Yet I gave a good account of myself. Ears split, noses crumpled and teeth splintered under the crushing impact of my iron-hard fists, and the yells of the wounded were music to my battered ears. But that damnable chain about my waist kept tripping me and coiling about my legs, and pretty soon the bandage was ripped from my head, my scalp wound opened anew and deluged me with blood. Blinded by this I floundered and stumbled, and gasping and panting they bore me down and bound my arms and legs.
The survivors then fell away from me and lay or sat in positions of pain and exhaustion while I, finding my voice, cursed them luridly. I derived ferocious satisfaction at the sight of all the bloody noses, black eyes, torn ears and smashed teeth which were in evidence, and barked in vicious laughter when one announced with many curses that his arm was broken. One of them was out cold, and had to be revived, which they did by dumping over him a vessel of cold water that was fetched by someone I could not see from where I lay. I had no idea that it was a woman who came in answer to a harsh roar of command.
“His wound is open again,” said one, pointing at me. “He’ll bleed to death.”
“I hope he does,” snarled another, lying doubled up on the floor. “He’s burst my belly. I’m dying. Get me some wine.”
“If you’re dying you don’t need wine,” brutally answered the one who seemed a chief, as he spat out bits of splintered teeth. “Tie up his wound, Akra.”
Akra limped over to me with no great enthusiasm and bent down.
“Hold your damnable head still,” he growled.
“Keep off!” I snarled. “I’ll have nothing from you. Touch me at your peril.”
He exasperatedly grabbed my face in his broad hand and shoved me violently down. That was a mistake. My jaws locked on his thumb, evoking an ear-splitting howl, and it was only with the aid of his comrades that he extricated the mangled member. Maddened by the pain, he howled wordlessly, then suddenly gave me a terrific kick in the temple, driving my wounded head with great violence back against the massive bench leg. Once again I lost consciousness.
When I came to myself again I was once more bandaged, shackled by the wrists and ankles, and made fast to a fresh ring, newly set in the stone, and apparently more firmly fixed than the other had been. It was night. Through the window I glimpsed the star-dotted sky. A torch which burned with a peculiar white flame was thrust into a niche in the wall, and a man sat on the bench, elbows on knees and chin on fists, regarding me intently. On the bench near him stood a huge gold vessel.
“I doubted if you’d come to after that last crack,” he said at last.
“It would take more than that to finish me,” I snarled. “You are a pack of cursed weaklings. But for my wound and that infernal chain, I’d have bested the whole mob of you.”
My insults seemed to interest rather than anger him. He absently fingered a large bump on his head on which blood was thickly clotted, and asked: “Who are you? Whence do you come?”
“None of your business,” I snapped.
He shrugged his shoulders, and lifting the vessel in one hand drew his dagger with the other.
“In Koth none goes hungry,” he said. “I’m going to place this food near your hand and you can eat. But I warn you, if you try to strike or bite me, I’ll stab you.”
I merely snarled truculently, and he bent and set down the bowl, hastily withdrawing. I found the food to be a kind of stew, satisfying both thirst and hunger. Having eaten I felt in somewhat better mood, and upon my guard renewing his questions, I answered: “My name is Esau Cairn. I am an American, from the planet Earth.”
He mulled over my statements for a space, then asked: “Are these places beyond the Girdle?”
“I don’t understand you,” I answered.
He shook his head. “Nor I you. But if you do not know of the Girdle, you cannot be from beyond it. Doubtless it is all fable, anyway. But whence did you come when we saw you approaching across the plain? Was that your fire we glimpsed from the towers last night?”
“I suppose so,” I replied. “For many months I have lived in the hills to the west. It was only a few weeks ago that I descended into the plains.”
He stared and stared at me.
“In the hills? Alone, and with only a poniard?”
“Well, what about it?” I demanded.
He shook his head as if in doubt or wonder. “A few hours ago I would have called you a liar. Now I am not sure.”
“What is the name of this city?” I asked.
“Koth, of the Kothan tribe. Our chief is Khossuth Skullsplitter. I am Thab the Swift. I am detailed to guard you while the warriors hold council.”
“What’s the nature of their council?” I inquired.
“They discuss what shall be done with you; and they have been arguing since sunset, and are no nearer a solution than before.”
“What is their disagreement?”
“Well,” he answered. “Some want to hang you, and some want to shoot you.”
“I don’t suppose it’s occurred to them that they might let me go,” I suggested with some bitterness.
He gave me a cold look. “Don’t be a fool,” he said reprovingly.
At that moment a light step sounded outside, and the girl I had seen before tiptoed into the chamber. Thab eyed her disapprovingly.
“What are you doing here, Altha?” he demanded.
“I came to look again at the stranger,” she answered in a soft musical voice. “I never saw a man like him. His skin is nearly as smooth as mine, and he has no hair on his countenance. How strange are his eyes! Whence does he come?”
“From the hills, he says,” grunted Thab.
Her eyes widened. “Why, none dwells in the Hills, except wild beasts! Can it be that he is some sort of animal? They say he speaks and understands speech.”
“So he does,” growled Thab, fingering his bruises. “He also knocks out men’s brains with his naked fists, which are harder and heavier than maces. Get away from there.
“He’s a rampaging devil. If he gets his hands on you he won’t leave enough of you for the vultures to pick.”
“I won’t get near him,” she assured him. “But, Thab, he does not look so terrible. See, there is no anger in the gaze he fixes on me. What will be done with him?”
“The tribe will decide,” he answered. “Probably let him fight a sabertooth leopard barehanded.”
She clasped her own hands with more human feeling than I had yet seen shown on Almuric.
“Oh, Thab, why? He has done no harm; he came alone and with empty hands. The warriors shot him down without warning—and now—”
He glanced at her in irritation. “If I told your father you were pleading for a captive—”
Evidently the threat carried weight. She visibly wilted.
“Don’t tell him,” she pleaded. Then she flared up again. “Whatever you say, it’s beastly! If my father whips me until the blood runs over my heels, I’ll still say so!”
And so saying, she ran quickly out of the chamber.
“Who is that girl?” I asked.
“Altha, the daughter of Zal the Thrower.”
“Who is he?”
“One of those you battled so viciously a short time ago.”
“You mean to tell me a girl like that is the daughter of a man like—” Words failed me.
“What’s wrong with her?” he demanded. “She differs none from the rest of our women.”
“You mean all the women look like her, and all the men look like you?”
“Certainly—allowing for their individual characteristics. Is it otherwise among your people? That is, if you are not a solitary freak.”
“Well, I’ll be—” I began in bewilderment, when another warrior appeared in the door, saying, “I’m to relieve you, Thab. The warriors have decided to leave the matter to Khossuth when he returns on the morrow.”
Thab departed and the other seated himself on the bench. I made no attempt to talk to him. My head was swimming
with the contradictory phenomena I had heard and observed, and I felt the need of sleep. I soon sank into dreamless slumber.
Doubtless my wits were still addled from the battering I had received. Otherwise I would have snapped awake when I felt something touch my hair. As it was, I woke only partly. From under drooping lids I glimpsed, as in a dream, a girlish face bent close to mine, dark eyes wide with frightened fascination, red lips parted. The fragrance of her foamy black hair was in my nostrils. She timidly touched my face, then drew back with a quick soft intake of breath, as if frightened by her action. The guard snored on the bench. The torch had burned to a stub that cast a weird dull glow over the chamber. Outside, the moon had set. This much I vaguely realized before I sank back into slumber again, to be haunted by a dim beautiful face that shimmered through my dreams.
3
I awoke again in the cold gray light of dawn, at a time when the condemned meet their executioners. A group of men stood over me, and one I knew was Khossuth the Skullsplitter.
He was taller than most, and leaner—almost gaunt in comparison to the others. This circumstance made his broad shoulders seem abnormally huge. His face and body were seamed with old scars. He was very dark, and apparently old; an impressive and terrible image of somber savagery.
He stood looking down at me, fingering the hilt of his great sword. His gaze was gloomy and detached.
“They say you claim to have beaten Logar of Thurga in open fight,” he said at last, and his voice was cavernous and ghostly in a manner I cannot describe.
I did not reply, but lay staring up at him, partly in fascination at his strange and menacing appearance, partly in the anger that seemed generally to be with me during those times.
“Why do you not answer?” he rumbled.
“Because I’m weary of being called a liar,” I snarled.
“Why did you come to Koth?”
“Because I was tired of living alone among wild beasts. I was a fool. I thought I would find human beings whose company was preferable to the leopards and baboons. I find I was wrong.”
He tugged his bristling mustaches.
“Men say you fight like a mad leopard. Thab says that you did not come to the gates as an enemy comes. I love brave men. But what can we do? If we free you, you will hate us because of what has passed, and your hate is not lightly to be loosed.”
“Why not take me into the tribe?” I remarked, at random.
He shook his head. “We are not Yagas, to keep slaves.”
“Nor am I a slave,” I grunted. “Let me live among you as an equal. I will hunt and fight with you. I am as good a man as any of your warriors.”
At this another pushed past Khossuth. This fellow was bigger than any I had yet seen in Koth—not taller, but broader, more massive. His hair was thicker on his limbs, and of a peculiar rusty cast instead of black.
“That you must prove!” he roared, with an oath. “Loose him, Khossuth! The warriors have been praising his power until my belly revolts! Loose him and let us have a grapple!”
“The man is wounded, Ghor,” answered Khossuth.
“Then let him be cared for until his wound is healed,” urged the warrior eagerly, spreading his arms in a curious grappling gesture.
“His fists are like hammers,” warned another.
“Thak’s devils!” roared Ghor, his eyes glaring, his hairy arms brandished. “Admit him into the tribe, Khossuth! Let him endure the test! If he survives—well, by Thak, he’ll be worthy even to be called a man of Koth!”
“I will go and think upon the matter,” answered Khossuth after a long deliberation.
That settled the matter for the time being. All trooped out after him. Thab was last, and at the door he turned and made a gesture which I took to be one of encouragement. These strange people seemed not entirely without feelings of pity and friendship.
The day passed uneventfully. Thab did not return. Other warriors brought me food and drink, and I allowed them to bandage my scalp. With more human treatment the wild beast fury in me had been subordinated to my human reason. But that fury lurked close to the surface of my soul, ready to blaze into ferocious life at the slightest encroachment.
I did not see the girl Altha, though I heard light footsteps outside the chamber several times, whether hers or another’s I could not know.
About nightfall a group of warriors came into the room and announced that I was to be taken to the council, where Khossuth would listen to all arguments and decide my fate. I was surprised to learn that arguments would be presented on my behalf. They got my promise not to attack them, and loosed me from the chain that bound me to the wall, but they did not remove the shackles on my wrists and ankles.
I was escorted out of the chamber into a vast hall, lighted by white fire torches. There were no hangings or furnishings, nor any sort of ornamentation—just an almost oppressive sense of massive architecture.
We traversed several halls, all equally huge and windy, with rugged walls and lofty ceilings, and came at last into a vast circular space, roofed with a dome. Against the back wall a stone throne stood on a block-like dais, and on the throne sat old Khossuth in gloomy majesty, clad in a spotted leopard-skin. Before him in a vast three-quarters circle sat the tribe, the men cross-legged on skins spread on the stone floor, and behind them the women and children seated on fur-covered benches.
It was a strange concourse. The contrast was startling between the hairy males and the slender, white-skinned, dainty women. The men were clad in loincloths and high-strapped sandals; some had thrown panther-skins over their massive shoulders. The women were dressed similar to the girl Altha, whom I saw sitting with the others. They wore soft sandals or none, and scanty tunics girdled about their waists. That was all. The difference of the sexes was carried out down to the smallest babies. The girl children were quiet, dainty and pretty. The young males looked even more like monkeys than did their elders.
I was told to take my seat on a block of stone in front and somewhat to the side of the dais. Sitting among the warriors I saw Ghor, squirming impatiently as he unconsciously flexed his thick biceps.
As soon as I had taken my seat, the proceedings went forward. Khossuth simply announced that he would hear the arguments, and pointed out a man to represent me, at which I was again surprised, but this apparently was a regular custom among these people. The man chosen was the lesser chief who had commanded the warriors I had battled in the cell, and they called him Gutchluk Tigerwrath. He eyed me venomously as he limped forward with no great enthusiasm, bearing the marks of our encounter.
He laid his sword and dagger on the dais, and the foremost warriors did likewise. Then he glared at the rest truculently, and Khossuth called for arguments to show why Esau Cairn—he made a marvelous jumble of the pronunciation—should not be taken into the tribe.
Apparently the reasons were legion. Half a dozen warriors sprang up and began shouting at the top of their voice, while Gutchluk dutifully strove to answer them. I felt already doomed. But the game was not played out, or even well begun. At first Gutchluk went at it only half-heartedly, but opposition heated him to his talk. His eyes blazed, his jaw jutted, and he began to roar and bellow with the best of them. From the arguments he presented, or rather thundered, one would have thought he and I were lifelong friends.
No particular person was designated to protest against me. Everybody who wished took a hand. And if Gutchluk won over anyone, that person joined his voice to Gutchluk’s. Already there were men on my side. Thab’s shout and Ghor’s bellow vied with my attorney’s roar, and soon others took up my defense.
That debate is impossible for an Earth man to conceive of, without having witnessed it. It was sheer bedlam, with from three voices to five hundred voices clamoring at once. How Khossuth sifted any sense out of it, I cannot even guess. But he brooded somberly above the tumult, like a grim god over the paltry aspirations of mankind.
There was wisdom in the discarding of weapons. Dispute frequently bec
ame biting, and criticisms of ancestors and personal habits entered into it. Hands clutched at empty belts and mustaches bristled belligerently. Occasionally Khossuth lifted his weird voice across the clamor and restored a semblance of order.
My attempts to follow the arguments were vain. My opponents went into matters seemingly utterly irrelevant, and were met by rebuttals just as illogical. Authorities of antiquity were dragged out, to be refuted by records equally musty.
To further complicate matters, disputants frequently snared themselves in their own arguments, or forgot which side they were on, and found themselves raging frenziedly on the other. There seemed no end to the debate, and no limit to the endurance of the debaters. At midnight they were still yelling as loudly, and shaking their fists in one another’s beards as violently as ever.
The women took no part in the arguments.
They began to glide away about midnight, with the children. Finally only one small figure was left among the benches. It was Altha, who was following—or trying to follow—the proceedings with a surprising interest.
I had long since given up the attempt. Gutchluk was holding the floor valiantly, his veins swelling and his hair and beard bristling with his exertions. Ghor was actually weeping with rage and begging Khossuth to let him break a few necks. Oh, that he had lived to see the men of Koth become adders and snakes, with the hearts of buzzards and the guts of toads! he bawled, brandishing his huge arms to high heaven.
It was all a senseless madhouse to me. Finally, in spite of the clamor, and the fact that my life was being weighed in the balance, I fell asleep on my block and snored peacefully while the men of Koth raged and pounded their hairy breasts and bellowed, and the strange planet of Almuric whirled on its way under the stars that neither knew nor cared for men, Earthly or otherwise.
It was dawn when Thab shook me awake and shouted in my ear: “We have won! You enter the tribe, if you’ll wrestle Ghor!”
“I’ll break his back!” I grunted, and went back to sleep again.
A Thunder of Trumpets Page 11
