as if she had never existed.

  The bark had been carefully stripped from the tree in sheets, soaked in water and pounded between stones to produce a fabric as soft as silk on the skin and as cool as cotton in the heat of the tropic sun. Now the women were using a sort of woodblock to decorate the fabric with elaborate designs that told meaningful stories, recounted legends, or set symbolic examples.

  That night, as far as Casca could tell, the conversation in the chief's house was entirely about other matters. It was as if the people only had a memory span of a few hours.

  Or perhaps it was simply that the disturbing news that had reached the island from the nearby Fiji isles put all other matters out of mind.

  Cakabau, the chief of the tiny island of Bau, had declared himself king of all of Fiji and the islands to the west, which included Navola Levu. Kini came from a village that had been subjugated by this bloodthirsty and power-hungry chief, and the elders of the village were interested to hear whatever he could tell them. They sat with Kini, Casca, and several members of the Rangaroa crew while the bib—the coconut kava cup—was passed back and forth.

  The old chief nodded knowingly. "Here in our mountain fastness we are invincible. It is impossible for an enemy to kill one of our men before we kill one of his, so long as we choose to sta
y behind our palisade."

  "Which we don't very often do," Mbolo said. it seemed to Casca that Mbolo, educated in English by the wandering merchant adventurer Samuel Clevinger, was almost as important as Semele.

  Sonolo, a massively built young man, shrugged and spread wide his enormous hands. "Well, after all, that is the way we are. Naturally we prefer to go out and greet the enemy and fight him where there is more danger."

  Semele paused, pursed his lips in thought for a moment, then spoke: "But is it not clear that against Cakabau we cannot afford to be so adventurous? Should we meet him outside the palisade and he kill one of our men, we would pay a great price for our adventurousness, Sonolo."

  It seemed to Casca that he must be missing or misunderstanding something of this conversation.

  "Excuse me," he said, "but I don't quite understand. Do you mean to say that the fighting stops as soon as one man is killed?" He looked into a number of uncomprehending faces.

  Sonolo, who was the war chief and a nephew of Semele, answered him. "But of course. Surely one dead man is enough."

  "Well," Casca shrugged, "from the point of view of the one, I guess it's one too many. But what if you should lose a man when you have the advantage?"

  Semele looked at Casca as if he suddenly had doubts of his intellect. "What advantage could offset the death of a man?"

  Casca shrugged and sat staring up at the thatch roof, looking for an answer from his long experience of civilized warfare that would make sense to these man-eating barbarians who could not conceive of a war that would kill more than one man.

  "But Cakabau, too, is invincible," Kini told the chief. "Perhaps he is, on his island of Bau, but we do not think of attacking Bau."

  "That is not what I mean," said Kini. "He is invincible wherever he goes."

  "How can this be?" asked Semele, puzzled.

  "He carries with him six weapons of enormous power."

  Semele laughed. "I will be very happy to meet Cakabau in battle if he is silly enough to carry six clubs. No man could wield even two clubs effectively."