«Neither do we,» said Swebon. «And I do not think it is so. How could the Sons of Hapanu make the Treemen understand what they wanted? The Treemen have no language that even the wisest of men can understand.»
Blade knew that there might be ways of communicating with the Treemen that didn't involve a spoken language. He also knew it would be hard to convince Swebon of this, and if he did, what good would it do? It would merely burden the chief with another worry for his people, without offering him any help against the dangers threatening them.
Besides, it didn't really matter whether the Treemen and the Sons of Hapanu were one problem or two. They were both becoming a serious menace to the Forest People. They both had to be met with better weapons and perhaps different tactics. Now all Blade had to do was invent these weapons and tactics.
He had no qualms about taking the side of the Forest People. The Treemen were an evolutionary dead end, too dangerous to be ignored as animals but too close to animals to be treated as men. They took and they would probably go on taking, without giving anything in return.
The Sons of Hapanu were a somewhat different matter. They had a well-developed civilization. No doubt they saw the Forest People the same way the People saw the Treemen, as an inferior race, hardly more than animals. Perhaps in the end they would win out and rule this Dimension, even the Forest.
Not now, though-not if Blade could do anything about it. The Sons of Hapanu might have all the virtues of civilization and a high opinion of themselves. That didn't give them the right to sweep through the Forest, killing or enslaving the People. The Forest People deserved at least a few more centuries to go their own way, and Blade would do everything he could to give them those centuries.
The only problem was that he still didn't know exactly what he could do to bring this about.
The village slowly recovered from the Treemen's raid. The dead were burned, their ashes cast into the river, and the proper rites performed in memory of the seven women carried off. The damaged huts were repaired, and the carpenters went to work on a whole squadron of new canoes. There were more than the village needed to replace the ones lost or set adrift by the Treemen.
«I am sending word to the Red Flowers village,» Swebon told Blade. «I would like their chief Tuk and his best men to join us in a raid against the Yal. They do not have enough canoes of their own, so we must make some new ones to carry their men.»
«Why a raid now?» asked Blade.
«We have lost women,» said Swebon. «We need more, and so we shall go to the Yal for them. It is a good way to make sure the Treemen do us no real harm.»
Blade thought it was also an even better way to make the wars among the tribes more dangerous. If every tribe who lost women to the Treemen promptly went out and raided its neighbors, the tribes would soon be fighting seriously. They would be weakening each other just at the time when they most needed to stand together against both the Treemen and the Sons of Hapanu.
For the tenth time, Blade wished he'd already come up with some new weapon or tactic to offer Swebon. Then he could not only point out how dangerous the raid on the Yal would be, he could offer an alternative. Unfortunately he still didn't have anything to offer.
Blade wanted to laugh and curse at the same time. Lord Leighton considered him something of a military genius for inventing so many new weapons in so many different Dimensions. His Lordship didn't know the half of it! It wasn't genius. It was just common sense, a good memory, and a keen eye for both detail and opportunities. None of this had done him a damned bit of good in this Dimension so far!
At least going out on this raid against the Yal would be a good starting point, whatever he thought of its wisdom. He'd be seeing the Fak'si in action, and while that might not help it certainly couldn't hurt.
«Swebon,» Blade said. «I would like to go with the Fak'si on this raid. I am not of your people, only a visitor, so I do not know if I have the right to-«
Swebon clapped Blade on the back and slapped his hair so hard Blade's ears rang. «I was praying to the Forest Spirit that you'd ask! With two strong spears like you and Guno following me, the Red Flowers will have to send more of their own good men. Otherwise they will lose honor and some of their share of the women we take.»
«Thank you, Swebon,» said Blade. «I do not promise to fight any better against the Yal than I did against the Treemen or the Horned Ones. But I hope I shall fight no worse, either.»
«Then may the Forest Spirit have mercy on the Yal,» said Swebon, laughing.
The next day Swebon left for the Red Flowers village, while the warriors prepared their weapons and the women packed food. The new canoes were hastily finished, launched, tested, then tied up along the bank to the south of the village, hidden behind a screen of leaves. The tale around the village was that a hunting party was going out, into land where the Banum might be found. Only Guno and a few other leaders among the warriors knew the real target of the raid.
Swebon returned from the Red Flowers with a canoe filled with their warriors, another filled with dried fruit, and promises of much more of both. Guno was heard muttering, «I'm not going to hope for much more than promises from the Red Flowers until I see it.»
He had to eat those words a few days later, when the Red Flowers showed up-five canoes and seventy warriors under their gray-haired chief Tuk. Swebon gave the Red Flowers three new canoes, and in return Tuk swore to follow Swebon as his chief until they all returned from their victory over the Yal. There was a final feast, and Lokhra spent the night being so grateful to Blade that he got very little sleep. Then the raiders set off, a hundred and fifty men in sixteen canoes.
They paddled up the Fak'si River, past its junction with the Yellow River, and on upriver for two more days. By the end of the third day they'd reached a point where a one-mile portage would take them to the river flowing down into Yal territory. Unfortunately, by the end of the third day it was also raining in buckets. The banks were rapidly turning into swamp and all the raiders were as soaked as if they'd been swimming. It was impossible to try hauling even the smallest canoe sections through the slimy ooze. It was impossible to even make camp and light fires to roast the fish they'd caught.
However, the rains gave with one hand what they took away with the other. It poured down so violently and so long that all the streams in the area were swollen to several times their normal size. One that was normally only knee-deep could now float loaded canoes. So instead of a mile of struggling overland, there was only a quick dash across a few hundred yards of ground high enough to be merely boggy, not liquid. Instead of costing them time, the rain ended up saving them two full days.
The banks of the new river rose more steeply, and there were fewer Horned Ones. Along the banks the trees grew taller, but their branches didn't make such a thick canopy as usual. The vines, creepers, bushes, and flowers of the jungle floor grew so thickly that the perfume of the flowers was sickeningly heavy and the cries of birds feeding on the fruit half deafened Blade.
The most common tree Blade saw was the same kind he'd awakened under, the kind with the ribbed trunk and the sticky sap. The sap oozed from the bark and collected in great puddles at the base. Swebon called it the kohkol tree.
«The sap has many uses, apart from decorating the skins of English warriors who fall asleep under the trees,» said the chief. Blade laughed, remembering the mess he'd been when he first met Swebon. «We pour it on the leaves when we put canoes together. We also use it for other things, which you will see in time.» Blade didn't ask what the «other things» might be; he suspected they were religious.