by John Norman
I pressed the attack, but in a courteous fashion. He defended himself well.
“What was his name?” I asked.
“Kurnock!” he suddenly cried out, angrily, and rushed toward me.
I sprawled him into the sand at my feet, and my blade was at the back of his neck.
I stepped back.
“Get up,” I said. “Now let us fight seriously.”
He leaped to his feet. I then administered to him, and to those in the tiers, a lesson in the use of the Gorean blade.
They sat in silence.
Then, bloodied, Drums, unsteadily, his sword arm down, wavered before me. He had been cut several times, as I had pleased.
He could no longer lift the blade. Blood ran down his arm, staining the sand.
I looked up to the mirror in the wall, that which I was confident was in actuality a one-way glass. I lifted my sword to that invisible window, in the salute of a Gorean warrior. I then turned again to face Drusus.
“Kill me,” he said. “It is twice I have failed my caste.” I lifted the blade to strike him. “I will be swift,” I told him.
I poised the steel.
“Let it be thus that an old debt owed to one named Kurnock is repaid,” I said.
“That is the first time I failed my caste,” said Drusus.
I regarded him.
“Strike,” he said.
“I do not understand,” I said.
“I did not kill Kurnock,” he said. “He was no match for me. I could not bring myself to kill him.”
I handed the sword to the third man on the sand.
“Kill me!” cried Drusus.
“Do you think a warrior can show less mercy than an Assassin?” I asked.
“Kill me,” wept Drusus, and then, from the loss of blood, fell into the sand.
“He is too weak to be an assassin,” I said. “Remove him.”
Drusus was drawn from the sand. The man who had been in charge of the combat then released Arlene from the iron post.
Proudly she stepped down from the platform and stood before me.
She said nothing, but removed her jewels and necklaces, and the coronet she wore, dropping them into the sand. She then slipped the gown from her body. She then stood befor me, proud and beautiful, and absolutely naked. She then turned and went to the foot of the small, round platform, picked up the opened slave collar, with the bit of silk wrapped about it, and returned to the place on the sand before me. She then knelt before me and lifted the collar and silk. “Collar your slave, Master,” she said.
I locked the slave collar on her, throat, not gently. I then took the bit of pleasure silk and, rather than throw it on her, tied it on her collar, at the side.
She would, by my will, wear only her collar on the sand. She turned, still kneeling, to the tiers. “He is my master!” she cried, proudly.
I was then ringed with the dart-firing weapons.
“Return to the cage,” said the man who had controlled the combats.
“Wait!” said a man on the tiers. “Look!”
We looked up, and saw a light, red, flash once below the mirror.
“Excellent,” said the judge, or controller of the combats.
Ram’s cage was opened and a sword was again placed In his hand. My sword, too, was returned to me.
Ram threw down his sword. “He is my friend,” he said. “I will not fight him!”
“Pick up your sword,” I told Ram. I looked about the tiers.
“I will not fight you,” he said. “They must kill me first.”
“I am sure they would be willing to do that,” I said. “Pick up your sword.”
Ram, too, looked about the tiers. “I see they wish to see more bloodshed,” he said.
“Let us not, then, disappoint them,” I said.
Ram looked at me, and then, to the pleasure of the crowd, picked up his blade.
“You must not fight him, Master!” cried Arlene. “Do not fight!” cried Tina.
Arlene was dragged to the iron post and knelt beside it. Her wrists, rudely, were lifted and snapped into the slave bracelets dangling at the ring. Then she knelt as did Tina, as what she was, as a slave girl, at the post, with her hands lifted and fastened above her head to the ring.
“Please, Masters!” they cried.
“Be silent, Girl,” said Ram to Tina.
“Be silent, Girl,” I said to Arlene.
“Yes, Master,” said Tina.
“Yes, Master,” said Arlene.
Ram and I met, as we had with our previous antagonists, in the center of the oval.
Then, after a moment or two, the man with us in the center of the sand withdrew.
“Place each of you your right heel on the wooden rim of the sand oval,” he said, grinning.
I looked about the tier,s. There were some six of the tubular weapons in evidence. Most of the men, however, were armed, as were Ram and myself, with the short sword.
I looked across the sand to Ram. We lifted our blades to one another, in salute.
“Fight!” cried the judge, or controller of the combat.
I leaped into the tiers, slashing and striking. I sped toward those who held the tubular weapons. Ram, on his side of the room, cut his way upward, buffeting and kicking. There was much screaming, and blood. I shook loose from two men. I stabbed another. Two of the tubular weapons clattered down. I cut the neck of a man who reached for one. I kicked a fellow in the face who reached for the other. Two men leaped on me, causing me to fall down the tiers. I heard blades leaving the sheaths. The girls screamed. More men fell, struggling to rise and draw their weapons. I heard a fearsome hiss and something smoked past my head, sinking into the sand. A moment later there was a burst from under the sand and sand and wood splinters blasted upward. I freed myself from the men with whom I was entangled, and slipped the blade through one. I shielded myself from one fellow with a tubular weapon while striking at another. I met two men with blades on the sand, felling one and slashing another, who reeled away. I leaped to the side to hack down at four men who were struggling with Ram. He leaped up, freed of them. He had lost his sword. Another hiss smoked past me and I saw, across the room, almost at the same instant, a six-inch dart sink part way into a steel wall and part of the wall, screeching, burst back, a four-inch hole, blackened, in it. I kicked a sword to Ram, and he seized it, meeting and defending himself against an attack. I passed my sword through the body of the man who had been in charge of the combats. I heard two more hisses, and part of the benches in one tier burst apart and I saw another dart disappear into the body of a man and I saw his eyes wild and the scarcest instant later he seemed to blow apart. I was then conscious of a whitish gas falling from the ceiling. I cut a man down by the door and tried to force it open. It was steel, and locked. I coughed and choked in the gas. It was hard to see. I reeled back from the door, and met the blade of another man, and cut him down. I saw Tina and Arlene, braceleted at the iron posts. They were agonized, trying to. breathe. A steel dart, fired from one of the riflelike weapons, caromed about the steel walls, leaving an explosive scar of blackened metal, a foot long, where first it struck. A man backed away from me, shaking his head. He could not well see me. I called out to Rain, who spun about, felling a man who would have struck him from behind. I defended myself against two other men, but, in the foglike mist, in a moment they were elsewhere. I heard a man pounding on the steel door. “Let us out!” he cried. I saw Tina and Arlene, in their collars, slumped unconscious at the posts, their small wrists strn obdurately captive in the inflexible slave bracelets which secured them so perfectly at the ring. I saw a man topple unconscious from one of the tiers. Another man I saw groping for one of the dart-firing weapons, it fallen on the tiers. I looked upward, at the impassive mirrorlike window in the wall. I could see the milky smokelike gas reflected in it. I defended myself against another attacker. He stumbled backward, bloody. Some four men now sank to their knees and sprawled among the tiers. The man had the tubular we
apon now, and was trying to steady it. I did not have time to reach him. I threw myself to the sand and, dropping the sword, rolling, seized up one of the weapons. Another man seized it, too, and I kicked him from it. I whirled, choking, straining to see through the gas. The man on the tiers had lifted the weapon to his shoulder but he did not fire it. My finger hesitated on the circular press-switch. He wavered and the muzzle of the weapon declined and he fell unconscious. I looked about, as I could. Ram lay sprawled in the sand near me. I was then the only man on my feet. I stumbled, and then straightened myself. I shook my head, trying to clear it. The gas was thick about me. Oddly, though the room was filled with a whitish gas, it seemed to be turning dark. I struggled to lift the muzzle of the weapon toward the mirrorlike window. Then I fell unconscious in the sand.
31. Half-Ear
“In here,” said the man in the brown and black livery of those men in the service of the Kurii. He indicated the metal door.
I had walked with them through the steel halls. There had been two of them. Neither of them was armed, nor was I.
I could have done little more in the steel halls than kill them.
One of the men opened the metal door. He then stood to the side, and gestured that I might go within.
I entered the door, and it was closed, and locked, behind me.
I looked about the room. It was domed, and some forty feet in height. It seemed simply furnished. It contained a few objects, mostly at the edges of the room. There were some tables, and cabinets and shelves. There were no chairs. Some chests, too, were at the side of the room. I stood upon a rug of some sort. Its nap was deep. It would give good footing to a clawed foot. The room was rather dark, but I could see dimly. There appeared to be a shallow basin of water sunk in the floor to one side. In the sides of the room, here and there, there seemed windows like portholes. Yet I did not think they opened onto the outside. I could see neither the bleak, moonlit ice of the north beyond them, nor even the lights of stars. Looking up I saw above me, beginning some ten feet from the floor, a network of widely placed wood and steel rods. Oddly, certain portholes, or apertures, or whatever they might be, were set high, too, some twenty feet from the floor, ringing the dome. One could not, given their height, look through them from the floor. By feel I determined that one of the walls, that to my right, as I had entered the room, as was the floor, was lined with some heavy ruglike substance. Thus, something suitably clawed, I supposed, could cling to it. On a table to the side, toward what I took to be the front of the room, there was a dark, boxlike object, about six inches in height, and a foot or so in width and length. At the center of the room, toward the front, there was a wide, low, circular platform. On this something lay.
I sat down, cross-legged, some twenty feet in front of the platform, and waited.
I watched the thing on the platform. It was large, and shaggy, and curled upon itself, and alive.
I was not sure, initially, if there were one or more things on the platform. But then I became confident it was only one thing. I had not realized he was so gigantic.
I sat quietly, watching it breathe.
After a time it stirred. Then, with an ease, an indolent smoothness of motion startling in so large a beast it sat up on the platform, regarding me. It blinked. The pupils of its eyes were like dark moons. It yawned. I saw the double row of fangs, inclined backward in the mouth, to move caught meat toward the throat It blinked again, and began to lick its paws. Its long, dark tongue, too, cleaned the fur about its mouth. It turned away and went to a side of the room where it relieved itself. A lever, depressed, released water, washing the waste away. The animal scratched twice on the plates near where it had relieved itself, as though reflexively covering its spoor. It then, moving on all fours, lightly, moved forward, around the platform, and went to the sunken basin of water in the room. It put down its cupped paws and splashed water in its face, and then shook its head. Too, it took water in its cupped paws, and drank. With one paw it gestured that I should approach, and palm open on the appendage, indicated that I might use the water. Crouching down I took a bit of water in the palm of my hand and drank. We looked at one another across the sunken basin.
The animal, on all fours, withdrew from the edge of the basin.
It projected its claws and scratched on the ruglike substance on the walls. Then, claws catching in the heavy material, it moved up the wall, stretching and twisting its body. Then it dropped down to a pole in the scaffolding. It sat there for a moment, and then, lightly, swung from one pole to another, and then returned, dropping lightly, for an animal of its weight, to the floor before the platform. It stretched again, catlike. And then it rose to its hind feet and looked down at me. It was more than eight feet in height I would have conjectured its weight at some nine hundred pounds. Then it dropped again to all fours and moved to the table on which there reposed the dark, boxlike object.
It moved a switch on the box. It uttered sounds, low, guttural, inquisitive. It did not use human phonemes and so it is difficult, if not impossible, to convey the quality of the sound. If you have heard the noises made by great cats, such as the Bengal tiger or the black-maned lion, and can conceive of such noises articulated with the subtlety and precision of g civilized speech, that will provide you with an approximation of what I heard. On the other hand, the vocal apparatus of the beast was not even of Earth origin. Certain of its sounds, for example, were more reminiscent of the snort of the boar, the snuffling of the grizzly, the hiss of the snake, than those of the large cats. The phonemes of such beasts are unmistakable, but they are, truly, like nothing Earth has prepared one to hear. They are different, not of Earth, alien. To hear these noises, and know they are a speech can be initially very frightening. Evolution did not prepare those of Earth to find intelligence in such a form.
The beast was then silent.
“Are you hungry?” I heard. The sounds, separate, had been emitted from the dark, flatish, boxlike object on the table. It was, then, a translator.
“Not particularly,” I said.
After a moment a set of sounds, brief, like a growl, came from the translator. I smiled.
The beast shrugged. It shambled to the side of the room, and there pressed a switch.
A metal panel slid up. I heard a squeal and a small animal, a lart, fled from within toward the opening. It happened quickly. The large six-digited paw of the beast closed about the lart, hideously squealing, and lifted it to its mouth, where it bit through the back of its neck, spitting out vertebrae. The lart, dead, but spasmodically trembling, was then held in the beast’s mouth. It then, with its claws freed, opened its furs and, by feel, delicately, regarding me, fingered out various organs which it laid on the floor before it. In moments it had removed the animal from its mouth. Absently, removing meat from the carcass, it fed.
“You do not cook your meat?” I asked.
The translator, turned on, accepted the human phonemes, processed them, and, momentarily, produced audible, correspondent phonemes in one of the languages of the Kur.
The beast responded. I waited.
“We sometimes do,” he said. It looked at me. “Cooked meat weakens the jaws,” it said.
“Fire, and cooked meat,” I said, “makes possible a smaller jaw and smaller teeth, permitting less cranial musculature and permitting the development of a larger brain case.”
“Our brain cases are larger than those of humans,” it said. “Our anatomy could not well support a larger cranial development. In our history, as in yours, larger brain cases have been selected for.”
“In what way?” I asked.
“In the killings,” it said.
“The Kur is not a social animal?” I asked, “It is a social animal,” it said. “But it is not as social as the human.”
“That is perhaps a drawback to it as a species,” I said.
“It has its advantages,” it said. “The Kur can live alone. It can go its own way. It does not need its herd.”
“Sur
ely, in ancient times, Kurii came together,” I said.
“Yes,” it said, “in the matings, and the killings.” It looked at me, chewing. “But that was long ago,” it said. “We have had civilization for one hundred thousand years, as you would understand these things. In the dawn of our prehistory small bands emerged from the burrows and the caves and forests. It was a beginning.”
“How can such an animal have a civilizatioit?” I asked.
“Discipline,” it said.
“That is a slender thread with which to restrain such fierce, titanic instincts,” I said.
The beast extended to me a thigh of the lart. “True,” it said. “I see you understand us well.”
I took the meat and chewed on it. It was fresh, warm, still porous with blood.
“You like it, do you not?” asked the beast.
“Yes,” I said.
“You see,” it said, “you are not so different from us.”
“I have never claimed to be,” I said.
“Is not civilization as great an achievement for your species as for mine?” it asked.
“Perhaps,” I said.
“Are the threads on which your survival depends stouter than those on which ours depends?” it asked.
“Perhaps not,” I said.
“I know little of humans,” it said, “but it is my understanding that most of them are liars and hypocrites. I do not include you in this general charge.”
I nodded.
“They think of themselves as civilized animals, and yet they are only animals with a civilization. There is quite a difference.”
“Admittedly,” I said.
“Those of Earth, as I understand it, which is your home world, are the most despicable. They are petty. They mistake weakness for virtue. They take their lack of appetite, their incapacity to feel, as a merit. How small they are. The more they betray their own nature the more they congratulate themselves on their perfection. And they put economic gain above all. Their greed and their fevered scratching repulses me.”