The King

by John Norman

  The figure stood there, in rage, snarling, surely more animal than man, for just a moment it stood there, the body of Atlar held high, squirming, bleeding, over its head.

  But in that moment, in that brief instant, we may surmise, as would be expected of one trained in the school of Pulendius, it had located each of the Heruls.

  Of the mounts of the Heruls about, of which there were seven, five of which Heruls were astride, and two standing nearby, without riders, in the snow, hobbled, their two front feet tied together with the reins dangling from their bridled snouts, the five shifted, startled, one bucking, throwing his rider into the snow, while of the two hobbled, one sank to its knees, squealing, a leg broken, and the other, trying to run, fell to its side, rolling, struggling, in the snow.

  The war cry tends to inspirit and energize its utterer, but, perhaps more importantly, it can, if not anticipated, momentarily freeze the responses of the enemy or prey. The roar of the lion has a similar role, it would seem, at least in the latter particular. The moment of inactivity is often all the predator needs to effect his purpose, to strike a blow, to reach a critical point, to shorten a distance.

  With another cry the mighty figure, snow thrashing about its legs, they forcing that great body through the snow, had hurled Atlar from the blade and rushed upon the nearest Herul and mount. An upward sweep of the great blade smote away the head of the horse, and it spun away, and there was a burst of blood which drenched the snow for yards about. The rider slid off the back of the horse. The mighty figure turned about, again, and again the blade flashed forth cutting through a Herul's leg at the thigh, cutting even the girth strap holding the saddle and the horse, too, sank to its knees a lateral slash marking the blade's passage. Another horse reared over the figure and the blade slashed out opening the belly, disemboweling the animal, the rider pitching away, scrambling up, in the snow. The horse thrashed, squealing, rolling about, its legs caught in the loops of its own intestines, its frantic movements tearing them out of its own body. The leader of the Heruls wheeled his mount away, some yards in the snow, and then turned it, his lance descendant, at the ready. He called to his men. There had been six. Utinn and Atlar were dead. Another, Utak, had crawled away, dragging a bleeding stump, leaving a river of blood in the snow. He had collapsed ten yards from the sledge. The rider who had been thrown, his horse bolting at the sudden, unexpected appearance of the figure, had now recovered his seat. Another rider, whose horse had been decapitated in the figure's rush forward had hurried to Atlar's frightened, hobbled animal, slashed the hobble, beat the horse to its feet, and mounted. The rider who had lost his saddle when his rearing horse had been fended back, with the fierce stroke of the terrible blade, some five feet in length, hurried, afoot, away from the sledge, to join the leader of the Heruls. The figure with the hilt of that terrible weapon in his two-handed grasp, panting, stepped away from the horse, which, wide-eyed, rolled about amongst its own intestines, these gushed forth upon the snow, bright, steaming from body heat, glistening and tangled, enmeshed.

  Four Heruls there were then, three mounted.

  One lowered his lance and charged.

  "Wait!" cried the leader of the Heruls, but the fellow had already, with a cry of rage, kicked back with his spurs, and his mount, squealing in pain, was plunging forward through the snow.

  The horse was to the figure in the snow almost instantly. The figure, trying to evade the charge, lost its footing in the snow, staggering, stumbling. It struggled to keep its balance. The lance thrust down. The Herul cried out in frustration. The figure in the snow, lurching, had managed, but barely, to turn the thrust with the flat of the blade. The horse wheeled. The figure in the snow felt the heat of its body, fiercely, its oily pelt, the fur-clad boot of the rider. The figure, buffeted, was struck to the snow. The sword was gone. The figure rolled from beneath the descending, clawed feet, the claws tearing in the snow. The rider wheeled the horse away, and then, again, aligned it, bringing it back once more to the attack line. The figure was now, again, on its feet, wary, hands out, the snow to its thighs, the sword somewhere to the side, somewhere inches beneath a dark cleft in the snow, not within reach, not before the horse, and the lance, could reach it. The horse, sped forward by the spurs, its flanks bleeding, charged, frenziedly. The figure evaded the thrust, forcing it up with a movement of his right forearm. At the next wheeling, and thrust, the figure, again buffeted, caught the lance behind the blade. The rider, startled, thought briefly to contest the possession of the implement, to struggle for it, to cling to it, but the shaft might as well have been rooted in the ground as be in whose grasp it was, and the rider suddenly found himself, as his horse shied to the left, unbalanced to the right, and he released the weapon, and grasped for the pommel of the saddle, and, in a flurry of snow, kicked up by the mount, half slid from the horse. As the horse turned, again, confused, wheeling in the snow, a hand on the Herul's jacket tore him from the mount and flung him on his back in the snow. The Herul, down in the snow, perhaps a foot or more deep, doubtless half blinded by snow, may not have seen the lance lifted over him. Its point splintered away, stopped only by the icy ground. The startled mount, which had now veered away, its flanks bleeding from spur wounds, was gathered in by the formerly dismounted Herul. In an instant, he was in its saddle, bending over, seizing a lance from the snow where he had thrust it a moment before. The figure from the sledge stood for an instant near the downed Herul. The formerly dismounted Herul, now again mounted, was now back with the leader of the Heruls, and the other Herul. There were, then, three Heruls, all mounted. In the chest of the downed Herul, the lance shaft stood upright. It was like a marker, distinct against the snow. The figure hurried to the depression, or slit, or cleft in the snow and felt downward for the sword, and, in a moment, lifting it, cold, had it in his two hands.

  The three would charge, in a coordinated fashion. He could see the leader, some yards away, with gestures, and quick words, organizing the attack. He had, perhaps, three or four seconds in which to act. He had no realistic expectation, afoot, armed as he was, of successfully resisting the coordinated attack of three such horsemen. These creatures were Heruls. Many learned to ride, clinging to a neck strap or harness, before they learned to walk. Peoples such as Heruls had given rise, long ago, on diverse worlds to tales of centaurs, and such creatures, creatures which were at one time man and horse, so much one with the mount they were. Imperial cavalry, if similarly armed, would not meet them in the field.

  Four horses lay in the bloodied snow, one headless; one dying, disemboweled; one hobbled, with a broken leg, it snapped, broken against the hobble, in its earlier alarm; and one wounded, that whose body had been partially shielded by the leg of its rider, he dying in the snow to one side, the leg lost at the thigh, and the girth strap.

  The figure in the snow tore his way to the wounded horse, seized its bridle near the jaws, cried out, kicked the animal, jerked its head upward, twice, and the horse, squealing, got its legs under itself and staggered up to its feet, turning, unsteady, eyes rolling, its paws, wet, crusted with ice, trampling its own blood down into the snow.

  Almost at the same time the first Herul made his passage, but the horse was now between them.

  The same-line attack is often used against an enemy afoot. Two riders, or more, are required for its prosecution. It is supposed that the first passage may fail of its mark, and particularly against an agile, ready foe. But the first rider, if he is evaded, in effect sets the target for the second rider. For example, if the target, seeking to avoid the first lance, moves to, or is moved to, a given position then that, of course, determines the line of the second rider, following closely on the heels of the first. With three riders, of course, the probabilities of a hit are considerably increased.

  The second rider, too, plunged past, he, too, following as closely as he did, unable to move to the opposite side of the horse.

  The leader of the Heruls, pulled his horse up, and it reared, squealing, scratching at
the air.

  The first two riders turned their mounts, the animals struggling in the snow.

  The figure who had been in the snow was then on the back of the wounded horse.

  At a call from the leader the two Heruls, urging their horses through the snow, rejoined him.

  There was no saddle on the newly mounted fellow's horse as it had been lost in the earlier stroke.

  The weight on its back, and the activity of movement, freshened the blood on the horse's right side.

  Its rider, the newly mounted fellow, unfamiliar, strange to the horse, surely not a Herul, had learned something of horsemanship on a distant world, Vellmer, an imperial world, at the villa, or holding, of a citizen of Telnaria, one Julian, of the Aurelianii, a patrician, even of the senatorial class. He had even practiced riding bareback, for one might not always have time to saddle one's horse, and had, in the saddle and bareback, familiarized himself with the lance, light and shock, and the scimitar and saber. But it is one thing to approach targets, and practice the address, the parry and thrust with the lance, the wielding of blades, of diverse weights, lengths, and curvatures, such things, from horseback, against wands and garlands, and quite another against men, and yet another, surely, against creatures such as Heruls. His lessons had not been, at that time, learned in the school of battle, the most pitiless of houses of instruction. He was not at that time a horsemen, not in the sense that worlds, and even Heruls, would know him, and fear him, later. He was at that time young, a very young man really, though with a terrible maturity for his age. He was, at that time, no more than a creature of dreadful, awesome promise. Too, the animal was unfamiliar, and wounded. Yet, even so, the Heruls drew back.

  "It is an Otung horseman," said one of the Heruls. He had met Otung horsemen long ago, in the spring and summer of 1103, in the chronology of the imperial claiming stone, set up in Venitzia, when Venitzia had been no more than a small military camp.

  The new rider retained the long sword. Its flat was across the back of the animal.

  The leader of the Heruls, too, remembered the Otung horsemen, those of the Otung Vandals.

  "Do you remember them?" asked the Herul who had first spoken.

  "Yes," said the leader of the Heruls.

  "They fought well," said the Herul who had first spoken.

  "Yes," said the leader of the Heruls.

  "They were very brave," said the Herul.

  "Yes," said the leader of the Heruls, holding in his mount. Then he drew a circle in the air.

  "Yes!" said the third Herul, elatedly.

  The Otung horsemen, though valiant, had been, with their massive horses, dense formations and shock tactics, no match for the illusive, swarming, lighter-armed, more mobile Heruls, appearing, disappearing, attacking, drawing back, striking from behind, shifting the point of attack, hanging on the flanks, choosing the time and place of war, engaging only when it was to their advantage.

  "Exercise care," said the leader.

  The attack of the circle is usually directed against an isolated horseman, whether isolated, oddly, in the tumult of battle or elsewhere more naturally, as in a meadow, a field, or a snowy plain. It means no more than a surrounding attack, and, for it, obviously, even two riders would suffice. One engages and defends, and the other, or others, attack. The engagement and defense, and the attack, of course, can be, and commonly is, transferred among riders, these modalities shifting as seems appropriate under the circumstances.

  The newly mounted rider kicked back into the flanks of his mount, instantly seizing the initiative, and it lunged forward toward the Heruls, that it might with its rider strike into their very midst, but the beast was slowed, from its wound, and the snow, and the Heruls, though taken aback, though startled for a moment, not having expected this audacity, recovered and parted, one to the left, two to the right, and the rider's horse, leaping and struggling, struck through the snow amongst them, the flash of the great blade better than a yard from the nearest foe. The rider turned swiftly toward one of the Heruls but he drew away from the charge. Each Herul now had freed the buckler from the side of his saddle. It could withstand the thrust of a lance, the slash of the saber, the deft flight of the scimitar, but the weight of the mightier blade must be turned, or slipped, else the buckler itself might be cut, or the hand within its single grip broken at the wrist, or the rider beaten down, perhaps out of the saddle. Too, the spinal cord of the mount, in a carelessly slipped thrust, might be severed. The Heruls were not eager to come within the thunder, the sweep, of that blade.

  The rider turned his bleeding mount in the snow. The Heruls were now about him.

  It was the circle.

  He plunged his horse between two of the riders.

  But in a moment they were with him, and then one was well ahead, and turned, waiting for him, lance ready, and the other two were behind him, one behind to his left, the other behind to his right. The rider reined in his mount. With a stronger, sounder mount, perhaps on a faster surface, he might have found open ground, and separated them in a line of pursuit, the swiftest closest to him, the second swiftest, in a minute or two, significantly behind, the slowest out of the fray, until it came back to him, in turn, but he had now reined in. The false flight, separating the pursuers, and the sudden turning back, to deal with them singly, was not practical. The rider was now surrounded. The four combatants stood still, mounted. The three Heruls formed the points of a triangle. Within this triangle was the newly mounted rider, alone. The distance of each of the Heruls to the target was some ten yards. The triangle, as a whole, was some forty or fifty yards out into the plain, out from the trampled snow about the sledge. It seemed quiet then on the snowy field.

  "It is over," called the leader of the Heruls to the young, blond rider.

  The young fellow turned to face him. The leader had been behind the young fellow, to his left.

  The young fellow grasped the hilt of the mighty sword in two hands.

  His mount sank a little down, into the snow, its back legs unsteady beneath it.

  Angrily, struggling to maintain his seat, the young man urged the horse up again.

  Then it was on its feet once more.

  The snow was red beneath it.

  A little wind blew some snow toward the rider farthest from the sledge, he at the point, or apex, so to speak, of the triangle.

  Very warily the three Heruls began to close in on the isolated horsemen amongst them.

  They stopped some four or five yards from him, on their attack lines.

  The leader of the Heruls looked from one of his men to the other.

  He was satisfied.

  "What is wrong?" suddenly called the leader of the Heruls to the Herul farthest out from the sledge, at the apex, so to speak, of the diminished triangle.

  "It is the horse," said the fellow. "It is the horse!"

  The horse, suddenly, had lifted its head. It threw its head back and forth. Its eyes were like round balls. It seemed to fear to put its paws down to the snow. It began to prance. It reared. It squealed. Its nostrils were wide, like cups, opening and closing. It showed its teeth. It tore at the bit.

  The newly mounted rider, he in the midst of the Heruls, spun about on his mount's back, pulling back on the reins, and in that instant there rose up from the snow, from that desolate, bleak landscape, snarling, almost at his side, like an explosion, like a blizzard of white fire, springing, shedding snow, like a torrent of teeth and claws, a vi-cat!

  It was a giant white.

  The vi-cat was upon the hindquarters of the wounded beast, its claws sunk inches into its loins, its teeth buried in its rump, and its weight and twisting threw the squealing horse to its side in the snow, trapping the rider, by one leg, beneath it.

  The horses of the Heruls bolted. For a moment they were unmanageable. The Heruls, struggling to retain their seats, dragged on reins, fighting for control. They screamed at the animals. The horses spun about, frantic, maddened, lost in the snow. The Heruls beat them
with the butts of their lances. Back, again and again, jerked the bits. Blood gushed from the mouths of the terrified horses, washing about the jaws, drenching the lacerating metal.

  Ravenously the vi-cat tore at its prey, feeding, holding it down with its paws, digging in it, its mouth and jaws thick with hair and blood.

  The rider of the animal drew his leg loose from beneath the squealing horse, and stood unsteadily in the snow, half staggering, the leg almost buckling beneath him.

  The sword was to one side, half in the snow, half visible.

  The vi-cat fed, its ears back, its head half lost in the body of the horse, obliviously, deliriously, not more than two yards from where he stood.

  The young man saw the sword.

  The Heruls, the leader first, then the other two, brought their mounts under control.

  The young man looked back to the vi-cat.

  He must reach the sword.

  The vi-cat paused in its feeding, suddenly.

  It lifted its head from the body of the horse.

  The young man stood extremely still. The sword was feet away.

  He must not move, not perceptibly.

  The rolling eyes of the horse turned wildly, piteously, toward him.

  At the same time the vi-cat saw him. It snarled.

  The young man was not a stranger to the vi-cat, for he, and other villagers, long ago, had hunted them, though not such as this one, not the giant white. He had killed his first vi-cat at the age of fourteen, one which had unexpectedly doubled back on hunters. Even at that age he had been larger and stronger than most men. He had killed the beast with an ax. He had given the skin to his best friend, Gathron. Later, years later, he and Gathron had had a fight. In this fight he had killed Gathron. The fight had been over a woman. He had soon left the village. He would go to Venitzia, and from there, elsewhere, anywhere, seek his fortune. He had worked his passage on a freighter. He had disembarked on Terennia. It was on Terennia that was to be found the school of Pulendius, in which gladiators were trained, for diverse games on diverse worlds.