Gladiators Of Hapanu

Chapter 13

Blade left behind in the shelter everything they weren't going to need by the river. Both he and Meera could now walk through the Forest like human beings instead of staggering along like pack mules, and they pushed south as fast as Meera could go. When they awoke on the morning of the fourth day, Meera saw water birds above the treetops. She told Blade that they would probably reach the river before nightfall.

The good news made Blade eager to move on. So they started off at once, eating the last of the fruit as they marched. By the time it was full daylight they were almost ready for their first rest stop. As always when they stopped, Blade walked back along the last hundred yards of their trail. He hoped to discover anyone or anything following them too closely. Twice he'd found the footprints of Treemen, and once he'd seen two of them leap into the trees and vanish.

This time Blade saw nothing until he'd nearly covered the hundred yards. Then he stopped abruptly, as his eyes picked out something moving fifty yards farther on into the Forest. It was a branch, but it was moving jerkily and irregularly, as no branch should-particularly when there wasn't enough wind blowing to even stir the leaves. Blade raised his club and spear, then moved toward the jerking branch a step at a time, prodding the vegetation ahead with the spear point as he went.

The moment he saw what was making the branch jerk, Blade went flat on the ground and started scanning the trees. It was a Fak'si hunter, one side of his face a mask of blood and his hands and feet bound crudely but effectively. Half-conscious, he was rolling back and forth. With each roll his shoulder caught the branch and made it jerk.

Treemen! That was Blade's first thought. Then he remembered that he'd never heard of the Treemen binding a victim. No one even knew if they could tie a knot. This man had to be the victim of human enemies. Or was he a victim? Blade examined the man more closely. Apart from the blood on his head, he showed no signs of any injury, not even a cut or a bruise.

It was just possible that an enemy raiding party could surprise a lone Fak'si warrior and take him prisoner without doing him much harm. It wasn't likely, though. Blade's thoughts moved on, steadily and grimly, from doubt to open susicion.

Was this man bait? If he was, who'd put him out, and who was he supposed to trap?

As Blade asked himself these questions, he was studying the trees ahead again. This time he was expecting human silhouettes, and he found what he expected. Deep inside the branches of a squat, spreading tree, two men were waiting.

Now to turn the tables and ambush the ambushers. Blade got down on his belly, as flat to the ground as any snake. He crawled through the shrubbery, trying hard not to disturb a single leaf, until he had a clear shot at the men. He couldn't recognize them or even their tribe, but that didn't matter. It was hard to believe they were Fak'si, and if they were, there was only one reason for them to be here. They were on his trail, to put an end to him and all his plans for helping the Forest People. They were going to kill him in the name of the priests, or tradition, or the Forest Spirit, or plain simple fear.

It amused Blade to think that servants of the priests might be the first victims of the new bows they'd tried to prevent. He smiled, and was still smiling as he rose from cover, nocked an arrow to his bow, drew, and shot.

His sudden appearance made one of the men shout. Then the arrow struck and got a second shout that turned into a scream. Another scream, the sound of cracking branches and rustling leaves, and Blade's victim thudded to the ground. The arrow was deep in his side, and as he rolled about in agony the shaft snapped off.

As it did, the second man came cracking down through the branches, leaping wildly with weapons in both hands. Blade's second arrow whistled over his head, and Blade didn't have time to shoot again. He had to drop the bow, snatch up his spear and club, and meet the man's rush. It was Guno.

Guno's face was twisted with rage and desperation, and his attack was that of a madman. He came in recklessly, swinging wildly but so hard that Blade knew he couldn't let even one of Guno's blows connect. Blade gave ground and let Guno's first half dozen swings land in the air. Then suddenly he turned halfway around and took a few quick steps, as if he was starting to run off in fear. Guno's spear came up as he got set to throw. For just long enough, he was a stationary target. Blade wheeled, hurled his warclub with all his strength, then ducked. Guno flinched as the spear left his hand, and it flew harmlessly over Blade's head.

Guno's flinching didn't save him. The club's ironbound head smashed jaw and one cheek into bloody flesh and bone. Guno staggered, tried to scream, tried to raise his own club, then collapsed as Blade came up and struck him in the stomach with the butt of his spear.

Blade washed some of the blood off Guno's face with water from the gourd at his belt, then waited for the man to catch his breath enough to talk. Blade had a fairly good notion of what was in Guno's mind, but he badly wanted to know more. He and Meera might be out of immediate danger, but what about Swebon? Any plots aimed at Blade would sooner or later also strike at the chief.

Slowly Guno seemed to recover his wits, at least enough to glare up at Blade with the look of a trapped, furious animal. He said nothing, only clasping his shattered jaw with one hand, the blood slowly trickling between his fingers.

«Can you talk?» said Blade sharply.

Silence.

«If you want a clean death, Guno, you'd better talk. Your two friends can't help you, and I'm certainly not interested in keeping you alive. But there are different ways of dying.» He pointed his spear toward Gino's loinguard. «Now-how did you come to follow me, and why?»

Blade had to rip off Guno's loinguard and draw blood with the spear before the man started talking. Then fear of dying like an animal instead of a warrior seemed to loosen his tongue. He was half-incoherent with rage, frustration, and pain, but with prompting from Blade's spear he told his story clearly enough.

One of the priests of the village saw Swebon collecting tools for Blade and guessed at least the most important parts of the chief's plans. He didn't dare challenge Swebon openly, since the chief was much too popular. Instead he went to Guno.

With two trusted comrades, Guno trailed Blade through the Forest to the first camp. He'd planned to attack Blade there, but then had second thoughts. It would be better to wait until Blade finished the work on the new bows, then kill him and Meera. After that he could hide the new bows and return with a tale that Treemen had killed Blade and Meera. No one would doubt him except Swebon, and with the help of the priest Swebon might disappear some night. Then Guno could retrieve the bows, claim them as his own invention, become chief of Four Springs village, and in time hope to rule all the Fak'si-and reward the priest.

Guno expected Blade and Meera to return straight to the village, and was planning to ambush them on the way. Instead they went off toward the river, and it took him a while to pick up their trail. He'd just caught up with them this morning, and Blade knew the rest.

Apparently the priest who'd put Guno on Blade's trail wasn't a simple-minded «Better the Fak'si die than the old ways change» man. He was a much more dangerous sort of opponent-a schemer who wanted to make sure that if the old ways changed, he would get part of the new honor and power.

Blade couldn't help wondering how long the alliance would have lasted. It made him think of an alliance between two rattlesnakes. It would probably have lasted just as long as neither man could figure out a reliable method of eliminating the other. Without Guno as an ally, the priest would be much less dangerous. But he would still be much too dangerous to leave alive in Four Springs village, free to seek new allies against Blade and Swebon.

«Who is your friend the priest?» asked Blade. «You cannot save him by silence. Swebon will cast down all the priests if he does not know which one, and-«

The sudden widening of Guno's eyes and the pad of feet on the grass behind him warned Blade with precious seconds to spare. Blade leaped aside as the man who'd been lying on the ground charged with a knife in one hand. The «binding» of his hands and feet had been as much of a trick as his «head injury.»

As the man charged, Blade caught him in a judo hold and used the man's forward momentum to flip him head over heels. The man was lighter than Blade expected, flew higher, and came down head-first. His neck snapped with a sharp, dry sound and he sprawled with his head at an impossible angle to his shoulders. As he stopped twitching, Guno made a desperate leap for the weapons on the-ground and came up holding a spear.

The weapon nearest to Blade was the dead man's fallen knife. He snatched it up, dropped to one knee as Guno rushed in, and thrust upward. He'd meant only to disarm the man and drive him back, but Guno came on and suddenly Blade's knife was deep in his chest. The spear fell from limp hands, blood gushed out of a gaping mouth, and Guno toppled. The rest of his secrets were gone with him, but at least his ambitions and plots would never be a problem for anyone again.

Blade tried to wipe off some of Guno's blood with a handful of leaves, then walked over to the man he'd hit with the arrow. The arrow was in so deep that the man was already mercifully unconscious from loss of blood. Blade was bending over to give him a quick death when he heard Meera screaming in the distance.

«Blade! Treemen! Treemen! Help!»

Blade whirled, snatched up a spear with one hand and his bow with the other, and ran toward where he'd left Meera. The quiver bounced on his back as he plunged through the Forest at the speed of an Olympic sprinter. Speed was everything now-the Treemen had no way of ambushing him as he moved, but they could easily carry Meera off into the Forest. Then he'd have the nearly impossible task of trailing them.

Meera didn't scream again, but as Blade got closer he heard the sound of branches snapping and leaves rustling as bodies thrashed about. Then a Treeman bellowed, just as Blade burst into the open.

One Treeman was picking Meera up under his left arm. A second was guarding the first one's back, arms spread, teeth bared, apparently ready to fight the whole world. A third was lurching to his feet, face twisted in pain. Meera's spear jutted out of his belly. It wasn't in far enough to kill, but it must be slowing him badly. As Blade appeared, the Treeman reached down to pull the spear out, then froze with his hand on the shaft. The other two Treemen also froze where they stood.

The Treemen's surprise gave Blade all the time he needed. His arms were a blur as he nocked an arrow, drew, and shot the Treeman holding Meera. The arrow went deep into the Treeman's back. He staggered, dropped Meera, took two lurching steps forward, then fell and lay writhing.

As Meera hit the ground she rolled, gripped the shaft of the spear sticking out of the Treeman's belly, and pushed with all her strength. He weighed three times as much as she did but she caught him off-balance. He bent over backward and Meera leaned on the spear, driving it through him until the point dug into the ground. He howled, thrashed wildly, and tried to grab her, but she always managed to stay out of his reach without letting go of the spear.

The sudden attack on his two comrades kept the third Treeman too paralyzed to move. Blade nocked another arrow and put it squarely into his heart. As he hit the ground, the first Treeman Blade hit stopped writhing and lay still on the bloody grass. The Treeman with Meera's spear in his belly was still struggling, but more feebly with each moment. Blade walked over, gently pulled Meera away, then brought his club down on the dying Treeman's skull.

As the last Treeman went limp, Meera sank to her knees at Blade's feet, shaking all over. She pressed her face against him and threw both arms around his waist. As tenderly as if he'd been handling a child, Blade lifted Meera to her feet and held her against him until she stopped shaking. Finally her breathing slowed. She even managed to smile as she wiped her face and tied her clothes together as well as she could.

«Your new bow-it does what you promised!»

Blade nodded. «I was hoping for the best, but I'm surprised things turned out this well. I know how to make such bows easily enough with English woods, but the woods in your Forest are new to me. I couldn't have worked so fast or done so well without your help.»

Blade told her about his battle with Guno. She listened, saying nothing but obviously not much surprised. Blade finished with, «Now let's collect the bodies and make things look right, in case anyone should come along this way. I don't want anyone to know this wasn't just another battle between hunters and Treemen.»

The job of covering their tracks was long and bloody. The bodies of Guno and his men had to be brought to where the Treemen lay. Then all the wounds had to be altered with knife and spear until they looked normal. Finally all the bodies had to be arranged naturally, as if they'd fallen where they lay in the fighting.

By the time the job was done, Blade was covered from head to foot in blood and sweat. Meera told him he looked gruesome and smelled worse. Unfortunately the nearest water was the river, still a few hours away. The insects were already swarming around, impartially settling on Blade and the dead bodies. The only thing to do was move on as quickly as possible.

They started picking up their equipment. Most of it had survived the fight, although the iron pot was cracked from being thrown against a rock. Blade thought he might be able to fix the pot, and if he couldn't there might be villages or hunting parties where he could find another.

«If I can't do anything else, I can always try hollowing out a section of log. I can fill it with what we want to boil, then heat stones over a fire and drop them into the liquid. I've seen it work with soup, so maybe it will work with the Shield of-«

Wssst-whunk! An arrow stood vibrating in the trunk of a tree a yard to Blade's right. It was short and thick, with a blue shaft and elaborately carved fins. Blade had never seen one, but he'd heard enough descriptions to know what he was seeing.

The Sons of Hapanu were within bowshot.

Blade's eyes met Meera's and he knew that she was thinking the same thing he was. If we get deep into the Forest, we're safe. Otherwise-

Blade didn't like turning his back and running from any opponent, but he liked even less fighting when he didn't know the odds. They turned, and as they did five more arrows hissed out of the trees. All of them flew low, at no more than knee height, and four of them missed. The fifth drove through Meera's left calf, making her jump and scream in surprise and pain. She went to her knees, and Blade turned to help her. I'll have to carry her, he thought, and that will-

Before he could complete the thought, armed soldiers of the Sons of Hapanu swarmed out of the trees. At first glance there seemed to be hundreds of them, and even at a second look there were at least forty. Too many to fight, said Blade's common sense, but Blade's fighting instincts weren't listening to his common sense. He and Meera couldn't hope to get away, so the only thing to do was kill as many of these bastards as possible before they went down themselves!

Blade hit the ranks of the Sons of Hapanu like a battering ram, so hard and so fast that he would have done damage if he'd been completely unarmed. As it was, he carried a spear in one hand and a club in the other, and he killed a man with each one in the first moment of the fight. Another man came at him now, shield up and sword thrusting. Blade struck the shield down with his club, crippled the man's sword arm with one spear thrust, then drove the spear into his throat. The man jerked so violently the spear was torn out of Blade's hands, then reeled away, dying on his feet. Blade tried to follow the man to retrieve his spear, found a soldier with elaborately-decorated armor in his path, and started fighting the man with club against sword.

The man's sword opened a gash along Blade's ribs as Blade's club came down on the man's shoulder. He dropped his sword, Blade raised the club to smash his skull, then what felt like half a dozen men tackled Blade around the legs. He went down on top of them, still lashing out with his fists as he fell, satisfied to feel his fists connect and hear men grunt and cry out.

Then there were more men looming over him, hoisting a stark-naked Meera into the air. She plunged down out of sight among the men and screamed as if she was being torn apart. Blade echoed her screams with a bull's roar, then something came crashing down on his skull. Blackness filled Blade's eyes, then his ears. Pain roared through him and tossed him like a wind. Then at last the blackness swallowed him.