by John Norman
Four days ago I had seen a girl drive, in which several sleen, fanning out over a large area of territory, had scented out scattered, hiding slave girls and, from various points, driven them into a blind canyon, where a waiting Kur had swung shut a wooden gate on them, fastening them inside. Sleen are also used to patrol the large return marches of groups of foraging expeditions, those marches between the temporary holding areas and the main camp.
The order of such a march is typically as follows: captured humans, in single file, form its center. These humans are usually thralls and bond-maids, but not always. The spoils are carried by the captured male humans, unless there are too many, and then the residue is divided among the bond-maids. Kurii burden the males heavily; they can think of little more than the weight they carry, and the next step; furthermore, their wrists are usually tied to the straps of their improvised backpacks.
Kurii, unlike Goreans, do not subject bond-maids to heavy labor; it toughens their meat; the bond-maids are separated from the males, that they be deprived of leadership; furthermore, the technique of keeping prisoners in single file, separating them by some feet, and preventing speech between them, tends to make conjoint action between them unlikely. Prowling the long single-file of prisoners, male and female, in alternate groups, bond-maids thus used to separate files of men from one another, will be sleen. Should any individual, either male or female, depart by so much as a yard from the line of march, or attempt to close the gap between himself and a fellow prisoner, the sleen prevent this.
Once I saw a girl stumble and two sleen, immediately, snarling and hissing, sprang toward her. She leaped, weeping, to her feet and darted to her precise place in the line, keeping it perfectly, casting terrified glances at the vicious predators. The line of prisoners and sleen is, on both sides, flanked by the Kurii foragers. There are thus five lines, the center line of prisoners and spoils, its flanking lines of sleen, and, on either side, the flanking lines of the Kur foragers. Human prisoners of Kurii, incidentally, are usually stripped; Kurii see no reason to give animals clothing.
I glanced to the Torvaldsberg.
The sun now glinted more fully on its height.
Below us, in the broad valley, the camp of the Kurii lay still in darkness. We heard, below, the howling of a sleen, lonely. I wondered if Kurii dreamed. I supposed they did.
"It is almost time," said Ivar Forkbeard to me.
I nodded.
Then, from below, we heard the hunting cry of a sleen, and then of two others, then others.
I did not envy Hilda, Ivar's slave. The Kurii would take little note of the sleen. Their cries were neither of alarm nor of fury. They were only gathering in another animal, perhaps a new one, wandered too close to the camp, or a stray, to be expeditiously returned to its herd. The first light then began to touch the valley. From the noises of the sleen we could detect the progress of their hunt, and the location of the imbonded daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar.
"There," said Ivar, pointing.
They caught her north of the bosk herd. We could see her white body, and the dark, sinuous, furred shapes converging upon it. Then she was surrounded, and she stopped. Then the spleen opened a passage for her, indicating to her which direction she was to go. Where else she turned she was met with the fangs and hisses of the accompanying animals. When she tried to move in any direction other than that of the opened passage they snapped at her, viciously. A single snap could tear off a hand or foot. Then two of the sleen fell in behind her and, snarling and snapping at her heels, drove her before them. We saw her fleeing before them, trying to escape the swift, terrible jaws. We feared, more than once, that they would kill her. A female who cannot be herded is destroyed by the herding sleen.
In the northwest quadrant of the camp was the herd of verr; in the northeast quadrant were the tarsk pens. The bosk were penned at the southern end of the camp. Near the center of the camp but somewhat to the south and east of the center, behind its poles and crossbars, lashed together, was a different herd of Kurii livestock. It was to this pen that the daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar, running before the snapping, snarling sleen, was driven. She darted between the crossbars and, in a moment, no longer harried by sleen, found herself on the trampled turf within, another member of the herd. It was as we had planned. The sleen now resumed their rounds, patrolling the perimeter of the pen. The new animal had been added to the herd. They were no longer interested in it, unless it should attempt to leave the pen. We saw Hilda, a speck in the grayish light, hurrying to the herd within, it huddled on the damp, soiled, trampled turf.
"I wish," said Ivar Forkbeard, "that I had such a herd."
The herd, indeed, consisted of sleek, beautiful animals, fair and two-legged. There must have been three or four thousand chattels confined in the great pen.
"Some of the girls are yours," I reminded him.
"And I intend to have them back," he said. In that herd, I surmised, were several of our women, Thyri, Aelgifu or Pudding, Gunnhild, Olga, Pouting Lips, Pretty Ankles, the former Miss Stevens of Connecticut, now Honey Cake, the girl named Leah, from Canada, whose last name was of no interest, and others. Too, among them now, prisoner, was Hilda, perhaps Ivar's preferred slave.
Hilda, even now, would be conveying our instructions to the frightened girls, for the most part, bond-maids. We would soon see if such feared sleen and Kurii more, or Gorean males, their masters. If they did not obey, they would be slain. As slaves, they were commanded; as slaves, did they fail to comply, they would be put to death. They had no choice. They would obey.
The sun was now sharp and beautiful on the heights of the Torvaldsberg.
"Tie on the scarves," said Svein Blue Tooth. The word slipped from man to man. On the other side of the valley, too, men would be performing the same action. Each of us tied about our left shoulder a yellow scarf. It was by such a device that the Kurii had recognized their confederates in the men of Thorgard of Scagnar. We would, too, wear such scarves. This was our vengeance on those who had betrayed their kind.
"Loosen your weapons," said Svein Blue Tooth. The men shifted. Swords were withdrawn from scabbards; arrows were fitted to the string, spears more firmly gripped.
It seemed strange to me that men, only men, would dare to pit themselves against Kurii. I did not know then, of course, about the fury.
Svein Blue Tooth had his head down.
I sensed it first in the giant, Rollo. It was not a human noise. It was a snarl, a growl, like the sound of a larl, awakening from its sleep. The hair on my neck stood on end. I turned. The giant head was slowly lifting itself, and turning. Its eyes were closed. I could see blood beginning to move through the veins of its forehead. Then the eyes opened, and no longer were they vacant, but deep within them, as though beginning from far away, there seemed the glint of some terrible light. I saw his fists close and open. His shoulders were hunched down. He half crouched, as though waiting, tense, while the thing, the frenzy, the madness, began to burn within him.
"It is beginning," said Ivar Forkbeard to me.
"I do not understand," I said.
"Be quiet," said he. "It is beginning."
I saw then Svein Blue Tooth, the mighty jarl of Torvaldsland, lift his own head, but it did not seem, then, to be him.
It seemed rather a face I had not seen before. The eyes did not seem those of the noble Blue Tooth, but of something else, unaccountable, not understood. I saw him suddenly thrust his left forearm against the broad blade of his spear. To my horror I saw him sucking at his own blood.
I saw a man, fighting the frenzy, tear handfuls of his own hair from his head. But it was coming upon him, and he could not subdue it.
Other men were restless. Some dug at the earth with their boots. Others looked about themselves, frightened. The eyes of one man began to roll in his head; his body seemed shaken, trembling; he muttered incoherently.
Another man threw aside his shield and jerked open the shirt at his chest, looking into the valley.
Those who had not yet been touched stood terrified among their comrades in arms. They stood among monsters.
"Kurii," I heard someone say.
"Kill Kurii," I heard. "Kill Kurii."
"What is it?" I asked Ivar Forkbeard.
I saw a man, with his fingernails, blind himself, and feel no pain. With his one remaining eye he stared into the valley. I could see foam at the side of his mouth. His breathing was deep and terrible.
"Look upon Rollo," said the Forkbeard.
The veins in the neck, and on the forehead, of the giant bulged, swollen with pounding blood. His head was bent to one side. I could not look upon his eyes. He bit at the rim of his shield, tearing the wood, splintering it with his teeth.
"It is the frenzy of Odin," said the Forkbeard. "It is the frenzy of Odin."
Man by man, heart by heart, the fury gripped the host of Svein Blue Tooth.
It coursed through the thronged warriors; it seemed a tangible thing, communicating itself from one to another; it was almost as though one could see it, but one could not see it, only its effects. I could trace its passage. It seemed first a ghastly infection, a plague; then it seemed like a fire, invisible and consuming; then it seemed like the touching of these men by the hands of gods, but no gods I knew, none to whom a woman or child might dare pray, but the gods of men, and of the men of Torvaldsland, the dread, harsh divinities of the cruel north, the gods of Torvaldsland. And the touch of these gods, like their will, was terrible.
Ivar Forkbeard suddenly threw back his head and, silently, screamed at the sky.
The thing had touched him.
The breathing of the men, their energy, their rage, the fury, was all about me.
A bowstring was being drawn taut. I heard the grinding of teeth on steel, the sound of men biting at their own flesh.
I could no longer look on Ivar Forkbeard. He was not the man I had known. In his stead there stood a beast.
I looked down into the valley. There were the lodges of the Kurii. I recalled them. Well did I remember their treachery, well did I remember the massacre, hideous, merciless, in the hall of Svein Blue Tooth.
"Kill Kurii," I heard.
Within me then, irrational, like lava, I felt the beginning of a strange sensation.
"I must consider the beauty of the Torvaldsberg," I told myself. But I could not look again at the cold, bleak beauty of the mountain. I could look only into the valley, where, unsuspecting, lay the enemy.
"It is madness," I told myself. "Madness!" In the lodges below slept Kurii, who had killed, who had massacred in the night. In my pouch, even now, there lay the golden armlet, which once had been worn by the woman, Telima.
Below, unsuspecting, they lay, the enemy, the Kurii.
"No," I said. "I must resist this thing."
I drew forth the golden armlet which had been worn by Telima.
On a bit of fiber I tied it about my neck. I held it. Below lay the enemy.
I closed my eyes. Then I sucked in the air between my teeth.
Somewhere, far off, on another world, lit by the same star, men hurried to work.
I fought the feelings which were rearing within me. As well might I have fought the eruption of the volcano, the shifting of the strata of the earth.
I heard the growling, the fury, of those about me.
Below us lay the Kurii.
I opened my eyes.
The valley seemed to me red with rage, the sky red, the faces of those about me. I felt a surge of frenzy building within me. I wanted to tear, to cut, to strike, to destroy.
It had touched me, and I stood then within its grip, in that red, burning world of rage.
The bowstring was taut.
There was foam at the mouth of Svein Blue Tooth. His eyes were those of a madman.
I lifted my ax.
The thousands of the men of Torvaldsland, on either side of the valley, made ready. One could sense their seething, the unbearable power, the tenseness.
The signal spear, in the hand of the frenzied Blue Tooth, its scarlet talmit wrapped at the base of its blade, was lifted. The breathing of thousands of men, waiting to be unleashed, to plunge to the valley, for an instant was held. The sun flashed on the shield. The signal spear thrust to the valley.
With one frenzied cry the host, in its fury, from either side of the valley, plunged downward.
"The men of Torvaldsland," they cried, "are upon you!"
Chapter 18 - WHAT THEN OCCURRED IN THE CAMP OF THE KURII
The Kur dropped back from the blade. Howling I leapt upon another, striking it before it could rise, and then another.
Simultaneously with the attack from the slopes, the girls in the cattle pen, following the orders of masters, conveyed to them by Hilda, crying out, fled in their hundreds from the pen, streaming throughout the camp. The herd sleen rushed among them but, confused in the numbers, found it difficult to single out women for returning to the pen. Similarly the marine predator attacking a school of shimmering flashing bodies makes fewer successful strikes than he would if he were able, undistracted, to single out individual quarries. A sleen would no sooner mark out a girl for return to the pen than three or four others would constantly enter and disappear from his ken, often luring him into their pursuit, while the first slips free, in her turn later perhaps to save another similarly. Furthermore, when a sleen would fasten on a given girl she would permit herself, rapidly, to be returned to the pen.
Thus the sleen, obedient to its training, would not harm her. As soon as she was back in the pen, of course, she would leave it again, escaping from a different sector. Any girl found remaining in the pen by a man of Torvaldsland, seeking her own safety, unless she had been ordered there by a free attacker, was to be summarily slain. I was pleased to note that the women feared more the men of Torvaldsland than even sleen and Kurii. Danger to them was of no interest to us. Their lives were unimportant. They were slaves. Accordingly, we used them to create a diversion. Many Kurii, springing from their tents, emerging from the leather and fur shelter tunnels, confused, first saw only the sleek, two-legged cattle streaming past, until perhaps axes fell upon them. The nature of the attack, and its extent, would not be clear to them.
A Kur lifted its great ax. I charged him, my ax swift before he could strike.
I wrenched free the blade of the ax, as it slumped down, breaking it free from its jawbone and shoulder.
"Tarl Red Hair!" I heard cry. It was the voice of a girl, wild, slender. I turned. I realize now it was Thyri, but I did not recognize her at the time. I stood mighty and terrible, the ax ready, my clothes drenched with blood, the Kur rolling and jerking at my feet. She put her hand before her mouth, her eyes terrified, and fled away.
I saw a Kur seize a man of Thorgard of Scagnar's camp and tear his head from his body.
The attackers, as well as the men of Thorgard of Scagnar, wore yellow scarves at their shoulders. Many Kurii, confused in the beginning, had fallen to the axes of scarved men, putatively their allies. Now, however, indiscriminately, they sought to destroy all armed male humans. Many were the men of Thorgard who fell beneath the teeth and steel of Kurii, and several were the Kurii who fell to the weapons of Thorgard's men, as they fought madly to defend themselves.
Once I saw Thorgard of Scagnar and Ivar Forkbeard trying to reach him. But Ivar was blocked by Kurii and warriors, and joined in their combat.
I heard the screaming of slave girls.
I saw two Kurii converging on Gorm. Twice, from behind, the ax swept laterally, once to the left, the second time to the right, chopping through the spines.
A sleen, more than eleven feet in length, six-legged, slid past, its fur wiping against my thigh.
Gorm, in his madness, was cutting at the bodies of the Kurii fallen now before him, shrieking.
Shoulder to shoulder, fighting, I saw Bjarni of Thorstein Camp and
the young man, whom I had championed on the dueling ground in the thing. I smelled fire. There was the howling of Kurii.
I saw a Kur, barred with brown, turning, backing away, snarling, limping, from Ottar, who kept the Forkbeard's farm. Ottar pursued it, heedless of his safety, his eyes wild, killing it, cutting its body then in two with repeated blows of his ax.
I saw the huge, little-known man of Torvaldsland, who had joined the host late, calling himself Hrolf, from the East, who had come from the direction of the Torvaldsberg. With a cry he thrust his spear through the chest of a Kur.
He fought magnificently.
A Kur charged. I side-stepped, catching it in the belly with the ax.
I saw another Kur, undecided, startled. I slipped in #gut. It charged. I reared the handle of the ax, catching it in the stomach, turning it to one side. It grunted. I leapt up, catching it in the side of the neck before it could rise. Its head half to one side it rose to its feet and ran for a dozen yards before it slipped, falling sideways, rolling into the fur and burning leather of one of their lodges.
"Protect me!" I heard. A female threw herself to my feet, putting her head to my ankle. "Protect me!" she wept. I looked down. She lifted her face, terrified, tear-stained. She had dark hair, dark eyes. I saw the iron collar, dark, on her white throat. It was Leah, the Canadian girl. With my foot I thrust her, weeping, to one side. There was men's work to do.
I met the attack of the Kur squarely. The handle of its ax smote down across the handle of mine, forcing me to one knee. Slowly I reared up, forcing the handle, now held in the two paws of the Kur, upward and backward. It again thrust down, with its full weight and strength, certain that it could crush the puny strength of a human. I held it only long enough to satisfy myself that I could, then I withdrew the handle swiftly, twisting to one side and lifting the ax. It fell forward, startled.
I stepped on the handle of the ax. It tried to dislodge it. My ax was raised. It rolled wildly to one side. My blow fell against its left shoulder blade, dividing it. Howling, it leapt to its feet, backing away from me, baring its fangs. I followed it. It turned suddenly and leapt away. I caught it before the opening of a pavilion tent, one of those of Thorgard of Scagnar, perhaps his own. The tent was striped. The Kur, turning, now facing me, moved backward; it stumbled against a tent rope, jerking loose its peg. I leaped forward, striking it again, at the left hip. The side of its furred leg was drenched with blood. Hunched over, snarling, it backed into the tent, where I followed it.