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'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 ru
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, gri
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 spi
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.
Gribardsun raised his eyes and stared back at the doctor, then made an O with his thumb and first finger and stared at the doctor through that.
The witch doctor became pale.
'When among the Romans, out-Roman them,' Gribardsun said to Silverstein.
He stood up and walked around the fire and seized the doctor by the nose and twisted it.
The doctor yelped with pain and flung his baton across the tent.
Gribardsun released the nose and went to the side of the tent and picked up the baton. It was of carved bone, and the hole in its end was large enough so that the shaft of a spear could be thrust through it. Originally, in the nineteenth century, the scientists had thought that the batons de commandement were for use in magical rites only. Then they had decided, in the twentieth century, that the batons were used to straighten out shafts. The truth, as the expedition had discovered, validated both theories. Some batons were used as physical tools and some as magical tools. In a sense, the magical batons were also shaft straighteners, since they were used by the witch doctors to straighten - or to bend - the invisible shafts that bound the universe together. The witch doctors kept the philosophy of the use of batons as a guild secret, transmitting the knowledge only to their successors. Gribardsun had tried to get Glamug to tell him the arcana of his trade, but Glamug had refused. However, by using a highly sensitive directional microphone, Gribardsun had eavesdropped on the school Glamug conducted for his two sons. He knew that the bone or wood or ivory baton was considered to be powerful. But a doctor who was powerful enough to use his own fingers to form the magical shaft-straightening hole was dreaded. There were very few. In fact, Glamug had never actually seen one. But the great doctor of tribal history - Simaumg - had used only his own fingers.