by John Norman
There was suddenly a scream from the height of the wall. I spun about to see one of Shaba’s men reel about and then plunge bloody from the wall’s height to the stones below. Then, rimmed against the blue tropical sky I saw, arms upraised, a red-spattered panga in its right paw, the huge, towering shaggy figure of a Kur. There were screams from below. Then I heard the screams of wild Kurii from all about, encircling the walls. I saw the height of a slender tree trunk suddenly protruding against the sky, leaning against the wall from the outside. A Kur scrambled up the trunk and leaped down over the wall. At other places, too, I saw the heads of Kurii, broad and fanged, eyes blazing, arms and paws thrust over the wall.
One of the Kurii screamed, a stabbing spear thrust in its chest. Bila Huruma swiftly deployed his askaris. I saw Kisu, a raider’s spear over this head, held in both hands, rush toward a crouching Kur, one just leaped into the courtyard.
“Remove these manacles!” I cried to Ngumi, the scribe at the side of Shaba, he who had conducted us to this place.
Eight or ten more Kurii dropped inside the wall, lightly for their weight, and crouched there for the moment, pangas in their fangs, the knuckles of their paws on the stones.
I saw Msaliti draw his knife and slip to the side.
Askaris rushed up stone stairs to the height of the walls, where the lateral walkways had not crumbled. I saw one thrust back another tree trunk. Then I saw four of them cut from the to of the wall by a charging Kur, one wielding a giant panga. I saw Kurii, too, thrusting their arms through the barrier of lashed poles mounted over the stones at the threshold. Ayari, small Ayari, joined the askaris there, thrusting with a stabbing spear through the poles.
“Free me!” I cried, maddened, to the scribe. I fought the manacles. I saw more Kurii clambering over the walls.
The scribe threw a wild look at Shaba. “Free him,” said Shaba.
I saw two Kurii, on all fours, pangas in their fangs, look towards us.
I heard screams at the threshold. I saw the poles being splintered and smote apart by pangas.
One of the slave girls, somewhere, screamed. A manacle, its double bolt thrust back by the key, opened. Many of the Kurii, I suspected, were Gorean Kurii, wild, degenerate Kurii, descendants of marooned Kurii or survivors of crashed ships. Others, I feared, were ship Kurii. “Hurry!” I cried. One of the two Kurii who had been looking at us suddenly lifted his arm and pointed towards us. On all fours, moving with an agility and speed frightening in so large a beast, they charged. The other manacle snapped free. I saw one of the beasts throw itself, panga still in its fangs, toward Shaba, reaching for the ring on its chain. I hurled the loosened manacles into the face of the other Kur. The beast who had attacked Shaba suddenly drew back, startled. Puzzled it looked at its paw, where there was a flash of bright blood. The panga fell from its fangs. The beast who confronted me, howling, tore the manacle from its slashed, moonlike eye. Its mouth was bloody where it had bitten dn the steel of the panga. I scrambled, leaping, half crawling, to the place on the stones where Ngumi had, after putting me in manacles, dropped my belt, sheath and dagger. I rolled wildly to the side. The panga of the beast who followed me, with a great ringing sound, and a flash of sparks, smote down on the stone. The beast who had attacked Shaba lay dead by his couch. Shaba was coughing and spitting blood. The blade of his fang ring, that containing kanda, was exposed, and bloody. I threw myself to the side again and again the great panga fell. The table on which reposed the map case and notebooks of Shaba seemed to explode in two, wood splintering and flying to the sides, the map case and notebooks, scattering, showering upward.
The Kur, roaring and snarling, looked about. For the moment it had lost me. I kept to its blind side. Then, uttering the war cry of Ko-ro-ba, I leaped upon its back, and, an arm about its throat, plunged the dagger to its heart. I felt the great body shuddering under me and I leaped away from it.
I spun about. I saw another Kur at Shaba. Again Shaba interposed the fang ring. I saw the six digits of the paw close on the chain about Shaba’s neck, and then the digits released the chain and the beast slipped back, limply. It sat for a moment, and then, unsteadily, fell to the side.
I thrust the bloody dagger between my teeth. On it I tasted the blood of Kur.
I seized up the panga which had been carried by the beast I had slain. It was heavy. I must needs use two hands to wield it.
I looked back once to Shaba, who, head down, was clutching at the blankets of the couch. They were covered with blood. Ngumi ran to him. Shaba lifted his head. “Fight,” he said. “Save yourselves.”
“I will never leave you!” cried Ngumi. Then he cried out, half cut in two. I leaped forward and, frontally, struck the Kur which had slain Ngumi. Its broad head was cut open to the neck. I looked down at Ngumi. The tribal stitching on his face, so startling and paradoxical in a scribe, a man of civilization, was identical to that on the face of Shaba.
“Help!” I heard. “They are breaking through!”
I ran to the threshold and, leaping upon the stones, screaming, struck at the arms and paws which were thrusting back the barrier of lashed poles. Paws and arms, severed, flew bloody from the blade. Kurii, howling, drew back.
“Others are coming over the walls!” I heard.
“Free me!” I heard. I ran to Turgus and slashed his bonds. He seized up a stabbing spear from a fallen askari and ran to fight. I then slashed away the bonds of the huddled, crouching slave girls. “Master!” cried Janice. They might now have some chance to flee. Yet they were enclosed within the walls. A human female who falls to a male conqueror may sometimes, by submitting herself totally to him as a slave, save her life, at least until he determines whether or not she is sufficiently pleasing. Kurii, on the other hand, generally have little interest in human females except as food.
I turned to meet the attack of another Kur. I blocked his blow with the panga and was, from the force of it, thrown back a dozen feet. He struck again and I was hurled back to the wall. The panga had almost been ripped away from me. My hands stung. He struck again and stone showered out from the wall, to the right of my head. I slipped to the side and caught him with the panga, striking across the hip and lower abdomen. He grunted and stepped back, holding splinters of bone and loops of intestine in its paw. I then struck its head away.
“Kisu, watch out!” I cried.
Kisu turned but a figure interposed itself between him and the attacker. A stabbing spear was thrust into the belly of the Kur, and then, stabbing five times more, in the belly and chest, and throat, the interposing figure forced back the bewildered, enraged beast. An askari then struck the beast from behind, thrusting his stabbing spear deep into its back, below the left shoulder blade. The beast turned to attack its new menace, and he who had been the interposing figure, now behind it, as it had turned, thrust his own stabbing spear deep into its back, as had the askari. The beast sank to its knees and snapping crawled toward the retreating askari for more than a dozen feet until it collapsed on the stones.
Kisu glared at he who had been the interposing figure. “My thanks, Ubar,” he then said. Then each, Kisu, the rebel, and Bila Huruma, Ubar of the equatorial empire, side by side, addressed themselves to thwarting the attack of new Kurii. I held the panga in two hands. My mouth was bleeding, as I had cut myself on the dagger clenched between my teeth. I looked about. I thrust the dagger through my tunic, it held in place, in the pierced cloth, by its hilt. I wiped blood from my face. I rejoined the fray. I struck a Kur from behind that was towering over a fallen askari, opening the shaggy skull to the nape. Another I struck, too, from behind, severing the spinal column. It had been bent over, pausing to feed. I saw yet more Kurii clambering over the wall. Others pressed again now at the lashed poles over the stones at the threshold. I ran toward the threshold. I hacked them back. They drew back, a leader roaring and gesticulating. Then others brought forth two of the slender tree trunks they had been using to scale the walls. I threw back my head to breathe. I checked that th
e dagger was still caught in my tunic. I thrust it through another place, too, in the tunic. Too easily, earlier, it might have been lost.
“How have we been surprised?” I asked Ayari, who was at the threshold.
“The guards at the small bridge were surprised and killed,” he said. ‘They took the bridge and crossed the moat.”
“It is a slaughter,” I said.
I looked about. The oval leather shields and the stabbing spears of the askaris might have been ideal armament for invincibility in tribal warfare but they afforded little in the way of martial equity when compared to the weighty, slashing pangas of the Kurii. They were not the mighty axes and heavy shields of Torvaldsland.
Bila Huruma was screaming at his men. He himself had discarded his shield, or it had been struck from him. “Single them out,” he cried. “Attack in fives, one engage, four strike!”
“He is improvising tactics,” said Ayari.
“He is a Ubar,” I said.
One askari might fend a committed blow of the panga with the iron blade of his stabbing spear. Four others might then, swarming upon the beast, drive their weapons repeatedly into it. These Kurii were, on the whole, wild Kurii, not ship Kurii. Each would be used to fighting alone, terrible and solitary, hunting its own kills in the ancient manner. They might be in proximity to one another, but each functioned, in effect, as an isolated unit. They were horrifying and ferocious, but were not trained.
“There are too many,” I said:
“It is true that we are lost,” said Ayari, “but we shall make a good fight of it.”
“Well said,” said I, “small rogue.”
I saw Bila Huruma slip to one knee. A mighty Kur stood over him, his panga raised over his head. Then, from behind Bila Huruma, there was a wild cry of Ukungu, and a raider’s spear, in its length, thrust past the Ubar and buried itself in a red wound in the Kur’s heart.
“My thanks, Rebel,” said Bila Huruma, regaining his feet. Kisu pulled his weapon free, and grinned. “I now owe you nothing,” he said.
“True,” said Bila Huruma, and then again, side by side, rebel and Ubar, they fought.
One of the Kur leaders, then, marshaling his forces, formed them in loose lines, that they might no longer be singly attacked. I had little doubt but what he was a ship Kur. I admired his ability to control the degenerate, recruited Kurii he commanded. There was perhaps in them the vestige, or memory, perhaps passed on in an oral tradition, of the disciplines and dignities in their past, notably, doubtless, that of ship loyalty.
“We are finished now,” I said. “They will fight together.”
Bila Huruma now gathered his men about him. Many were covered with blood. There were probably no more than a hundred left then with him.
I saw more Kurii dropping over the wall.
Suddenly, behind us, there was a splintering of lashed poles, and bindings, too, tore loose. Again and again, then, the trunks of small trees struck at the barrier fending us from the main forces of the attacker.
“We must hold them,” cried Ayari.
“It cannot be done,” I said. The framework of lashed poles, suddenly, broke half apart and Kurii swarmed within, some with pangas, some with clubs and sharpened sticks. We fell back from the stones, literally swept from our rampart by the irruption of the wood and the flood of massive; charging bodies.
The panga then was gone from my hands, wrenched away, lost in the body of the Kur in which I had buried it.
“Form!” I cried. “Get the wall to your backs!”
Men streamed past me to take a stand by the wall. I leaped upon a Kur’s chest, holding to him by my left hand, clenched in fur behind its shaggy neck. I drove the dagger, torn from my tunic, again and again into its chest. The Kur had worn rings of gold in its ears. I had little doubt it was a ship Kur. I slipped free as the animal screamed and reeled about, then fell, falling among the stones and wood, scratching at the stone.
I saw Torgus drive a stabbing spear into the chest of - a maddened Kur.
Then it seemed Kurii were all about me, yet scarcely aware of me, intent rather on the men at the wall. I drove my dagger into the belly of one which was pressing past me, and. in its rush, it hardly understanding that it was wounded, was carried, dragged, holding to the beast and dagger, for fifty feet among the Kurii. I wrenched the dagger free and, as another Kur, suddenly seeing me among them, truly seeing me, reached for me I thrust the dagger upward. It is difficult to reach the Kur’s brain with so small a weapon. It may be done, however, with the proper angle of elevation, through the socket of the eye. It may also be done through the ear and, where the skull is thinner, the temple. The Kur roared with pain and I lost the dagger, it wrenched away as the Kur threw its claws to its face. It pulled loose the dagger howling. Then it reached for me. I backed away. It died before it reached me. I pressed back and then, on either side of me, was with men. Weapons clashed at the line of war. The golden chain I had received from Bila Huruma, which he had returned to me, retrieving it from our raiders’ canoe, was covered with blood. I saw a Kur reaching over the wall, behind our men. I sprang upon the worn stone stairs leading at this point to the wall. I kicked it back over the wail. Another, finding footholds in the ancient stone, clambered upward. I removed the golden chain and lashed it in the face and it fell backwards from the wall, to the stones some twenty feet below. I raced along the wall’s top and thrust back one of the free trunks put against it. Two Kurii leaped from it as it toppled. I then saw a Kur below, within the wall. It was behind our line of men. It drew back the panga. I leaped from the wall’s height to its shoulders and looped the golden chain about its neck. It reached for me but could not dislodge me. I kept my head low, and my body away from the pangs. I tightened the chain. It flung itself against the wall and I was half crushed. My back felt wet and bits of rock stung in my back. I tightened the chain, tenaciously. I felt the claws of the Kur tearing at my back. I then felt the sudden rupture of the cartilage of its throat. Still it clawed at me. It could make no sound. Its tongue was half bitten through. The panga fell to the ground. It stood unsteadily. My hands were bloody on the golden chain, its links deep, almost unseen, in the throat of the Kur. Then it fell. I leaped free of it and tore loose the chain, looping its bloody links about my own neck. I picked up the fallen panga. To my horror the beast reached for me. I saw its great lungs expand and its eyes looking at me. It sucked air into its body through its ruptured throat, blood emerged from its mouth. It is not easy to kill a Kur. It reached again for me. I struck it with the panga, and then struck it again. “Forgive me, my friend,” I said. The blows had not been those of a warrior, but of a butcher. I was unsteady, and weak, my hands had trembled. I hoped that it would not regard itself as dishonored by my clumsiness.
I heard Bila Huruma rallying his men by the wall. Then he cried, “Charge!”
His audacity had taken the Kurii by surprise. But, in moments, viciously, Bila Huruma, Kisu, Turgus, Ayari and the askaris had been forced back again.
The situation was hopeless and yet, I think, the Kurii had been taught respect for men.
I saw a Kur leader, quickly and methodically, aligning his beasts. I doubted but what it would take more than one charge by the massed forces of the Kurii. To my surprise I saw the Kur leader, a huge, brown Kur, doubtless from one of the far ships, lift his panga in salute to the black Ubar. Bila Huruma, then, breathing heavily, raised his stabbing spear in his dark and bloody fist. “Askari hodari!” he cried. I shook with emotion. It was much honor he had done the beast, not even human, confronting him. The salute of the Kur commander had been acknowledged and returned. The words Bila Huruma had uttered were of course in the native tongue of Ushindi. One might translate them, in the context, I suppose, as ‘Brave Soldier’. A better translation, however, I think, especially since there is no other way to say this in the Ushindi tongue, is doubtless the simpler one, ‘Warrior.’
“I have it,” we heard cry. We looked to the stones at the threshold. There
stood Msaliti, an upraised bloody dagger in one hand, and, in the other, held high over his head, on its chain, a dangling ring.
“He has the ring!” I cried.
Msaliti shook the chain over his head. “I have it! I have it!” he cried.
I looked to the couch of Shaba. About it lay dead Kurii and slaughtered askaris. Shaba, coughing, held his chest. The poison ring, the fang ring, had been emptied. Msaliti had awaited his opportunity. He had then fallen upon Shaba. From the wounds I adjudged Shaba had been struck at least four or five times. He had then seized the chain and ring, and run to the threshold. The Kurii were between us and Msaliti.
The Kur commander raised his paw. His lips drew back over his fangs. It was a sign of Kur triumph, or pleasure. Then he swiftly communicated commands to his beasts. Msaliti leaped down from the stones and withdrew from the fortresslike enclosure. The Kurii facing us then, snarling, watching us, not turning their backs, began to withdraw. They obeyed their commander. He had won. He would not now risk more of his beasts. Too, he would wish to use them to guarantee the safe passage of the ring to his prearranged rendezvous, from whence it would be eventually returned to the steel worlds, or, on this planet, used devastatingly against men and Priest-Kings.
I, panga clutched in two hands, lunged after the beasts. Kisu seized me, holding me back. Bila Huruma, too, interposed himself between me and our shaggy adversaries. “No!” cried Kisu. “No!” cried Bila Huruma. “It is madness to follow!” “Stay with us, Tarl!” cried Ayari. Turgus, too, seized an arm. I could not free myself from Kisu and Turgus.
“Release me!” I said.
“You can do nothing now,” said Kisu.
“They will destroy the bridge,” I said. “We will be prisoners here!”
“Tonight is the full moon,” said Ayari. “Tonight, if you wish, you may wade through the fish unharmed. Tomorrow they will have returned to the lake.”
“Release me!” I cried.
