Beasts Of Gor

20
The Feasting House; We Return To The Feasting House

"Aja! Aja!" sang the woman.

I bit into the steak. Beside me, cross-legged, sat Imnak, grease from the raw blubber he chewed at the side of his mouth He wiped his face with his sleeve.

The feasting house was full. There were some forty individuals, men and women, crowded into the structure.

Imnak and I, and the girls, had come north in the summer, early. For weeks we had waited at the empty permanent camp. Finally, in the early fall, several families had arrived to occupy their seasonally abandoned dwellings. As it had turned out we could have taken our way north with the People, the various groups scattering to their diverse permanent camps. No time had been saved by my haste. We had hunted and fished, and sported with our slaves, and had waited.

"I did not think Karjuk would come to an empty camp," said Imnak, "but I did not know. So I came north wAll you."

"The camp is not now empty," I had told Imnak.

Imnak had shrugged. "That is true," he said.

"Where is Karjuk?" I asked.

"Perhaps he will come," had said Imnak.

"But what if he does not?" I asked.

"Then," said Imnak, "he does not."

As the weeks had passed I had grown more fretful and anxious.

"Let us hunt for Karjuk," I had urged Imnak.

"If the ice beasts cannot find Karjuk," said Ininak, "how can we find him?"

"What can we do?" I asked.

"We can wait," he said.

We had waited.

The drum of the red hunters is large and heavy. It has a handle and is diskilke. It requires strength to manage it. It is held in one hand and beaten with a stick held in the other. Its frame is generally of wood and its cover, of hide, usually tabuk hide, is fixed on the frame by sinew. Interestingly the drum is not struck on the head, or hide cover, but on the frame. It has an odd resonance. That drum in the hand of the hunter standing now in the midst of the group was some two and one half feet in diameter. He was now striking on it and singing. I could not make out the song, but it had to do with the mild winds which blow in the summer. These songs, incidentally, are rather like tools or carvings. They tend to be regarded as the singer's property. It is unusual for one man or woman to sing another's songs. One is expected to make up one's own songs. It is expected that every man will be able to make up songs and sing them, just as every man is supposed to be able to carve and hunt. These songs are usually very simple, but some of them are quite beautiful, and some are quite touching. Both men and women sing, of course. Men, interestingly, usually do the carving. The ulo, or woman's knife, with its semicircular blade, customarily fixed in a wooden handle, is not well suited to carving. It is better at cutting meat and slicing sinew. Also, carving ivory and bone requires strength. But women sing as well as men. Sometimes they sing of feasting clothes, and lovers, and their skill in quartering tabuk.

Another man now took the drum and began to sing. He sang a kayak-making song, customarily sung to the leather, wood and sinew, with which he worked, that it not betray him in the polar sea. A fellow after him sang a sleen song, usually sung on the water, encouraging the sleen to swim to where he might strike them. The next song dealt with a rascal who, supposedly hunting for tabuk, lay down and rubbed his boots on a rock, later returning to his companions with a report of luckless hunting, indicating his worn boots as evidence of his lengthy trekking. From the looks cast about the room I gathered the rascal might even be present. One fellow, at least, seemed quite embarrassed. He soon leaped up, however, and sang a song about the first fellow, something about a fellow who could not make good arrows. Two women sang after this, the first one about gathering birds' eggs when she was a little girl, and the other one about her joy in seeing the face of a relative whom she had not seen in more than two years.

It is rather commendable, I think, that the red hunters make up songs. They are not as critical as many other people. To them it is often more important that one whom they love sings than it is that his song is a good song. If it is a «true» song, and comes from the heart, they are pleased to hear it. Perhaps then it is a "good song" after all. Songs, even simple ones, are regarded by the red hunters as being precious and rather mysterious They are pleased that there are songs. As it is said, "No one know. from where songs come."

"Sing. Imnak!" called Akko.

"Sing, Imnak" called Kadluk.

Imnak shook his head vigorously. "No, no," he said.

"Imnak never sings," said Poalu, helpfully volunteering this information, forgetful apparently of the bondage strings knotted on her throat.

"Come, Imnak," said Akko, his friend. "Sing us a song."

"I cannot sing." said Imnak.

"Come, come, sing!" called others.

To my surprise Imnak rose to his feet and, hastily, left the feasting house.

I followed him outside. So, too, concerned, did Poalu.

"I cannot sing," said Imnak. He stood by the shore. "Songs do not come to my mouth. I am without songs. I am like the ice in the glacier on which flowers will not bloom. No song will ever fly to me. No song ever has been born in my heart."

"You can sing, Imnak," said Poalu.

"No," said Imnak, "I cannot sing."

"Someday," said Poalu, "you will sing in the feasting house."

"No," said Imnak, "I will not sing. I cannot sing."

"Imnak," she protested.

"Go back to the feasting house," he said.

She turned about, and returned to the feasting house. The feasting house, except for being larger, was much like the other dwellings in the permanent camp. It was half underground and double walled These two walls were of stone. Between them there were layers of peat, for insulation, which had been cut from the boglike tundra Hides too, were tied on the inside, from tabuk tents, affording additional protection from the cold. There was a smoke hole in the top of the house. One bent over to enter the low doorway The ceiling, supported by numerous poles. consisted of layers of grass and mud. There was the feasting house, and some ten or eleven dwellings in the camp. Although there were some fifteen hundred red hunters they generally lived in widely scattered small groups. In the summer there was a gathering for the great tabuk hunt, when the herd of Tancred crossed Ax Glacier and came to the tundra, but, even in the summer, later, the smaller groups, still pursuing tabuk, would scatter in their hunts, following the casual dispersal of the tabuk in their extended grazings. At the end of the summer these groups, loosely linked save in the spring or early summer, would make their ways back to their own camps. There were some forty of these camps, sometimes separated by journeys of several days. Imnak's camp was one of the more centrally located of the camps. In these camps the red hunters lived most of the year. They would leave them sometimes in the winter, when they needed more food, families individually going out on the pack ice to hunt sleen. Sleen were infrequent in the winter and there would not, often, be enough to sustain ten or twelve families in a given location. When game is scarce compensation can be sometimes achieved by reducing the size of the hunting group and extending the range of the hunt. In the winter, in particular, it is important for a family to have a good hunter.

Imnak looked out, over the water.

"Once, I thought I would make up a song," he said. "I wanted to sing. I wanted very much to sing. I thought I would make up a song. I wanted to sing about the world, and how beautiful it is. I wanted to sing about the great sea, the mountains, the lovely stars, the broad sky."

"Why did you not make up a song?" I asked.

"A voice," said Imnak, "seemed to say to me, 'How dare you make up a song? How dare you sing? I am the world. I am the great sea. I am the mountains, the lovely stars, the great sky! Do you think you can put us in your little song? Then I was afraid, and fell down."

I looked at him.

"Since that day I have never tried to sing," said Imnak.

"It is not wrong to sing," I said.

"Who am I to make up a song?" asked Imnak. "I am only a little man. I am unimportant. I am no one. I am nothing."

I did not attempt to respond to him.

"All my songs would fail," he said.

"Perhaps not," I said. "At any rate, it is better to try to make a song and fail, than not to try to make a song. It is better to make a song and fail, than not to sing."

"I am too small," said Imnak. "I cannot sing. No song will sit on my shoulder. No little song comes to me and asks me to sing it."

"No song," I said, "can catch the sky. No song can encompass the mountains. Songs do hot catch the world. They are beside the world, like lovers, telling it how beautiful it is."

"I am unworthy," said Imnak. "I am nothing."

"Perhaps one day," I said, "you will hear a voice say inside you, 'I am the world. I am the great sea, I am the mountains. the lovely stars, the great sky. And I am Imnak, too! Tell me your song, Imnak, for I cannot sing without you. It is only through you, tiny insignificant Imnak, and others like you, that I can see myself and know how beautiful I am. It is only through you, my tiny, frail precious Imnak, and others like you, that I can lift my voice in song. "

Imnak turned away from me. "I cannot sing," he said.

We heard laughter from the feasting house. I could see the stars now above the polar sea. It was thus already the polar dusk.

The remains of the great Hunjer whale lay beached on the shore, much of it already cut away, many bones, too, taken from it.

"The meat racks are full," I said, referring to the high racks here and there in the camp.

"Yes," said Imnak.

Two weeks ago, some ten to fifteen sleeps ago, by rare fortune, we had managed to harpoon a baleen whale, a bluish, white-spotted blunt fin. That two whales had been taken in one season was rare hunting, indeed. Sometimes two or three years pass without a whale being taken.

"It is good," said Imnak, looking at the meat racks. "It may be that this winter the families will not have to go out on the ice."

Ice hunting can be dangerous, of course. The terrain beneath you, in wind and tides, can shift and buckle, breaking apart.

The sun was low on the horizon. We heard more laughter from the feasting house.

The polar night is not absolutely dark, of course. The Gorean moons, and even the stars, provide some light, which light reflecting from the expanses of the snow and ice is more than adequate to make one's way about. Should cloud cover occur, of course, or there be a storm, this light is negated and one, remaining indoors, must content oneself with the sounds of wind in the darkness, and the occasional scratching of animals on the ice outside.

"I cannot remember the racks being so heavy with meat in my lifetime," said Imnak.

"It is little.wonder the people are so pleased in the feasting house," I said.

Besides the whales many sleen and fish had been taken. Too, the families, coming north, had dragged and carried what dried tabuk meat they could with them. Even the children carried meat. With them, too, they had brought eggs and berries, and many other things, spoils from the summer, though not all for the larder, such as horn and sinew, and bones and hides. They did not carry with them much grass for the boots or mosses for the wicks of lamps as these materials could be obtained readily somewhat inland of the permanent camps.

When the sun dipped beneath the horizon it would not be seen again for half a year. I would miss it.

"I think we have enough food for the winter," said Imnak. "When night falls we will have enough to eat."

I looked at the high meat racks, some with tiers, some twenty feet or more in height, to protect the meat from sleen, both those domesticated and the wild sleen that might prowl to the shores as the hunting, the leems hibernating, grew sparse inland. Wild snow sleen, particularly when hunger drives them to run in packs, can be quite dangerous.

"Even if we have enough food for the winter," I said, "if Karjuk does not come soon, I must hunt for him, even if it means going out on the ice in the darkness."

"Remain in the camp," said Imnak.

"You need, not come with me, my friend," I said.

"Do not be foolish, Tarl, who hunts with me," he said.

"You may stay with your friends." I said, "who now so please themselves in the feasting house."

"Do not think lightly of my people," he said, "that they are pleased to laugh and to look upon one another and tell stories and sing. Life is not always pleasant for them."

"Forgive me," I said.

"There is no one in the feasting house who is of my people, who is not a child," he said, "who has not lived through a season of bad hunting. The children do not yet know about bad hunting, we do not tell them."

I did know the red hunters were extremely permissive with their children, even among Goreans. They very seldom scolded them and would almost never strike a child. They protected them as they could. Soon enough the children would learn. Until that time let them be children.

"There is no one in the feasting house who is of my people, who is not a child," he said, "who has not seen people starve to death. Many times, too, it is not the fault of the people. There is sickness, or there is bad weather. Sometimes there is a storm and the snow hides the breathing holes of the sleen." He spoke very quietly. "Sometimes," he said, "there is an accident. Sometimes one's kayak is rent. Sometimes one falls. Sometimes the ice breaks." He looked at me. "No," he said, "do not think too lightly of my people. Let them laugh and be happy. Do not despise them that they are joyful that for once their meat racks are heavy."

"Forgive me, my friend," I said.

"It is done," he said.

"You are a great hunter," I said.

"I am a terrible hunter," he said. "But once I did slay six sleen in one day," he said. He grinned.

"Let us return to the feasting house," I said.

Together we returned to the feasting house.