Casca 17: The Warrior (19 page)

Casca's coronation ceremony took up the greater part of a day and a night.

Everybody, including a number of guests from Lakuvi, gathered at the chief's newly built house shortly after dawn. Mbolo sat in the place of highest honor, Casca next to him, the tabua on its long cord leading from Mbolo's feet to the huge bowl of kava.

Mbolo accepted the first bowl of kava, draining it, clapping and pronouncing it empty. The young warrior accepted the bilo and returned to the bowl to refill it. Mbolo rose and moved aside, motioning for Casca to occupy the position by the whale's tooth.

Casca sat and looked along the cord to the kava bowl, then around the great room at the entire population of the village. The bilo arrived and he clapped, accepted, and drank it.

Every voice in the house said "
matha
" with him, and every pair of hands clapped three times with him. Again he looked along the cord to the kava bowl and then around the room.

"I feel like a king on his throne," he muttered to himself in some amazement. His glance roved back around the room and came to rest on Mbolo, squatting beside him.

"No, I don't. Dammit, I feel like the father of a family."

A
great wellspring of affection for his people filled his being, along with an all-pervasive contentment.

"Maybe I'll just keep the job for
a while and see what sort of a fist I can make of it. I don't have to move on just yet." He settled down to enjoy the occasion.

The bilo of kava passed back and forth to each of the minor chiefs, then their wives, then, to the whole of the rest of the tribe in some order that Casca could no way discern. Mbolo made
a long, long speech, followed by Ateca. Then each of the minor chiefs made long speeches, too, followed by their wives, and then from all around the room speaker followed speaker, apparently at random, until virtually every villager, certainly somebody from every family, had spoken on the accession of the new chief.

Meanwhile, banana-leaf platters of fish and taro and cassava and breadfruit passed around and around the great house. Just when Casca was convinced that he could not eat another mouthful, the supply of food would diminish and the bilo of kava would be passed again, the speeches continuing.

After two or three hours of drinking kava more food appeared, now some huge crabs, papayas, mangoes, and bananas, then lobsters, eventually a giant turtle. Each successive course of the banquet followed a long interval of kava drinking and speech making.

Casca enjoyed the occasion immensely. He was now very much bigger than the hard, lean railroad worker who had arrived on the island a few months earlier, and his appetite had increased accordingly. Without effort he put away everything that was placed before him. He had also become attuned to the effects of the kava and after a few bi
los, passed into an enjoyable state of alert tranquility which grew more and more pleasant with each bilo he drank.

Finally, very late in the night, the speeches came to an end and people drifted out of the house. The minor chiefs and their wives withdrew, and Casca found himself the only man in the room.

Setole was nearby, her enormous bulk seated on a mat alongside Casca. Next to her sat Ateca, and there were also a score or more other women present, Vivita seemingly first among them.

Setole went to the raised, private part of the room and prepared a sleeping mat, indicating that she was doing so for Casca. He watched in some amusement and a little amazement as she then prepared a mat for herself on the small floor close to the dais.

On the other side of the room, and just as close, Vivita spread a mat. A little farther away Ateca laid out a mat, and then in some sort of unperceivable order, each of the other women did the same, keeping a respectful distance from each other so that they were distributed all around the room.

Casca looked around. Except for Semela's widow, each of these women had slept with him at some time since he'd been in the village. He realized with a start that each of the girls he'd slept with in the village of Lakuvi was there, too, even the ones he'd forgotten that he had slept with during the orgy following Cakabau's defeat.

"Great man-eating pussy of Venus," Casca groaned, "they surely don't expect me to service all of them tonight. I might be getting a bit too old for this sort of caper."

As it turned out, he slipped into a blissful, kava-stoned sleep as soon as he lay on his grass mat and slept through the night undisturbed.

In the days that followed, he found that the pattern of his life had been drastically altered. He was only safe so long as he stayed on his raised dais. As soon as he stepped down from it one or other of his wives—it seemed that all of them were now his—would assail him to sit with her, to allow her to prepare a meal for him and if it were night, to make love to her.

And his wives were the least of it. It seemed that everybody in the village had a problem of some sort and an urgent need to lay it at Casca's feet. It even seemed to him that several villagers invented or resurrected old problems for the simple pleasure of presenting them to him.

He discovered that wherever he went in the rebuilt village or in the recultivated farm patches or on the newly made fishing boats, there was work for him to do, advice to be given, problems to be solved, decisions to be made, quarrels and disputes to be arbitrated. And always there were children trying to trip him or frighten him or simply waylay him by forming a dancing chain around him. He would no sooner oblige them by stumbling over a stretched vine to their enormous delight, but would trip over a cunningly placed stick he hadn't seen, to their greatest glee. Whenever they jumped at him from concealment he would leap high into the air in simulated tenor, and their shrieks of joy would scarcely cease when another of them might succeed in actually startling him, the merriment bursting out afresh.

Most nights either Setole or Vivita would usually lay claim to him, but every few nights they would yield to one of the other women. It irritated Casca immensely that even as supreme chief and god he still didn't get to choose his own bedmate.

His irritation increased further when he noticed that his wives, including Setole and Vivita, and even the elderly Ateca, left the chief's house to spend the night with other men whenever it suited them.

"Damn," he fumed, "I'm a hero, a war chief,
supreme chief. I'm even God Almighty, but I don't get to choose who lays me, and my wives just lay anybody they please."

A few days and a few nights and Casca
was once more thinking of flight.

He was sleeping with Vivita when it occurred to him that he preferred that she be the woman to whom he would bid good-bye, so he woke her gently and made love to her once more. When she fell back to sleep he snatched up his duffel, threw his few possessions into it, and crept from the house.

There was no moon, but Casca moved quickly and soon arrived at the place of refuge.

He was halfway across it, toward where Tepole's remains lay, when Sonolo rose up from the ground in front of him as Casca's footfalls woke him.

"Mbula, Casca," the ex-war chief greeted him. "Are you dead now too?"

Casca laughed aloud as he stared through the darkness at the emaciated man.

"No, Sonolo, I'm as alive as you are."

"But I am dead, Casca."

Casca reached out a hand and touched him on the chest. Sonolo started back as if burnt. His mouth dropped open in terror. Tentatively he stretched out one hand.

"Touch me," Casca invited. "I am real, just as you are." Sonolo's trembling hand touched his shoulder, withdrew,
then touched him again.

"Then we are both alive?" Sonolo asked in wonder. "Then what has happened to me?"

Casca sat down and motioned to hint to do the same. He took from the duffel some fruit and a coconut.

"You eat, and I'll try to explain," he said. He then quickly told him how the muskets had accomplished the defeat of Cakabau.

At this news Sonolo seemed to come to life. He hungrily munched the fruit thirstily from the coconut as Casca continued the story of the earthquake, Semele's death, his own return from the dead, and his chieftainship.

"Then I am not dead, nor in exile?" Sonolo asked wonderingly.

"Neither one," Casca answered. He saw opportunity and grasped it. "The village awaits you. I have come to tell you that you are to be chief."

"But you have just told me that you are chief, that you are Rangaroa come to lead us."

"Indeed," Casca replied, "but Rangaroa cannot stay for long in one village. There is much for me to do. The time has come for me to return to the sea, and you must take my place as chief."

"
I do not understand."

Casca stood up.
"Return to the village and consult with Mbolo. Tell him what I have said, and tell him the manner of my going, then you will understand. You will be a good chief. Good-bye.
Mbula
."

He got up and strode quickly to the cliff. At the very edge he turned around. Sonolo had just gotten to his feet and was staring through the darkness toward him.

Casca waved his hand and dropped down the cliff face, crouching under the overhang of rock.

He heard Sonolo's startled shout, then he could hear him running toward the cliff to stop at the edge, shouting into the darkness: "Rangaroa, where are you? Casca, what has become of you?"

The confused Sonolo stood a little while at the cliff edge. There was just enough light for him to see that Casca's body had not crashed onto the rocks below, nor had he heard any fall. He looked around at the night sky. Had the man-god flown into the clouds where the Valangi came from? Perhaps Mbolo could explain.

He turned and headed back across the refuge and toward the village.

Casca heard Sonolo leave, and continued his climb down to the broad, flat rock. He made his way around the edge of the small backwater and found the sail canoe, riding the quiet water at the end of the vines that secured it to several trees.

He ran to where his provisions were hidden, and found, as he had hoped, that the tidal wave had not struck this side of the island. Everything was just as he'd left it.

He quickly loaded the supplies into the small boat, untied the lines, and pushed it out beyond the rock into the open sea.

From horizon to horizon all was
one blackness, peppered with a few stars. Casca raised the sail and the offshore breeze carried him from the shore. Behind him he could just make out the mass of the cliff. Ahead there was an endless space, the few stars fading into the clouds that were gradually building toward a storm.

The wind died to
a calm, and Casca sat just offshore in the tiny sail canoe. Now the last of the stars had disappeared and there was no light. He could no longer distinguish the shape of the cliff from the sea or the night sky.

It didn't matter. He just sat and waited, letting his destiny cast him adrift once more...

In colonial China at the turn of the century, Casca is a British soldier with a choice – a suicide mission or the gallows. To avoid death by hanging, he must penetrate the heart of the mysterious land and bring back word of the impending revolution. Captured and tortured by a Warlord, his true identity is revealed. They call him
Cas-Ca Sho
– of long life – and proclaim him a Count…

Now he must lead an army of a million subjects – into the slaughter of a revolt against the British

For more information on the entire Casca series see
www.casca.net

The Barry Sadler website
www.barrysadler.com