Part 4 (1/2)

”Hold your tongue, Aondo,” a third e you, I will You are jealous as well as foolish”

Seyganko could add nothing to those words of wisdohter Emwaya had indeed aroused much jealousy Emas the finest wo less than their finest warrior, but not allchief vowed to look to his back when the huge Aondo was near, then crept to the left to his chosen hiding place The other warriors folloith only the faintest rustling of the darass and the soft chrrr of insects tobarely long enough for the grass to rise again when they heard voices and footfalls on the trail As was most often the case, the sounds were those of wo a band of wo food and other comforts to the camp where the Gao River flowed out of the Lake of Death

The Kwanyi also kept warriors in the south, guarding their herdlands and grain fields on the other side of the lake Chabano would gladly have kept h the pass into the riverlands beyond the mountains That the Ichiribu ruled the Lake of Death with their canoes stood in his way and made his hatred for the the Kwanyi on the trail, wiser than his fellows, called for silence But he called for it in a voice as loud as the others' Seyganko's keen ears let him measure the distance to the speaker alth of vine between them If the enemy advanced another twenty paces farther, they were as doo in the jaws of a leopard

The, Kwanyi advanced that distance, and Seyganko let theo another twenty paces before he put the bone whistle to his lips and blew If the women could run in either direction up the trail, there would be fewer of theh-pitched shriek of the bone whistle silenced hule creatures alike for a moment In thatplaces and flung theh ti back before he faced two men Both had the heavy hide shi+eld and three spears Chabano had given each of the Kwanyi On open ground, by daylight, they would have been the Ichiribu warriors match, and even now they were no foe to despise It was not in Seyganko to despise any foe, for which reason he still lived and his foes mostly did not

He feinted with his club to draw onehis net over the top of the other's shi+eld and pulled hard The spiked weights on the edge of the net caught in both flesh and hide Theuntil it no longer protected hianko's stroke with his club was no feint It splintered the man's wooden headdress and the skull beneath it Instantly Seyganko whirled to stamp on the shaft of a spear thrust at him by the second warrior, then closed until his chest was hard against the ; he pushed hard, flinging Seyganko backward

Seyganko pretended to lose his balance and fall on his back The warrior charged forward, his second spear poised to thrust doard

It thrust, but struck only grass and earth Seyganko had rolled sideways, and as he rolled, he lashed out with both feet The warrior stuht for balance, and had no attention to spare for Seyganko's club Sweeping in a vicious, low arc, the club darted under the shi+eld and crushed a knee

Thehis balance

Seyganko himself was in behind the shi+eld, and ait shattered under another blow of the club

With no foes ready to hand, Seyganko could spare attention for his co theKwanyi wo off inland Not a few of the Kwanyi warriors were following

Seyganko called the spirits of his ancestors to curse those Kwanyi cowards Or were they cowards? Might they not be obeying the couessed that such Ichiribu raids had as their purpose the taking of captives ?

Seyganko added Chabano to those he cursed The eneerous even when he could hold few secrets If he could teach his warriors to prefer flight to capture, he ht keep many of them, and each one deadly to the Ichiribu

An outcry like that of anko's attention, to the trail A spear's length away, Aondo had a woainst a tree He had jerked her waistcloth fro it into her mouth And just as he had been warned not to do, he had turned his back on all else but the woround rolled over, gripped a spear, and thrust upward

The thrust failed to be deadly, because at the last htly with his club The spear's point sank only a thumb's width into Aondo's buttocks He leaped into the air with a crya hand to his wound

One hand was not enough to hold the wo herself, she fled into the night Aondo started in pursuit, dashed head-on into the shi+eld of a Kwanyi warrior too surprised to raise a spear, and found hianko snatched up the fallen spear, the only weapon that could reach the pair in ti; he could have done better with a fishi+ng trident But his ar and his eye was true Also, he did not need to kill

The spear drove through the Kwanyi's thigh with such force that the point burst out on the other side The anko closed the distance to thehis club with the other The ained his wits enough to start bandaging his prisoner's thigh with the fallen waistcloth

With two captives ould live until Dobanpu could speak to theanko blew the whistle again and proenerous sacrifice when the other men of his band answered

They not only answered, they came swiftly, and with twoShe was hardly irl, the tattoos of womanhood barely healed on her ar but those tattoos and a feather that was bound into her hair behind one ear