The Chieftan

CHAPTER 15

“What are those sounds?” asked Janina, frightened.

“They are horns, hunting horns,” said the gladiator.

“This world, then, is not uninhabited,” said Janina.

“It would seem not,” said the gladiator.

He kicked dirt over the small fire they had built on the bank.

“My clothes are not yet dry!” protested Janina.

“Put them on wet, or carry them,” said the gladiator.

“I am exhausted,” she said. “We almost died. I cannot move.”

She looked up at him, pathetically. She knelt on leaves. Her hair had been loosened, that it might be dried near the fire.

“Then I shall rope you to a tree and leave you behind,” he said.

She rose to her feet and hastily began to gather her clothes from the cord stretched between two trees.

“Forgive your slave,” she said.

The gladiator stood very still, listening.

“What world is this?” she asked, rolling the garments of Princess Gerune into a small bundle.

“I do not know,” he said, softly.

“Forgive me, Master,” she said, realizing she might have disturbed him.

The gladiator looked up at the sky. The descent of the capsule, last night, might have been visible, particularly in the upper atmosphere. It might have been mistaken for a meteor at first, a falling star, perhaps even later, when the fearful rush in the atmosphere, like a hurricane over the trees, was audible. But, too, there may have been a visual contact, when the descent slowed and the capsule began to skim the trees, the sensors searching for level surfaces, where the adjusting thrusters would be activated for a landing. But then, too, perhaps not. How could one know?

Again the horns sounded.

The gladiator threw the last bits of the armor into the river. These, with certain other supplies, he had salvaged from the capsule.

“Master, I cannot swim!” had cried Janina, last night, first waist deep in the current, trying to help bring the capsule to the shore, then her footing lost, falling, her hands slipping from the wet metallic surface, being swept downstream.

The capsule, when it had left the Alaria, sped by the brunt of the decompression, had tumbled uncontrolled from the rupture in the hull, and only moments later had the gladiator, within the darkened, stifling cabin, been able to locate the launch release, the engagement of which had two primary effects, the first being to activate the clearance thruster, used for distancing the capsule from the mother ship, to protect it in the event of explosions or radiation, and the second being to activate, after the clearance burn, various systems internal to the vehicle, which supplied heat, light and oxygen. This delay in activating the clearance thruster kept the capsule cold when the first tracking shots left the Ortungen fleet. Two missiles, which tracked from the ships themselves, by means of monitors, not heat, had followed the capsule for over fifteen hundred miles. Then it had disappeared from the monitors. The gladiator had, of course, manually, disengaged the locating beacon, and turned off internal and external lighting as soon as these devices could be located. He had also reduced the noise level in the vehicle as much as possible, levering down even the life support systems to minimum settings. The ship was then like a silent, dark mote in a silent, dark sea, a mote which seemed to be nowhere, but might be anywhere. A pursuit craft had been sent out, but it was soon recalled to the mother ship. It paused only long enough to collect the two missiles, which had then been disarmed by signals from the mother ship. It was not clear to the gladiator why the pursuit had been so soon terminated. The capsule had suffered damage in its emergence from the Alaria. This damage rendered accessible navigational equipment inoperative and impaired the utility of manual devices for controlling the vernier thrusters, used for course adjustments. In effect the ship was, manually, blind and rudderless. This injury was not, under the circumstances, however, a serious one. The escape capsules, you see, were not designed for skilled, practiced operators. Their functioning was largely a matter of automatic sequences. Once the launch sequence had been activated, the capsule was designed to clear the mother vessel, initiate life support and transmit a tracking signal. One purpose of the verniers, of course, was to make it possible to remain in the vicinity of the initial launch, in case rescue might be imminent. To be sure, that would not have been wise under the circumstances which then prevailed. I think there is little doubt that the gladiator was fortunate to have escaped from the vicinity of the Ortungen fleet. For example, his capsule being largely uncontrollable he could not have used a launch trajectory which might have made use of an Ortungen ship as a shield, so that it would be exposed only to the guns of the shield ship, have engaged in complex evasive activity, engaged and disengaged engines in such a way as to leave a scattered, confusing track of dissipating heat behind it, made use of distant stars and bodies, and occasional debris, and such, to mask its position, and so on. To be sure several escape capsules, over the past few days, had managed to successfully elude the Ortungen fleet, most often when they burst forth together, using the schooling effect to disconcert the predator. Although it is not immediately germane to our narrative, it is of interest to note that Pulendius was among those who had managed to flee the Alaria successfully. Some days later he and his party were picked up by one of ten imperial cruisers. The presence of these cruisers in the vicinity was no accident. They had come in response to the distress call of the Alaria. This was the reason, incidentally, that the pursuit of the gladiator’s ship, and, indeed, of another, as well, had been so soon terminated. Most escape capsules, however, as you may have gathered, were not successful in eluding the Ortungen fleet. Indeed, only a handful was successful; most were destroyed. Indeed, an escape capsule which had left the Alaria only moments before that of the gladiator had, several hours later, as a result of the explosion of a pursuing missile, been severely damaged, and cast adrift thereafter amongst the gravitational geodesics of that portion of space. The clearance thruster had been detached, the explosive bolts being fired, shortly before the projected strike of the missile. The missile had struck the trailing thruster and not the escape capsule. The capsule itself, however, given the proximities involved, and the quantity and speed of the debris, both of the thruster and the missile, had been severely damaged. If one detaches the thruster, or such a device, prematurely, it is unlikely to be useful as either a decoy or a shield. It is unlikely to be useful as a decoy because, at least within practicable detection distances, it can be distinguished from the target. As a shield it must appear suddenly enough and close enough to the missile’s target that it is not possible for the missile, closing on the target, to avoid it. It must, accordingly, be interposed at almost the last moment, and the attendant risks accepted. Had the escape capsules been war vessels, of course, they would have been equipped with more sophisticated defensive devices. As it was, they were not even armed with handguns. Weaponry, as we now well know, tended to be carefully controlled by the empire. And, indeed, the escape capsules which had been stored in Section 19 were supernumerary capsules, and not a part of the regular escape complement, which complement consisted of capsules readied in the locks. Accordingly, they were not even equipped with charts, not that these would have been of great use to most civilian occupants. They were equipped, however, happily, with the usual complements of stores. In the case of the last two escape capsules, those with which we have been recently concerned, these stores had been to some extent depleted by the fugitives, those who had been hiding in the hold. On the other hand, this matter was not serious, as a very limited number of passengers was involved in both cases.

“The horns, Master!” said Janina.

“Yes,” he said.

The horns had again sounded.

The gladiator had lost consciousness a few hours after the launching of the escape capsule. He had awakened later, it was not clear how long he had been unconscious, to feel a dampened rag being pressed in the darkness to his brow.

“Master?” had asked Janina.

His armor had been removed.

They knew not where they were.

He had then again lapsed into unconsciousness, weakened from the loss of blood, bruised, shaken, from the impact of the armor blasted back against his body.

After two days they had illuminated the cabin.

The gladiator had lain on one elbow, and looked at the slave.

She cast her eyes downward, shyly.

“Remove your clothing,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

He then took her in his arms and turned her beneath him, onto the steel plating of the escape capsule flooring.

“Master is strong!” she whispered.

“Be silent,” he told her.

“Yes, Master,” she had said.

When a slave is told to be silent, you see, she may not speak.

But, in a few moments, she gasped, and cried out, and then, later, clung to him, his, subdued.

The capsule had drifted in space for weeks, lonely and rudderless, tugged this way and that by forces so subtle they could not have detected them, but then, eventually, as the consequence of the invisible geography of gravity, they began, slowly at first, and then more rapidly, to spiral toward a world. The testing sequence was initiated, and it soon became clear to the capsule’s occupants that, for one reason or another, whether from a lack of necessity or because of inoperability consequent upon damage, the secondary clearance system was not going to fire. The implementation of the landing program had begun, of course, immediately after the processing of the results of the testing sequence.

There had been several tiny ports in the escape capsule, of only some four inches in diameter. It was difficult to see through them. The monitoring cameras, fore and aft, were not functioning.

They could feel heat, even within the capsule, as the atmosphere was penetrated.

In the descent something must have gone wrong, for a disk at the bow began to flash redly.

A whining, sirenlike sound filled the cabin for a brief moment, and then stopped. The disk stopped flashing.

They could see trees below.

They were moving laterally. Behind them, but visible through one of the ports, was a rope of fluid, aflame.

“There is no place to land,” had screamed Janina.

The terrain below was, indeed, rugged, and forested.

There was a frightening sound as the speeding capsule lashed through branches and then, suddenly, climbed, again, upward. Then it spun about, and hovered, arid seemed to slip in the air, down a dozen feet, and then another dozen feet. It righted itself. It began to descend again, and then, again, abruptly, in the light of what obstacle the occupants knew not, rose up again.

Two needles, though this was not noted by the occupants of the vehicle, now verged, suddenly, as though broken, at the bottom of their gauges.

“We are falling!” said Janina.

The gladiator crawled to the wheel which controlled the fins of the craft, usable in an atmosphere. Their use had been clear from experimentation in space, though they had been ineffective in that medium.

He drew back on the wheel and the craft soared upward.

“There is no power!” said Janina.

He leveled the wheel, and sought to peer out the bow port. Then he swung the wheel to the right, and then back, somewhat, to the left, and then pressed it forward.

He tried to follow the course of the river.

He sped between the trees, over the water, and then pressed the wheel forward again, and the escape capsule hit the surface of the water like a stone, and, splashing, flew into the air, and then descended, and did this again and then again, and was then rushing through the water, it flying to both sides, and then the capsule was on gravel, scraping, and then water, it rushing beneath, and then gravel again, and then, at last, half on the bank of the river, and half in the water, stopped.

They had lost no time in leaving the capsule and withdrawing into the forest, shielding themselves behind trees and rock.

When it became clear that the capsule was inert, they returned to it.

It was deeply scarred, and a far different vehicle, now space-worn, and scorched, and pitted and gashed, from the one which had tumbled free of the Alaria so long ago. There were streaks of vegetable matter on it where it had flashed through branches. It was tipped. Two of its wheels, for the tracks, were broken away. “We are alive,” said Janina.

“We will use the vehicle for a shelter,” he said.

“No, please, Master!” she said. “We have been within it so long! Let us sleep in the open!”

“There may be danger here,” he said.

“Animals?” she said, frightened.

“Or worse,” he said.

She looked at him.

“They might like you on a rope,” he said.

“I belong on a rope,” she laughed.

“And so does every woman,” he said.

“Yes, Master!” she said.

“But we must leave the vehicle soon,” he said. “We must learn this world.”

“Do you think it populated, Master?” she asked.

“I do not know,” he said.

“Perhaps we should build a shelter somewhere else,” she said, looking about herself, frightened.

“It is late,” he said.

Before they retired for the evening, he thrust the vehicle higher on the bank. He also put some branches about it, to conceal its outline.

Early that afternoon, miles upriver, over an area of several square miles in extent, there were heavy rains. This was not understood by either the gladiator or the exquisite young slave, Janina, she whom he had won, a lovely prize in a contest. Doubtless they had been exhausted by their ordeal, the escape from the Alaria, the long weeks in space, the terrors of the landing, the awesomeness of finding themselves on an unfamiliar world, a new, seemingly primitive, surely beautiful, perhaps uncharted, world. In any event, the waters from upriver, flowing from innumerable rivulets, from dozens of streams, from several tributaries, like veins in the surface of the earth, draining an area more than a hundred square miles, began to move downstream, slowly at first, and then with gathering force. These swelling waters, borne by the now swift current, crept up the banks at many points, even higher than most of the diverse levels already recorded in the clay, indeed, until, here and there, they almost touched the grass, and, at shallower places, were plentifully overflowing the banks. The capsule, even thrust higher as it had been, was lifted from the bank, and the gladiator awakened suddenly, the capsule lifting, then rocking, then beginning to turn, beginning to wash downward toward the current. He had aroused the slave instantly and together, as it seemed clear the capsule might be lost, they had flung certain supplies, a medical kit, blankets, the rifle and the pistol, though these were now without ammunition, and such, out the hatch, high onto the bank, above where the water now reached. This they did in the darkness, and in a driving rain, and in the midst of thunder and lightning, for their area, too, was now much affected by storms, quite possibly a portion of the same weather system which had been active upstream earlier.

The gladiator emerged from the capsule, the water to his thighs, half-blinded by the wind and rain, and pressed against it with his hands, where they slipped on the slick surface. He slipped in the water. He tried to get his back to the vehicle and turn it, to thrust it up the bank. It was rocking. It was hard to grasp. He cut his arm on the stabilizer. The vehicle spun about.

Janina, her clothing soaked with rain, stood on the bank. She had, moments before, wading, made her way ashore.

To the gladiator’s right a great dark branch, its leaves beaten down by rain, swept past.

The capsule turned in the overflowing waters. The gladiator lost his hold on it, and, slipping, moved about it, to get once more between it and the main channel of the river.

Water streamed from the capsule.

It would be suddenly illuminated, eerily, whitely, in flashes of lightning.

So, too, was the slave on the bank, and the trees behind her.

“I cannot hold it!” cried the gladiator.

It was at that point that Janina had waded forth into the black, swirling waters, to lend her small strength to his.

Too, almost at the same time, no more than a moment or two later, he had, unexpectedly, managed to brace himself on some solid surface on the overflowed bank, doubtless an outjutting rock.

Janina was waist-deep in the water, about the capsule, to his right, as he was braced.

He did not even understand, at that time, where she was, or what she was doing.

“I have it!” he cried. He thrust it back a bit, toward the bank. He felt with his feet for another purchase, one six inches closer to the bank.

It was at that point that Janina had lost her footing in the rushing water. She clutched at the capsule but her hands could close on nothing. They slipped on the large, slick, oval surface. She fell to her back in the water, her hands losing contact with the capsule. It was at this point, as the current took her, and she had begun to be swept downstream, that she had cried out. “Master, I cannot swim!” she cried.

The gladiator turned to seize her but she was swept past him. For a moment or two the air trapped in her robes would hold her to the surface. He saw her hand, the robes falling from it, lifted. “Master!” she screamed. He left the side of the capsule and plunged after her, wading, but she was already yards away. He then began to swim toward a point at which he hoped to intercept her. But she was not there. So swift was the current. He saw her then, in a flash of lightning, yards downstream, clinging to a rock, the waters rushing about it. But when he reached the rock she had been swept from it. He pushed away from the rock, slipping, and hastened downstream. He turned in a minute, fighting the current. Might she not be near? Something struck his leg and he reached down, but it was a branch. “Master! Master!” he heard, and once more he hastened downstream, lashing the water. He saw, in another flash of lightning, her head disappear under the roiling surface of the dark waters. As he swam he tried to judge the feel of the current on his body, its turnings, its deflections, as it was shaped by the contour of the banks, the irregularities of the riverbed. At times the water rushed over his head, and he rose, shaking his head, looking wildly about. He saw the capsule moving downstream, to his right, tipped, awry in the current. A scream was before him in the darkness to the left. Again he sped toward a projected rendezvous, the location dictated by an instant’s calculation of the physics of time and current. But, of course, she was not an inert object, but one which moved, and straggled, and the robes, too, clinging about her, influenced her movements. How could one judge such things, and in the darkness, the turbulence? She was, again, not at the projected point of rendezvous, or, if she was, it was in the darkness, or perhaps even momentarily beneath the surface, eluding his grasp, perhaps by inches. “Master!” he heard, a scream half choked with water. Then he sped directly downstream, anything to be somewhere ahead of her. He crested the current and rushed before it, half borne by it, half racing it. Then he turned about in the water, fighting against the current. “Scream!” he cried. “Cry out!” He wondered if she were under the water, perhaps feet away, speeding toward him. He wondered if she was drowned. Then, in a flash of lightning, he saw a fold of garment, and, in another stroke of lightning, he got his hand on it. He jerked her head out of the water. Then, swept downstream, he struck against something. In the center of the stream, temporarily arrested there, caught on a rock, was the large branch, almost a tree in itself, which must have washed away from some bank, and which had passed them earlier. They were then, in the pouring rain, enmeshed in the smaller branches. He reached for branches, and they broke off. He steadied himself against the wet, black trunklike main branch. He gasped for breath. Her head was back, her eyes wild. “I have you, slave,” he said. “Master!” she cried, her face streaming with water. The branch then, pressed in the current, suddenly, unexpectedly, awkwardly, moved, slipping away from the rock. It was then loose in the current, and spinning downstream. Then it rolled and the smaller branches, like a barrel of spokes, forced them both under the water. The gladiator reached up, partly climbing, partly tearing through branches. His fingernails were bloodied from tearing at the bark. Then he emerged into the storm again, his left arm about the slave’s neck. In a flash of lightning he saw the escape capsule, far downstream, deep in the water, listing. The river churned inches from the opened hatch. He did not doubt, from its depth in the water, that the capsule had already shipped a considerable amount of water. He was afraid to release the branch. He did not know if he could reach the shore. An uprooted tree swept past. “Look!” he cried, clinging to the branch. Downstream, in the darkness, there was a sudden bluish glow, and then the escape capsule, its entire large, oval surface, began to crackle with sparks and flame. Then again there was darkness. “Beware!” he said, and braced himself, for the trunk of a tree, like a spear, smote into the branch to which they clung, spinning it about.

“Are you all right?” asked the gladiator.

“Yes, Master,” cried the slave.

There was now, under the roar of the storm, another roar, somewhere ahead, a roar which grew progressively louder. The gladiator tried to peer through the darkness and rain. He fought for breath. The water must have reached yet another system in the escape capsule, for, far downstream, it began again to glow, but this time with an orangish color. And then, suddenly, it was dark. It was as though the glow had been suddenly snapped off, like a light. A part of a tree swept by, a catlike beast clinging to its trunk. Its fur was sleek with rain. The branch to which the gladiator and the slave clung caught for a moment on another rock. “What is the noise, not the storm?” the gladiator asked himself, confused. “Is it a thousand beasts? Is it thunder from afar?” “Too,” he asked himself, “what of the capsule? How did it cease so suddenly to glow?” The roar was now becoming even louder. It competed with the wind, the storm. Suddenly he heard a wild screech of terror from ahead, which then faded suddenly. It had to be the animal which they had seen, but moments before. Now the roaring was deafening. In the darkness the gladiator, as the slave cried out in terror, in protest, thrust away from the branch, and, with one arm, as he could, fought for the shore. He was swept muchly downstream, but twice caught against rocks. Then, when the roar was unmistakable, even to one confused in the darkness, one wrought with titanic strain, one exhausted from physical effort, he got the mud and gravel of the riverbed beneath his feet, and, the slave terrified and bedraggled in his arms, made his way to the bank. In the next flash of lightning he saw, holding the slave, the edge of the falls, some yards away. Curious he went to its brink. The drop was something in the nature of a hundred feet. He saw the sopped, catlike beast slide through the water, its ears back, and scratch its way up to the shore. It was possible, he thought, that they might have survived the fall. To be sure, it is difficult to make judgments on such matters. He did not see the capsule. He did not know if it were still afloat or not. After resting for a time, he once again lifted the slave in his arms, who was trembling, and began to make his way back upstream, to where they had salvaged some of their goods. After a time the rains stopped. He had then managed to build a small fire. This was managed with leaves and brush from rain-sheltered places. The fire was lit with the lighter, from the survival kit, one of the objects removed earlier from the capsule. They had then stripped and set about drying their clothes. His had dried first, easily, as they were lighter, less voluminous, less cumbersome. Janina had been kneeling near the fire, drying her hair, when they first heard the horns.

“There are several horns now,” said Janina.

“They are on this side of the river,” said the gladiator. “We will cross.”

“Not the river!” said Janina.

“The level is much subsided,” said the gladiator.

“I fear the river!” said Janina.

“This,” said the gladiator, “will prevent you from being swept away.”

He knotted a rope about her neck.

“That is its only purpose, is it not, Master?” she asked.

“What do you think?” he asked.

She looked down, shyly, smiling. Janina, in the arms of strong masters, had learned her womanhood.

The remains of the armor he had cast into the river. Its utility was grievously impaired, it having been muchly damaged on the Alaria, and he feared, too, that on this world it would constitute little more than a clumsy, weighty encumbrance. Could one manage edged or pointed weapons, even staves or clubs, well, if one were so housed? Might one not be tripped, or caught, or be for most practical purposes helpless in such garb? Would it turn the blow of an ax, for example, or be of much service if one were caught in a noose, cast from a tree? Too, men seen in such things might be taken to be the barbarians of the ships, and he doubted that such would be likely to be popular with primitively armed rustic or sylvan populations, if they knew of them, at all. The armor, of this sort, which weighed in the vicinity of a hundred pounds, had its place, surely, in a world of fire pistols, and weapons of a similar sort, but it did not seem that it would be of great value in a primitive, natural, savage world, one where survival was more likely to be a function of speed and agility, and will, intelligence and ferocity, than an arrangement of relative impenetrabilities.

The gladiator prepared a bundle, consisting of most of the materials they had salvaged from the capsule, including some rations, and also Janina’s clothing. This bundle the slave would bear. He himself slung the empty Telnarian rifle across his back. He retained the belt from the armor, and housed the empty fire pistol in its holster. He also put on the belt a sheathed knife, from the survival kit. He was, for the most part, however, unencumbered. He cut himself a staff, both as a weapon, and to assist in the transit of the river. He then, leading the slave on her rope, she bearing the bundle of supplies, and such, on her head, steadying it with her hands, waded into the river. In a few minutes they had safely crossed.

On the other side he wound the free end of Janina’s rope about her neck. There were then several coils about her neck. He tucked in the free end.

“You will follow me,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

In this fashion she would bear the rope herself, and it would be conveniently at hand, obviously ready for a variety of employments.

Toward noon they heard the horns again.

The horns, now, were on their side of the river.

One seemed to be behind them, and another to their right. They then began to move left, through the thick, dark forest.

But, in an hour, they heard a horn before them.

They then resumed their original march, away from the river.

“They are closer, Master,” said Janina, a little later.

“Yes,” said the gladiator.

“Those are hunting horns, Master?” asked Janina.

“Yes,” said the gladiator.

“What are they hunting, Master?” asked Janina.

“Us,” he said.