I studied the zorca with its twisted single horn. The saddle was richly decorated, but it was functional, comfortable, and the stirrups were long so that there was nothing here of the bent-legged crouch of the Rotten Row jigger up-and-down. One could ride a long way in that saddle. I fancied I would.
Besides the pair of swords and the willowy lance, Hap Loder owned an ax of a peculiar and deadly character, double-bitted, daggered with six inches of flat-bladed steel. Also he had a short compound bow. I looked at his arsenal with amusement; then again at the bow, with respect. He could have shot me down with that long before I could reach him. I cocked an eye at him.
“Show me your skill with the bow, Hap.”
He responded willingly. He strung it with a quick practiced jerk, looking up apologetically. “This is a light hunting bow, Dray Prescot. It has no great power. But I joy to show my skill to you, obi-brother.”
A piece of driftwood lay in the sand fifty yards off.
Hap Loder put four arrows into the wood—thunk! thunk! thunk! thunk!—as fast as he could draw back the string, and loose.
I was impressed.
Maybe that was all the weapon he needed, after all.
Also strapped to the saddle in the confined space allowed to so short-coupled an animal were a number of pieces of armor. Most were steel, although some were of bronze, and it looked as though Hap had built up his harness at different times and from different sources. He told me that a Jiktar commanded a thousand men, and my respect for him increased. The Clan of Felschraung was less than ten miles distant. I have for the moment spoken of distances in Earthly terms; when the time is ripe I will tell you more fully of Kregan methods of mensuration and numerology and of time. With two suns and seven moons the later is complex and fascinating.
I had yearned for years to return to Kregen; now I was here and I must not waste time.
“Wait here, Hap,” I said. I leaped up to the saddle. The feeling was at once strange and familiar; but altogether exhilarating. It was not the same as swooping down and zooming up in an Aphrasöean swinger; but as I pounded along with the wind in my hair I felt much the same feelings of freedom and exultation. I would find Delia—I would!
I skidded to a halt before Hap Loder and jumped down.
“We will walk together, Hap.”
So we started off toward the Clan of Felschraung.
Loder pulled the Fristle spear from the dead zorca. “It is not good to waste a weapon,” he said.
“Where do they come from, Hap? Where would they have taken Delia?”
“I do not know. The wise men may answer you. We have but lately come into this area, for we cover many miles in a year. We wander forever on the great plains.”
We left the sea far behind us and I realized I had not seen one sail on all that vast expanse.
I learned that there were many clans wandering the prairies of this continent, whose name, according to Hap Loder, was Segesthes, and that between them was continual conflict as one vast conglomeration of people and animals moved from grazing area to grazing area. The city, which was the only city he knew of and which he had never seen, was called Zenicce. There was in his demeanor when he spoke of Zenicce not only hatred but a certain contempt.
Some few miles inland we ran across the hunting party from which Hap Loder had parted in chase—a chase, incidentally, he had lost—and I was introduced. The moment we had made pappattu, the necessary preliminary to the challenge, Hap cried out that he had made obi to me.
On the bronzed faces of the clansmen I saw a dawning respect. There were a dozen of them, and two looked as though they would challenge me, anyway, for the custom was that any man may challenge any other to take obi; but the others recognized that if I had beaten Hap Loder I would also beat them. Hap looked down haughtily. Among the clansmen honor and fierce pride ruled. Weakness would be instantly singled out and uprooted. I was to learn of the complicated rituals that governed a clansman’s life, and of how by a system of duel and election their leaders were chosen. But at this time I looked about ready to fight them all if needs be. And, according to their custom, had I chosen to do so, then Hap would have fought at my side until either we had been killed or they had all made obi to me.
That they had all made obi to Hap was in abeyance at a time of new pappattu; whenever a new challenge was made to take obi, all old obis died. In effect this would never work in practice, and the challenge and the giving and taking of obi would be left to the two contestants.
One of the men, a surly giant, decided. There seems always such a one in a group, resentful of his defeat at the hands of him who has taken obi from him, putting it down to chance or ill luck, and vengefully always on the lookout to reclaim what he considers is rightfully his. This one was a deposed Jiktar. He leaped from his zorca, immediately pappattu was over, and said to me, sneeringly: “I will fight you at once.”
Hap stiffened and then said: “According to custom, so be it.” He drew his own sword. “This sword is in the service of Dray Prescot. Remember that.”
The fellow, one Lart, stood balanced on the balls of his feet, a steel-headed spear out-thrust. I caught Hap’s eye. He nodded at the spear across the zorca that was ours.
“It is spears, Dray.”
“So be it,” I answered, and took the spear, and poised it.
As I had known it would be, it was heavy as to blade and light as to haft, ill-balanced, and clumsy. It would throw reasonably well, and no doubt that was its primary function. But if Lart threw his, and I dodged, I would break his neck.
As we circled each other warily I understood that Hap had challenged me with his sword because that was the weapon I had been wearing. This must be another of their customs.
Lart darted in, thrusting and slashing as he came, hoping to bewilder me with his speed and ferocity. I leaped aside nimbly, not letting the spears touch. The same desperate urgency was on me now as had spurred me on when I had fought Hap Loder. I had to find Delia; not prance about at spear-play with a hulking vengeful lout. But I would not wantonly kill him. The Savanti had taught me that, at the least.
But it was not to be. In a quick flurry of the bronze blade I feinted left, swirled right and thrust and there was Lart, a stupid expression on his face, clutching the haft of my spear which had gone clean through his body. Thick blood oozed along the shaft from the wound. When, with a savage jerk, I wrested the spear out blood spouted.
“He should not have challenged me,” I said.
“Well,” said Hap, clapping me on the shoulder. “One thing is sure. He has gone to the Plains of Mist. He cannot make obi to you now.”
The others laughed at the witticism.
I did not. The fool had asked for it; but I had vowed never to kill unless there was no other way. Then I remembered my more binding vows, and I said to them curtly: “If any of you have seen a girl captured by Fristles, or any of their loathsome kind, tell me now, quickly and with truth.”
But none had heard or seen anything of Delia.
I took Lart’s zorca, as was proper, and I understood that all his property, after the clan leaders had made their judgment, would be mine. Surrounded by clansmen I rode out for the tents of the Clan of Felschraung. Delia seemed enormously remote to me.
Chapter Eight
I take obi of the Clansmen of Felschraung
I, Dray Prescot of Earth, sat miserably hunched in the skin tent of a man I had killed and felt all the impotent anger and the frustrations and the agony and the hell of total remorse and sorrow.
Delia was dead.
I had been told this by the clan leaders themselves, who had heard from scouting parties who had seen the Fristles set upon by, as they phrased it, “strange beasts riding stranger beasts” and there was no doubt. But there had to be doubt. How could Delia be dead? It was unthinkable, impossible. There must be a mistake. I questioned the scouts myself, impatient of pappattu and of the challenges that sometimes came. All the camp knew that Hap Loder, a Jiktar of a th
ousand men, had made obi to Dray Prescot, and there were few challenges. I learned the customs and how it was that ten thousand men could live together without a continual round of challenges. On first meeting, obi could be given or taken. Subsequently, it was a matter for jurisdiction of the wise men and the clan leaders, of custom and of necessity, and of elections when a leader died or fell in battle. I was impatient of it all. I searched the camp for the men, and asked my questions easily enough after I had killed the first three and taken obi from the rest, all of them, to the number of twenty-six. Their stories tallied. Strange beasts riding beasts had set upon the Fristles and all the party had been slain.
So I, Dray Prescot of Earth, sat in my skin tent surrounded by the trophies my search had brought me, and brooded long and agonizingly on what had been lost.
Even then, even then I doubted. Surely no man would be foolish enough to slay such glorious beauty as Delia of Delphond? But—but it had been beasts who had attacked. I shuddered. Would they not see beauty in Delia? And then, came the horrific thought, perhaps if they did it were better she were dead.
I believe you, who listen to the tapes spinning between the heads of your recorder, will forgive me if I do not dwell on my life among the clansmen of Felschraung. I spent five years with them. I did not age. By challenge, by election and duel, I rose in the hierarchy, although this was not of my seeking. It is an amazing and sobering fact to realize the power of ten thousand men who have made obi to one man. By the end of the five years every single one of the clansmen of Felschraung had made obi to me, either directly as the result of a victory in combat or through the indirect method of acknowledging me, with all the ceremony demanded by obi, as being their lord and master.
It all meant nothing, of course.
Mainly, it was forced upon me by circumstances and my saving my own skin. I knew why I wanted to live. Quite apart from my abhorrence of suicide, despite the dejection into which I can fall, if I surrendered my life abjectly and Delia of the Blue Mountains still lived and needed me—how would I acquit myself on the Plain of Mists then?
Some days of sunshine and rushing winds as we rode our zorcas across the wide prairies I would think Delia truly dead. And then on other days as the rains lashed down and the pack animals and the endless lines of wagons rolled across the plains, sinking axle-deep into the mud, I would begin to think that perhaps she still lived. Often I found myself believing she had in some miraculous way been transported back to Aphrasöe, the City of the Savants. If so, that was a happening I could understand and applaud. I had been discharged from Paradise for helping her, as being unworthy. Perhaps the Savanti had reconsidered their verdict. Could I look forward once more to seeing the Swinging City?
That I had under my direct command ten thousand of the fiercest fighters I had ever led was an accident.
Their chief weapon was the laminated reflex bow. I, too, learned the knack of sending five shafts out of five into the chunkrah’s eye. The chunkrah, as the reference suggests, was the cattle animal, deep-chested, horned, fierce, superb eating roasted. I had need of this expertise with the bow, for more than once or twice when elections had selected the combatants I fought men who wished to take obi from me with bows. I found a primitive pleasure astride zorca or vove in stalking my opponent, clad in hunting leathers like myself, bow to bow, slipping his arrows and sending my own shafts deep into his breast.
The clansmen used an ancient and superbly thought-out system of warfare. While they used their earth-shaking herds of chunkrah to break down enemy palisades or wagon circles, they considered this a waste of good chunkrah-flesh. They fought when the need arose from within the tightly-drawn wagon circle, the laager of the plains. But they took their fiercest joy in the two riding animals, the vove and the zorca. As a clansman I shared with them the two entirely different exhilarations to be found in charging knee to knee in the massive vove phalanxes and in pirouetting superbly on the nimble zorcas as the flashing shafts from our bows seethed into the hostile ranks.
For the first shock of vove combat when the earth shuddered to the pounding of the hooves, the clansmen used the long, heavy, couched lance, banded with iron and steel. Then they would take to their axes, with which they were irresistible. The broadsword was used, and often; but normally only when the ax was smashed or lost from its thong. With my experience of wielding a tomahawk in boarding parties on my own Earth I was able to hold my own. But an ax has a relatively short cutting edge; a striking sword will wound down almost its whole sharpened length. Even from their zorcas and voves, perched in their high saddles, they could not with their axes best me. I found that in the melee of mounted combat when the mighty voves struggled head to head and the swinging room was restricted, an ax could crushingly do more damage, biting down solidly through steel and bronze and bone. It was a useful weapon then. But as the press increased and the dust rose choking and blinding and stinging in our sweating eyes and clogging in our riding scarves, the short stabbing sword came into its own, and made short work of opponents against whom axes would clog.
“The earth shuddered to the pounding of hooves.”
The balanced throwing knife was regarded with some favor by certain of the clans of the great plains, and the terchick, as the form in which it was forged was called by the clansmen—I suspected not from its shape but from the sound it made—was swift and accurate. However, it was essentially the woman’s weapon, and the fierce tawny-skinned bright-eyed girls of the clans could hurl their terchicks with unerring skill. In the nuptial ceremony the groom would stand for his bride as she sank a quiver-full of terchicks into the stuffed target sacks at his back. Then, laughing, when all her defenses were gone, he would take her up in his arms and place her tenderly upon his vove for their bridal ride.
The voves were eight-legged, large, savage, horned and tufted, shaggy with a russet color glorious beneath the suns of Antares. Their endurance was legendary. Their hearts would pump loyally for day after day in the long chase if necessary, until the animal dropped dead, still struggling on. They carried the main war divisions of the clansmen, fighting with bulk and strength. The zorcas were lighter, fleeter but without the awe-inspiring stamina of the vove.
After five years it became necessary for me to conquer and take over the Clan of Longuelm. Again there was only a marginal joy in it. Hap Loder, who was now my right-hand man, remarked that I could, if I wished, weld the whole of the clansmen of the great plains into a single mighty fighting force.
“Why, Hap?” I said to him.
“Think of the glory!” His face reflected the shining promises he could see. “A force so powerful nothing could stand in its way. And you could do it, Dray.”
“And if I did, whom would we fight?”
His face fell. “I had not thought of that.”
“Perhaps,” I said to him. “Because there would not then be anyone to fight, it might be worth the doing.”
He did not really understand me.
Great wealth reckoned in any terms had been amassed during that five years. I possessed zorcas and voves by the thousand, and chunkrahs by the tens of thousand. I commanded with the rights of life and death the lives of twenty thousand fighting men, and three times as many women and children. The wagons contained chests of jewels, rare silks of Pandahem, spices from Askinard, ivory from the jungles of Chem. A flick of my fingers could bring a dozen of the most beautiful girls one could find to dance for me. Wine, food, music, literature, good talk and the wisdom of the wise men, all were mine without a thought.
But I merely existed through this time, for all I cared about was Delia of the Blue Mountain, and through her for Aphrasöe where all the luxuries and delicacies of the clansmen would taste immeasurably sweeter.
Life, however, was for the living.
If I have given the impression that obi was a mere matter of a challenge, and a relatively brainless combat, then I do the clansmen a disservice. It carried far more ramifications than that. The wise men, for instance, could
not in their aged sagacity be expected to be continually leaping up to swing and sword and shoot a bow. The electoral system balanced out in the end to the benefit of the clan, and the clan leader was a fine fighting man, as would be essential given the conditions of life on the great plains of Segesthes.
I knew that I could count on the absolute and fanatical loyalty of every single man of the clans of Felschraung and Longuelm. I had made it my business to weed out men of Lart’s type. The first lieutenant of a King’s Ship soon learns to handle men. I could find an inverted, ridiculous pride in the fact that my men owed me loyalty without the need of the lash, and if I fancied they also held me in some affection, I would not be a human being had that not pleased me.
These were poor substitutes for what I had lost.
The clansmen kept no slaves.
There was no need for me to do as I would undoubtedly have done, and freed them all with that procedure’s consequent tears and confusions and tragedies. Out on the great plains loyalty and affection between man and man and between man and woman would have clogged had slavery obtruded. We rode like the wind, and like the wind were here and gone before oafish mortals could apprehend. Mysticism came easily on the great plains beneath the seven moons of Kregen.
Most obi challenges were fought mounted; only my own flat feet on which I had been standing those first few times had given me an advantage which later I recognized. A clansman lived in the saddle. When a man and maid joined themselves in the simple nuptials recognized by the elders they would ride off together astride their mounts as a natural extension of the lives they had known. They would always contrive to ride off into the red sun’s sunset, and not the green sun’s. This I understood. Among the many languages of Kregen—and I soon picked up enough of the clansmen’s so that I could converse in that tongue as well as Kregish—there were many and various names for the red sun and the green sun and for all the seven moons, and all the phases of the seven moons. Suffice it that if the need arises I will use the most suitable names; for names are important on Kregen, more, if that be possible, than on Earth. With a name a primitive man may conceive he possesses the inner nature of the thing named. Names were not given lightly, and once given were objects of respect. Yes, names are important, and should not be forgotten.
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