Casca 17: The Warrior by Barry Sadler

were looking worriedly at Casca. He didn't need to be told that he was about to create a bad omen. If the war chief did not wish to eat the vanquished foe, it would clearly suggest doubt about the victory.
    He moved quickly to dispel any such notions.
    He stood, belched, farted, thumped his chest and sat again on the floor, taking back the banana leaf and quickly biting off the other testicle.
    The cannibals shrugged and returned their attention to their meal. They didn't understand Casca's little routine, and probably presumed that it was a custom amongst whites when they were eating their enemies. They returned their attention to what they were eating while Casca tried to decide which end of the penis would be the least revolting to start chewing. A disinclination to take the head into his mouth made him decide to start at the base, and he found the meat even tastier than the pig organ he had eaten two months earlier in San Francisco.
    The children had now tired of their rope game and were racing for the sea, whooping and shouting and dragging with them the many yards of the warrior's entrails, the contents of which were smeared all over their bodies.
    They leaped laughing into the water and sat in the shallows, inch by inch squeezing out the excreta from the intestines and thoroughly washing them in the sea.
    When the fire pit was opened and the leaf-wrapped parcels of meat were passed around, Casca was in turn presented with an arm and a leg, but to his immense relief he was only expected to nibble a mouthful and pass along the rest. He then made a great show of eating a great deal, keeping his mouth and his hands full of the vegetable roots so that nobody thought to offer him more meat.
    In a remarkably short space of time there was nothing left of the enemy but a few bones that children were breaking open with stones to get at the marrow. The whole village had participated in the feast, so that nobody had eaten more than a few mouthfuls of the body.
    Yet the meat seemed to have a strange effect. Some of the younger warriors who may have eaten more than anybody else were staggering about as though drunk. Several of them were crudely fondling girls who were responding lewdly and enthusiastically, although until now Casca had seen only the most modest behavior in public. He felt himself to be on the edge of stupor and had to struggle to stay awake, while all around him there developed something like one of the orgies he once used to attend in Rome.
    Some music started up on the wooden drums and the stringed instruments, and men and women began to dance. Their movements and gestures became increasingly sensual, the dancers getting more and more excited.
    From time to time a couple would stop dancing, seize each other hungrily and quickly leave the scene, almost running into the jungle or behind a house, anywhere, it seemed, where they could quickly set about satisfying their raging lust. Some of them barely bothered to get out of sight.
    Others would leave the dancing and come to where most of the people were seated and dance before them, offering themselves to the one they had chosen.
    A number of pretty young girls did this before Casca, and two or three times he was about to get to his feet and accept their offer when suddenly the girl would turn and go back to the other dancers.
    When this happened yet again Casca saw the moment when the girl changed her mind. She looked as if she'd been threatened.
    Casca looked behind him to see the seated Vivita looking up at the girl. The expression on her face was more of disdain than anger, her mouth partly open, drawn down at the corners, her eyes staring coldly at the younger girl.
    The girl seemed to be in heat, and for a little while tried to ignore Vivita's cold stare, concentrating on displaying her charms to Casca. He was fascinated at the duel between the two women, and lusting for the younger one, who was surely his for the taking. He watched Vivita carefully, but she