Norman, John - Gor 10 - Tribesmen of Gor.txt

by Tribesmen of Gor [lit]

  seemed hurried. Surely even for his mighty body the heat, the sun, the scarcity

  of water, the scarcity of food, must have taken dreadful toll. At times his

  wounds must have tormented him. Twice I saw him lick bloody crusts from their

  eruptions. Yet, slowly, as though by force of will, he moved on. I was sure he

  would kill us both. One does not tease the desert. It is implacable, like a

  stone or furnace.

  “I need water,” I told him. It had been gone, for more than a day.

  The Kur held up eight fingers, and pointed to the sun.

  I did not understand his meaning.

  We continued our journey. An Ahn later, nostrils distended, head to the ground,

  he became excited. He pointed to the ground. He looked at me, as though I must

  understand. I did not, of course, understand. He looked at the sun, and at me,

  as though weighing the values of alternative courses of action. Then he swiftly

  departed from his original direction. I realized, several Ahn later, that he was

  following an animal trail, the odors of which my senses were not keen enough to

  detect. We fell on our bellies before the foul water, stinking with excrement,

  and drank, and again I filled the bag. There was a half-eaten

  tabuk by the water hole. The Kur warned me from certain pieces of the meat,

  smelling it. Other pieces, farther from the eaten areas, more exposed to the

  sun, he gave me. He himself broke free a haunch and, with swift motions, with

  his teeth, holding it, ripped the dry meat from the bone.

  The Kur motioned me to my feet. We must again proceed. Fed, watered, I followed

  him, though each step because of my exhaustion, was torture.

  He returned to his original trail, from which he made his detour, and continued

  his march.

  The next morning he pointed to the sun, and held up seven fingers before me. But

  be let me sleep, in the shelter of a rock, while he watched. That night we again

  began the trek. The rest did me much good. The next morning he pointed to the

  sun, and held up six fingers before me. His rendezvous, I gathered, whatever it

  might be, must be accomplished within six days. It was for that reason that he

  had been driving us both.

  Water became more scarce.

  The Kur began to move more slowly, and drank more. I think its wounds had begun

  to tell upon it. No longer did it seem willing to risk leaving the trail to hunt

  for water. It was becoming a desperate beast. It feared, I gathered, missing its

  rendezvous. It had not counted on its own weakness. The leather I wore about my

  feet was in tatters, but in the footprints of the Kur there was blood. It moved

  on, indomitably.

  Then the water was gone.

  That morning the Kur had pointed to the sun and held up four fingers.

  We went a day without water.

  In a place, on the next day, we found flies, swarming, over parched earth.

  There, with his great paws, slowly, painfully, the Kur dug. More than four feet

  below the surface be found mud. We strained this through the silk I had had tied

  to my wrist, into his cupped paws. He gave me almost all of this water. He

  licked from his moistened palms only what I had left, In another place, that

  night, we found a narrow channel of baked mud, the dried bed of a tiny, vanished

  stream, of the sort which in the winter, should it rain, carries water for a few

  days. We followed this to a shallow, dried pool. Digging here we found dormant

  snails. In the moonlight we cracked, the shells, sucking out the fluid. It

  stank. Only at first did I vomit. Again the Kur gave me almost the entire bounty

  of this find. Then we could find no more.

  We retraced our steps to the point at which we had left the trail, and continued

  our journey.

  The next morning the Kur pointed to the sun, and held up three fingers.

  The water bag, in my hands, hung limp, dry.

  “Let us rest,” I said to the Kur.

  He pressed on. I followed the footprints. There was blood in them. I shut my

  eyes against the glare of the terrain.

  I put one foot in front of the other, again and again. The Kur began to limp.

  I felt weak, sleepy. I was not much interested in eating. I began to feel

  strangely hot. I felt my forehead. It was dry, and seemed unnaturally warm. I

  felt sick to my stomach, nauseous. That is strange, I thought. I have had little

  to cat. “We must rest,” I told the Kur. But he continued to press ahead. I

  tumbled after him, the water bag in my hand. I looked at it. It had cracked in

  the sun. I clung to it, irrationally. I would not release it. When the sun was

  high, I fell. The Kur waited until I regained my feet and then he limped on,

  ahead of me. “I’m dizzy,” I told him. “Wait!” I stood still, and waited for the

  dizziness to pass. The Kur waited. Then we went on again. I had a headache. I

  shook my head. The pain was severe. I put one foot before the other, continuing

  to follow the Kur. I began to itch. I scratched at my arms and body. I stumbled.

  The Kur moved on ahead of me. It was odd to feel no saliva in one’s mouth. My

  eyes were dry. Bits of sand seemed to lie between the eye and the lid; I felt,

  too, the grit of sand in my mouth, I could not spit it out; my eyes would not

  form tears. My lips became sore and began to ache. My tongue felt large. I felt

  skin on my tongue peeling. I began to feel cramps in my stomach, and in my arms

  and legs. I looked about. There seemed much water here and there, in flat

  places, in the distance, rippling, stirring. Sometimes our path took us toward

  it, but when we reached it, it was sand, the air above it rippling and troubled

  in the desert’s heat.

  “I can go no further,” I told the Kur.

  He turned to face me, crouched over, He pointed now to his right, for the first

  time. He pointed directly eastward, toward the dunes. It was at this point, I

  understood, that he would enter the dunes for his overland trek.

  I looked at the dunes to my left, shimmering with beat, rippled in the wind, the

  tops like bright, tawny smoke in the light.

  It would be madness and death to enter them.

  He pointed to his right, with the long arm, to the dunes.

  “I can go no further,” I told him.

  He approached me. I regarded him. He took me by the arms and threw me to his

  feet in the dirt. I heard him take the water bag, and heard it being ripped. My

  hands were jerked behind me and tied. My ankles were crossed and tied. With

  portions of the water bag and shreds from it, the Kur bound his feet, to protect

  them from the sand. He twisted a rope from other strips of the bag. I felt this,

  as I lay in the sand and grit, knotted about my throat. With his teeth he

  severed the leather that had bound my ankles. I almost strangled. I was jerked

  to my feet. The Kur turned toward the dunes, the rope of twisted leather in his

  right paw. Then he led me, tethered behind him, his human prisoner, climbing,

  slipping, up the first long, sloping crest, into the dunes.

  “You are mad, mad!” I wanted to scream at him. But I could only whisper, and

  scarce could heir my own voice.

  He continued on, and I, tethered, followed him.

  The wind whipped across the sand.

  I have marched to Klima, I t
old myself. I march again to Klima. I march again to

  Klima. But on the march to Klima I had had water, salt.

  Sometime in the late afternoon I must have fallen unconscious in the sand. I

  dreamt of the baths of Ar and Turia. I awakened in the night. No longer was I

  bound. I was carried in the arms of the Kur, over the silvered dunes. He moved

  slowly. He was lame in his right foot. I lay against wounds in his upper chest.

  They were open. But they did not bleed.

  Again I fell asleep. The next time I awakened it was shortly before dawn. The

  Kur, near me, half covered with sand, stirred by the wind, slept. I rose to my

  feet, unsteadily. Then I fell. I could not stand.

  I sat in the sand, my back against a dune. I watched the Kur. It had been an

  admirable, mighty beast. But now the deserts, and its wounds, were killing it.

  It was now weak, and drawn. Its flesh seemed to hang upon its huge frame, a

  shrunken reminiscence of the former mightiness of the beast. I regretted,

  strangely, seeing its decline. I wondered at what drove it, why it strove so

  relentlessly in its mission, whatever that might be. It dared to pit itself

  against the desert. I noted its fur. No longer was it sleek, but now it seemed

  lifeless, brittle; it was dry; it was coated with sand. The leather of its

  snout, with the two nostrils, was cracked and, now, oddly gray. Its mouth and

  lips were dry, like paper. About the snout, the nostrils, the mouth and lips,

  were tiny fissures, broken open, filled with sand. Sand, too, rimmed the

  nostrils and eyes, and the mouth and lips. It lay in the sand, curled, its head

  facing away from the wind, like something discarded, needed no longer, cast

  aside. It, proud beast, had pitted itself against the desert. It had lost. What

  prize, I wondered, could be worth the risk the beast had been willing to take,

  the price it had been willing to pay, its own life. I wondered if it could rise

  again to its feet. I did not think either of us would survive the day.

  The sun was rising.

  The beast rolled to its feet, and shook the sand from its fur. It stood

  unsteadily.

  “Go without me,” I said. “I cannot walk. You can no longer carry me.”

  The beast lifted its long arm and pointed to the sun. It lifted two fingers.

  It approached me. “I cannot go with you,” I said. “What is so important”‘ I

  asked.

  The beast, with one of his digits, rubbed about its lips and tongue. It thrust

  the finger against my lips. I tasted sand, and salt.

  “I cannot swallow,” I said.

  The beast regarded me for a long time. Its corneas were no longer yellow, but

  pale and whitish. There seemed no moisture in the eyes. At the corners the tiny

  cracks about the eyes were coated with sand. My own eves stung. I no longer

  attempted to remove particles from them.

  The beast turned away from me and bent his head over his cupped hands. When he

  again turned to face me I saw, in the black cup of his paws, a foul fluid. I

  thrust my face to his hands, and, my own hands trembling, holding his cupped

  hands, drank. Four times did the beast do this. It was water from the last large

  water hold we had visited, where the half-eaten tabuk had been found, held for

  days in the beast’s storage stomach. It was water, in a sense, from his own

  tissues he gave me, releasing it now, not into his own system, but yielding it

  to me, that I might not die. Again did the beast try to give me water, but then

  there was none left. He had given me the last of his water. Now again, from his

  mouth and lips, and body, he scraped salt. He took it, too, from the bloody

  crusts of his wounds. I took it, with the sand, licking at it, now able to

  swallow it. He had given me; it seemed an inexplicable gift, water and salt from

  his own body.

  “I can trek again,” I told him. “It will not be necessary to carry me, should

  you be able to do this, or to bind me, leading me as a prisoner. You have given

  me the water and salt from your own body. I do not know what you seek, or what

  your mission may be, but I shall accompany you. We shall go together.”

  But the beast motioned now that I should rest. Then he stood between me and the

  sun and, in the shade of his body, as he moved from time to time, I slept.

  I dreamed of the ring he wore about the second finger of his left hand.

  When the moons were high I awakened. Then I followed the Kur. He moved slowly,

  being lame. His desiccated tissues, I did not think, would much longer support

  life. The water he had been saving, perhaps for me, was gone.

  I did not know what he sought. Yet I admired him that he should so indomitably

  seek it. I did not think it an ill or unworthy thing to die in the company of

  such a beast.

  At his side I sensed the will and nobility of the Kur. They were indeed splendid

  foes for Priest-Kings and men. I wondered if either Priest-Kings or men could be

  worthy of them.

  Thus, natural enemies, a human and a Kur, in a strange truce in the desert, side

  by side, trekked. I knew not toward what. I did not question, nor had I

  questioned, did I think my companion could have responded to me. I accompanied

  him.

  Many times during the night he fell. He grew visibly weaker. I waited for him to

  regain his feet. Then we would again take up our march.

  Near morning we rested. In an Ahn he tried to rise, but could not. He looked at

  the sun. In the sand, with one digit, he drew a single mark. He curled the great

  clawed right fist, and struck the sand once with it, hopelessly. Then he fell

  into the sand.

  I thought that he would die then, but he did not. At times during the day, when

  I lay in the shadow of his body, I thought him dead but, putting my ear to his

  chest, I detected the beating of the large heart, slow, irregular, sporadic,

  fitful like the clenching of a weakening fist.

  In the night I prepared to bury the Kur. I dug a trench in the sand. I waited

  for it to die.

  I regretted that there would be no stone with which to mark the grave.

  When the moons were full, he put back his bead and I saw the rows of fangs. To

  my horror he struggled again to his feet, and, shaking the sand from his body,

  took up again the march. In awe I followed it.

  In the morning he did not stop to rest. He pointed again to the sun, and this

  time lifted a closed fist.

  I did not understand his meaning. Then the hair rose upon the back of my neck.

  He had indicated time, by pointing to the sun, and days, by lifting his fingers.

  He had now pointed to the sun, and lifted only the great, dry fist, obdurate,

  closed.

  I then understood, in horror, suddenly, the meaning of his mission.

  There were no more days left. It was the last day. It was a world’s last day.

  “Surrender Gor,” had been the message to the Sardar, from the Kurii ships. It

  had been an ultimatum. The Priest Kings, of course, had been only puzzled; their

  response had been curiosity, inquiry; it had never occurred to them, rational

  creatures, what might be the enormity of the plan of Kurii. I sensed there might

  be different parties among them, creatures so menacing, so fierce, so

  aggressive, so proud, so imperialis
tic, so uncompromising, factional and

  belligerent. After the failure of the major probe in Torvaldsland, it seemed not

  unlikely a given party or tribe might have fallen from power. I did not think it

  would be desirable, among Kurii, to be among a party which had fallen from

  power. It seemed clear to me then that a new force had come to power among the

  enemies of the Sardar, one willing, if necessary, to sacrifice one world to gain

  another.

  The Kur had held up a closed fist. There were no more days. I found myself

  struggling to keep up with the beast.

  The slave runs had been stopped. Doubtless key operatives, particularly those,

  who spoke languages of Earth, had been evacuated from Gor. Others, ignorant of

  the horrifying, strategy of interplanetary warfare would remain. Even Ibn Saran,

  with all his brilliance, did not, I supposed, conjecture his role as dupe in

  this plan, precipitating tribal warfare, thus effectively, for almost all

  practical purposes, closing the desert to intruders, strangers, agents either of

  Priest-Kings or even of alternative Kurii parties. Kurii, I suspected, were as

  little united as men, for they, too, are jealous, proud, territorial beasts.

  Gor, I understood, was to be destroyed. This would eliminate a world, but with

  it, Priest-Kings, and leave Earth unsheltered, vulnerable, to the attack fleets

  of the steel worlds. Better one world than none.

  Though it was in the heat of the Tahari noon the beast did not pause. The Kur,

  like the great cats, hunts when hungry, but it is a beautifully night-adapted

  animal. Its night vision is perhaps a hundred times keener than that of humans.

  It can see even by starlight. It would be blind only in total darkness, as in a

  brine pit at Klima. The pupils of its eyes, like those of the cat, can shrink to

  pinpoints and expand to wide, dark, light-sensitive moons, capable of minute

  discriminations in what to a human being would seem pitch darkness. The Kur,

  commonly, emerges from its lair with the falling of darkness. It is then that

  its nostrils distend and its ears lift, listening, and that it begins its hunt.

  I had no doubt that the destruction of the world, as would seem fitting to a

  Kur, would occur with the coming of night. It is then that the Kur, commonly,

  chooses to hunt.

  In the late afternoon the Kur cried out with rage. It stood on the crest of a