Fearless Master of the Jungle (A Bunduki Jungle Adventure (24 page)

There!
’ Hak-Bart hissed, only just managing
to suppress his excitement and hold his voice to a tension-charged
whisper. He pointed to the water.

Just as keen-eyed, the Earth
couple had also seen the small ripple disturbing the
center of the
lagoon. They knew that it was caused by the predator making use of
physical adaptations for its specialized way of life. Set high upon
the snout on top of the skull, its nostrils and eyes allowed it to
breathe and see with little else of its body being exposed. So,
although it had risen to investigate the sounds, they alone broke
the surface of the water.

Using its tail in such slow
sideways undulations that there was barely a motion on the surface,
the predator advanced at a snail
’s pace across the lagoon. Measuring the
distance between them with his eye, Bunduki began to take the draw
on his bow. He wanted his quarry closer before he loosed the shaft,
so as to make even more certain of attaining a hit. On either side
of him, his wife and Hav-Bart watched with bated breath as if they
had been turned to stone.

Catching his
wife
’s eye,
the blond giant gave a brief inclination of his head. Knowing what
was wanted, she repeated her impersonation of a lovelorn lady
crocodile in search of male company.

The nostrils and eyes sank beneath the
surface!

‘
Damn
it!’ Hav-Bart ejaculated, fortunately
sotto voce,
watching a couple of air bubbles
rising after all other signs of the creature had gone.

‘
Don’t
move!’ Dawn hissed, duplicating her husband’s thoughts and acting,
without needing prompting, as he would have wished.

Freezing again into a state of
complete immobility,
Hav-Bart continued to stare at the surface of the
lagoon. After almost thirty seconds had gone by, he was given a
further example of just how well the Earth couple understood the
mentality and behavior patterns of their prey.

Showing no more disturbance than the
bubbles had in making their appearance, the nostrils of the
predator broke through the glassy surface. There was barely as much
as a suggestion of a ripple to betray its arrival. An instant
later, almost eighteen inches behind the nose, the small
protuberance of its eyes came into view. They were followed in the
same effortless fashion by the whole of the head.

‘
So
that’s it!’ Dawn ejaculated, in a voice so low that the words
barely reached the men’s ears, taking notice of the way in which
there was no sign of the fourth tooth of the saurian’s lower jaw.
It’s an
alligator,
not a crocodile!’

Equally aware of the most
easily observable difference between species
Alligator
and the
Crocodilia,
Bunduki matched his wife’s
identification. Like her, he now realized that they were not
dealing with the almost entirely harmless-to-mankind dwarf
crocodiles
^lxv
or ‘false’ gavials
^lxvi
which had been the only types of
saurians they had seen in the neighborhood of the village.
Furthermore, he shared her understanding of the predator’s
behavior. For all its size, which he estimated at over ten foot
from nose to tail, the Mississippi alligator was puzzled and
cautious. It had heard sounds resembling, but somewhat different
to, those of its kind. So it was displaying care while
investigating.

Watching the alligator coming
slowly nearer, Bunduki
completed his draw and aligned the arrow so that
it would make its point of impact about twenty-four inches behind
the knobs of the protruding eyes. However, he did not relax his
hold on the string. Close to sixty yards still separated them and,
while confident that he could make a kill at that distance, he
preferred to do so from nearer to the bank. In that way, there was
a better chance of retrieving the body and avoiding any suggestions
that he had failed to carry out his mission.

So gradually that time seemed to be
standing still, the alligator continued its wary advance towards
the shore. Its head was still exposed and the outline of its
massive body was discernible below the surface.

Fifty yards,

Forty!

Dawn was clenching her hands
until the knuckles showed white. On the other side of the blond
giant, Hav-Bart felt as if his lungs would burst. Yet he dare not
suck in a breath for fear that the sound would disturb his
companion
’s
concentration, or frighten the alligator.

‘
Dapan-Dankara!
’
yelled a voice from not too far away, accompanying the
words by banging a stick of some kind against the trunk of a
tree.

Instantly, the alligator lost all of
its lethargic air. Upending its body, so that the massive tail rose
and descended on the erstwhile still surface of the lagoon with a
terrific slapping sound that could have been heard for a quarter of
a mile, it began to do a half-roll as a prelude to making a power
dive for safety.

Swiftly as the saurian was
moving, Bunduki
’s response had been even more rapid.

Although seething with rage at
the speaker, who he suspected had created the commotion
deliberately, the blond giant released the arrow as soon as the
sound reached his ears. There was a solid whunk!
’ which told him that he had
scored a hit. Further confirmation was supplied, by the sight of
the four-bladed point protruding some six inches from the underside
of the alligator’s chest, before it disappeared beneath the now
roily surface of the lagoon. It appeared briefly a couple of
seconds later, curving upwards in a jump that seemed more suitable
to a sailfish feeling a fisherman’s hook than such an ungainly
creature. Going down, there was a momentary flash of white from its
belly as it rolled over. Although the blond giant knew that it was
dead, it did not reappear and he doubted whether recovering the
body would be possible.

‘
That
was Han-Ateep’s voice!’ Hav-Bart growled furiously.

‘
There
were two of them at least,’ Dawn went on, anger showing plainly on
her beautiful face. ‘I saw them running away, but not quickly
enough to do anything about it.’

‘
Don’t
worry, darling,’ Bunduki replied, thinking how— in view of his
wife’s skill as an archer—the men responsible for the disturbance
could count themselves lucky that she had not been holding her bow
ready for use. We’ll attend to them later. Let’s go back to the
village and tell the people they can start to use this lagoon
again.’

‘
F
ar be it for me to sound like a nagging wife,’ Dawn Gunn
said quietly, eyeing Bunduki in a disapproving manner as they
walked out of the Wurka-Telonga village accompanied by several men,
including the four who had brought them most of the way from
Jey-Mat.

‘
Why
not?’ the blond giant interrupted. ‘You always did
before
we were
married.’

‘
I’ll
ignore
that
,’
the girl declared, in a way which bore the unspoken
addition of, “but just wait until later”. ‘As I said, far be it
from me to sound like a nagging wife, but I do think what you’re
planning might be thought just a
tiny
bit injudicious.’

‘
I
didn’t know they taught you words like that at Roe-dean,’ Bunduki
commented.

‘
Dangerous, even,’ Dawn continued, paying no apparent
attention to her husband’s injection. ‘But that’s only
my
opinion, of
course.’

‘
When
did you say you were going to start
not
nagging?’ Bunduki inquired, although he agreed
with his wife’s comment. ‘Anyway, if I can pull it off for dear old
Tik-Felum, he’ll have his proof in a way that should satisfy
him.’

‘
And
if you
don
’
t
pull it off, you could be killed,’ Dawn warned, then
pouted. ‘You haven’t any thought for
me,
you brute. There’s no widow’s pension on
Zillikian.’

For all the light manner in
which they were talking, neither the girl nor her husband
underestimated the danger of what he was planning to do. However,
she realized that he was taking a deliberately calculated risk and
had made his decision based upon his knowledge of what it entailed.
His
behavior
was neither rash, nor incautious, but that which they both had
agreed would best serve their needs under the
circumstances.

While the return to the village
should have been one of triumph, Tik-Felum had done his best to
prevent it from being regarded in that light. He had, as the Earth
couple had guessed, sent the members of his coterie amongst the
villagers to spread the word that only visible proof of the
‘crocodile’s’ death
would be regarded as acceptable. So, with his men hovering around
and taking notice of what was happening, the news that the corpse
was not available for inspection produced the effect he
required.

Not all of the Senior
Elders
’
adherents were available to give him support. Deneb-Ginwe,
Han-Preep, and Flant-Wlip were conspicuous by their absence. Before
either Dawn or Bunduki could mention the matter of the disturbance
that had lost them the alligator’s body, Tik-Felum had informed
them that the trio were making an expedition to the coast of the
‘Lake With Only One Shore’. They had left some time before,
according to him, with the intention of catching some of the green
sea turtles so highly prized as culinary delicacies and which would
have been a fitting meal to celebrate the
Dapan-Dankaras
mission having proved
successful.

Having excused the absence of
his sons and apparently had the explanation accepted, Tik-Felum had
inquired into the reason for the alligator
’s body being missing. On hearing
what had happened, but not that the Earth couple and Hav-Bart were
aware of who was responsible, he had then adopted an air of such
blatantly false commiseration that Dawn had found it hard to
prevent herself from showing her true feelings. Nor had she felt
any better disposed towards him when he had suggested that the
disturbance had been the work of a river-spirit protecting the
predator.

‘
In
which case,’ the Senior Elder had gone on, still speaking
far louder than was necessary, so that the assembled populace could
also hear. ‘There are those who might say the water-spirit turned
aside your arrow and the “crocodile” still lives.’

‘
We
all saw the arrow strike and its head was sticking out of the other
side of the “crocodile’s” body,’ Hav-Bart had protested, sharing
his people’s general lack of zoological knowledge and being unable
to identify the saurian correctly. Oblivious of the venomous glare
being directed at him by Tik-Felum, he went on equally loudly, ‘It
was dying as it went down and, unless the current has carried its
body away, we’ll find it when it comes to the surface
again.’

‘
You
say that the arrow pierced so deeply that its head came out at the
other side?’ the Senior Elder had asked, hoping to arouse
incredulity among his audience as they were all aware of the
predator’s size.

‘
It
did,’ Hav-Bart had agreed, then countered swiftly, That is no
ordinary bow and the arrows have heads on them like none I have
ever seen.’

‘
Let
anybody who thinks they aren’t powerful enough to do the deed stand
out and say so,’ Dawn had announced, picking out the men with whom
she and her husband had been in contention at Jey-Mat. ‘My Lord
Bunduki will soon prove whether it be true or false.’

‘
Come,
my lady,’ the blond giant had said, when nobody offered to accept
his wife’s challenge. ‘We’ll go and deal with the second
“crocodile”.’ Instead of moving off, however, he had raised the bow
so that all could see and, swinging his gaze so that it settled on
first one and then the others of Tik-Felum’s coterie, he continued
in a carrying voice, ‘But this I say, water-spirit. If you come
anywhere near me, or make a sound to try and save the other
“crocodile”, I’ll find and kill you. You have my word as the
Dapan-Dankara
for that!’

To each of the sullen crew who
had helped the Senior Elder enforce his regime, it seemed that the
white-haired foreigner had selected him personally for attention.
Obviously the Senior Elder
’s story of a water-spirit had not been believed
and the ‘Earths’ had known what had happened. There was a chilling
menace in the voice and the cold blue eyes of the tremendously
muscled speaker that warned he meant every word he had said. What
was more, they were all aware—two at first hand—that he was capable
of carrying out his threat.