Norman, John - Gor 10 - Tribesmen of Gor.txt

by Tribesmen of Gor [lit]

  I could not reach into the jaws. Then the beast swept upward and I, clinging to

  the fin, erupted with it, eyes and nostrils stung with salt, half blinded, more

  than ten feet into the air. I was aware of torches across the water on the raft,

  men crying out, then the fish, I clinging to it, fell into the water, thrashing.

  As the fish fell back into the water it rolled, lifting me into the air. I shook

  my head and released the fin, lunging for the jaws which were held open by

  T’Zshal’s body. My arm entered the jaws. The fish rolled. I lost my grip. I

  seized T’Zshal’s body. Again I reached my arm into the jaws, grasping. I got my

  hand on the hilt of the dagger. The fish leaped again from the water and I had

  the dagger free, plunging it, ripping, into the gill tissue below its jaw, one

  of the salt-adaptations of marine life in the pit. I did not know the number of

  its hearts or their location. These vary in Gorean sharks. Too, the heart is

  deep within the body. I did not think I could reach it with the blade at my

  disposal. But the gill tissue is delicate, like layers of petals, essential for

  drawing oxygen from the environment. Madly did the great marine beast thrash;

  its jaws distended, trying to disgorge its victim, but it was held by the teeth;

  it tried to bite through the body in its jaws but the body was wedged well

  within the jaws and it could exert little leverage. Then the thrashing grew

  weaker. The Old One was still alive when I was drawn away from it, pulled by

  Hassan and another man to the surface of the raft. I could not release the

  dagger. Hassan pried it from my fingers with his hands. I lay on my back on the

  beams of the raft. Near me lay T’Zshal. I crawled to my hands and knees and went

  to him.

  “You let the Old One seize you,” I told him.

  “I was clumsy,” he smiled.

  Flesh hung, ripped from his body. I tried to press together the wounds. “The Old

  One?” asked T’Zshal.

  “Dead,” I said.

  The carcass lay in the water, whitish, buoyed by the salt. It was longer than

  the raft itself.

  “Good,” said T’Zshal. Then he closed his eyes.

  “He is dead,” said one of the men.

  “Find the lance head,” said I, “take the lacings from the blade. Bring me the

  dagger.”

  “You cannot save him,” said Hassan. The beams beneath the body of the kennel

  master were drenched with blood. My forehead was drenched with sweat. I saw the

  wounds in the shifting torchlight above and behind me. There was salt on my

  hands, blood. I pressed together, as I could, the serrated flesh.

  “I did not know there could be so much blood in a man,” said one of the men

  behind me.

  “Bring me what I asked for,” I said.

  The lance shaft broken, was found floating near the raft. The lacings which had

  reinforced the head were removed. The dagger was thrust in the wood beside me.

  “Help me,” said I, “Hassan.”

  “Be merciful,” said Hassan. “Kill him.”

  “Help me.” I said.

  “There is no hope,” said he.

  “We have shared salt,” I said.

  “I will help you,” said Hassan.

  Using the dagger as an awl, punching through the flesh, and the long lacing from

  the lance head, while Hassan held together the edges of the ripped furrows, I

  crudely sewed together the rent, bloodied meat before me.

  Once T’Zshal opened his eyes. “Let me die,” he begged.

  “I thought you once made the march to Klima,” I said.

  “I did,” said T’Zshal.

  “March again to Klima,” I told him.

  The fists of the kennel master clenched. A bit later be slept.

  I leaned back from the body of T’Zshal. “You would not qualify as one of the

  caste of physicians,” said a man behind me.

  “I myself,” said Hassan, “would not admit him to the leather workers.”

  We laughed. T’Zshal slept.

  “What of the Old One?” asked one of the men.

  “Leave him,” I said. The lelts, as yet, had not even dared approach the

  shifting, buoyant carcass of the Old One. In time their hunger would bring them,

  nosing and nibbling, to its bulk, and the blind feast in the black waters would

  begin.

  “Return to the salt docks,” I said.

  The men picked up their poles. The great raft turned and began to make its way

  back toward the docks.

  18 I Retrieve a Bit of Silk; We Enter the Desert

  “What would you have for saving my life?” asked T’Zshal.

  “How is it,” I asked, “that this interview takes place in the domicile of the

  Salt Master?”

  I stood on cool tiles, blue and yellow, in a vaulted room, in the, keep of the

  Salt Master. I stood before a draped couch, on which lay T’Zshal. Guards were

  about. Near me stood Hassan.

  “I am the Salt Master,” said T’Zshal. Men of the caste of physicians, slave,

  too, at Klima, stood about the couch. “What would you have?”

  “My freedom,” said I, “and water.” I regarded T’Zshal. He lay upon the couch,

  stripped to the waist, not deigning to bide the fierce, sewn wounds, which

  encircled his body.

  “There are no kaiila at Klima,” said T’Zshal.

  “I know,” I said.

  “You would enter the desert afoot?” he asked.

  “I have business away from Klima,” I said, to him.

  “You saved my life,” said T’Zshal. “In return, you ask only your own death?”

  “No,” I said. “I ask freedom and water.”

  “You do not know the desert,” he said.

  “I will accompany him,” said Hassan. “I, too, ask freedom and water. I, too,

  have business away from Klima.”

  “You know the desert?” asked T’Zshal.

  “The desert is my mother, and my father,” said Hassan. It was a saying of the

  Tahari.

  “And yet you would leave Klima afoot?”

  “Furnish me kaiila,” said Hassan. “And I will not refuse them.”

  “I could place both of you high at Klima,” said T’Zshal.

  “Our business lies elsewhere,” I said.

  “You are determined?” asked T’Zshal.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I, too,” said Hassan.

  “Very well,” said T’Zshal, “stake them out in the sun.”

  We were seized from behind by guards. We struggled. “I saved your life!” I

  cried.

  “Stake him out in the sun,” said T’Zshal.

  “Sleen!” cried Hassan.

  “He, too,” said T’Zshal.

  I pulled at the stake to which my right wrist was fastened.

  “Lie still,” said the guard. I felt the point of his lance at my throat.

  He retired to the canopy beneath which, with water, he sat, cross-legged, with

  his companion. Between them they had, in the crusts, scratched a board for Zar.

  This resembles the Kaissa board. Pieces, however, may he placed only on the

  intersections of lines either within or at the edges of the board. Each player

  has nine pieces of equal value which are originally placed on the intersections

  of the nine interior vertical lines with what would be the rear horizontal line,

  constituted by the back edge of the board, from each player’s point of view. The

  corners are
not used in the original placement, though they constitute

  legitimate move points after play begins. The pieces are commonly pebbles, or

  bits of verr dung, and sticks. The “pebbles” move first. Pieces move one

  intersection at a time, unless jumping. One may jump either the opponent’s

  pieces or one’s own. A jump must be made to an unoccupied point. Multiple jumps

  are permissible. The object is to effect a complete exchange of original

  placements. The first player to fully occupy the opponent’s initial position

  wins. Capturing, of course, does not occur. The game is one of strategy and

  maneuverability.

  “Hassan.” I said.

  “Lie still,” he said. “Do not speak. Try to live.”

  I was silent.

  “Ali,” cried one of the guards. He had just made a move, which pleased him.

  I kept my eyes closed, that I be not blinded.

  I was cold.

  I moved the stake, to which my right wrist was fastened, a quarter of an inch.

  “Hassan,” I said. “Do you live?”

  “Yes,” said he, from near me.

  We had been staked out in the crusts.

  The sun was now down.

  Under the Tahari sun some men last as little as four hours, even those who have

  made the march to Klima.

  Water had been nearby, but we had not been given any. We kept company with the

  stakes. One moves as little as possible. One must not sweat. Further, one

  shields, with one’s body, the surface on which one lies. The surface temperature

  can reach one hundred and seventy-five degrees by late afternoon.

  Oddly, I was now cold. It was the Tahari night. I could see the stars, the three

  moons.

  The two guards had now gone.

  “By noon tomorrow, we shall be dead.” said Hassan.

  I moved the stake again, to which my right wrist was fastened, another quarter

  of an inch. Then, slowly, bit by bit, I drew it from the crusts.

  Hassan’s face was turned toward me.

  “Do not speak,” I told him.

  With the freed stake and my right hand, I rolled to my left and attacked the

  crusts about the stake that held my left wrist down. Then I bad it free, and

  with my teeth and right hand, freed my left wrist of its impediment, then I

  freed my ankles of the straps.

  “Save yourself,” said Hassan. “I cannot walk.”

  I freed him of the restraints at his wrists, then of those which held his

  ankles. To my right wrist, dangling, hung the stake I had first drawn from the

  crusts.

  “Leave,” Raid Hassan. “I cannot walk!”

  I bent down and lifted him to his feet. I supported him with my left arm about

  his waist. His right arm was about my shoulder.

  We looked up.

  About us, in a dark cloud, scimitars drawn, were more than a dozen men.

  I seized the stake in my right fist, to do war with steel.

  The men about us parted. I saw, among them, carried on a sedan chair, the figure

  of T’Zshal. The chair was placed before us.

  “T’Zshal!” I cried.

  He regarded us, under the moons.

  “Are you still determined to enter the desert?” he asked.

  “We are,” I said.

  “Your water is ready,” he said.

  Two men, with yoke bags, falling before their body, on each side, stepped

  forward.

  “We sewed together several talu bags,” said T”Zshal, “to make these.”

  I was stunned.

  “I hoped,” said T’Zshal, “to teach you the sun and the lack of water, that you

  might be dissuaded from your madness.”

  “You have well taught us, T’Zshal,” said I, “the lack of water and the meaning

  of the sun.”

  He nodded his head. “You will now, at least with understanding,” said he, “enter

  the desert.” He turned to a guard. “Cut the stake from his wrist,” he said. It

  was done. Then he turned to another guard, one with a one-talu bag, who had been

  one of the men who had watched us, when we had been staked out. “Give them

  water,” he said.

  “You did not let me struggle in the straps,” I said to the guard.

  “You saved the life of T’Zshal,” said the man. “I did not wish you to die.” Then

  he gave Hassan and I to drink from the water he carried.

  Before we finished the bag, we passed it about the men, and T’Zshal, that each

  of us, there together, might have tasted it, the water from the same bag. We

  had, thus, in this act, shared water.

  “You will, of course,” said T’Zshal, “remain at Klima for some days, to recover

  your strength.”

  “We leave tonight,” I told him.

  “What of him?” asked T’Zshal, indicating Hassan.

  “I can walk,” said Hassan, straightening himself. “I now have water.”

  “Yes,” said T’Zshal. “You are truly of the Tahari.”

  A man handed me a bag of food. It contained dried fruit, biscuits, salt.

  “My thanks,” I said. We had not expected food.

  “It is nothing,” he said.

  “Will you not,” I asked T’Zshal, “in your turn, when your wounds heal, march

  from Klima?”

  “No,” said T’Zshal.

  “Why?” I asked

  I have not forgotten the answer he gave me.

  “I would rather be first at Klima than second in Tor,” he said.

  “I wish you well,” said 1, “T’Zshal, Salt Master of Klima.”

  Hassan and I turned and, with the water, and our supplies, into the night

  desert, took our way.

  We stopped outside the perimeter of Klima. From the place in the salt crusts,

  where I had hidden it, I took the faded, cracked bit of silk that had been

  thrust in my collar on the march to Klima. I held it to my face, and to the face

  of Hassan.

  “A trace of the perfume lingers,” he said.

  “Perhaps I should give it to those of Klima,” I smiled.

  “No,” smiled Hassan. “They would kill one another for it.”

  But I had no wish to give it to any at Klima. Rather I wished to return it,

  personally, to a girl.

  I tied the bit of silk about my left wrist.

  Then together, under the Gorean moons, through the salt crusts, we began the

  trek from Klima.

  We stopped once, on the height of the great shallow bowl, which encloses Klima,

  to look back. We saw Klima white in the light of the three moons. Then we

  continued our journey.

  19 The Wind Blows from the East; We Encounter a Kur

  I heard Hassan cry out.

  Through the sand, I plunged toward him.

  He stood on the side of a dune, in the moonlight. There was a flattish, large

  expanse of rock, exposed by the wind, below him.

  “I saw it there!” he cried. “I saw it.” He pointed to the flattish extent of

  rock. The wind swept across it. I saw nothing. I

  “It is madness,” said Hassan. “There is nothing there. I am mad.”

  “What did you see?” I asked.

  “A beast,” he said. “A large beast. It stood suddenly upright. Its arms were

  long. It looked at me. Then it was gone.” He shook his head. “But it could not

  have been there. There is nowhere for it to have gone.”

  “You describe a Kur,” I conjectured.

  “I have heard of them,” said Hassan. “Are they not mythical, creatures of

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nbsp; stories?”

  “Kurii exist,” I said to him.

  “No such beast could live in the desert,” said Hassan.

  “No,” I said, “such a beast could not live in the desert.”

  “Strange,” said Hassan, “that I should imagine a Kur here, in the Tahari.”

  I went to the rock, and examined it. I found no sign of a beast. The wind

  whipped the nearby sand. I could not discern footprints.

  “Let us continue our trek,” said Hassan, “before we both go mad.”

  Shouldering again the water, I followed Hassan.

  Yesterday we had finished the food. Yet did we have water. Hassan saw five birds

  overhead in flight.

  “Fall to your hands and knees,” he said. “Put your bead down.” He did so, and I

  followed his example. To my surprise the five birds began to circle. I looked

  up. They were wild vulos, tawny and broad-winged. In a short time they alighted,

  several yards from us. They watched us, their heads turned to one side. Hassan

  began to kiss rhythmically at the back of his band, his head down, but moving so

  as to see the birds. The sound he made was not unlike that of an animal lapping

  water.

  There was a squawk as he seized one of the birds which, curious, ventured too

  near. The other vulos took flight. Hassan broke the bird’s neck between his

  fingers and began to pull out the feathers.

  We fed on meat.

  We had been twelve days on the desert, when I detected, suddenly, in a moving of

  the wind, the odor.

  “Stop,” I said to Hassan. “Do you smell it?”

  “What?” he asked.

  “It is gone now,” I said.

  “What was it that you smelled?” be asked.

  “Kur,” I said.

  He laughed. “You, too,” be said, “are mad.”

  I scanned the dunes about us, silvered in the light of the moons. I shifted the

  water bag slung over my shoulders. Hassan stood nearby. He moved the bag of

  water he carried to his left shoulder, it falling before and behind.

  “There is nothing,” he said. “Let us proceed.”

  “It is with us,” I said. “You were not mistaken, days ago, when you saw it.”

  “No Kur can live in the desert,” he said.

  I looked about. “It is with us, somewhere, out there,” I said. Somewhere.”

  “Come,” said Hassan. “Soon it will be morning.”

  “Very well,” I said to him.

  “Why do you hesitate?” he asked.