Fearless Master of the Jungle (A Bunduki Jungle Adventure (14 page)

As was the almost invariable
habit of male Mun-Gatah warriors when beyond the walls of their
homes (the only exception being when they were dealing with the
pacific jungle dwelling Telongas) the men were clad in round metal
helmets, specially prepared rhinoceros-hide breastplates, thick
leather kilts with slits at the front and rear for ease when
mounted, stout greaves and sandals of the same material. All had
swords for defensive purposes sheathed on their belts, which they
supplemented by lances and war-axes. However, the former type of
offensive weapon had been left either stuck into the ground
alongside its owner
’s mount or was suspended by a loop at the point of balance
being passed around the saddle horn and the butt in a metal ‘shoe’
on the right stirrup iron. The axes were also hanging from their
users’ rigs and were unavailable for immediate use.

Not that any of the warriors was
granted an opportunity to arm and defend himself!

Taking advantage of the fact
that the men had been so completely absorbed in watching the fight
between the two women, their assailants had approached as near as
possible without alarming the
gatahs
which were trained to act as lookouts. At such
close quarters, the otherwise effective protecting clothing offered
little of the usual safeguards against the weapons of
enemies.

While the breastplates could
withstand the arrows from all bows except those of the
mysterious
“Earths”,
^xxxix
and the helmets offered
resistance to most weapons, long experience had taught the other
warrior nations how to circumvent the advantages of the Mun-Gatahs’
garments. One weak spot, although only practical from a short
distance, was the gap between the bottom rim of the helmet and the
collar of the breastplate. Small though it might be, as was
demonstrated by the killing of the
banar-gatah
rider and two more of the men with arrows,
the exposed area was vulnerable.

Hissing and twirling through
the air at great speed, two curved pieces of wood felled the fourth
and fifth warriors. One was struck at the rear of his helmet, which
suffered a deep indentation. His head was slammed forward and there
was a sharp pop as his neck was broken. Caught in the middle of the
back, the breastplate—which
was thinner at the rear—proved no protection and
the other went down with his spinal column snapped.

Nor did the last man
f
are any
better. The cause of his death was a circular disc of metal shaped
like two saucers stuck together, about six inches in diameter and
with a hole through the middle. Skimming along at a gentle
downwards angle, it struck the ground some feet to his rear. The
convex curve caused it to ricochet and imparted an even more
vicious spin as it rose. Brushing open the slit at the back of his
kilt, its razor-sharp edge buried into the inside of his left thigh
to sever the great femoral artery. Although he managed to draw his
sword, the way in which the blood gushed and spurted from the wound
prevented him from putting it to use. He was dying on his feet and
collapsed just after the weapon had left its sheath.

If Charole had not been so
debilitated, she could have drawn conclusions from the weapons that
had been used. While the Amazons
^xl
and the Gruziak were archers, the
former did not employ the simple but
very
effective throwing stick.
^xli
As the female warriors and the
horse-riding Gruziak lived respectively to the east and north of
the Mun-Gatahs’ domain, this reduced the chances of members of
either race being so far to the west of their home territories as
they now were. Furthermore, there was only one race that carried
the kind of metal disc that had killed the sixth warrior. The
proximity to the salt-water ‘Lake With Only One Shore’ gave an
added clue to the attackers’ identity. Unlike the land-based
nations, the Cara-Bunte travelled to and from their raids in large
boats propelled by oars and sails.

Charole was not kept for long
before she received her first sight of the attackers and discovered
to which nation they belonged. They left their places of
concealment and darted forward, passing the
gatahs
whose snorts of alarm would have
betrayed their presence if they had attempted to close in before
dealing with the warriors. There were four men and two women, which
had been the reason why they had struck from a distance instead of
approaching and giving the enemy an opportunity to
fight.

The male members of the party
were all of medium height, but thickset and heavily muscled, with
olive-
colored skin and the broad Mongoloid features of Earth’s
Oriental races. Apart from a black tuft growing from the center to
dangle behind in a braid, their heads were devoid of hair.
Barefooted, and moving with the somewhat rolling gait of sailors
ashore, they had on voluminous knee-length pantaloons of various
colors, broad silk sashes around their midriffs and short,
sleeveless soft leather jerkins. For hand-to-hand combat, each
carried thrust through his sash a sword shaped like a
Sumatran
lading
in a colorful metal tipped wooden sheath. Its double-edged,
spear shaped blade was twenty inches in length and had a breadth of
two inches at its widest point, but the concave wood—with one
exception’s— handle had no guard. Two of them held short recurved
bows which were supplied from the quivers of arrows swung across
their shoulders. Empty-handed, another pair had flung the throwing
sticks which had dispatched the fourth and fifth Mun-Gatah
warriors.

Clearly the last man had not
participated in the killing. Tallest, heaviest and oldest of the
male Cara-Buntes, his jerkin was decorated on each breast by a
silver filigree sailfish curving in the kind of leap which made the
species
Istiophorus Albicans
so highly prized by big game anglers, and he had a
portrait of a killer whale emblazoned across the back. As further
proof of his superior status, the ivory hilt of his
lading
was inlaid with
silver as was its sheath, and there was a broad golden bracelet
embossed with a sailfish on each wrist. He was further armed with a
short spear, the head of which was shaped like a crescent moon and
sharpened all around its edge.

Having attractive Oriental
features and
coloration, with black hair taken back in what on Earth
would be called a ponytail, neither of the women was more than five
foot four inches in height. The smaller, a girl in her late teens,
was also the younger and she lacked two inches of that height. She
had a curvaceous, if slender, build. For all that, armed with a bow
only slightly less powerful than those of the men, it had been she
whose arrow had killed the
banar-gatah
rider. The elder, who had attained her middle
thirties, was buxom rather than lithe. However, there was no sign
of fat on her firm body. It was she who had thrown the
halaka
as the razor-edged
discs were known.

Each of the female Cara-Buntes
wore a short, loose fitting, wide sleeved white smock and very
little else. The smocks were not fastened in any way, their fronts
being kept closed by a black cloth sash. Through the left side of
this was tucked the sheath of a twenty inches long weapon
resembling an Atjeh
’s
rentjong
in having a wavy single-edged blade and a hilt in the shape
of a duck’s head. Neither had any footwear. Like the tallest man,
the older woman’s smock bore the sailfish and killer whale patterns
and the bracelets she wore sported the same motif. A second
halaka
hung on a hook
attached to the right side of her sash.

‘
Take
that woman alive!’ shouted the eldest man, his voice
sibilant.

‘
Leave
her to me,’ ordered the older woman, with a similar intonation
which made some of the T’s sound like V’s. “Did you hear me,
Muchkio?’

‘
I
hear you, Shushi,’ the girl answered sullenly, letting the
bow she had been raising sink down, and relaxing its
string.

Listening to what was being said,
Charole made a desperate effort and drew free the head of the
lance. Deprived of its support, she felt as if the ground was
heaving beneath her feet. Desperately she spread her legs apart,
lifting the weapon and wishing that she did not feel so helpless.
She knew it would only take a short while for her excellent
physical condition to throw off the worst of the exhaustion, but
was equally and bitterly aware that the time would not be granted
to her.

Advancing swiftly, the buxom
woman did not trouble to draw her
rentjong.
Instead, she suddenly lunged and, as
Charole made an ineffectual attempt to turn the lance on her, she
caught hold of it with both hands. Giving a sharp and twisting
heave, she wrenched it from its owner’s grasp.

Staggering a few steps from the force
with which she had been disarmed, Charole contrived to
remain—albeit uncertainly—upright.

It proved to be of no benefit to the
Protectress!

Throwing the lance aside with a
contemptuous gesture, Shushi followed as Charole came to a halt
and
endeavored to assume a defensive posture. It was to no
avail. When close enough, the buxom woman pivoted on her left leg
while snapping out the right in a fast yet power-packed
kick.

The leather hard sole of the
foot caught the Protectress in the
solar plexus
and, even if she had been in full
possession of all her faculties, the impact would still have been
more than her well-developed stomach muscles could withstand.
Giving a strangled croak of torment as what little breath she had
was driven from her lungs, she folded over at the waist and her
legs began to buckle like candles near a flame. Before they
collapsed completely under her, Shushi struck again. Not with the
foot this time, but just as effectively. Folding its thumb across
the palm, but keeping the fingers extended and together, the woman
chopped the heel of her right hand viciously against the back of
Charole’s neck. Everything went black for the already barely
conscious Protectress and she fell face forward, as if she had been
pole-axed, to sprawl motionless at her assailant’s feet.

‘
Kill
those
gatahs,
’
commanded the oldest of the men, who was a senior warlord
of the Cara-Bunte nation. ‘You’ll stay here and start butchering
them, Roshta, Muchkio. I’ll send some of the others to help you
bring in the meat and the loot. Keep your hands off
that
until the Lady
Shushi and I have looked it over and taken what
we
want.’

‘
Yes,
Lord Torisaki,’ the younger of the male archers assented and the
girl gave a surly nod of concurrence.

‘
Get
something to lift her on so we can take her to the landing place,
Goti!’ Shushi ordered, indicating Charole’s flaccid body, as
Muchkio employed the arrow she had refrained from drawing to kill
the Protectress’s
banar-gatah.
Then she turned to her husband and went on, ‘The
Dragon God has smiled on us, Lord Torisaki, bringing this one to us
so soon after we landed.’

‘
Yes,’
the warlord agreed, thinking of certain ambitions he and his wife
had frequently discussed in the privacy of their living quarters.
The raid upon which they were engaged had been organized with their
future plans in mind. Having been making what they had expected to
be an unproductive reconnaissance, they had seen Elidor’s party
taking up the ambush positions. While ordering his party to
separate into two, each being able to deal with Mun-Gatahs, Charole
had arrived and enabled them to approach with greater ease than if
there had been no distraction. ‘There will be much honor in taking
such a one as her back to Tansha-Bunte. Take care of her and tend
her wounds, my lady. She won’t be able to walk for a while, but
she’s not too badly hurt and we want her in the best of health so
that she can put up a good fight when we put her into the arena
before the Emperor.’

~*~

As the unconscious body of the
Protectress of the Quagga God—bound hand and foot and suspended
from a sapling cut for that purpose—was being lifted ready to be
carried to the Cara-Buntes
’ landing place, far to the southwest a struggle
for domination between two magnificent looking females of different
species was about to commence.

Having secured the isabelline
mare to her in the
Nemenuh
fashion, Dawn Drummond-Clayton took hold of the reins.
Starting to lead Isabel into the water, she experienced no greater
reluctance than
Shambulia
had displayed over following Bunduki. Employing the
Australopithecus
’
language as fluently and effectively as her husband-to-be
had, she coaxed the mare to follow her. She expected a similar
response on mounting. Nor was she disappointed. However, from
Isabel’s first reaction to the discovery that a living creature was
sitting upon her, it was apparent that she intended to fight in a
different fashion—though no less vigorously—to that of the big
stallion. Being somewhat smaller and lighter than
Shambulia,
she did not place
her reliance on the ‘bucking straight away’ which had formed his
main line of defense. This in no way detracted from the spirited
manner in which she carried out her efforts to dislodge the
unwanted burden.