The Texts Of Festival Read Online Free PDF Page A

hand darted for the gun.
    Before Jo-Jo had even pulled the gun clear of the belt, a little single-shot ball gun had appeared in Frankie Lee’s hand. The round ball had taken Jo-Jo in the chest, knocking him back into his chair. For a moment he had hung there and then the chair toppled and he hit the floor.
    In that moment Jo-Jo realised that, if his run of luck had really ever started, it was now finished for good.

3.
    The spread fingers were rigid on the wooden table. The knife was a blur as it rose and fell, stabbing viciously at the spaces between the fingers. The men in the tent finished the chant with a shout and Nath stood back from the table, wiping the sweat from his shaved head. Dimly he was pleased that his turn in the knife game was safely over, for, although proud of his speed, old Wob had lost a finger not long ago. He was content to chant with the rest.
    Oltha sat in a carved chair in front of the table where the men played the knife game. Apart from straw, rugs and two large chests, the table and chair were the only furniture in the tent, in fact the only furniture in the whole camp, the property of the chief — tokens of his authority, carefully carried from place to place in the rear wagon.
    About fifteen men crowded the tent, some standing, some sprawled in the straw. They were short, thickset men with coarse, brutal faces, and either shaved heads or long straggling hair, greased down with animal fat and gathered into heavy plaits wound with strips or rags. They had a standard dress of a coarse woollen or hide tunic: a sleeveless one-piece garment ornamented with crude brooches or studs and their leggings were bound up with thick strips of leather. Their bare arms were covered with tattoos, birds, animals, skulls, and women in obscene poses; and their faces carried the marks of a hard, bestial, outdoor life.
    A few were already snoring; the hill farmer’s beer was taking its toll and would ensure that the game did not last all night, although it was likely that fights would break out before the last man collapsed. Fights, however, broke out most nights in camp and it was as well that the men were unconscious while the moon was still high. At dawn they would have to break camp and make the long day’s journey to the meeting place.
    Outside the tent the remainder of the mounted guns stood watch, lounged by the fire or grappled with a woman in the deep shadows. The deal of beer had turned the camp into a party and around the twenty fires or in the dozen squat, conical tents figures shouted, sang and stumbled. Even the guards grew lax.
    It was as well that they were partying tonight. The next few days would be given to travelling and fighting.
    He stood up and the knife chant faltered. The man with his hand spread in the candlelight stopped his stabbing and straightened.
    ‘’Nuff?’
    ‘’Nuff,’ confirmed Oltha, ‘soonly I sleep. March tomorrow.’
    The men nodded and filed out of the tent. For a while he sat in the empty tent. He listened to the shouts as the men from the tent joined their brothers round the fire. Oltha scratched his stomach and felt pleased. His tribe was becoming strong. Not, of course, as strong as in his grandfather’s day. He dimly remembered the legendary time: how once the guns had ridden the roaring iron monsters that sped across the land. In his grandfather’s day the tribe had been invincible; even the lords of Festival had feared their might and paid tribute. But the iron monsters had one by one died until, even when he was a child, only five had remained. As he grew their magic had failed and the stocks of the spirit had dwindled. Then had come the defeat in the west; the last two machines had been destroyed. The warriors, his father among them, had fallen before Starkweather’s army and their repeating guns and he became chief of a broken tribe, outcasts on the barren, spoiled hills.
    Gradually they had regained their strength, raiding farms, absorbing small warrior