Fearless Master of the Jungle (A Bunduki Jungle Adventure (15 page)

Commencing the proceedings
by
‘chinning
the moon’, and having it countered in the same manner as that of
the stallion, the mare took off in a series of high and
‘fence-cornering’
^xlii
leaps. Despite entailing repeated
changes of direction, to a rider of Dawn’s experience these
presented no difficulties—beyond making sure they did not allow her
mount to reach the shallow water. However, on taking off for the
eighth time, having found that she had not succeeded in removing
her burden by such methods, Isabel elected to ‘swap ends.’ Curving
her body in mid-flight, she turned a complete half circle while in
the air. Taken unprepared, the girl gave a howl of distress and,
sliding sideways from the saddle, went head first into the
lake.

Seeing Dawn being unseated,
Joar-Fane let out a frightened squeal and At-Vee the Hunter gave
vent to a
string of Telonga obscenities he only very rarely employed
in the presence of a woman.

While equally alarmed, Bunduki
wasted no time in verbally expressing his concern. Instead, having
already made preparations to render assistance if it should be
required, he shook loose the noose of the lariat which At-Vee had
brought from the tree-house
’s corral and which Dawn had been holding during
the conquest of
Shambulia.

The blond giant appreciated
that his wife-to-be was facing two major dangers. Even if her
superbly tuned reflexes and rider
’s instincts had not had time to take
over, the water would lessen the impact of her fall. Although she
would doubtless alight without injury, Isabel might turn upon her.
Or, if the mare should make a distress signal,
Shambulia
’
s
feelings as a former
manadero
^xliii
might prompt him to dash to her
rescue. So Bunduki was ready to deal with either, or both, threats
to Dawn’s well-being.

The need did not arise!

Feeling herself relieved of the
insidious burden, Isabel
’s natural inclination was to put as much distance
as possible between herself and whatever it had been. So, grunting
with a mixture of alarm and relief, she went onwards for a couple
more bounds.

Then the rope attached from
Dawn
’s waist
to the saddle horn snapped tight!

Despite having been caught
unawares, the girl justified Bunduki
’s faith in her ability to fall without
injury-aided by the
Nemenuh
method of water breaking which had proved equally
efficacious on countless other occasions over the years—and was
already starting to sit up when Isabel reached the end of the rope.
Spitting out the liquid she had inadvertently swallowed Dawn was
jerked under again.

Although the
girl
’s
weight brought Isabel to a halt, she did not react as the blond
giant had feared by either returning to the attack or signaling to
the stallion that she required help. Instead, she did no more than
swing around until she was facing Dawn.
Shambulia
was still exhausted and having
received no request for assistance, he remained passive and did not
attempt to pull free the lead-rope by which he was tethered to a
bush. ‘Hey, expert!’ Bunduki called, relief plain on his face,
watching the soaking and bedraggled girl rising. ‘That’s a fancy
way of doing it!’

‘
Yes,’
agreed At-Vee, his concern alleviated by the discovery that Dawn
was unharmed. ‘But I thought you were supposed to be riding Isabel,
not teaching her to swim.’

‘
Don’t
let those brutes mock you, sister,’ Joar-Fane encouraged, sharing
the men’s sentiments, as the other girl glared towards the shore.
‘She can’t beat
us!
’

‘
All
right, Isabel,’ Dawn gritted, returning her attention to the mare.
Taking the rope in both hands, but making sure she did not tug at
it, she advanced slowly. As she moved, she continued to speak in a
soft, soothing voice which was at odds with the content of the
words she was uttering. ‘All right, you tricky something-or-other,
so-and-so, something-else. I’m going to get back on and stay there
until you something-well give up.’
^xliv

As the language of the
Australopithecus
did not include obscenities, being limited to
purposeful word-sounds, and sharing At-Vee’s feelings on the
subject of profanity—even though it was possibly justifiable under
the circumstances—the girl conducted her, as it proved, effective
method of calming the mare in English.

Coming alongside Isabel without
having aroused a display of hostility, Dawn unhurriedly returned to
the saddle. Pacific as the mare had been until that happened, she
started to exhibit her objections almost as soon as the girl was
settled on her back. Showing speed rather than strength, she
intermingled
‘swapping ends’ with ‘chinning the moon,
‘sunfishing’,
^xlv
‘crawfishing’,
^xlvi
but without the murderously effective
‘pinwheeling’,
^xlvii
and
never
in the same order, and put her rider
through a long and grueling struggle. At last, however, hampered by
the water—which she had been continually prevented from
quitting—and countered by Dawn’s superlative exhibition of
equestrianism, she too was finally driven to a state of exhausted
submission.

Even as the tired, but delighted, girl
was returning to join them, the congratulations of her
husband-to-be and friends were brought to an abrupt end.

Bunduki was the first of the
party to notice that two boats filled with people and propelled by
sails were turning from the river into the mouth of the lake. Long,
narrow, carvel-built
^xlviii
and somewhat spoon-shaped, they
reminded him of the
ghe ca vom
river craft he had seen in and around Saigon while on an
expedition which his adoptive father had been carrying out for the
International Union for Conservation and Natural Resources. The
resemblance even extended to the fact that the single mast was
stepped well forward and carried what looked like an oblong
combination of an Oriental gaff
^xlix
and lugsail.
^l
There was a small bamboo deckhouse to
shelter at least some of the dozen or so crewmembers; and the
rudder, mounted on the sternpost, curved gracefully beneath the
hull so as to offer a greater purchase, control and maneuverability
on restricted water-ways.
Oculus,
eye-like, insignia decorated the bows, but the
remainder was unpainted.

Not only had the
blo
nd giant
never heard of the Telongas operating such boats, although he knew
they used canoes on the rivers, but he found something else
disconcerting. The occupants had the same skin pigmentation of
facial characteristics as his jungle-dwelling hosts, but all but
one of the men were completely hairless, and their clothing was
made from animal skins of various kinds. Even the women amongst
them carried weapons.

While the Telonga hunters went
armed—although their weapons were more in t
he nature of tools for hunting—the
same did not apply to the male non-hunting members of their
communities. Nor, apart from Joar-Fane—who had recently adopted the
practice—did any of the women carry weapons.

All of these details presented
possibilities for which Bunduki did not care. Watching the boats
approaching with all the facility for
maneuvering offered by the
archaic-looking rigging, he sent his right hand flashing to the
hilt of the bowie knife he had retrieved from At-Vee.

‘
Get
back to the house, girls!’ the blond giant ordered, wishing that he
had thought to bring his bow and arrows as they would have been far
more adequate than the knife for repelling what he believed to be
an alien invasion. ‘We’ll try to stop them landing.’

‘
Come
on, you cowardly, cringing old Mun-Gatah bitch!’ ordered the sullen
Cara-Bunte girl called Muchkio, stirring the Protectress of the
Quagga God’s recumbent body with a bare foot. When this failed to
elicit any response, she bent and, digging her fingers into the
short black hair, went on in a mocking tone as she began to haul
upwards, ‘Stir yourself. The Lord Torisaki wants to question
you.’

In spite of the fact that
Charole had apparently been subdued for several hours, such
treatment proved ill advised
.

On regaining consciousness,
which was not until she had been transported to the raiding
party
’s
camp, the Protectress’s first thought—it was, in fact, produced by
a subconscious reaction resulting from her last cohesive
recollection—had been to try and struggle. Although she was no
longer bound, having been released from the pole so that she could
be revived and bathed in the stream upon the shores of which the
Cara-Buntes had established their base, she had learned that this
was not a wise move in her present weakened state.

Shushi having been supervising
the cleansing and reviving, so as to administer treatment to the
captive
’s
wounds, had rammed a knee into her stomach and pinned her down.
Then the buxom woman’s right hand, which had a grip like the
closing jaws of a bear-trap, took hold of and began to crush
Charole’s naked left breast. Such was the agony induced by the
grinding fingers that she had almost fainted. So, realizing that
resistance was futile until she had recovered at least some of her
strength, she had laid passive and been released. Satisfied that
she had cowed the Protectress, Shushi had applied an ointment to
the abrasions acquired while fighting Elidor. From its stinging
sensation, Charole had decided it was similar to the medication her
nation used and hoped it had the same quick acting
qualities.

After the
Protectress
’s wounds had been tended, she was taken—dragged by the
arms and legs as she was still
in
no state to walk—and dumped unceremoniously
outside the sumptuous pavilion tent of War-Lord Torisaki. She had
not been fastened in any way, but had known that the time was not
ripe for an attempt to escape. Instead of expending energy in what
she had known would be a pointless waste of it, she had devoted her
attention to taking stock of the situation.

What Charole had seen warned her,
although she had not really required the warning, that her position
was very grave.

The first thing the Protectress
had noticed, apart from the entirely expected fact that she was
left without weapons, was that she was not allowed to dress.
Instead, she was clad only in the brief black lace panties which
were her underwear. The silver lam
é halter, skirt, her greaves and sandals
were nowhere to be seen.

Charole had not needed to
ponder on the reason for the removal of her attire. It had not been
done so that she could be assaulted sexually. Rape was carried out
on
very
rare occasions, but the ‘Suppliers’ had implanted such a
strong pride of race into the members of every nation that the
thought of having sexual intercourse with a person of another race
was generally considered abhorrent and was infrequently practiced.
She had been stripped because the lack of garments would make her
escape increasingly difficult and her recapture more
certain.

Continuing her surreptitious
observations, while allowing her depleted energy to be restored by
the inactivity, Charole had discovered that the
Cara-Buntes
’
camp was in a valley between two sand dunes and within sight of the
‘Lake With Only One Shore’. It was comprised of the War-Lord’s
pavilion encircled by twenty smaller tents. They were similar to
the kind of temporary accommodation presented by the ‘Suppliers’ to
the Mun-Gatah nation and gave shelter to the hundred or so male and
female warriors who had accompanied Shushi and Torisaki on what was
chiefly a food gathering expedition.

Down on the shore, drawn up
above the high tide level, were a number of boats shaped like
shallow oval baskets. Constructed on a framework of willow poles
fastened together with rawhide lashings, they were covered with the
hides of Defassa and Common waterbucks that were sewed together and
whose natural water-resistant qualities were enhanced by a coating
of melted fat from the species
Kobus Defassa
and
K. Ellipsiprymnus
mixed with earth and ashes. Like the
so-called ‘bullboats’ made from the skins of bull bison and used by
Indians and fur traders along the Missouri River, which they might
have been patterned upon, they were very light and had a draught of
less than ten inches. This and their exceptional carrying
capacity
^li
made it possible for each to
transport a heavy load. So they were employed as a means of
communicating between the sea-going vessels and the shore, or to
carry back the loot when raiding along rivers.