The Usurper

by John Norman

  “Come out, old one!” cried the fellow at the foot of the stairs leading up to the wagon of Hunlaki. “You have lived long enough! Come out! I have a throat to cut!”

  Scarcely had these words left his throat when a hand, from behind, seeming to emerge from the crowd, closed over his mouth, tightly, and pulled his head up and back, exposing the throat, and the knife, with a swift, clean draw, cut back to the base of the spine.

  “I am out,” said Hunlaki. “And it is you who have lived long enough.”

  The fellow twisted in the dirt and blood at Hunlaki’s boots.

  “I, too, had a throat to cut,” said Hunlaki.

  “He did not see you,” said a fellow.

  “It was not my intention that he should,” said Hunlaki.

  “You are cunning,” said a man.

  “I keep my saddle,” said Hunlaki. “I keep my wagon.”

  “Excellent, dear friend,” said one whom Cornhair had heard called Mujiin.

  Mujiin, it was said, had long ridden with Hunlaki, even from the time of the last, great battle with the Otungen, following which the Plains of Barrionuevo had become the Flats of Tung.

  Mujiin seemed much pleased.

  He had not, of course, interfered in the business at hand. It was not the Herul way.

  “Strip this,” said Hunlaki, gesturing to the gasping, choking figure at his feet, its hands clutched about its throat, the blood running between the tentaclelike digits. “The dogs are hungry.”

  “Tonight they will be fed,” said a fellow.

  “We will gamble for his helmet, his furs, and horses,” said a man.

  Mujiin had ascended the steps of Hunlaki’s wagon. He carved a deep notch in the right doorpost of the wagon. It was one of six such notches.

  The figure at Hunlaki’s feet was now inert.

  Its helmet, furs, and boots were being stripped away.

  “It seems you still live, old warrior, old Hunlaki,” said a man.

  “As of now,” said Hunlaki.

  “I thought he would kill you,” said a man. “But he did not.”

  “And you lost a silver darin?” said Hunlaki.

  “Two,” said the man.

  “I hope to die in battle,” said Hunlaki, “and hope to be killed by a greater one than he.”

  “Who?” asked a man.

  “A greater one than he,” said Hunlaki.

  He watched the stripped body of the Herul being dragged toward the gate. There was a line of blood marking the furrow of its passage. Outside the gate, one could hear the howling of the dogs, doubtless excited by the smell of blood, a scent which their keen nostrils can detect, even in the summer, at a range of several hundred yards.

  Hunlaki wiped his blade on his fur boot.

  A Herul youth, perhaps no more than five years of age, looked up at Hunlaki.

  “Learn from this, young warrior,” said Hunlaki. “Be not boastful, be not vainglorious, do not preen like the bright-tailed sunbird. Do not stand out. Do not be easy to see. Be one with the grass and trees. Do not stand upright on high ground. Be always on your guard. Look about yourself frequently. When one faces north, expect the vi-cat to attack from the south. When one faces south, expect it from the north.”

  “I will, old warrior,” said the child.

  “I must to my watch,” called Mujiin, pleased, from the high step of the stairs to the wagon of Hunlaki.

  “I shall accompany you,” said Hunlaki.

  The incident had occurred in the neighborhood of noon.

  The fortresslike Herul camp was a large one, though many are larger. It consisted of some fifty wagons. The camps are larger in the spring and summer when there is ample grazing for the cattle. That is also a time for trading, converse, courtship, riding contests, martial games, the chanting of histories, and such. In the fall and winter the camps are smaller and, naturally, more numerous. This distributes the herds in such a way as to take advantage of the seasonally reduced pasturage. In the fall the herds begin to grow their winter coats. It is said that the cattle then resemble lumbering, shaggy hillocks, and, when it snows, seem like small, white, living mountains, the air above them steaming with the smoke of breath, crowding together in large circles. The Tangaran winter is often a difficult time for the herds and, in the fall, perhaps anticipating losses, the Heruls thin the herds for meat, hide, and bone, which, in the spring, may be used in trade, usually with the merchants of Venitzia. Fodder is also cut and dried in the summer, by women and slaves, and stored in earthen burrows. This is usually reserved for prime animals, and cows. Many of the steers wax fat in the summer and fall, and live off this fat in the winter. It is common, too, for them to chop and paw through the snow, for grass, lichens, and herbs.

  In late Igon, Cornhair, nude, but wrapped head to foot in thick furs, the furs fastened tightly about her with several coils of rope, had been brought to a trade island in the Lothar. There she was flung, from the man-drawn sled, so helpless and wrapped, upon the stony beach of the island, on its eastern side, nearest the Flats of Tung, with other trade goods, for there were several such sleds. Helpless in her wrappings of bound fur she understood little of what was transpiring. After a time she heard the approach of horses, or what we have, for convenience, termed horses, snarling and snorting, apparently breasting the chill stream, several of them, and then she heard their paws breaking the edge of ice, near the shore, and then heard their scratching on the cold, stony beach. Boots struck the beach as riders dismounted. Something, too, or several things, seemed to be dragged over the cold gravel of the beach. She then heard Telnarian, and something else, which she did not at that time recognize. She heard also the cackling of domestic fowl, the squealing of pigs. After a time, she sensed something close to her, and then something was undoing the furs about her head. They were suddenly pulled back and she shut her eyes against the painful, ensuing blast of light, with its concomitant of bitter, piercing cold. She opened her eyes, screamed, and lost consciousness. She had seen her first Herul, the large eyes, the scaled skin, the seemingly earless head. Almost immediately she was returned to consciousness, awakened, slapped again and again, for stockmen, slavers, and Masters tend not to be patient, let alone indulgent, with their beasts, no matter how slight, soft, and fair they may be. “No, no!” she cried. And then, wide-eyed and horrified, she was silent, as a clawlike tentacle was pressed across her lips. She felt the hardness of the monitory digit and realized she was not to speak. Too, in a moment, she felt one of those digits press against the side of her neck. She did not understand this, but, within the digit, then unsheathed at the Herul’s will, was a soft membrane which, even in its momentary contact with her skin, registered her unique biological identity, leaving a trace which, in the Herul’s memory, was uniquely hers, much as a Herul dog might remember her smell, a slaver might take her measurements, and her finger and toe prints, or an imperial warden obtain and file away a record of her hereditary uniqueness, that borne unmistakably in each of her cells, which no disguise or falseness could alter or conceal. Later, when she would be tied naked to the learning post in the Herul camp, many other Heruls, considering her, would make a similar determination.

  Cornhair, to her consternation, and misery, in the cold, was relieved of the ropes and furs, and, by two Otungs, dragged to her feet, and, arms held, exhibited to the Heruls. In that instant, shivering, moaning with cold, she realized she was the only female amongst the trade goods. The other women, nineteen of them, who had been brought to Tangara with her on the Narcona had been branded and distributed amongst the Otungs, two by outright gifting, Nissimi and Rabbit, to men named Ulrich and Vandar, and the remainder by lot. The brand, the lovely slave rose, of course, as it had been with the others, had been burned into the thigh of Cornhair. Indeed, the mighty barbarian, the imperial officer, Otto, had personally supervised her marking.

  The Otungs released Cornhair
and she fell to her knees. Surely now that she had been exhibited, and as a slave is exhibited, openly, fully, and without compromise, she would be again permitted the warming shelter of the furs, but the boot of a Herul was upon them. She put down her head, shivering. She dared not speak, nor, at the moment, reach for the furs. She wisely sensed that such boldness would not be permitted to a slave. Along the beach there were several sleds, which, raftlike, presumably poled or drawn, had been brought to the island from the forest side, with several Otungs. On the river side of the beach, nearest the plains beyond, were a number of Heruls, and a cluster of horses. There were also several light, wheelless platforms of poles, to which some of the horses had been harnessed. Between the sleds and the platforms were heaped or stacked goods of various kinds. On the forest side were such things as bundles of pelts, sacks of dried meat, hard-shelled winter fruit, vessels of honey, canisters of salt, mainly from brine springs, and quantities of wood, some cut and smoothed into boards. The salt and wood was of particular importance to the Heruls, as both wood and salt were rare on the Flats of Tung. The wood served mainly for the repair and construction of wagons, and the salt for lick blocks, accessible to the herds. Salt, too, it might be mentioned, might be traded for by the Heruls with the Telnarians of Venitzia, but that tended to be expensive as it was imported. Pelts obtained from the Otungs might be traded, in turn, with merchants, usually those of Venitzia, for any number of manufactured articles. The Heruls, for their part, had with them such things as crates of domestic fowl, pigs crowded into small wooden cages, and, from Venitzia, axe heads, knife blades, beer and kana, and a great number of bolts of cloth, of diverse qualities. The thicker, finer, and more ornate cloths were favored by the higher women of the Otungen, and the coarser fabrics were allotted to the lesser women and slaves. Cornhair, head down, her knees half in the sand and grit of the cold beach, shivering, clutched her arms about herself. She listened to the voices. She knew she was being bargained for. She heard the tiny sound of coins, surely not darins, but pennies. She saw four cast down on the furs beside her. They were kicked back, and the Herul, hissing, snatched them up again. One of the Otungs pulled her head up and back, and, with his free hand, lifted and spread her hair. Her hair color she had learned, in the hall to which she had been led, bound and leashed, from the Telnarian wilderness camp, through the forest, was not that unusual amongst Otung women. But then Otung women were seldom slaves. It was more common that they owned slaves. Such slaves, as those brought with her to Tangara, were more likely, like most slaves, to be dark haired and dark-eyed. Certainly a hair and eye color such as hers, blue-eyed and blond-haired, was not unknown in the markets, but, too, it was not that common in most markets, particularly in those of the colonial worlds.

  After her branding, she had been knelt, nude, hands tied behind her, her ankles linked but some inches apart in thong shackles, her thigh still afire with pain, before the barbarian captain, Otto.

  “I am branded,” she said.

  “As were the others,” he said.

  “I gather then,” she said, “that I am not to be immediately slain.”

  “Perhaps,” he had said, “you were branded merely that you might be slain as a marked slave.”

  “I think not,” she said.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “On my knees,” she said, “before a free man.”

  “You will grow familiar with such a posture, before the free,” he said.

  “I am not to be immediately killed,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “Even a slave such as you, as worthless as you, might have her uses, putting herself, for example, instantly, at a snapping of fingers, at the disposal of the free, wholly and helplessly surrendered, as a slave is wholly and helplessly surrendered, hoping that lengthy and inordinate pleasures may be derived from her body, that Masters might then feed her and permit her to live. A dead slave is good for little but food for the dogs.”

  “I see,” she said.

  “Surely when you were free, you must have wondered what it would be, to kneel as you are now, naked, helpless, bound, a slave, before a free man.”

  She was silent.

  “You will be trade goods,” he said.

  “I?” she said. “I? Trade goods? Trade goods! I am not to be kept?”

  “No,” he said.

  “You are a king!” she cried. “Am I not to be a king’s slave?”

  “No,” he said.

  “I am not trade goods!” she said. “I cannot be traded! I was the Lady Publennia Calasalia, of the Larial Calasalii!”

  “We will see what we can get for you,” he said. “But, if nothing, then we will give you away, or leave you bound naked on the beach, for animals, or to die of exposure.”

  “You cannot do this to me!” she cried.

  “Put her with the other goods,” he said, turning away.

  She tried to spring to her feet, but, as she was tied, her ankles fastened but some six inches apart, that she might be well apprised of her bondage, she fell, to her left shoulder. She looked after him, wildly. Hands were then put upon her, and the stock tender, Qualius, had lifted her in his arms, and carried her to a storage area.

  She remained kneeling on the beach, shivering with cold, her head down, her arms held about herself.

  “Sell me, sell me!” she thought.

  Her captors wanted a darin for her.

  One of the Heruls snorted, explosively. She would later understand that noise as a Herul laugh.

  Attention then seemed diverted from her.

  She recalled the words of the barbarian, that, if she were not sold, she would be given away, or left helpless on the beach, perhaps for the nibblings of filchen, if not of larger beasts, or left to die of exposure.

  Surely they would not tell the Heruls that!

  The Heruls must suppose her captors might hold her dear, hold for at least a darin.

  “A darin!” she thought. “I should sell for a thousand darins, for ten thousand darins!”

  “I am freezing,” she thought. “Sell me soon, for a penny, for the peeling of a fruit, for a crust of bread, for anything, but sell me, sell me soon!”

  The tradings were taking place, offers and counteroffers, bargainings and negotiations, these strung out for better than fifty yards along the beach.

  The slave necklace was no longer on her neck, with its metal pendant.

  Suitably clothed, the brand covered, might she not pass as free, somewhere, somehow?

  She thought of trying to rise and run, but where, and to what? Too, she doubted that her legs would hold her. She feared, even, she could not move her legs, that they were too cold to serve her.

  “If escape were possible for me,” she thought, “it would be here, in the wilderness, into the forest! This would be my chance, here, not in civilization, where I, marked, would be clothed as a slave, where I would be known, recognized, and identified as a slave, where I would be collared, but, alas, even here, there is no escape for me. I could run only into darkness, cold, and death. I would be eaten. I would starve!”

  Then she put aside the foolishness of even contemplating flight.

  She did not think she could even rise to her feet.

  No, she realized, there was no escape for the female slave, not in the cities, not in the forests, not in the fields, nowhere. She had known that when she was free, that was understood, and it had amused her, but, then, she had never thought that she would be a female slave, and that there would never be any escape for her.

  “At least I am not in a collar,” she thought. “My throat is bare!”

  No one seemed to be about.

  Her hand reached out, just a little, slowly, to clutch the furs, and, almost at the same time, the knout fell on her body, and then again and again, and she put her head down, covering it with her hands. “Forgive me, Master!” she cried.
“Forgive me, Master!”

  “Are you cold?” asked he who then was to her as keeper and captor.

  “Yes, Master!” she cried.

  “Do you wish to speak?” he asked.

  “Yes, yes, Master!” she cried.

  “Speak,” he said.

  “I am cold, Master!” she wept. “I freeze! Please let me cover myself with the furs!”

  “Do you petition permission to enclose yourself in the furs?” he asked.

  “Yes, yes, Master!” she said.

  “You reached out for the furs,” he said.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “Without permission,” he said.

  “Yes, Master,” she said. “Forgive me, Master.”