Bunduki (Bunduki Series Book One) (25 page)

Although still shaken by her
experience, Charole had recovered sufficiently to sit up and take
notice. She saw Bunduki dealing with the first three attackers.
Then, as the
banar-gatah
rider rushed up and the blond giant ducked under his
grabbing hands. Catching the man around the knees, Bunduki
straightened and pitched him head over heels.

Watched by the fascinated
woman, the three men flung themselves
en masse
at the blond giant. They were, as she
knew, trained warriors as good as any in the Mun-Gatah nation. Yet,
for all their capability, they could not subdue the big stranger,
even with the help of the
banar-gatah
rider.

It took the combined efforts of the
entire hunting party to quell Bunduki. Nor did they succeed for a
good fifteen minutes (as he measured time). Throughout it, he used
every bit of skill and strength he possessed, calling upon the
various unarmed combat techniques which he had acquired. By the end
of the fight, three of the Mun-Gatahs were down with broken bones
and a fourth lay dead, his neck snapped like a rotten
twig.

Standing and looking down at the blond
giant’s mighty body, now bruised, bloody and stripped to only the
leopard skin loincloth, Charole felt a sense of elation. At last,
providing she could win him over, she was certain she had found a
man who was capable of helping her to overthrow the High
Priest.

‘
You
fight very well, Dawn of the Apes,’ Dryaka remarked,
entering the main section of his pavilion tent carrying the Randall
Model 1 fighting knife in his right hand. ‘They tell me that
Elidor’s jaw is broken. She always did talk too much, so it might
be an improvement.’

Dawn Drummond-Clayton was puzzled and
not a little perturbed as she watched the High Priest of the
Mun-Gatah nation approaching. While the oil lamps which had been
lit at sundown did nothing to soften the savage lines of his
features, he seemed almost jovial and friendly.

After having defeated Elidor, the girl
had expected to be beaten up by the two serving women, or put to
torture if not killed. Instead, apart from having been kept
manacled by the hobbles and under observation at all times to
prevent her from trying to remove them, she had practically been
treated like a guest.

On their return from attending to the
unconscious Elidor, the women had carried out the High Priest’s
orders regarding the prisoner. They had bathed the dried blood from
Dawn’s face, allowed her to drink and had given her a good meal.
From the way they had talked and acted, the girl had concluded that
they were not entirely averse to the beating she had given to their
superior.

Accepting that—watched as she
was by the women and with male guards close by—there could be no
hope of escape, Dawn had not attempted to do so. After the meal,
she had made a bed from some of the pillows and rested on it. She
had wanted to rebuild her strength in
case an opportunity to get away
should present itself, or to be ready if Elidor came back in search
of revenge.

The rest of the afternoon had passed
without incident. Despite the reason Dryaka had given to the Elders
for having Dawn brought into his pavilion, he had not attempted to
question her. In fact, he had left her in the care of his adherents
and had gone off about some business of his own.

Night had fallen before the High
Priest had returned. From the expression on his face as he stalked
from the main entrance to his sleeping quarters, the girl concluded
that whatever the business which had occupied him had been it had
failed to come up to his expectations. However, apart from glancing
at Dawn and asking the serving women if all was well, he had taken
no notice of her. She estimated that over an hour had elapsed since
she had last seen him.

‘
Bring food, then leave us,’
Dryaka ordered, without giving the girl an opportunity to answer
his comment about Elidor.

‘
My father and his men will
be coming to rescue me,’ Dawn stated, as the High Priest sat on the
cushion which one of the serving women had placed in front of her.
‘You’ve seen how effective even a woman’s bow and arrows can be.
Many of your people will die if I’m harmed.’

‘
Yes,’ Dryaka
said, showing no perturbation over the warning. Instead, he looked
pointedly at the knife in his hand and went on,
‘Your “Suppliers”
have given you excellent weapons. Far better than anything we’ve
received. Where and how do they make their deliveries?’

‘
I
don’t know—’ Dawn began, genuinely puzzled by the
question.

‘
And you claim
to be the daughter of the Apes’ leader!’ Dryaka ejaculated, before
the girl could finish. ‘Don’t trifle with me, or it will be the
worse for you. I alone stand between you and death. Charole wants
your blood for killing her eagle. Only I can give you the chance
of
fighting for your life instead of being sacrificed to the
Quagga God.’

Dawn had been meaning to say that she
did not know what the High Priest had meant by ‘Suppliers’. She had
hoped to obtain information about a matter which had been puzzling
her.

After the girl had rested earlier in
the day, having no desire to let her muscles become stiffened by
inactivity, she had risen and started to walk around. Although she
had not been permitted to leave, she had studied the camp from the
pavilions front and rear entrances. Then she had turned her
attention to the interior of the tent.

Like Bunduki when he had been looking
at the property of the dead Mun-Gatah warriors, Dawn was puzzled by
what she saw. The materials from which the pavilion and its
furnishings were made were of a far higher and more sophisticated
quality than she would have believed her captors were capable of
producing. In fact, they had the feel and appearance of modern
synthetic fabrics. The lamps, weapons and other metallic objects
that she had examined also seemed to have been made by
machines.

Apparently the Mun-Gatahs and, judging
from the High Priest’s question, the other primitive nations had
some source of supply which was capable of manufacturing their
requirements. Yet, even if such a technically advanced people had
wanted to retain a monopoly on trading with the otherwise
undiscovered races, it was unlikely that they would be able to keep
their activities a secret.

Unless, of course, Dawn’s theory
regarding her whereabouts should be correct.

Fantastic and unbelievable as it
seemed, the girl was growing even more certain that she had guessed
the truth.

‘
Come
now
,’
Dryaka went on, interrupting Dawn’s train of thought and adopting a
more placatory attitude after having delivered the threat. He also
dropped his voice and darted a glance at the kitchen portion of the
pavilion, continuing, ‘I’m willing to tell you that our “Suppliers”
put them in the caves beneath the Quagga God’s temple.’

‘
I
don’t know where our “Suppliers” make their deliveries,’
Dawn answered and, seeing anger darken her interrogator’s face,
knew that she would have to do better than that. Having noticed how
he had behaved and spoken when giving her the information, she had
an inspiration. ‘I’m Tarzan’s
youngest
daughter. Only he and his oldest son and daughter
are allowed to know the secret.’

Being aware that the subject of the
mysterious ‘Suppliers’ was taboo amongst his own people and the
other races with whom he had come into contact, Dryaka was willing
to accept the girl’s explanation. However, he was disappointed as
he always was whenever he made an attempt to solve the mystery of
the ‘Suppliers’. He had hoped that the ‘Apes’ might have different
beliefs on the subject, or that Dawn—being the ‘daughter’ of her
nation’s leader—had access to the required information.

‘
Where
is your home?’ the High Priest asked, raising his voice to its
previous level as he left the potentially dangerous business of
discussing the “Suppliers”.

‘
On the edge of the jungle,
far to the east,’ Dawn replied.

‘
What brought you to the
land of the Mun-Gatahs?’ Dryaka inquired.

‘
I
had often heard of your people,’ the girl lied, but so
convincingly that she might have been speaking the truth. ‘So I
thought I would come and see what you were really like. Then a lion
frightened my mount—’

‘
Your people are riders?’
Dryaka interrupted.

‘
We are,’ Dawn
confirmed, and decided, in view of his surprise, that a little
boasting might not come amiss. ‘But our mounts are bigger, stronger
and faster than anything I’ve seen here
.’

‘
It’s
very
strange that I’ve never heard of you,’ Dryaka said,
pensively and almost dubiously.

‘
Our land is very far away,’
the girl countered. ‘And we guard its borders jealously. We usually
stay within them and kill any strangers who try to
enter.’

‘
I see,’ the High Priest
grunted. On various occasions, Mun-Gatah raiding parties or
individuals had disappeared without a trace. They could have fallen
foul of the “Apes”. That would explain why none had returned to
bring news of a well-armed and dangerous nation. ‘How many of your
people are there?’

‘
We have five large cities,’
Dawn told him, seeking a happy medium between failing to impress
him with her “nation’s” numbers, and arousing suspicion through
over-exaggeration.

‘
Five
!’
Dryaka repeated, in a mixture of awe and disbelief. ‘No
other nation has more than
one
!’

‘
We aren’t like the other,
nations,’ Dawn pointed out with complete conviction and well
simulated disdain.

From the brief flicker of emotion
which crossed the High Priest’s swarthy face, the girl guessed that
her thrust had gone home. So it had. Dryaka dropped his gaze to the
Randall knife and remembered the quality of her bow and arrows,
realizing that all were far superior to anything that the
Mun-Gatahs and other nations owned.

‘
I’m sorry for the way you
were treated, Dawn,’ the High Priest declared, trying to look
contrite and pleasant. ‘It was all the fault of those fools I sent
to ask you to come and visit me in peace.’

At that moment, preventing
Dryaka from continuing with the lying apology, the flaps at the
rear of the pavilion were opened. Looking about him in a nervous
manner, a short, chubby man entered. He wore the undecorated attire
of a
grar-gatah
rider, but did not have the appearance of being a
warrior.

‘
I bring news,
Lord Dryaka!’ the newcomer announced
hurriedly, throwing a glance
towards the closed front entrance and speaking in a low voice. Then
his gaze swung to Dawn and he pointed at her. ‘Charole has brought
in a prisoner. He is a very big man, dressed like a Telonga, but
with skin like this woman’s. His hair is white, but he isn’t old
and he is very muscular. The knife they took from him is almost as
long as our swords and like no other I’ve ever seen.’

Only by exercising all of her self
control could Dawn hold her emotions in check. Even so, she failed
to prevent herself giving a little gasp as the import of the man’s
information struck her. Unless she was mistaken, he had brought
terrible news. The person whom he described sounded very much like
her adoptive cousin.

If it was Bunduki, he too had fallen
into the hands of the Mun-Gatahs!

Fortunately for the girl, her
involuntary and brief response had gone unnoticed by the High
Priest. He was scowling malevolently at the newcomer, a spy whom he
had planted in the Protectress’s retinue.

‘
I’ve heard nothing of
this,’ Dryaka protested, for the arrival of a prisoner—particularly
one as unusual as this man appeared to be—would normally have
attracted sufficient attention to be reported to him. ‘When did it
happen?’

‘
Soon after
sundown,’ the spy replied and went on hurriedly in
exculpation.
‘I haven’t been able to get away until now, my lord. She
had him brought to her pavilion secretly after it was dark. He is
still there and she is treating him as well as—very
well.’

‘
Is she? Dryaka growled,
guessing that the man had intended to say, “as well as you are
treating this girl.”, or words to that effect. ‘And you say that
she’s alone with him?’

‘
She was, my
lord, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I mustn’t stay
long, my lord, or I may be missed. There is something else I have
to tell you
.’

‘
What is
it?
’

‘
Talgum and Altab came a few minutes ago, although she had
said she was not to be disturbed. They brought a small bag which
they said had come from your pavilion.’