I scrambled over the stockade wall. A woman, not even seeming to see me, crying out with pain, fled past me. She held a child in her arms.
There was now a horrified shouting in the camp. I saw torches being thrust to the ground. Men were irrationally thrusting at the ground with spears. Others tore palm leaves from the roofs of huts, striking about them.
I hoped there were no tethered animals in the camp. Between two huts I saw a man rolling on the ground in frenzied pain.
I felt a sharp painful bite at my foot. More ants poured over the palings. Now, near the rear wall and spreading toward the center of the village, it seemed there was a growing, lengthening, rustling, living carpet of insects. I slapped my arm and ran toward the hut in which originally, our party had been housed in this village. With my foot I broke through the sticks at its back.
'Tarl!' cried Kisu, bound. I slashed his bonds. I freed, too, Ayari, and Alice and Tende.
Men and women, and children, ran past the doorway of the hut.
There was much screaming.
'Ants!' cried Ayari.
Alice cried out with pain.
We could hear them on the underside of the thatched roof. One fell from the roof and I brushed it from my shoulder.
Tende screamed, suddenly, bitten.
'Come this way,' I told them. 'Move with swiftness. Do not hesitate!'
We struck aside more sticks from the rear of the hut and emerged into the rustling darkness behind it.
People were fleeing the village. The stockade gate had been flung open. One of the huts was burning.
'Wait, Kisu!' I cried.
Alice cried out with misery.
Kisu, like a demented man, ran toward the great campfire in the center of the village, There, in the midst of people who did not even seem to notice him, he wildly overturned two great kettles of boiling water. Villagers screamed, scalded. The water sank into the earth. Kisu's legs were covered with ants. He buffeted a man and seized a spear from him.
'Kisu!' I cried. 'Come back!' I then ran after him. A domestic tarsk ran past, squealing.
Kisu suddenly seized a man and hurled him about, striking him repeatedly with the butt of his spear, beating him as though he might be an animal. He then kicked him and drove him against the fence. It was the chieftain of the Mamba people. He drove the butt of the spear into the man's face, breaking his teeth loose. Then he thrust the blade of his spear into his belly and threw him on his face beside the wall. Again and again Kisu, as though beside himself with rage, drove the spear blade down into the man's legs until the tendons behind the knees were severed. He then, almost black with ants himself, shrieking, bit from the man's arm a mouthful of flesh which he then spat out. The chief, bleeding, cried out with misery. He lifted his hand to Kisu. Kisu turned about then and left him by the wall. 'Hurry, Kisu!' I cried. 'Hurry!' He then followed me. We looked back once. The chieftain of the Mamba people rolled screaming at the wall, and then, scratching and screaming, tried to drag himself toward the gate. The villagers, however, in their departure, had closed it, hoping thereby to contain the ants.
48
We Acquire Three New Members For Our Party, Two Of Whom Are Slave Girls
I kicked her. 'I will take this one,' I said.
The leader of the small people then untied the ankles of the blond girl and unbound the fastening that held her, by her vine collar, to the loop tied about the log.
'Stand up,' he told her. She stood up. She still wore her gag. It had been removed only to feed and water her.
The leader of the talunas stood before me, a vine collar on her throat, her hands tied behind her back.
'Put your head down,' I told her. She lowered her head.
I then went to the white male, who had been the captive of the talunas, released by the small people from his prison hut before they burned the taluna village.
He knelt in the clearing, in the chain of the talunas, shackles on his ankles and wrists, connected to a common chain depending from a heavy iron collar.
'You were with Shaba,' I said.
'Yes,' he said, 'an oarsman.'
'Do I not know you?' I asked.
'Yes,' said he. 'I am Turgus, who was of Port Kar. It was because of you I was banished from the city.'
'The fault,' I smiled, 'seems rather yours, for it seems it was your design to do robbery upon me.'
It had been he, with his confederate, Sasi, who had attempted to attack me in Port Kar, along the side of the canal leading to the pier of the Red Urt.
He shrugged. 'I did not know you were of the Warriors,' he said.
'How came you upon the river?' I asked.
'When banished from Port Kar,' he said, 'I must leave the city before sundown. I took passage on a ship to Bazi, as an oarsman. From Bazi I went to Schendi. In Schendi I was contacted by an agent of Shaba, who was secretly recruiting oarsmen for a venture in the interior. The pay promised to be good. I joined his expedition.'
'Where now is Shaba?' I asked.
'Doubtless, by now,' said he, 'he had been destroyed. Our ships were subjected to almost constant attack and ambush. There were accidents, a wreck, and several capsizings. We lost supplies. We were attacked from the jungles. There was sickness.'
'Shaba did not turn back?' I asked.
'He is dauntless,' said the man. 'He is a great leader.'
I nodded. It was a judgment in which it was necessary to concur.
'How came you to be separated from him? I asked.
'Shaba, lying ill in a camp,' he said, 'gave permission that all who wished to leave might be free to do so.'
'You left?' I said.
'Of course,' he said. 'It was madness to continue further on the river. I, and others, making rafts, set out to return to Ngao and Ushindi.'
'Yes?' I said.
'We were attacked the first night,' he said. 'All in my party were killed save myself, who escaped. I wandered westward, paralleling the river.' He cast a glance at the talunas, trussed kneeling by the log, their heads down, fastened to it, their necks helpless to the blow of the panga, should it descend. 'I fell to these women,' he said. He lifted his chained wrists. 'They made me their work slave,' he said.
'Surely they forced you to serve their pleasure, as well,' I said.
'Sometimes they would beat me and mount me,' he said.
'Unchain him. He is a male,' I said.
Ayari, with a key taken from a pouch found in the hut of the taluna leader, unlocked the chains of Turgus, who had been from Port Kar.
'You are freeing me?' he asked.
'Yes,' I said, 'you are free to go.'
'I would choose to remain,' he said.
'Fight,' I told him.
'What?' he asked.
'Strike at me,' I said.
