Kinyanpi. Our kaiila shifted under us. We waited, under the network of ropes and cloths. I heard songs of war.
There was a sudden, horrified scream of a tarn, impaled.
'Shields overhead!' I cried.
A tarn, its wings like thunder, smote the air below us, some twenty feet over our heads, and ten another.
Other tarns, I could see, had suddenly swerved or begun to climb.
The kaiila under us turned, startled, scratching at the dust.
'Watch the Yellow Knives!' I called to Cuwignaka.
'They are not moving,' said Cuwignaka. 'They are holding in place.'
A tarn then was caught under the ropes. Screaming, it tore its way free, pulling leather and cloth with it. Its rider was held on its back, lifeless, his knees under the girth rope, his body riddled with arrows. Two other birds hung in the netting, one with its neck broken and the other with a wing half torn away. The riders were pulled from their backs and hacked to pieces. The tarn with the useless wing snapped with its great back at its foes and then was killed with lance thrusts. One rider fell from the back of a struck tarn and caught in the netting, hanging head down. His hands were held and his throat was cut. Another perished similarly, lances thurst upward through the ropes and cloth, until he could be pulled down, falling to the ground, there to die under knives. I saw, looking wildly about, tarns flying erratically, hit with arrows. I saw two fall. One rider I saw fall from the back of a tarn, some few hundred yards to the west and north of the camp. I looked wildly back to the west. The Yellow Knives had not moved.
'How many were there?' I asked Cuwignaka.
'Forty, fifty?' speculated Cuwignaka. 'I do not know. Not so many as before.'
I did not know, either, how many were in the original attack. Surely those numbers would still be in the vicinity. I would have guessed some two hundred riders would have struck in the first attack, with which had taken the camp by surprise. Cuwignaka's speculations as to the number sinvolved in the recent skirmish was congruent with my own estimations. They majority of the Kinyanpi, for some reason, it seemed, had been held back. This puzzled me. The attack, of course, I told myself, might have been primarily and excursionalry probe, a venture to determine the nature and strength of our defenses. If that were the case, I thought grimly to myself, its riders would have ample information to report to their superiors.
'Why do you think so few attacked?' I asked Cuwignaka.
'I do not know,' he said. 'Where a smaller number attacks a larger number there is more glory.'
I smiled to myself. Perhaps Cuwignaka was right. While I had busied myself with the prosaic categories of military arithmetic and motivation, I had perhaps neglected the mentality of the enemy, which, in some cases, as in that of red savages, might be eccentric and unusual, at least when viewed from an inadequate or alien perspective. If glory is more important to the enemy then normal military objectives, calculated in costs and units, then one, accordingly, is advised to make certain adjustments in one's thinking about him.
'But,' said Cuwignaka, 'that is not really our way. Surviving is more important then glory.'
'Then why did so few attack?' I asked.
'I do not know,' said Cuwignaka.
I was irritated. Now, my deifce of explanation had tumbled. Now, no more than Cuwignaka, did I understand the nature of the recent attack.
'Look,' said a man.
'I see,' I said.
A single tarnsman, high in the sky, was flying towards the Yellow Knives. Then he alit, among them.
'Surely now they will coordinate their forces,' said Cuwignaka.
'I think so,' I said.
Chapter 28
FIGHTING CONTINUES
'See?' asked Cuwignaka.
'Yes,' I said. Before the lines of the Yellow Knives, some three hundred yards away, to the west, riders rode back and forth, with feathered lances.
It was now late in the afternoon.
'They are preparing for an attack,' said Cuwignaka. 'They are exorting their warriors to be brave.'
'Yes,' I said. I had now, again, taken my place in the Kaiila lines. I had ridden to the perimeter of our rearward lines, there, for the second time, to inspect the deployment of archers, the placement of the stakes, the rigging of the overhead nets. I found all in order. Had I not done so I would have conveyed my suggestions to Cuwignaka who, in turn, would have relayed them to Hci. He, then, would have brought them to the attention of Mahpiyasapa or of Kahintokapa, One-Who-Walks-Before, who was in charge of this sector of our position. Kahintokapa, of the Casmu band, was a member of the prestigious Yellow-Kailla Riders. This rather roundabout procedure, providing we had the time in which it might function, seemed advisable to both Cuwignaka and myself. We doubted that either Mahpiyasapa or Kahintokapa would much relish receiving direct advice from two fellows as lowly in the camp as ourselves. On the other hand, Hci had been scrupulously honest, somewhat to our surprise, in making it clear to his father and Kahintokapa the source of his earlier recommendations for defense against the attacks of the Kinyanpi. That he had even considered my counsel, let alone heeded it and conveyed it, and as mine, to Mahpiyasapa and Kahintokala, had surprised both Cuwignaka and myself. Neither of us had expected this, not of Hci, from whom we looked for little but arrogance and vanity. Too, to our surprise, when we had come to join the warriors they had opened their rnaks to permit us to take our place among them. We had not fled. We had not gone to wait with the women and children. We had come with shields and lances. They opened their ranks. We then, one who wore the dess of a woman, and one who was only a slave, took our place among them.
'I think they will be coming soon,' said Cuwignaka.
'Yes,' I said.
At our rearward lines I had seen Kahintokapa. He had raised his hand to me, palm open, in greeting. I had returned this gesture. It was almost as though I were not a slave. He had his shield again in its cover, as he had had earlier. He would withdraw it from the cover for combat, of course.
'They are probably wiating for the Kinyanpi,' said Cuwignaka.
'I think so,' I said.
In my return to our lines I had stopped to see Grunt. He was near the area where the women and children were gathered. He, with some of the women, was nursing the wounded. Wasnapohdi was with him. That we had turned the attack of the Kinyanpi had inspirited him. 'The camp can be held, I am sure of it!' he had said.
'I think so,' I had said.
'The Yellow Knives have been quite successful,' he had said. 'They have obtained numerous kaiila, much loot and many women. Surpirse is now no longer with them. I know such men. They will soon withdraw. Obtaining further loot would be too costly to them.'
'They have not yet withdrawn,' I had said.
'I do not understand that,' he had said.
'Nor do I,' I had admitted. It had seemed strange to me that the Yellow Knives, after the difficulites of taking the camp had been made clear to them, had not withdrawn. One would have expected that of red savages.
'They remain in the field?' he had asked.
'Yes,' I had said.
'Interesting,' he had said.
When I had left Grunt I had ridden a hundred yards or so away, to look at the remains of the council lodge. Little now remianed but its poles. It had been the central target of the inital attack of the kinyanpi, the Flighted Ones. Hundreds of arrows, I had heard, had penetrated its lodge skins. In it, and about it, had been the scene of a massacure. It was little wonder that watonka had not been eager to attend the council. It was fortunate that
