Swordsmen of Gor (77 page)

As noted, this was the morning of our third day at sea.

“It is falling behind,” said one of the mariners.

“It has been with us since the Alexandra,” said the other.

“It weakens,” said the first.

“It is foundering,” said the second.

“It is drowning,” said the first.

How odd, I thought, that a sea sleen would be with us from the Alexandra.

Perhaps they frequented these waters. Still we were far from shore, and the sea sleen, as other forms of predatory sea life, tends to range the fishing banks, so to speak, shallower waters closer to shore where sea plants can get sunlight, these plants then forming the basis of a rich marine ecology.

But we were now far from shore.

Too, sea sleen commonly swam in packs. They were seldom alone.

“How could a sea sleen drown?” I asked.

“That beast is mad,” said the first fellow.

“That is not a sea sleen,” said the second mariner, turning about. “That is a land animal. See the width of the head, the jaws.”

The sea sleen is an unusual animal, presumably related somehow to the varieties of land sleen. Its body is much narrower, and the head is narrow and knifelike. The six powerful appendages attached to that long, narrow body are flippered, not clawed. It is not fully clear whether the sea sleen is a marine adaptation of the sleen or a similar but independently evolved animal. Its body is snakelike, and it approaches its prey silently, gliding, usually from the rear right or left, and propels itself, when making its strike, by the sudden lashing of its tail. It is the fastest creature in the sea. Its greatest moment of danger is at its birth, for the mother’s casting of the offspring and blood into the water stimulates the investigation of predators, in particular that of the nine-gilled Gorean shark. At such times several male sea sleen will ring the mother and infant, protecting them. The narrow snout of the sea sleen, driven into the shark at great speed, can destroy the capacity of gills to extract oxygen from the water, and crush cartilage. The razorlike teeth aligned in two rows within the narrow, triangular jaws, too, some eighteen inches in length, can seize, shake, and tear the head from many varieties of shark. The mother, within the ring, has only a few Ehn within which she must bring the infant to the surface, for its first breath.

“It is not a sea sleen?” I said.

“No,” said the first mariner.

“It is exhausted,” said the other.

“It is an amazing beast,” said the first mariner. “It has been with us since the Alexandra. It swims all night, in the darkness, following us, somehow keeping up with us, and we with a fair wind. It must have incredible strength.”

“Which now fails,” said the other.

“As it must,” said the first.

“And so it dies,” said the other.

“It has followed the ship?” I said.

“Yes, Commander,” said the first of the two mariners.

“But why, why?” I asked.

“It is mad,” said the first.

“In any event, it drowns,” said the second mariner. “We must now be about our duties.”

“Ho!” I cried, suddenly, frightened, to the officer of the watch, and climbed the steps past the helm deck, to the stern castle.

“Commander?” he said.

“The glass,” I said to him, with urgency. “Give me your glass!”

He removed the sling from his shoulder, to which was attached the case which holstered the glass of the Builders.

At the high rail of the stern castle I saw, now far behind, the small motion in the water, now scarcely visible, even with the glass, in the swelling waves, which marked the point beyond which our mysterious companion could not proceed, that point which marked for it the end of a journey it could not complete.

I cast aside my sword and scabbard.

“Stop, Commander! Do not!” I heard the officer of the watch cry out, and then I saw the flash of the mighty rudder to my right, and entered the cold waters of gleaming Thassa.

Chapter Forty-Two

I RENEW AN ACQUAINTANCE

I encircled the mighty neck of the beast with my arm, and felt the throb of blood in the throat. It lived. I kicked my way to the surface, and was thrown yards to my right by the wash of water, and went under, and came up, again, and gasped for breath, half blinded by the water, still clinging to that massive, furred neck, and the beast’s head was then, too, out of the water and I heard an explosive exhalation of air, and then I felt through the fur, the expansion of the throat, as massive lungs drew in a volume of air, and there was then an expellation of air and water, choking and eruptive, and the breath was like a burst of smoke in the cold air, and then, again, the beast breathed, and it seemed to rise from the water, pulling me upward, half out of the water, and breathed again, and was then beside me, and we were cast about, together, in the waves. In swells we would be lifted twenty or thirty feet into the air and would then swirl downward into the troughs, to be lifted again and slide downward again, and again. My body began to numb in the water, and my legs and arms began to lose feeling and stiffen, and my arm slipped from the neck of the beast and I was separated from it, surely for yards, and then I felt it beneath me, rising up, and my body was gripped, firmly, gently, in those wide jaws, and lifted up, and my head, gasping, my eyes lashed with wind and salt water, was above the surface, and I breathed. It seemed somehow, in these moments, the beast had renewed its vitality, and had come alive again. I did not think I could last long in waters of this temperature. My head above the water, the jaws released me, and I clung to the fur at its neck. My fingers seemed to stiffen and freeze, and lose their strength, but they were clenched in the fur, fastened there, like cold hooks in that cold, soaked fur. We would die together. It would be madness to put a longboat into that sea. I began, insanely, to count the Ihn, curious to know how long it would be until I lost consciousness, as though it might matter. Then I fought to feel, and to continue to feel, for all the torment and misery, to continue to feel. I determined to count to another Ehn, and then another. I lost consciousness and awakened, and again lost consciousness and again awakened. It seemed there was only the eternal rushing of the water, the lifting and falling, again and again, and the cold, and the large body beside me, to which I numbly clung. I caught sight of the sky over the water. I thought it beautiful. I lost consciousness, again. I do not know how long I was in the water. I awakened, again, in the misery and violence, and heard a low, vibratory rumble beside me, that odd emanation from a large thoracic cavity. My fingers began to slip from the fur. I could cling to it no longer.

“Commander!” I heard, as though from far off.

“Kill the beast!” I heard. “It is attacking the commander!”

“No!” I cried, hoarsely. I hoped they could hear me, if they were truly there. “No! No!”

I became dimly aware of the bulwarks of a pitching galley, her mast down, her oars outboard, about me.

I reached out with my right arm, and caught an oar. It was drawn inward, toward the thole port. I felt hands reach down, over the rail, and seize me, and was drawn inboard, over the rail.

“You went overboard,” said Pertinax.

“Are you all right?” inquired Tajima.

One of the nested galleys had been launched.

“You are fortunate the officer of the watch saw you,” said a man.

“Kill the sleen,” said a mariner.

“Do not,” I said. “Bring it aboard.”

“No,” said a man, “such beasts are dangerous.”

“It is half dead,” said another.

“Leave it,” said an oarsman.

“No,” I said.

“Stop!” cried Pertinax, reaching for me.

I went over the rail, and was in the water, making my way toward the sleen, now some yards abeam.

I caught it by the neck, and drew it toward the galley.

“Oars down!” I said. “Into the water, down!”

“Comply!” cried Tajima to the nearest oarsmen.

“Four oars went under the water, and I drew the body of the sleen over two of them. “Oars up!” I said, from the water. “Bring them inboard, blades out, close to the hull.”

The body of the sleen then, though with difficulty, for its weight, was lifted from the water.

“Take it on board!” I cried.

“Surely not!” said an oarsman.

“Now!” I said.

“Comply,” said Tajima, and he himself, followed by Pertinax, entered the water beside the hull, to roll the body of the sleen closer to the hull.

“See the size of it,” said a mariner.

“It will tear your arm off!” said an oarsmen.

“Get ropes, lift,” said a mariner.

I was aided aboard, again, and Tajima and Pertinax, in the freezing water, encircled the body of the sleen with ropes, and it was lifted aboard.

“Bring blankets,” said Torgus, who had commanded the galley, adding, “for both.”

“This thing, recovered, could kill everyone on board,” said an oarsman.

“Yes,” I said, shivering, “but it will not do so.”

Tajima and Pertinax were then assisted in boarding.

“You did not fall overboard, did you?” said Pertinax.

“Perhaps not,” I said.

With one blanket I tried, as I could, to dry the fur of the sleen, and put two others about it.

“So we have here,” said Torgus, “three fools.”

“And a beast brought on board,” said an oarsman.

“Fitting for a voyage of madness,” said a mariner.

Tajima, Pertinax, and I, shuddering and miserable, then availed ourselves of blankets.

“Put about,” said Torgus. “Return to the ship.”

“I could use a cup of kal-da,” said an oarsman.

“So could we all,” said another.

“This is a sleen,” said Tajima, looking down.

A rumbling emanated from within its thoracic cavity. Then it closed its eyes, and slept.

“His name,” I said, “is Ramar.”

Chapter Forty-Three

THE RECRUIT

“It was a very foolish thing you did, Tarl Cabot, tarnsman,” said Lord Nishida.

“Perhaps,” I said.

“We could have lost a galley,” he said.

“I am pleased she is safe,” I said.

“You brought a dangerous animal on board,” he said.

“No more dangerous, surely,” I said, “than ten larls.”

“They are caged,” he said.

“Not at Tarncamp,” I said.

“The larl is large and noble,” said Lord Nishida. “The sleen is sly and treacherous.”

“It may one day save your life,” I said.

“How is that?” he said.

“It is alert to menace, to deceit,” I said.

“It is a beast,” he said.

“An unusual beast,” I said.

“It is a mystical thing,” he smiled, “something magical, possessing a gift of divination?”

“Not at all,” I said. “I think it has to do with scent, and with changes in a body, reticences, tensings, an incipient readiness to spring, restrained, such things.”

“If it is to remain on board,” he said. “It must be caged, or chained.”

“It has spent much of its life in such imprisonments,” I said. “It waits for the chain to be removed, the door of the cage opened.”

“It is very large,” he said. “It is not wild, I take it.”

“No,” I said. Ramar was the consequence of a long line of domestic breeding, on a Steel World, of generations of selection, designed to produce size, swiftness, agility, ferocity, and cunning. It had been bred, literally, for the hunt, and the arena.

“To what commands will it respond?” he asked.

“I do not know,” I said. “And if I did, I could not pronounce them.”

I was unable to produce the phonemes of Kur.

“That is strange,” said Lord Nishida.

“They are in a different language,” I said, “one spoken in a far place.”

I observed lord Nishida closely, but he gave no sign of understanding me, of suspecting what might be the different language, or the far place.

I thought it well to change the course of our exchange.

“You might find such a beast of value,” I said.

“Oh?” he said.

“It is an excellent tracker,” I said. Indeed, the sleen was a tenacious, indefatigable tracker, the finest on Gor. Its tracking skills had doubtless been evolved for the pursuit of game, but, in the domesticated sleen, often carefully bred for generations, they often proved of great value to humans. It was not unusual for a sleen to locate and pursue a track which might have been laid down several days earlier. There have been documented cases of a sleen locating and following a trail put down more than a month earlier.

An obvious application of sleen is in hunting, say, tabuk, wild tarsk, and such. A related application of sleen is in tracking fugitives, slave girls foolish enough to think they might escape, and such. Depending on the commands issued, the sleen will either destroy and feed on the quarry, or drive it to a preappointed destination, usually a cage, the gate of which the quarry, if it wishes to live, must close, and swiftly, therewith locking itself within. There are also guard sleen, which guard granaries, storerooms, warehouses, and such. They may, too, patrol the perimeters of camps, to prevent intrusions and unauthorized departures. Many a slave girl has been turned back at a camp’s periphery, sometimes to be hurried back to her master, by the fangs of a sleen to whom her value and beauty are a matter of utter indifference. Sleen may also be used to guard prisoners, holding them in place. Too, some sleen are used for herding. They may be used, for example, to herd stripped free women, not yet embonded, to whom the coffle might seem an indignity. Many such women are only too eager then to be permitted to seek refuge within a warrior’s tent, within which they will serve as, and be used as, a slave. After a free woman has been used as a slave she is usually branded. After that, what else is she good for? She may then be coffled, without reservation. An interesting application, similar to the above, occurs when free women, in the hope of escaping looters, chains, and flames, hurry by postern gates and obscure exits from a fallen city into the surrounding countryside. Those who are not promptly taken into custody, running into the arms of enemy soldiers, fallen into fragilely roofed siege ditches, rather like capture pits, finding themselves unable to scale walls of circumvallation, caught in slave wire, taken in slave snares or slave traps, and such, may be sought by trained sleen. Each woman is likely to mean silver in the coffers of the conquerors. The sleen are trained then to round up, herd, and drive these women to the enclosures, say, corrals or pens, waiting for them. Some sleen are even trained to hold down and tear the garmenture from such women before starting them on their journey toward their readied facilities of incarceration. Recalcitrant quarry are eaten. In any event, there are numerous uses for domestic sleen, far more than it would be practical or convenient to enumerate. Some other uses, which might be mentioned in passing, for mere purposes of illustration, would be that of the bodyguard, and that of an animal used for sport, as in racing, or fighting. Ramar, for example, had been bred primarily as an arena animal, and, in his matches, had been a favorite amongst Kur gamblers.