The King

by John Norman

  "But she is now fled."

  "But should not be difficult to follow, in the snow."

  "No," said the giant.

  "Do you know where you are?" asked the Herul.

  "No," said the giant.

  "You are within two days journey of the forests of the Otungs," said the Herul. "It was at my request that Mujiin brought the wagons here."

  "Does the slave know where she is?"

  "Certainly," said the Herul.

  "I do not know the way to the Otungs," said the giant.

  "She will know the way," said the Herul.

  "Then I need only follow her," said the giant.

  "That was my intention," said the Herul.

  "Why have you shown me these kindnesses?'' asked the giant.

  "I am old now," said the Herul. "And I must be killed one day. I think I would like to be killed by you."

  "I have no quarrel with you," said the giant.

  "But we are enemies, the Heruls, and the Otungs."

  "I am a peasant, from the festung village of Sim Giadini," said the giant.

  "No," said the Herul. "You are an Otung."

  "I do not know that I am an Otung," said the giant.

  "You are Otung," said the Herul.

  "I do not know who I am," said the giant.

  "That is true," said the Herul. "You do not know who you are."

  "What is the name of the slave?" asked the giant.

  "It is she whom you know," said the Herul.

  "Yata?"

  "Yes."

  "The night is clear," said the giant. "I will follow her in the morning."

  "Do not let her know she is being followed."

  "No," said the giant.

  "By the way," said the Herul, "she is a camp slave. We thought that might be useful, she once the daughter of an Otung noble, to help her understand, particularly at the beginning, the nature of her new condition, that of slave."

  "What is the nature of the camp slave?" asked the giant.

  "She is the common property of the camp," said the Herul. "She must beg and give pleasure before she is fed. She may be disposed of, in any fashion, by anyone in the camp, such things.''

  "I see," said the giant.

  "I give her to you," said the Herul.

  "A runaway slave?"

  "Yes."

  "My thanks," said the giant.

  "It is nothing," said the Herul.

  "And, in any case," said the giant, "she would be subject to claimancy."

  "I see that you have thought on the matter," said the Herul.

  "Yes," said the giant.

  "When you apprehend her," said the Herul, "do not forget that she is a runaway slave, that she has fled from her former masters."

  "I will not," said the giant.

  The Herul regarded him, from the high saddle.

  "It is a dangerous time to go among Otungs," said the Herul, "for it is the Killing Time."

  "I have heard that," said the giant.

  "Be careful."

  "I shall."

  "Do not think the white pelt will protect you," said the Herul. "There are men who will kill for such a pelt."

  "It is of great value, and yet you have given it to me."

  "It is yours," said the Herul.

  "I do not want to kill you," said the giant.

  "Do not the sons always kill the fathers?" asked the Herul.

  "You are not my father," said the giant.

  "You are the nearest thing I have ever had to a son," said the Herul.

  He then turned his mount, and began to move away.

  "Who are you?" called the giant, standing in the snow. "What is your name?"

  "Hunlaki," said the figure, moving away.

  …CHAPTER 23…

  He heard the woman scream.

  He hastened forward, through the snow.

  The great blade was already unsheathed. He had unsheathed it several minutes ago, when he had first caught the smell of the animal.

  He had then followed her recent tracks, rather than paralleling them, from a distance, as was his wont, in case she might look back, or retrace her steps. He had seen, with her tracks, but fresher, those of the beast.

  Other than the scream and the sound of his hurried movements through the trees the forest was very quiet.

  The moon was out, and its light, and that of the stars, fell through the bare branches of the scattered trees, and thence, amidst the tracery of shadows, to the snow, brilliantly illuminating it, sparkling on its cold, bleak surface, silvery, and crystalline, like frozen fire, soft, cold fire.

  He came upon her in a small clearing. She was on her hands and knees in the snow, where she had, he supposed, been scratching for roots, or seeds, under the snow, even under the brittle layers of frozen leaves.

  The bear had risen up on its hind legs, its forepaws extended. It was some seven feet in height.

  We shall speak of the Tangaran forest wroth as a bear, first, in virtue of our common practice of using familiar expressions for resembling creatures tending to occupy and exploit similar ecological spheres in similar manners, and, second, because of its resemblance to the arn bear, originally indigenous to Kiros, but popular, because of its spirit and aggressiveness, in imperial arenas for generations.

  ''Ho!" called the giant, rushing forward.

  He did this not from any misplaced sense of fair play, and a man would unhesitantly have been cut down from the back, but to turn the animal, so that its two hearts, which are paired, and ventrally situated, like those of the arn bear, which he had learned to fight, would be turned toward him.

  The blade drove between the paws of the angered beast, driving through the right-side heart.

  The beast struck with its paw, to knock the blade away, and the paw, slashed, streamed blood in the moonlit snow.

  The woman screamed.

  She could not see clearly what was occurring, from the turned beast before her.

  She crawled backward in the snow.

  The giant withdrew the blade, jerking it free.

  The beast stood on its hind legs, regarding him, balefully, and put its paw in its mouth.

  The rearing to the hind legs increases the stature of the bear and tends to intimidate in intraspecific combat and to startle, overawe and immobilize many forms of prey in hunting.

  Too, of course, it considerably increases, as is common with an upright posture, the scanning range of the optical sensors. In the case of the bear there were two optical sensors, as is common in many species, given the advantages of binocular vision and paired organs.

  Such a posture, however, does expose the torso to hazards unlikely to be encountered in its natural habitat, blades of steel, cord-driven or gas-impelled projectiles, and such.

  Within its mighty frame valves were closing, and opening, sealing away the ruptured, spilling organ within its breast, rerouting pounding, rushing charges of blood, wreaking changes within its body, like the damming and rechanneling of rivers within some bulky, concealed domain.

  The bear went to all fours, protecting its other heart.

  It snarled and charged.

  The man braced himself, on one knee in the snow. The bear drove itself on the blade, six inches or more, and then, growling, backed off, snarling. It approached again but more cautiously. This time it was fended back. It struck at the blade, pushing its point to one side with the bleeding paw.

  The blade reached out, again, and blood sprang from the snout of the bear.

  The bear then backed away, a yard or two, in the snow. Then it turned, and began to move away. The arn bear can behave similarly. The woman had disappeared.

  But the giant was not now concerned for her, nor for her safety.

  It was not she who was now in danger.

  The giant, breathing heavily, rose up from one knee, from the snow.

  He took a step forward, considering that he might pursue the beast, but slipped. He caught his balance, bracing himself with the blade.
r />   Then the beast had seemed to slip away, amidst the trunks of the trees, the tracery of the wickedly dark shadows, so black against the cold, moonlit snow.

  The giant uttered an angry noise.

  But surely the bear had withdrawn from the fray, having had enough. Surely it had abandoned this territory, the infringement on which may have motivated its initial behavior. Surely it, surly, its fur matted, and stinking, perhaps aroused from its den, where it might have slept until late winter or early spring, would simply abandon its country.

  The giant kicked about in the snow, working his boots down to the frozen leaves, the thick, crackling matting carpeting the forest's icy floor.

  In this fashion he would have solid footing.

  But the beast was gone, and the danger past.

  It is few men who would pursue such a beast at such a time. One tends to be too grateful, simply that one is still alive. Too, it is difficult to administer a blow with lethal effect to a retreating four-legged animal. It is almost necessary to be at least abreast of it, or nearly so. Too, one does not know, really, what it is doing. Indeed even beasts within the same species differ in such matters.

  The beast was surely gone now.

  It is hard to know, sometimes, what it is doing.

  Indeed, perhaps the animal itself, so natural does its retreat seem, does not know what it is doing. Perhaps it only understands when suddenly, irresistibly, in its given time and order, the second mechanism, instantaneously, savagely, engages.

  The forest was extremely quiet.

  The beast must now, surely, be gone.

  Perhaps it had not abandoned its territory. After all, the man was not of its species. It was not as though another bear, or wroth, had driven it away. Perhaps the animal had, by now, simply returned to its lair, to nurse its wounds, to sleep.

  The giant stood for several minutes in the snow.

  It was hard to hold the great blade at the ready.

  Then he rested the blade on his shoulder.

  How much, he wondered, is this thing, the Tangaran forest wroth, like the arn bear.

  In the arena, of course, the footing is better, and there is good lighting, as there must be, for the spectators.

  The forest was extremely quiet.

  It is gone, thought the giant. It is gone.

  No, thought the giant. Remember the school of Pulendius, remember the arn bear.

  But this is not an arn bear, he told himself. It is something different. It may be like an arn bear, but it is not an arn bear. There must be many differences. Doubtless there must be many differences.

  That was doubtless correct, but, of course, the question in point had to do with a particular modality of behavior. Was it like, or unlike, the arn bear in that respect?

  The answer to this question, of course, he did not know.

  Too, animals, as men, differ among themselves.

  It is gone, he told himself. It is gone.

  At that moment there was a savage roar from behind him and a scuffling, rushing sound in the snow.

  In the school of Pulendius he, and the others, at any sudden, unexpected sound had been trained, even with blows, to react instantly, the same cry which might thus in one person induce startled, momentary immobility becoming the trigger in another, properly conditioned, to movement.

  But he could scarcely interpose the blade and he was struck from his feet.

  He scrambled up, throwing himself to the side, as the beast turned like a whip, and he flung the sword up between them The beast struck at it and bit at it. Then its jaws were full of blood. The giant leapt to his feet, and turned, and struck at the forelegs of the animal, it growling, air bursting through the bubbles of blood in its mouth, and it went down, legs cut away at the second joint, and the man raised the sword again, and, as the beast turned, head lifted, reaching for him, jaws gaping, he struck it across the skull, over the right eye, cutting away part of the skull, and then, as the beast stopped, as though puzzled, and lowered its head slowly, tissue and brains wet on the side of its face and in the snow, he raised the great blade again, and, slashing down, severed the vertebrae and half the neck. It then lay convulsing in the snow.

  …CHAPTER 24…

  The fire was well blazing.

  It sizzled, and hissed, as grease, from roasting bear meat, fell into the flames.

  There was wood aplenty, cold, fallen and dry, from the trees about. It had not been so on the plains. It is not hard to make a firedrill, even without a cord, and tiny shavings, cut by the Herul knife, and crushed, crumbled leaves, the ice broken out of them, dried and heated, warmed, against the skin, had taken the heat of friction, and begun to smolder, with a tiny, curling thread of smoke, and then flicker, and then spring up, in an infancy of encouraged fire, in which, soon, twigs blazed, and then hand-broken kindling.

  She sat to one side, bound hand and foot.

  It had not been difficult to follow her in the snow, her prints clear.

  She had known he was about, of course, from the moment she had had a clear glimpse of him, earlier, he clad in the skins of the dogs, cowled in the head of the dog, in the moonlight, terrible, with the sword, engaged with the bear.

  She had fled.

  Surely he would be killed.

  In any event she must flee.

  But, in a time, knowing herself followed, he making no secret of the matter, she had turned, at bay, armed with a stick.

  "Does a slave," he had inquired, "raise a weapon against a free man?"

  Swiftly she had thrown the stick down, into the snow.

  "Remain standing," he had said, "turn about, place your hands, wrists crossed, behind your back."

  She faced away from him, trembling, in tears.

  He lashed her wrists together, behind her back, with a leather cord, part of the drawstring from the bag given him by the Herul, which had contained some food, meal, cheese and strips of meat, cut paper thin in the summer and dried on poles. In this way flies do not lay their eggs in it. He cut the drawstring in such a way that there was enough left over for her ankles.

  She squirmed a little, inching a bit closer to the fire.

  "Where did you get the pelt of the white vi-cat?" she asked.

  "It seems," he said, "that on the prairie I killed the animal, that it died from blows I inflicted. Others skinned it. It was given to me by a Herul, one named Hunlaki. You know Hunlaki."

  "Yes," she said. "I know Hunlaki." She shuddered. She was a human female, and a slave.

  "I had killed another vi-cat earlier," he said, "a smaller animal, one with a mottled coat. That pelt they kept."

  "I do not believe that you, alone, could kill the white vi-cat," she said.

  He shrugged.

  "I killed the bear," he said.

  "You were fortunate," she said.

  "Perhaps," he said.

  After he had captured her he had returned to the carcass of the bear which he had then, she kneeling nearby, bound, in the snow, had skinned. He also took a quantity of meat from it. He had put the meat in the skin and tied it all, with sinew, into a long roll. This roll he put about her neck, and tied its ends together, before her. He had then gathered up his other things and left the place, she following.

  An hour later, a good distance from the remains of the bear, which might attract scavengers, or wolves, he had found a place which had seemed suitable for a camp.

  He had there relieved her of her burden and freed her hands, that she might, under his watchful eye, gather wood for the fire. When she had returned several times, with suitable fuel, which she placed to the side, he had rebound her, this time crossing her ankles, and serving her feet as well. He had then set about making the fire.

  "Thank you for not stripping me in the snow," she said.

  "You are not going anywhere," he said.

  She squirmed a little, angrily.

  "There are few furs for you," he added.

  This sort of thing has been mentioned, the common practice, in the wi
nter, and in cold areas, of transporting, and housing, slaves naked, in furs, as a way of increasing their vulnerability and rendering escape impractical. It might be mentioned that in areas of blazing heat, and burning soils, as on various worlds, a similar practice obtains, only there the slaves have only a sheet of reflective material to gather about themselves, and are denied insulated boots, and such protective gear.

  "You did not think," said he, "that I would permit you, a mere slave, to be wrapped in the pelt of the vi-cat, did you, as though you might be a queen, in the arms of a king?"

  "I am Hortense," she said, "daughter of Thuron, noble of the Otungs."

  He did not respond.

  "Build up the fire," she suggested.

  "This is the forest of the Otungs," he said.

  "Oh?" she said.

  "Yes," he said.

  "They are far away," she said. "There is no danger. Build up the fire."

  He threw some extra wood on the blaze.

  "I am hungry," she said.

  They were some two days into the forest.

  "There is some meat of dog, raw," he said, "some cheese, some dried meat, some meal."

  "There is roast bear meat," she said.

  "True," he said, watching the meat sizzle on the spit, propped over the blaze. He turned it a little, twisting the spit, and more grease dropped, hissing, into the fire.

  "I have had only some nuts, some roots, some seeds," she said. "It is hard to find anything, under the snow."

  "When did you eat last?" he asked.

  "Yesterday," she said.

  "You must be very hungry," he said.

  "Yes!" she said.

  "The meat is almost done," he said.

  "Excellent," she said.

  "Do you think you will be given any?" he asked.

  "Beast!" she cried, and struggled to free herself, but could not do so.

  He observed her, dispassionately.

  "I am Hortense," she said, "daughter of Thuron, noble of the Otungs!"

  He did not respond to her.

  "Why have you followed me?" she asked. "You have a Herul knife. Did you take it from Hunlaki? Did you kill him?"

  "No," said the giant. "No."

  "Have you come to spy for Heruls on Otungs, as it is said the Hageen did?"

  "No," said the giant.

  "Why did you come?" she asked.