Fearless Master of the Jungle (A Bunduki Jungle Adventure

by J. T. Edson

  Spluttering out curses and trying to make the banar-gatah go faster as it churned through the water, At-Vee was hard put to restrain his impatience. Coming ashore, he reined the animal to a stop and almost tumbled from the saddle in his eagerness. However, he did not permit emotion to make him forget any part of his instructions. Allowing the reins to fall free and ground hitch his mount, he ran to Dawn’s side. Although he had two more aids to the capture hanging over his knife and shilva, he left them there and removed the hobbles she was carrying.

  As the Hunter knelt by the mare and touched its upper hoof, it snorted and tried to jerk the leg away. Instantly Dawn made use of the ‘twitch’ and its effort ended. Nor did it attempt further objections while he was buckling the cuffs of the hobbles into place. With that task completed, there was a further precaution he had to take before removing the boleadora.

  The article At-Vee took from across his shilvas head was modeled upon the hackamore of the American Indians and cowhands. Made mainly from rope, it was shaped like a bridle. There was a loop known as a bosal at the lower end, which would encircle the quagga’s head immediately above the mouth and serve as a bit. Higher, a three inch wide brow band made out of an opened up fulsa sack could be slid down the cheeks to act as a blindfold. While reins could be attached, as yet only a lead rope was fitted.

  Working as quickly as possible, At-Vee slipped the bosal over the stick of the ‘twitch’ and, with the girl moving first one, then the other hand to let it pass, eased the hackamore into place as he had rehearsed the previous night. Having settled it firmly in position, he adjusted the brow band over the mare’s eyes and set about untangling the cords around the forelegs. With that task completed, he went across and did the same for the blond giant.

  Fifteen minutes later, the capture was complete.

  Joar-Fane had joined her husband and friends to help put the finishing touches to their efforts. Wanting to give the quaggas an opportunity to recover from the fright and moderately rough handling they had received, the human beings had withdrawn a short distance. Having regained their feet, the combination of being blindfolded and hobbled was inducing the mare and stallion to refrain from trying to escape. They were further calmed by being able to smell and hear the banar-gatahs, which had been unsaddled, grazing close by.

  ‘Well you’ve got them, brother!’ At-Vee stated.

  ‘We’ve got them,’ Bunduki agreed, just as delightedly. ‘Now all we have to do is tame them.’

  ‘That won’t be hard,’ Dawn declared. ‘All you pair will have to do is let us do all the thinking for you. Don’t you agree, Joar—?’

  As Bunduki had done the previous afternoon, the girl committed an error in tactics. Instead of keeping him under observation, she turned her head to look at Joar-Fane on starting the final sentence. A powerful hand caught her right wrist and, before she realized what was happening, the blond giant was sitting on a rock with her across his knee. Transferring his grip to the back of her neck and pinning her down, he applied the flat of his free palm to the seat of her leopard skin pants.

  ‘Ow!’ Dawn screeched and, the words being punctuated by further slaps and squeaks of pain, went on, ‘Help me, Joar-Fane!’

  ‘You try and you’ll get the same,’ At-Vee warned his wife.

  For a moment, the little Telonga girl stood indecisive. Then she gave a shrug and, eyes bubbling with merriment, said, ‘I’m sorry, sister. I don’t know you. So it’s not my place to interfere.’

  ‘You should have listened to me last night, Dawn,’ At-Vee commented, as the spanking ran its course. ‘I said everything comes to those who wait—and ask for it.’

  However, despite the levity, they all knew that their problems were not at an end. The capture had been successful, but they would have to wait until the quaggas would succumb to being led and that was certain to take a few more days.

  Chapter Six – Die Charole, You Bitch!

  Despite the curses Charole had uttered over yielding to an impulse that had caused her some difficulties, when she looked back, she felt that her luck was still holding out.

  Having made her escape from Bon-Gatah with nothing untoward occurring, Charole had decided against following the suggestions of Elder Eokan immediately. While she was satisfied that he had sufficient ulterior motives to be sincere in his offer of assistance, she considered that something else must take precedence over going directly to Zeh-Gatah. A shrewd strategist and born conspirator, she was aware of the value of negotiating from as strong a position as possible, and she hoped to gather the means to do just that.

  When he had been preparing to betray his superior, Zongaffa the Herbalist had made a large quantity of Thunder Powder and had, almost certainly, prepared a number of “Terrifiers”. In which case, they must be hidden somewhere, and Charole had deduced that the hiding place would be in the vicinity of the late High Priest’s country villa. So she had gone there with the intention of searching for what would be of the greatest help in her bid to return to power.

  That had been five days ago.

  Since then, the Protectress had had cause to regret having made the attempt!

  While conducting the search, Charole had been seen by the one person more than anybody else who had cause to hate her.

  Not only had Elidor of Veet-Gatah been the High Priest’s senior female adherent, she was the one he had hoped would supplant Charole as the Protectress of the Quagga God. However, having suffered defeat at the hands of Dawn of the ‘Earths’—all the more humiliating because the foreigner’s wrists had been manacled—she had fallen from grace. Before she could recover from the broken jaw she had sustained in the fight, Dryaka had formed his alliance with Charole and she was displaced permanently from his favor.

  Obviously, on learning of the High Priest’s death, Elidor had either decided to establish herself as owner of his estate, or had duplicated Charole’s summation with regard to Zongaffa’s treachery. Whatever the reason, she and six male companions had come on the scene while the Protectress was trying to locate the hoard of Thunder Powder. Recognizing her from a distance, despite the changes she had made to her appearance, they had given chase.

  If Charole had had her own quagga as a mount, she would have been able to leave her pursuers far behind during the early stages and lose them at her leisure. As it was, while the banar-gatah stallion circumstances had compelled her to use was an animal of excellent quality it could do no more than maintain roughly the same distance between her and her pursuers as she made for Zeh-Gatah. Naturally, after the original attempt failed to bring them together, neither she nor Elidor’s party were riding at a gallop. Instead, the latter were following her with the aid of an exceptionally competent reader of tracks.

  In spite of having been taught various methods of hiding signs of her passing, Charole did not offer to put any of them into practice. xxx They were all too time-consuming to carry out correctly and anything less, considering the obvious quality of the man doing the tracking, would be futile. Nor, as the advantages were outweighed by other factors, had she kept moving after night had fallen in order to increase her lead and, perhaps, lose her pursuers. In addition to having no wish to tire and possibly ride her stallion into the ground, she had known that the proliferation of carnivores with nocturnal hunting habits, and other dangerous animals, made travelling through the darkness an extremely hazardous undertaking. Sharing her appreciation of the difficulties, Elidor’s party had also halted once the sun went down.

  One worrying point for Charole was that she was prevented from taking the most direct route to her destination. She had been driven northwards by the original chase and was now making a semi-circular swing towards Zeh-Gatah. What was more, the area she had entered shortly before nightfall on the third afternoon was rolling, but not too dense, woodland that fringed the great ‘Lake With Only One Shore’ close to which— although she had estimated it was still some miles away—the city was situated.

  For all Charole’s misgivings, by noo
n on the fifth day of the pursuit, it seemed that her persistence had paid off. Since she had set out that morning, after breakfasting upon the fulsa and stream water which had been her only sustenance since fleeing from Bon-Gatah, she had seen nothing of Elidor’s party. Of course, because of the woodland terrain she was traversing, her view to the rear was extremely limited. However, she was taking comfort from the thought that they would possibly be suffering even more than she was from the reduction of visibility. They would now be forced to rely entirely upon their tracker, which would compel them to move more slowly than she was.

  Even as Charole was returning her gaze to the path ahead, her complacency was shattered in no uncertain fashion. She was going across a fair-sized clearing and, suddenly, found herself surrounded by riders who appeared from concealment all around it. There was even one to her rear, cutting off any slender chance of a retreat. Facing the Protectress was Elidor! Dressed and armed in the same style, except that she did not carry a lance, the woman almost matched Charole in height and dimensions. Although, in healing, the break had left her jaw slightly crooked, she was still sullenly beautiful and about the same age as the Protectress. Nearly as strong and fit, she had attained a well-deserved reputation as a warrior. Lounging on the saddle of her banar-gatah stallion, which was showing just as much evidence of hard travelling as Charole’s leg-weary mount, she had a sword dangling from her right hand.

  ‘There, you see!’ Elidor said, looking with triumphant exultation at the nearest man who was also mounted on a banar-gatah stallion. ‘I told you that she was making for Zeh-Gatah and we could catch her by cutting across this way.’

  ‘You did,’ the warrior agreed.

  ‘So you made a lucky guess for once,’ Charole scoffed, turning the lance in her right hand and throwing it so that the point stuck in the ground by her mount. ‘Now what?’

  Before she started to speak, the Protectress’s thoughts were racing. The bag containing the small sack of ‘Thunder Powder’ and the ‘Terrifiers’ was wrapped with her ‘fire box’ and other belongings in the cloak that was strapped on the cantle of her saddle. Even if they had been readily available, the latter’s fuse cord was not lit. So she had no way of bringing the potent devices into operation. Nor did she consider that the lance, or the throwing spear hanging on the skirt of her saddle, would serve her needs. Her banar-gatah had been too hard pressed over the past few days to make a suitable mount on which to wield the former weapon, and she doubted whether she would be granted an opportunity to draw, much less throw, the latter. There was, she accepted, only one way open to her.

  ‘You took an oath to sacrifice one of the “Earths” to the Quagga God,’ Elidor replied. ‘But we haven’t seen it happen yet. So you have lost His favor and have forfeited your right to act as His Protectress.’

  ‘I’ve yet to be deposed,’ Charole pointed out.

  ‘Your failure and flight from Bon-Gatah did that,’ Elidor declared, after glancing around as if hoping one of her male companions would speak.

  ‘I still have my robes of office,’ Charole countered, indicating the bulky bundle wrapped in the cloak. Acting on Eokan’s advice, she had collected the ceremonial garments before taking her departure. Without them, there can be no new Protectress.’

  ‘Then they must be taken from you,’ Elidor stated, falling into the trap that had been laid for her.

  ‘By whom?’ Charole challenged, swinging her right leg forward and over the saddle horn to jump to the ground. ‘Do you mean to have these six men do it for you?’

  The words gave Elidor no choice over how she must respond. They were directed in a way which she could not ignore. In spite of having the men with her, she knew Mun-Gatah custom required that a dispute of such a nature must be settled between the main participants if they were of the same sex. Persons of the opposite gender were not allowed to interfere, no matter where their loyalties might lie. So a failure to respond to Charole’s imputation of her courage would cause her a serious loss of face. It could even lead the warriors to desert her in the Protectress’s favor.

  For all that, Elidor hesitated instead of acting immediately. While Charole’s failure to make the promised sacrifice had implied a fall from grace, the fact that she still lived, had escaped from the hostile capital city and was apparently going to Zeh-Gatah—which was not her home town—in search of assistance, suggested she had not entirely forfeited the Quagga God’s favor. In which case, dealing with her was not a sinecure. She was too capable a fighter for that.

  ‘Well?’ Charole said derisively, wanting to make sure that the other’s hesitancy did not go unnoticed by her companions. ‘Why don’t you tell them to do what you’re obviously afraid to try?’

  Any slight hope that Elidor might have nourished of evading the confrontation ended with the mocking words. One brief glance at the men informed her of their feelings on the matter. They expected her to accept the challenge. So, yielding to the inevitable, she wondered how she might fight with the best chance of survival.

  Watching Charole stepping away from the banar-gatah and lance, Elidor drew her conclusions. While she was still mounted and her opponent on foot, she realized that the animal between her legs would be unable to respond with its best speed. Like the stallion the Protectress had been riding, it had covered many miles since leaving Dryaka’s country estate. What was more, she had pushed it hard while making for the position between Charole and Zeh-Gatah. Taking all those factors into consideration, she felt that she would lose more than she gained by attacking while still in the saddle.

  ‘All right!’ the brunette ejaculated, making a rapid dismount. Raising her sword, she darted forward with a yell of, ‘Die Charole, you bitch!’

  Showing neither alarm nor any great concern over Elidor’s threat and obvious eagerness to come to grips, the Protectress slid the ivory handled sword from its sheath and advanced to meet her.

  Watching the way in which the women were moving towards each other, the male warriors dismounted. Leaving their gatahs ground hitched by the dangling reins, confident that their own numbers and the noise of the fighting would frighten away any predatory animals who might be lurking in the vicinity, they advanced on foot to obtain closer views of what promised to be a worthwhile engagement. Charole and Elidor were noted for their skill with swords. As there was so little to choose between them, unless something untoward happened, the contest was likely to be a long one.

  Fully trained and competent swordsmen, the warriors were able to form their judgments even before the first blows had been struck. All of them considered that Elidor had one important factor in her favor. As a member of a hunting party whose quarry was aware of their presence, with others to share in keeping watch, and able to light a fire, her rest had been less disturbed than that of the Protectress. Travelling alone and of necessity being obliged to avoid anything that could guide her pursuers to her in the darkness, Charole could have had little sleep for the past four nights and so was much the tireder of the two.

  Sharing her companions’ summation, Elidor was determined to draw all she could from her advantage. So she made no attempt at performing the subtler aspects of swordplay. Although she too had learned from Dryaka the value of the blade’s point and of thrusting rather than using the edge all the time, she concentrated upon merely slashing as rapidly and forcefully as she could. To the watchers, it seemed that she was dominating the action. Certainly she was compelling the Protectress to back away before her attack.

  Equally conscious of the prevailing conditions, Charole had realized that she had never needed to use her feet and brain so much in order to take some of the strain from her right arm. Such was the fury of the brunette’s onslaught that, at first, the Protectress could do nothing more than parry for her life. However, employing all her considerable skill to help ride out the storm, she was content to let her assailant expend most of the effort. The tactics being performed by Elidor would tire her sword hand and deplete the breath in her lungs.

/>   When at last the brunette’s whirlwind assault began to flag, Charole changed to the offensive. She feinted at the others head and, as Elidor’s sword went up for a parry, changed the apparent cut into a lunge. Showing her appreciation of the danger, the brunette sprang hurriedly backwards. Continuing to retire as Charole pressed after her, she made what fencers on Earth called a Maltese cross defensive pattern with her weapon. It was a style of guard that nothing could penetrate. However, particularly with the Protectress continually probing at it in a series of rapid and light feints, such a method was costly in breath and strength.

  Suddenly, realizing the danger from the way she was behaving, Elidor carried her sword up and back for a cut at the top of the Protectress’s skull. Judging that she had time for the maneuver, Charole did not attempt to parry. Instead, bounding rapidly to her left, she executed a swift coup-de-flanc. The blade passed beneath the brunette’s raised right arm, slitting through the silver lamé material of her halter and biting across the flesh below. A little higher and the cut would have rendered her arm useless. As it was, the only result it achieved was to make a shallow gash. What was more, an instant after it was delivered, Elidor’s sword descended to slice away a thin and small strip of skin from Charole’s right thigh. This also failed to do any significant damage.

  There was a rumble of excited comment from the watching men as the Protectress drew the first blood. However, she had inflicted only a minor wound and was repaid by an equally unimportant graze. Charole saw fear flicker momentarily across Elidor’s face, but knew it was only caused by the worry that she might be too seriously injured to continue fighting. Then the brunette was withdrawing so quickly that she almost ran backwards for a few paces. As her opponent followed with an equal rapidity, she ducked below the ivory handled sword as it was directed sideways at her neck and lunged for its owner’s bosom.