The Chieftan

CHAPTER 16

“Keep behind me,” said the gladiator.

Janina, the rope on her neck, crouched down, behind him.

The gladiator stood with his back to a large rock. There was a clearing here, in the forest, and several such outcroppings.

“Abandon me, Master,” Janina had begged.

But he had turned about, in anger, and cuffed her to silence.

She had not even requested permission to speak.

To be sure, he had not made a practice of requiring this deference of Janina.

She had then knelt at his feet and gratefully kissed them.

He had seen shadows in the forest, about them.

Shortly thereafter he had come to the open place, and had gone to the rock, a large, high, broad rock, where he had turned about and placed himself as he now stood.

There had been more blasts of horns, some doubtless summoning blasts, others perhaps signaling that the quarry had been brought to bay, and then, in a few minutes, the shadows among the trees, darknesses among darknesses, had become numerous.

Nothing emerged from the forest.

The gladiator sat down, cross-legged, then, waiting.

He picked up pebbles, after a time, and threw them about.

Janina continued to crouch behind him, eyeing the forests.

Then, something like a quarter of an hour later, a man emerged from the forest. He had a leather headband. He was clad in skins. There was a large ax tied across his back.

He sat down, also cross-legged, back near the trees. He was some twenty yards from the gladiator.

After a time the gladiator called to him. “Can you understand my speech?”

“Yes,” said the man.

After a time the man called to the gladiator. “You are Drisriak.”

“No,” said the gladiator.

“You have their weapons,” said the man.

“I am not Drisriak,” said the gladiator.

“There are too many of us for you to kill,” said the man.

“I mean you no harm,” said the gladiator.

“We have bowmen,” said the man. “A hundred arrows, in an instant, could strike you.”

“If you are marksmen, only one would be needed,” said the gladiator.

There was an angry sound from the forest behind the man, and he lifted his hand, to silence it.

“You are bold, Drisriak,” said the man.

“I am not Drisriak,” said the gladiator.

“You have not come for the tribute?”

“No,” said the gladiator.

“We keep our produce, our pelts, our women, for ourselves,” said the man.

“I mean you no harm,” said the gladiator. “I shall put my weapons aside.”

“Only a fool disarms himself,” said the man.

The gladiator very slowly, very carefully, unslung the Telnarian rifle and put it to the side. He, too, undid his belt and placed it to the side, with its holstered fire pistol, and the sheathed knife.

“You are without ammunition,” said the man.

“You are discerning,” said the gladiator.

“Why do you not try to threaten us,” asked the man, “because you are somehow without your ship, without your armor, without usable weapons?”

“I am not Drisriak.”

“What is your people?”

“I have no people,” said the gladiator.

“Everyone has a people,” said the man.

“No,” said the gladiator. “In the empire there are millions who are alone, who have no people.”

“I have heard of the empire,” said the man.

“It is far away,” said the gladiator.

“Who are you?” asked the man.

“I am called ‘Dog,’ “said the gladiator.

“That is an animal,” said the man.

“Yes,” said the gladiator.

“Is that your true name?”

“I do not think I have a true name.”

“You are a slave?”

“No.”

“What are you?” asked the man.

“I am a peasant,” said the gladiator.

“No,” said the man. “You are Drisriak.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The woman,” he said.

The gladiator was silent.

“You have her naked, with a rope on her neck,” he said.

“Yes,” said the gladiator.

“That is no peasant’s woman,” said the man. “She is beautiful. She is beautiful enough to be a tribute girl.”

The gladiator was silent.

“That is a slave-block woman,” said the man.

“All women are slave-block women,” said the gladiator.

There was assent to this from the forest.

“That is a Drisriak’s woman,” said the man.

“No,” said the gladiator.

“She is beautiful enough to be a Drisriak’s woman,” said the man.

“Then their women must be very beautiful,” said the gladiator.

“They are,” said the man.

“You seem not fond of the Drisriaks,” said the gladiator.

“We conceal ourselves in the forest from them,” said the man.

The gladiator shrugged.

“Where is your ship, the others?”

“We are alone. There is no ship.”

“How came you here?”

“We fled the captured imperial vessel, the Alaria, in an escape capsule. It brought us here. The capsule is lost to us. It was by the river.”

“Who took your vessel?”

“The fleet of Ortog, who is an Ortung.”

“Ortog is a prince of the Drisriaks,” said the man. He spat to the side.

“His house is secessionist,” said the gladiator.

“Who, then, will come for the tributes?”

“Will any come?”

“They have.”

“Who?”

“Ortog, for the Drisriaks,” said the man.

“Perhaps there is an end now, to such things,” said the gladiator.

“There is never an end to such things,” said the man.

“But you are concealed in the forests.”

“They will come,” said the man.

“Then you must fight.”

“They can destroy the forests,” said the man.

“They have such power?”

“Yes.”

They were then silent for a time.

“You are not Drisriak?” said the man, finally.

“No,” said the gladiator.

“Give us the woman,” said the man. “You can then go.”

“No,” said the gladiator.

Janina crept more closely to him.

“You would give your life for a woman?” he asked.

The gladiator did not respond.

“She is a slave, is she not?” asked the man.

“Yes,” said the gladiator.

“She can be bought and sold, like a pig,” said the man.

“Yes,” said the gladiator.

“You would give your life for her?”

Again then was the gladiator silent.

“We can take her,” said the man. “We are many. You are one.”

“I gather that honor does not exist in the forests,” said the gladiator.

“It is only in the secrecy of the forests, hidden away, that honor can exist in these times!” said the man, angrily, rising to his feet.

The gladiator, too, then, rose to his feet.

“We will buy her,” said the man. “Two pelts of the black wolf!”

“She is not for sale.”

“Three,” said the man.

“No,” said the gladiator.

“But you might, in honor, give her away,” said the man.

“True,” said the gladiator.

Janina crept even more closely to the gladiator.

“Give her to us,” said the man.

“No,” said the gladiator.

“Give us the pistol, the rifle,” said the man.

“No,” said the gladiator.

“But you claim they are without ammunition.”

“That is true.”

“Give them to us.”

“No.”

The man then removed the ax from his back. The gladiator, not taking his eyes from him, reached down and picked up the staff he had cut.

At the same tune, from the forest, emerging into the clearing, came some seventy to eighty men. Behind them, now detectable among the trees, were others.

“There are so many, Master!” said Janina.

“Yes,” he said.

The men continued to emerge from the forest.

“Master,” moaned Janina.

Then the gladiator and the kneeling slave were muchly enclosed, on three sides.

Altogether there may have been some three hundred to three hundred and fifty men. They carried a variety of weapons, most spears, some bows, some swords, some axes.

“Give me to them, Master!” said Janina.

“No,” said the gladiator.

“Master!” protested Janina.

Angrily he lashed back with the back of his left hand, striking her from her knees, flinging her back to the rock behind them, where she turned, and then half-knelt, half lay, bleeding, a chastised property.

“Clear a place,” said the man with the headband, stepping back a few feet.

Men parted.

“You would match an ax to a staff?” asked the gladiator.

“Cut a staff,” said the man.

A fellow left, to go into the woods. In a few moments he returned, with a stout, trimmed branch.

“Your staff,” said the man with the headband, “is too long, too thick, too unwieldy.”

But he did not know the strength of the gladiator, that he could wield such a thing as a lesser man might have a stick.

His ax handed to another, the man in the headband hefted the staff just cut for him. It was springy, and green. It would have something of the resiliency of a whip, with something of the lash of such an object. It would not be likely to break, unless struck with incredible force.

A wide circle was traced in the dirt, there in the clearing. The men from the forest lined the circle. Janina, the rope unwound from her neck, it then again serving as a leash, was pulled to the edge of the circle, where she was knelt down. The leash was shortened, by looping, so that, as she knelt, the fist of her leash holder was but a foot from her neck.

The staves were crossed.

“Begin!” called a man, striking upward with the butt of his spear, with a sharp crack separating the staves.

The gladiator stood in the center of the circle, his staff not lifted, in no defensive posture.

The man with the headband moved about him, and the gladiator turned, to follow him.

The man with the headband feinted, and then again, but the gladiator made no move to counter a possible blow, nor to initiate one of his own.

Then the butt of the man’s staff thrust at him.

It was a tentative, exploratory touch. But it left its mark. “He fears to fight,” said a man at the side. The man with the headband then struck the gladiator a round blow. Men cried out. Such a blow might have felled a lesser man.

“He is strong,” marveled a man.

The man with the headband then, perhaps as astonished as the others, struck the gladiator again, this time even harder.

“Are you weak, Astubux?” jeered a man.

In fury then the man with the headband again struck the gladiator, but it was as though he might be smiting an inert, natural thing, the rock, a tree.

“Aiii,” marveled a man.

Then the man with the headband, whose name was Astubux, again struck the gladiator, as hard as he might.

But, again, the gladiator did not lose his footing. He hardly flinched. But the stripes on his body, the rising of the dark welts, evidenced the authenticity of the blows.

“Fight! Fight!” screamed Astubux. “Are you a coward?” he asked.

The gladiator’s eyes, for a moment, were frightening to read. In them, but scarcely detectable, there was suddenly suggested something terrible. It was like a movement in a dark forest, one perhaps of some dreadful beast, one best left unaroused.

Astubux stepped back.

The gladiator eyed him.

Then the strange thing, fleeting, terrible, in the eyes was gone. It was as though the beast had turned away.

Astubux rushed forward, striking down with the staff, but this time the blow was simply blocked, smartly, as was the next, and the next. This the gladiator had decided. Then the staves were braced against one another and the gladiator, step by step, forced Astubux toward the edge of the circle, where men, in awe, drew back. But he did not force him from the circle. He forced him three times to its perimeter, and each time let him return to the center. Astubux was now wide-eyed, and sweating. Then the gladiator pressed down on Astubux’s staff and Astubux, in the center of the circle, was forced to his knees. Then the gladiator drew back the great staff and smote down, breaking the staff of Astubux. Astubux tried to move backward but was forced by the butt of the gladiator’s staff to his back. Then, for a moment, the beast appeared once more in the gladiator’s eyes, as he lifted his staff, like a spear. Then, again, it was gone. He drove the staff downward. It sank six inches into the soil beside Astubux’s head.

“Be pleased I did not choose to fight,” said the gladiator. He then turned about, and left the circle.

Astubux scrambled back out of the circle, and stood, outside it, breathing heavily.

The man at the edge of the circle who was holding the leash of Janina, it muchly looped, pulled her to her feet by it and led her to the gladiator. He placed the loops of the leash in his hand. The gladiator then wound the leash, again, as it had been before, about the neck of Janina. She then knelt beside him, the coils of rope on her neck, acknowledged his.

“What people are you?” asked the gladiator.

“We are the Wolfungs,” said Astubux, “the remnants of one of the five tribes of a once mighty people, one long since scattered, as legend has it, about the worlds.”

“And what people was that?” inquired the gladiator.

“The forest folk,” said Astubux. This is the same people, we might note, or so it seems from the records, which were later to appear in so many of the chronicles as little more than a legend of terror, that people known more generally as the Vandals, or Vandalii. We have already touched on certain difficulties in connection with the etiology of the name.

“And what are the other tribes?” asked the gladiator, for he was suddenly keenly interested in this matter.

“They may no longer exist,” said Astubux.

“What were they then?” asked the gladiator.

“The Darisi, the Haakons, the Basungs, and the parent tribe, the largest and fiercest of all the tribes, the Otungs.”

“Ortog believed me to be an Otung,” said the gladiator.

“Why?” asked Astubux.

“I do not know,” said the gladiator.

“Who are you?” asked Astubux.

“I do not know who I am,” said the gladiator.

“If you are an Otung,” said Astubux, “then they have not perished.”

“We would be of kindred peoples,” said a grizzled fellow.

“I do not know who I am,” said the gladiator. “I am only a peasant.”

“If you are of the Otungs,” said the grizzled fellow, “you are not a peasant, you are a warrior, a warrior among warriors, a warrior of a race of warriors.”

“No,” said the gladiator, shaking his head. “I am only a peasant.”

At that moment there was a terrifying crashing, and breaking and roaring in the forest. The very earth shook. Some hundreds of yards away flames leaped upward. A moment later smoke rose from the trees.

“It is the sign of the Drisriaks!” cried a man.

“They have found us!” cried another.

“There is no escaping from them!” cried another.

“Come!” said Astubux to the gladiator. He, followed by the gladiator and several of the other men, climbed the tall rock, from the summit of which they could survey the forest, for miles about. Janina, too, followed.

“There! See!” said Astubux, pointing.

A broad stream of fire, perhaps a mile in width, as though from the stars themselves, poured down into the forest.

“It is the sign of the Drisriaks!” said Astubux.

“No!” said a man. “It is different! Look!”

The broad swath of fire was being intelligently directed. It was carving, in the forest, a sign, one which the gladiator had seen before. Indeed, it had been on the armor which he had discarded. It was on the buckle of the belt, which he had left below, with the empty fire pistol and the sheathed knife. It had been, too, on the vessels of the Ortungen fleet.

“That, I think,” said the gladiator, “is the sign of Ortog, or of the Ortungs.”

“It is not the sign of the Drisriaks,” said a man, studying the pattern of flame and smoke.

“Ortog, as I understand it,” said the gladiator, “has left the house of the Drisriaks.”

“But he comes, as before, for the tribute, as he had before, for the Drisriaks,” said a man.

“I think so,” said the gladiator.

“Only to be gathered now for himself,” said the grizzled fellow.

“It would seem so,” said the gladiator.

“Their envoys will be at the village in a few days,” said Astubux, glumly.

“What will you do?” asked the gladiator.

“We will pay,” said Astubux. “What else is there to do?”

“Who is your chieftain?” asked the gladiator.

“We have no chieftain,” said Astubux.

“How can that be?” asked the gladiator.

“The Drisriaks kill our chieftains,” said Astubux.

“It is their way,” said the grizzled warrior.

“Now none will be chieftain,” said Astubux.

“Who would be so?” asked another.

“What are spears to the power of the Drisriaks?” asked another.

“And thus they deprive you of leadership?” asked the gladiator.

“And our manhood,” said another, bitterly.

“To the loss of such one might prefer death,” said the gladiator.

He recalled a courtroom, and an arena, far away.

“We have no leader,” said a man.

“Astubux speaks for us,” said a man.

“Yes,” said another.

“It is he who deals with the envoys,” said another.

“To my dishonor,” said Astubux.

“You must proclaim a chieftain,” said the gladiator.

“That he may die, that we then may all die?” said a man.

“It is a long time since one has been lifted on the shields,” said a man.

“You are free to go,” said Astubux.

They stood on the summit of that high, bare rock, and looked out upon the forest, where, in a roar of smoke and fire, in long lines, each a mile in width, burned into the forest itself, there blazed the sign of Ortog.

“See how they announce their arrival,” said a man.

“See how they insult us,” said another.

“I am not pleased with this,” said the gladiator.

“It has nothing to do with you,” said a man.

“It is our grief, not yours,” said Astubux.

“It should not be your grief, but your provocation,” said the gladiator.

“It is no concern of yours,” said Astubux.

“If I should be somehow of Otung blood,” said the gladiator, “would we not be kindred?”

“Yes,” said a man.

“And would this insult not then be done to me, as well?” asked the gladiator.

“Yes,” said a man.

“I do not accept it,” said the gladiator.

“I do not understand,” said a man.

“You are a peasant,” said Astubux.

“What is a people with no chieftain?” asked the gladiator.

“It is no people,” said a man.

“A wolf with no head, with no eyes, with no will,” said another.

“A beast that sleeps,” said a man.

“You,” said the gladiator to a man standing nearby. “Go below and bring here, to the summit of this rock, the bundle of clothing with my things.”

The man seemed startled for a moment, but then he turned about and went down the escarpment, and then, in a bit, reappeared on its summit, bearing the bundle of clothing.

Smoke from the fires drifted about the rock.

Animals could be seen below, fleeing, mostly frantic, bounding ungulates.

The gladiator accepted the bundle of clothing from the Wolfung warrior, and then he threw it to Janina. “Put it on,” he told her.

The garments were now muchly wrinkled and soiled. Too, they were frayed, from the escape capsule, and torn, from the rocks and the branches in the river, but they still retained, even in their current state, more than a hint of their original splendor. The colors, even if faded, were still clearly discernible, and intact were the complex embroidered designs, and the insignia of station and house. Janina, too, put about herself the rich jewelry, the necklaces and bracelets, which had been accessory to them.

“Those are the colors of the Drisriaks,” said a man, in awe.

“See the designs, the insignia,” said another.

“The jewelry!” said another.

“Those, if I read them aright,” said Astubux, “are the robes of Gerune, princess of the Drisriaks!”

“They are,” said the gladiator.

“This then,” cried a man, pointing excitedly to Janina, “is Gerune! You have captured her!”

“The sister of hated Ortog!” said a man.

“Kill her!” said another.

But the gladiator put his hand on the man’s spear, and thrust it aside.

“No,” he said, “this is not Gerune. It is a common slave.”

“Surely it is Gerune!” said a man.

“Strip, and rebundle the garments,” said the gladiator to Janina.

“It must be Gerune,” said a man.

“She wears the royal garments,” said a man.

“We can hold her for ransom,” said a man.

“He has Gerune,” said a man. “His rope is on her neck!”

“We can use her to bargain with the Drisriaks,” said another.

“It is not Gerune,” said the gladiator. He took the bundled garments from Janina, the jewelry wrapped inside. He handed this bundle to the fellow who had originally fetched it upward from below.

“Gerune wears his rope on her neck,” said a man.

“It is not Gerune,” insisted the gladiator.

“Surely it is,” said Astubux.

“How careless then,” said the gladiator, irritably, seizing Janina by the arm and turning her about, so that her left flank was to the men, “that the Drisriaks should have had their princess branded.”

On Janina’s left thigh, high, just under the hip, a common branding site, was the small flower, the slave rose.

“It is not Gerune,” said a man.

“How came you then by the garments of Gerune?” asked a man.

“I took them from her, on the ship,” said the gladiator. “She figured in my plan of escape. The garments were worn by this slave, that she might be mistaken for Gerune.”

“And what of Gerune herself?” asked a man.

“I marched her before me, gagged, naked, bound, on a rope, through the corridors of the captured ship, before hundreds of warriors of Ortog.”

The men cried out with pleasure.

“I think you had best kneel,” said the gladiator to Janina, who hastily, belatedly, knelt.

“Hands on thighs, knees spread,” said the gladiator.

Janina complied.

“Keep your head down,” suggested the gladiator.

Janina put down her head.

“And what is Gerune, sister of Ortog, like?” asked a man.

“I think you would find that her body would be that of a pleasing slave,” said the gladiator. “Before I left the ship her head was at my feet.”

“It is the Drisriaks who take our women,” said a man.

“Perhaps,” said the gladiator, “it should be you who take their women, for your naked slaves.”

“Glory to the Wolfungs!” said a man.

“It is a long time since we have tasted glory,” said a man.

“You have no chieftain,” said the gladiator.

“Of what avail are the blades of spears against fire from the stars?” asked a man.

“I have a plan,” said the gladiator.

“It is time a chieftain was proclaimed,” said a man.

“It would be suicide for anyone to dare to be lifted upon the shields,” said a man.

“He would be killed by the Drisriaks,” said a man.

“Let such matters be the concern of the chieftain,” said the gladiator.

“You are not a Wolfung,” said Astubux.

“Choose then one of your own,” said the gladiator.

The men looked at one another.

“Astubux?” asked a man.

“No,” said Astubux.

“Would you deal with the Drisriaks?” asked a man of the gladiator.

“Certainly,” said the gladiator.

“And what would you offer them?” asked a man.

“Defiance,” said the gladiator.

“It is a hopeless matter,” said a man.

“Nobility,” said the gladiator, “is most easily purchased in an impossible cause.”

“What will our women say?” asked a man.

“They will obey,” said the gladiator.

“It has been a long time since we have had a chieftain,” said the grizzled man.

“You have a plan?” asked a man.

“Yes,” said the gladiator.

“Let us return to the village,” said a man.

And so the group left the summit of that high rock and assembled below. In leaving they trekked through the circle which had been scratched by the butt of the spear, that within which two men had done contest with staves. Astubux and the gladiator, with others of the leading warriors, led the group. Behind the gladiator, and to his left, in the heeling position, sometimes stumbling, came Janina, the rope wrapped still about her neck, bent under her burdens as before, including even the bundle of clothing and jewelry which had once graced the figure of Gerune, princess of the Drisriaks, sister of Ortog, king of the Ortungen. As she was a slave it was appropriate that she be laden. The others were, of course, free men. The party also crossed, at one point, a broad swath of blackened trees. The carcasses of incinerated animals lay here and there. An occasional scavenger looked up as the party passed. Birds had come to the area in hundreds, to peck out burned grubs and worms, and small animals, where the brush and leafy cover of the forest floor had been seared away. The ash was still warm to the bare feet of Janina.

Toward evening they arrived at the village.

That night, in the light of a great fire, blazing in the center of the village, amidst much shouting

and the beating of weapons, a new chieftain was proclaimed, that by the Wolfungs, one of the lesser tribes of the Vandals, the gladiator being lifted upon the shields of warriors.