The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens by L. Sprague de Camp Page A

and under Frome’s chin.
    Three Dzlieri had been told off to lose the first flight.
    “Now look here, friends,” said Frome, “you know what the Earthmen can do if they—”
    T-twunk! The bowstrings snapped; the arrows came on with a sharp whistle. Frome heard a couple hit. The pumpkin jerked, and he became aware of a sharp pain in his left ear. Something sticky dripped onto his bare shoulder.
    The Dzlieri shouted: “Etsnoten wins the first round!”
    “Was that not clever, to nail his ear to the tree?”
    “Line up for the next flight!”
    “Hoy!” Hooves drummed and more Dzlieri burst into view. “What is this?” asked one in a crested brass helmet.
    They explained, all jabbering at once.
    “So,” said the helmeted one, whom the others addressed as Mishinatven. (Frome realized that this must be the insurgent chief who had seceded from old Kamatobden’s rule. There had been rumors of war . . .) “The other Earthman knocked him witless, bound him, and left him for us, eh? After slaying our fellows there in the brush?” He pointed to the bodies of the two Dzlieri that had fallen to the machine gun in the earlier skirmish.
    Mishinatven then addressed Frome in the Brazilo-Portuguese of the spaceways, but very brokenly: “Who—you? What—name?”
    “I speak Dzlieri,” said Frome. “I’m Frome, one of the survey party from Bembom. Your folk attacked us without provocation this morning as we were breaking camp, and wounded our chief.”
    “Ah. One of those who bounds and measures our country to take it from us?”
    “No such thing at all. We only wish . . .”
    “No arguments. I think I will take you to God. Perhaps you can add to our store of the magical knowledge of the Earthmen. For instance, what are these?” Mishinatven indicated the rubbish left by Quinlan.
    “That is a thing for talking over distances. I fear it’s broken beyond repair. And that’s a device for telling direction, also broken. That—” (Mishinatven had pointed to the radar target, an aluminum structure something like a kite and something like a street sign) “is—uh—a kind of totem pole we were bringing to set up on Mount Ertma.”
    “Why? That is my territory.”
    “So that by looking at it from Bembom with our radar—you know what radar is?”
    “Certainly; a magic eye for seeing through fog. Go on.”
    “So you see, old fellow, by looking at this object with the radar from Bembom we could tell just how far and in what direction Mount Ertma was, and use this information in our maps.”
    Mishinatven was silent, then said: “This is too complicated for me. We must consider the deaths of my two subjects against the fact that they were head-hunting, which God has forbidden. Only God can settle this question.” He turned to the others. “Gather up these things and bring them to Amnairad for salvage.” He wrenched out the arrow that had pierced Frome’s ear and cut the Earthman’s bonds with a short hooked sword like an oversized linoleum knife. “Clamber to my back and hold on.”
    Although Frome had ridden zebras over rough country (the Viagens Interplanetarias having found a special strain of Grévy’s zebra, the big one with narrow stripes on the rump, best for travel on Vishnu where mechanical transport was impractical), he had never experienced anything like this wild bareback ride. At least he was still alive, and hoped to learn who “God” was. Although Mishinatven had used the term gimoa-brtsqun, “supreme spirit,” the religion of the Dzlieri was demonology and magic of a low order, without even a centaur-shaped creator god to head its pantheon. Or, he thought uneasily, by “taking him to God,” did they simply mean putting him to death in some formal and complicated manner?
    Well, even if the survey was washed up for the time being, perhaps he could learn something about the missing missionary and the trader. He had come out with Hayataka, the chief surveyor, and Pete Quinlan, a new man with little