Then, oblivion.
He didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious, but when he sat up he saw through the trunks of the trees the shattered hull of the Bird about a hundred feet away. It was lying on its side on a lower level than he was, so he supposed that he was sitting on the slope of a hill. Only half of the craft was in sight; it must have been broken in two, and most of the middeck and stern ground into rubble beneath the advancing juggernaut of the island.
Dully, be realized that the drizzle had stopped, the clouds had cleared and the big and little moons were up. The seeing was good, too good.
There were people left alive in the wreck, men, women and children who were trying to climb through the tangle of ropes, spars and broken, jagged, projecting planks. Screams, moans, shouts and calls for help made a chaos.
Groaning, he managed to rise to his feet. He had a very painful headache. One eye was so swollen he couldn’t see with it. He tasted blood in his mouth and felt several broken teeth with his lacerated tongue. His sides hurt when he breathed. The skin seemed to have been torn off the palms of his hands. His right knee must have been wrenched, and his left heel was a ball of fire. Nevertheless he got up. Amra and Paxi and her other children were in there; that is, unless they’d been caught in the other half. He had to find out. Even if they were beyond his help there were others who weren’t.
He started to hobble through the trees. Then he saw a man step out from behind a bush. Thinking that he must be a survivor who had wandered off in a dazed condition, Green opened his mouth to speak to him. But there was something odd about him that imposed silence. He looked closer. Yes, the fellow wore a headdress of feathers and held a long spear in his hand. And the moonlight, where it slipped through the branches and shone upon an exposed shoulder, gleamed red, white, blue-black, yellow and green. The man was painted all over with stripes of different colors!
Green slowly sank down upon his hands and knees behind a bush. It was then that he became aware of others who stood behind trees and watched the wreck. Then these emerged from the darkness under the branches. Presently, at least fifty plumed, painted, armed men were gathered together, all silent, all intently inspecting the wreck and the survivors.
One raised a spear as a signal and gave a loud, whooping war cry. The others echoed him, and when he ran out from beneath the branches they followed him.
Green could watch only for a minute before he had to close his eyes.
“No, no!” he moaned. “The children, too!”
When he forced himself to look again, he saw that he had been mistaken in thinking that everybody had been put to spear. After the first vicious onslaught, in which they’d killed indiscriminately and hysterically, like all undisciplined primitives, they’d spared the younger women and the little girls. Those able to walk were lined up and marched off under the guard of half a dozen spearsmen. The too badly injured were run through on the spot.
Even in the midst of this scene, Green felt some of his intense anguish eased a little. Amra was still alive!
She held Paxi in one arm and with the other pulled Soon, her daughter by the temple sculptor. Though she must have been terribly frightened, she faced her captors with the same proud bearing she’d always had, whether in the presence of peasant or prince. Inzax, her maid, stood behind her.
Green decided that he’d better try to follow her and her captors at a discreet distance. But before he could get away he saw the women and older children of the savages appear, bearing torches. Fortunately none came his way. Some of these mutilated the dead, dancing around the hacked corpses and howling in imitation of the adult men. Then began the work in earnest, the carving up of the flesh. These painted people were cannibals and made no bones about it. Fires were being lit for a midnight snack before the bulk of the meat was brought back to wherever their homes were.