by John Norman
The Kurii now, on both sides, stood between us and the weapons. The side doors, leading from the hall, were now all closed to us. Kurii, too, stood before the entrance to the hall, axes ready, eyes flaming. We were, some six or seven hundred men, crowded together, effectively surrounded. At our backs was the western wall of the hall. "Clear room!" cried Svein Blue Tooth. "Let us use our axes!"
Trying to draw back from the Kurii, approaching slowly, great, bloody axes ready, terrified men pushed back, further and further.
I managed to free myself from the crowd, and take a position on its fringe, between men and Kurii. If I were cut down I would prefer it to be in a situation where I might move freely. I unsheathed my sword.
I saw the lips of one of the Kurii drawing back.
"Your blade is useless," said Ivar Forkbeard, now standing at my side.
The Kurii crept closer.
I heard a scream from a height, and, looking up, saw a human thrown from the balcony which ringed the hall, some thirty feet above the dirt floor, some ten feet below the roof beams. I saw then that Kurii held the balcony.
I did not think they would long delay finishing us. The smoke was thick in the hall. Men choked. Men coughed. I saw, too, the nostrils of the Kurii closing to narrow slits. Sparks fell in their fur.
I brushed aside one of the hanging vessels of bronze, a tharlarion-oil lamp which, on its chain, hung from the ceiling, some forty feet above. It is such that it can be raised and lowered by a side chain.
"Spears!" cried Ivar. "We need spears!"
But there were few spears in the fear-maddened, terrified crowd of men cringing back from the beasts. What spears there were could not be thrown because of the press.
To one side I saw the Kur with the golden band on its arm. At the side of its mouth were saliva and blood, the fur matted.
It looked at me. I knew then it was my enemy. We had found one another.
An ax struck toward me. It had been wielded by the Kur whose lips had drawn back. I darted to one side, the ax buried itself in the dirt, I found myself within the beast's guard, I thrust the blade, to its hilt, into the chest of the beast. It gave a puzzled snarl which I heard, jerking the blade free, only as I leaped back. The other Kurii looked at it, puzzled; then it fell into the dirt.
There was silence, save for the crackling of flames.
The horror of what I had done then was understood by the leader of the Kurii.
A Kur had been killed.
"Attack!" cried Ivar Forkbeard. "Attack! Are you docile tarsk that you dare not attack? Men of Torvaldsland, attack!"
But no man moved.
Mere humans, they dared not set themselves against Kurii. They would rather, helpless, await their slaughter.
They could not move, so struck with terror they were.
The body of the dead Kur, inert, lay heavy, crooked, in the dirt. The bloodied ax was to one side. The shield arm was twisted in one of the straps. The other strap was broken.
The eyes of the leader of the Kurii, whom I knew to be my enemy, blazed upon me. His horror, seeing his fallen brother of the killing blood, had now become rage, outrage. I, one of the herd, of the cattle, had dared to strike one of the master species, a superior form of life. A Kur had been killed.
I set myself.
Again in the hall of Svein Blue Tooth rang the blood shriek of the Kurii. On each side of the leader, plunging toward us, howling, swept Kurii. Too, they pressed in from the sides, axes falling.
I do not choose to speak in detail of what followed. Kurii themselves, axes like sheets of iron rain, shattered that fearful throng, splitting it into hundreds of screaming fragments of terror. A man not more than a yard from me was cut half in two, from the head to the belt, in one stroke. I managed, as the Kur was twisting his ax, trying to free it of the body, to drive my blade through its neck, under the left ear.
I saw Ivar Forkbeard, his sword gone, lost in the body of a nearby Kur, his knife in his hand, one hand thrusting away and upward
the jaws of a Kur, repeatedly plunge his knife into the huge chest of the beast. There was uneven footing in the hall. We slipped in the blood. It filled the pit of the long fire. It was splashed about our trousers and tunics.
Near one wall I yanked a spear free from the hands of a fallen man-at-arms. Momentarily I sickened at the sight of the exposed lungs, sucking air, the hand scratching at the wall beside him. I hurled the spear. It had a shaft of seven foot Gorean, a head of tapered bronze, some eighteen inches in length. At close range it can pierce a southern shield, shatter its point through a seven-inch beam. It passed half through the body of a Kur. Its ax fell. My act had saved a man. But, in the next instant, he had fallen beneath the ax of another.
I pressed my back against the wall. A beam fell, burning, from the roof at the southeastern corner of the hall. I heard bond-maids screaming. Kurii looked upward. Their nostrils were shut against the smoke. The eyes of many of them, commonly black-pupiled, yellowish in the cornea, seemed red, swollen, veined. I saw one, suffering in the smoke and sparks, look up from feeding, and then again thrust his head down to the meat, clothes torn away from the chest, on which it was feeding. I saw Ivar Forkbeard, with a spear, set himself against the charge of an unarmed Kur. He set the butt of the spear deep in the earth behind him. The spear's shaft gouged a trench six inches deep behind him, and then stopped, and the Kur, biting in the air, eyes like fire, backed away, and fell backward; Ivar leaped away as another ax sought him.
I saw, across the room, the leader of the Kurii, it with the golden band on its arm.
I recalled its words on the platform of the assembly, in the field of the thing. In rage it had cried, "A thousand of you can die beneath the claws of a single Kur!"
There were perhaps now no more than a hundred or a hundred and fifty men left alive in the hall.
"Follow me!" cried Svein Blue Tooth. His ax, and those of his men, had shattered through the rear of the hall. Like panic-stricken urts, thirty-five or forty men thrust through the hole, sometimes jamming themselves momentarily within it, some tearing the flesh from their bodies and the sides of their faces on the splintered wood. "Hurry! Hurry!" cried the Blue Tooth. His garments were half torn from him but, still, about his neck, on its chain, was the tooth of the Hunjer whale, dyed blue, by which men in Torvaldsland knew him. Svein thrust two more of his men through the aperture. Kurii were between me and the opening. Ivar Forkbeard, and others, too, were similarly cut off. Another beam fell, flaming and smoking from the roof, striking into the dirt floor, and leaning against the wall. The hangings which had decorated the hall were now gone, burned away, the walls scorched behind them. The only portion of the wall that was clearly afire, however, and threatening to cave in, was the eastern edge of the southern wall.
I saw ten Kurii leap to the back of the hall, to where Svein Blue Tooth and his men had made their opening, to prevent the escape of others.
They stood before the opening, axes lifted, snarling. One man who approached too closely was slashed to the spine with a sweep of the bluish ax. One who begged mercy in the center of the hall was cut in twain, the blade of the ax driving into the very dirt itself, emerging covered with dirt and blood, streaked with ash.
"The lamps!" cried the Forkbeard to me. "Red Hair," he cried, "the lamps!"
Another beam from the roof, burning, dropped heavily to the floor of the hall.
I saw the Kur who held the leashes of the caught bond-maids dragging the girls from the hall. He held the leashes, several in each hand, of more than forty catches. The collars were of thick leather, with metal insert locks, flat metal bolts slipping, locking, into spring catches; when closed, two rectangular metal plates adjoined; sewn into each collar was a light, welded metal ring; about this was closed the leash snap; the action of the leash snap was mechanical but, apparently, it was beyond the strength of a woman to open it. The leashes were some fifteen feet in length, allowing in this radius one Kur to hold several captives at once. The Kur l
eft the hall. Screaming, stumbling, helplessly, the caught women followed their beast master.
I saw Kurii, methodically, blow after blow, striking the fallen, lest any might have sought to hide among the dead. Some men, tangled in the bodies, screamed, the axes falling upon them. The wounded, too, were methodically dispatched. I observed the patterns; they were regular, linear, of narrow width; no body was missed. The Kurii, I realized, were efficient; they were, of course, intelligent; they were, of course, like men, rational animals. One man leaped screaming to his feet and ran. He was cut down immediately, running almost headlong into a Kur, one of the Kurii set before the killing line, to intercept such fugitives. Men, it seemed to me, could be no match for such animals.
Kurii now encircled the group of men near the western wall of the hall. Most of them moaned, crying out with misery; many fell to their knees.
I saw two Kurii turn in my direction.
I saw Ivar Forkbeard standing among the huddled men near the western wall of the hall. He was easily visible, being one of the few standing. He looked red and terrible in the reflection of the flames; the veins on his forehead looked like red cables; his eyes, almost like those of the Kurii themselves, blazed. His long sword, now again in his hand, which he had recovered from the body of the Kur in which he had left it, was again bloodied, and freshly so; his left sleeve was torn away; there were claw marks on his neck. "On your feet!" he cried to the men. "On your feet! Do battle!" But even those who stood seemed numb with terror. "Are you of Torvaldsland?" he asked. "Do battle! Do battle!" But no man dared to move. In the presence of Kurii they seemed only cattle.
I saw the lips of Kurii draw back. I saw axes lift.
Then again the Forkbeard's voice, through the smoke, the sparks, suddenly half choking, drifted across the hall to me.
"The lamps!" he cried again, as he had before. "Red Hair," he cried, "the lamps!"
Then I understood him, as I had not before. The tharlarion-oil lamps, on their chains, hanging from rings on the roof beams! The apertures in the ceiling of the hall, through which smoke might pass! He had intended that I would escape.
But I had played Kaissa with him.
"First," I called, "the Forkbeard!" I would not leave without him. We had played Kaissa.
"You are a fool!" he cried.
"I have not yet learned to break the Jarl's Ax's gambit," I rejoined.
I sheathed my sword. I leaned back, casually against the wall. My arms were folded.
"Fool!" he cried.
He looked about, at the men who could not fight, who could not move, who could not stir. He slammed his sword into its sheath and leaped up, seizing one of the lamps on its chain.
The two Kurii who had turned toward me now lifted their axes.
I turned over the table, behind which I stood. The two axes hit the heavy beams simultaneously, exploding wood in great chunks between the walls, shattering it as high as the ceiling itself.
I vaulted the table.
I heard the startled snarls of the Kurii.
Then I had my hands on one of the large, swinging, bronze lamps. Oil spilled, flamed from the wick. I swung, wildly. My right sleeve caught afire.
I heard a Kur below me scream with pain; I looked down, and hauled myself up to avoid the stroke of an ax; one Kur reeled about; the left side of its furred head, wet, drenched in oil, was aflame; it screamed hideously; it clawed at its left eye.
Hand over hand I crawled up the chain; then the chain shook, wildly; I struggled to hold it; the fire at my right sleeve snapped back and forth; I lost my breath; I feared my neck would break; blood was on the chain; I held it; Kurii howled beneath me; I moved further up the chain; then the chain stretched down, taut; an ax flew wheeling past, half cutting into one of the crossbeams in the roof; I climbed higher; then, suddenly, I realized why the chain had been pulled taut; the beam, above me, creaked; the chain was now tight, like a cable; the links strained, grating on one another; it now bore, besides mine, the weight of a Kur, rapidly climbing; the ring above me, through which the chain passed, pulled part way from the wood; I scrambled up the last few feet of the chain; I threw my arm over the beam; I felt claws seize at my leg, then close about it; I released the beam, screaming the war cry of Ko-ro-ba, falling tearing and ripping with fingers and teeth about the neck and head of the startled Kur; stiffened fingers, like daggers, drove at its eyes; my teeth tore at the veins in its wrist, in the arm that held the chain; in that instant the Kur realized, and, I realized, too, for the first time, that there were on the surface of Gor animals as savage as its kind, slighter animals, smaller, weaker, but no less vicious, in their way no less terrible; fending me away, screaming, biting, it released me, but I clung about its shoulders and neck; I bit through half of its ear; I pulled myself up to the beam; an orifice, red, projecting fangs like white nails, stretched below me; I drew the sword and, as it climbed, eyes bleeding, ear torn, after me, I cut away its hand; it fell back, growing smaller, until it struck heavily on the reeded earth, stained with its churned, reddish mud, forty feet below; it broke its neck; I tore away the flaming sleeve of my garment and thrust it, on the sword point, into the face of the next Kur; the hand of the first still clung to the chain, with its six multiple jointed fingers; the Kur, with a shake of its head, dislodged the burning cloth and pulled its pierced face from the sword; it bit at the sword, cutting its mouth; it reached to the beam; I cut at the fingers; it lost its balance; it, too, fell backward.
"Come!" I heard. I saw the Forkbeard on a nearby beam. "Hurry!" he cried.
I choked in the smoke. I thrust at the next Kur, driving the blade through its ear into the brain. Part of the roof fell away, tumbling burning to the ground below.
"Hurry!" I heard, as though from far away. I cut down at the next Kur. It snarled, grasping for me. The ring, through which the chain passed, unable to bear longer the weight of Kurii, splintered free of the wood. I saw the ring and chain dart downward. Four Kurii climbing, two leaping free, two clinging to the chain, fell to the earth below.
Another portion of the roof fell, not more than twenty feet from me. Below, covered with sparks scarcely visible in the smoke, I saw Kurii looking up, cheated of their prey. A beam fell, not more than a dozen feet from them. Their leader uttered some sound to them. His eyes, blazing, looked up at me. About his left arm was the spiral golden band. Then he, with the others, turned about and, swiftly shambling, some looking back, fled the hall. I sheathed my sword.
"Hurry!" cried the Forkbeard. I leaped from beam to beam to join him. After him, I squeezed through one of the smoke holes in the roof of the burning hall. Then we were standing on the wooden-shingled blazing roof of the hall of Svein Blue Tooth. I looked up and saw the stars and moons of Gor.
"Follow me," cried Ivar. In the distance I saw the Torvaldsberg. There was moonlight reflecting from its snows. He sped to the northwest corner of the hall. He disappeared over the edge of the roof I looked over and saw him, in the moonlight, making his way downward, hand by hand, foot by foot, using the clefts, projections and niches in the ornate carvings of the exterior corner beams of the Blue Tooth's hall. Swiftly, my arm scorched from the fire which had torn at my sleeve, hear pounding, breathing heavily, I followed him.
Chapter 15 - ON THE HEIGHT OF THE TORVALDSBERG
It was noon, on the snowy slopes of the Torvaldsberg.
Ivar and I looked behind us. We could see them following, four of them, like black dots.
"Let us rest," said Ivar.
I shut my eyes against the glare of the sun on the snow. He sat down, with his back against a rock. I, too, sat down, crosslegged, as a warrior sits.
We had climbed down from the roof of the Blue Tooth's burning hall, using the projections and relief of the ornately carved corner beams. Climbing down, I had seen Kurii moving about, but near the front of the hall. In the light of the burning hall, here and there, scattered in the dirt of the courtyard, we saw sprawled, scattered bodies, and parts of bodies. Some Kurii, sq
uatting among them, fed. In one corner of the stockade, huddled together, their white bodies, now stripped, red in the light of the flames, were the bond-maids, in their leather collars, leashed, the straps in the furred fists of their master. Several Kurii, not feeding, carrying shields, axes, moved to and fro. We dropped to the courtyard, unseen. We slipped behind the hall, keeping, where possible, buildings between us and the yard. We reached the palisade, climbed to its catwalk and, unnoticed, leaped over.
I opened my eyes, and looked down into the valley. The four dots were larger now.
The Forkbeard, after our escape from the stockade of Svein Blue Tooth, had been intent upon reaching his camp. It had been dangerous, furtive work. To our astonishment the countryside was swarming with Kurii. I could not conjecture their numbers. There might have been hundreds; there might have been thousands. They seemed everywhere. Twice we were pursued, but, in the midst of the scents, and distracted by fresh blood, our pursuers turned aside. We saw, at one point, two Kurii fighting over a body. Sometimes we threw ourselves to the ground, among the fallen. Once a Kur passed within a yard of my hand. It howled with pleasure at the moons, and then was gone. As many as four or five times we crept within yards of feeding Kurii, oblivious to our presence. The attack had been simultaneously launched, obviously, on the hall and the surrounding thing-camps. Even more to our astonishment than the Kurii, and their numbers, about, was the presence of men, wearing yellow scarves, among them, men whom they did not attack. My fists clenched in rage. Kurii, as is often the case, had enlisted human allies.
"Look," had said the Forkbeard, pointing from a height, on which we lay prone, to the beach. Offshore, some few yards, among the other ships, lay new ships, many of them, strange ships. They lay black, rocking, on the sparkling water. One ship was prominent among them. It was large. It had eighty oars. "_Black Sleen_," said Ivar, "the ship of Thorgard of Scagnar!"