Beasts of Gor

by John Norman

  "Work well, Tarl Cabot," called my lovely captor from the height of the platform.

  "Move," said a guardsman.

  We strode forth, moving in unison, on the left foot. Our right ankles, chained in coffle, followed.

  The log was heavy.

  * * * *

  "It is like stone," said Ram. He drove the iron bar, which he gripped in fur, downward. It struck the layer of permafrost, and rang.

  I, too, drove the bar into the hole. A bit of frozen dirt was chipped away.

  We made our hole at a diagonal, for the logs we were to set now were bracing logs, which would help support the wall at this place. It was some half a pasang from the platform. It was weakened at this point. I had heard of this yesterday, before I had been conducted by my fair captor from her headquarters. Some work had been done yesterday, with logs and stone. More remained to be done now. This weakness was to the left of the platform, looking out toward the tabuk. The center of the wall had been built across the main run of the tabuk migration. The animals, frustrated, sometimes tended to press against the wall. Sometimes, too, animals at the wall were forced against it, pinned against it, by the weight of animals behind them. Sometimes, in open places, huge, massive bucks, heads down, would charge and strike the wall with their horns. The animals did not understand this obstruction in their path. It was incomprehensible to them, and, to many, maddening. Why did it not yield?

  Two or three times, at certain points, I learned, the wall had buckled, but, each time, men managed to repair it in time.

  "Put stone here," said a guardsman.

  Men, carrying stone, placed it against the wall. Such support, however, would not be as effective as the log braces which we were laboring to set in place.

  On the other side of the wall there were thousands of tabuk. New thousands arrived each day, from the paths east of Torvaldsland.

  "With the permafrost," I said to Ram, "the logs of the wall cannot be too deeply fixed."

  "They are deeply enough fixed," he said. "They could not be withdrawn without sufficient labor."

  "Surely we have sufficient labor," I said.

  "Perhaps you could discuss the matter with the guards," he said.

  "They might not be agreeable," I pointed out.

  "What is your plan?" he asked.

  We two were chained together, but apart from the others, to facilitate our labors. Several other pairs, too, were so chained. The coffle, in virtue of the arrangements of chains and ankle rings, could be broken up into smaller work units.

  "Imnak," I said, "would you like to go home?"

  "I have not seen the performance of a drum dance in four moons," he said.

  "Tasdron," said I, "would you like a new ship?"

  "I would fit it to fight tarnsmen," said he. "Let them then try to take her."

  "Do not be foolish," said a man. "Escape is hopeless. We are chained. Guards, if not here, are many."

  "You have no allies," said another man.

  "You are mistaken," I said, "our allies number in the thousands."

  "Yes!" said Ram. "Yes!"

  The keys to our ankle rings were in the keeping of the chief guard, the master of our coffle.

  "Speak less," said a guard. "You are here to reinforce the wall, not spend your time in talk like silly slave girls."

  "I fear the wall is going to buckle here," I said, indicating a place at the wall.

  "Where?" he asked, going to the wall, examining it with his hands.

  I did not think it wise on his part to turn his back on prisoners.

  I thrust his head, from behind, into the logs. It struck them with considerable force. I gestured to the men about, that they join me at the wall. The fallen guard could not be seen amongst us. His sword I now held in my hand.

  "What is going on there?" called the chief guard.

  "You will get us all killed," said a man.

  He pushed his way amongst us, striking to the left and right. Then he saw his fallen fellow. He turned, white-faced, his hand at the hilt of his sword. But the sword I carried was at his breast.

  Ram relieved him swiftly of the keys he bore. He released me, and then himself, and then gave the keys to Tasdron.

  "There is no escape for you," said the chief guard. "You are pinned with the wall on one side, the guardsmen who may be swiftly marshaled on the other."

  "Call your fellow guards to your side," I said.

  "I do not choose to do so," he said.

  "The choice is yours," I granted him. I drew back the blade.

  "Wait," he said. Then he called out, "Jason! Ho-Sim! To the wall!"

  They hurried over. We had then four swords, and two spears. They did not carry shields, for their duties had only involved the supervision of a work crew.

  "Captain!" called another guard, from some forty yards away. "Are you all right?"

  "Yes!" he called.

  But the man had apparently seen the movement of a spear amongst the workers.

  He turned suddenly and, bolting, fled toward the platform and main buildings.

  "A spear!" I said.

  But by the time it was in my grasp the man was well out of its range.

  "He will give the alarm," said the chief guard. "You are finished. Return to me my weapons and place yourselves again in chains. I will petition that your lives be spared."

  "Well, Lads," said I, "let us now to work with a good heart. I do not think we will have a great deal of time to spare."

  With a will, then, they set themselves to the opening of the wall.

  "You are insane!" said the chief guard. "You will all be trampled."

  As soon as one log was tortured out of the earth and lifted away Imnak slipped through the opening, out among the tabuk.

  "He at least will escape," said one of the men.

  "He will be killed out there," said another.

  I was disappointed that Imnak had fled. I had thought him made of sterner stuff.

  "Quickly, Lads," I said. "Quickly!"

  Another log was pulled out of the earth, levered up by bars and, by many hands, heaved to the side.

  We could hear the alarm bar ringing now. Its sound carried clearly in the clear, cold air north of Torvaldsland.

  "Quickly, Lads!" I encouraged them.

  "You, too," I said, gesturing to the three guards who were conscious. "Work well and I may spare your lives."

  Angrily, then, they, too, set themselves to the work of drawing logs out of that cruel turf.

  Suddenly a tabuk, better than eleven hands at the shoulder, thrust through the opening, buffeting men aside.

  "Hurry!" I said. "Back to work!"

  "We will be killed!" cried the chief guard. "You do not know these beasts!"

  "Guards are coming," moaned a man.

  Hurrying toward us we could now see some forty or fifty guardsmen, weapons at the ready.

  "Surrender!" said the chief guard.

  "Work," I warned him.

  He saw that I was ready to make an example of him. Earnestly he then bent sweating to his work.

  "I surrender! I surrender!" cried a man, running toward the guards.

  We saw him cut down.

  I took again the spear which had earlier been pressed into my grasp.

  I hurled it into the guards, some fifty yards now away. I saw a man fall.

  The guards stopped, suddenly. They did not have shields. I took the other spear.

  "Work!" I called to the men behind me.

  "Heave!" I heard Ram call.

  Two more tabuk bounded through the rupture in the wall. There would not be enough. They did not know the wall was open. Some four more tabuk, as though sensing freedom, trotted past.

  There would not be enough.

  I threatened the guards with the spear. They fanned out, now, wisely, warily.

  Another log was rolled aside.

  Two more tabuk bounded through.

  "Kill him!" I heard the chief of those guardsmen say. Four more tabuk trott
ed past.

  There would not be enough tabuk! The guards now crept more close, blades ready.

  "Aja! Aja!" I heard, from behind the fence. "Aja! Hurry, my brothers! Aja!"

  There was a cheer from those who labored at the destruction of the wall.

  Forty or more tabuk suddenly, with startling rapidity, a tawny blur, trotted past me. They were led by a magnificent animal, a giant buck, fourteen hands at the shoulder, with swirling horn of ivory more than a yard in length. It was the leader of the herd of Tancred.

  "Aja!" I heard from behind the fence.

  Suddenly it was as though a dam had broken. I threw myself back against the logs. The guardsmen broke and fled.

  Floodlike, like a tawny, thundering avalanche, blurred, snorting, tossing their heads and horns, the tabuk sped past me. I saw the leader, to one side, on a hillock, stamping and snorting, and lifting his head. He watched the tabuk streaming past him and then he bounded from the hillock, and, racing, made his way to the head of the herd. More tabuk now, a river better than sixty feet wide, thundered past me. I heard logs splintering, and saw them breaking and giving way. They fell and some, even, on the backs of the closely massed animals, were carried for dozens of yards, wood floating and churned, tossed on that tawny, storming river, that relentless torrent of hide and horn, turned toward the north. I moved to my left as more logs burst loose. In minutes the river of tabuk was more than two hundred yards wide. The ground shook beneath me. I could hardly see nor breathe for the dust.

  I was aware of Imnak near me, grinning.

  11

  What Further Events Occurred in the Vicinity of the Wall;

  I Again Turn my Eyes Northward;

  I Pause only to Reduce a Woman to Slavery

  I tied her wrists together. There was a great cheer from my men.

  As I had anticipated there had been little actual fighting.

  Once the wall had been broken, Drusus, of the Assassins, had departed with several men.

  Several guardsmen, too, their discipline broken, had sought supplies and fled south. The wall broken there seemed little point to them to remain and die.

  We had little difficulty with the guards and work crews east of the break in the wall. It had been a simple matter to don the uniforms of guards and seem to march a new chain of men east. The men in the chain, of course, were not locked within, save for those at the end of the chain who had been former guards, now clad in the rags of laborers. I was of the warriors, and Ram, as it turned out, was quite skillful with the sword. Confronted with us and the majority of the putatively chained laborers, suddenly throwing off their chains and encircling them, they offered little resistance. Soon they, like their colleagues, wore locked manacles and laborers' rags. At the eastern end of the wall a similar ruse surprised the camp of hunters. We lost some of these as they fled south but others we captured and chained, acquiring several longbows, which might be used at the latitude of the wall, and several hundred arrows. Some nine men among our forces were of the peasants. To these I gave the bows.

  At the end of the wall Imnak wept, seeing the strewn fields of slaughtered tabuk. The fur and hide of the tabuk provides the red hunters not only with clothing, but it can also be used for blankets, sleeping bags and other articles. The hides can serve for harnesses for the snow sleen and their white-skinned, female beasts. Too they may be used for buckets and tents, and for kayaks, the light, narrow hunting canoes of skin from which sea mammals may be sought. Lashings, harpoon lines, cords and threads can be fashioned from its sinews. Carved, the bone and horn of the animal can function as arrow points, needles, thimbles, chisels, wedges and knives. Its fat and bone marrow can be used as fuel. Too, almost all of the animal is edible. Even its eyes may be eaten and, from its stomach, the half-digested mosses on which it has been grazing.

  Fluttering jards, covering many of the carcasses like gigantic flies, stirred, swarming upward as Imnak passed them, and then returned to their feasting.

  He looked about, at the slaughtered animals. Only one in ten had been skinned.

  The sinew had not been taken, nor the meat nor bones. Some hides had been taken, and some horn. But the mission of the hunters had not been to harvest from the herd of Tancred. Their mission had been to destroy it.

  With a sudden cry he fell upon a bound hunter. I prevented him from killing the man.

  "We must go," I said. I vomited. My stomach had been turned by the stench.

  * * * *

  I used capture knots on her wrists. There was a great cheer from my men.

  "I am your prisoner, Captain," she said.

  I did not speak to her, but handed her, her wrists bound before her body, to one of my men.

  "We shall hold you to your word," said Sorgus, the hide bandit, uneasily.

  "It is good," I told him.

  He, with his men, some forty, who had taken refuge in the wooden hall, that serving as the headquarters of the wall commander, filed tensely between the ranks of my men. I had permitted them their weapons. I had little interest in the slaughter of minions.

  The men and guardsmen who had been at the wall's center, in the buildings there, and west along the wall, including the hunters at that termination of the structure, learning the breaking of the wall and the freeing and arming of many laborers, had for the most part fled. Others, however, under the command of Sorgus, had boldly rallied to turn the tides of victory in their favor. They had not at that time, however, realized that nine of our men, peasants, gripped bows of yellow Ka-la-na wood. Behind each of these nine stood men bearing sheaves of arrows. Of the original force of Sorgus, some ninety-five men, fifty had succumbed to the fierce rain of steel-tipped arrows which had struck amongst them. Only five of his men had been able to reach the bowmen. These I slew. Sorgus, with some forty cohorts then, seeing me deploy bowmen to his rear, broke for the hall and barricaded himself within.

  "He is waiting," said Ram, "for the return of the tarnsmen, those on patrol."

  We would have little protection from attack from the air.

  The arrow flighted from a diving tarn, allied with gravity and the momentum of the winged beast, can sink a foot into solid wood.

  Such an attack would necessitate the scattering of my men, their seeking cover. Defensive archery, directed upward from the ground, fighting against the weights of gravity, is reduced in both range and effectiveness. The dispersal of my men, of course, would provide Sorgus and his men with their opportunity, under the covering fire of their tarnsmen aloft, to escape from the hall.

  "When are the tarnsmen due to return from patrol?" I asked.

  "I do not know," said Ram.

  "Sorgus!" I had called, to he within the headquarters.

  "I hear you," he responded.

  "Surrender!" I called.

  "I do not!" he said. Arrows were trained on the door through which he spoke.

  "I do not wish to slay either you or your men," I called to him. "If you surrender now I will permit you to retain your weapons and withdraw in peace."

  "Do you think me a fool?" he called.

  "When do you expect your tarnsmen to return?" I asked.

  "Soon!" said he.

  "It could be days," said Ram.

  "I hope, for your sake, Sorgus," I called, "that they return within the Ahn."

  I positioned my archers at the openings to the hall, with armed men to defend them. I encircled the hall with my men. They carried stones and clubs.

  "What do you mean?" called Sorgus.

  "I am going to fire the hall," I said.

  "Wait!" he said.

  "You and your men may depart in peace now," I said, "or die within the Ahn."

  More men joined me, still in their chains. They had come east from the farther portions of the wall. They had been abandoned by their guards. These wore even their chains as yet. We would remove them from them later with tools. These newcomers carried, many of them, the iron bars used for chipping at the permafrost, and picks, and shovels. Two carrie
d axes.