The Undesired Princess (10 page)

11

Light and sound awakened Rollin Hobart; the former from the cave mouth, where the curtain was thrust aside by Theiax’s head, the latter the lion’s deep voice: “Yellow men come back, Prince! Wake up!”

The Parathai yawned and stretched themselves out of their respective dreamlands. “What are they doing?” asked Hobart, feeling his teeth with his tongue and wishing for a toothbrush.

The social lion looked back over his shoulder. “Many little boats come. One yellow man gets out, wades, comes on shore. You want I kill him?”

“No, no! I want to see him.” Hobart stood up and thrust the curtain entirely to one side. The Ikthepeli canoes were lined up a few yards offshore, packed with yellow humanity with no signs of hostile intent. Across the beach advanced one of the savages: a squat, middle-aged individual with a face like a disk of wrinkled butter and lank black hair. He wore the skull of a small animal around his neck, and a bone skewer through his nose, but was otherwise unclad.

When he saw the group in the cave mouth he said something in a high-whining voice and dropped to all fours. He crawled thus toward them with every evidence of the most abject humility.

Yezdeg spat and jerked his thumb toward Hobart, snarling:
“Myavam Sham Parathen irs zamath varaliv Logayag vorara math a gvari!”

The crawling man raised his head toward Hobart with a slightly less hopeless expression, saying: “You wish to speak with me in Logaian?” He handled the language quite fairly himself.

“Uh-huh,” said Hobart. “Stand up, man; I’m not going to hurt you!”

“I plead for my poor people, who never hurt Parathai—” began the savage, getting up.

“Okay, okay; tell ’em to come ashore. If they don’t bother us, we won’t bother them.”

The savage turned and shrilled a command to the people in the boats. Gingerly, the canoes were brought up to the land, and timidly the occupants, all ages and sizes, climbed out, each one trying to hide himself behind the others. They were a scrawny lot; from the fact that the one who spoke Logaian looked much the best fed, Hobart guessed that he was the boss.

He said: “We’re looking for the medicine-man of the Ikthepeli.”

“Why do you want him?”

“Business; I think he can help us.”

“I am him. I am called Kai.”

“Fine! How—”

“Mizam Zhav!”
cried Fruz. He was staring toward the rear of the cave; the other followed his eyes. By the light that now came through the entrance appeared a sight that made Hobart’s scalp prickle: great cakes of ice, on each of which reposed a corpse. The light was strong enough to show bright-red skin.

“What are those?” asked Hobart. “Keeping ’em to bury, or what?”

“No,” said Kai indifferently. “To eat.”

“Huh?”

“Sure. They are Rumatzi we killed in this year’s battle.”

“You mean you—uh—”

“You did not know? Every winter we cut ice from the lake. In spring we arrange battle with the Rumatzi, who live across the lake. Same number on both sides, same weapons, same everything. We take their deads and they take ours, to eat. Good idea, yes?”

“Not according to my way of thinking,” said Hobart.

“But what else to do? Too many people otherwise; not enough fish. We starve; Rumatzi starve. Must kill some, so why not have fun of a battle?”

“Maybe I’m prejudiced, but it still seems a pretty gruesome way of disposing of the casualties.”

Kai spread his hands. “You mean fight like horse-people and
not
eat the deads? We think that is bad, wicked business, to kill people for no good reason!”

“Okay, you can eat your own grandmothers as far as I’m concerned. Now how—”

Kai’s mouth and eyes widened with horror. “You mean eat one of our own tribe? Why, that would be
cannibal!
That is eating
people!
We eat Rumatzi; they eat us. We are always careful not to mix deads up! You horse people have such bad, wicked ideas!”

“Okay, skip it! We need the help of a competent magician against our enemies, the Marathai—”

“Not me!” interjected Kai. “Not my war! My poor people have enough trouble with Parathai without getting Marathai down on us, too! Anyway I am not a good magician. I am just a poor hungry Ikthepeli, who knows a couple little tricks to protect me and my poor people!”

“What sort of trouble have you had with my outfit?”

“You will not punish my poor people if I tell?” said Kai, looking uneasily at Hobart’s companions.

“Of course not!”

“All right. You could not catch me anyway; I would just disappear,
fush-whoosh,
but my Ikthepeli cannot do that. You ask for trouble. What you call trouble. Is it trouble when your horsemens come by on horses and chop up our canoes to make a fire?”

“Yes, I’d say it was,” said Hobart judiciously.

“Is it trouble when they take away our only net, which took a year to make, so we have to spear fish until we make another?”

“Undoubtedly.”

Kai stood upright now, his former hangdog air gone as his anger rose. “How then, you call it trouble when they rape our women, right here on beach, in front of whole tribe? Trouble when they kill women’s men when they try to stop them? Three men killed—let me count—fifteen days ago. Rest not killed because they ran fast. One killed four days ago; we found him dead with Parathai arrow. One of your horse people thought it funny to shoot. What do you say now, Sham?”

Hobart was by this time almost as indignant as the medicine-man. He snapped, “I’ll soon put a stop to that. But wait—how about your help?”

Kai looked crafty, but so openly and transparently so that the effect was more amusing than sinister. He said at last: “If you will really stop Parathai from hurting us, I will help. But can you? They are proud people.”

“I’ll do my best. If they commit anything on you, I’ll punish them as though it were on a member of their own nation. But what’s your help going to consist of? Are you really a poor magician, or was that just a gag?”

“I am not very good, but I will do my best, too. Maybe I know more than just a couple tricks.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, I will not tell that. Secret of trade, yes, ha-ha?”

“Ha-ha yourself,” smiled Hobart. “You’d better show me at least a sample.”

“I can do.” Kai turned to the clear sky and extended his hands, palms up. He began an ululating wail:

“Marekula eromanga,

“Savaii upolu!

“Maalaea Topanga

“Nukunana kandavu,

“Pag pago oamarul.”

A few hundred feet up, a small cloud formed; at first like one of those that mark an ordinary thermal; then boiling more and more furiously, like a miniature thunderhead. Kai’s voice rose to a shriek, and he clapped his hands. At once a narrow shaft of rain poured down from the cloudlet; it was no trouble to watch the dark streamer extend earthward. It took it two or three minutes to reach the surface of the lake, where it churned the smooth surface in a fifty-foot-circle tangent to the shoreline.

Kai clapped his hands twice, and the rain was sharply cut off at the source. By the time the drops that had already started down from the cloud had all struck the lake, the cloud itself had evaporated. Kai turned to Hobart with a grin: “I have a couple tricks, yes?”

“Evidently. Want to get your stuff ready to come with us?”

“Me come with you? No sir! Not me! I fear Parathai, and my poor people need me. Look!” He took off his necklace with its little rodent skull, and hung it around the engineer’s neck. “When you want me, take hold of the skull and squeeze—not hard, or it breaks—and call me. I come,
foosh!
But three times only; it will not work after that.”

“Well—” said Hobart doubtfully.

“Do not worry; I come! I must protect my people.” Kai stiffened, a far-away look coming into his eyes. He pulled several slivers of bone out of topknot, tossed them into the air, and studied the positions in which they fell to the ground.

“Ha!” he cried tensely. “Now, Sham, you can show me if you mean what you say. I gave you a sample magic; you give me a sample justice. One of your Parathai has just killed one of my poor people!”

“What?”
Hobart looked wildly around; Yezdeg was plainly missing.

“Yes. He took the wife of Aao. We think it is a bad, wicked thing to take another man’s wife. The last time it happened, in my father’s days, we gave the bad man to Rumatzi to eat. But that is not all: the wife of Aao fought your horseman, and he got angry and killed her. Now, will you kill your horseman?”

“Whew!”
whistled Hobart. As usual, just when he had been about to draw a breath of relief, it transpired that his apparent piece of astounding good luck had a catch in it. In this case the worm had contained an exceptionally vicious hook: he was committed to having one of his new subjects executed.

He turned to Sanyesh: “Will you—” But he stopped at the elder’s stony expression. He could trust nobody but himself to find Yezdeg, investigate the alleged murder, and deal impartial justice.

He picked up his musket, and said, “Come on!” and strode out to where Theiax guarded the horses, to the uneasy displeasure of the latter. There were only three horses, a fact that blasted Hobart’s lingering hope that he might find Yezdeg innocently snoozing in the neighborhood. The Ikthepeli gave all the party a wide berth, hovering ready for a dash to their canoes, except for Kai, who followed sticking the skewers back in his hair.

“Better come along and see how this turns out,” Hobart told him.

But Kai shook his head stubbornly, and Hobart, intercepting the glares that Sanyesh and Fruz focused on the medicine-man, could not blame him. Kai explained: “My bones will tell me, Sham!”

Hobart mounted and led the way to the top of the slope. The flat, cactus-studded desert spread out before them, and Hobart immediately saw in the distance a horseman ambling peacefully toward them on a yellow horse. It was Yezdeg without a doubt.

A muttered conversation between Fruz and Sanyesh behind him made the skin of his back crawl, though he could not understand a word. It would be bad enough to have to kill a man, without risking retaliation by the deceased’s friends.

The two Parathai were evidently thinking along similar lines, for Sanyesh cried sharply: “Sham! I heard your talk with savage. You cannot shoot Yezdeg for little thing like that! Fruz says so, too.”

“What makes you so sure he’s guilty?” said Hobart.

“Oh, savage knows. But suppose Yezdeg did? Not crime to kill useless fish-eaters; everybody does. Not like real people.”

Rollin Hobart needed just this opposition to make him really determined. “Well, they are real people from now on,” he barked. “You heard my agreement.”

“But Sham!” persisted Sanyesh. “If she real person, why not act like real person? Real woman like Parathai
never
go around with no clothes if not want man to take. If she real person, then she want man to take, and all her fault. Woman cannot say to Parathaian, ‘take,’ and then hit him when he try to; that insult. If not real person, then no crime to kill anyway.”

“Makes no difference,” snapped Hobart. “The new law of the Parathai is that the Ikthepeli are real people whether they wear clothes or not, and are to be treated as such. I, the sham, say so.”

But it appeared that the customs of the barbarians were not as easily disposed of as that. Sanyesh continued his argument: “Was not law when Yezdeg killed woman. Cannot kill man for breaking law nobody ever heard of!”

It was true; there was even a provision in the U.S. Constitution against
ex post facto
laws. Besides Sanyesh and Fruz were by now gently fingering their sword hilts, the elder apologetically, the young retainer defiantly. The implication was that he might shoot one of the three, but the survivors would make sure he had no chance to reload.

By now Yezdeg was close enough for a hail, the sun gleaming on his yellow hair. He was caroling a song as if he had not a care in the world, and wiping an obviously bloody knife with a piece of thin leather.

The other two Parathai tensed themselves, watching Hobart. But the engineer merely said: “Time to start for home, boys,” and led off.

After they had ridden a while in silence, Hobart pulled alongside of Sanyesh and asked: “I ought to know more about the laws of the Parathai. You recognize the right of self-defense?”

“That’s so,” said the counsellor, not at all chummy.

“How about duels?”

“We have. Depends. If fair fight, same weapons, same everything, no crime. If you pick fight and have big advantage, like gun, counts like murder. Man’s family can take you before tribal assembly and get permission to kill you.”

“How about responsibility for agents’ acts?”

“What
is
that?”

“Suppose a man hires another man to kill a third man. Who’s the murderer?”

“Each is half-murder. Instead of killing one man, we half kill both.”

“How would you do that?” asked Hobart, intrigued despite his predicament.

“Easy; cut off heads halfway.”

Hobart abandoned a nascent idea of sicking Theiax on the unregenerate Yezdeg. As far as he was concerned there was no distinction between being decapitated halfway and completely. He would have to get Yezdeg killed by some less direct method.

Not that Hobart wanted to kill Yezdeg or anybody else, abhorrent though the young barbarian’s act seemed to him. But he’d promised Gordius, and he’d promised Kai . . .

“Damn all promises!” he said aloud.

He jogged along in deep thought for a while. Then he directed Sanyesh: “Tell Yezdeg that he’s evidently brave enough to kill a woman.”

Sanyesh gave Hobart a glance glittering with suspicion, but spoke a sentence to Yezdeg. The latter seemed puzzled for a while, then answered with a long speech.

“He say,” interpreted Sanyesh, “he brave man; killed many Marathai.”

“I haven’t seen him kill any Marathai, but I do know he killed a woman.”

Again the pause for translation. Sanyesh reported: “He say he not kill real woman, only dirty fish-eater.”

“Okay,” said Hobart amiably. “Then he’s brave enough to kill a poor fish-eater woman.”