Fearless Master of the Jungle (A Bunduki Jungle Adventure (20 page)

With those thoughts in mind,
the Protectress was determined to guide the
war-lord
’s
thoughts away from the possible source of supply left by the dead
Zongaffa. If she succeeded in steering him as she wanted, her hopes
of regaining her liberty would be greatly improved.

‘
The
trouble is that with a large force, there are too many people in it
for
anything
to be kept a secret,’ Charole remarked, sounding pensive,
when neither the man nor the woman made a comment. ‘And one’s
leaders
always
want to take anything new and useful for
themselves.’

‘
Is
there anybody else who knows how to make the “Thunder Powder’?’
Shushi asked, having been told of Zongaffa’s demise.

‘
Not
among my people,’ Charole admitted, struggling to conceal her
delight at the way in which the conversation was developing. ‘Have
you heard of, or met, the “Earths”?’

‘
'“Earths”?’ Shushi repeated, fumbling with the unfamiliar
word. ‘What are they?’

‘
Not
“What”, “who”,’ Charole corrected. ‘I’ve only seen two of them, a
man and a woman, but those two have weapons the like of which I’ve
never seen equaled. They have bows which can drive an arrow so far
through one of our breastplates that its head came out at the back.
And that is something neither the Cara-Buntes, nor any other people
we’ve fought against
ever
managed to do. That is one of their arrows
there.’

‘
Huh!’
Shushi grunted, unimpressed, after picking up and giving the
missile a cursory examination. ‘I don’t see anything special about
it, except that its head has four cutting edges instead of
two.’

‘
And
is made from a far better steel than any of us are given,’ the
Protectress pointed out. ‘What’s more, you’ve never seen a tree
with “wood” like that from which the shaft it made. I had a broken
one in my bundle. If it’s still lying around out there and you have
it fetched, you’ll see what I mean.’

‘
I’ll
take a look at the “wood” in this arrow,’ Shushi
stated.

Gripping the ends of the shaft
in her hands, as Charole had done on first making contact with a
similar missile, the war-lady began to bend it. She soon learned,
again as the Protectress had, that the
‘wood’ had exceptional strength and
resisted a pressure that would have snapped any Cara-Bunte
arrow.

‘
Here,
you!’ Torisaki barked, paying more attention and addressing a
male
Yung-Lib
who had been squatting on his heels in the corner showing
not the slightest interest in what was going on. Telling what was
wanted, the war-lord concluded, ‘Go and fetch it here. And don’t
take all day about it, damn you!’

‘
Tell
us more about these “Earths”, or whatever you call them,’ Shushi
requested, as the
Yung-Lib
slouched out of the pavilion. ‘Nobody has ever brought any
of them back to Cara-Bunte and our people have raided all around
the mainland.’

‘
We’ve
not had many of them ourselves,’ Charole answered, trying not to
grit out the words as she remembered how much of her present
misfortune was attributable to Dawn Drummond-Clayton and Bunduki.
‘In fact, I personally have only seen two of them.’

‘
What
did they look like?’ the war-lady demanded with a touch of
impatience, and her one-eyed gaze kept returning to the arrow,
studying its points of difference from those to which she was
accustomed.

‘
The
man was the biggest, strongest, most handsome male I’ve ever seen,’
Charole began, ‘for all of his white hair.’

‘
White
hair?’ echoed Shushi, who had the habit of repetition when
puzzled or disbelieving some statement. ‘How old was
he?’

‘
Not
out of his twenties,’ the Protectress estimated. ‘His hair wasn’t
the white of an old man’s, but more golden in color. The woman was
about the same age and—’ On the point of describing Dawn in
unflattering terms, she saw how doing so would not help her to
achieve her purpose. ‘Well, not
bad
looking and fairly well formed. In fact, the Lord
Dryaka found her all too attractive the first time w—he had her as
his prisoner. That was how she came to escape.’ Again she paused
just in time to avoid a possible indiscretion and decided to
distort the next facts. We’ve never had the man, but he followed us
to our hunting camp. It was he who prevented us from chasing her
after she’d escaped.’

‘
How?’
asked Shushi.

‘
According to our warriors who started after her, they have
magic powers,’ Charole explained, speaking slowly and trying to
avoid any emotion as she approached one of the vital portions of
her scheme. ‘She and the man changed themselves into a couple of
those “Hairy People” that live in the jungle.’

‘
Rubbish!’ the war-lady snorted, having seen a few of the
very occasional
Australopithecus
who had fallen into raiding parties’ hands and
reached Cara-Bunte.

‘
That’s what the warriors told us,’ Charole insisted, her
brows knitting in annoyance at the buxom woman’s curt interjection.
‘All
I
know personally is that I heard first a female and then a
male of the “Hairy People” give one of those damned cries, or
bellows in his case, that you hear them making in the jungle. Only
these sounded close to the camp and we were miles from the nearest
woodland, much less the real jungle.’

‘
I
don’t believe it!’ Shushi stated, before she could stop
herself.

‘
Have
a care, damn you!’ Charole warned, forcing herself into a sitting
position and glaring as best she could with her features so
battered. ‘Have you forgotten already what happened the last time
you called me a liar?’

‘
Stop
that, damn you, or I’ll crack your heads together and knock some
sense into you!’ Torisaki thundered, as his wife spat out a
Cara-Bunte obscenity and grasped the arrow in the manner of a
knife. In the face of his obvious determination to prevent a
resumption of hostilities and also appreciating how little either
of them was capable of fighting, the women relaxed. Satisfied that
he had kept the peace, he continued, ‘Are the Mun-Gatahs so
frightened of the dark, or the “Hairy People”, that hearing what
might have been no more than somebody making noises would prevent
you from chasing an escaped prisoner?’

‘
We
are
not
afraid!’ the Protectress contradicted indignantly, still
having pride in her nation for all that she would have been willing
to help plan and participate in any invasion that might prove
successful, providing it offered her the means to return to power.
‘We’d have gone after them, but that blasted “Hairy Man’s” bellow
terrified our mounts so much they stampeded through the camp. By
the time we’d rounded them up, the “Earths” had
disappeared.’

‘
Never
to be seen ag—?’ Shushi commenced in a mocking voice, but subsided
into silence as her husband directed a furious and prohibitive
glare at her.

‘
We
saw them again all right,’ Charole corrected, appreciating the
futility of allowing herself to be provoked and promising herself
that she would have a reckoning with the war-lady if a more
suitable opportunity was presented.
‘Both
of them.’

With that, delighted by the way
in which the two Cara-Buntes were taking in every word, the
Protectress told the story of Dawn
’s recapture and its aftermath. She
noticed how they exchanged glances on hearing of the People-Taker’s
fate, which suggested that they were aware of the Telonga
population’s normally pacific and cowardly nature, but not even
Shushi showed skepticism. Basing her story on what she had seen,
learned from Elder Eokan on the night of her flight from Bon-Gatah
and deduced during the lonely hours that had followed, she went on
to describe what Bunduki had achieved.

‘
Not
only did he bring together three of our District Administrators who
had always hated each others’ guts, but he formed an alliance with
the captain of the Amazon’s Black Panther Regiment to help rescue
his woman. Have you ever known anybody else who could do so much,
or of any
man
who could make friends with those hell-cats?’

‘
I
haven’t,’ Torisaki conceded without hesitation, but the
return of the
Yung-Lib
with the two segments of the broken arrow brought the
conversation to a temporary halt.

While the war-lord was
examining the pieces, paying particular attention to the point at
which Charole had cut through them with her sword after trying to
break the shaft by hand, the
Yung-Lib
bent and whispered something to Shushi. Darting a
glance at the left side wall, which was on the outside of the
pavilion, she made an equally quiet reply. Alert for any kind of
hostility or treachery on the war-lady’s part, Charole was watching
the by-play. She felt a surge of alarm as the servant went to
collect one of the disc-like
halakas
which lay with the other’s weapons. However,
Shushi did no more than accept and place the deadly device on the
pillow beside her without making any reference to why she was doing
so. Instead, she gave a jerk of her head and the
Yung-Lib
turned to go into
the kitchen at the rear of the pavilion.

‘
Y
ou’re right, Charole,’ Torisaki admitted, too engrossed to
have noticed what his wife was doing and passing the arrow to her.
‘I’ve never come across wood of that kind.’ He paused for a few
seconds, then asked the question that the Protectress was hoping to
hear, ‘How can we find the “Earths”?’

‘
They
can ride very well,’ Charole replied, thinking of the occasion when
her life had depended upon the blond giant’s ability while riding a
fast-moving
gatah.
^lvii
‘But, in spite of that, I believe
they are jungle dwellers.’

‘
Huh!’
Shushi put in, turning her gaze briefly from the left side wall.
‘Much that tells us. The jungle covers all the southern end of the
mainland.’

‘
Yes,’
Charole conceded, knowing that she was approaching the crux of her
efforts and controlling her asperity over the war-lady’s comment.
‘But, vast though it might be, is it large enough to hide a
complete nation, which we were told had five cities, so completely
that nobody has ever come across
any
of its people until these two
appeared?’

‘
It
doesn’t seem likely, or even possible,’ Torisaki admitted, so
interested now—as was his wife—that neither of them noticed a
slight inconsistency between the Protectress’s last comment and an
earlier statement with regard to the “Earths”.

‘
Either way, it doesn’t make things any easier,’ Shushi
declared, without looking away from the left side wall. ‘Finding
just two people in the jungle would be even more impossible than
locating a whole nation. Even if we had any reason for wanting to
find them.’

‘
Would
you say that the “Earths” knowing how to make the “Thunder Powder”
is reason enough?’ Charole challenged.

‘
Do
they
know
that?
⁹
Torisaki demanded, and his wife was
so impressed with the possibility that she turned her attention
from the wall.

‘
They
do,’ the Protectress bluffed, having no concrete evidence upon
which to base the statement. She explained why she believed that
the “Earths” possessed the requisite knowledge, concluding with,
‘Bunduki certainly recognized it as soon as he saw it—.’

‘
You
’
ve
had him as your prisoner?’ Shushi asked.

‘
I
did!’

‘
And
let him escape?’

‘
Yes!’

‘
You
never mentioned
that
before,’ the war-lady reminded the Protectress.

‘
Would
you
have?’ Charole countered, showing annoyance.

‘
That
doesn’t matter,’ Torisaki put in, before his wife could make any
reply. ‘If they know how to make it, we’ll have to try and find
them.’

Which was exactly what Charole had
been leading up to.

If the theory which the
Protectress had been formulating was correct and accepted by the
Cara-Buntes, it could prove beneficial to her in three ways.
Firstly, it would prolong the time before her captors set off
for
their
island home; from which she would have not the remotest chance of
escaping. Secondly, if she achieved all she wanted, she had the
means by which she could avenge herself upon Dawn and Bunduki of
the ‘Earths’ as well as being given the opportunity to try and
extract whatever knowledge they possessed with regards to the
“Thunder Powder”. Thirdly, and not the least important of the
considerations, even if the search of the jungle should prove
abortive, there would be a far greater chance of her regaining her
liberty there than here, on the banks of, or while being taken
across, the ‘Lake With Only One Shore.