Fearless Master of the Jungle (A Bunduki Jungle Adventure (27 page)

‘
Did
you close the door when you came out?’ Dawn whispered, noticing
that it was just a little way open.

‘
Yes,’
Marn-Bara replied, cool enough in spite of her fears for Hav-Bart’s
well-being to keep her voice equally quiet.

‘
In
that case,’ Dawn said, still
sotto voce
and holding out the bow. Take this and stay
here.’

‘
What
are you going to do?’ Marn-Bara inquired, accepting the
weapon.

‘
Take
a leaf from—hey, he’s my cousin-in-law now-Brad Counter’s book,’
Dawn replied, without realizing that she was speaking English until
she was half way through the far from succinct
explanation.

Making no attempt to translate
the cryptic comment, the Earth girl darted forward. While visiting
a ranch owned by the relatives of Bunduki
’s Texas-born mother, she had seen
his look-alike cousin, Bradford Counter, demonstrate various
aspects of a peace officer’s work. In the course of his duty as a
deputy sheriff in Rockabye County, Texas, he often had the need to
gain swift and unexpected access to a building or room. So he had
perfected effective ways of making an entrance.
^lxx

Despite being bare-foot, Dawn
was confident that she could duplicate one of
Brad
’s
techniques. The door she was approaching stood slightly ajar and
she would not need to supply enough power to spring a lock. On
reaching the most appropriate distance, she launched her left leg
forward and turned the foot so that its sole and not the toes made
the contact. Swiftly taken as it had been, the kick propelled the
door open with some force. It struck something and there was a yell
which informed the girl that her precaution was worthwhile.
However, she did not allow herself to be lulled into a sense of
false security by hearing the subsequent thud such as would be made
by somebody sitting down unexpectedly on the floor. If there had
been only one person lurking within, he was unlikely to have
elected to stand at the hinged side of the door.

With that thought in mind, Dawn
plunged across the threshold. Instead of going in erect, she
crouched and, as a glance to her left proved, once again she was
taking a necessary precaution. Although the room she entered was
unlit, the quarter moon gave just sufficient illumination for her
to see and identify the man-who was striking at her with a
dapur bener
kris-as
the
Senior Elder, Tik-Felum’s younger son, Han-Ateep.

Unfortunately for the young
man, his blow was aimed at a height which would have taken the girl
across the throat if she had entered erect. As it was, the weapon
passed harmlessly above her head. There was no time for Dawn to
have conscious thoughts. She responded instinctively, but with the
deadly precision of a highly trained knife-fighter. Twisting
towards her assailant, she drove the razor-sharp blade into his
stomach and his impetus took it home almost to the unlugged brass
double hilt. Then, almost of its own volition, it emerged as her
advance into the room drew on the sambur horn
‘finger-grip’ handle and
liberated it. Clasping at his wound, Han-Ateep stumbled screaming
through the door and collapsed at Marn-Baras feet.

Having disposed of her attacker, Dawn
did not forget that he had at least one companion present. So,
advancing a few long strides across the room, she gazed about her
rapidly to make sure there were no more. Satisfied on that score,
she swung around to find out who the man behind the door might be
and what he was up to.

Surprised, slightly dazed and
with some of the breath knocked from him by being hit by the door
and dumped unceremoniously on his rump, Flant-Wlip had managed to
retain his hold on his
kris
when he sat down. What was more, muttering
obscenities, he was already starting to rise.

The situation was such that
Dawn did
not
dare consider thoughts of sporting behavior. Not when she
was opposed by a man taller, heavier and, possibly, stronger than
herself; particularly as he was armed with a weapon almost three
times the length of her own.

Darting forward, the girl saw a
mixture of alarm and fear come to the
man’s unprepossessing face. Although
he contrived to thrust himself erect before she reached him, his
haste threw him off balance. Nor was he granted an opportunity to
rectify the situation, or to defend himself.

Despite her antipathy towards
Flant-Wlip and all that his kind stood for, Dawn could not bring
herself to kill him while he was temporarily unable to fight back.
Equally, she was aware that he would not hesitate to take her life
if he was given the slightest chance. Furthermore, he must be
incapacitated and prevented from delaying her departure after
Bunduki.

With all those points in mind,
the girl lashed around her knife like the strike of a diamondback
rattlesnake. Its blade sliced through the skin, flesh, muscles,
sinews, veins and arteries of Flant-Wlip
’s right forearm until it scraped the
bone. Blood spurted from the wound in the wake of the withdrawing
steel and the
kris
fell from a hand he would never again be able to
use.

‘
Don’t
kill me!’ the stricken man screamed, toppling backwards into a
sitting position and cowering away from the menacing figure with
its gore-smeared knife. ‘The Cara-Bunte are waiting to ambush
Bunduki at the Place of Punishment. Don’t kill me for giving you
the warning.’

~*~

Unaware of exactly what was
happening to his wife, although the screams he had heard as he was
passing through the main gates of the palisade had been masculine
in their timbre and he knew they could not have been made by Dawn
Bunduki also did not know that he was advancing into greater peril
than he had anticipated. From what he could now see, he realized
that things were even graver than he had expected. What was more,
he was not arriving any too soon. It was clearly going to
be death and not
merely chastisement that was to be inflicted upon Hav-Bart.
However, Marn-Bara had badly underestimated the number of
Tik-Felum’s coterie who were involved.

In a fair-sized clearing that
was surrounded on three sides by fairly dense jungle and terminated
on the fourth by the edge of the escarpment, was the
Wurka-Telongas
’ Place of Punishment. Out in the middle, Sraat-Challig and
nine more of the Senior Elder’s supporters were hard at work. Split
into a group of five on either side of the bound and gagged
dissident, they were straining to bend over a couple of sturdy
trees which were clearly prepared for the purpose. Both had had all
their foliage and branches removed and there were two ropes—the
longer being pulled on by the Wurkas and the shorter equipped with
a running noose—attached to the top of each.

The men were so engrossed in their
task that none of them noticed the blond giant was approaching. Nor
was there any reason for them to assume that he might be. They were
too far from the village for the screams of Han-Ateep and other
sounds to reach their ears. Furthermore, when Tik-Felum had
dispatched them to deal with Hav-Bart, he had been less than frank
regarding his reasons.

On calling his leading
supporters together, the Senior Elder had made no reference to the
news he had received shortly after nightfall. Han-Ateep and
Flant-Wlip had arrived accompanied by a warrior who had announced
he was a Cara-Bunte and served the War-Lord Torisaki, but he was
not the pair
’s captive. Rather it was the other way around. As soon as
they had reached the ‘Lake with Only One Shore’, they and
Deneb-Ginwe had been taken prisoner by the crew of the
warlord’s
zaruk.
On learning what had brought their captors to the region,
being desirous of saving their own skins, they had offered their
services in helping to trap Dawn and Bunduki of the ‘Earths’. Nor
had they given a moment’s thought to how doing this might endanger
the lives of their fellow villagers.

Having had their suggestion
accepted, the treacherous
trio had guided the Cara-Buntes—who were now using
the ‘bull boats’—through the maze-like waterways of the swampland.
Even though night had fallen by the time they arrived, Torisaki had
called a halt while they were still out of sight of the village. He
had declared that he wanted nothing from the Wurka-Telongas and
would leave them in peace after the ‘Earths’ were delivered into
his hands. It had been Deneb-Ginwe who had proposed where the
capture might most easily take place. However, he had not cared for
the next development. He was retained as a hostage while the other
two were sent to make the arrangements.

Seeing an opportunity to remove
both of the
‘Earths’ and also the leading dissident against his regime,
Tik-Felum had put all his devious conniving abilities to devising a
scheme which would bring it about. Having the Cara-Bunte, Han-Ateep
and Flant-Wlip keep out of sight while he was giving his
instructions to the other members of his coterie, the latter had
not known of the trio’s presence in his house.

It had taken all of the Senior
Elder
’s
powers of persuasion to obtain compliance with his suggestions. Not
until he had convinced the assembled men that it could be done with
complete safety would they agree to carry out the proposals he was
making. Their resolve had been stiffened by the memory of the
unrest and near hostility which many of the community had started
to display towards them since the disposal of the two ‘crocodiles’
by the Dapan-Dankara. It had now been accepted that the first was
dead. So they had felt that the people needed to be taught a sharp
lesson. Furthermore, they agreed that their numbers would be
sufficient to cope with the ‘Earths’ if Tik-Felum’s story that
Hav-Bart had gone on a hunting trip was not believed.

Giving his adherents no time to
think up arguments, or raise points that might be open to question,
Tik-Felum had sent them to their tasks. Only four would make the
abduction, but another six were required to draw down the
‘breaking trees’.
That had only left Jomus-Takn with two supporters for his task.
They were to wait in ambush between the guesthouse and main gates
to prevent the ‘Earths’ from interfering if an alarm should be
raised.

As the Senior Elder had hoped,
the abductors had relied upon the generally pacific
behavior and
obedience to male orders shown by their womenfolk when removing
Marn-Bara’s husband. They had done no more than tell her to keep
quiet before taking Hav-Bart away. However, after they had gone,
she had shown something of the fresh spirit imbued among the
population by the ‘Earths’ presence and she had gone to fetch help.
Waiting in concealment, Han-Ateep and Flant-Wlip had entered the
house—the Cara-Bunte having already departed to tell Torisaki of
the arrangements—and Tik-Felum’s summation of how Dawn and Bunduki
would react to the news had, unfortunately for them, proved
correct.

Knowing nothing of the Senior
Elder
’s
machinations, the men in the clearing believed that everything was
going as planned. They were soon to learn differently.

While running from the village,
Bunduki had heard the trumpeting of forest elephants not too far
away. He had identified the particularly strident call of the big
bull which led the herd Dawn and he had met on their way to the
village,
^lxxi
but there was not time for him to try
and summon them and see if he could enlist their aid.

Accepting that whatever action
he took must be carried out alone and unaided, unless his wife was
able to come on the scene swiftly enough to help him, the blond
giant had already decided upon his strategy. It was based on the
method in which the Masai
melombuki
^lxxii
Kira-Kangano, had taught him
was the best way to handle the shield when meeting the charge of a
lion.

Dropping and advancing his left
shoulder, with the arm bent in front of it, Bunduki peered over the
top of the shield
’s rim. This allowed the convex elliptical surface to cover
all the vital areas of his body, with the exception of the top of
his head. However, there was one major difference from the method
he had been taught. No Masai
moran,
not even one who had attained the honored title
of
melombuki,
ever advanced to meet the lion. He waited for it to come to
him.

Bearing the heavy shield with
no greater apparent effort than if it weighed as light as a
feather, the blond giant did not merely continue to run across the
clearing. Calling upon his tremendous reserves of strength, he
actually increased his pace until he was moving in a manner more
suitable for sprinting in a hundred yards
’ race.

There was so much grunting and
so many shouted accusations that one or another of the men was not
pulling his weight (it being a characteristic of that kind of
person that he would be terrified of the possibility that somebody
else would do less than his share of work) none of the party—not
even those facing in
Bunduki’s direction—noticed the big newcomer until
he had almost reached them.