Book I of III: The Swords of the Sultan (28 page)

About thirty or so seconds later, he counted
out twelve black midget men, all without white make-up on their
faces—eleven wore grass skirts, while the final man in the far,
left corner wore a black and brown skirt made of animal fur—neither
did they move, but crouch on the ground and stare at it mindlessly.
After all, they, and he, were obviously all prisoners within a
roofless cage made of twelve-foot-tall bamboo sticks. No windows or
doors that way.

As he slowly turned his head to look to his
left, he counted only one entrance/exit this way, and no other
prisoners. There was a bamboo door that had a rectangular window
three quarters of the way up. And through this window he saw only
the white-painted faces of two black men.

Baltor tried to prop himself up, but found
that his head was just way too dizzy, and his stomach a bit
nauseous—he slowly laid back down in order to collect his wits and
his stomach.

When he finally began to feel a bit better,
about twenty minutes or so later, he propped himself up into a
sitting position. And after discovering that he was still feeling
semi-okay a minute later, he slowly and cautiously rose until he
was standing firmly on his two feet.

Though a dizzy spasm did cross Baltor a
moment later, he still found that he was okay enough to stand, but
just to be on the safe side, he stood in place for still another
minute.

Once that minute had passed, he quietly
walked over to an old man, who sat by himself nearby, and
whispered, “Hello.”

The man completely ignored Baltor, as his
eyes continued to look in the direction they had initially been
looking at—the ground.

After another minute of silence had passed,
Baltor next quietly walked over to the group of men huddling
together—three of them—and whispered to them, “Hello—do any of you
guys speak this language?”

All three responded in the same way by
studiously ignoring him,

Just like the old man.

After his eighth attempt in all eight
languages, he finally gave up, quietly walked back over to his
spot, sat back down, and looked back out the window at the two
guards. It was then that he first became aware that the guards were
now chatting like birds, and it wasn’t actual birds making the
“coos” and “caws.”

While still listening to the guards, he stood
back up, quietly walked over to the wall that was his prison, found
a small hole in between two of the bamboo stalks, and looked out
that hole for a few minutes.

Outside this prison, he saw a whole lot of
midget men, women and children, all with variously designed white
make-up designs on their faces, as well dozens of other large
bamboo huts. Some simply sat around and chatted in that foreign
language, while others silently walked around and still others
worked. None at all wore shirts, just those grass skirts and
leather sandals. The women wore just enough bone necklaces to
conceal their privates.

Once he had thoroughly scanned this side of
the village as best he could, Baltor walked over to the other side
of the hut, found yet another hole, and scanned thoroughly out that
area.

On this side of the village, he observed that
there were no huts, no living people and no camel. Instead, there
was a huge fire pit still smoldering; hanging over the fire pit
upon a dozen long bamboo sticks, there were half of a dozen human
corpses with all skin removed, hanging by their arms and legs
wrapped and tied around the sticks—turning to dried jerky. Valuspo
was nowhere to be seen anywhere.

Obviously, even though Baltor had never
before run across a group of cannibals, he had certainly heard of
them and never forgotten, thanks to a bedtime story dramatically
relayed by his mother’s only sibling—ole’ Uncle Baltor.

Because of the uncle’s profession of choice,
which was being a skipper on a merchant ship that sailed the
“Eleven Seas,” he had only two one-week-long opportunities to visit
the nephew that had been directly named after the uncle.

Immediately the nephew began to get very
nervous as the thoughts of his impeding doom swelled.

Before a minute’s time had passed, Baltor
suddenly began to feel very queasy, and a moment later he got so
uncontrollably sick that he crouched down onto his knees so he
could puke his guts out.

A minute later yet not feeling much better,
he began to hear someone trying to speak to him quietly, though it
was in that bird-like language, which sounded exactly like the
cannibal guards.

He turned his head to see that young man
standing before him, the man wearing the fur loincloth. Upon closer
glance, Baltor observed that he stood at five-foot-six-inches and
had powerful muscles. He was the tallest and strongest man out of
them all.

Baltor slowly sat up, and then he shrugged
his shoulders to indicate that he didn’t understand what the young
man had just said.

Again, the young man said something else,
though what he said sounded just like an exotic bird.

This time, Baltor decided to ask in the
language of Misharan, “Can you speak this tongue?”

The man said something else in his bird-like
language that was completely unintelligible to Baltor’s ears.

Baltor switched over to the language of
Pagasian, while asking the same question for the second time—this
time, instead of saying anything else, the young man turned around,
walked back over to his buddies, and squatted back down into
silence.

Giving up as well, Baltor walked back over to
the hole in the hut that revealed the huts and the cannibals, and
then continued to stare out of the hut as day slowly turned into
night.

After all, there was nothing else he could do
but wait and study his adversaries….

Once night had come, and still without any
sign of Valuspo, the tribe gathered at the fire pit. After a dozen
or so cannibals had taken the corpses to another location, the rest
of the tribe had begun to set up a large bonfire.

As soon as the last cannibal had returned,
the tribe immediately started with the ritual—a fast drumbeat
commenced, whereupon the cannibals simultaneously began to dance
chaotically around the fire while chanting in that exotic,
bird-like language.

From amongst the crowd, a six-foot tall
figure soon emerged that was about two-to-three feet taller than
all of the other midgets. Even with the strange shadows cast by the
fire, Baltor could see that this was no man at all but a
gorilla!

Almost amusingly, this beast joined in the
dance as it continuously circled around the fire several more
times, with everybody now circling behind—until all of a sudden,
everyone stopped at the exact same moment when the drums stop,
including the gorilla.

It then beat its fisted paws into its chest
quite harshly, while screaming something out that didn’t sound
ape-like at all, yet bird-like,
“Cee-caw-chee-hee-choo-cha-ha-hoo-chaw-chee-caw!”

While screaming the chant back, the cannibals
immediately began to spread themselves farther away from the fire,
which soon formed a twenty-foot circular perimeter around the
gorilla.

Once again in that bird-like language, it
screamed out, “Caw-chee-chaw-hoo-ha-cha-choo-hee-chee-cawchee!”

Joining the gorilla from the crowd was a
woman donning a feather-covered costume, bearing a feathered hat
that also bore the head of a vulture seamed into the top.
Meanwhile, the cannibals screamed back the chant, their voices even
louder this time.

The gorilla next screamed out,
“Caa-ha-hoo-chaw-chee-caw-choo-hee-chee-cawchee!”

As soon as the cannibals had finished
screaming back the chant, the two guards outside opened the door,
and then cawed something to all the prisoners inside while
gesturing with their spears to exit the hut.

Within seconds, the other prisoners began to
shuffle mindlessly toward the door of the hut. Though Baltor
appeared to be the only one afraid, he too followed them.

Once he stood outside, his head and eyes
quickly gazed left and right seeking any possible escape.

One of the guards had been carefully watching
and listening to all the prisoners, especially this giant-sized,
brown-skinned one, and immediately he slapped this prisoner in the
back of the knees with his spear very, very, very hard—this action
caused Baltor’s knees to crash hard into the ground, and
simultaneously cause lots of pain!

A second later, the guard sharply cawed
something out, while gesturing with the very sharp point of his
spear in Baltor’s face to follow the rest.

He slowly stood to his feet and then
painfully stumbled toward the other prisoners that were already
nearing the bonfire. The crowd had already made a small gap for
them to pass toward the center.

When Baltor drew closer to the fire, he
realized this was no gorilla at all, but a man in a gorilla suit
that covered him from head to toe. That is, except for the
gorilla’s face that had been cut out, revealing a black-painted
human face underneath.

Once the prisoners had all lined up near the
fire that included Baltor, the gorilla-man then screamed out
something like,
“Coo-hoo-hoo-hee-chee-caw-caw-chee-chaw-hoo-ha-cha!”

As the crowds of cannibals closed the gap and
any sort of escape, they screamed back the gorilla-man’s chant.

The vulture-woman next screamed out,
“Cee-caw-chee-hee-choo-cha-ha-hoo-chaw-chee-caw-caw!”

As soon as she had finished, the others
slowly began to chant almost quietly at first, “Caw. Caw. Caw. Caw!
Caw! Caw! CAW!” The chanting grew progressively faster, as well
louder and louder.

Suddenly and in unison, the cannibals stopped
the chanting. Meanwhile, the gorilla-man and vulture-woman had made
their way over to the first prisoner, and the gorilla-man growled
out, “
Grrroooooooowwwwwwwwwwllll!
”

Even though Baltor was the last of the
thirteen total prisoners, he pondered any sort of escape options
without averting his head. However, there were no options, as the
entire tribe consisting of at least a hundred completely surrounded
them.

Baltor picked up the sound of a shocked gasp,
and he quickly gazed back over to see that two cannibals were
holding the first prisoner firmly in place, and that the
gorilla-man had just jabbed an extremely sharp ivory tusk into the
center of the prisoner’s chest.

As the prisoner screamed out his agonizing
pain, Baltor could barely hold back his gasp of shock and horror as
he observed the heart physically removed by the gorilla-man’s
hand—a heart that was still beating! He watched in ever-increasing
horror as the gorilla-man extended the heart out to the
vulture-woman, and the vulture-woman disgustingly crunched her
teeth right into the heart, which caused blood to spray all over
her white-painted face.

Shocked, horrified, and disgusted, Baltor bit
back his own scream by biting his own tongue, as he watched the
prisoner instantaneously drop to the ground while screaming out his
anguishing pains and clutching his heartless chest.

As for the gorilla-man, however, he
ecstatically raised the remaining portion of the heart into the
air, and as he tightly squeezed it with his fist, which caused a
whole lot more blood to pour down his arm—he screamed out,
“
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
”

Baltor could no longer hold back his scream
of shock and horror at the same time as the rest of the cannibals
screamed ecstatically back in response to their leader, so no one
heard his.

A moment later, he dry-heaved, but his eyes
could not look away as the gorilla-man took a bite into the heart,
which caused still more blood to squirt all over his face.

The second the gorilla-man casually tossed
that heart into the fire as if it was a piece of wood, the prisoner
finally died!

Meanwhile, Baltor could no longer hold back
the remaining fractional contents of stomach juices that he threw
up.

When he looked up about thirty seconds later
with tears still pouring out of his eyes, he blurrily saw the
gorilla-man and vulture-woman now standing before the next
prisoner—the young man who wore the fur loincloth.

Already, the gorilla-man had recommenced with
that strange and frightening chant.

Baltor realized that if he didn’t do
something quick, he would be the last to die this horrific and
disgusting way, so he needed to use the element of surprise and
fight his way through the crowd.

Without pause, he booked for freedom, and he
even valiantly fought for it for the next several minutes. However,
the masses immediately began closing in on his position like hordes
of flies on a tiny piece of dung, as they began to leap at him with
arms and legs extended completely outward as if flies without their
wings.

Baltor knocked out or killed a grand total of
fourteen cannibals, before the fifteenth such cannibal had
successfully knocked him to the ground, with the rest of the
cannibals piling right on top!

Only a moment later, the cannibals had
completely pinned him to the ground. Baltor was unable to move with
more than two thousand pounds of body weight on top of him, and for
about twenty seconds, unable to breathe….

After the pile of cannibals had separated
about a minute later, two of the remaining cannibals forcibly
brought Baltor back to his feet. While breathing very raggedly and
coughing all the while, he saw that the gorilla-man and
vulture-woman were now standing in front of him.

Upon closer glance, he saw through his starry
vision that both had bone rings that began from inside their
nostrils that curled around the outside of their noses—even weirder
than that, he observed that they bore friendly smiles, though all
he could do was to gulp down his fears and wait.

The gorilla-man drew even closer, giving
Baltor the up-down look, still with that friendly smile upon his
face. Several seconds later, he scanned across the tribe around him
as he said nicely,
“Coo-hoo-hoo-hee-chee-caw-caw-chee-chaw-hooha-cha.”