Neq the Sword

CHAPTER NINE

Yod's camp was on guard day and night. It had been alert the whole time Neq had been absent. Ever since that first spiked head.

Good. He wanted them to suffer, just as they had wanted him to suffer. They had succeeded in torturing him... and now he would repay them in equal measure. He wanted every man to remember what the tribe had done, that day Neqa died, and to know that the time of reckoning was at hand. To know that every man of Yod's tribe would be staring on a pike.

First he took the guards--one each night, until they began to march double, and after that two each night. When they marched in fours he desisted; that was too chancy. He didn't care about himself, but he didn't want to die or become further incapacitated before he had completed his vengeance.

He avoided the foursomes and moved instead into the camp, killing a warrior in his sleep and taking the head. After that there were men on guard everywhere--one sleeping, one busy with chores, the third watching. The tribe was down to forty, and it was terrified.

Neq made no killings for a week, letting them wear themselves out with the harsh vigil. Then, when they relaxed, he struck again, twice. That brought them alert again.

They had to take the offensive. They swept the forest for him, trying to rid themselves of this stalking horror. He killed two more and left their heads for their fellow-searchers to find.

They went back to the perpetual alert, the men haggard.

But they had to leave their immediate campside to fetch water, to hunt, to forage. Three men, resting in the forest, gave way to fatigue and slept. They never woke. Thirty-three remained.

There were fifteen women in the camp and twenty children. Now these noncombatants began standing guard over their men. Neq disliked this; he did not know what would happen to them once their men were gone. The women might be culpable for not encouraging some restraint in their men--no woman had shown herself during the whole of that nefarious day--but the children at least were innocent.

But he remembered Neqa, her piercing screams, her struggle as Yod raped her, and her failure to cry thereafter. His heart hardened. How often had this sort of thing happened before, with the women and children knowing and doing nothing? A person of any age who would not speak against such obvious wrong deserved no sympathy when the consequence of that wrong came back to strike him personally.

Three men came after him, guided by a dog. A clubber and two daggers. They must have borrowed the canine from some other tribe, for there had been no animals at the camp before. Neq had known it would come to this: small cruising parties tracking him down relentlessly. He was ready.

He looped about, confusing the scent-trail, then attacked from behind. He killed one dagger before they could react, and swung on the other.

"Wait!" the man cried. "We--"

Neq's sword-arm transfixed his throat, silencing him forever. But as the blade penetrated, Neq realized he had made a mistake. He recognized this youth.

Han the Dagger.

The boy who had balked at raping Neqa. Who had helped free Neq, however temporarily. Who had fled while the sexual orgy continued, after trying to stop it.

"Wait!" the third man, the clubber, cried, and this time Neq withheld his stroke. "We did not do it. See, I am scarred. Where you struck me when we fought in the circle, and I--"

Now Neq recognized him too. "Nam the Club--the first of Yod's men I engaged," he said. "I tagged you in the gut." Nam might be better now, but he could not have participated then; not when that wound was fresh.

"The other dagger," Nam said, pointing to the first dead of this trio. "Jut--you fought him and Mip the Staff together. You did not wound them, but Jut hid. He knew what was coming. He never--"

Neq reflected, and realized that Jut's face was not among those he had seen at the raping. He had just killed two innocent men.

Not quite. Jut had not raped, but he had not protested either. He had fled, letting it go on. Even Han had had more courage than that.

"There were fifty-two men in Yod's tribe--plus Yod himself," Neq said. "Fifty-three altogether. Forty-nine did it, after hearing my oath. If you three did not, that accounts for fifty-two. What other man is innocent?"

"Tif," Nam said. "Tif the Sword. You killed him in the circle before--"

"So I did." Neq hesitated, feeling sick as he looked down at Han. "Tif I do not regret, for it was a fair combat. Jut I might have spared, had I realized. But Han helped me, and--" Here regret choked off his words.

"That's why we came to you," Nam said. "We knew you did not have cause against us. We thought--"

"You turned traitor to your tribe?"

"No! We came to plead for our tribe!"

Neq studied him. "You, Nam the Club. You bragged of diddling. Had you been fit, would you have raped my wife?"

The man began to shake. "I--"

Neq lifted the tip of his sword. Blood dripped from it.

"I am a clumsy warrior," Nam said with difficulty. "But never a liar. And I am loyal to my leader."

Answer enough. "Were you friend to Han the Dagger?"

"No more than any other man. He was a stripling, softhearted."

Yes, the clubber was no liar. "I spare you," Neq said. "For the sake of this lad who was innocent and whom I wrongly slew. With choice, I would have cut you down instead, but now I spare you. But take this message to Yod: I spare no other."

"Then kill me now," Nam said simply. "Yod is a good leader. He is a rough man to resist, and he has bad ways about him, so that when he tells us to do something--even something like that--we must do it or suffer harshly. But he takes care of his tribe. He had to make an example."

"Not with my wife!"

"Discipline. He had to show--"

Neq's sword sliced off his nose and part of his talking mouth.

Then, sorry, Neq killed him cleanly.

And vomited, just as though he were a lad of fourteen again, at his first blooding.

At last he buried the bodies in honorable nomad fashion, digging the grave and forming the cairn with his sword. He did not mount their heads.

Twenty-five remained, and they were dying more readily now. But Neq performed his ritual with a sense of futility. He knew that vengeance would not bring Neqa back or right the wrong he had done the nonraping tribesmen. Han the Dagger--there was no justifying that murder. Already Neq was guilty of acts as bad as those perpetrated against him--but he could not stop.

The second party to find him was female. Neq had learned caution, and did not attack them: five young women. He stood his ground and parlayed.

They were hauling a wagon covered by a tarpaulin. Neq watched it, judging that it was large enough to hold a man. A man with a gun. Neq stood in such a way as to keep one of the girls between himself and the wagon.

"Neq the Sword," their leader said. "Our tribe wronged you. But we offer atonement. Take one of us to replace your wife."

Surprised, he studied them more closely. All five were pretty--evidently the pick of the tribe.

"I have no quarrel with the women," he said. "Except that you did not protest the dishonoring of one of your kind. But I can not trust you and do not want you. Your men must die."

"It was our leader who was responsible," the woman replied. "Our men were bound to do Yod's bidding, or to die cruelly. Kill Yod and you have vengeance."

"I will kill him last," Neq said in fury. "He must suffer as he has made me suffer, and even then it will not be enough. Neqa was worth more than your entire tribe."

She seemed nonplussed for a moment, but made a decision. "We have brought him to you," she said. She gestured, and the other four approached the wagon.

Neq grabbed the leader with his left arm, his pincers threatened near her face, and held her before him as a shield against Yod's gun. She did not resist. Her sleek buttocks touched him.

The cover came up. The man inside was exposed.

It was Yod. But the man had no gun. He was dead, his hands servered, the hilt and blade of a dagger protruding from his mouth, and soaking in his own blood.

"Our men were bonded to him, and afraid," the captive woman said. "But we were not. We have brought your vengeance to you. Only spare the rest, for our children will perish if we are left without men."

"This is not vengeance," Neq said, troubled. "You have denied me my vengeance."

"Then kill us too, for we five killed Yod. Only leave this place."

Neq considered killing them, as she suggested, for they were trying to buy the reprieve of the guilty. But he found himself sick of it all. Now both Neqa and vengeance had been taken from him. What else was left?

He turned loose the woman. She merely stood, awaiting his response, and the others stood too, like waking dead. They were all young and fair, but there were pockets under their eyes and tension lines about their mouths, and they were less buxom than they might have been. Their vigil and their act of murder had scarred them already.

Neq lifted his sword and touched it to the leader's bosom. She blanched but managed not to flinch. He slid the blade along her front so that it cut open her dress of availability and the handmade halter beneath it, exposing her breasts and letting them droop. Yet they were full and handsome.

He had only intended to check her for weapons. If she had a knife on her person he would know for whom it had been intended, and that would justify what he might do. But there was no knife. Those breasts reminded him forcefully of Neqa's breasts... and suddenly he just wanted to forget.

Vengeance was too complicated.

He pushed her away and fled.