The occupants were naked except for loin strips, though the temperature was about ten degrees above zero Fahrenheit except very near the fire. The tent stank of stale sweat, saliva burning in the fire, wet furs near the fire, rotting teeth, gummy dirt, rotten meat on some bones in a corner, and excrement in two open dug-out trunks of wood used as chamber pots.
After being out in the open, the stench was almost as bad as a fist blow. But both men had encountered this every time they had entered a winter tent of the Wota'shaimg. Gribardsun had adapted - or at least had not complained - almost immediately. Silverstein had never really become at ease in the stench.
Three men pointed their spears at the two while the women removed the packs from their backs. All their clothes except their shorts were taken off. To get the parkas and undershirts off, their hands were untied. Gribardsun estimated his chances of breaking loose and decided against them. Even if he could get past the spears inside the tent and the mob outside, he would be naked. He still might escape freezing if he ran all the way back to camp. He did not have these people's tolerance for cold, but he had more than most twenty-first centurians.
However, his chances at this time were just too slim. He would wait.
When his hands were retied, they were fastened in front of him. This was an advantage, but his ankle was tied by a tough sinew to the bottom of a tent pole. Silverstein was similarly tethered. The sinew was long enough for them to sit by the fire, which they did without objection from anyone. The chief and the big man seemed amused by the shivering of their prisoners.
'What do you think is going to happen to us?' Drummond said through chattering teeth.
'I don't know,' Gribardsun said. 'But since we killed so many, somewhere near half their adult males, we'll probably be required to suffer for it.'
'Torture?'
'It's not outside the realm of possibility,' Gribardsun said.
The men left. The prisoners were in the charge of the juvenile male and the women. The juvenile sat on a pile of furs and pointed a spear at them. The women sat or squatted near the edge of the tent and looked intently at their guests. One of the young females was quite pretty, if the dirtiness of her hair and face and the streak of mucus running from nose to lip were discounted. She looked back into Gribardsun's eyes for a long time before dropping her gaze. She wore only a strip of wolf fur around her waist, revealing a well-rounded and full-breasted form. Her face was a modified and attractive version of her father's. But her mother's sagging fat figure was a sad forecast.
Gribardsun was not that taken by her, but he did hope he could somehow use her to escape. So he gazed admiringly at her, smiled, and even winked once.
That was a mistake. She leaped up shrieking and plunged out through the opening.
A minute later, the angry voices of the chief and other men were at the entrance, and then the chief entered with a man whose painted face and one-eyed baton de commandement indicated the witch doctor. They were followed by the big man who had previously hit Gribardsun and several others. The juvenile male was standing up, his spear jabbing at Gribardsun. His skin was pale and his knees were shaking. The other women looked frightened. The juvenile was the only one who had seen the wink.
Gribardsun could understand nothing of the words shouted at him, of course. But he understood after several minutes of dancing and chanting by the doctor that he should not have winked. To this tribe, that was a form of the evil eye. Gribardsun did not know what to do next. If he winked at the witch doctor, for instance, to show him that his magic was stronger, then the witch doctor might logically decide to put Gribardsun's eyes out.
What followed was unexpected but not unwelcome. In this tribe, virtue, that is, white magic, that is, the tribe's own magic, triumphed over evil, that is, black magic, that is, the magic of another tribe.
But the magic must be put to the test, and so Gribardsun was taken outside where he and the big man entered a small arena dug out of the snow. Silverstein was taken along. The big man stripped naked, and Gribardsun's bonds were untied and his shorts removed. The adult males then crowded around the walls of the snow pit, and juvenile males and some of the other women pressed in behind them.
The big man was about six-foot-five and broader-shouldered, heavier-legged, and thicker-armed than Gribardsun. He had some fat but not enough to give the impression of obesity.
Gribardsun understood without being told that this was to be trial by combat. He wondered, briefly, if this custom had actually arisen in this tribe and spread out from there. But he knew that it was doubtful that one small group would have originated the custom. In any event, no one would ever know, since study of this period was so restricted.
He hopped up and down and flexed his legs and arms and worked his fingers to restore his circulation. His shivering, however, had stopped.
The big man, smiling confidently, walked up to Gribardsun with his arms out and his hands open.
Silverstein, shivering in one corner of the arena, guarded by the juvenile expected Gribardsun to win. Though the tribesman was bigger, Gribardsun knew all the philosophies and techniques of twenty-first century schools of hand-to-hand fighting. He should be able to chop his opponent down with karate or judo in short order.
But the Englishman at first made no attempt to use anything but brute strength. He grabbed the tribesman's hands in his and waited. The big man, grinning, pushed against his smaller opponent. Gribardsun dug his naked heels into the snow and pushed back. The two slipped back and forth and then, suddenly, Gribardsun twisted the other man's hands, and the man dropped sideways onto the snow. The man struck heavily. The spectators grunted, or said something like'Uhunga!'
His grin lost, the man got to his feet. Gribardsun seized his hands again and yanked downward and inward, and when the man was near enough, brought up his knee and drove it against the chin beneath the thick beard.
This time the man had great difficulty getting to his feet.
Gribardsun helped him up, grabbed him by the back of the neck and his thigh and lifted him above his head. He turned around and around, slowly, smiling at the awed tribespeople, and then heaved the man, who must have weighed at least 280 pounds, over their heads and against the edge of the arena. The man struck it side-on, slid down, and lay at its bottom motionless.
The witch doctor advanced from the crowd, shaking his baton and muttering something rhythmic. He brought the end of the baton under Gribardsun's nose, held it there, and then moved it from side to side.
Gribardsun suddenly grabbed the baton, tore it from the doctor's grasp, and sent it spinning far out into the snow.
The doctor turned gray under the paint on his face and chest.
The next step was up to the tribesmen. Silverstein hoped they would not try something simple and logical, such as launching every spear they had against the two prisoners.
Nobody moved. Everybody stared at Gribardsun. He smiled and walked toward the exit of the arena.
They gave way before him, and he took Silverstein's hand and led him back to the chief's lodge. There they sat down by the fire. Gribardsun added wood to it despite a muttered protest from the old woman who had not witnessed the combat outside.
The witch doctor and the chief entered. Gribardsun looked at the fire and ignored them. The doctor danced around the fire, passing behind Gribardsun and shaking his baton, which he had rescued, over the Englishman's head. He went around the fire widdershins twelve times and stopped on the other side of the fire just opposite Gribardsun. He raised the baton to his eye and looked through the hole in its end at Gribardsun.