Lord Tyger (30 page)

After having walked a quarter of a mile from the hill, they came to a watch post, where two men stood on top of a platform on a high framework of bamboo. These wore tall, conical hats of bright-orange river-hog hide and white robes. They carried large, round shields of hippo hide and long spears with copper heads. When they saw Gilluk, they clashed the spearheads together in salute. Thereafter, they gawked at Ras. Gilluk became impatient and asked them if they had lost their senses. Had they forgotten what they were to do when the victorious king came out of the Great Swamp?

The guards unfroze, and their eyes resumed their usual size. One began beating on a large drum. The other scrambled down the ladder and dipped one knee and his spearhead onto the earth. On arising, he looked more closely at Ras, and then he began to shake. It was some time before his teeth quit chattering.

Only when Gilluk gave a sharp command did the man turn away to precede them on the triumphal march to the king's castle.

The guards looked as if they were half-Wantso and half-Sharrikt. They were taller than the Wantso but shorter than Gilluk, more sturdily built, and had thicker lips, flatter noses, and very tightly curled hair. Gilluk verified Ras's guess. The royal family, the administrative class, and the priestly class, were the only pureblood Sharrikt left, and the only ones classified as Sharrikt. The freemen were descended from Sharrikt masters and Wantso slaves. Gilluk seemed almost apologetic in his explanations.
Originally, he said, when the Sharrikt came into this world, they had been pure. They had attacked the Wantso, who at that time lived where the Sharrikt now lived, had killed some, enslaved others, and driven the rest across the Great Swamp. From the beginning, death was the penalty for the Sharrikt who had children by a slave woman. Nevertheless, Wantso women bore children to their masters, and the penalty ceased to be applied within a few years after it had been decreed. A king who had had a dozen children by various slaves had changed the law. And, in time, so many were born to farmers and artisans that they had become freemen, through some development the history of which Gilluk did not know.

The pureblood aristocracy numbered about thirty-five. Thirty-one, now that four had died in the swamp. There were about eighty freeman farmers and artisans and about sixty slaves. A percentage of the freemen could bear arms as guards, defense soldiers, and policemen, but only the pureblood could go to war. This explained why Gilluk had been so upset on learning that the Wantso were all dead. There could be no more expeditions to test the courage and skill of the young Sharrikt and to entertain the older.

"The Wantso require that their young men kill an elephant, a buffalo, or a leopard before they become full-fledged warriors," Ras said.

"Oh, the Wantso!" Gilluk said contemptuously. "Among us, a youth has to kill a leopard as the first step to becoming a warrior. Then he must participate in a raid in which he kills or at least wounds a Wantso, before two witnesses. After that, he is entitled to contend for the kingship if he wishes.

"Oh, yes, take off that leopardskin loin-covering. Only Sharrikt are allowed to wear leopard. The people might become confused if they see leopard on you."

"If I do that," Ras said, laughing, "then every man in this kingdom will have to lock up his wife."

Gilluk looked grave and said, "You may be right. Very well. Keep it on--for now."

"I was only joking," Ras said.

They entered the farmland, where women and children ran up to the road to make obeisance to the king, and men followed to see what the excitement was about. Most of them stopped far short of the road when they saw Ras. Children hid behind their mothers' billowing skirts and peeped wide-eyed at him. Ras grinned, causing them to scream and cover their eyes.

"I see I'll have to educate my people," Gilluk said. "They must learn that you are only a bleached-out man, not a ghost."

"I hope so," Ras said. "I'm getting tired of scaring people."

"I think I can solve that problem," Gilluk said. Ras felt uneasy at this remark, one of many enigmatics uttered by the king since the battle in the swamp.

"Get behind me," Gilluk said. "No one is allowed to walk by my side, and only a herald, or a corpse in a funeral procession and its bearers, can precede me."

Ras stepped back a few paces. There were more people along the road now. The farms were closer together. There were many hogs, chickens, and goats, and a number of the buffalo domesticated by the Sharrikt. The fields were rich with yams, sweet potatoes, sorghum, millet, and other plants.

These people were more numerous and wealthier than
the Wantso. It was evident that they could have sent an army to wipe out the Wantso if they had wished. And he had believed the Wantso when they had boasted of some day slaughtering the Sharrikt and ridding the earth of them!

Presently, as they neared the hill on which the king's house stood, ten freeman warriors, commanded by a cousin of the king (as Ras found out later), became their guard of honor. Gilluk's three wives, each standing under a parasol held by a slave-boy, greeted him. He kissed his fingers and touched the wet ends to their foreheads while they were on their knees before him. All three closely resembled Gilluk. Two were his cousins, and the chief wife was his sister.

The wives arose to walk behind the king. They had intended to crowd his heels, but Ras so frightened them that they dropped back twenty or more paces.

Gilluk's white-haired mother, carried in a chair by two strong Wantso slaves, came down the hill to greet them. She wept with joy because he was alive and with grief because her younger son was dead. A priest, wearing a white robe that trailed on the ground and a triple-tiered hat with a stuffed baby crocodile on its top, saluted Gilluk. While all stood in the sun, except for the wives and the mother, the priest gave a long speech.

Ras, hungry and impatient, interrupted the speech with several loud breakings of wind. The wives giggled. Gilluk turned around and glared, at which the three women became quiet. At last the priest finished, and the procession went up the hill on broad, stone steps. At the top, Gilluk led the parade through a wide and tall square entrance into the building, which was even larger than Ras had thought. Actually, what had seemed one
building from a distance turned out to be two, with a high wall around them. In the space between the buildings, on a platform of wood, were several cages of bamboo.

Bigagi was in one.

Ras was startled. He opened his mouth to ask Gilluk how Bigagi had been caught and also why he had not said anything about this. Gilluk pointed at Ras and ordered the guards to put him in a cage. Since they surrounded Ras, the tips of their spears only a foot from him, he did not resist.

After he was encaged, Ras asked Gilluk why he had done this.

"It's a matter of justice," Gilluk said. "You kept me in a cage for six months, so..."

"And when the six months are up?"

"I don't know. You're a problem."

"Why am I?" Ras said. "Why can't I live with you Sharrikt as a Sharrikt? I mean you no harm."

"Well, I don't know what attitude to take toward you," Gilluk said. "You can't be treated as a divine Sharrikt. On the other hand, you're too dangerous to be a slave. You'd run off into the jungle and wage the same kind of war against us as you did against the Wantso. You can't be a freeman, since you'd never work a farm or take orders from us.

"Yet, you haven't harmed me or threatened the Sharrikt. And I do like you, in spite of your being a savage. So, I don't know at this moment what I'll do when the six months are up. Meantime, you must pay for having kept me a prisoner."

Gilluk smiled and said, "You'll be treated well, just as you treated me well. That means, of course, you'll get no women. I
asked you for women, you know, and you wouldn't get me any."

"Not wouldn't. Couldn't."

"Oh, you could have. You didn't want to."

Ras gestured at Bigagi.

"I have to kill him, since he killed my parents. What about him?"

"I'll think about him," Gilluk said. "He was caught the night before I went to the Great Swamp. He was trying to get a slave woman to run off with him, but she didn't want to. She had a husband she liked--the Wantso born here aren't circumcised, you know--and Bigagi had nothing except danger and starvation to offer her. She turned him in, and he killed the woman and a soldier before he was captured. He is a mad hyena. Normally, he would be tortured as a public example. Now, I don't know. It would be interesting to pit him against you. We sometimes match captured Wantso warriors against each other. They don't want to fight, but they do, because both would be killed if they didn't. In this case, however, each would like to kill the other, so it would actually be more gratifying to you than to us if you fought to the death."

Ras asked what the winner's fate would be.

"Well, if the Wantso knew that he would be tortured if he won, he might let you kill him to escape it. So, I'll promise him that he'll live if he wins, although he'll have to be blinded. If you kill him, you'll be tortured. It's only just. You will have cheated us out of torturing him."

Ras said that he did not see the logic. Gilluk replied that he could not be expected to do so, since he was only a bleached-out savage. However, he should not complain, because he would be
given six months of easy living--except for the lack of a woman, of course.

"I may not have you fight the Wantso," Gilluk continued. "Who knows? I may allow you to live, even to go free."

"With my eyesight?"

"Who knows?" Gilluk's smile showed that he knew that this uncertainty was to be a six-months' torture.

"I don't want to do this," he said. "I do like you. But a king has to see justice done, no matter how it grieves him personally. Now, what can I do for you?"

"Bring me food," Ras said. "I'm hungry. And then go away, so that seeing you won't spoil my appetite."

15

ONE DEAD, ONE DYING, ONE ALIVE

"What is it you want now?" Gilluk said.

Ras could not tell him in one word, because Sharrikt had no "squirrel-cage." He described in detail what he wanted and how it could be built.

"I've already built you a larger cage with bars in it for you to exercise on," Gilluk said. "I've installed troughs and pipes and a water wheel and assigned slaves to work the wheel so you can drink and bathe any time you feel like it. That took much material and labor..."

"You found it interesting, didn't you?" Ras said. "It kept you from being bored, didn't it?"

Gilluk clucked, frowned, and said, "True. I've been thinking about building a water system for my quarters. But this rotating cage! Why do you want it?"

"I don't have enough space to exercise properly. I need to run and run fast, mile after mile. I can't do it in this narrow box unless I have a rotating cage. Of course, you could build me a
cage a half mile long, then I'd have enough room."

Ras laughed. Gilluk said, "Why don't I just build a cage over the entire land? Would that satisfy you?"

"I'd still be in a cage," Ras said.

"All right," Gilluk said. "I'll do this for you, since you treated me fairly well when I was your prisoner. But don't ask for more. Don't ask for the moon."

"Could you get it?" Ras said. "I understand that one of your titles is Tamer of the Moon."

"As chief priest, I do have jurisdiction over it," Gilluk said. "Sometimes, I think you're poking fun at me. You don't seem to realize how serious your situation is. I may torture or kill you at any moment."

"You promised me six months. Is your word no better than a slave's?"

"Sometimes considerations of state force a king to go back on his word. The welfare of the people comes first."

He interrupted Ras's protest. "You haven't yet removed your leopardskin. I know I told you to keep it on, but I've changed my mind. My people are confused about this."

"Tell them that I am the son of God, hence, divine, and entitled to wear leopard."

"They wouldn't understand that, because you're a non-Sharrikt. And I reject that reasoning because it's not for the good of my people."