Bunduki (Bunduki Series Book One) (10 page)

‘
Back!’
Bunduki roared, reverting to
Mangani
and placing himself between the girl and
the female.

Ignoring the command,
the
she-Mangani
continued to advance. The big blond did not hesitate in his
response. Stepping forward and dropping the club with the arrow
still in it, he delivered a right hand cuff to the side of the
disobedient female’s head that was hard enough to knock her
sprawling. After that, none of the others tried to come near and,
on regaining her feet, the first one hurried away.

Handing his bow to Joar-Fane who was
staring at him with an expression that—under the circumstances—he
found disconcerting, Bunduki picked up the club and drew free his
arrow. Tossing the club aside, he led the way to the capybara he
had killed. Looking at it, the girl let out a gasp.

‘
No Telonga
could have done this!’ the girl declared, indicating the arrow
which had sunk to cresting
^xxviii
so that its head had emerged on
the other side. Then another, more pressing thought diverted her
and she ran the tip of her tongue across her full red lips. The
water-pig is good meat. Even a wild one.’

‘
Are you hungry?’ Bunduki
inquired, looking at her as he was kneeling by the
carcass.

‘
I
have not eaten more than berries and fruit since I escaped
from the Mun-Gatahs’ People-Taker three days ago,’ Joar-Fane
replied.

Who is he?’ Bunduki asked, removing
the broad head from the adapter on the buff-colored arrow’s
shaft.

‘
He comes to our villages
with his. men and women and takes the people.’

‘
Don’t your men stop
them?’

‘
The hunters sometimes say
they should, but the Elders put them away before the People-Taker
comes so there won’t be any trouble,’ Joar-Fane explained. ‘I don’t
know what happens to those who are taken. None of them have ever
come back.’

‘
You say that you escaped,’
the blond giant prompted, drawing the headless arrow free from the
capybara and standing up. ‘Did anybody come after you?’

‘
Three of his men and a
woman,’ the girl replied.

‘
Where are they
now?’

‘
I don’t know. They followed
me across the Big River after I had fallen in, but I haven’t seen
them today.’

Although Bunduki was interested
in the girl’s story, he decided that they would postpone continuing
with it until they had crossed the stream and left the
Mangani
behind. So, having
fitted the head back on the shaft, he returned the arrow to the
quiver and swung it across his back. Taking the bowie knife from
its sheath, he used it to sever a hind leg from the
capybara.

‘
This ought to be enough
meat for us,’ he told the girl as he cleaned the blade of the knife
with a handful of grass. Sheathing it, he went on, ‘If we leave the
rest for the “Hairy People”, they won’t trouble us.’

‘
Very well, Bunduki,’
Joar-Fane assented. ‘I’ll carry the meat.’

‘
There is
food,’ the blond giant announced in
Mangani,
indicating the remains of his prey.
‘We go. If you follow,
Tar-Ara
kill!’

Having delivered the warning,
Bunduki took his bow from the girl and strode towards the
stream.
Collecting
the bloody leg, she glided after him. There was pride in
her sensual, graceful posture and she darted a triumphant glance at
the big female who had attempted to attack her. Seeing the other
bare her teeth, Joar-Fane hurried to the blond giant’s side.
Although encumbered by their meat, she attempted to take hold of
his empty right hand. He avoided being trapped and, after a warning
that he wanted the hand free in case they should be attacked, she
desisted.

With its bed consisting of firm, clean
gravel and a depth of no more than three feet, the stream presented
no difficulty for the girl or Bunduki. Its waters were clear and
the current mild, allowing him to make sure there were no dangerous
creatures or fish.

‘
Shall we take off our
clothes and let them dry?’ Joar-Fane inquired hopefully as they
reached the opposite bank and walked ashore.

‘
No,’ Bunduki said, hiding
the grin which was caused by knowing what prompted the suggestion.
‘We’ll keep going. The sun will dry them.’

Ignoring the girl’s
disappointed pout, the big blond looked back across the stream.
The
Mangani
were eagerly approaching his kill. Moving stiffly,
Bul-Mok
let out a furious
bellow as one of the younger males tried to precede him. Although
his son backed away, Bunduki guessed that the dominant bull would
have to reassert his ascendancy after suffering his
defeat.

‘
Where do you
live, Joar-Fane?’ the blond giant asked, putting the
Mangani
from his thoughts
and starting to walk towards the north-west.

‘
Beyond the Big River,’ the
girl replied vaguely, trotting at his side.

‘
Where is that?’

‘
I don’t know.’

Striding along, Bunduki looked
down at the girl and silently admitted that she might be speaking
the truth. In the jungle it was too easy for an inexperienced
person to lose all sense of direction. That did nothing to reduce
his predicament. He did not want to postpone his search for Dawn
while trying to return Joar-Fane to her village. So, he concluded,
he must take the little girl with him. Once
they had found his adoptive
cousin, the pair of them could escort Joar-Fane to her
home.

‘
Something tells me that I
might need a chaperone,’ the big blond mused, glancing at the
pretty girl as her hot little hand closed on his. ‘Or a bodyguard
might be better.’

Allowing Joar-Fane to retain her grip,
much to her delight and satisfaction, Bunduki guided her through
the jungle. The warmth of the sun soon dried their garments, as he
had said it would.

Although the girl claimed that
the area through which they were passing had always been notorious
for the numbers and ferocity of the ‘Hairy People’ who occupied it,
they neither saw nor heard any more of the
Mangani.
There were plenty of other creatures,
but nothing that posed a threat to their safety even though
Joar-Fane behaved in a frightened manner no matter how harmless a
beast they saw. After a short time, Bunduki suspected that her
behavior was merely an excuse to nestle up to him.

From her comments, the girl clearly
knew little about animals. In fact, she confessed that she had very
rarely left her village. When forced to make a journey it had
always been accompanied by older people. They had stuck to clearly
marked trails and never ventured into the jungles.

There was, however, little
conversation as they walked along. While Bunduki would have liked
to learn more about the land in which he found himself, the girl
had something
very
different in mind as a topic of conversation. It was one
which did not meet with his approval under the circumstances. So he
instructed her to keep quiet until they stopped for a rest. When
she began to protest he warned her that some wild beast or the
‘Hairy People’ might stalk them and take them by surprise unless he
could hear and prevent it. The ruse served its purpose. She stopped
her chatter, but continued to cling to his hand and stare nervously
about her.

After they had covered about
six miles, Bunduki was satisfied that
Bul-Mok
and his family were not following
them. They were descending into a wide valley, through which ran a
small stream.

‘
I’m hungry and tired,’
Joar-Fane hinted, breaking her silence.

‘
Then we’ll eat and rest,’
Bunduki answered.

Hurrying to the banks of the stream,
Joar-Fane set down the capybara’s leg and knelt to drink. She was
genuinely tired and hungry, but had another idea in mind when she
mentioned the fact. After they had fed and rested, she felt sure
that she could persuade her rescuer to take a much greater interest
in her than he had been doing so far.

If she could not, the little
girl told herself grimly, then she had no right to the name,
‘The Loving
One’.

‘
Tomlu
has her!’ Dryaka enthused as he watched his
adherent charging towards Dawn Drummond-Clayton. ‘She’ll soon
be
mine
!’

Hearing the excited chatter of
agreement from the other members of the High Priest’s faction,
Charole darted a glance filled with disappointment and bitter
animosity at him. From the moment that Ragfbuf’s mount had fallen,
she had been aware that Tomlu was almost certain to make the
capture. What was more, the way in which he had turned the butt of
his lance to the front had warned her that he was intending to take
the prisoner alive.

Watching Dawn swing around, raise and
start to draw the bow, the Protectress of the Quagga God found
herself torn between two conflicting desires. While she would have
liked to lay her hands on the beautiful stranger—towards whom she
had formed an instant and implacable hatred—she wanted it to be on
her own terms. Certainly she did not wish Dryaka to gain the
satisfaction and—if, as seemed likely, Dawn should prove an
entertaining sacrifice—the acclaim of the population for having
brought in such a prisoner.

Charole found herself on the verge of
hoping that the girl would escape. However, even though she guessed
that the High Priest could read her thoughts, she knew better than
to voice them aloud.

Making an effort, Dawn managed
to hold her breath. She had the arrow drawn to its anchor point,
with the fletching brushing against her cheek. With the man so
close and the need for haste, she aimed in the style known as
‘
gap
shooting’. She concentrated her full attention upon the centre of
his chest, although still conscious of, and taking into
consideration, the amount of space between the arrow’s point and
its target. The size of the space, or ‘gap’, became a guide to the
angle of elevation that was required and she could if necessary
adjust her weapon accordingly.

The necessity did not
arise!

In fact, Tomlu was so nearby that time
that the tip of Dawn’s arrow was sighted straight on its intended
mark.

He was at her point blank
range
!

Even as the girl relaxed her fingers,
she felt disconcerted by her attacker’s attitude. He was leering at
her and showing neither fear nor concern for his safety, despite
the fact that he could see she was aiming the arrow at him. Either
he did not know what a bow was, or for some reason he clearly felt
that he was in no danger.

There was no time for Dawn to ponder
on the phenomenon. Released from her restraint, the arrow was sent
on its way.

Tomlu was still grinning when the
missile struck the centre of his breastplate, sent there with the
full propulsive power of the bow’s draw weight of seventy pounds.
Instead of bouncing back, or being deflected, the point passed
through the rhinoceros hide as if it was so much wet, soft paper.
Shock and amazement mingled with the agony that was distorting the
burly mans brutish features as the arrow’s quadruple blades cut
deeper and deeper into his chest cavity.

While the Man-Gatah scout had been
correct in his estimation of the point at which the girl was
aiming, all of his other calculations had been woefully, completely
and fatally wrong. Yet it had been an understandable error, born
out of his ignorance of the full facts regarding her
weapons.

The archers against whom Tomlu
had previously been brought into conflict all used primitive wooden
bows of, at most, a forty pounds’ draw weight. No all wood ‘self
bow could match the tensile strength of a unidirectional fiber
glass precision implement such as the Ben Pearson Marauder.
^xxix
That was particularly true when, as
was the case with the Mun-Gatahs’ usual enemies, it was discharged
from a chest draw.

Nor did his previous foes possess
arrows to equal those used by the girl. The exceptionally fine
temper of the steel used to manufacture the four-blade head was far
superior to anything that Tomlu had come across. So, instead of
being halted or turned aside by his erstwhile protective
breastplate, the girl’s shaft had been able to slice through it and
into his torso.

Although the burly scout did
not remain in error for
long regarding his assumptions, the lesson he
learned was of no use to him.

An involuntary jerk by the stricken
man’s left hand caused his fast-moving zebra, trained to be
instantly obedient to such signals, to swerve in that direction.
With its rider already starting to lose his balance and allowing
the lance to slip from his grasp, the alteration toppled him from
the saddle. Slipping out of the stirrup-irons, his feet did nothing
to help him retain his seat. Falling, he landed on his right
shoulder and bounced three times before coming to a halt on his
back. It had been such a close thing that Dawn was compelled to
leap into the air to avoid being struck by his body.