Casca 17: The Warrior (6 page)

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 stay 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."

"These weapons are not clubs, and Cakabau himself only carries one of them, but they can kill a man from a distance of tens of paces."

The old chief looked intently into Kini's eyes. "You have seen these weapons?"

"I have seen them. On our island of Vanua Levu we met Cakabau and his raiders on the beach and three of our men were killed from a great distance."

"Hmm." Semele scratched his grizzled head. "Hmm. We have heard of these fire-stick weapons, but we thought the tales exaggerated. This is something new which must be taken into consideration."

Ateca, a tiny woman who seemed to be the chief's number one wife, spoke: "Can the stones that these fire sticks throw pierce our palisade?"

"Not readily, I think," Kini replied.

"Then here we remain invincible," said Semele, "but outside our palisade we are vulnerable." He turned again to Kini. "What is Cakabau's vulnerability?"

Kini shook his head. "Alas, none has found it."

Semele looked grim. "Then it is clear. We must acquire this form of invincibility or we are doomed.
From whence came his weapons?"

"From the Valangi," Kini replied.

"Valangi—the whites," Sandy whispered to Casca. "Makes you feel proud, eh?"

"And why did the Valangi give him weapons?"

"He gave them men for the weapons," Kini glowered. "Our men."

"Mmm."
Semele slowly moved his great head in circles, first one way with an expression like that of a puzzled child, then the other way with increasing realization. "So, they gave him the weapons before he gave them the men?"

"Of course," Kini spat. "The men of Bau would not try to take our men without these weapons."

Again Semele rotated his head in the puzzled manner. "Are not the Valangi afraid that the Tui Bau will turn the guns on them, take their men and eat them?"

Kini laughed, but bitterly. "The Valangi are not afraid, because they have bigger weapons—as big to these weapons as you are to a baby."

Semele stopped moving his head. His face was all consternation as he gasped: "How can this be? Who could carry such a weapon?"

"They carry them on their great canoes, such as the one I came here on. They make a great fire on the ship and then there is a terrible noise on the ship, and then the noise and the fire and many large stones are in the village, and many dead people are everywhere. I do not know how."

Semele looked at Larsen. "Do you have such weapons on your great canoe?"

"I do not," Larsen said. "We have no weapons aboard." He had decided early in this conversation to say nothing of his ship's small brass cannon,
nor of the muskets and a revolver concealed in his cabin.

Casca was relieved at his reply, although he guessed there would be some arms concealed aboard somewhere, just as he had his small .38 in his jacket pocket. He patted it lightly.

The old chief asked more and more questions, and Kini looked unhappy as they extended more and more into areas he didn't understand. Yet he wanted to provide the much needed information.

"There is much of this business of the Valangi that I do not understand, Semele. None can understand."

"Then tell us without understanding," said Semele. "Perhaps our Valangi friends here can explain."

Kini spread his hands wide in a gesture of incomprehension. "Amongst the Valangi there is only one God, the one called Jesus. But they have many different... many different..." He gave up. It was beyond understanding.

"Different what?" Semele pressed.

"I hardly know, chief. Different men—they are called preachers—who talk to this Jesus in different ways. But
these different preachers—some agree, others differ."

"According to their villages," Ateca said.

Kini looked bewildered. "No, that is what none can understand. The ones who agree come from many different villages, from many different islands, different countries, different flags, yet they agree. Others from the same country, same village, like London or Boston or Sydney, they do not agree. And these different preachers encourage their believers to attack each other—not for land, or for food, or for women—but so as to convert the others to their own way of talking to this Jesus."

"I don't understand," said Semele.

"It is not to be understood," said Kini.

Semele looked inquiringly at Larsen and Casca and Sandy.

They all shrugged. "Truly," said Larsen, "it is not to be understood."

"But how is this disagreement to do with the weapons?" Ateca asked.

"Aha, yes, what of the weapons?" asked Semele.

"The weapons come from a Captain Savage, a trader and missionary Valangi, who wishes to convert everybody to his method of talking to Jesus. He calls it Methodist."

"What does he trade in, this Savage?"

"Men, Semele, he deals only in men."

For a long time Semele sat looking at the floor. Then for a long time he stared at the roof. At last he spoke. "Will this Savage sell us guns if we give him men?"

Kini's eyes started from his head. "If you... I do not know. I do not know.
I do not like to think about such a thing."

"And I do not like to think about it," said Semele, "but now it is necessary to do some thinking."

"But this is evil thinking."

"Of course it is. But if what we hear from Viti Levu is true, and I fear it is, Cakabau has already done this thinking. We are told that he has already offered for sale all the men of our village, and that he has already been paid much money. Now he must take our men. And what is a village without men? It is the end of the world for us."

The next morning Casca awoke beside Vivita, a slim, quiet woman who had—he couldn't tell how—won him from three or four competing women the previous night. But he was glad she had won.

She was not beautiful. Her forehead was too high, her nose too broad, the nostrils large and flared, her lips thick, a front tooth missing. But her slim body was a fount of sexual energy, and her placid silences were pleasant to be around.

She gestured to him that he should get up quickly, that there was much happening. She pointed toward the beach and toward the chief's house, and made gestures of fighting.

She brought him a length of tapa cloth and showed him how to wrap himself in it, forming a
sulu, the long kilt worn by men throughout the South Pacific.

"
Vanaka vaka levu
, thank you very much," Casca said, appreciating the admiration in Vivita's eyes now that he was dressed like any other warrior. But how to carry his gun and knife?

He put on his jacket, and Vivita clapped her hands in delight. Reassured, he added his belt, but left his arms concealed in his jacket pockets.

Casca hurried to the chief's house, on the way noting that there were many strange canoes drawn up on the beach and many strange warriors standing around them.

From Semele he learned that these men came from Lakuvi, a village on the other side of the island, a traditional enemy. The lands that the people of Lakuvi farmed ran up toward the village of Navola, and they laid claim to some of the coconut trees and breadfruit trees that belonged to Navola. The dispute had been going on forever, every so often leading to wars between the two villages.

The battles resolved nothing about the long-standing dispute but were welcomed by both sides, since each battle meant that one village or the other was likely to feast on meat that night.

If the men from Lakuvi won the battle, the killed Navola man would be partly eaten on the beach in front of the village and the remains taken back to Lakuvi for a feast in their own village. The victors would also strip Navola's fruit trees and taro patches of their food, and the disputed trees on the far slopes of the mountain would for a time belong to Lakuvi.

If Navola won, as the defending village usually did, the slain man would be eaten, the trees would become their undisputed property for a while, and they would also seize most of the enemy's weapons and some of their canoes.

But just now, as far as Casca could see, the battle was going in a very leisurely manner. The men below on the beach were making no preparations for attack, and the Navola villagers appeared quite unconcerned, going about their normal tasks, working in their food gardens, cooking, children playing about.

Eventually the men below on the beach began beating drums and forming up in something like battle order— drawn up in three ranks, chanting, shouting and waving their great, black war clubs.

Casca spoke to Semele and was given a beautiful, shiny club, about the heaviest weapon he had ever hefted. It was the root of
a tree that grew deep in remote jungle, the root branches cut short to sharp knobs. The wood was extremely hard, heavy, and very unlikely to split or break even when pounded against another similar club. When pounded with all the force of a warrior's arm against a man's head, death was the inevitable result.

After some long time the enemy moved up the hill toward the village and a number of Navola warriors formed up and began to dance and chant too.

The enemy moved farther up the hill, stopped again, danced and chanted, and the men of Navola replied.

When the Lakuvi warriors appeared at the top of the rise the Navola men moved outside the outermost of the three palisades and the two groups danced, chanted, and threatened each other.

The Lakuvi men moved closer. The Navola men moved farther from the palisade to confront them.

For some hours the two squads maneuvered about the open flat space outside the palisade, each seeking an opening that would make an attack worthwhile:

Casca grew tired of watching the ceremonious maneuvering from his perch with the
Rangaroa
crew on the top rail of the outer palisade. Semele had confided to him his fear that the attack might have been planned in cooperation with Cakabau to test Navola's defenses, and prepare the way for a full-scale attack with the Bau chief's fearsome weapons.

Casca turned from the maneuvers. The battle would not be joined unless one side felt sure of an advantage and of their skills. Forces and arms were so evenly matched that this might take a very long time.

"Well enough," Casca said to himself, "but what if Cakabau should arrive with his muskets?"

Navola's troops were led by Sonolo, and Casca admired the way his club-wielding warriors danced forward and back, maneuvered from one side of the small plateau to the other and back in aggressive feints or in response to threats from the Lakuvi warriors.

But if Cakabau's men were to arrive, all Sonolo's brilliance would be irrelevant with the first shots. And Cakabau's men did not just kill one man. Their six muskets usually killed six men, and notoriously they might then go on a rampage, killing and eating great numbers of the enemy. The musket had radically changed the practice of war in the islands.

Casca tried to think of how the crucified one's curse would keep him alive or bring him back to life if he were chewed up and digested in a dozen different cannibal's stomachs.

Would he live on in some other form? Many different forms according to where the cannibal's bodies excreted his pieces? A number of soldier ants perhaps, with some sort of group consciousness that used to be Casca Rufio Longinus? He knew something very like terror as he thought about it. Nor did he relish the alternative prospect of underfed and overworked slavery on the Australian sugar plantations.

He turned and ran... across the open space to the second palisade, where the lounging defenders glanced at him curiously... across the next open space to the inner palisade, and across the next space... past the chief's house, across the village square, past the houses and toward the inner rear palisade.

He cleared the six-foot fence in his stride, the two horizontal rails and the outward-leaning slope of the fence assisting him, as they were designed to do.

He cleared the next two palisades similarly, ignoring the surprised looks of the few warriors posted at the rear to guard against a sneak attack from this direction.

He raced down the eastern slope of the hill until he was sure he was lower than the attackers on the western slope, then turned and raced back around the northern slope to come up behind and below the enemy warriors.

He crept up the slope until he was within pistol shot of the three ranks of warriors with their backs to him.

He put down his club and took the five-shot .38 from his jacket pocket, checked the load, and stuck it in his belt.

"If I have to use you to win this, I'm just no damned good," he muttered.

He looked along the line of broad, black backs, each with a huge, black club, and he patted the spare ammunition in his pocket.

"But if it comes to it, I'd sure rather be no damned good than chopped up."

He shook his head in astonishment. He hadn't felt like this in a long time, maybe a couple of centuries.

"What the fuck is happening to me? Am I falling in love with life?" He recalled his bout of seasickness when the curse of an eternity of soldiering looked positively inviting compared to one more minute of seasickness, and any form of death more inviting still.

He picked up the great war club and raced up the rest of the slope, heading for the last man in the rear rank. A few yards short, the man heard or sensed him and half turned. Casca let out a great whoop and hurled himself forward, the great club swinging for the thick helmet of black hair.

The blow never reached home. Taken by surprise as he was, the Lakuvi warrior just had time to bring up his club and block the blow.

The shock of the impact very nearly wrenched the club from Casca's grasp. The warrior was knocked out of the line and a little away from his comrades.

Sonolo couldn't see Casca and didn't know what was happening, but realized there was some disturbance in that corner of the enemy's ranks and feinted for the other side.

The Lakuvi squad danced away, leaving Casca and the single warrior on their own.

The warrior hurled himself at Casca. He managed to block the blow, but again almost lost the club.

"Shit, this isn't as easy as it looks," he muttered as he aimed another flailing blow at the black head.

Again the muscle-wrenching
clash, and Casca felt his arm growing numb. And the nearest of the enemy warriors was now turning in his direction, their front ranks having succeeded in parrying Sonolo's blind feint.

Casca wearily brought up the club as his enemy swung for his head. At the last moment, instead of parrying the blow with his club, he pivoted on his heel, swaying out of the way. The momentum of his effort carried the warrior past him, and Casca continued his pivot and brought
a crashing blow down on the back of his head.

Too late
, he thought, as he saw three more enemy rushing toward him. He dropped the club and pulled the revolver from his belt.

But the enemy warriors stopped dead as they saw their comrade fall. They dropped their clubs and turned and ran away down the slope. In another second the rest of the Lakuvi men realized what had happened and ran too. The war chief, last to see the defeat, turned and ran after them.

Now Sonolo realized what had happened and came running to Casca, whooping delightedly as he hugged him. In a second he was surrounded by gleeful warriors all trying to hug him.

They picked up the unconscious enemy and lifted him above their heads. From the palisade came a great cheer, then
a louder one as everybody inside the village realized that they were victorious.

Half a dozen warriors carried the body to the village while the others raced after the retreating enemy to secure some of their canoes. Abandoned clubs were all over the field. Casca accompanied the body into the village, surrounded by the entire population cheering lustily.

Casca noticed that the body was carried with respect, almost with affection. As it was placed on the ground in the square he saw that some of the women who had been cheering so lustily only a moment earlier were now crying.

A number of men were digging a hole and others were bringing stones and firewood and pots full of hot coals. Women were bringing great armfuls of banana leaves and calabashes and gourds full of water.

Semele squatted cross-legged on the ground, and the unconscious warrior was placed before him, the feet toward him. Those who had carried the body ended their slow chant and also squatted beside the body. Casca stood looking down at the man's head. He seemed to be in a deep coma, and would no doubt be dead very soon.

Semele beckoned Casca, and when he approached the old chief stood up, indicating that Casca should sit in his place. Casca did so and a great cheer went up from all the village people.

Sandy had appeared from somewhere. "He's just made you a chief, mon," he said. "You're a war chief now, I'm thinkin'."

Casca realized that Sandy was right.
"Hell," he muttered, "I don't want the job."

"Don't say it too loud or you'll be stuck with it for life. They distrust ambition and only reward performance."

Casca shrugged. Well, why the hell not? He'd led armies often enough before. This wouldn't be so different.

Ateca came toward the dying warrior, carrying a green-stone axe, the sun glinting from the razor-
sharp blade. She stood between Casca and the enemy, chanting slowly. She held the head of the axe toward Casca, then turned gracefully, raising it high above her head.

Casca felt his own testicles leap up into his pelvic cavity as the axe was buried in the ground with a dull thump, severing the warrior's genitals from his body.

A great cheer went up.

Ateca picked up the severed piece and inserted a green twig into the root of the penis. As the stick stretched the penis to about erect length there were shrieks and giggles from the women and laughs and grunts from the men.

The fire in the pit was now roaring, and Ateca held the meat out over the fringe of the fire, carefully toasting it, continually withdrawing it before it burned.

Casca was so intrigued by this South Pacific cuisine that for a moment he failed to notice what was happening to the rest of the body. Two women were squatting between the still breathing man's legs, reaching into the body cavity through the hole that Ateca had opened and dragging out handfuls of intestines which they passed to a number of small children, who ran around dragging the entrails about like lengths of rope. Other women were spearing the heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys on twigs and holding them out over the edge of the flames.

Ateca placed the cooked meat on a banana leaf and presented it to Casca.

He stared, horror stricken, at the penis, the outer skin crisped to black-brown and split apart by the heat, showing the pink lightly cooked meat inside. The testicles had shrunk to the size of grapes.