A hundred paces from the shore, all five men lifted their paddles as one. The canoe glided forward on its own momentum for another fifty paces. By then, its bow was sliding in among the weeds that grew so thick in places that a child might walk upon them.
Seyganko led his comrades over the side of the craft with as little noise as they had made in paddling. Gripping the sides, they kicked silently until they could sink their feet into the oozy bottom.
Each man wore only his headdress and a snake-skin loinguard, besides his weapons: a club or a trident, a knife of stone chips set in wood, and a net. Each also wore a generous coating of rancid fish oil. Its reek made any except the Ichiribu gag. It also hid the odor of living flesh from the small fish known as the eunuch-maker which swarmed along the shores of the Lake of Death.
"Remember," Seyganko whispered, "we need no women prisoners. If they flee, do not chase them."
"And if they stay?" one warrior asked with a grin that showed even in the darkness.
"Remember, too, that a man taking a woman turns his back on the world," Seyganko said.
"He—" the largest of the warriors said. "You need not think where to find your next woman, Seyganko. Not when—"
"Hold your tongue, Aondo," a third man said. "Or if Seyganko does not challenge you, I will. You are jealous as well as foolish."
Seyganko could add nothing to those words of wisdom, although he knew that his betrothal to the shaman's daughter Emwaya had indeed aroused much jealousy. Emwaya was the finest woman of the Ichiribu and deserved nothing less than their finest warrior, but not all men saw that as clearly as she did.
The young chief 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 followed, with only the faintest rustling of the damp grass and the soft chrrr of insects to mark their passage.
They had been in hiding barely 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 women and men together— warriors guarding a band of women, taking 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 much more strength there, to raid through 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 them burn like a live coal.
Now someone among 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 almost as if he had stretched a length of vine between them. If the enemy advanced another twenty paces farther, they were as doomed as a dog in the jaws of a leopard.
The, Kwanyi advanced that distance, and Seyganko let them go 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 them at hand to distract men like Aondo.
The high-pitched shriek of the bone whistle silenced human foes and jungle creatures alike for a moment. In that moment, the five Ichiribu warriors leaped from their hiding places and flung themselves at their enemies.
Seyganko had just enough time to see that none of his comrades were holding back before he faced two men. Both had the heavy hide shield and three spears Chabano had given each of the Kwanyi. On open ground, by daylight, they would have been the Ich-iribu 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 one man's shield up, then flung his net over the top of the other's shield and pulled hard. The spiked weights on the edge of the net caught in both flesh and hide. The man howled and stumbled forward, his shield dropping until it no longer protected him.
This time, Seyganko'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 man's shield.
The warrior was strong; 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 downward.
It thrust, but struck only grass and earth. Seyganko had rolled sideways, and as he rolled, he lashed out with both feet. The warrior stumbled, abandoning his spear in a fight for balance, and had no attention to spare for Seyganko's club. Sweeping in a vicious, low arc, the club darted under the shield and crushed a knee.
The man reeled again, and this time there was no regaining his balance. Seyganko himself was in behind the shield, and a moment later the shield fell as the arm holding it shattered under another blow of the club.
With no foes ready to hand, Seyganko could spare attention for his comrades. It was hard to pick them out from among the mass of screaming, fleeing
Kwanyi women and bearers. Most of them were, as he had hoped, running 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 commands of Chabano, who could have guessed that such Ichiribu raids had as their purpose the taking of captives ?
Seyganko added Chabano to those he cursed. The enemy chief was shrewd enough to be dangerous even when he could hold few secrets. If he could teach his warriors to prefer flight to capture, he might keep many of them, and each one deadly to the Ichiribu.
An outcry like that of mating leopards returned Seyganko's attention, to the trail. A spear's length away, Aondo had a woman backed against a tree. He had jerked her waistcloth from her and was now stuffing it into her mouth. And just as he had been warned not to do, he had turned his back on all else but the woman. A Kwanyi warrior lying bloody on the ground rolled over, gripped a spear, and thrust upward.
The thrust failed to be deadly, because at the last moment, Seyganko tapped the warrior lightly with his club. The spear's point sank only a thumb's width into Aondo's buttocks. He leaped into the air with a cry more of surprise than of pain, clapping a hand to his wound.
One hand was not enough to hold the woman. Disdaining any thought of garbing herself, she fled into the night. Aondo started in pursuit, dashed head-on into the shield of a Kwanyi warrior too surprised to raise a spear, and found himself in a bare-handed fight for his life.
Seyganko snatched up the fallen spear, the only.
weapon that could reach the pair in time. It was the kind of weapon ill-balanced for throwing; he could have done better with a fishing trident. But his arm was strong 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 man howled as if stung by fire ants and flung Aondo away. Seyganko closed the distance to the man, gripped the spear-shaft with one hand, and swung his club with the other. The man toppled, Seyganko jerked the spear loose, and Aondo regained his wits enough to start bandaging his prisoner's thigh with the fallen waistcloth.
With two captives who would live until Dobanpu could speak to them, the raid was already a victory. Seyganko blew the whistle again and promised the spirits a generous sacrifice when the other men of his band answered.