Marauders of Gor (21 page)

           
"What is going on !" I heard cry.

           
Thyri, awakened, screamed.

           
I lay, stunned, at the foot of the wall, on the couch.

           
"Torches!" cried the Forkbeard. "Torches!"

           
Men cried out; bond-maids screamed.

           
I heard the sound of feeding.

           
Then in the light of a torch, lifted by the Forkbeard, lit from being thrust beneath the ashes of the fire pit, we saw it.

           
It was not more than ten feet from me. It lifted its face from the half-eaten body of a man. Its eyes, large, round, blazed in the light of the torch. I heard the screaming of bond-maids, the movements of their chains. Their ankles were held by their fetters. "Weapons !" cried the ForkbeaPd. "Kur! Kur!" I heard men cry. The beast stood there, blinking, bent over the body. It was unwilling to surrender it. Its fir was sable, mottled with white. Its ears, large, pointed and wide, were laid back flat against its head. It was perhaps seven feet tall and weighed four or five hundred pounds. Its snout was wide, leathery. There were two nostrils, slitlike. Its tongue was dark. It had two rows of fangs, four of which were particularly prominent, those in the first row of fangs, above and below, in the position of canines; of these, the upper two were particularly long, and curved. Its arms were longer and larger than its legs; it held the body it was

           
devouring in clawed, pawlike hands, yet six-digited, extrajointed, almost like tentacles. It hissed, and howled and, eyes blazing, fangs bared, threatened us.

           
No one could seem to move. It stood there in the torchlight, threatening us, unwilling to surrender its body. Then, behind it I saw an uplifted ax, and the ax struck down, cutting its backbone a foot beneath its neck. It slumped forward, over the couch half falling across the body of a hysterical bond-maid. Behind it I saw Rollo. He did not seem in a frenzy; nor did he seem human; he had struck, when others, Gautrek, Gorm, I, even the Forkbeard, had been unable to do other than look upon it with horror. Rollo again lifted the ax.
 

           
"No !" cried Ivar Forkbeard. "The battle is done!"

           
The giant lowered his ax and, slowly, returned to his couch, to sleep.

           
One of his men touched its snout with the butt of his spear, and then thrust it into the beast's mouth; the butt of the spear was torn away; the bond-maids screamed. "It is still alive!" cried Gorm.

           
"Get it out of here," said Ivar Forkbeard. "Beware of the jaws.

           
With chains and poles the body of the Kur was dragged and thrust from the hall. We took it outside the palisade, on the rocks. It was getting light.
 
I knelt beside it.

           
It opened its eyes.

           
"Do you know me ?" I asked.

           
"No," it said.

           
"This is a small Kur," said the Forkbeard. "They are generally larger. Note the mottling of white. Those are disease marks."

           
"I hope," I said, "that it was not because of me that it came to the hall."

           
"No," said the Forkbeard. "In the dark they have excellent vision. If it had been you it sought, it would have been you it killed."

           
"Why did it enter the hall ?" I asked.

           
"Kurrii," said Ivar Forkbeard, "are fond of human flesh."

           
Humans, like other animals, I knew, are regarded by those of the Kurii as a form of food.

           
"Why did it not run or flight ?" I asked.

           
The Forkbeard shrugged. "It was feeding," he said. Then he bent to the beast. "Have you hunted here before?" he asked. "Have you killed a verr here, and a bosk?"

           
"And, in the hall," it said, its lips drawing back from its jaws, "last night a man."

           
"Kill it," said Ivar Forkbeard.

           
Four spears were raised, but they did not strike.

           
"No," said Ivar Forkbeard. "It is dead."

           
Chapter 8
 
      
Hilda of Scagnar

           
"So is this the perfume that the high-born women of Ar wear to the song-dramas in En'Kara ?" asked the blond girl, amused.

           
"Yes, Lady," I assured her, bowing before her, lisping in the accents of Ar.

           
"It is gross," said she. "Meaningless."

           
"It is a happy scent," I whined.

           
"For the low-born," said she.

           
"Lalamus!" said I.

           
My assistant, a large fellow, but obviously stupid, smoothshaven as are the perfurners, in white and yellow silk, and golden sandals, bent over, hurried forward. He carried a tray of vials.

           
"I had not realized, Lady," said I, "that perception such as yours existed in the north."

           
My accent rnight not have fooled one of Ar, but it was not bad, and to those not often accustomed to the swift, subtle liquidity of the spfflh of Ar, melodius yet expressive, it was more than adecluate. My assistant, unfortunately, did not speak.

           
The eyes of Hilda the Haughty, daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar, flashed. "You of the south think we of the north are barbarians !" she snapped.

           
"Such fools we were," I admitted, putting my head to the floor.

           
"I might have you fried in the grease of tarsk," she said, "boiled in the oil of tharlarion!"

           
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"Will you not take pity, gr,~at Lady," I whined, "on tho~ who did not suspect the ci~filization, the refinements, of tl; north ?"

           
"Perhaps," said she.~"Have you other perfumes ?"

           
My assistant, hopefully, lifted a vial.

           
"No," I hissed to him. "In an instant such a woman wi see through such a scent."

           
"Let me smell it," said she.

           
"It is nothing, lady," I whined, "though among the highes born and most beautiful of the women of the Physicians i is much favored."

           
"Let me smell it," she said.

           
I removed the cork, and turned away my head, as thougl shamed.

           
She held it to her nose. "It stinks," she said.

           
Hastily I corked the vial and, angrily, thrust it back intc the hand of my embarrassed assistant, who returned it tc its place.

           
Hilda sat in a great curule chair, carved with the sign o~ Scagnar, a serpent-ship, seen frontally. On each post of the chair, carved, was the head of a snarling sleen. She smiled, coldly.

           
I reached for another vial.

           
She wore rich green velvet, closed high about her neck, trimmed with gold.

           
She took the next vial, which I had opened for her. "No," she said, handing it back to me.

           
Her hair, long, was braided. It was tied with golden string.

           
"I had no understanding," said she, "that the wares of Ar were so inferior."

           
Ar, populous and wealthy, the greatest city of known Gor, was regarded as a symbol of quality in merchandise. The stamp of Ar, a single letter, that which appears on its Home Stone, the Gorean spelling of the city's name, was often forged by unscrupulous tradesmen and placed on their own goods. It is not a difflcult sign to forge. It has, however, in spite of that, never been changed or embelli~hed; the stamp

           
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~'~

           
of Ar is a part of its tradition. In my opinion the goods of Ko-ro-ba were as good, or better, than those of Ar but, it is true, she did not have the reputation of the great city to the southeast, across the Vosk. Ar is often looked to, by those interested in such matters, as the setter of the pace in dress and ~nanners. Fashions in Ar are eagerly inquired into; a garment "cut in the fashion of Ar" may sell for more than one of better cloth but less "stylish"; "as it is done in Ar" is a phrase often heard. Sometimes I had little objection to the spreadings of such fashions. After the restoration of Marlenus of Ar, in 10,1 19 Contasta Ar, from the founding of Ar, he had at his victory feast decreed a two-hort, about two and one half inches, shortening of the already briefly skirted garment ofthe female state slave. This was adopted immediately in Ar, and, city by city, became rather general. Proving that I myself am not above fashion I had had this scandalous alteration implemented in my own house; surely I would not have wanted my girls to be embarrassed by the excessive length of their livery; and, in fact, I did the Ubar of Ar one better, by ordering their hemlines lifted by an additional quarter inch; most Gorean slave girls have lovely legs; the more I see of them the better; I wondered how many girls, even as far away as Turia, knew that more of their legs were exposed to free men because, long ago, drunkenly, Marlenus of Ar, at his victory feast, had altered the length of the livery of the female state slaves of Ar. Another custom, long practised in the far south, below the Gorean equator, in Turia, for example, is the piercing of the ears of the female slave; this custom, though of long standing in the far south, did not begin to spread with rapidity in the north until, again, it was introduced in Ar. At a feast Marlenus, as a special treat for his high officers, presented before them a dancer, a female slave, whose ears had been pierced. She had worn, in her degradation, golden loops in her ears; she had not been able, even, to finish her dance; at a sign from Marlenus she had been seized, thrown to the tiles on which she had danced, an* raped by more than a hundred men. Ear piercing, from this time, had begun to spread rapidly through

           
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the north, masters, and slavers, often inflicting it on thei glrls. Interestingly, the piercing of the septum, for the in sertion of a nose ring, is regarded, generally, a great dea more lightly by female slaves than the piercing of the ears Perhaps this iS partly because, in the far south, the fre~ women of the Wagon Peoples wear nose rings; perhaps i iS because the piercing does not show; I do not know. Th~ piercing of the ears, however, is regarded as being the epito me of a slave girl's degradation. Any woman, it is said, with pierced ears, is a slave girl.

           
"You insult me," said Hilda the Haughty, "to present me with such miserable merchandise ! Is this the best that great Ar can offer ?

           
Had I been of Ar I might have been angry. As it was I was somewhat irritated. The perfumes I was displaying to her had been taken, more than six months ago, by the Forkbeard from a vessel of Cos. They were truly perfumes of Ar, and of the finest varieties. "Who," I asked myself, "is Hilda, the daughter of a barbarian, of a rude, uncouth northern pirate, living in a high wooden fortress, overlooking the sea, to so demean the perfumes of Ar ?" One might have thought she was a great lady, and not the insolent, though curvacious, brat of a boorish sea rover.

           
I put my head to the floor. I grovelled in the white and yellow siLk of the perfumers. "Oh, great lady," I whined,

           
the finest of Ar's, perfumes may be too thin, too frail, too gross, for one of your discernment and taste."
   
~ ~ ~

           
Her hands wore many rings. About her neck she wore, looped, four chains of gold, with pendants. On her wrists were bracelets of silver and gold.

           
"Show me others, men of the south," said she, contemptuously.

           
Again and again we tried to please the daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar. We had little success. Sometimes she would wince, or make a face, or indicate disgust with a tiny motion of her hand, or a movement of her head

           
We were almost finished with the vials in the flat, leather case