Bunduki (Bunduki Series Book One) (3 page)

And then, from a long way off in the
north-west, rose a cry similar to that which Bunduki had
given.

For a moment, the blond giant
wondered if his ears were playing tricks upon him. Then, as the
distant call was repeated, he had the brief hope that it might be
originating from a male member of his adoptive family. Certainly it
had not been made by Dawn. She would have used the cry of a
female
Mangani.
Nor was it likely to have come from Tarzan, Sir Paul, Korak
the Killer,
^xi
or Armand. When Kenya had been
granted its independence, they had known that there was no future
for them if they had stayed there. So they had accepted David
Innes’ offer to join him and make a new life for themselves and
their families in Pellucidar
^xii
Dawn and Bunduki had been included in
the invitation. Being employed under contract by the Ambagasali
Government, they had honored the agreements by staying on until
suitable replacements could be hired.

So, with the rest of the
Greystoke family already settled in their new homes at the Earth’s
core, the response to his challenge could not have been made by one
of them. Yet Tarzan’s exhaustive investigations during the
mid-1960s had led him to believe that the
Mangani
were extinct.

That was, Bunduki concluded, just one
more mystery to add to those which had already come to his
attention since he awoke. It certainly did nothing to help him
locate Dawn, unless she too had heard the distant call and was
making her way towards it. So he decided that he would not allow
the speculation to distract him any longer from his
search.

Having reached his decision, the blond
giant picked up his bow and climbed nimbly to the ground. On his
arrival, still conscious of the feeling that his every move was
being scrutinized, his right hand reached up and slid an arrow from
the quiver on his back. Without the need for him to look at what he
was doing, he rested its shaft on the arrow-shelf of the bow’s
handle and slipped the groove of the nock over the
string.

Once again, failing to locate the
watcher, Bunduki put the matter from his thoughts. However, he
remained alert and his eyes were constantly on the move as he
started to walk in a northwesterly direction. As he did so, he
became aware of the pangs of a deep hunger. It was as if he had
nothing in his stomach and intestines. Identifying a number of
plants, bushes and trees, although some were unfamiliar, he
selected such fruit and berries as he knew to be edible and ate
them while on the move. There was, however, a more urgent need in
the food line. From what he saw, filling it should not be difficult
for a man with his skill as a hunter.

The variety of animals which Bunduki
came across proved to be an unending source of amazement and
conjecture. Once a troop of black and white Colobus monkeys, like
those in the Abedare Forest of Kenya, hurled abuse at him from the
trees. At the same time, a small herd of white-spotted Axis deer
fled as he had seen their kind do during an expedition to India.
Not a mile away, while Hooloock gibbons swung from the branches and
fed in a fig tree, a large sounder of white-lipped peccaries were
foraging at its foot on the fruit which were being dislodged. Later
he heard the calls of chimpanzees and of Asian jungle fowl. He saw
tracks left by bongo, giant forest hog and buffalo as well as
identifying—by sight—a South American three-toed sloth and a
Malayan tapir. Still further on, a bull guided its harem and young
away as a jaguar appeared at the edge of the clearing in which they
had been grazing.

Birds, reptiles and smaller mammals
were also present in a similar geographically confusing profusion.
By their lack of fear, they were none of them used to human beings.
The only creatures that appeared to be absent, he noticed with
relief, were bothersome insects, ticks, leeches and other
parasites.

It seemed to Bunduki that he
had stumbled into a kind of vast zoological gardens, in which
creatures from every continent had been gathered and were allowed
to roam
at
will. Even
Mangani,
unless his imagination had been playing tricks upon him.
That was possible, he had to admit. There had been no signs, nor
sounds, of them apart from the very distant answer to his
challenge.

Altogether the environment through
which the blond giant was passing struck him as being something
Dawn and he had frequently discussed and hoped to find as children.
He could not even start to guess where on Earth it might be, which
aroused another possibility—farfetched as it might appear to be—for
him to consider.

The time was almost noon and the
continuing pangs of hunger caused Bunduki to set aside the train of
thought which his summation had brought to mind. Instead, he
started to hunt in deadly earnest. Gliding silently between the
trees and through the undergrowth, with keen blue eyes constantly
flickering glances from side to side, ears straining to catch the
softest sound and nostrils testing the air—although his sense of
smell was not so well developed as that of the other members of his
adoptive family—he looked more like a predatory jungle creature
than a civilized human being.

At last Bunduki found his prey.
Halting in cover at the edge of a large clearing, he looked to
where half a dozen grayish, somewhat squarely built creatures were
feeding on the banks of a stream. They were capybara and, although
rather large for his needs, made good eating. There was another
point that appealed to him, as the former Chief Warden of a game
reserve. Their species bred in such numbers that, particularly if
his theory regarding his location was correct, the death of one
would not seriously deplete the stock.

Standing erect and relaxed,
with his left foot pointing towards the target, the blond giant
extended his left arm and turned the bow from the nearly horizontal
carrying position almost to vertical. The fingers of his bow-hand
were curled around the pistol grip of the handle-riser, taking the
pressure of the draw against the base of the
thumb. His right elbow was
raised outwards to shoulder level. Tucking the little finger of the
draw-hand out of the way, he folded the remainder—with the nock of
the arrow between the first and second digits—over the string.
Utilizing his tremendously strong back and shoulder muscles, rather
than those of his right arm, he drew the string and arrow
rearwards.

Being a hunter, as opposed to a
tournament-target archer, Bunduki favored the high, or cheek draw.
Tilting his head slightly to the right, until the second finger of
his draw-hand was touching his cheek just over the last tooth in
his lower jaw, he attained his anchor point. He took aim swiftly
and carefully, holding his breath to avoid the motion of his chest
disturbing his posture. Then he relaxed the fingers of his right
hand to accomplish a smooth release. Uncoiling from the arcs into
which they had been drawn, the bow’s upper and lower limbs caused
the string to straighten and thrust the arrow forward.

Retaining his stance, the blond giant
watched the thirty-one inch long arrow whistling through the air.
It flew true and the capybara at which he had aimed, a young male,
gave a convulsive bound as the one hundred and twenty-five grain,
needle-sharp point spiked into its body. The razor-edged quadruple
blades of the head cut onwards and collapsed the lungs in passing.
Down went the stricken animal, its legs kicking. It was dead before
its alarmed companions had plunged into the stream and swam
away.

Resuming a more relaxed attitude,
Bunduki strolled across the clearing. It was fringed by dense
undergrowth that was pierced at several points by game trails.
Reaching his prey, he lay the bow on the ground. Slipping off the
quiver, as he meant to take a dip in the stream after he had eaten,
he placed it alongside the bow. Then, as his right hand reached
across to the Randall knife, he heard something which drove all
thoughts of food from his head.

There was a rustling in the
undergrowth to his left. A savage, snarling bellow rang
out—followed by the scream of a terrified woman!

Seeing
a shape appear at the top of the
slope, the large black-maned lion rose from where it had been
lazing in the shade of a clump of bushes. At its low, challenging
growl, the rest of its pride interrupted their feeding on the
carcass of the cow bison which they had killed.

At the sight of the lion, Dawn
Drummond-Clayton came to a halt. It was, she told herself bitterly,
her own fault that she should find herself in a such a precarious
situation. After all she had seen that day, and with her practical
experience, she ought to have been more careful. Instead of walking
along engrossed in her thoughts, she should have stayed alert. If
she had, the noises being made by the feeding pride would have
warned her of their presence and she could have avoided
them.

Of course, she went on, her
preoccupation might be considered excusable under the
circumstances.

Ever since Dawn had woken at
sunrise, to find that she was lying on a ledge half way up the side
of a rocky
kopje
^xiii
she had been forcing herself to
accept very peculiar conditions. She had remembered M’Bili’s murder
and the Land Rover plunging into the Gambuti Gorge, but nothing
more until waking to discover that she was alive and
uninjured.

On first looking around, she
had thought that she might be somewhere in the Ambagasali. Wild
Life Reserve; although she could not imagine how she had come to be
there. At every side the plains rolled away in gentle, undulating
folds which were speckled with herds of herbivorous animals of many
kinds and punctuated by
kopjes,
clumps of bushes and the occasional tree. The
terrain was, in fact, reminiscent of what the male members of her
family had jokingly referred to as the M.M.B. A.A.; the Miles and
Miles of Bloody Awful Africa.

Having studied her surroundings, Dawn
realized that she was not within the familiar bounds of the
Reserve. The Reserve would have been hard put to equal the numbers
of animals she had observed, and certainly could not have offered
such a diversity of species. The very unusual variety of animals
had caused her to have doubts as to whether she was even still in
Africa. All of the normal plains’ creatures had been in evidence;
ostriches, secretary birds, kori bustards, warthogs, giraffes,
buffalo and numerous types of antelope and gazelle from different
parts of her home continent. Scattered among them had been nilgai
and blackbuck from India. Giant anteaters, pronghorns, pampas and
whitetail deer that were normally residents of North or South
America had been mingling with them.

Various thoughts had been passing
through her head as she stood identifying the different kinds of
animals.

Could she be suffering from a dying
illusion, or dreaming while unconscious from the injuries she had
sustained in the crash?

Dawn doubted whether either
supposition was the answer.

Then what had happened?

Where was she?

And, equally important, why had
Bunduki not been brought with her?

Almost as a reply to the last
question, the girl experienced a growing subconscious suggestion
that her adoptive cousin was also alive and that she could find him
somewhere in a jungle to the southeast.

Like the blond giant, Dawn had been
puzzled by the sensation. She had never felt anything so utterly
demanding and compulsive. It was as if she had been subjected to
post-hypnotic suggestion. While it was almost beyond her
comprehension, she decided that it was no more so than any of the
other inexplicable circumstances in which she found
herself.

There was, Dawn had concluded, only
one way to deal with the mystery. Accept the suggestion as valid
and go to try and find Bunduki, who was almost certainly looking
for her. Between them, they ought to be able to solve the other
puzzles.

Having accepted that as her best
course of action, Dawn had reviewed the situation in a calm and
positive manner.

Whoever, or whatever, had saved her
life must have had a sound and logical reason for doing so.
Certainly they had given her adequate means of self-protection. In
some way they had found and assembled her Ben Pearson Marauder
Take-Down hunting bow. It had been at her side, with the
eight-arrow bow-quiver attached and her shoulder-quiver.
Altogether, they had supplied her with twenty-two fiber glass
Micro-Flite arrows with four-blade Bear Razorhead points, all of
which were most acceptable in her present situation. Nor would her
Randall Model 1 fighting knife come amiss. It was hanging sheathed
on the belt of the garments which had replaced the blouse, jeans
and moccasins she had been wearing in the Land Rover.

In addition to arming her, the
mysterious rescuers had given her a way of satisfying the sensation
of complete emptiness in her stomach. There had been a small
packet, wrapped in the skin of a Thomsons gazelle, with her
bow. Opening it,
she had found that it contained some
biltong
^xiv
and
pemmican.
^xv
There had even been a small stream
near the foot of the
kopje
so that she had been able to quench her
thirst.