After the explosion, there was no return fire. Still cautious, the Perkunishans continued to hug the ground until they were several yards away. One exposed himself briefly but drew no fire. There was a signal from one, and all rose and dashed towards the wall. Suddenly, smoke from a gun behind the wall rose, and seconds later Two Hawks heard the crack. A Perkunishan fell. Another shot; another crumpled.
The others were too near the wall to turn to run. They kept on charging but fired as they did so to force their enemy to keep his head down. He, however, paid no attention to the bullets which were bouncing off the stone near his head. He kept on shooting and with deadly effectiveness. Two more staggered; one fell backward and the other ran forward again a few steps after stopping before he too slumped.
Two Hawks was surprised. He could see the helmet and upper part of the defender’s uniform. Both were the same type as the Perkunishans’. There was one difference. He wore two broad red stripes on his chest.
Then the survivors were through a break in the wall. They fired pointblank at him, but if he was struck he gave no indication. He reversed his rifle, swung the stock like a club, and felled the closest man. He disappeared momentarily from Two Hawks’ view, then came up with the body of the man he had struck down held above his head. He hurled the body at the other two and knocked them both down. What he might have done after that, however, was matter for speculation. He seemed to have the upper hand all of a sudden, but one of the men who had been shot down came to life. He rose and fired at the man with the red stripes. The helmet flew off his head, and he dropped.
A minute later, the three survivors had dragged their enemy out onto the ground. The wounded Perkunishan did not help them but busied himself shedding his coat and tearing off his shirtsleeve. He then bandaged his upper right arm. The other two hauled the body of the enemy to a place beneath a maple tree. From somewhere they had gotten a rope, a section of which they used to tie his hands. They removed the man’s boots and bound his feet together.
One end of the rope was tied to the man’s wrists and the other thrown over a branch. Two men hauled on the rope, and the captive was borne upright until his bare feet were about eight inches from the ground. His position must have been painful, since all the strain of weight was on his arms, tied behind him, and forced back and up. Despite this, the face of the hanging man was expressionless. He spun slowly at the end of the rope and did not even open his mouth to protest when the soldiers piled wood for a fire below his feet.
Two Hawks decided to interfere. He admired the big man’s magnificent fight, although this alone would not have been enough to make him attack the soldiers. He was curious about the reasons for the fighting between two groups of Perkunishans.
He told the others in his party what he wanted to do. They agreed to follow him, especially after he said he thought the captive might give them valuable information. They spread out, taking some time to go around the hill and crawl along a depression. Entering the woods from the depression, they cautiously approached the Perkunishans. Ten minutes elapsed before they were crouching behind trees, close enough to hear the conversation. Since this was in Perkunishan, Two Hawks did not understand much of it, but it was obvious they were cursing and taunting the hanging man.
By then, the fire was blazing high enough to lick at his bare feet. He had to be suffering intense agony, yet he said nothing. Two Hawks did not wait any longer for a more advantageous time. He did not want the captive to be crippled. He drew a bead on the stomach of the soldier nearest him; the others also sighted in. Two Hawks lifted one hand, held it, then chopped down. An almost simultaneous crash of gunfire smashed the three Perkunishans backwards. None of them moved again.
Two Hawks rushed out, kicked the burning sticks to one side, and then cut the rope where it was tied to the tree-trunk. Two Blodlandish lowered the hanging man.
Two Hawks removed his knife from his scabbard, but he did not offer to cut the giant’s bonds. He looked too dangerous. He was at least six feet seven high and three across the shoulders. His arms, chest, and legs were gorilloid in bulk. His face was broad and high-cheekboned; his nose, aquiline; his hair, straight and black. However, his skin was not especially dark, and his brown eyes had large green flecks.
One of the Blodlandish, Aelfred Herot, questioned the man in Perkunishan. There was some rapid conversation, and Herot said, “He’s a Kinukkinuk.”
Two Hawks nodded. Kinukkinuk was the Algonquian nation which occupied the area of Czechoslovakia of Earth 1. For over a hundred years, it had been part of Perkunisha.
“He says his name is Kwasind, that is, the Strong One. He was in a Kinukkinuk regiment under the command of Perkunishan officers. He and other Kinukkinuk decided to desert and join the Hotinohsonih. But they were tracked down and cornered in the farmhouse. You saw the rest. I’ve explained who we are. He says he would like to throw in with us. He also speaks Hotinohsonih, since his mother was a slave from that country. He says she was freed by his father before he married her, so Kwasind is not the son of a slave. The Kinukkinuk are very proud, even if they are treated as sub-human by the Perkunishans.”
Without a word, Two Hawks cut the ropes from Kwasind. The giant rubbed his wrists while he walked around to restore his circulation. The skin of his feet was very red but not burned.
He sat down on a corpse to put his boots back on. Two Hawks handed him a rifle and a belt of ammunition and a knife.
In Hotinohsonih, Kwasind said, “Thank you.”
“You can walk all right?”
“I can walk. But if you had been ten seconds later...”
Two Hawks sent Herot back to bring up Ilmika and her guard. The casualties were checked. Three Perkunishans were still living, seriously wounded. Kwasind and the Blodlandish put them out of their pain with knives in the solar plexus. Kwasind took a sword from a dead officer and hacked off the heads of the Perkunishans. He arranged them in a little pyramid and then stood back a distance to admire the arrangement.
O’Brien vomited. Two Hawks felt sick.
Herot explained. “By severing the heads of his enemies, he’s keeping their souls from going to Michilimakinak, the Kinukkinuk heaven.”
“Very interesting,” Two Hawks said. “I hope he doesn’t have any more customs which will delay us.”
Ilmika and Elhson joined them. Ilmika turned pale on seeing the heads, but she did not say anything.
Kwasind chanted over the bodies of his fellow countrymen, then opened their jackets and shirts. The left breast of each was tattooed with a swastika in a circle. These Kwasind removed by cutting a circle around them and stripping off the skin. He restored the fire that Two Hawks had kicked apart and threw the tattooed skins into the flames.
Herot said, “The tattooed symbols contain the ‘souls’. If they’re burned, the souls are free to fly up to Michilimakinak. But if they’re taken by enemies, they could be dried or preserved in alcohol. The souls would then never get to Michilimakinak.”
Two Hawks waited until Kwasind was finished. If the delay had been caused by anything but a religious custom, he would have insisted on leaving at once. In this case, it was important not to offend. To strike at a man’s religion was to strike at his basic identity.
10
The party walked northwards across the country all that day and the next. The dawn of the third, they were startled out of their sleep by the roar of many motors. Two Hawks crawled to the edge of the hollow in which they were hidden and looked down the slope of the hill at the road a quartermile below. It was crowded with a column of armored cars and trucks pulling cannon on caissons. All the vehicles were painted scarlet with blue bars. The doors bore the image of a black bear, rampant.