by John Norman
"Where is Torvald?" cried out Ivar Forkbeard.
I shrugged.
"There is no Torvald," said the Forkbeard. "Torvald does not exist."
I made no attempt to answer the Forkbeard.
"The bones of Torvald," said the Forkbeard, "even the bones of Torvald are not here."
"Torvald was a great captain," I said. "Perhaps he was burned in his ship, which you have told me was called Black Shark." I looked about. "It is strange though," I said, "if that were the case, why this tomb would have been built."
"This is not a tomb," said Ivar Forkbeard.
I regarded him.
"This is a sleeping chamber," he said. "There are no bones of animals here, or of thralls, or urns, or the remains of foodstuffs, offerings." He looked about. "Why," he asked me, "would Torvald have had carved in the Torvaldsberg a sleeping chamber?"
"That men might come to the Torvaldsberg to waken him," I said.
Ivar Forkbeard looked at me.
From among the weapons at the foot of the couch, from one of the cylindrical quivers, still of the sort carried in Torvaldsland, I drew forth a long, dark arrow. It was more than a yard long. Its shaft was almost an inch thick with iron, barbed. Its feathers were five inches long, set in the shaft on three sides, feathers of the black-tipped coasting gull, a broad-winged bird, with black tips on its wings and tail feathers, similar to the Vosk gull. I lifted the arrow. "What is this?" I asked the Forkbeard. "It is a war arrow," he said. "And what sign is this, carved on its side?" I asked. "The sign of Torvald," he whispered. "Why do you think this arrow is in this place?" I asked. "That men might find it?" he asked.
"I think so," I said.
He reached out and put his hand on the arrow. He took it from me.
"Send the war arrow," I said.
The Forkbeard looked down on the arrow.
"I think," I said, "I begin to understand the meaning of a man who lived more than a thousand winters ago. This man, call him Torvald, built within a mountain a chamber for sleep, in which he would not sleep, but to which men would come to waken him. Here they would find not Torvald, but themselves, themselves, Ivar, alone, and an arrow of war."
"I do not understand," said Ivar.
"I think," I said, "that Torvald was a great and a wise man."
Ivar looked at me.
"In building this chamber," I said, "it was not the intention of Torvald that it should be he who was awakened within it, but rather those who came to seek him."
"The chamber is empty," said Ivar.
"No," I said, "we are within it." I put my hand to his shoulder. "It is not Torvald who must awaken in this chamber. Rather it is we. Here, hoping for others to do our work, we find only ourselves, and an arrow of war. Is this not Torvald's way of telling us, from a thousand years ago, that it is we on whom we must depend, and not on any other. If the land is to be saved, it is by us, and others like us, that it must be saved. There are no spells, no gods, no heroes to save us. In this chamber, it is not Torvald who must awaken. It is you and I." I regarded the Forkbeard evenly. "Lift," said I, "the arrow of war."
I stood back from the couch, my torch raised. Slowly, his visage terrible, the Forkbeard lifted his arm, the arrow in his fist.
I am not even of Torvaldsland, but it was I who was present when the arrow of war was lifted, at the side of the couch of Torvald, deep within the living stone of the Torvaldsberg.
Then the Forkbeard thrust the arrow in his belt. He crouched down, at the foot of the couch of Torvald. He sorted through the weapons there. He selected two spears, handing me one. "We have two Kurii to kill," he said.
Chapter 17 - TORVALDSLANDERS VISIT THE CAMP OF KURII
It was very quiet.
The men did not speak.
Below us, in the valley, spread out for more than ten pasangs we saw the encampment of Kurii.
At the feet of Ivar Forkbeard, head to the ground, nude, waiting to be commanded, knelt Hilda the Haughty, daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar.
"Go," said Ivar to her.
She lifted her head to him. "May I not have one last kiss, my Jarl?" she whispered.
"Go," said he. "If you live, you will be more than kissed."
"Yes, my Jarl," she said, and, obediently, slipped away into the darkness.
The ax I carried was bloodied. It had tasted the blood of a Kur guard.
We stood downwind of the encampment.
Not far from me was Svein Blue Tooth. He stood, not moving. It was cold. I could see the outline of his helmet, the rim of the shield, the spear, dark against darkness.
Near us, behind us, stood Gorm, Ottar and Rollo, and others of Forkbeard's Landfall. It was some Ehn before the Gorean dawn. On a distant world, lit by the same star, at a comparable time, men turned in their beds, mercury vapor lamps burned, lonely, heavy lorries rumbled down streets, keeping their delivery schedules, parts of yesterday's newspapers fluttered down lonely sidewalks.
With us stood Bjarni of Thorstein Camp, and with him he who had in the formal duel carried his shield. At Bjarni's shoulder, too, stood the young man, scarcely more than a boy, whom he had in that duel intended to fight. With the boy, too, was his friend, who would have carried the shield for him.
The war arrow had been carried. It had been carried to the Inlet of Green Cliffs, to Thorstein Camp, from Ax Glacier to Einar's Skerry; it had been carried to the high farms, to the lakes, to the coast; it had been carried on foot and by swift ship; a thousand arrows, each touched to the arrow of Torvald, had been carried, and where the arrow had been carried, men had touched it, saying "I will come." They came. Captains and rovers, farmers, fishermen, hunters, weavers of nets, smiths, carvers of wood, tradesmen and traders, men with little more than leather and an ax to their name, and jarls in purple cloaks, with golden pommels on their swords.
And among them stood, too, thralls. Their heads were not lower than those with whom they stood. Among them was the lad called Tarsk, formerly Wulfstan of Kassau, to whom Thyri had once been given for the night. In the night of the attack he, at the Forkbeard's encampment near the thing field, with an ax, had slain a Kur. I remembered finding the carcass of the animal beneath the fallen, half-burned canvas of the Forkbeard's tent. Thralls are not permitted to touch the war arrow, but they are permitted to kneel to those who have. Wulfstan had handed the Forkbeard the ax, disarming himself, and had then knelt before him, putting his head to his feet.
Thralls may be slain for so much as touching a weapon. He had taken dirt from beneath the feet of the Forkbeard and, kneeling, had poured it on his head. "Rise, Thrall," had said the Forkbeard. The young man had then stood, and straightly, head high, before the Forkbeard. The Forkbeard threw him back the ax. "Carry it," said the Forkbeard.
On another world, lit by the same star, in another place, dawn, too, drew near. The distant light in the great cities, unknowing, soon to be occupied with the concerns of their days, piercing the haze of daily, customary poisons, first struck the heights of the lofty buildings, reflecting from the rectangular windows, like sheets of burnished copper reflecting the fire of the sun.
Men would soon be up and about their duties, hurrying from one nothing to another, to compromises, to banal degradations, anxious lest they fail to be on time. They would not care for the blackened grass growing between the bricks; they would take no note of the spider's architecture, nor marvel at the flight of a wren darting to its nest among the smoke-blackened, carved stones. There would be no time. There would be no time for them, no time for seeing, or feeling, or touching, or loving or finding out what it might be to be alive. Clouds would be strangers to them; rain an inconvenience; snow a nuisance; a tree an anachronism; a flower an oddity, cut and frozen in a florist's refrigerator.
These were the men without meaning, so full and so empty, so crowded, so desolate, so busy, so needlessly occupied. These were the gray men, the hurrying men, the efficient, smug, tragic insects, noiseless on soft feet, in the billion iron hills of technology. How
few of them gazed ever on the stars. Is grandeur so fearful that men must shield themselves with pettiness from its glory; do they not understand that in themselves, and in perhaps a thousand other intelligences, reality has opened its eyes upon its own immensity; do they shut their eyes lest they see gods? We could see now a glimmer of light on the peak of the Torvaldsberg.
I wondered how many men would die. I wondered if I myself, this morning, in Torvaldsland, in bleak light, would die. I gripped the ax. It had good weight. The balance was apt.
Across the valley, there were others, men, waiting, too. The signal would be a shield signal, taking the morning sun, a flash, and then the attack. Hundreds of war cries would be mingled as men poured down the slopes. There were men here, too, even from Hunjer, Skjern, Helmutsport and Scagnar itself, on whose cliffs Thorgard's fortress ruled.
Never before, to my knowledge, had men attacked Kurii.
I gazed at the giant, Rollo. His eyes seemed vacant. He stood as a child, with his great ax. About his neck was a golden medallion. His chest was bare, beneath a leather vest.
Svein Blue Tooth fingered the tooth of the Hunjer whale, dyed blue, on its chain about his neck. He was a good jarl. He had been the third, after Ivar Forkbeard and Tarl Cabot a warrior of Ko-ro-ba, to lift the arrow of Torvald. Not far away from him was even Ketil, of his high farm, the wrestler whose arm I had broken. It was splinted with a third of a spear shaft. In his left hand he carried a sword. Among the men, too, was a large fellow, as large as, or larger than, Rollo, whom I did not know. He was fiercely bearded, and carried a spear. He had told us he was Hrolf, and from the East. None had questioned him.
Below us, in the valley, we could see the coals of thousands of fires in the camp of the Kurii. They slept, curled, several in each shelter. The field shelters of the Kurii are made of skins and furs, arched over bent saplings. Each is little more than four or five feet high, with a comparable width, but is fifty or sixty feet in length, some being as long as a hundred feet in length. These shelters, too, are often curved and irregular in outline; sometimes they adjoin one another, with entrances giving mutual access. They resemble caves, sometimes networks of caves, constructed in the open. Kurii drop to all fours to enter and leave them. No Kur enjoys sleeping exposed. If in a field they will sometimes even burrow into the ground, almost like a sleen, and cover the opening with grass and sticks from the bottom. It always sleeps with its head toward the opening.
The Kurii herds were quiet. There was little stirring in them. I could see the white herd of verr, hundreds of the animals, penned in the northwest quadrant of the camp; in the northeast quadrant were the tarsk pens. I could smell them in the early morning air. I could smell, too, the odors of Kurii, and the tramped dung of bosk. The bosk were at the south of the camp. They would, effectively, prevent the Kurii from slipping free on the south. The herd numbered some several thousand. The northern pole of the camp would be left free, as a seeming avenue of escape, to lure embattled Kurii, should the tide of the war turn against them, into flight northward. It would be, in the language of Gorean strategists, the bridge of jewels, beckoning, alluring, promising safety, prophetic of escape.
Near the center of the camp, but somewhat to the south and east of the center, like the verr, the tarsk, the bosk, was another herd of Kurii animals; it, too, resided in its pen, a wide pen, more than a quarter of a pasang in diameter, formed of poles and crossbars, lashed together; this pen, however, was patrolled by prowling, domesticated sleen; the animals huddled together, within the pen, hundreds of them, terrified of the sleen; these were herd sleen, trained to group and control animals.
To the north and west of the camp's center I could see the tents of Thorgard of Scagnar and his men.
I smiled.
The Kurii had been in no hurry to initiate their march to the south. They had failed, several days ago, in the Thing Assembly, to intimidate the men of Torvaldsland into furnishing them provisions for their march. After their devastating victory of the night of Svein Blue Tooth's feast, in which his hall was burned, and the thing encampments laid waste, they had formed their own camp, and set methodically about gathering supplies for their southern march. Hundreds of sorties had penetrated the hills and valleys, burning farms, and gathering goods, generally tools and weapons, and livestock. There were collection points to which such materials were brought, from which, by short marches, they were conveyed to the camp. During this time, a hundred pasangs to the south, Svein Blue Tooth had set the rallying point of the men of Torvaldsland.
In these days I had much spied on Kurii, living on the land, returning more than once to the Blue Tooth's war camp. It is nothing for a warrior to cover ninety pasangs on foot in a day. This is usually done by alternating the warrior's pace with the warrior's stride, and allowing for periods of rest. Few who have been invested in the scarlet of the warriors cannot match this accomplishment. I, and many others, can considerably improve upon it.
A typical Kurii foraging squad consists of six animals, called a "hand," with its "eye," or leader. Two such "hands" with their "eyes," constitutes a "Kur," or "Beast." The military Kur, in this sense a unit, is commanded by a "Blood" This seems peculiar perhaps but is explained by ancient Kurii belief, that thought is a function of the blood. One "thinks" thus with one's entire body, not just the brain. Contemporary Kurii understand, naturally, that cognitive processes are brain-centered, or largely brain-centered, but the ancient terminology, in their songs, poetry, and even military lexicon, remains. Analogously, humans continue to speak of affairs of the heart, a man of good heart, that someone of big heart, etc., which terminology perhaps lingers from times when the heart was regarded not as a chemomechanical pump but as the throne and home of the emotions.
The commander of a military Kur, thus, might better be thought of as the "brain" or "mind," but continues, in their languages, to be spoken of as the "blood." A "blood" thus commands the two eyes and the two hands. Twelve "Kurs," the sense of military units, constitutes one "Band." This one hundred and eight animals, including subalterns and leaders, and is itself commanded by a "Blood," whose rank is indicated by two rings on the left arm. Twelve of these Bands constitutes a March. A March thus consists of 2160 animals, or, counting the commanders of each Band, 2,172 animals. A March is commanded by a Blood, whose rank is indicated by one ring on the left arm. The ring rank are quite plain, being of some reddish alloy, and are distinguished from decorative rings, of which many Kurii are fond. Kurii, generally, like men, seem vain beasts, there appears to be an inverse correlation between height of rank and intricacy and variety of ornamentation. The higher the rank the simpler is likely to be the ornamentation.
The commander, or Blood, of a March wears only a single, thin reddish ring. Whether or not this simplicity is honored
duty, so to speak, or in their privacy, I do not know. I do not know the full significance of the rings. I do not understand how they are earned, or what is involved in moving from the "second ring" to the "first ring." I do know that rings are welded on the wrists of the beasts.
The iron files of the Goreans, incidentally, will not cut the alloy. They may be obtained, of course, by the severing of the arm. Why the conjunction of bands is spoken of as a "March" is also unclear. This may refer to a military march, of course, but, I suspect, the term being apparently ancient, that it may also refer to migrations in the remote history of the Kurii, on their own world, putatively no longer existent or viable. There is some indirect evidence that this may be the case, because twelve "Marches" are referred to not as a Division or Army, or some such unit, but rather as a "People".
A People would be commanded by a "Blood" of the People. Such a commander is said to stand "outside the rings." I do not fully understand the meaning of this expression. The Kurii, as I may have mentioned, consist of several "Peoples."
Not all of these "Peoples" speak the same language, and, I gather, there are differences among, and within, each People. For example, differences in marking, in t
exture of fur, in temperament, in tooth arrangement, in ear shape, and so on. These differences, negligible from the point of view of humans, are apparently of considerable importance among the Kurii themselves. The human, pursued by such an animal, is not likely to be concerned about the width of its ears or the mottling of its fur.
Kurii, in their past, at least, were apparently torn by internecine strife, disrupted by "racial" and "civil" wars among themselves. It is not impossible that the defertilization or destruction of their former home was a consequence of such altercations. No Kur, however, I am told, of whatever race or type, will eat the meat of another. This is interesting, considering the ferocity of their carnivorous dispositions. They hold the human, unfortunately, in no such regard.
It will be noted that the military arrangements of the Kurii are based on the number twelve or divisors and multiples of twelve. Kurii use, I understand, a base twelve mathematics. The prehensile appendage of the normal Kur is six digited.
Sometimes the foraging squads of the Kurii had been accompanied by trained sleen, often four of them. Twice, in my reconnoitering, I had had to kill such beasts. The sleen have various uses; some are merely used as watch animals or guard animals; others are used as points in the advance of squads, some trained to attack putative enemies, others to return to the squad, thus alerting it to the presence of a possible enemy; others are even more highly trained, and are used to hunt humans; of the human-hunting sleen, some are trained merely to kill, and others to hurry the quarry to a Kurii holding area; one type of sleen is trained to destroy males and herd females, distinguishing between the sexes by scent. A sleen may bring a girl in, stumbling and weeping, from pasangs away, driving her, as Kurii take little notice, through their very camp, until she is entered into a herd.