Unsung warrior box set, p.54
Unsung Warrior Box Set, page 54
part #1 of Unsung Warrior Series
He heard the whispering ‘phffft’ that followed moments after Menan’s strange frog call, but only because he was listening for it. A second whisper followed. Then an uproar broke out on the hill. The first dart had hit one of the Iban newcomers, crouched behind an AK 47. The second dart had hit an Iban warrior waiting beside the other assault rifle.
The men brushed the darts off quickly enough, but the poison was already in their systems. It was a type of carefully refined tree sap, and would normally kill whatever it struck. The warriors had brushed most of the poison off the foot-long darts under Maric’s instructions, but it was guesswork whether the two men would live.
One collapsed within thirty seconds. The other stayed on his feet, but he was very wobbly. Judging by the noise, the Iban around the two AK 47 sites were starting to panic. They couldn’t see where the darts were coming from, and they’d given up blowpipes themselves years ago. It was old 22s and food they traded for these days. The blowpipes were a legend from their own past, come to life!
Maric had told the hunters to count to a hundred between darts, and it was a while before two more raced through the air and claimed victims. At 50 meters per second, the threadlike missiles were almost impossible to see on the way to their targets. This time there was a burst of rifle fire in response. It was aimed in the direction the Iban guessed the darts were coming from, but all the shots went wide.
Behind the scenes, Maric was preparing for a final push onto the hill. He didn’t want to risk the lives of the war party in a hand to hand situation against bullets. Instead, he had the warriors whittling rough spears out of saplings. They might only have a wooden point, but enough weight behind them would drive the points deep into flesh.
Maric was beginning to think the coastal Iban might have to be killed outright, if they wouldn’t lay down their weapons, but he wanted the villagers kept alive. He reiterated that fact, once more, to the war party as they showed him the results of their work. Keeping the villagers alive was important for the end game.
The Dayak tribes of Kalimantan would have to cooperate if they wanted to keep loggers out, and get a fair deal for the resources under their land. If it was their decision to let those resources be exploited. The Iban, the Penan, the Kayan, and the smaller tribes, would have to give up centuries of enmity and distrust.
That wouldn’t happen overnight, and there would be a lot of resistance to the idea in the beginning. Maric already had part of the process planned. It would happen after the war party had opened up the nomadic trails once again. After that there would be a tribal meeting of the Kayan at the winter camp in the south.
Maric would wait until someone stated the obvious – that the tribes needed to work together to secure rights – and then put his support behind the idea. He couldn’t be the one who was seen to suggest it. The idea had to come from one of the Kayan. There would too much resistance to any idea that might come from a foreigner.
That was why he didn’t want unnecessary deaths today. He didn’t want any more excuses for blood feuds than there already were. Not with a political amalgamation of the tribes on the horizon.
Once the spears had been made ready, Maric gave the command to move out. His hands moving swiftly as he gave the orders, and others passed his ‘words’ along. From now on it would be hand signals only. Except for the one chance he intended to give the coastal Iban to surrender, which was going to happen now now.
“Taruh senjatamu! Para pendatang baru akan kembali ke pantai. Jalur nomad akan dibiarkan sendiri. Pikirkan apa yang akan dilakukan leluhur Anda!”
Maric’s voice rang out through the jungle on the hill. It was a long speech for him, and he hoped his Indonesian had been up to the task. He particularly liked the last bit, where he had urged the Iban to ask themselves what their ancestors would do in this situation. That was a big thing among the nomadic tribes.
The rest of his message was simple. Send the newcomers packing, and open the trails once again.
There was no reply. Maric assumed the Iban were thinking about his role in this. They’d heard his accent, and they must be wondering who had allied themselves with the Kayan. That should put some pressure on the defenders.
“Pikirkan berapa banyak orangmu yang akan mati!” came the reply at last. Maric read a lot into that voice. There was some desperation, but there was also the flat sound of someone who had nothing to lose.
He sighed. Maybe the coastal Iban had a criminal past, maybe there was nowhere else for them to run to. Maybe this was their last chance to make something of their lives. The reply – think how many of you will die – confirmed their stubbornness.
He always wondered about people when they chose death because they couldn’t get their own way. The ego was a slippery thing. Right now it was whispering to them that there would be a miracle, and they would somehow come out of this alive. Such thoughts seemed to contravene the evolutionary imperative to survive. Why would some people have an ego that guaranteed their destruction before they could pass on their genes?
Maric shut off his thinking. You went into battle with every one of your senses open to your surroundings, and every other part of your brain shut down. At least you did if you wanted to come out of the action alive.
The best of the Kayan hunters would be infiltrating the enemy position by now. It was a slow process, something that required every skill they had. In a few more minutes they would have discovered the weakest spots on the perimeter. They would be taking out sentries if any of them were stupid enough to be alone. Then they would spirit the Iban away as if they’d never been there.
Mostly, though, they would be preparing for the fight to come. Silently signaling those on either side about their next moves, how they might attack an Iban position in force when the call came.
A runner slid in beside Maric, now settled at the base of the hill on the other side from the village, and dropped into sign language. The Iban around the AK 47s had moved out from their positions to look for the source of the darts, so the hunters with the blowpipes had pulled back.
Maric nodded approval. He could see his assets and his enemies in his mind, advancing and retreating. He knew where every person was on the battlefield, as he always did. He had trained himself in that skill, and it had saved many lives.
He loved the SAS work, where skill counted for so much. It was just like the training Cal had given him when he’d completed his apprenticeship on the mats, when he had a Black Belt behind him, and joined Cal in the New Zealand SAS.
It had been a time of wonder, as skills he never knew he had unfurled from deep inside him. Cal had been right. Modern men and women had lost 80% of their instinctive abilities. Fortunately, the nomadic tribes of Kalimantan still had a good few of them left.
Menan dropped onto his haunches alongside Maric’s position, and there was a protracted conversation in sign language. When Menan looked up, Maric nodded. Menan was just looking for confirmation of the next part of the plan, and he was reading the situation perfectly.
Moments later the same ‘fer-rog’ cackled, and there was the faintest sound of movements, followed by grunts and choked-off cries. Then there was silence again.
This was the only dangerous part of the plan. The Kayan now controlled most of the hill behind the village, but a charge by the newcomers with military-style weapons would be costly. Fortunately the silence held. The remaining defenders were either confused about what had just happened, or unwilling to check on the outlying positions they had previously held.
Maric rose to his feet and climbed quickly up the hill with Menan at his side. They looked down through the trees on the other side, and into the dense undergrowth. It was marked here and there with the brown of the warriors’ backs, and the upright lines of the spears they held.
There was a chatter of fire from the base of the hill, and the sound of undergrowth being shredded off to Maric’s right, along the edge of the clearing. Then the silence returned. Maybe the defender behind the AK 47 had seen something, maybe he’d just succumbed to nerves.
About now the Iban would be realizing they should have cleared lines of fire behind them, up the hill, as well as down into the village. But the village had been where they’d expected the Kayan to appear.
One of the warriors below Maric jerked his head up, and turned sharply to look to his left. The dull thump of a 303 sounded on the left side of the hill, and the warrior tumbled backwards onto the ground.
He had sensed the danger. His proximity awareness had worked, but it had done so too late. He’d registered the intent of the man with the 303, but he wasn’t used to rifles. Maric would have been moving the instant he felt it.
The tall man cursed as he sprinted around the side of the hill, the undergrowth whipping at him and the occasional low branch threatening to take his head off. He was angry at himself, because he had failed the war party. He had known some of the coastal Iban had tactical training, and he hadn’t checked for an outpost that could provide crossfire.
The 303 boomed again, and he hoped the Kayan were all now under cover. Then he saw a cluster of trees ahead with a small amount of camouflage around it, and patches of brown inside. A taller figure in the middle shifted its attention to Maric, and re-positioned a rifle. A moment’s calculation told Maric he wasn’t going to make it to the outpost in time. The man lifted the rifle slightly, and squinted along the barrel, and his intent bloomed.
Maric reached up, and locked his hands around a branch above him. He levitated moments before the 303 cracked harshly once again, and the bullet passed below him. Then he was sailing through the air. The figure with the gun worked the bolt desperately, but it stuck for a moment at fully open. Then it closed.
When the figure raised the rifle again it was just in time to meet Maric’s full weight as his boot slammed into the middle of the weapon. He caught the man’s hand where it grasped the trigger. A finger snapped under the impact, and the rifle catapulted out of his grasp.
Another of the men swept forward, sweeping a parang back and forth at impressive speed. Maric snapped a boot up under his chin, and turned to drive an elbow into the side of the first man’s head. Both of them fell senseless. That left three Iban villagers, further back inside the stand of trees.
Maric heard the words “pohon, pohon tinggi,” and felt the eyes of the men upon him. Then they fled. Maric was a little puzzled. How long had he been called The Tall Tree in Kalimantan? Word must have spread a year earlier, when some of the Kayan warriors became part of his strike force at the Count’s diamond mine.
He trussed the taller Iban and made his way back up the hill. He would check on the Kayan who had been shot by the 303 later, but for now it was time to take out the last of the defenders. The war party was in position, and he only needed to give the word.
CHAPTER 5
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Menan took some of the Kayan warriors on a circular route to the other side of the village. They were to be a diversion. While the diversion force were traveling through the jungle, Maric did something odd. He walked back to the other side of the hill, and began to whistle a tune.
He was playing with the defenders’ minds. They would be expecting an order to attack them at any moment, and the whistling might be the command. Maric had used the technique before. In his mind he thought of it as something like hypnotizing the enemy.
When he finished the tune, and there was no attack, he could feel the tension around the village relax. Then Menan and the warriors with him came charging through the village from the far side, yelling and banging their parang swords against the sides of the wooden platforms. There job was to draw the defenders out.
The AK 47s and 303s opened up in frenzied bursts, and the Kayan melted into the cover under the houses. As soon as the first shot rang out, hiding any sounds they might make, dozens of warriors rose out of hiding and launched the spears they’d made. A moment later the warriors were back behind cover, and the deadly projectiles were raining down on the defenders’ positions.
Maric had given the order to target the larger build of the coastal Iban, if the Kayan could tell the difference, but he wasn’t averse to collateral damage. The people wielding the weapons had to be stopped, and the villagers weren’t blameless in all this.
A minute later Maric gave a low call, and the warriors moved up cautiously to see what they had achieved. There was no response from the defending positions. One tree looked more battered than the rest, bark chipped off it in a dozen places and spears buried in the ground around it. It must have been hiding someone on lookout, someone the Kayan had particularly targeted.
Maric sensed a movement ahead of him and slowed, his Glock slipping into his hand. Then an Iban villager stepped out from behind the tree, with his arms straight out to the side. Maric figured this was the jungle equivalent of raising his hands.
The man’s eyes were so wide with fright, and the pupils contracted with fear, that his eyes were nearly all white. It was the first time Maric had seen anyone that terrified. The villager collapsed slowly as his legs gave out. He ended up sitting with his arms locked straight, holding his shoulders up. Behind him lay a number of bodies, most with two or three spears lodged in them. Some were still alive.
Maric wished he had one of the paramedics from his SAS team with him. He did the best he could with the injured, but he had to dispatch one man with his Glock who would have died slowly and painfully. Then he committed three more to the care of those warriors in his war party who had dealt with injuries like this before.
Night was falling at this point, and the Kayan took over the longhouse, while the Iban made do with the rest of the houses. Menan said something in Indonesian, and it didn’t take long for the villagers to prepare a basic meal for themselves and their ‘guests’.
Menan posted guards for the night, but they weren’t needed. The villagers were a subdued lot now the inflated stories of the coastal Iban had evaporated. Then again, thought Maric, he shouldn’t say all of the villagers went along with it.
How many went along because some of the nobles did, or because it would have been disloyal to friends and neighbors to say no? Few people had an idea of right and wrong that went very deep.
In the morning it was time to deal with the bodies. Only one of the Iban newcomers had survived that long. It was the man Maric had laid out with an elbow, and trussed up at the outpost off the hill. He made sure the Kayan knew what he wanted for this one. He was to take a message back to his bosses on the coast. He was not to be killed.
The rest of the coastal Iban were beheaded, though the heads were then buried with the bodies. The beheadings allowed some of the Kayan to claim ancestral rights associated with the act. Menan in particular was looking forward to putting a fourth club-shaped insert into the back of his grandfather’s parang.
The burials were Maric’s idea. The Kayan would have left the bodies of the dead for the Iban to clear away, and the villagers would have dismembered the bodies, before leaving them deep in the forest for animals to take care of.
Instead, the bodies went into a common grave on the edge of the village. The Iban buried the bodies, and built a huge pile of stones over it at Maric’s direction. He wanted the defeat of the coastal Iban to be remembered. He wanted something left as a lesson to the greedy and corrupt. The villagers would see this every day, and remember.
Finally, the villagers took their own dead and stored them in caves for the customary rites of their tribe. These would be done when the Kayan were gone.
The last of the coastal Iban would be escorted to a place on one of the rivers where a klotock would take him down to the coast. Menan dispatched three of his best men to make sure this was carried out. The men would catch up with the war party before it was back in the southern lands with the rest of the Kayan people, if they moved fast.
It didn’t take long to clear out the remaining traders from the other villages of Long Pahangai. Menan split his forces into groups, so they could deal with all the villages at the same time. Half of the traders died resisting arrest – Maric had to explain the concept of arrest to the Kayan, where it caused much merriment – and the other half were sent packing. They were to give the same message to their backers as the one who was already on his way toward the coast.
When it was all over, Maric was pleased with the way the mission had gone. The Kayan had their customary rights back, and the nomadic trails for the summer migration were open again. There was still the thorny problem of forming a political body that could defend the rights of the nomadic tribes, but thank God that wouldn’t be a problem Maric had to deal with.
He was looking forward to the celebrations that would occur when the war party rejoined the rest of the tribe. It was always a grand time among the Kayan people. As long as he stayed clear of the lethal arak he would be fine.
Maric was a fan of the much gentler palm wine. He had seen containers fastened to the stumps of the palm tree flowers to collect their sap. A few hours of fermentation yielded a sweet wine around 4% alcohol content. Leaving it longer doubled the alcohol but gave the wine a more sour taste. Maric liked the sweet stuff.
The only surprise for Maric when the war party got back to the traditional southern lands was a present. The Kayan gifted him a tract of their land. He didn’t want to be included in their nobility, so they had given him a special place in the tribe. In true nomad fashion, the land he was given shifted with the tribe. It also included a house that would be built for him when they settled somewhere for more than a few days.
Maric was bemused at the honor, but accepted it anyway. The Kayan were saying he had a ‘home away from home’ anytime he wanted to stay with them. There were other privileges too, and he could have chosen one of the young women without a bride price being asked. He knew the bride price was a common practice for a relationship with a set period of time, but he hadn’t availed himself of the offer in the past. Menan didn’t ask him if he was interested these days.
