Blood Brothers of Gor

Chapter 47 THE THIRD DAY OF WAR

"I think they will be coming in the neighborhood of noon," said Cuignaka.

It was now the third day in the siege of Council Rock.

Yesterday afternoon we had seen Kinyanpi. Yesterday night we had lit a great bush beacon which we had prepared. This beacon, whether used for the emisson of smoke in daylight hours, or its flame at night, could be seen for pasangs across the prairie.

"The Yellow Knives, left to their own resorces," said Hci, "would have withdrawn after the failure of the first day. It seems to me highly unlikely that the discipline of the soldiers and beasts can long be maintained over them."

"Doubtless they now have the backing of the Kinyanpi," I said. "Flighted scouts, at any rate, were observed yesterday."

"More than Kinyanpi will be required to bring them again to the barricade," said Hci.

"You expect, then," said Cuwignaka, "only one more major assault."

"And it will be the most determined of all," said Hci, grimly.

"And who will be its leaders?" asked Cuwignaka.

"The beasts, of course," I said.

"Yes," said Hci.

"It is nearly noon," said Cuwignaka, looking upward.

"I hear drums," I said.

"Medicine drums," said Hci.

"Soldiers are leaving the camp," I said.

"Yes," said Hci.

"They are riding south," I said.

"Interesting," said Hci.

"There is a Kinyanpi rider," said Cuwignaka, pointing upward.

"Doubtless a scout," said Hci.

"There is movement now, in the Yellow-Knife camp," I said.

"They are coming," said Hci.

"Who is their lead?" asked Cuwignaka.

"The beasts," I said.

"We do not know how long the day will last," said Hci. "Feed and water Bloketu."

She was roped to her post, just as she had been the first two days.

"Do you beg food and drink?" asked Cuwignaka.

"Yes, Master," she said.

He fed her and watered her.

"Thank you for my food and drink, Master," she said.

"I beg food and drink," said Iwoso, suddenly.

Shall I give her food and water?" asked Cuwignaka.

Iwoso looked at Hci. The decision would obviously be his. Yesterday she had not begged. Accordingly, as it is customarily the case when begging is required, she had received neither food nor drink.

"Yes," said Hci.

Iwoso was then fed and watered. Her mouth, her head extended, clung greedily, desperately to the spout of the water bag. Then it was pulled from between her teeth. She tried to lick at the water at the side of her mouth.

"Do you think me weak, Iwoso," asked Hci, "that I have so soon permitted you food and drink?"

She looked at him puzzled.

"Have you not asked yourself why I might do this, so soon?" he asked.

She looked at him, frightened.

"I am doing it to improve your appearance," he said, "much as one might water an animal before its sale, that you will look your best for the Yellow Knives."

"Again you use me for your purposes, tricking me!" she said.

"You may now thank me for your food and drink," he said.

"Thank you for my food and drink," she said, in fury.

"More humbly, more appropriately," said Hci.

"I thank you for my food and drink," she said. "I thank you for it — humbly," she said.

Hci looked at her.

"— My captor," she added.

Hci put his hand under her chin and held her head up. "Do you think her throat would look well in a collar?" he asked Cuwignaka.

"Yes," said Cuwignaka.

"I will never wear a collar!" said Iwoso, her head held up by Hci's hand.

"My collar?" asked Hci.

"Of course," said Cuwignaka.

"I will never wear your collar!" said Iwoso. "I would die first!"

"The beast in the lead," I said, "is called Sardak. That closest to him is Kog."

"They are fearsome things," said Cuwignaka.

"Surely," said Hci, joining us, "they are of the medicine world."

"Do not be afraid," I said to him.

"They expect all opposition to crumble before them, at their very appearance," said Cuwignaka, bitterly.

"They can bleed and die, like men," I told Hci.

"Things of the mdicine world," said Hci, "may sometimes seem to bleed and die, but they do not truly do so."

"They are not of the medicine world," I said.

"I am uneasy," said Hci.

"The Kaiila must hold against them," I said.

"Soldiers," called a man, running along the escarpment, "roped together, are beginning to climb the back face of the mountain!"

"It is to be a coordinated attack," said Cuwignaka.

"Then," I said, looking upward, "I think we may soon expect the Kinyanpi."

"It is the end for you!" cried Iwoso. "You are finished!"

"Look!" cried Hci, suddenly, pointing upward.

We heard the drums on the trail, beten by medicne men, dancing about the beasts. They Yellow Knives, in lines behind them, advanced.

"Look!" insisted Hci.

In the sky there was a tarn.

My heart leapt.

"We are doomed!" cried Hci.

Men about us screamed, and threw their arms before their faces.

We crouched down, dust and rocks flying past us, that we not be forced from the edge of the escarpment by the turbulent blasts of those mighty, beating wings. Then the monster had alit amongst us.

"It is Wakanglisapa!" cried Hci. "It is Wkanglisapa, the Medicine Tarn!"

I approached the beast slowly. Then I put out my hand and touched its beak. I then, as it loweed its head, took its head in my hands and wept. "Greetings, Ubar of the Skies," I said. "We are together again."

"There is a cloud in the east," said a man, "small, swiftly moving."

"It will be Kinyanpi," I said. "My friend has preceded them."

Men looked at one another.

"Bring a girth rope, and reins," I said. "And trow back the lodge covers and poles which conceal our tarns. We must greet our visitors."

Men hurried away.

Yesterday night the great beacon of brush had been lit on the summit of Council Rock. It had been lit the first in a line of ten such beacons. Each, in turn, as soon as the light of the preceding beacon had been visible, had been lit. Before morning, some singly, some in groups of two or three, under the cover of darkness, our tarns had been brought to Council Rock, there to be concealed within specially prepared lodges. There were eighteen of these beasts, that which had been a Kinyanpi mount which had come to us on the prairie, the two wild tarns we had captured by means of the tarn pits, and the fifteen tarns we had managed to secure in our subsequent raid. These tarns we had brought from Two Feathers to the Waniyanpi compound commanded by Seibar. There, concealed by day and trained by night, and housed withing striking distance of Council Rock, they had waited for our signal.

I put the girl rope on the great black tarn. I fixed the reins upon it.

I heard the approach of the drums on the trail ascending to the summit.

"The soldiers on the back face near the top," said a man.

"Repel them as you can," I said.

Lodges were thrown back, and te poles and skins. Tarns were revealed.

I leaped to the back of Ubar of the Skies. My weapons were handed to me.

Canka, Hci and Cuwignaka hurried to mouth their tarns.

Eagerly, awaiting no command or signal, his neck outstreched, Ubar of the Skies looked to the air.

"Ko-ro-ba!" I cried, the name of the city to which I had first been brought on Gor, Ko-ro-ba, the Towers of the Morning.

The tarn screamed.

Blasts of air tore though my hair. The feathers on my tem-wood lance lashed backwards, like flags snapping in the wind.

I heard other tarns, too, screaming behind me, and heard the beatings of wings.

Council Rock fell away beneath me.

Like a dark streak, vengeful and fearful, the great black tarn clove the skies.

Suddenly bodies and tarns seemed to be exploding about me as we entered, penetrating, the startled formations of the Kinyanpi. No resistance in the air had they expected, nor none this soon. I saw eyes, wild, about me.

My lance took a rider from his mount, tearinghim back out of the girth rope, and then he was spinning, wildly flailing, screaming and turning, growing smaller, journeying with terrilbe, accelerative force, seemingly eccentrically, to the turf below, it seeming to rock and shift with my movements, like liquid in a bowl.

Ubar of the skies reared back, talons raking, screaming. I saw tangles of intestines torn from the body of a tarn. I turned the stroke of a lance with my small shield.I heard a man scream, his arm gone. The disemboweled tarn fell away from us, fluttering, spining downward. With a shake of its mighty head my tarn flung the shield from its beak, a hundred feet away, the arm still inserted in the shield straps. Then the tarn was climbing, climbing. Tarns swirled about us, below us. Some struck one another. I gave the tarn his rein. Four tarns began to follow us. Still did my tarn climb. Through clouds, such bright, lofty fogs, did we ascend. Below us, like birds springing wonderously from the snow, tarns and their riders emerged from the clouds, following us.

"Will you seek the sun?" I laughed.

Could it be that, after all these years, the tactics of combat on tarnback remained so fresh, so vivid, in the eager, dark brain of my mighty mount? Could they be retained so perfectly, with such exactness, seemingly as terrible and sharp as in the days when they were first imprinted, high above grassy fields, the walls of Ko-ro-ba in the distance?

I fought for breath.

The mighty lungs of the tarn expanded. I could feel their motion betwen my knees. It drew the thin air deeply into those moist, widened cavities. Still we climbed.

Then we turned, the sun at our back.

The other tarns, strung out now, struggling, wings beating painfully, sporadically, against the thin air, hung below us. They were exhausted. Tehy could climb no further. They began to turn back.

Out of the sun struck the great tarn. As I had been trained to do I drew as deep a breath as possible before the dive began. It is not impossible to breathe during such a descent, particularly after the first moments, even in the rushing wind, but it is generally recommended that one do not do so. It is thought that breathing my effect the concentration, perhaps altering or complicating the relationship with the target. The bird and the rider, in effect, are the projectile. The tarn itself, it might be noted, does not draw another breath until the impact or the vicinity of the impact, if the strike fails to find its mark. Teh descent velocities in strike of this sort are incredible, and have never been precisely calculated. They are estimated, however, at something in the neighborhood of four hundred pasangs per Ahn.*

There were snappings, as of wood breaking, but it was not wood. The first tarn, that highest, was struck full in the back, the man broken between the two bodies. Its back was broken and perhaps the neck of the man in the same blow. As a hurricane can imbed a strw in a post so, too, are compounded the forces involved by the speed of the stroke.

Again the tarn aligned itself, smote downward, then lifted its wings, almost folded on either side of me, its talons, like great hooks, lowered.

It caught the second tarn about the neck, as it swerved madly, by the grasping talons of its left foot, and I was thrown about, upside down, the ground seeming to be over my head, and the two birds spun in the air and then my tarn disengaged itself, the neck of the other bird flopping to the side, blood caught in the wind, like red rain.

*No terrestrial conversion is supplied in the Cabot ms. for this figure. Equivalences supplied elsewhere in the Cabot mss. suggest a figure of a little over two hundred miles per hour. -J.N.

Its rider's scream alerted the third rider, but, in a moment, the talons had locked upon him, his bird exhausted, struggling in the air, and he was torn upward from the girth rope. He was released, falling through the clouds below us, disappearing. He would fall, I conjectured, through the Kinyanpi formation below, that formation being by now, I supposed, arrested by the other tarnsmen, those from Council Rock. Beneath those placid, fleecy clouds I had litte doubt there was bloody war in the air.

The forth rider made good his escape, descending through the clouds, disappearing.

I swung the tarn about, for a moment, over the clouds, and then entered them, several hundred feet from where the fow had disappeared.

An escape trajectory, if one is dealing with a wily foe, can pove to be a tunnel of ambush.

I took the tarn below the clouds and there again made visual contact with the foe. He was racing down to join his fellows.

This pleased me. I hoped that he would spread alarms among them.

I was less pleased by what else I saw and yet I knew I could have expected little that was different.

Our bold tarnsmen from Council Rock fought amidst circling Kinyanpi.

They were outnumbered easily by ten to one. The outcome of such an arrangement was surely a foregone conclusion unless some new ingredient might intervene, something unexpected or different, which might drastically alter the balances of battle.

That our men had lasted this long was a function of several factors, factors on which I had desperately relied. As nearly as I could determine, few tribes in the Barrens had mastered the tarn. That there were Kinyanpi had almost been taken as a matter of myth by the Kaiila until their dramatic appearance at the summer camp. This suggested that such groups were rare. Teh Kinyanpi, I conjectured, occupied a position rather analogous to that of Earth tribes who might have been among the first, in the sixteen and seventeen hundreds, to master the horse. Due to lack of competition their battle skills, originally developed in connection with the kaiila, would presumably have declined. Similarly, due also to a lack of competition, and the merciless selections of war, they had not yet become to the tarn as the normal warrior in the Barrens is to his kaiila, namely, a member of a matched fighting unit. On the other hand, the shield and lance skills of the Kaiila were fresh, and our men were tried warriors. Secondly, I had had the men and their tarns train as fighting units, not only the man and his mount, but the men and their mounts, in pairs and prides, as well. Signals were conveyed not by tarn drums, however, but, in one of the manners of the Barrens, by Herlit-bone whistles.

In one of my calculations I had been disappointed. I had hoped that the mere appearance of the great black tarn would inspire terror in the Kinyanpi and that they would withdraw.

Five riders had done so, when it had appeared suddenly, unexpectedly, behind me, in the vicinity of a Yellow-Knife camp in which they had been sojourning, where we had captured the fifteen tarns.

The riders below, however, perhaps because of their numbers, or perhaps their leadership, or their confidence in their medicine, had not done so.

Discomfitted they might have been. Frightened they might have been. But they had not withdrawn.

"Down, Ubar of the Skies!" I cried.

Perhaps they had feared less than might have Yellow Knives, Fleer or Kaiila, because they were more familiar with tarns than such tribes. Perhaps they feared less because it was daylight. Perhaps they had feared less beause the tarn bore reins, a girth rope, a rider, and had approached them from Council Rock.

Their apprehensions must be restored.

I had formed a plan.

Down we pummeted into the midst of the Kinyanpi. Screaming, men scattered on thier tarns. We struck none. I had slung my weapons about me. My shield was at my hip.

The tarn hung, hovering, in the air, as the Kinyanpi regrouped.

I pointed to three of them, one after the other, and then, my arms folded, spoke a command to Ubar of the Skies. "One-strap." The bird began to ascend.

I had seen the surprise of the Kinyanpi when I had released the reins. Their eyes had widened when they had seen my arms were folded. Let it dawn on them that the tarn had obeyed my mere word. I did not look back, for fear of spoiling the effect. I hoped, of couse, that the three men would be following me.

As soon as I had entered the clouds I whipped out my small bow and put an arrow to the string, and held two in the bow hand, and, reseizing the reins, brought the tarn about, and yet it seemed it needed not guidance. Dark and silent in the fog it veered about. One by one the Kinyanpi, consecutively, as I had hoped, entered the cloud. This was the tunnel of ambush, as it is called. A trained tarnsman is taght to avoid it. Three tarns, riderless, returned to the formation below.

I replaced the bow. Again, allowing a suitable interval, I plummeted the tarn downward, again into the midst of the Kinyanpi.

Interestingly, as nearly as I could determine, no fighting had taken place in my absence.

My tarn braked in the air, spreading and beating its wings. Again my arms were folded. I pointed dramatically at a fellow. He shook his head wildly and pulled his tarn away. I pointed at another fellow. He, too, declined my invitation. One of the Kinyanpi struck his painted chest, crying out. I pointed to him. Then I pointed to two others. They looked at one another, uneasily. Then, regally. I looked away. "One-strap," I said to Ubar of the Skies.

We ascended again to the clouds.

I listened carefully, every sense alert. The fellow who had struck himself on the chest was eager. I barely had time to enter the cloud, with apparent leisure, than I had turned and he was upon me. I had no time to draw the bow. The lance thrust at me and I clutched at it, and then caught it. Tarn to tarn we grappled for the lance. I let him think he was wrenching it away from me. This freed my right hand for the knife. He took it, to the hilt, in his left side, under the ribs. I cut the girth rope on his tarn and drew him across to the back of my own tarn. I killed him there. I then took the tarn to a place in the clouds which I judged to be above the Kinyanpi formation. There I released the body. It would fall through the formation.

"Hunt," I said to Ubar of the Skies. We moved quietly, a stroke at a time, through the sunlit vapor of the cloud.

Then, too, within the cloud, I saw the other riders below me. They had kept together. They were wiser than he others. Then I could not see them in the cloud.

"Hunt," I whispered to Ubar of the Skies.

Ubar of the Skies, given his rein, began to circle, every sense in the great body tense and alert. I fitted an arrow to the string of my bow.

Sometimes it seemed almost as though we were motionless, floating, or arrested in time and space, and that it was the moist, nebulous substance of the cloud that flowed past us, almost as though we were immersed in a river of fog.

Then I saw shapes before us. Ubar of the Skies was approaching from behnd and on the right. Most men are righthanded. It is more difficult, thustly, for them to turn and fire over their right shoulder. Ubar of the Skies was a trained tarn of war.

The arrow, fired from not more than fifteen feet away, entered the body of the rider on the right below the left shoulder blade and almost at the same instant Ubar of the Skies, screaming, with those hooklike, terrible talons tore the body of the rider on the left from the girth rope. I seized the reins of the tarn whose rider I had struck with the arrow. I lowered my head, avoiding the wing. Then the wing, for a moment, was arrested, caught against the Ubar of the Skies, I jerked free, from the front, where it protruded, the arrow, drawing it through the body. I did not want visible evidence of how the rider had met his end. The tarn freed its wing and I was almost struck from the back of Ubar of the Skies. The other rider was screaming, locked in talons below me. I returned the bloody arrow to the quiver. As I could I drew the tarn whos reins I held beside us, leaning forward on the back of Ubar of the Skies. Such reins are not made for leading and the stroke of the wings, so close to my bird, was irregualr, uneven and fantic. Then I cut the girth rope on the tarn, when we were over the Kinyanpi below, and let the body slide from its back. With little regret I released the tarn. It sped away.

The body would seem to have fallen from the sky, from the clouds, myseriously, inexplicably, like a meteor amonst them, penetrating their formation, thence descending to its encounter with the grasslands below.

I hovered high in the clouds, over where the Kinyanpi circled below.

I waited a suitable interval.

The man was screaming beneath me.

I recalled a child, slain and mutilated in a summer camp. "Teach me to kill," had said Cuwignaka.

"Release," I said to Ubar of the Skies.

The man, gesticulating, flailing, screaming, the sound rapidly fading, sank away from me, drawn by gravity, through the air.

I waited another suitable interval and then I, again, took Ubar of the Skies downward. Again I hovered among terrified Kinyanpi, my amrs folded. Let them consider what medicine such a fow might possess.

I then, regally, imeriously, pointed to the chieftain of the Kinyanpi, he most pominent among them, he next to the bearer of the feathered staff, the battle staff.

He shook his head, wildly. I then, with a sweeping gesture, pointed to the east, that direction from which they had come. Wildly he turned his tarn and, crying out, followed by his men, fled.

"Quickly!" I cried to Cuwignaka, Canka, Hci and the others. "Back to Council Rock!"

Soldiers ad established a hold on the eastern ledges of Council Rock, to which they had been climbing, those ledges opposite those above the trail, up which, slowly, medicine drums beating, medicine men dancing about the beasts, the porcession of Yellow Knives, a few minutes ago, had begun its climb. Behind the soldiers who attained the ledge other soldiers, roped together, clambered upward. The eastern face of Council Rock seemed covered with men and ropes.

Then tarns, screaming, talons racking, wings beating, hurtled among the startled soldiers on the ledge, seizing and tearing at them, blasts of wind even from the wings forcing some back over the edge. The defenders leaped foward. We landed our tarns among a litter of bodies, red and white, on the ledge.

I looked down, at the ropes men, not yet to the top. "Let those with tarns, who lost women and children at the summer camp, attend to these," I said.

In a moment tarns had swept again from the ledge and then, seizing ropes and men in talons, at the very rock face itself, dragged and dangling, screaming men from teh sheer surface; ropes and men, tangled, were pulled away from the surface; ropes and men, torn loose from the hand and footholds, unsupported, sped twisting and turning to the rocks below.

I raced across the top of Council Rock, men behind me. The Yellow Knives, on the western side of Council Rock, prevented by the mountain from knowing what had occured in the air to the east, and on the eastern faces of the rock, singing their medicine, their hearing throbbing with the beat of drums, had not disisted in their porcession to the summit; they had continued to ascent the trail.

"You are done!" cried Iwoso. "You are finished!" Roped to the post she was, she, too, was ignorant of the developments to the east.

Yellow Knives were not twenty-five feet below me, on the trail. In their lead surrounded by medicine men, beating on drums and dancing, were Sardak and Kog, and five others of the Kurii. I also saw, prominent among the Yellow Knives, Alfred, with soldiers, and a Yellow Knife I recognized as the third of the war chiefs who had been at the summer camp. He had not taken part, as far as I knew, in the earlier actions. It was his intention, however, I gathered, to participate in the anticipated resolution of the siege, in his forces' climactic victory.

Before resistance had crumbled at the appearance of the Kurii.

Even now the barricade at the summit was deserted.

Some fifty to seventy feet from the barricade the procession stopped.

The drums stopped. The medicine men stopped dancing. They drew back.

Kog and Sardak came forward, followed by the others.

The barricade was no longer empty. Atop it, on the logs and stakes, the wind moving in its fur, stood a gigantic Kur.

Yellow Knives crowded back against one another, uneasily. They looked to Kog and Sardak, but these beasts, standing as though stunned, or electrified, on the stony trial, were oblivious of them.

The Kur on the barricade distended its nostrils, drinking scent.

Sarkad stepped forward. He reared upright, increasing his scanning range. He moved his tentaclelike fingers on his chest, which gesture, I think, is a displacement activity. Some claim it has the function of cleaning the claws.

The ears of the beast on the barricade, one half torn away, flattened themselves against the side of the head.

Sardak's ears, too, lay back.

I saw that the claws of the rear appendages, or feet, of the monster on the barricade, had emerged. So, too, I noted, had those of Sardak.

The beasts did not speak to one another. Words were not necessary.

Swiftly, moving with incredible grace and lightness for its bulk, the beast on the barricade descended to the trail.

Sardak, the two rings of reddish alloy on his left wrist, advanced to meet it.

They stopped, some ten feet from one another, alone facing one another on the trail, between the barricade and the other beasts and Yellow Knives.

They then began, keeping very low, on all fours, to circle one another.

Occasionally one would reach out, or snarl, or make a sudden movement, but not charging, to see the response of the other. Fangs were bared.

The hair on the back of my neck rose. Was it like this, I wondered, in the ancient days of the Kurii, long before the steel worlds, long before, even, the development of their technology. Is it like this, I wondered, even today, in the steel ships, in the "killings."

Then the two beasts, as though they had satisfied themselves, squatted down, their hind legs under them, facing one another. To a superficial observer, they might ahve seemed somnolent. But I could sense the ripple of muscle, the tingle of nerve, beneath the fur in those mighty bodies. They were somnolent as a gun is somnolent, one with a finger tensed, poised, upon its trigger.

Suddenly, as one, both beasts leapt at one another, and seemed, grappling, biting and tearing, claws raking, almost as if they were a single, blurred animal cutting and tearing at its own body. There was a scraching of claws on the stony trail. They rolled and tore at one another and blood, from drenced fur, marked the stone, leaving the pattern of the fur.

They then backed away from one another again, and again began to circle.

It had been no more than a passage at arms.

Again they sprang towards one another and again, sometimes, thier movements were so rapid, turning and grappling, biting and tearing, that I could not even follow them. The energy and speed of such beats is awesome.

Then they had again separated.

The medicine men of the Yellow Knives looked at one another, frightened. There was blood on the rock. Such things, then, could bleed.

Zarendargar, Half-Ear, my friend, had then, I suspected, made his determinations. I do not think Sardak understood this, at the time.

I lifted an arrow to the string of my bow.

Once more the beasts charged and met with fierce impact. Then Zarendargar was behind Sardak. Sardak flung his head back, to close the space between the skull and the vertebrae, his eyes like wild moons, but it was too late. The massive jaws of Zarendargar, inch by inch, Sardak held in his arms, forced the head forward. Then with a sound of tearing muscle and skin, and crushed bone, Zarendargar's jaws closed. Men watched, horrified, as Zarendargar, holding it by the neck, it half bitten through, in his jaws, shook the body, fiercely. He then flung it from him and leaped up and down, scratching at his chest. He flung his head up to the sun and howled his victory. For a moment or two the body on the rock still bled, the movements of te heart marked in the gouts of fluid that surged over the fur. The head lay askew, to one side, held by vessels and skin. Zarendargar screamed and leaped onthe stone, and, scatching, climbed a bit up the rock face from teh trail, and then, fell back, and leaped again. The sun and sky were again saluted by the victory cry of the Kur. There was blood and fur at his mouth. I could see the double row of fangs, streaked with red, the long, dark dongue emergent like a serpent from the spittle and blood, the foam, of the kill. Kurii, I reminded myself, are not men.

Yellow Knives shrank back.

Zarendargar then lifted the body of Sardak in his hands and held it over his head. The arm of Sardak, with its two rings of reddish alloy, hung limp. The head hung a foot from the body. Then Zarendargar flung the body from the trial, down, down, onto the rocks below.

I loosedned the arrow from my bow into the heart of Kog. He stiffened, the feathers almost lost in the fur, and then fell.

Kaiila warriors had now appeared on the ledges beside me, and were visible now, armed, at the barricade.

The Yellow Knives began to back downward. The war chief cried out to them, presumably ordering them to remain in place. A medicine man turned and fled. Kurii looked about, at one another. None seemed eager to advance on Zarendargar.

Zarendargar stood before the barricade, his arms lifted, snarling, his face and body bloody.

"Hold!" cried Alfred to those about him. "Hold! Do not fall back! Attack! Attack!" he cried out in Gorean. There were few there, I supposed, except for the handful of soldiers with him, who understood him. No one moved decisively. "Attack! Attack!" cried Alfred. He took a step forward but none, clearly, intended to follwo him, "Attack!" he cried.

The Yellow Knives looked at one another. They were undecided. The Yellow Knives wavered. It seemed their medicine had failed them. They had lost their medicine.

At this moment Ubar of the Skines appeared behind me, outlined against the sky. He extended his mighty wings and smote them against the air. He uttered the challenge scream of the tarn.

The Yellow Knives then turned and fled.

Kaiila swarmed over an through the barricade, with clubs and lances, and shields and knives. There was confusion below.

Arrows were loosened from the height of the escarpment into the fleeing Yellow Knives. Fighting took place at a dozen places on the trail. Some of our men who were transmen brough thier tarns into the fray, ranking down at the Yellow Knives. Yellow Knives, crowding, fleeing, forced many of their own number from the trail.

"Look!" I said. In the distance, coming from the west, were columns of dust.

"They are coming!" cried Cuwignaka, elatedly.

"Yes," I said.

These would be the Dust Legs, the Sleen and Fleer, tribes to whom we had sent riders.

We had been the bait, on Council Rock, to lure the Yellow Knives and soldiers into a trap, a trap which these other tribes, acting in coalition, were to spring shut. Clearly their best intrests were involved in doing so. The Yellow Knives, in cooperating with white soldiers, had betrayed the Memory. In such a way, according to the Memory, an earlier tragedy,

now almost lost in legends, had begun. The Barrens must be protected. Too, sacrilege had been performed, in the attack on a summer camp. Was this not to be avenged? Even more seriously Kinyanpi had come to the more western countries. Such alliances, those of Yellow Knives with forces such as those of the white soldiers and the Kinyanpi, threatened the delicat tribal balances in the Barrens. Such events might produce dislocations, interfering with the migrations of the Pte, the Kailiauk, and forcing tribes from ancestral hunting grounds. Our agents' aruments had been, it seemed, persuasive. Too late had the newcomers arrived to aid in the fray. Not to late, however, were they to close off a hundred avenues of retreat, to interfere with a thousand escapes, to wreak havoc among a withdrawing, demoralized, terrorized enemy.

I saw Alfred struck down from behind with the heavy, balled knob of a carved wooden canhpi.

Iwoso was white with terror, roped to her post, seeing the retreat of Yellow Knives.

Treading his way among the fighting groups on the trail, slowly making his way upward, was he who had been the third of the three war chiefs at the summer camp.

I pointed him out to Hci.

"I have seen him," said Hci.

The man was carrying a bow and arrows. He moved with purpose. An arrow was fitted to the string.

His face, under the fearsome pain, was controted with rage. He stopped below us, on the trail. Iwoso, helplessly roped to her post, moaned. She cried out something to him, pleadingly. She was in clear view, only a few feet above him. She was well displayed. Her ankles were roped back against the post; at the waist, too, she was fastened to it, the rawhide ropes deep in her belly, and deep, too, in the notch behind the post; he rneck, too, was tied to the post; and her hands, as well, in tight, rawhide loops, rather at her sides and slightly behind her. She cried out again to him, pleadingly. She could do little more than squirm in her bonds, and scarcely that. I had seen to it. The arrow, from below, was aligned on her heart. It leapt from the string, speeding woard the naked, roped beauty. Hci interposed his shield, and the arrow, deflected, caromed off a hundred feet in the air. The Yellow Knife below, with a cry of rage, turned then, and fled down the trail.

"I have business," said Hci. Lightly, moving swiftly, discarding his shield, armed now only with his knife, he made his way from our position, to the trail summit, and to the barricade. I then saw him, in a moment, making his way down the trail.

Iwoso gasped, and tried to turn her head away, her neck in the ropes.

"Look," said Hci.

Iwoso looked, helplessly, commanded.

The scalp, freshly cut, bloody, dripping, hung before her face, held in Hci's fist.

"It is the scalp of he who would have slain you," said Hci, "he with whom you conspired."

"Look," said Hci.

She opened her eyes, looking again upon the bloody trophy.

"Do you understand?" asked Hci.

"Yes, my captor," she said, in a small voice.

Hci then put the scalp in his belt. Blood from it ran down his leg, down his naked thigh, as he wore the breechclout.

It was the scalp of he who had been the third of the war chiefs in the summer camp.

Iwoso then closed her eyes, in misery, turning her head away, her head held in place by the ropes under her chin.

I removed the girth rope from Ubar of the Skies. I took the reins from the sable monster.

"You are free, Sweet Friend," I said. I caressed that savage beak. It put it down, against my side. Ubar of the Skies was not a woman, something to be owned and dominated, something, even with the whip, if necessary, to be forced to love and serve, somthing which could not be fulfilled until it found itself helplessly, with no recourse whatsoever, willlessly, at the feet of a master.

"The trail is clear," I said to Hci.

"Yes," he said.

The five Kurii, I saw, those who had been with Sadak and Kog, lay slaughtered on the trail. They had been riddled with arrows and hacked to pieces. Some, I think, may have been slain my Yellow Knives who, in wrath, sensing perhaps a betrayal or fraud in them, had fallen upon them.

It would be a long time, I thought, before Kaiila or Yellow Knives would be likely to again take such beasts for supernatural creatures, visitants from the medicine world.

"Do you see those dusts?" Hci asked Iwoso, pointing to various points in the west.

"Yes," she said.

"Those will be Sleen and Dust Legs, even Fleer," he said, "intercepting your people, doing massacure among them."

I could see riders, even, in the Yellow-Knife camp, below. Lodges were burning.

"There will be much loot, many kaiila," said Cuwignaka. "Doubtless they will find their journey worth thier while."

"And they need not even have attacked a summer camp," said Hci, bitterly.

Iwoso sobbed.

"Need they?" asked Hci.

"No, my captor," said Iwoso.

"The Yellow Knives are defeated," said Hci to her. "They are scattered. They flee for their lives."

"Yes, my captor." she said.

"There is now no hope of rescue for you, my roped, Yellow-Knife slut," said Hci.

"No, my captor," she said.

"You are now totally alone," he said.

"Yes, my captor," she said.

"You now belong to the Kaiila," he said.

"Yes, my captor," she said.