Blood Brothers of Gor (71 page)

She regarded him startled, blood at her mouth.

"How do you dare, without permission, to so put the name of a free man on your slave lips?" asked Cuwignaka.

Bloketu looked at Cuwignaka, startled, disbelievingly. He was now a man who had punished her.

"I am sorry," she whispered.

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His eyes were fierce. I think she scarcey understood that it could be Cuwignaka.

"--Master," she added.

On the trail below, only some twenty feet or so below the ledge, charging upward, Yellow Knives, four or five abreast, mounted on painted kaiila, swept toward the top of the trail, some hundred feet or so to our right.

But a moment before the fanguard of his charging force could attain the summit the high, heavy structure of timbers and sharpened stakes was thrust into place. The stakes, anchored by the timbers, were tied together like fierce wooden stars. Kaiila, screaming, unable to check their forward momentum, plunged onto the stakes. Impaled and torn, pressed from behind, filling the air with hideous noises, they reared and twisted, throwing riders and biting and clawing at one another. More kaiila rushed foreard, charging behind them, striking into the bloody, halted mass. Riders slipped down among the animals, screaming. More kaiila, from behind, pressed forward. Dozens of animals and may riders were forced from the trail, sliding and plummeting down the steep face of Council Rock.

I saw one of the war chiefs of the Yellow Knives, whom I remembered from the summer camp, in his kaiila slip over the ledge. Still more Yellow Knives, not clear on what was ahead, were trying to force their way upward on the narrow trail. Men fought to escape the edge, cuting at one another even with knives. But those at the edge, often, other Yellow Knives pressing forward, were thrust, even fought, from the trail.

The air was rent with screaming, that of beasts and men. Bodies, thos of kaiila and Yellow Knives, slipped from the edge, plummeting downward. Lances snapped against the stone and the barricade, halted in their charge, seeing the impossiblity of advance under the current conditons, were trying to back their beasts from the barricade. This forced other beasts and men from the trail. Others, wildly, fought to turn their beasts. Some of these, successful, began to try to force their way back down the trail.

There was much shouting as well as screaming. I saw the movement of battle staffs. Their visibility, of course, was minimal, given the twistings of the irregualr, tortuous trail. More efficient were the blasts of war whistles. The trial then,

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long and winding, visible in many of its lengths from the height of the escarpment, seemed choked with Yellow Knives. It was like an odd, upward-moving, arrested river of beasts and men, suddenly stopped, immobilized, in its flow. We could have even see many Yellow Knives, puzzled, milling about, near the foot of the trail, hundreds of feet below. The trail, within its narrow boundaries, the rock on one side, the fall on the other, consituted a suitable trap, or slaughter channel, for our paralyzed, bewildered, confined enemies.

"No!" screamed Iwoso. "No!"

Lodges, with their poles, were thrown back and men energed, dragging at the ropes of small travois, heavily laden with stones. Others, with their hands, and levers, began to roll larger stones, even boulders, toward the edge of the escarpment.

"No!" cried Iwoso.

"Shall we gag her?" asked Cuwignaka.

"no," I said. "Let her cries, if they will, distract our attackers."

To this point we had struck not a blow. Yet I think taht more than a hundred and fifty Yellow Knives might already have perished, victims of that steep, dreadful trail, crawded from it, driven from it, trampled upon it, and some even falling under the weapons of their own fellows, fighting for space on the rugged ascent. Then began the leathal hail of stones, hundreds flung from above, dozens rolled and toppled over the edge. These stones, striking down, could not fail to find marks. They plunged into the seething mass at different points on the trail. Some of the larger stones even did their work more than once, striking men or kaiila from the trail at one point and then, bounding downward, striking the face of the rock here and there, to shatter into yet more men at a lower point in the ascendant trail. Some finally plunged, rolling and bounding downward, into the Yellow Knives far below on the grass.

Yellow Knives raised their shields but this did little good for the potency of the stons lay primarily not in their capacity or cut or penetrate but to transmit their considerabl force, bluntly, crushingly, suddenly, to the trget surface. Arms were broken in the shield straps. Men were struck from the backs of kaiila. Animals, maddened, screaming, hissing, snorting, squealing, reared and bolted. Dozens of men and animals, buffeted, losing their footing, crowded from the

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edge, slipped, scratching and screaming, down the rock's steep face.

Iwoso regarded the scene of carnage with horror.

Frenzied blasts on war whistles, relayed to the bottom of the trail, finally had their effect. Slowly, with difficulty on the narrow trail, some backing down, some turning, some falling, the Yellow Knives on the lower lengths of the trail, pressing back among their fellows at the foot of Council Rock, freed the lower ascents, enabling their trapped fellows on the upper reaches of the trail, those so exposed to our pleasures, to begin their own laborious, tortuous descent. Their retreat was harried by the further flinging of stones and rolling boulders.

The baricade at the summit of the trail, with its sharpened wooden stakes, with their bloodied points, was even temporarily removed, to permit the rolling down the trail of a great boulder. This the rear guard of the Yellow Knives, packed against their retreating fellows, the rock on one side the drop on the other, their eyes wide with horror, must watch bounding inexorably toward them. Then it struck amongst them. It took perhaps a dozen men from the trail and then bounded down the rock face and, a few Ihn later, skipping and leaping almost like a pebble, possessing such terrible forces, yet seeming so small from this height, it caromed off the foot of the rock face and then landed, rolling and bounding, among scattering Yellow Knives on the grass below.

Iwoso looked at Hci. She was helpless in her ropes. He did not speak to her.

The stones had been gathered over a period of days and brought to the height of Council Rock. The girls, of course, would not have known this, for thy had been in their bonds and hoods in the prison lodge.

"The trail is cleaing," said Cuwignaka. "Do you think they will go away?"

"No," I said.

"Where are the soldiers?" asked Cuwignaka.

"They must be somewhere about," I said.

"Look," said Hci, pointing downward.

A single rider, a Yellow Knife, in breechclout and paint, and with a full bonnet of Herlit feathers, was urging his kaiila up the trial. In some places the upgrade on this trail was some forty-five degrees and the kaiil, scratching and scrambling, lunged and fought his way upward.

"That is a brave man," said Cuwignaka.

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"He is probably looking for a coup," said Hci.

The rider, tall on the kaiila, singing medicine, disdaining to lift his shield, rode past, below us.

"I recognize him," said Cuwignaka. "He is one of the war chiefs who delt with Watonka,"

"You are rigt," I said. There were three such chiefs. On had perished in the first attack.

Mahpiyasapa did not give the order to fire on the man. It was not merely that he respected his bravery. It was also that he was permitting the man to scout the position. A certain form of assault, it might seem, would be effective.

The man haulted his kaiila only yards from the barricade, with its terrible, bloody points.

Then he turned his kaiila about, not hurring.

"He is truly brave," said Cuwignaka, admiringly.

"He is a war chief," said Hci.

The man stopped his kaiila beneath us. He ceased singing his medicine and looked upward. He saw the two stakes, some twenty to twenty-five feet above him, and the naked, roped beauties who graced them.

"Do not speak," said Hci to Iwoso, "or you will be slain."

Iwoso was absolutely silent. Warriors of the Kaiila do not make idle threats.

The warrior, looking upward, scarcely noticed Bloketu. He did, however, for a time, regard Iwoso. His face was absolutely expressionless. Then, slowly, he resumed his descent, once more singing his medicine song.

"He is furious," said Hci. "Superb!" Then he turned to Iwoso. "They will fight fiercely to rescue you," he said.

Iwoso looked at him, frightened.

"But they will not be successful," he said.

Iwoso fought the ropes, futilely.

"You may speak now," said Hci, watching the retreat of the Yellow Knife.

Iwoso's lovely, curved body squirmed inside the confining ropes.

"Peraps you should speak now, whild you have the opportunity," said hci, "for later perhaps you would have to request permission to speak, and if men did not please to give it to you, then you might not speak."

Iwoso looked at Hci in anger. Her lips trembled. But she did not speak. She pressed her body once again, futilitly, against the ropes. Then she stood desdainfully at the post, roped helplessly to it.

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"They are coming again," said Cuwignaka, "this time single file. They will not crowd themselves on the trail."

"They are still on kaiilaback," I said. "They learn their leassons hard."

"Kahintokapa will count fifty," said Hci. "He will then give the signal."

My count and that of Kahintokapa, near the trail summit, near the barricade, tallied exactly. When the first fifty riders had passed the chosen point on the trail the second barricade, bristling, too, with stakes, on ropes, was lowered to the trail, shutting off the upper segment of the trail as effectively as a gate. The first fifty riders, not realizing they were cut off, continued upward. The later riders stormed against the barricade, the successive riders piling up behind them, forced the first riders forward, onto the stakes, and several riders, as the file behind them doubled and then bulged, were forced from the trail. The second barricade was defended by a fusilade of arrows sped from the small bows of Kaiila warriors suddenly appering at the upper edge of the escarpment. Meanwhile, Kaiila bowmen, firing from behind the first barricade, and crawling over and through it, loosened war arrows inot the enemy. Disadvantaged were the Yellow Knives to be on kaiilaback in such close quarters. And as they lowered their shields to defend themselves against the almost point-blank fire of the Kaiila other Kaiila archers, from above, over the edge of the escarpment, fired down upon them. Some of the men afoot, with thier weight, throwing it against the beasts, even forced the beasts and their riders from the trail. Survivors, turning their kaiila about, fled back down the trail, there to encounter the second barricade. One man, with the downward momentum of the slope, managed to leap his kaiila over the lower barricade. Two others, on foot, crawling through the barricade, managed to escape. He who had lept his kaiila over the lower barricade was the second war chief of the Yellow Knives, he who had ascended the trail only Ehn earlier. It was a fine, agile beast.

"I do not think they will come again on kaiilaback," said Cuwignaka.

"I would think not," I said.

Cuwignaka's speculation, as it turned out, was sound.

In about an Ahn, in the vicinity of noon, we saw some three or four hundred Yellow Knives ascending the trail, on foot, slowly, conserving their energy.

"You are finished now!" said Iwoso. "You are finished!"

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In the way of defenders we had only some two hundred men, what we had been able to gather of the remnants of the Kaiila bands after the battle of the summer camp. Stones would not be likely to be too effective against men on foot. The barricades, too, to men on foot, though they would surely constitue impediments to their advance, would scarcely constitue insuperable obstacles. Further, the Yellow Knives, like other red savages honed to warlike perfection over generations of intertribal conflict, were fine warriors. I did not doubt but what, man for man, they might be equvalent of the Kaiila. The delicat balances of tribal power would not have been sustained for generations, in my opinion, had radically disparate disributions of martial skills been involved.

"Already they are moving over and through your lower barricade!" cried Iwoso.

"Yes," said Hci. we had not chosen to defend it.

"In their numbers," cried Iwoso, elatedly, "they will storm your upper barricade, overwhelm the defenders and then be amongst you!"