THE UNDERWORLD WARRIOR

Chapter 1

Standing in the doorway of his house, Goodnight was finding it hard to absorb all that has happened to him in just two short weeks. Vaguely, he could remember being pushed over the ledge and falling, for what seemed an eternity, into the water. From that point on and until he awoke, lying on a reed pallet two days later, as verified by his calendar wrist watch, everything in between was a blank. As told to him, by his appointed man servant, Shapoco, the native women, while doing their daily wash at the river, discovered his body entangled in his bow and lying in the reeds along the bank of the stream. According to Shapoco, the women, at first, were very frightened for they had never seen a white man before, and particularly, a man of his size. However, they soon realized that they had nothing to fear and proceeded to pull him out of the water. While they were doing this, one of the women went to the village to get help. She returned in a little while accompanied by several men. They, after getting over their initial shock, carried Goodnight, on a mat, back to the village. For the past several days, the village medicine man attended to Goodnight and nursed him back to health. Just what he had done to cause Goodnight's many cuts and bruises to heal so quickly was to remain a mystery to him. Goodnight cared only that whatever it was, it worked and that he was happy just to be alive.

As Shapoco was approaching up the pathway, Goodnight could not help but marvel at his looks, as well as the looks of all the other people in this land. The men, though small in stature, standing five feet or less; the women, only slightly shorter, were a pleasure to behold. Their skin was a soft creamy hue and all had long bluish-black hair. The men were powerfully built, and the women, though petite, were exquisitely formed. The manner of dress was somewhat reminiscent of the Egyptian style. The men wore short skirts, covered with intricate feather work, capes on their upper body and, on their feet, sandals made from animal skins.

Chapter 14

After spending a good week, laying out his attack routes, practicing underwater swimming, and snorkeling, Goodnight felt he and his men were ready to go on the attack. In his mind, Goodnight knew that what lie before him could, at best, be called a campaign of slaughter. In order to instill the degree of fear necessary to bring the underworld lords to the conference table, many people would, unfortunately, have to be killed.

In what was to be a vain, but hopeful attempt to minimize the amount of killings, Goodnight's plan of operation was to hit each of the four enemy villages in four consecutive days. On the first raid, his men would be instructed to kill only one man each. With each successive raid, they would increase the number they were to kill by one. It was Goodnight's hope that, before the numbers grew too high, the enemy would be ready to come to the conference table.

As he prepared to launch his first raid on the enemy villages Goodnight, with much remorse, lead his men to the boats in preparation for their journey into the depths of the enemy villages, bringing to them his campaign of bloodletting and gore.

As the boats neared the exit of the waterway tunnel, Goodnight, with the raising of his hand, indicated to his men to cease rowing. As soon as all the boats were stopped, he again, by hand signal, indicated to his men that they should prepare to disembark. As his men entered the water, Goodnight, because of his great size and obvious differences, could not accompany his men. He knew that, for the success of the campaign, he must stay behind with the boats.

Upon swimming, for the most part underwater and using their snorkels to full advantage, Teo and the men under his leadership, managed to invade the village, quickly disbursing themselves as planned. Since it was the middle of the night, they found, for the most part, that the people were fast asleep.