Casca 17: The Warrior (14 page)

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.

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.

But it seemed that this was not a day to be remembered. Nor was
Tepole to be remembered, neither his crimes nor his punishment.

Sakuvi and Vuki and the departed Sonolo, on the other hand, were talked of at great length, and songs grew out of the conversations that recorded their lives and their deaths, carrying the moral that whiskey had brought about the end of all three.

But Vuki's murderer was not mentioned by name. It was as if Tepole had never existed.

And, too, it was as if Cakabau didn't exist. Casca strove with all the language he could muster, and with remarks in English to Semele and Mbolo, to make the threatened raid the topic of conversation, but without success. So far the attack had not happened, perhaps it never would.

The villagers were heartily sick of the topic. Already the threatened raid had cost them their hundred best men, the whiskey casualties, and Sala's brother. Tepole was not counted as a loss.

Frustrated, Casca withdrew from the conversation and sat back to relax and enjoy the kava, and later Vivita, or which other woman wound up in his bed for the night.

He looked around at the likely contenders. There were half a dozen young women, all, at the moment, staying respectfully a little farther from him than Vivita. But Casca now knew that this might change in the course of the evening, that the game amongst the women never stopped. Through some process of communication, competition, and cooperation that he'd not been able to discern much less appreciate or understand, Casca was aware that the women might decide amongst themselves that he should spend the night with one of these young lovelies rather than with the gap-toothed Vivita.

The kava was beginning to take hold. Casca felt the pleasant, numbing sensation spreading throughout his body, felt the tension and worry about Cakabau's raid seeping away. The soft light from the
fire and the whale-oil lamps was becoming a golden glow.

The little blue stones around Takuni's neck reflected the soft light very pleasantly. Casca watched the firelight glinting off the facets of the stones and wondered what they were. Surely not cut, he decided they must be some naturally occurring crystal.

Suddenly he was on his feet, snatching at the little necklace, holding the stones in the palm of his hand and studying them intently.

"Where do these come from?" he demanded.

Takuni was taken aback. So was everybody else. It seemed that Casca was forgetting his manners.

Takuni shrugged uncomfortably.
"From the mountain. There are many, if you search for them."

"And yellow?"
Casca shouted. "Are there yellow ones too?"

"Of course, yes." Takuni shrugged again. `But the yellow stuff crumbles in your fingers. These are much prettier."

Casca whooped like a delighted schoolboy. He threw his clenched fists into the air as if to throw them away and stamped his feet and grunted and shouted. He grabbed Takuni by the waist and lifted her high above his head.

Semele, Mbolo, Ateca, Duana, and even the imperturbable Vivita stared at him in amazement.

He put down the girl, raced across to Semele, and lifted the astonished giant in his arms. He put him down and whirled about to do the same to Mbolo.

"Gunpowder!" he shouted.
"Gunpowder! Great balls of Mars, we've got gunpowder!"

Semele looked up from where Casca had dropped him. A lesser man might have suffered a considerable loss of dignity.

"What is gunpowder?" he asked politely.

Casca whooped some more, shouted, "Gunpowder, gunpowder, gunpowder," stamped his feet, waved his fists, danced a sort of barbaric jig, and finally collapsed to the floor laughing.

Semele, Mbolo, and the others waited patiently and politely for his outburst to pass.

Lying on the floor, Casca made the gesture of an erection with his right arm and clenched fist. "Force," he shouted. He clutched his balls in his left hand and opened the right fist explosively. "Fire," he yelled.
"Life for the muskets."

When at last his hilarity diminished, Casca sputtered an explanation through his chuckles. "We can use the muskets. The men have not been wasted. Sonolo's mission will yet defeat Cakabau and save the village."

In the morning Casca awoke to a breakfast of papayas and cooked bananas and coconut milk, prepared by Takuni. He held out his hand and she dropped the necklace into it. He grunted happily as the sight of the crystals confirmed his idea of the previous night.

"You can find some more of these stones for me now?"

"Of course, yes."

"And the soft yellow stuff?"

"Of course, yes."

"Good, let's go."

He gulped a mouthful of coconut milk, snatched up some bananas, and left the hut at such a pace that Takuni had to run to catch up with him.

"We shall need a bag," she gasped.

"Get one," Casca snapped, and kept right on heading for the lower slopes of the volcano.

Takuni ran to her hut and returned with a tapa sack, trotting to keep up with Casca, who was striding along at the phenomenal speed that he had first learned in Caesar's legions, covering a full six feet every time his left foot hit the ground.

They struck directly up the face of the mountain, ignoring the curving trail until the going got so steep that they had to use it.

His pace didn't slacken. He climbed like a man possessed. After the several days of frustration and inaction he now saw the opportunity to do something, and luxuriated in the sweat streaming from every pore of his body.

His little companion managed to keep up with him, but in some confusion. To move so fast under the broiling tropical sun was an absurdity to her. Did this blue-eyed madman fear that the mountain would go away?

After some hours of climbing at Casca's frenetic pace they came at last to the lip of the volcanic crater. Casca stood on the edge and looked down across the expanse of black lava. Huge waves of molten rock racing from the core had hardened in place when the fires cooled, and they now formed a great, black, frozen sea.

They climbed down into the crater and made their way across the lava, sometimes having to climb the arching face of a wave six to eight feet tall. Then the waves were smaller, only ripples, and then the frozen puddle of lava was flat.

It was hot underfoot, and from time to time the surface crust broke away and they fell through the trapped bubbles of air, sometimes only an inch, but often a foot or more. Casca's heart was in his mouth at the thought that they might be crashing right through the surface lava and down into the fires beneath.

They came to the crumbling inner edge of the crater and looked down. Far below them red fires glowed and sulfurous fumes drifted up to them.

"The very halls of Hades," Casca muttered. "Where do we find the stones?" he asked Takuni.

"Everywhere," she said, and smiled, "and nowhere. It is necessary to search."

"Yeah," grunted Casca, "well, there's hours of light left, let's get to it." He moved to skirt the fire pit. "You go that way, and yell out if you see anything—blue or yellow."

The sun burned down out of the clear blue sky. The lava underfoot was almost too hot to touch. Casca cursed that he had not brought some water. He seemed to be moving in small clouds of steam issuing in puffs from the hot ground.

He plodded about on the hot, black stone, bored now with the tiresome task of searching for tiny flecks of color in the endless sea of black.

Across the pit Takuni was capering about like a child at a picnic, darting first in one direction where she thought she saw some color, then disappointed, swerving away to run a few paces another way.

Her scatterbrained mode of searching half annoyed, but also amused Casca, who was diligently quartering the area, carefully examining every tiny cleft and crevice.
He was about to call to Takuni to search more carefully when she gave a shriek of unmistakable delight and Casca found himself bounding eagerly to her side.

She had come to where the ripples of lava rose again into waves, and was looking up the back of a long rise of black dotted with tiny flecks of yellow.

Casca sucked in his breath in disappointment. It would take hours to dig out just one ounce of these tiny little dots of sulfur.

Takuni was running up the back of the wave, to jump off its crest and race to the next one.

Casca shrugged and took out his knife. "Well," he muttered, "maybe she'll find some bluestone while I'm winkling out this stuff."

But another delighted yelp from Takuni had him bounding up the back of the wave and leaping from its face as she had. In the back of the next wave he could see a broad swathe of yellow where the lightweight sulfur had frothed to the top of the denser lava.

Casca fell upon the vein of yellow and dug out great chunks of it, catching them in his left hand and gesturing to Takuni to bring him the tapa sack.

Takuni did
so, first taking out the two coconuts she had carried with her from the village. Casca looked at the little black girl in amazement.

"What else did you think of that I forgot?" he asked as he opened a coconut and gulped thirstily from it.

For an answer Takuni reached into the sack and brought out a small green-stone axe.

Casca sheathed his knife and held out his hand. As Takuni handed him the axe he took both her hands in his and kissed her gently on the lips.

She responded willingly. Casca looked around. In the entire expanse of the crater there was no grass, not even a patch of bare soil, nothing but the hard, black, hot rock with its broken, crumbling edges. To lay the girl down on the sharp rock was unthinkable; it would lacerate her back to strips.

"I'd cut my knees to bits too," Casca grunted, handing Takuni the coconut and going to work with the axe. "This is enough of the yellow stuff. Look for the bluestones." He turned all his attention to his digging.

For a moment Takuni stood looking at him as if disappointed, then she scaled the wave of lava, jumped off the edge, and ran skipping for the next rearing black wall.

Casca wielded the little axe with a will, chopping away the brittle rock and scooping out handfuls of the soft yellow sulfur. He was coming to the end of the vein when he heard Takuni calling from a long way away.

He clambered up to stand erect on the crust of lava, six feet or so above the general flow. He could see Takuni waving from a great distance, almost to the far side of the crater.

Hurriedly he scooped all the free sulfur into the sack and set off at a half run, whooping exultantly as he went. When he got to Takuni she was down on her hands and knees, peering down into a tiny crevice in the rock. She moved aside to let him see.

Tiny wisps of sulfurous steam issued from deep down in the crevice and condensed onto its walls on the way to the surface. The steam carried with it tiny traces of copper and sulfur that had been chemically welded together in the giant caldron below. Here and there on the sides of the crevice the condensed steam had deposited tiny blue crystals of copper sulfate.

Casca seized Takuni and kissed her rapturously. She hugged him fiercely.
"What the hell," Casca muttered, "this old hide can stand a few more scars." He lowered himself to the ground, and she was quickly astride him. He didn't even notice the way the broken edge of the rock sawed his back to a bloody mess.

It was dark before they got out of the crater, but Casca was well satisfied with the day's prospecting. He had perhaps twenty or so ounces of pure sulfur and about the same weight of copper sulfate. He had also collected several long sticks of obsidian, the volcanic glasslike stone that formed in the intense heat of the fiery magma.

They made their way down the mountain and back to the village, going directly to Takuni's house, where she quickly prepared a meal of cassava, taro, breadfruit, and bananas. Then they lay down together on the sleeping mat.

It was mid
-morning when Casca awoke. He had slept through the morning drums and all the hubbub of Takuni's household as they awoke, washed, breakfasted, and left the house to attend to the day's work.

Casca and Takuni were alone in the house, and she brought him a breakfast of small fish in coconut cream as soon as she saw that he was awake. When he'd eaten she walked with him to his own hut, turning aside to go her own way when they were almost there.

He set to work at once, pounding up the small blue crystals, sieving the sulfur through tapa cloth, and finally combining the two with some of the saltpeter that Larsen had left for pickling fish and some charcoal from Vivita's cook fire.