He swept past me and spun his kaiila, then jerked it up short, back on its haunches in the sand.
I readied myself for another passage.
For ten days had we trained, for ten Gorean hours a day. Of the past forty passages eight had been divided, no blood adjudged drawn. In thirty-two I had been adjudged victorious, nineteen times to the death cut.
He pulled his sand veil, yellow, from his dark face, down about his throat. He thrust his burnoose back further over his shoulders. He was Harif, said to be the finest blade in Tor.
“Bring salt,” he said to the judge.
The judge gestured to a boy, who brought him a small dish of salt.
The warrior slipped from his saddle, and, on foot, approached me.
I remained mounted.
“Cut the leather from the jaws of your kaiila,” said he. Then he gestured to the boy, that the boy should remove the claw sheaths of the beast. He did so, carefully, the beast moving, nervous, shifting in the sand.
I discarded the exercise sheath, and, with the bared blade, parted the leather that had bound the jaws of the kaiila. The leather sprang from the blade. Silk, dropped upon the scimitar of the Tahari, divided, falls free, floating, to the floor. The beast reared, its claws raking the air, and threw back its head, biting at the sun.
I lifted the curved blade of the scimitar. It flashed. I sheathed it, and slipped from the saddle, giving the rein of the mount to the boy.
I faced the warrior.
“Ride free,” he said.
“I will,” I said.
“I can teach you nothing more,” he said.
I was silent.
“Let there be salt between us,” he said.
“Let there be salt between us,” I said.
He placed salt from the small dish on the back of his right wrist. He looked at me. His eyes were narrow. “I trust,” said he, “you have not made jest of me.”
“No,” I said.
“In your hand,” he said, “steel is alive, like a bird.”
The judge nodded assent. The boy’s eyes shone. He stood back.
“I have never seen this, to this extent, in another man.” He looked at me. “Who are you?” he asked.
I placed salt on the back of my right wrist. “One who shares salt with you,” I said.
“It is enough,” he said.
I touched my tongue to the salt in the sweat of his right wrist, and he touched his tongue to the salt on my right wrist.
“We have shared salt,” he said.
He then placed in my hand the golden tarn disk, of Ar, with which I had purchased my instruction.
“It is yours,” I said.
“How can that be?” he asked.
“I do not understand,” I said.
He smiled. “We have shared salt,” he said.
* * * *
I was returning to my compartment in Tor, from the tents of Farouk of Kasra. He was a merchant. He was camping in the vicinity of the city while purchasing kaiila for a caravan to the Oasis of Nine Wells. This oasis is held by Suleiman, master of a thousand lances, Suleiman of the Aretai.
It had been at my invitation that Farouk had consented to judge the passages at arms, constituting the final phases of the scimitar training.
It had not been inconvenient for him, for he was inspecting kaiila at the corrals near the southern gate of Tor.
The judging had not been difficult, either, fortunately, for the passages were clear. One passage, divided between us, adjudged as “no blood drawn,” might have been disputed. Harif had wished it awarded to me. I refused to accept it, of course, for his body had not been touched. The judge had seen the matter correctly. The stroke in question was the back-handed, ascending face stroke. Even though the blade was sheathed I had held the stroke, holding it short, a hort from his face. The leather would have torn at his forehead, ascending, over the bridge of the nose. I did not wish to injure him. Unsheathed, followed through, of course, such a stroke would have taken off the top of his head, slashing upward through the hood of the burnoose.
“Would you be my guest tonight in my tents?” had asked the judge, Farouk of Kasra. It had been his son who had carried the salt, who had unsheathed the claws of my kaiila. The boy had stood by, eyes shining. His name was Achmed. It had been he who had, enroute in a caravan, months before, discovered the rock on which had been inscribed ‘Beware the steel tower.’
“I would be much pleased,” I told the merchant, “to dine with you this night.”
That night, when our repast had been finished, and a clothed, bangled slave woman, the property of Farouk, had rinsed our right hands with veminium water, poured over our hand, into a small, shallow bowl of beaten copper, I drew forth from my robes a small, flat, closed Gorean chronometer. It was squarish. I placed it in the hands of the boy, Achmed. He opened it. He observed the tiny hands, moving. There are twenty hours, or Ahn, in the Gorean day. The hands of the Gorean chronometers do not move as the hands of the clocks of the Earth. They turn in the opposite direction. In that sense, they move counterclockwise. This chronometer, tooled in Ar, was a fine one, sturdy, exact. It contained, too, a sweeping Ihn hand, with which the tiny Ihn could be measured. The boy watched the hands. Such instruments were rare in the Tahari region. He looked at me.
“It is yours,” I told him. “It is a gift.”
The boy placed the chronometer in the hand of his father, offering it to him.
Farouk, merchant of Kasra, smiled.
The boy then, carrying the chronometer, took it about the circle of the small fire, on the sand of the tent; before each of his kinsmen, he stopped; into the hands of each, he placed the chronometer. “I give you this,” he said. Each looked at the chronometer. Then each handed it back to the boy. The boy returned and sat next to me. He looked at his father.
“You will tell the time,” said Farouk of Kasra, “by the speed of your kaiila, by the circle and the stick, by the sun.”
“Yes, Father,” said the boy, his head down.
“But,” said his father, “you may keep the gift.”
“Oh, Father, thank you!” he cried. “Thank you!” He looked to all his kinsmen. “Thank you,” he said to them.
They smiled.
“And you, swordsman,” said he to me, “I thank you.”
“It is nothing,” I said to him.
Farouk of Kasra looked at me. “I am pleased,” he said. Then he had asked, “What is your business, Hakim of Tor, and may I in any way be of service to you?”
It had been on the route to the Oasis of Nine Wells that the boy had seen the rock.
“I am a humble merchant,” I said. “I have a few small stones which I would like to sell at the Oasis of Nine Wells, to buy date bricks to return and sell in Tor.”
“You do not handle a sword like a merchant,” smiled Farouk of Kasra.
I smiled.
“I, myself,” said Farouk of Kasra, “am soon journeying to the Oasis of Nine Wells. I should be honored if you might, with your kaiila, accompany me.”
“I should be most pleased to do so,” I told him.
“I have purchased what kaiila I need,” said Farouk.
“When will you leave?” I asked.
“At dawn,” he said.
“I must pick up a girl at the pens of Tor,” I said. “I shall join you on the trail.”
“Do you know the desert?” asked Farouk.
“No,” I said.
“Achmed,” he said, “will wait for you at the south gate.”
“I am pleased,” I said.
After coming from the tents of Farouk of Kasra, outside the walls of Tor, I was returning late to my compartment, which lay in the district of tenders and drovers.
Things, it seemed to me, were proceeding well. Enroute I would find the rock which had been discovered, some months ago, by the boy Achmed, the son of Farouk. This rock would be the place at which my search must begin. After determining this point, I would continue on to the Oasis
of Nine Wells, where I would lay in supplies and water, attempt to hire a guide, and, returning to the rock, strike eastward into the Tahari. Questioning nomads, doubtless to be found here and there in the wastes, and the inhabitants of various oases, many of them off the main caravan routes, I hoped, eventually, to obtain enough data or information to make it possible to find the mysterious tower of steel. I thought it likely that there existed such a tower. I doubted that it was a figment of the imagination of the man who had made the inscription and, thereafter, had died in the desert. Towers of steel do not figure in the hallucinations, the delusions of the desert mad. Their delusions are influenced by wish fulfillment; they involve water. Moreover, they are not likely to take the time to inscribe messages on rocks. Something had driven the man over the desert, something he had to tell. He had been, apparently, a raider. But yet, for some reason, he had fought his way, presumably eventually on foot, dying, through the desert, toward civilization, to warn someone, or something, of a steel tower. I did not doubt there was such a tower. On the other hand, I would have little or no chance of finding it by striking blindly out into the desert. I would have to make contact with nomads, and others, hoping eventually to find one who had heard of, or knew of, the tower. If it were in the dune country, removed from oases and caravan trails, of course, few, if any, might have seen it. Yet, I did not doubt that at least one man had seen it, he who had made the inscription, who had died near it, whose body had been dried, blackened, by the sun.
The streets of Tor were dark. Sometimes they were steep; often they were narrow and crooked. Sometimes I felt my way by touching a wall. Some places a small lamp burned, high, near a doorway.
I thought I heard a step behind me. I threw back the burnoose, unsheathed the scimitar. I waited.
I heard nothing more.
I pressed on through the streets. No more did I hear a step behind me.
I looked back, the streets were dark.
I think I was not more than a half pasang from my compartment when, approaching an opened gate, some forty yards ahead, lit by torches in walls, I stopped.
It was a small courtyard, through which it was my intention to pass.
I saw the shadow, furtive, dart back behind one of the two halves of the gate.
At the same time I heard the movements of men behind me. There were five of them.
I felled the first. I felled the second. I caught the scimitars of three on my blade and leaped back. They separated, intelligently, and, crouching, edged toward me. I backed away, crouching. I hoped to draw the center man forward, to where he might, if I should move to the right, block the man on his own right, or if I moved to the left, block the man on his own left. But he hung back, the two on the sides creeping forward. Whichever man I attacked need only defend himself; the other two would have a free instant, that of his defense, to make their own strokes. These men were not common street thieves.
Suddenly the three men stopped. I tensed. One man threw down his scimitar. All three of them turned and fled.
Behind me I heard the doors of the courtyard swing shut. I heard the beam, locking it, fall in place.
I turned. I could see nothing for the closed gate. The torches, high on the walls of the courtyard, flickered, casting pools of yellow light on the plaster walls.
Then I heard a human scream of horror from the other side of the gate.
I did not know at that time how many men were waiting in the courtyard. I do not think any of them escaped.
I waited, scimitar drawn, outside the closed gate of the courtyard.
High above, in a wall to my right, a light appeared. “What is going on?” cried a man.
Lights appeared in others of the high, narrow windows. I saw men looking out. I saw one woman, holding her veil to her face, peering out.
In what could not have been more than two or three Ehn, men, carrying torches, some of them lamps, emerged into the street. We could hear, too, men on the other side of the courtyard. Within the courtyard we then heard men moving. I heard a woman scream. I could see movement, and torches, in the vertical thread of space between the two halves of the gate.
“Open the gate!” called a man, pounding from our side. We heard the heavy bar thrust up, and then creak, rotating, on its four-inch-thick pin. Four men, from our side, pushed open the gate. The crowd in the courtyard stood back, in a circle. Torches were lifted as men looked to the stones of the courtyard. My eyes examined the heights of the walls, the adjoining roofs. Then I, too, gave my attention to the stones of the courtyard.
Eleven men lay there, and parts of men.
“What could have done this,” whispered a man.
I wondered if any had escaped. I doubted it.
The heads of four of the men had been torn from them; the heads of two others had been half bitten from them; one man’s throat looked as though it had been struck twice with parallel hatchets; I was familiar with the spacing of the wounds; two men had lost arms, one a leg; one of the men without an arm had been disemboweled; there was also the print of jaws in his shoulder; I was familiar with this sort of thing; I had seen it often enough in Torvaldsland; the man is seized about the neck and shoulders and held, while the squat, powerful, clawed hind feet rip at the lower abdomen; twenty feet of gut was scattered in the blood and robes, like wet, red-spattered rope; the man who had lost a leg had had his spine bitten through; I could see the stomach from the back; the other man who had had an arm torn from him, too, had been half eaten, ribs erupted from the chest cavity; the heart and the left lung were missing; the eleventh man had been the most cleanly killed; about his throat, on the sides, were six black, circular bruises, like rope marks; his head hung to one side; the back of his neck had been bitten through.
I looked again to the walls, the roofs about the courtyard.
“What could have done this?” asked a man.
I turned and left the courtyard. Beside the two men in the street, who had tasted my scimitar, were gathered several townsfolk of Tor.
I looked down on the two bodies. “Do you know them?” I asked a man.
“Yes,” he said, “Tek and Saud, men of Zev Mahmoud.”
“They will kill no more,” said a man.
“At what place might I expect to find the noble Zev Mahmoud?” I inquired.
“He and his men are often to be found at the Cafe of the Six Chains,” said the man. He grinned.
“My thanks, Citizen,” said I.
I wiped my blade on the burnoose of one of the fallen men, and resheathed it.
Looking up, I saw, hurrying toward us, from the courtyard, carrying a torch, the small water carrier I had encountered several times. He looked up at me. “Did you see?” he asked. His face was white. “It was horrible,” he said. He trembled.
“I saw,” I said.
I pointed to the two men in the street. “Do you know these men?” I asked.
He peered at them closely. “No,” he said. “They are strangers in Tor.”
“Is it not late to carry water?” I asked him.
“I am not carrying water, Master,” he said.
“How is it that you are in this district,” I asked.
“I live but a short way from here,” he said. Then he left, bowing, carrying the torch.
I looked at the man to whom I had spoken earlier. “Does he live near here?” I asked.
“No,” said the man, “he lives by the east gate, near the shearing pens for verr.”
“Do you know him?” I asked.
“He is well known in Tor,” said the man.
“And who is he?” I asked.
“The water carrier—Abdul,” said the man.
“My thanks, Citizen,” said I.
* * * *
“Zev Mahmoud?” I asked.
The heavily built man in the kaffiyeh and agal looked up, angry, then turned white.
The point of the scimitar was at his throat.
“Into the street,” I told him. I looked at the two other men,
who sat, cross-legged, about the small table, with him. I gestured with my head. “Into the street,” I told them.
“There are three of us,” said Zev Mahmoud.
“Into the street,” I told them.
They looked at one another. Zev Mahmoud smiled. “Very well,” he said.
One of them, who had lost his scimitar, took one from a man in the cafe.
“Our fees will yet be paid,” said one of the men to Zev Mahmoud.
I followed them into the street.
There I finished them.
I did not wish to leave them behind me in Tor.
It was late when I returned to the compartment in the district of tenders and drovers.
I was not surprised to find the water carrier waiting for me, sitting on the steps.
“Master,” he said.
“Yes,” I responded.
“You are new in Tor,” said he, “and may not know the ways of the city. I know many in Tor, and might be of much help to you.”
“I do not understand,” I said.
“There will soon be war between the Kavars and the Aretai,” he said. “Caravan routes may be closed. It may be difficult to get tenders and drovers who will, in such dangerous times, venture into the desert.”
“And how,” I asked, “should such misfortune come to pass, might you be of assistance to me?”
“I could find you men, good men, honest, fearless fellows, who will accompany you.”
“Excellent,” I said.
“In troubled times, though,” he said, cringing, “their fees may be higher than normal.”
“That is understandable,” I said.
He seemed relieved.
“Whither are you bound, Master?” he asked.
“Turia,” I told him.
“And when will you be prepared to leave?” he asked.
“Ten days,” said I, “from the morrow.”
“Excellent,” he said.
“Seek then,” said I, “such men for me.”
“It will be difficult,” said he, “but depend upon me.”
He put forth his palm. I put into it a silver tarsk. “Master is generous,” said he.
Tribesmen of Gor Page 8
