by Ryder Stacy
“Just pretend you’re a hero being welcomed home rather than a prisoner about to be acupunctured with arrows—and you’ll feel fine,” the Chinese Freefighter said to Detroit without turning his head.
“Yeah, feel better already,” Detroit groaned. He just didn’t feel like dying today. At last the Indians grew tired of the public display and the prisoners were taken to the central square filled with large bonfires which were kept burning all the time. A constant stream of young buckskinned squaws kept coming out of the surrounding woods carrying armloads of dead wood and branches to feed the flames. Medicine men danced around the fires wearing whole buffalo heads—horns, fake eyeballs, swollen white tongues and all, the thick brown fur necks falling almost to their stomachs. They yelled out the deep magical incantations of their ancestors’ spirits and called on the buffalo gods to grant their wishes. Skinny dogs ran barking around the Freefighters’ legs as they were taken down from their ’brids and led to a long horizontal hitching pole where their bound hands were promptly tied behind their backs along the thirty-foot length.
The victorious braves dismounted and gathered in front of them, some of their feather headdresses hanging down nearly to their ankles. Hunting knives dangled from their rawhide belts and intricately ornamented rifles from their shoulders. They seemed to delight in intimidating their captives and stared at them, laughing, turning to one another with cool self-congratulations. They pointed to the two women who were tied side by side and laughed louder and more coarsely, as scores of lips were licked in anticipation.
The young chief who had demanded their surrender back in the valley walked over to Nielson, untied him, and began communicating with the hand signs again.
“He wants to know who we are,” Nielson said to Rockson who stood tied, two men down from, him. “He’s Shom-ga-na.”
“Tell him everything—tell him the truth,” Rock said. “Our only chance is to get these fellows on our side. Tell him we’re Americans like him and his people and our only enemy is the Reds. Shit! Tell him we’re happy to make his acquaintance!”
Nielson gasped in horror, trying to figure out how to communicate such metaphysical concepts as “enemy” and “truth,” but began frantically wiggling away with both hands as the rest of the tribe looked on mystified by the captive’s motions.
“He says he and his people—they are the real Americans. That the white man came and stole his land and nearly destroyed it. Now his people, the New Sioux Nation, will take it all back again.”
“Tell him he’s right,” Rockson yelled over. “Tell him every fucking word he’s saying is true. That our ancestors made many mistakes and committed injustices. But now we face a threat that will destroy us all—even the gods in the clouds.”
Again Nielson did his hand tricks and after much asking of questions back and forth with fingers, the Freefighter linguistics expert again spoke out to Rockson, his voice becoming more alarmed with every exchange.
“He says not only did we screw up the whole world—but that our coming across the sacred plains angered the Volcano God and it erupted because of us. And Rock,” Nielson gulped audibly, “he says they have to sacrifice us to the God-of-Fire now to set things right again.”
“Great,” Rockson said, spitting out a gob of disgusted foam into the hard-packed black soil. “Out of the volcano—into the frying pan.”
One of the older chiefs, whose face was like a prune filled with a thousand lines carved into the dark red skin, yelled out impatiently from a deerskin throne a hundred feet away. Ten other top Indian war chiefs sat on slightly lower chairs on each side of him and waited, stone-faced, for the proceedings to begin. Three gigantic braves with muscles rippling like steel cables along their arms came and untied the captive on the right side of the pole. It was Thalsberg, one of the youngest men Rock had chosen for the trip due to his sharp-shooting ability and his knowledge of Russian fortification architecture. The man tried to kick out at the painted braves but they took a few blows and grabbed his legs, trussing him up with tight rawhide bindings carrying him away from the pole and over to the largest bonfire which burned dead center in the cleared square, fed a constant flow of fuel from a human conveyor belt of squaws that stretched off to the woods a hundred yards away.
Thalsberg writhed in the Indians’ grasp like a creature possessed, twisting his hips, whipping his head around trying to smash them. But all was to no avail. The braves walked with their human package right up to the edge of the roaring fire, twenty feet in diameter, flames rising high into the darkening sky as evening fell. Rock yelled to Nielson, who made signs for ‘no.’
The Indians pulled their glistening, sweat-coated arms all the way back and with a heave, threw the struggling Freefighter 10 feet into the flames. He crashed down onto the burning timbers and coals and screamed out so loud that some of the skinny dogs that were watching it all yelped in fear and darted off sideways.
The coals and flames ripped into Thalsberg’s body like ravenous teeth and set the skin aboil. From their vantage point, every one of the prisoners could clearly see the flesh turn red at first, then brown, then black as it burst into an oily flame. And the man’s face—the lips pulled back so far that the gums and all the teeth were visible as the mouth stretched open wide enough to emit the ear-shattering screams that came out. But not for long. Fire, though the most painful way of dying, kills one relatively quickly. Within fifteen seconds the screams stopped and the body in the cool forgetfulness of trauma shock, ceased its mad jerkings. All the flesh was quickly consumed by the intense heat of the roaring human oven and the bones poked through, the marrow bubbling out the ends and dropping in sizzling pops onto the logs below.
Rock’s eyes were moist as he realized that he had made the wrong choice—that they were all going to die like that—and he was responsible. It was one of the very few times in his life that the Doomsday Warrior wished he was dead so he wouldn’t have to see what was going to happen next.
One of the junior chiefs, a one-eyed badly scarred man standing at the front ranks of the crowds grouped around the square moved forward suddenly toward the prisoners. He headed right for Kim and looked down at her with bestial lust. Then he reached forward and, pulling her field jacket open, ripped her sweatshirt off her body. She stood there, trying to be brave as the cruel face, half its teeth missing, took in the naked breasts standing out proudly in the cool night air. The Indian reached both hands forward and clamped them over the soft globes of flesh, squeezing them so hard that Kim cried out in pain.
Rona, tied next to her, had no love lost for her rival, but if anyone was going to bash her little head in it would be a Wallender, not a foul-breathed, scar-faced Indian. She pulled back her right leg as far as it would go and swung it forward, putting her hips and all her body into the motion. The long leg and booted foot flew out like a striking rattler in a blur of black and caught the brave just beneath the ribs. He wheezed out hard and then crumpled up in a heap on the ground, gasping for air. The nearby Indians couldn’t believe their eyes at first—that a mere woman could unleash a blow that took Cha-wamga, one of their toughest men nearly out. But the incredulity turned to rage within seconds and they started forward on Cha-wamga’s command, reaching for their long blades, ready to take care of them all right here and now.
“Tell them I challenge their gods,” Rock screamed over to Nielson, who was looking on in horror, debating whether to take on the advancing ranks as only his hands were free.
“Tell him I demand the right of a warrior to take the test of the gods—you hear me?” Rock screamed. Not knowing what the hell Rockson was talking about, Nielson frantically tried to get the idea across to the Indian he had been signalling with, who stood, arms folded impassively across his painted chest, two yards in front of him. Shom-ga-na looked at Nielson’s hands almost in spite of himself, and as the message penetrated his mind he let out a yell, ran in front of the pole-tied prisoners, and held up his arms, stopping the braves with knives in their hands
and blood in their eyes from going a step further. He turned toward the great Chief Bright Sun, the man who had brought the tribe back to the old ways, the good ways, and yelled out a stream of words. The chief’s face grew even tighter, his lips settling into a very displeased look as the sub-chiefs on each side muttered angrily, slamming their fists onto the armrests of their buffalo-skin mini-thrones. The crowd whispered to one another, suddenly subdued and angry.
The Sioux communicator turned back toward Nielson and sent out patterns of signs with quick stiff fingers.
“Rock, I don’t know what the hell your demand means or why it worked—but he told me they’re not going to kill us now and that the initiator of the challenge should come forward—to meet his maker.”
“Good work!” Rock said. It was the chance he had been waiting for—an out, an opportunity to pit his skills against theirs. The sign-language Indian walked forward and cut Rockson and Nielson free from the pole, taking the wrist thong in his hands and pulling the Doomsday Warrior forward. He motioned for Nielson to follow and the three of them walked through the buzzing, threatening masses of braves until they reached Chief Bright Sun and his ten-man ruling council, where they stopped. The top chief spat out a few quick questions to the Indian translator who related them to Nielson.
“He wants to know how you know about the challenge of the gods,” the clearly terrified Nielson said. “How the hell did you know, anyway?”
“All tribes the world over have challenges—ways to avoid certain death. It’s like an escape valve for the common man—some method in lieu of a system of law for him to have at least a shot at getting out of trouble. I took a chance—what’d we have to lose? But don’t tell him that. Tell him,” Rock said, pausing, glancing over at the wizened old face that glared at him suspiciously, wondering what all the talk was about, “tell him that I have great magic, powerful explosive magic. That I made the volcano erupt because I wanted it to. That how else could we have come from that direction unless I was a top magic man.”
Nielson looked confused.
“Just tell him all that—don’t worry how it sounds.”
The nervous Freefighter made his hand-signals again—he and his Sioux counterpart quickly understanding one another’s gestures now and communicating in seconds with a flurry of fingers and palms. Rockson kept his eyes fixed firmly on the top chief’s face to see his reaction as the words were translated. The prune-faced man’s pupils seemed to dilate for a second as if from fear—but the old man had been through too many poker games of nerves with his own upstarts and would-be assassins to buckle under Rockson’s gaze. He looked straight back, twin orbs of shiny black beneath folds of red leathery skin focused on Rockson without a flicker of emotion. But the Doomsday Warrior knew that he had affected him—knew that magic, superstition, their fears of things they didn’t understand were his ace in the hole. And that he would play it to the hilt.
As the top chiefs conferred, arguing back and forth, Rockson lifted his bound arms to the sky and yelled out his own incantations to the white man’s gods. The Indians stopped talking for a moment and looked on in consternation.
“How much woooood
Could a woodchuck chuuuuck
If a woodchuck couulllld
Chuck wood, chuck wood, chuck wood.”
Rockson sang in long, drawn-out vowels, snapping his teeth together hard on all the consonants so that the entire thing sounded like an angry call to the demons of the darkness. The gulley-faced chief seemed to sink even deeper into the folds of animal skin that surrounded him. Rockson kept on with the mad chantings, stamping his feet up and down in a makeshift dance, swinging his tied hands around in front of him in wide concentric circles. The other Freefighters, though tied and marked for imminent death, could barely suppress their laughter at the Doomsday Warrior’s remarkable theatrics.
The chiefs conferred again—all of them looking worried now—and then apparently came to some sort of decision as they stopped talking and stared at Rockson as if he was a hideous bug that had crawled out from under a slime-coated log. The translator walked back over to Nielson and the two went at it again with gusto. After a minute, Nielson turned to the Doomsday Warrior.
“Well, you’ve got your wish, Rock. The Challenge-of-the-Buffalo, as they call it. Whatever it is—you’re going to get a chance to find out right now.”
“Thanks, Nielson—whatever happens,” Rock said softly. “You did good, real good.”
“Rock, one more thing. I think they’re a little afraid of you now. That woodchuck tune and your praying stuff stirred ’em up. Some of the sign language that the translator was using had connotations of—madman from the skies or lunatic eagle with wings of fire—I don’t know—something. But whatever you’re doing—is definitely psyching ’em out.”
Four hulking braves appeared and hoisted Rockson, two on a side, and carried him to the center of a circle about fifty feet in diameter where they deposited him roughly on the dirt. The Doomsday Warrior looked around curiously, wondering just what the hell was going to happen next—and started to work his hands completely free so he could take on whatever it was. From out of a thirty-foot-high teepee with the skulls of buffalo surrounding it like a fence came a whole crew of the biggest of the young braves—and over the tops of their bodies—full buffalo heads with eyes, fur, and horns as long and sharp as daggers. The ten Sioux holding aloft bludgeon-sized tomahawks, quickly came over to the circle and lined up on the perimeter until they were evenly distributed around Rockson. Then they came in slowly, ever closer, for the kill.
The Doomsday Warrior gulped, looked up for a split second toward the sky—launching an appeal to a—hopefully—compassionate God who he hoped was in a good mood today—and wriggled his flexible mutant’s-hands free of the leather thongs. This was not going to be easy. No—he couldn’t doubt himself, couldn’t think about getting them all at once. Just one at a time, that’s all—one at a time. Or so the little pep talk he gave himself went. Until the entire group came charging forward, their buffalo heads pointed straight ahead, polished curved horns reaching out a yard or more toward his flesh, tomahawks flailing.
Rock shot between two of them, kicking the legs out from under one brave as he went and slamming the buffalo head down onto the rock-strewn ground with a thump. He slid behind the body and down, so that though the crowd of hundreds of Sioux who stood around could see where he was, for just a few seconds the horned braves who had sped forward, butting at the air trying to rip the white-skin, didn’t realize that their prey had ducked them. Rock slid his hands down the groaning Indian’s side and felt a handle. He ripped it free and, with something approaching joy, saw that it was a long double-edged hunting knife, solid and as well-balanced as a small sword. Someone up there liked him, or at least wanted to draw the contest out a bit. He jabbed the fallen brave; a deep twisting blow. One down. The Doomsday Warrior thought for the sheerest second of dashing over to free his imprisoned team—but quickly took in the mob of Indians standing all around the open field in the center of the encampment—and thought better of it. They’d rip him apart like a snar-lizard on a deer. There was only one way he, or the others were going to get out of this damned thing alive. That was by killing every one of the bastards—who were just realizing that their prey had vanished. Before the 9 warriors left standing could turn, Rockson ran several yards toward the tightened circle and attacked from the rear. He lunged almost with a fencing motion and plunged the sixteen-inch knife into the back of the closest Sioux brave. The razor-sharp sliver of steel slid into the flesh like butter and severed one side of the man’s spinal cord. He fell to the ground as if he’d never been born, unable to move a muscle though his eyes still twisted and turned inside the paralyzed skull as if searching frantically for memories of the life he was about to leave. The buffalo heads were obviously impeding their vision. There was a chance after all.
The rest, realizing their charge had missed its mark, turned to find the crazy white man who had
dared to challenge the horns of the buffalo—from which no man in their history had escaped. Rock caught the closest brave, who leapt madly forward trying to split Rock’s mutant-skull with his tomahawk. With a snapping roundhouse kick as the Indian swung and he ducked, Rock’s booted foot slammed into the brave’s groin, squashing the testicles to a bloody pancake. No need to kill him, he was down for the duration, scrunched up in foetal position.
The Doomsday Warrior suddenly felt a stabbing pain in his back and spun around just in time to avoid the full thrust of one of the ivory-colored horns that were being head-speared at him. The bearer of the murderous tidings flew past, taking some of Rock’s blood away on the sharp prong. But as the Sioux dug his feet into the ground to turn, the Doomsday Warrior’s blade descended through the flea-bitten flap of buffalo hide over his shoulders and into the brave’s neck. Again the knife’s aim was true. The top side of the double-edged weapon cut along the throat’s nerve ganglia, the blood vessels. Rock pulled the knife out, dripping red. The Indian was stopped like a pickup truck out of gas and slammed forward, the buffalo helmet falling off to reveal the man’s head hanging by spurting arteries, in his neck a gaping hole of bloody muscle. Hands over his throat, the Sioux flopped around the sandy circle like a fish out of water, no longer a threat to anyone, gargling blood as he waited to die.
Rock thought for a moment of grabbing the fallen buffalo mask which lay at his feet. But he had no idea of how to use the thing—besides, it would only slow him down. As deadly as the long horns were, wearing the masks was obviously cutting the Indians’ mobility and vision considerably. Presumably no one who had faced them before had been able to move fast enough to avoid those goring horns. And once securely impaled—it was all over. Speed—that was all he had—and the ability to fight like a demon. A pair of horns came at him from the side, catching Rockson slightly off balance. Seeing he had no time, the Doomsday Warrior, instead of trying to evade the attack, took it head on. As the Sioux slammed into his belly, Rock eased back and grabbed hold of both horns with an iron grip. Using the brave’s own mass and speed, Rockson let himself be pushed backwards. He hit the ground on his back and pulled the Indian forward and over, kicking up into the man’s chest with all his might. Buffalo head and owner went flying past, landing two yards behind Rock where the Indian tried to pull free of the now-confining weapon.
