Blood Brothers of Gor (43 page)

They were fastened, for the most part, in two different forms of hair ties. In one, the wrists of the woman were bond before her body, lifted and raised, in the hair of the woman before her. Another woman's wrists, then, would be bound in her hair, and so on. Some of these women were doffled in lines, and others in circles, the last woman's hair serving to bind the wrists of the first woman. The other form of hair tie had the hands of a woman tied behind her back to the hair of the woman who, her head lowered, knelt behind her.

Once again, some were secured in lines, and others in circles, the hands of the last woman being tied in the hair of the first. This second form of hair tie, done in lines, incidentally, resembles a comon coffle arrangement, achieved with a set of relatively short thongs each about five feet in length. The first woman's hands are then bound behind her with another thong, its free end then being take up and bound about the

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neck of the woman behind her, and so on. An advantage of this coffle arrangement is that women may be easily taken from it, and added to it.

A similar arrangement, of course, may be achieved with chains, each length of chain terminating at one end with a pair of slave bracelets and, at the other end, with a closable, lockable neck ring. The last woman on the coffle, of course, has the neck ring attached to her own bracelets and chain locked about her own neck. An advantage of the chains over the thongs, of course, is that the chain cannot be chewed through. Some of the other girls under the ropes and cloths were tied in more conventional fashions. Some were not even tied at all. An example was Oiputake, or Kiss, whom I well knew. It was she whom I had taken from a herd earlier, and imporved. Too, it was she who had alerted us to the fact, thinking little of it at the time, that the Yellow-Knife chieftains in camp were not civil cheiftains by war chiefs.

"Master!" she had cried to me, extending her hand to me.

"Be silent, Slave," I had told her.

"Yes, Master," she had said. I had then ridden on. I did not wish to converse with her at the time. She could not follow me. She stood within a small dirt circle, probably drawn with the heel of a moccasin about her. It was a confinement circle. She could not leave it without permission of a free person. I did stop my kaiila briefly beside a blond girl, lying on her belly in the dirt. She trembled, knowing I had stopped near her.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"I am a nameless slave of Cotanka, of the Wismahi," she said.

She was the slave who, earlier, had been used by Yellow Knives as, in effect, a lure girl, one used to distract or, say, entrap a warrior. Cotanka had been fortunate. He had not been killed. He now owned her. I did not think her lot would be an easy one. She wore the "bonds of a master's will." Grunt had put her in them. She lay on her stomach. Her wrists were crossed behind her. Her ankles, too, were crossed. She was "bound." She could not rise to her feet. Yet there was not a rope or a strap on her body. She was "bound by the master's will." She could not move from this position unless, at the word of a free person, she was freed from it.

To break the position otherwise is to be instantly slain.

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No longer now were some of the Yellow Knives riding about, back and forth before their lines, moving their lances about, preparing their parties for combat, exorting them, doubtless, to boldness and bravery.

The kaiila of the enemy were now aligned towards us.

"Make ready your lances, make ready your knives." chanted Mahpiyasapa, riding before our lines. "May your eyes be keen. May your movements be swift and sure. May your medicine be strong!"

"They will be coming soon," said Cuwignaka.

"Yes," I said.

"What are they waiting for?" asked a man.

"The Kinyanpi," said another.

I glanced over to Hci. I saw his shield move, as though by itself. Then he steadied it. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck. I felt goose flesh.

This movement of the shield had not been unnoticed by Mahpiyasapa. He rode to Hci.

"What is wrong with your shield?" he asked.

"Nothing," said Hci.

"Fall back," said Mahpiyasapa. "Do not fight." Then he rode from him.

Hci, however, did not leave his place in our lines.

"Perhaps the Kinyanpi will not come," said a man.

"The Kinyanpi!" cried voices to our rear, the shout being relayed from man to man.

I looked back.

"It is the Kinyanpi," said Cuwignaka, looking back, too.

"Yes," I said. They are coming in two flights, two darknesses, one from the east, one from the southeast.

We gave our attention to Mahpiyasapa, awaiting his signal.

Mahpiyasapa, before our lines, lifted and lowered his lance.

We had little doubt as to what the tactics of the Kinyanpi would be this time. They would not repeat their earlier mistake of a direct, low-level attack against our defenses. They would either keep their height and rain arrows down upon us or act in support of the Yellow Knives. As we could protect ourselves resonalby well with shields from simple, distance archery it seemed obvous, then, that our two enemies would act in conjunction. If we warded blows of Yellow Knives we could not, at the same time, protect ourselves from aerial fire. Similarly, if we attempted to protect ourselves from aerial

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fire, by lifting our shields, we would be exposing ourselves to the Yellow Knives' plane of attack. Presumably we would await the attack of the Yellow Knives under the ropes and netting. This would make overhead archery more difficult for the Kinyanpi but would also give the Yellow Knives the momentum of attack.

As soon as Mahpiyasapa had lowered his lance we placed about our bodies yellow scarves and other strips of yellow cloth. It was in this way that Watonka, the Yellow-Knife war chiefs, Bloketu, Iwoso and others had been identified as personages not to be fired upon by the Kinyanpi.

Again Mahpiyasapa raised and lowered his lance, and then he pointed it toward the enemy.

As one man, kaiila squealing, warriors howling, feathers flying, lances lowering, our lines leapt toward the enemy.

We struck them, the milling, startled, wheeling about, kaiila rearing, a full Ihn before the turf was dark with the wild, swiftly moving shadows of the Kinyanpi overhead.

The engagement was brief, perhaps only four or five Ehn, and the Yellow Knives, howling and whooping, in full flight, speeding away, forsook the field. I lifted my bloody lance in salute to Cuwignaka. The Kinyanpi, too, had withdrawn. Scarcely a dozen arrows had fallen amongst us. Of these, of those that had found targets, they reposed in the bodies of Yellow Knives. In what consternation must the Kinyanpi have viewed the plethora of yellow signals beneath them. Surely they would have understood that most of such might be worn by Kaiila, but, in flight, moving swiftly, uncertain of their desiderated targets they had, for most part, restrained their fire.

"They will not be back!" laughed a man.

"See the signla of Mahpiyasapa," said another. "Let us return to our lodges."

We turned our kaiila about and, slowly, not hurrying, well pleased with ourselves, tired, but quietly jubilant in our victory, made our way back toward our camp.

"Look!" said a man, pointing back, when we had reached again our former lines.

"I do not believe it," said another.

We looked back, those three or four hundred yards, across the field. At the crest of a rise, once again, suddenly emerging, silhouetted against the sky, were lines of Yellow Knives.

"They have regrouped," I said. This was evident. Yet I had not expected it. This manifested a type of discipline that I

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would have expected of routed red savages, and certainly, in any case not this soon.

"I thought they had gone," said a man.

"I, too," said another.

"Surely they have enough women and kaiila," said a man. "It seems like they should have left long ago."

"There seems little enough for them to gain in further fighting," said a man.

"They would have to pay dearly for anything further," said another.

"Yet they are there," said another.

"Yes," said another.

"It is not like Yellow Knives," said a man.

"I do not understand it," said another fellow.

"Nor I," said another.

I, too, wondered at the reapperance of the Yellow-Knife lines.

It was dusk. This, too, was puzzling. Red savages, on the whole, prefer to avoid fighting in darkness. In the darkness it is difficult to be skillful and, in the absence of uniforms, friends my be too easily mistaken for foes. Some savages, too, prefer to avoid night combat for medicine reasons. There are many theories connected with such things. I shall mention two. One is that if an idividual is slain at night, he may, quite literally, have difficulty in the darkness in finding his way to the medicine world. Another is that the individual who is slain at night may find the portals of the medicine world closed against him. These beliefs, and others like them, it seems clear, serve to discourage night combat.

One may, as in many such cases, then, wonder whether night combat is discouraged because of such beliefs, or whether such beliefs may not have been instituted to discourage night fighting, with all of its confusions, alarms and terrors. On the other hand, there is no doubt whatsoever that many red savages take such beliefs with great seriousness. The life world, and consciousness, of the red savage, it must be clearly understood, is quite different from that of, say, a secular rationalist or a scientifically oriented objectivist. One of the most common, and serious, mistakes that can be make in crosscultural encounters is to assume that everyone one meets, is, in effect, very much like oneself. Their personal world, the world of their experience, their experiential world, may be quite different from yours. If it is not understood in its own terms, as he understands it, it is likely to seem irrational,

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eccentric or foolish. Properly understood, on the other hand, his world is plausible, in its terms, as is yours. This is not to say that there is nothing to choose between life worlds; it is only to say that we do not all share the same life world.

"Why are they not going away?" asked a man.

"It will soon be dark," said another.

"They must have very strong medicine," said another.

"Perhaps," said another, uneasily.

I saw Hci struggle for a moment to again control his shield. Then, again, he had steadied it.

"What are they waiting for?" asked a man.

"Thier ranks are opening," said a man.

"Something is coming through them," said another man.

"It is a sleen," said one man.

"No," said another.

"It is on all fours," said another man.

"Surely it is a sleen," said another.

"It is too large to be a sleen," said another.

"Aiii!" cried a man. "It is rising to its feet. It is walking on two feet!"

"It is a thing from the medicine world!" cried a man.

"It is a medicine helper of the Yellow Knives!" cried another.

Almost at the same time, from behind us, thee were cries of consternation. "Riders!" we heard. "Riders!"

We wheeled our kaiila about. At the back of the camp, thee were screaming and the sounds of numberous kaiila, squealing and snorting, their clawed feet tearing at the grass. At full speed, pennons flying, lances lowered, bucklers set, in sweeping, measured, staggered attack lines, waves of riders struck the camp.

"They are white men!" cried a man near me.

I saw a woman, running, caught in the back with a lance, between the shoulder blades, flung to the dust, the lance then withdrawn. It had been professionally done.

"White men!" cried another man near me.

I saw another man toward the rear, an archer, discharge an arrow, and leap to the side, to avoid a rider. He was hit by the next rider, one of those in the succeeding wave, its riders staggered with those of the first. In this type of formation, given the speed of the charging kaiila, the distance between successive waves is about forty to fifty feet. This is supposed to provide the next rider with a suitable response interval. If the first rider misses the traget the second, thus,

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has time to adjust for its change of position. From the point of view of the target, of course, which may even be off balance, it is difficult, in the interval involved, to set itself for a second evasive action. Its probles are further complicated, also, of course, by the imminent arrival of even further attack wavs. The primary purpose of the staggering of the attack-wave riders is to bring a target which may have escaped from the attack lane of one rider almost immediately into the attack lane of another.