He had been sound asleep, dreaming of sex and violence—which, more often than not, went together in his waking life as well—and he felt the approach and was awake and aware well before Chumo was near enough to attack him, had that been his plan.
Sayjak belched, farted, scratched himself, and stretched. Then he regarded Chumo as he climbed, waiting for him to achieve a suitable nearness for quiet conversation.
“Sayjak,” the other called. “Come quick. We got troubles.”
Sayjak yawned deliberately before responding.
“What troubles?” he said then.
“Eeksies. All over. Most to south. More coming in west, north.”
“How many eeksies?”
“All of fingers. All of toes. Dick, too. Many times. Just in south.”
“What they doing?”
“Nothing. Sit in camp. Eat. Crap. Sleep.”
“What about west ones? And north?”
“All of fingers. Maybe throw in a few dicks. Just getting there. More came in north while we watched.”
“You and Staggert?”
“Yes.”
Sayjak reached for his mascot. It had taken him weeks to learn to tie a knot in a piece of cord he had found in the bounties’ camp. But he had seen knots before and knew their function. And this cord already had a knot in it. He had used it as a model. Over and over, he had looped and twisted the strand until one day he did it. He had repeated it then, even learning variations. Then he was ready.
He tied each end securely to the hair of Big Betsy’s head. This made it easy to hang from broken tree limbs, or to wear it around his neck when he felt the occasion warranted ceremony. Now, it hung from a nearby branch, and he reached out and stroked it as a thinking aid, and perhaps for good luck, also. He had cached the machete in the hollow of another tree, and every now and then he took it out and cut something with it.
For a moment, he considered wearing the head. But he had too far to go, too fast. It could catch or tangle in the brush. He bade it goodbye, then told Chumo, “Take me south. Then west and north. I must see these eeksies for myself.”
So he followed Chumo down the tree, halted to alert the clan to the presence of eeksies, then headed into the south. Several hours later, he crouched in the brush with Chumo, regarding the encampment. A great number of the hunters were about, eating, talking, cleaning or honing weapons. It was the largest gathering of them that Sayjak had ever seen. Along with the apprehension this produced there came a number of questions. Why so many? Why now? And they were bounties—not eeksies, in their green-and-brown uniforms. Why bounties?
Eeksies were official; they were establishment, sent from some far-off place to do a job, and for that matter, their jobs did not always involve killing the People. Sometimes they cut trees or planted them, set fires or fought them, dug ditches, diverted rivers. Bounties, on the other hand, only came to kill—and unlike eeksies they took away tokens of their work. It was from the bounties, in fact, that he had gotten the notion of taking Big Betsy’s head. The bounties were freer, wilder, nastier, more worthy of respect-Usually, they were loners or trackers in small parties, and he had to assume that those to the west and the north were a part of this entire business. Such things did not just happen…
After a time, he touched Chumo’s shoulder.
“Take me to the west now,” he told him.
As they traveled, he wondered where Otlag’s clan browsed these days. Or Dortak’s. Or Bilgad’s. A general knowledge of where the others browsed was useful in preventing territorial disputes. But he was thinking precisely, rather than generally, at the moment.
Spying on the much smaller western party from a dangerous vantage, he began to suspect that none of the other clans would be enclosed by the three bounty parties and the plains to the east. He would know for certain soon enough, but already he began to feel uneasy. Hoga, who had been watching the western group, told him that its last few members had just arrived. They were making camp, though, rather than waiting as if they expected orders momentarily. So Sayjak assumed that they planned to spend at least one night in the area before commencing any concerted action with the other groups.
Hoga and Congo, who had been left by Staggert to watch the party since its discovery that morning, followed Sayjak’s lead away from the clearing.
“You know where Dortak’s or Bilgad’s or Otlak’s clans are right now?” Sayjak asked.
“Otlak’s that way.” He pointed north. “Far past the next bounty encampment. Dortak’s farther west.” He pointed again. “Don’t know about Bilgad.”
Sayjak felt a strange sensation in his stomach, for he had felt that Bilgad foraged to the southeast. That indeed only left his own clan within the walls he now saw being raised. These bounties, he was suddenly certain, wanted him and his people for a particular vengeance.
He groped after a concept—the posting of the three groups so as to enable them to move most effectively against his people. His head filled with the projected activity. The notion of putting it all together in this fashion before doing it took hold of him mightily. He did things, too, in that way, though on a much smaller scale. While he lacked a word for the concept “plan,” in both its verb and noun forms, he suddenly understood it. And he realized that he needed one of his own, a bigger one than he had ever come up with before.
“Take me north now,” he said, “where Staggert watches the other group.”
He calculated distances as they went, and he thought about the Circle Shannibal. He knew that he must act quickly, and that his plan would have to be better than their plan.
A little after noon they arrived at the northern encampment. Staggert met them and led them to a vantage amid trees on a hilltop.
“This is the smallest camp,” Sayjak observed. “I see two hands of bounties.”
“And there are more bounties on patrol,” Staggert said.
“The People are in great danger,” Sayjak said after a time.
“From these bounties?” Staggert said.
“Yes. These and those to the west are going to surprise the People and drive them southward to be slaughtered.”
“How do you know this?” Staggert asked.
Sayjak thought of the raid on which he had slain Big Betsy. He suddenly thought of the other bounties coming here because he had given them fear, fear that they could become the prey.
“I tell you everything I know, Staggert, and you’ll be too smart,” he said, “like me. They want our heads, and they will take them. Unless we have a—a better way of doing things than their way of doing things.”
He turned toward Chumo.
“Go back,” he told him, “to the other two camps. Get Congo. Get Hoga. Get Ocro. Bring them here to wait for me.”
“Wait?” Chumo asked. “Where are you going?”
“Back for the rest of our clan.”
“Bring ‘em here, too?’
“Place near here.”
“What for?”
Sayjak studied the other. Then he tapped his forehead.
“New way of fighting.”
“What do you call it?”
“People warfare,” Sayjak replied.
Then he turned and was gone into the jungle.
He brought the entire clan with him that evening, leaving all but the able-bodied males in a clearing about a mile from the northern encampment. He wore his mascot about his neck and he carried the stick-that-cuts as he led them, finally positioning his warriors in a glen near to the bounties’ camp. Then he conferred with his lieutenants.
Staggert, Chumo, Svut, Congo, Ocro, and Hoga stood with him in a twilit clearing as he said, “Tonight we going to kill them all here. You know how?”