Marauders of Gor

Chapter 17 Torvaldslanders visit the camp of Kurii

It was very quiet.

The men did not speak.

Below us, in the valley, spread out for more than ten pasangs we saw the encampment of Kurii.

At the feet of Ivar Forkbeard, head to the ground, nude, waiting to be commanded, knelt Hilda the Haughty, daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar.

“Go,” said Ivar to her.

She lifted her head to him. “May I not have one last kiss, my Jarl?” she whispered.

“Go,” said he. “If you live, you will be more than kissed.”

“Yes, my Jarl,” she said, and, obediently, slipped away into the darkness.

The ax I carried was bloodied. It had tasted the blood of a Kur guard.

We stood downwind of the encampment.

Not far from me was Svein Blue Tooth. He stood, not moving. It was cold. I could see the outline of his helmet, the rim of the shield, the spear, dark against darkness.

Near us, behind us, stood Gorm, Ottar and Rollo, and others of Forkbeard’s Landfall. It was some Ehn before the Gorean dawn. On a distant world, lit by the same star, at a comparable time, men turned in their beds, mercury vapor lamps burned, lonely, heavy lorries rumbled down streets, keeping their delivery schedules, parts of yesterday’s newspapers fluttered down lonely sidewalks. With us stood Bjarni of Thorstein Camp, and with him he who had in the formal duel carried his shield. At Bjarni’s shoulder, too, stood the young man, scarcely more than a boy, whom he had in that duel intended to fight. With the boy, too, was his friend, who would have carried the shield for him. The war arrow had been carried. It had been carried to the Inlet of Green Cliffs, to Thorstein Camp, from Ax Glacier to Einar’s Skerry; it had been carried to the high farms, to the lakes, to the coast; it had been carried on foot and by swift ship; a thousand arrows, each touched to the arrow of Torvald, had been carried, and where the arrow had been carried, men had touched it, saying “I will come.” They came. Captains and rovers, farmers, fishermen, hunters, weavers of nets, smiths, carvers of wood, tradesmen and traders, men with little more than leather and an ax to their name, and jarls in purple cloaks, with golden pommels on their swords. And among them stood, too, thralls. Their heads were not lower than those with whom they stood. Among them was the lad called Tarsk, formerly Wulfstan of Kassau, to whom Thyri had once been given for the night. In the night of the attack he, at the Forkbeard’s encampment near the thing field, with an ax, had slain a Kur. I remembered finding the carcass of the animal beneath the fallen, half-burned canvas of the Forkbeard’s tent. Thralls are not permitted to touch the war arrow, but they are permitted to kneel to those who have. Wulfstan had handed the Forkbeard the ax, disarming himself, and had then knelt before him, putting his head to his feet. Thralls may be slain for so much as touching a weapon. He had taken dirt from beneath the feet of the Forkbeard and, kneeling, had poured it on his head. “Rise, Thrall,” had said the Forkbeard. The young man had then stood, and straightly, head high, before the Forkbeard. The Forkbeard threw him back the ax. “Carry it,” said the Forkbeard. On another world, lit by the same star, in another place, dawn, too, drew near. The distant light in the great cities, unknowing, soon to be occupied with the concerns of their days, piercing the haze of daily, customary poisons, first struck the heights of the lofty buildings, reflecting from the rectangular windows, like sheets of burnished copper reflecting the fire of the sun. Men would soon be up and about their duties, hurrying from one nothing to another, to compromises, to banal degradations, anxious lest they fail to be on time. They would not care for the blackened grass growing between the bricks; they would take no note of the spider’s architecture, nor marvel at the flight of a wren darting to its nest among the smoke-blackened, carved stones. There would be no time. There would be no time for them, no time for seeing, or feeling, or touching, or loving or finding out what it might be to be alive. Clouds would be strangers to them; rain an inconvenience; snow a nuisance; a tree an anachronism; a flower an oddity, cut and frozen in a florist’s refrigerator. These were the men without meaning, so full and so empty, so crowded, so desolate, so busy, so needlessly occupied. These were the gray men, the hurrying men, the efficient, smug, tragic insects, noiseless on soft feet, in the billion iron hills of technology. How few of them gazed ever on the stars. Is grandeur so fearful that men must shield themselves with pettiness from its glory; do they not understand that in themselves, and in perhaps a thousand other intelligences, reality has opene,el its eyes upon its own immensity; do they shut their eyes lest they see gods? We could see now a glimmer of light on the peak of the Torvaldsberg.

I wondered how many men would die. I wondered if I myself, this morning, in Torvaldsland, in bleak light, would die. I gripped the ax. It had good weight. The balance was apt.

Across the valley, there were others, men, waiting, too. The signal would be a shield signal, taking the morning sun, a flash, and then the attack. Hundreds of war cries would be mingled as men poured down the slopes. There were men here, too, even from Hunjer, Sjkern, Helmutsport and Scagnar itself, on whose cliffs Thorgard’s fortress ruled.

Never before, to my knowledge, had men attacked Kurii.

I gazed at the giant, Rollo. His eyes seemed vacant. He stood as a child, with his great ax. About his neck was a golden medallion. His chest was bare, beneath a leather vest.

Svein Blue Tooth fingered the tooth of the Hunjer whale, dyed blue, on its chain about his neck. He was a goodjarl. He had been the third, after Ivar Forkbeard and Tarl Cabot a warrior of Ko-ro-ba, to lift the arrow of Torvald. Not far away from him was even Ketil, of his high farm, the wrestlerwhose arm I had broken. It was splinted with a third of a spear shaft. In his left hand he carried a sword. Among the men, too, was a large fellow, as large as, or larger than, Rollo, whom I did not know. He was fiercely bearded, and carried a spear. He had told us he was Hrolf, and from the East. None had questioned him.

Below us, in the valley, we could see the coals of thousands of fires in the camp of the Kurii. They slept, curled, several in each shelter. The field shelters of the Kurii are made of skins and furs, arched over bent saplings. Each is little more than four or five feet high, with a comparable width, but is fifty or sixty feet in length, some being as long as a hundred feet in length. These shelters, too, are often curved and irregular in outline; sometimes they adjoin one another, with entrances giving mutual access. They resemble caves, sometimes networks of caves, constructed in the open. Kurii drop to all fours to enter and leave them. No Kur enjoys sleeping exposed. If in a field they will sometimes even burrow into the ground, almost like a sleen, and cover the opening with grass and sticks from the bottom. It always sleeps with its head toward the opening.

The Kurii herds were quiet. There was little stirring in them. I could see the white herd of verr, hundreds of the animals, penned in the northwest quadrant of the camp; in the northeast quadrant were the tarsk pens. I could smell them in the early morning air. I could smell, too, the odors of Kurii, and the tramped dung of bosk. The bosk were at the south of the camp. They would, effectively, prevent the Kurii from slipping free on the south. The herd numbered some several thousand. The northern pole of the camp would be left free, as a seeming avenue of escape, to lure embattled Kurii, should the tide of the war turn against them, into flight northward. It would be, in the language of Gorean strategists, the bridge of jewels, beckoning, alluring, promising safety, prophetic of escape.

Near the center of the camp, but somewhat to the south and east of the center, like the verr, the tarsk, the bosk, was another herd of Kurii animals; it, too, resided in its pen, a wide pen, more than a quarter of a pasang in diameter, formed of poles and crossbars, lashed together; this pen, however, waspatrolled by prowling, domesticated sleen; the animals huddled together, within the pen, hundreds of them, terrified of the sleen; these were herd sleen, trained to group and control animals.

To the north and west of the camp’s center I could see the tents of Thorgard of Scagnar and his men.

I smiled.

The Kurii had been in no hurry to initiate their march to the south. They had failed, several days ago, in the Thing Assembly, to intimidate the men of Torvaldsland into furnishing them provisions fortheirmarch. After their devastating victory of the night ofSvein Blue Tooth’s feast, in which his hall was burned, and the thing encampments laid waste, they had formed their own camp, and set methodically about gathering supplies for their southern march. Hundreds of sorties had penetrated the hills and valleys, burning farms, and gathering goods, generally tools and weapons, and livestock. There were collection points to which such materials were brought, from which, by short marches, they were conveyed to the camp. During this time, a hundred pasangs to the south, Svein Blue Tooth had set the rallying point of the men of Torvaldsland.

In these days I had much spied on Kurii, living on the land, returning more than once to the Blue Tooth’s war camp. It is nothing for a warrior to cover ninety pasangs on foot in a day. This is usually done by alternating the warrior’s pace with the warrior’s stride, and allowing for periods of rest. Few who have been invested in the scarlet of the warriors cannot match this accomplishment. I, and many others, can considerably improve upon it.

A typical Kurii foraging squad consists of six animals, called a “hand,” with its “eye,” or leader. Two such “hands” with their “eyes,” constitutes a “Kur,” or “Beast.” The military Kur, in this sense a unit, is commanded by a “Blood”This seems peculiar perhaps but is explained by ancient Kurii belief, that thought is a function of the blood. One “thinks” thus with one’s entire body, not just the brain. Contemporary Kurii understand, naturally, that cognitive processes brain-centered, or largely brain-centered, but the anc terminology, in their songs, poetry, and even military I con, remains. Analogously, humans continue to speak of affairs of the heart, a man of good heart, that someone h; big heart, etc., which terminology perhaps lingers from ti when the heart was regarded not as a chemomechanical pump but as the throne and home of the emotions.

The commander of a military Kur, thus, might better be thoughtof as the “brain” or “mind,” but continues, in their languages, to be spoken of as the “blood.” A “blood” thus commands the two eyes and the two hands. Twelve “Kurs,’ the sense of military units, constitutes one “Band.” This one hundred and eight animals, including subalterns leaders, and is itself commanded by a “Blood,” whose rank is indicated by two rings on the left arm. Twelve of these Bands constitutes a March. A March thus consists of 2160 animals, or, counting the commanders of each Band, 2,172 animals. A March is commanded by a Blood, whose rank is indicated by one ring on the left arm. The ring rank are quite plain, being of some reddish alloy, and are distinguished from decorative rings, of which many Kuriiare fond. Kurii, generally, like men, seem vain beasts, there appears to be an inverse correlation between height of rank and intricacy and variety of ornamentation. The higherthe rank the simpler is likely to be the ornamentation.

The commander, or Blood, of a March wears only a single, sin reddish ring. Whether or not this simplicity is honored duty, so to speak, or in their privacy, I do not know. I fur do not know the full significance of the rings. I do not understand how they are earned, orwhat is involved in movingfrom the “second ring” to the “first ring.” I do know that rings are welded on the wrists of the beasts. The iron files of the Goreans, incidentally, will not cut the alloy. They may be obtained, of course, by the severing of the arm. Why the conjunction of bands is spoken of as a “March” is also unclear. This may refer to a military march, of course, but, I suspect, the term being apparently ancient, that it may also refer to migrations in the remote history of the Kurii, on their own world, putatively no longer existent or viable. There is some indirect evidence that this may be the case, because twelve “Marches” are referred to not as a Division or Army, or some such unit, but rather as a “People”. A People would be commanded by a “Blood” of the People. Such a commander is said to stand “outside the rings.” I do not fully understand the meaning of this expression. The Kurii, as I may have mentioned, consist of several “Peoples.” Not all of these “Peoples” speak the same language, and, I gather, there are differences among, and within, each People. For example, differences in marking, in texture of fur, in temperament, in tooth arrangement, in ear shape, and so on. These differences, negligible from the point of view of humans, are apparently of considerable importance among the Kurii themselves. The human, pursued by such an animal, is not likely to be concerned about the width of its ears or the mottling of its fur. Kurii, in their past, at least, were apparently torn by internecine strife, disrupted by “racial” and ‘civil” wars among themselves. It is not impossible that the defertilization or destruction of their former home was a consequence of such altercations. No Kur, however, I am told, of whatever race or type, will eat the meat of another. This is interesting, considering the ferocity of their carnivorous dispositions. They hold the human, unfortunately, in no such regard. It will be noted that the military arrangements of the Kurii arebased on the number twelve or divisors and multiples of twelve. Kurii use, I understand, a basetwelve mathematics. The prehensible, appendage of the normal Kur is six digited.

Sometimes the foraging squads of the Kurii had been accompanied by trained sleen, often four of them. Twice, in my reconnoitering, I had had to kill such beasts. The sleen have various uses; some are merely used as watch animals or guard animals; others are used as points in the advance of squads, some trained to attack putative enemies, others to return to the squad, thus alerting it to the presence of a possible enemy; others are even more highly trained, and are used to hunt humans; of the human-hunting sleen, some are trained merely to kill, and others to hurry the quarry to a Kurii holding area; one type of sleen is trained to destroy males and herd females, distinguishing between the sexes by scent. A sleen may bring a girl in, stumbling and weeping, from pasangs away, driving her, as Kurii take little notice, through their very camp, until she is entered into a herd. Four days ago I had seen a girl drive, in which several sleen, fanning out over a large area of territory, had scented out scattered, hiding slave girls and, from various points, driven them into a blind canyon, where a waiting Kur had swung shut a wooden gate on them, fastening them inside. Sleen are also used to patrol the large return marches of groups of foraging expeditions, those marches between the temporary holding areas and the main camp. The order of such a march is typically as follows: captured humans, in single file, form its center. These humans are usually thralls and bond-maids, but not always. The spoils are carried by the captured male humans, unless there are too many, and then the residue is divided among the bond-maids. Kurii burden the males heavily; they can think of little more than the weight they carry, and the next step; furthermore, their wrists are usually tied to the straps of their improvised backpacks. Kurii, unlike Goreans, do not subject bond-maids to heavy labor; it toughens their meat; the bond-maids are separated from the males, that they be deprived of leadership; furthermore, the technique of keeping prisoners in single file, separating them by some feet, and preventing speech between them, tends to make conjoint action between them unlikely. Prowling the long single-file of prisoners, male and female, in alternate groups, bond-maids thus used to separate files of men from one another, will be sleen. Should any individual, either maleor female, depart by so much as a yard from the line of march, or attempt to close the gap between himself and a fellow prisoner, the sleen prevent this. Once I saw a girl stumble and two sleen, immediately, snarling and hissing, sprang toward her. She leaped, weeping, to her feet and darted to her precise place in the line, keeping it perfectly, casting terrified glances at the vicious predators. The line of prisoners and sleen is, on both sides, flanked by the Kurii foragers. There are thus five lines, the center line of prisoners and spoils, its flanking lines of sleen, and, on either side, the flanking lines of the Kur foragers. Human prisoners of Kurii, incidentally, are usually stripped; Kurii see no reason to give animals clothing.

I glanced to the Torvaldsberg.

The sun now glinted more fully on its height.

Below us, in the broad valley, the camp of the Kurii lay still in darkness. We heard, below, the howling of a sleen, lonely. I wondered if Kurii dreamed. I supposed they did.

“It is almost time,” said Ivar Forkbeard to me.

I nodded.

Then, from below, we heard the hunting cry of a sleen, and then of two others, then others.

I did not envy Hilda, Ivar’s slave. The Kurii would take little note of the sleen. Their cries were neither of alarm nor offury. They were only gathering in another animal, perhaps a new one, wandered too close to the camp, or a stray, to be expeditiously returned to its herd. The first light then began to touch the valley. From the noises of the sleen we could detect the progress of their hunt, and the location of the imbonded daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar.

“There,” said Ivar, pointing.

They caught her north of the bosk herd. We could see her white body, and the dark, sinuous, furred shapes converging upon it. Then she was surrounded, and she stopped. Then the spleen opened a passage for her, indicating to her which direction she was to go. Where else she turned she was met with the fangs and hisses of the accompanying animals. When she tried to move in any direction other than that of the opened passage they snapped at her, viciously. A single snap could tear off a hand or foot. Then two of the sleen fell in behind her and, snarling and snapping at her heels, drove her before them. We saw her fleeing before them, trying to escape the swift, terrible jaws. We feared, more than once, that they would kill her. A female who cannot be herded is destroyed by the herding sleen.

In the northwest quadrant of the camp was the herd of verr; in the northeast quadrant were the tarsk pens. The bosk were penned at the southern end of the camp. Near the center of the camp but somewhat to the south and east of the center, behind its poles and crossbars, lashed together, was a different herd of Kurii livestock. It was to this pen that the daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar, running before the snapping, snarling sleen, was driven. She darted between the crossbars and, in a moment, no longer harried by sleen, found herself on the trampled turf within, another member of the herd. It was as we had planned. The sleen now resumed their rounds, patrolling the perimeter of the pen. The new animal had been added to the herd. They were no longer interested in it, unless it should attempt to leave the pen. We saw Hilda, a speck in the grayish light, hurrying to the herd within, it huddled on the damp, soiled, trampled turf.

“I wish,” said Ivar Forkbeard, “that I had such a herd.’

The herd, indeed, consisted of sleek, beautiful animals, fair and two-legged. There must have been three or four thousand chattels confined in the great pen.

“Some of the girls are yours,” I reminded him.

“And I intend to have them back,” he said. In that herd, I surmised, were several of our women, Thyri, Aelgifu or Pudding, Gunnhild, OIga, Pouting Lips, Pretty Ankles, the former Miss Stevens of Connecticut, now Honey Cake, the girl named Leah, from Canada, whose last name was of no interest, and others. Too, among them now, prisoner, was Hilda, perhaps Ivar’s preferred slave.

Hilda, even now, would be conveying our instructions to the frightened girls, for the most part, bond-maids. We would soon see if such feared sleen and Kurii more, or Goreanmales, their masters. If they did not obey, they would be slain. As slaves, they were commanded; as slaves, did they fail to comply, they would be put to death. They had no choice. They would obey.

The sun was now sharp and beautiful on the heights of the Torvaldsberg.

“Tie on the scarves,” said Svein Blue Tooth. The word slipped from man to man. On the other side of the valley, too, men would be performing the same action. Each of us tied about our left shoulder a yellow scarf. It was by such a device that the Kurii had recognized their confederates in the men of Thorgard of Scagnar. We would, too, wear such scarves. This was our vengeance on those who had betrayed their kind.

“Loosen your weapons,” said Svein Blue Tooth. The men shifted. Swords were withdrawn from scabbards; arrows were fitted to the string, spears more firmly gripped.

It seemed strange to me that men, only men, would dare to pit themselves against Kurii. I did not know then, of course, about the fury.

Svein Blue Tooth had his head down.

I sensed it first in the giant, Rollo. It was not a human noise. It was a snarl, a growl, like the sound of a larl, awakening from its sleep. The hair on my neck stood on end. I turned. The giant head was slowly lifting itself, and turning. Its eyes were closed. I could see blood beginning to move through the veins of its forehead. Then the eyes opened, and no longer were they vacant, but deep within them, as though beginning from far away, there seemed the glint of some terrible light. I saw his fists close and open. His shoulders were hunched down. He half crouched, as though waiting, tense, while the thing, the frenzy, the madness, began to burn within him.

“It is beginning,” said Ivar Forkbeard to me.

“I do not understand,” I said.

“Be quiet,” said he. “It is beginning.”

I saw then Svein Blue Tooth, the mighty jarl of Torvaldsland, lift his own head, but it did not seem, then, to be him.

It seemed rather a face I had not seen before. The eyes did not seem those of the noble Blue Tooth, but of something else, unaccountable, not understood. I saw him suddenly thrust his left forearm against the broad blade of his spear. To my horror I saw him sucking at his own blood.

I saw a man, fighting the frenzy, tear handfuls of his own hair from his head. But it was coming upon him, and he could not subdue it.

Other men were restless. Some dug at the earth with their boots. Others looked about themselves, frightened. The eyes of one man began to roll in his head; his body seemed shaken, trembling; he muttered incoherently.

Another man threw aside his shield and jerked open the shirt at his chest, looking into the valley.

I heard others moan, and then the moans give way to the sounds of beasts, utterances of incontinent rage.

Those who had not yet been touched stood terrified among their comrades in arms. They stood among monsters.

“Kurii,” I heard someone say.

“Kill Kurii,” I heard. “Kill Kurii.”

“What is it?” I asked Ivar Forkbeard.

I saw a man, with his fingernails, blind himself, and feel no pain. With his one remaining eye he stared into the valley. I could see foam at the side of his mouth. His breathing was deep and terrible.

“Look upon Rollo,” said the Forkbeard.

The veins in the neck, and on the forehead, of the giant bulged, swollen with pounding blood. His head was bent to one side. I could not look upon his eyes. He bit at the rim of his shield, tearing the wood, splintering it with his teeth.

“It is the frenzy of Odin,” said the Forkbeard. “It is the frenzy of Odin.”

Man by man, heart by heart, the fury gripped the host of Svein Blue Tooth.

It coursed through the thronged warriors; it seemed a tangible thing, communicating itself from one to another; it was almost as though one could see it, but one could not see it, only its effects. I could trace its passage. It seemed first a ghastly infection, a plague; then it seemed like a fire, invisible and consuming; then it seemed like the touching of these men by the hands of gods, but no gods I knew, none to whom a woman or child might dare pray, but the gods of men, and of the men of Torvaldsland, the dread, harsh divinities of the cruel north, the gods of Torvaldsland. And the touch of these gods, like their will, was terrible.

Ivar Forkbeard suddenly threw back his head and, silently, screamed at the sky.

The thing had touched him.

The breathing of the men, their energy, their rage, the fury, was all about me.

A bowstring was being drawn taut. I heard the grinding of teeth on steel, the sound of men biting at their own flesh.

I could no longer look on Ivar Forkbeard. He was not the man I had known. In his stead there stood a beast.

I looked down into the valley. There were the lodges of the Kurri. I recalled them. Well did I remember their treachery, well did I remember the massacre, hideous, merciless, in the hall of Svein Blue Tooth.

“Kill Kurii,” I heard.

Within me then, irrational, like lava, I felt the beginning of a strange sensation.

“I must consider the beauty of the Torvaldsberg,” I told myself. But I could not look again at the cold, bleak beauty of the mountain. I could look only into the valley, where, unsuspecting, lay the enemy.

“It is madness,” I told myself. “Madness!” In the lodges below slept Kurii, who had killed, who had massacred in the night. In my pouch, even now, there lay the golden armlet, which once had been worn by the woman, Telima.

Below, unsuspecting, they lay, the enemy, the Kurii.

“No,” I said. “I must resist this thing.”

I drew forth the golden armlet which had been worn by Telima.

On a bit of fiber I tied it about my neck. I held it. Below lay the enemy.

I closed my eyes. Then I sucked in the air between my teeth.

Somewhere, far off, on another world, lit by the same star, rnen hurried to work.

I fought the feelings which were rearing within me. As well might I have fought the eruption of the volcano, the shifting of the strata of the earth.

I heard the growling, the fury, of those about me.

Below us lay the Kurii.

I opened my eyes.

The valley seemed to me red with rage, the sky red, the faces of those about me. I felt a surge of frenzy building within me. I wanted to tear, to cut, to strike, to destroy.

It had touched me, and I stood then within its grip, in that red, burning world of rage.

The bowstring was taut.

There was foam at the mouth of Svein Blue Tooth. His eyes were those of a madman.

I lifted my ax.

The thousands of the men of Torvaldsland, on either side of the valley, made ready. One could sense their seething, the unbearable power, the tenseness.

The signal spear, in the hand of the frenzied Blue Tooth, its scarlet talmit wrapped at the base of its blade, was lifted. The breathing of thousands of men, waiting to be unleashed, to plunge to the valley, for an instant was held. The sun flashed on the shield. The signal spear thrust to the valley.

With one frenzied cry the host, in its fury, from either side of the valley, plunged downward.

“The men of Torvaldsland,” they cried, “are upon you!”