Bunduki (Bunduki Series Book One) (12 page)

When Charole raised the matter, the
High Priest claimed that he wanted to obtain a worthy sacrifice for
the Quagga God. She did not believe him. That was the duty of the
People-Taker, or—as very few of the Telongas he brought in were
suitable for sacrificial purposes—the raiding parties who were sent
to collect victims from the more warlike nations and, as such, the
task was beneath the dignity of his high office.

Nor was Charole inclined to
accept Dryaka’s other reason, that he wish-to avenge the deaths of
the two scouts. The social distinctions of the Mun-Gatah were long
established and rigidly enforced. Neither of the men had been
even
ocha-gatah
riders, so he was hardly likely to put himself to any great
inconvenience on their account.

If anything, the unacceptable excuses
served to increase her suspicions. She felt even more certain that
his interest went beyond obtaining a challenger who would justify
his confidence. To her way of thinking, anything to which the High
Priest attached so much importance was worth learning. She might be
able to turn it to her advantage. So she had added her support to
keeping the peace between the two women.

For all their mutual desire to hunt
the girl down, neither the Protectress nor the High Priest would
weaken their factions by leaving a member to keep watch and see
which direction she was taking as she fled. Nor, in case she had
told them the truth about having friends in the vicinity, had they
been inclined to reduce their force as a whole by each supplying an
observer. They had realized that the omission might lessen their
chances of catching Dawn, but neither would yield on the
matter.

Bringing his high-spirited, seventeen
hand quagga stallion to a halt, Dryaka scanned the expanse of the
plains around him. His cold, but very keen eyes located every
detail except the one which he had hoped—yet had not really
expected—to see. A low snort of disappointment and annoyance burst
from him. It was as he had feared. The beautiful stranger had
already disappeared.

When last seen, the girl had given the
impression that she was making for the woodland. However, he had
already discarded the idea of going there by the most direct route.
It was possible that she had turned aside before arriving at the
trees. In which case, going there could cause them to miss her
trail.

The question was, would Dawn take the
chance of entering the woodland?

The fact that the girl had been on
foot suggested she belonged to a nation who made their home in such
terrain, or even in the dense jungle that lay beyond it. If such
was the case, she would have a decided advantage over his party
while they were all moving among the trees and bushes of the
woodland. While they were skilled hunters and excellent trackers,
the Mun-Gatahs preferred to seek their prey from the backs of their
zebras. That was always difficult in woodland and frequently
impossible in the jungle.

However, having given much
thought to the matter as
he was riding along, the High Priest believed they
might find the girl in the savannah rather than the woodland
proper or the
jungle. The area towards which she had been heading when last seen
was inhabited by the brutish, sub-human ‘Hairy Men’. From what he
had seen of their ferocity when occasional specimens had been
brought in by raiding parties, he doubted whether the girl would
dare to enter their domain. She was, in his opinion, more likely to
remain in the type of country which the ‘Hairy Men’ usually
avoided.

Not that Dryaka had mentioned his
conclusions to the others. He would only do so when he could be
reasonably sure they were correct. He had a reputation for being
right more often than wrong and for rarely making mistakes. It was
most useful in retaining the loyalty of his adherents. So, keeping
quiet, he turned his attention to try and solve a point which had
arisen during the course of his theorizing. It was one that, if he
could produce the answer, might supply a clue to the direction Dawn
would have to take if she was returning to her homeland.

To which nation did the beautiful,
tawny-haired girl belong?

At his first sight of Dawn,
Dryaka had thought that she might be an Amazon. Her hair and
light-colored skin had suggested she could be a warrior of that
race, but her
clothing and armament had been against it. From what he had
remembered about the Amazons, those who wore the skins of
antelope—being swift-running messengers—were invariably slender.
Women who were of Dawn’s build and heavier were clad in the skins
of a black panther, leopard, lion or tiger. What was more, whether
armed with a spear and shield, war-axe or bow, they always carried
a sword to augment their knives. No Amazon archer he had ever seen
had possessed a bow of the kind so ably wielded by the girl. In
fact, he had never come across such a weapon in all his dealings
with members of other nations.

Thinking about Dawn’s reply when she
had been questioned about her origins got the High Priest nowhere.
Unknowingly, she had said the word ‘Apes’ in English instead of
translating it as ‘Hairy Men’. Naturally, Dryaka had never heard of
a nation called the ‘Apes’. Whoever they were, and wherever they
made their homes, he told himself, their ‘Supplier’ had given them
very special kind of archery equipment.

Even before Tomlu’s death, the girl’s
bow had been a source of interest and speculation to Dryaka. He had
been a soldier, raider, temple-guard and People-Taker before
attaining his present high office and he had recognized it as
something out of the ordinary. If his suspicion about how the scout
had been killed was correct, it was definitely an unusual, even
remarkable weapon.

Although Dryaka had no intention of
letting Charole know, the bow was now his main reason for desiring
to make the girl his prisoner.

‘
Finding her won’t be easy,’
Dryaka warned, at the end of his scrutiny.

‘
We won’t do it by sitting
here,’ Charole answered, impatient as always, moving restlessly on
the saddle of her equally large and fine-looking mount.

‘
Where do you think you’re
going?’ Dryaka challenged, as the Protectress set her quagga into
motion.

‘
After her, of
course.’

‘
Where do you intend to
start looking?’

Always wary when dealing with the High
Priest, Charole read a warning in the tone of his voice. It implied
that she was on the point of making a mistake. There must be some
fault in her line of reasoning, but she failed to see what it might
be. If she went ahead and they should not capture the foreign girl,
which she realized was quite likely, Dryaka would claim it was her
error of judgment that caused their failure. To have that happen
would add to her loss of face over the eagle and might seriously
weaken her position by causing the waverers among the population to
turn in the High Priest’s favor. So, much as it went against the
grain, she knew what must be done. However, she saw a way in which
she might be able to make the High Priest responsible if things
went wrong.

‘
Where
do
you
say we should start looking?’ the Protectress inquired,
halting her mount and turning her head.

‘
We’ll
go to Tomlu’s body, then find and follow her tracks from there,’
Dryaka replied without hesitation. Having seen the trap that had
been set for him, he went on, ‘Even then, we may not catch her. But
we may as well try.’

Although Charole would have bitten off
her tongue rather than have said so, she silently conceded that the
High Priest had given sound advice. Going directly to the woodland,
as she had intended, without knowing at least approximately where
Dawn had entered would have been futile as it would have made
finding her tracks difficult and time consuming if not completely
impossible. She also noted bitterly that he had avoided the pitfall
which she had intended for him.

Without waiting to discover what
Charole thought of his suggestion, Dryaka started his quagga
moving. The others followed him in silence. There had been little
conversation since the quarrel between Elidor and Sabart had ended.
Once they had crossed the river, the whole party were too engrossed
in scanning the terrain over which they were riding to speak. While
there had been no sign of the foreign girl’s cousin and his
warriors, they could be in the vicinity. Having seen the girl’s
arrow kill Tomlu, the Mun-Gatahs had had no desire to let
themselves be ambushed by several equally well armed and capable
archers. So they had considered that unceasing vigilance was of
greater importance than talking.

Coming up to Ragbuf s
crippled
grar-gatah,
neither the Protectress nor the High Priest deigned to give
it or its lifeless rider a single glance. It was left to one of
Cha- role’s male adherents to use his lance and put the animal out
of its misery. Dryaka was dividing his attention between the
transfixed eagle and Tomlu’s body, with most of it directed at the
latter. Duplicating his actions, Charole was at first unable to
decide what he expected to see.

‘
By the Quagga God!’ one of
the male riders ejaculated, his voice throbbing with something
close to superstitious awe. ‘Her arrow went through his
breastplate!’

Even as the comment was being made,
Dryaka was placing over his saddle horn the loop that was attached
to his lance at its point of balance. With its butt in the cup of
the stirrup, the weapon was suspended and his hands were free.
Swinging to the ground, he flipped the reins over the quagga’s head
and allowed them to dangle. Then he went to kneel alongside the
body. The quagga stood motionless, ground-hitched by the hanging
reins as effectively as if he had tied them to an immovable object.
Oblivious of everything else, Dryaka studied the shaft that rose
from Tomlu’s chest.

Apart from the eagle’s
attendant, who had turned aside and was riding towards his dead
charge, only Charole had continued to advance after Dryaka—who had
put on a short spurt—dismounted. The rest of the party came
to
a halt
some feet away. They divided their attention between keeping watch
for possible enemies and staring at the scout, or rather at the
thing which had killed him. Realizing that she must be missing
something of importance, Charole joined the High Priest on the
ground. Schooling her features into an expression of bored
disinterest, she stood and watched him.

‘
Look
at
this
!’
Dryaka could not prevent himself from saying, after he had
studied and felt at the shaft of the arrow.

‘
I’ve seen dead men before,’
the Protectress sniffed, with a well simulated air of indifference
which she felt sure would elicit further information.

‘
But
you’ve
never
seen one who was killed like
this
!’
Dryaka protested, so stung by the woman’s attitude that he
said more than he had intended. ‘Look at how deeply the arrow has
penetrated.’

Once it had been brought to her
attention, Charole understood the full implications of the High
Priest’s statements and guessed that she had unearthed his main
reason for wanting to capture the foreign girl.

Then another thought struck the
Protectress, causing a slight shudder which she instantly
suppressed. Everything pointed to Dawn being an expert archer, with
sufficient skill to have hit her mark across the width of the
chasm. She remembered the look of hatred on the girl’s face when
starting to aim the bow at her and realized that she had
been
very
close to death at that moment. Without the protection of a
leather breastplate, or possibly even if she had had one, Dawn’s
arrow would have been lethal at the distance which was separating
them.

Having no desire to allow the High
Priest to see how she was affected by what she saw and thought, the
Protectress continued with her pretence of indifference.

‘
He must have
fallen on the arrow and driven it in deeper,’ Charole commented and
pointed to where the attendant was standing glaring at the dead
bird. If her
bow was so powerful, it would have sent the arrow straight
through my eagle.’

‘
She didn’t have time to
draw it fully when she loosed it at the bird,’ Dryaka explained and
turned the body on to its side. ‘Look here! The head has come
through the back. No other arrow has ever pierced one of our
breastplates, much less gone in this deep and—’ he let the corpse
go and tapped the nock of the shaft ‘there’s no dirt here, so he
can’t have fallen on it.’

With that, the High Priest gripped the
arrow and tried to withdraw it. Charole was much too interested to
comment. Even when he failed to extract the shaft, she remained
silent. Opening his hand, he scratched at the cresting with a
fingernail and his face took on a deeper, more puzzled
frown.

‘
Fetch me the bird, Elidor!’
Dryaka ordered, coming to his feet.

Urging her
banar-gatah
to a gallop, the brunette made
her way to where the attendant was crouching over the bird and
crooning the Mun-Gatah death chant. She guided the animal in such a
way that it was heading straight at the man, causing him to make a
hurried leap to the rear to avoid being ridden down. Leaning over
without slackening her mount’s speed, she bent and scooped up the
eagle as she passed. Ignoring the man, who had tripped and was
sitting on the ground, she returned to the rest of the party. She
brought the zebra to a rump-sliding halt at the High Priest’s side
and leapt from the saddle almost before its forward motion had
ceased. All in all, it had been an excellent piece of
riding.