Casca 17: The Warrior (5 page)

Canoes ferried them to the beach, where they were greeted by music and bare-breasted girls in grass skirts whose dancing was quite different from the Tahitians. The music came from wooden drums and an instrument made from a coconut half strung with strings of gut. Casca reflected that there were no animals in these islands, and forebore thinking further about just what gut might have been used.

They were taken to a fortified village on a hilltop some distance from the beach.

Casca was impressed by the village defenses. A six-foot palisade of sharpened poles leaned outward so that it was virtually unscalable by attackers. On the inside there were two horizontal rails that enabled the defenders to take up positions of advantage. There were small openings that a man had to bend double to get through. There were three of these fences to be passed through before they reached the village, a collection of thatched huts around an open space. The huts were similar to those on Hua Wahine, but these had walls of woven coconut fronds and floors of crushed seashells.

The hut they were led to was many times the size of any of the others. At the far end of the one enormous room a huge man sat cross-legged on a raised dais of coconut logs covered with seashells and grass mats. He was, perhaps, the biggest man Casca had ever seen.

He recalled that legend amongst European sailors had it that these cannibals continued to grow throughout their lives, and looking at Semele, Casca could believe it.

The man was enormous, but not in any one place. His body was one firm, muscular ball. Nowhere were there any folds of loose fat or sagging flesh. His huge head sat on a columnar neck atop a body that was as thick through from breastbone to spine as it was from shoulder to shoulder. Arms the size of Casca's legs were complemented by great legs and huge feet.

Yet when Semele moved, Casca was amazed to see that he moved easily and even gracefully.

The house filled up with people and Casca guessed that everybody in the village was there. Semele came down from the dais which Casca assumed was his private space. Not very private, he thought, and not much space either.

Everybody sat cross-legged on the floor and two women carried in a carved bowl filled with a muddy liquid. They placed it on the floor and another old man, not quite as huge as Semele, carried from it a huge whale's tooth on a rope of plaited vines, placing it at Semele's feet.

"Kava," sandy told Casca. "They like it better than whiskey."

A glance was enough to convince Casca that he was much more likely to prefer whiskey.

The old man, Mbolo, intoned a long speech which was presumably a welcome.
A younger man scooped some of the kava in a bowl made from a polished half coconut shell and with much ceremony carried it respectfully to the chief. Semele clapped his hands, then accepted the bowl and drained it, clapped three more times, said "matha" returned the bowl to the young man, and everybody in the room clapped three times.

The whale's tooth, called a tabua, was moved to Larsen's feet, and the next bowl came to Larsen, who repeated the chief's actions. The bowl passed back and forth, going now to Mbolo and then to Casca, although the tabua remained by Larsen.

Casca chuckled to himself as he realized that the islanders placed him number two in the ship's company.
Guess they've never heard of a passenger
, he mused. He was disagreeably surprised to find that the liquid tasted every bit as bad as it looked, the only effect being a numb feeling in his tongue and gums. The bowl passed back and forth, going now to one of the islanders, then to one of the company from the
Rangaroa
.

When all the company had drunk from the bowl it continued to pass, but conversation broke out throughout the room. The language was musical, stately, and interspersed with much laughter.

The chief and those around him, to Casca's astonishment, spoke English, and reasonably good English.

Semele explained that the South Seas trader, Clevinger, had once had a post on the island and had gone to some pains to teach the villagers English.

The chief told them that this was the island of Navola Levu and that they were in the principal village, Navola. He asked many questions of Larsen and of others in the crew: where they had come from, how many days they had been at sea, and where they were bound for. His curiosity seemed endless.

After some hours of this conversation and many, many bowls of kava, a number of women entered the house,
carrying banana-leaf platters laden with steaming fish, cooked bananas, papayas, breadfruit, yams, cassava, taro, and a dozen other fruits and vegetables Casca couldn't identify. The chief seemed to have an unlimited appetite, and Casca noticed that each time he reached for food, everybody did the same.

"If I'm here for long, I'll wind up as big as he is," Casca whispered to Larsen.

The chief seemed to arrive at somewhat the same thought, and singled Casca out for special questioning, apparently because he was the most powerfully built of the ship's company.

Gradually Casca became aware of a frown of puzzlement growing on the old chief's brow. A skilled interrogator himself, and the survivor of countless interrogations under all sorts of tortures, Casca realized that this quiet, casual questioner had plied him with such a complex skein of questions that he had tripped up here and there, and the wise old man had realized that there was more to Casca's past than he was prepared to relate.

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.

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 hor
rible as her eyes bulged, her tongue protruded, her arms shot out, the fingers extended with 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."