Джеффри Лорд - King Of Zunga

Once the rage had gone out of Nayung's face, Blade turned to Chamba and said, «Your tongue is waving again, Chamba, like a dry leaf in the wind. I go to bring the water because this is not a forest of the land of the English. I do not know how to hunt its animals, I do not know what fruits are good to eat. If I went out to gather fruit, I might bring back something poisonous. And then you would stuff your swollen guts full of it, and that would be the end of you. Do you want to risk that, Chamba?»

Chamba didn't. Nayung burst out laughing at the expression on the other warrior's face, and said, «Blade, is the art of using one's tongue as a weapon practiced among all the English warriors? Or are you the only one who has learned this? The spirit of your head must be very wise indeed if you are. You stick your words into that man like one of the Ivory People digging up the ground with his tusks.»

«When we are at home, I will fight Blade, and I will cut that tongue out of his mouth with a dull knife,» snarled Chamba. He could barely keep himself from grinding his teeth in rage. «Then I will throw it on a fire, and we will see if it is a very good weapon when I roast it and eat it!»

«I do not know how good a weapon it would be either,» said Blade. «It would not be ruled then by the spirit of my head. But at least it is ruled as long as it is in my head. Yours flaps and waves by itself even now.» He picked up the water pots and strode off toward the spring before Chamba could move or speak again.

So they marched across the forest; with Blade and Chamba swapping verbal thrusts every mile or so. On the afternoon of the fifth day Blade noticed that the greenery overhead was beginning to thin out noticeably. Soon they began passing open spaces, where the sun glared down onto patches of grass cropped short by any number of animals and marred with their droppings and footprints.

Blade noticed that the Zungans were beginning to move more cautiously. Their eyes roved about ceaselessly, and their hands were tighter on their spears than before. Blade hardly needed Nayang's warning that they were coming to the edge of the northern plains. There the slave raiders might be met, although Nayung admitted it was rare for them to travel all the way to the edge of the forest. Rare, but not unheard of. So from here to the town of Brona there was danger that there had not been before.

There was no permanent camp for them that night. On the edge of the forest one would have simply been bait to the slave raiders. Instead the party found a patch where the trees still grew thick, laid down a heavy carpet of leaves, and made camp there. They had dried meat with them, and with the water from their gourds they half filled their stomachs before going to sleep. Here two men mounted guard during the night instead of one. And the other four slept with their spears close beside them.

Early the next morning they were on the move, striking out across the open plains toward Brona. North of the forest the land was drier, the ground harder, the grass shorter. In the south it had reached almost to Blade's knees. Here it only brushed his ankles. But as in the south, the plain was still dotted with gnarled trees and patches of low-slung shrubbery.

With Nayung in the lead and Blade at the rear, the band headed north at the mile-eating jog that put even Blade's muscular legs and good wind to the test. The hard ground with its wavering of coarse brown-green grass offered good footing. One stride flowed easily into another, in what seemed like an endless pattern.

On and on they went. Although Blade had renewed his hat of leaves on the edge of the forest, he felt the sun beating down on the leaves and through them. It wilted them until they offered no more protection, then began working on his head. He knew, logically, that his brains couldn't be getting boiled in his skull like a potato in its jacket. But it certainly began to feel that way as the day wore on. Once again he blessed his Mediterranean tan. Without it, he would have been rapidly turning the color of a boiled lobster. How he would have felt was better left to the imagination.

None of the Zungans seemed to be showing any sign of fatigue, strain, thirst, or even heat-sickness. Blade was a bit surprised. He knew that this was their land, their climate. But they were made of flesh and blood, not iron.

The hours and the miles rolled by. Once Blade looked through the sweat that poured down over his eyes and saw a series of moving gray masses far off toward the horizon. A herd of the Ivory People. But the beasts ignored the men, and soon were left behind.

That was not the only wildlife on the plain. More than once Blade saw antelopelike beasts bounding away, in ones and twos, half-dozens, and entire herds. Once they came on a decaying carcass, large but beyond recognition now. Broad-winged birds with rust-colored backs and black bellies soared away from the carrion, and olive-brown dogs scampered away in all directions. The dogs made no effort to close with the moving men. Perhaps they ate only carrion, perhaps a group of six armed men was something they knew to be a tough proposition. Soon they were out of both sight and earshot, lost in the vastness of the plain.

Still the Zungans did not slow, although Blade noticed that they were sweating heavily. The man just ahead of Blade had his eyes half-closed and his face screwed up into a sort of grimace. It was good to know that at least one of these supermen was beginning to feel the strain!

Nayung now began looking back toward Blade every few minutes. So did Chamba. There was open disdain on Chamba's face, but there was something more like curiosity on Nayung's. Blade was a bit confused. Had his face turned green, or had something else equally unusual happened to him-

Then the light dawned. Nayung was watching him to see if he could keep up the pace, or if he showed signs of slowing down and even collapsing. The D'bor wanted to find out if this Richard Blade of the English could keep up with Zungan warriors in the field. Blade was almost willing to bet that Nayung was deliberately forcing the pace to the maximum his own warriors could take, to test Blade's speed and endurance. And Chamba, of course, was looking back at him, positive that this Englishman would fall on his pale face sooner or later and have to be left for the carrion birds and the scavenger dogs.

If he had felt like wasting the breath, Blade would have sworn, half in indignation, half in amusement. Very well. Nayung wanted to see if this new warrior was worthy of being accepted among the Zungans. Blade was an expert judge of his own endurance, and he knew that he had ample reserves left if Brona wasn't too much farther. He checked the position of the sun. It was well down in the sky already. Darkness would be falling soon. It would be safe enough to throw away a little of those reserves of his to drive his point home to Nayung.

Blade started lengthening his stride, and gradually he closed the gap between him and the next man, and soon he was walking beside him. The Zungan shot Blade a bewildered look. Then Blade was out in front of the man and angling back into the line ahead of him. As Nayung looked back this time, Blade would have sworn he almost started in surprise-and then grinned faintly.

Nayung did not step up the pace, however. A few minutes later Blade moved up another place. This time Nayung's grin was unmistakable. When Blade moved up a third place, to move in just behind Chamba, Nayung showed all of his teeth and raised both clenched fists over his head in salute.

Chamba, however, was obviously unwilling to be overtaken as easily as the first two men. Blade saw the Zungan warrior's long, sinewy legs increase their stride, and pushed his own pace up a little. Neck and neck, he and Chamba swung out and moved up past the next man in the line. Then they swung in together just behind Nayung.