Free The Sky And The Forest by C.S. Forester Page A

clapped the other fork on the other girl's shoulders and stapled a chain to that, too. So the two girls were fastened to each other rigidly five feet apart, unable to touch each other, and yet free to move as long as they moved in unison. They could never run away through the forest bound together like that, and yet each was perfectly free to carry a bundle on her head, and any unwieldy package could be slung from the stick between them. Then he tore off the bark-cloth kilts from the girls so that they were naked, and then he turned to another pair.
    “Come here,” he said.
    He worked with the rapidity of long practice, fastening the captives in pairs, indifferent to their sexes, and stripping them all naked. He came to Indeharu, took one glance at his white hair, and rejected him, making him stand aside, to be joined by other old men and women in a separate group. Loa, when his turn came, found himself bound to Nessi, Ura's wife. Nessi was weeping bitterly, hugging her baby to her breast; they struck her to make her raise her head. When they had chained Loa into the fork they freed him from the ropes which bound him; he was helpless now to make any move without dragging Nessi with him, and the chain was close about his throat, threatening to strangle him if he made any move uncoordinated with hers.
    The young children able to walk with their mothers they left free, and many of the women, like Nessi, had infants in their arms; Loa, slowly emerging from his stupefaction, had a momentary gleam of pleasure at the realization that neither Musini nor Lanu were among the prisoners. They might still be free -- unless they had been killed. Soon all the prisoners were fastened, save for the children and the group of older people.
    “Kill those,” said the headman with a wave of his arm towards the older people, and the spearmen closed in on the group.
    They beat in their skulls with their knobbed clubs, and thrust their spears through them. The old people died amid a diminishing chorus of screams. Indeharu broke away and tried to run on his old legs, but a flung spear stuck in his thigh, and a black demon, leaping after him, shattered his skull with a single blow that made a horrible sound of breaking bones. Indeharu was the last to die; the others had already fallen in a tangled heap, although in the heap an arm or a leg still moved feebly. The headman snatched the child from Nessi's arms and flung it to the ground, and someone else thrust a spear into it. Nessi screamed and plunged forward, cutting the scream short as the chain tightened about her throat, for Loa naturally did not plunge with her. Fallen to her knees, Nessi tried to crawl to where her dead child lay just out of reach, but Loa stood rooted to the earth, and Nessi could not reach it. The chain dragged against Loa's neck.
    All the little children, the babies in arms and those who could only just walk, were killed, so that their mothers would be freed of the burden of carrying and attending them. The children who could run beside their mothers were spared; those among the boys who should survive both the long march across Africa, and the crude surgery to which they would then be submitted, would fetch high prices in the slave markets of Mecca, higher even than the girl children of undoubted virginity. But the little babies were a liability and in no way an asset; long experience had taught the raiders that to allow a woman to keep her baby was almost certainly to lose them both, and that meant the loss of a carrier.
    The slaughter was soon over, and the raiders began apportioning loads among their slaves. The biggest tusk in the town's collection was allotted to Loa and Nessi. It was not one of a pair; maybe the other one had not developed in the elephant's jaw, or anyway its fate had long been forgotten. This one was dark brown with age -- an Arab scraped the tip of it with his knife and showed his teeth with pleasure at sight of the pleasant fresh material within.