The King

CHAPTER 19

“They are trussed like the vardas they are,” said one of the Heruls, stepping back.

“How,” asked Olar, “so tied, can we run at your stirrup, how, so tied, can we pull in the traces of the sledge?”

“It would be difficult,” said the leader of the Heruls, still mounted, as were four other Heruls. Two had dismounted to tie Olar and Varix.

“I do not understand,” said Varix.

“Break up the sledge, for firewood,” said the leader of the Heruls.

“I do not understand,” said Varix.

“It is not your bait trap, nor is it ours,” said the leader of the Heruls. “It will do for firewood.”

“You are cold?” asked Olar.

“Do you think we are beasts, to eat raw meat?” asked the leader of the Heruls.

“We have no kettles with us,” said one of the Heruls who was dismounted.

‘’Do you think we would run such as you for the dogs?’’ asked another, one who was mounted.

“No!” cried Olar.

“Why?” asked Varix.

“You did not fight,” said the leader of the Heruls.

“I can remember when Vandals fought,” said another.

“You are mounted, we are on foot!” said Olar.

“We are hungry,” said one of the dismounted Heruls.

“You will roast well,” said the other.

Olar and Varix, tied back to back, sitting in the snow, their ankles crossed and bound, struggled.

“Break up the sledge,” said the leader of the Heruls. He held his lance in his right hand, or, perhaps better, appendage. It was a multiply jointed, haired tentacle, now sheathed in a beaded, fringed, mittenlike fur sleeve. He had two such hands, or appendages, or tentacles, as did the others, an arrangement which tended to be common, given the selective advantages of paired, symmetrical structures. At the tip of each tentacle, recessed beneath a contractible callosity, there was a tiny anatomical feature, a small, caplike sensory organ. Its function has been likened to that of taste, and even to sight and smell, but these sensory modalities are available to the Heruls, and the Hageen, as, indeed, given their advantages, to millions of diverse species throughout the galaxies. To be sure, that two species have a sense of taste, or such, does not guarantee that their experiences are identical. Even in something as obvious as vision, it is not clear, for example, that the visual experiences of diverse species are identical, for example, with respect to what can be seen, and how it can be experienced. Similarly, it seems unlikely that the visual experiences of, say, insects and men are identical. And, too, the visual experiences of an organism which has eyes on the sides of its head may be rather different, in consciousness, than one which, say, has the eyes in the front of the head, permitting a binocular focus, and such. The visual experiences of a creature with eye stalks or seven eyes, placed at diverse places on the body, laterally, ventrally, dorsally, and such, may be different, as well. We shall not attempt to speculate on the specific nature of the sensory experience correlated with the small, protected, tentacular sensory organ of the Heruls. We ourselves have never had such an experience. To those who have had the experience, a verbal description would doubtless be superfluous. To those who have not had the experience a verbal description would doubtless be unilluminating, if not unintelligible. Figures of speech may or may not be helpful. There seems dispute on such a matter. For example, suppose that one lacked particular sensory modalities. Then, would it be helpful to say, really, for example, that the taste of an orange is like seeing the sun at midday, that the smell of wet grass is like the taste of wine, that the blare of a trumpet is like the heat of fire? But the function of the Herul organ, or one of its utilities, at least, is clearly recognition. It seems clear that, in some sense, it reads, or reacts to, on a cellular, or subcellular, level, with consequences in consciousness, the chemistry, if not the very hereditary coils, of an organism, in a very specific fashion. The organ, which is not vestigial, seems to antedate the development of other senses, such as sight and hearing, in the evolution of the Herul organism. It, or its predecessor, seems to have functioned in making determinations as to self-identity, and to what might be ingested and what not. It seems to have prevented, in the beginning, certain chemical macrocompounds from being self-destructive, for example, from predating on their own bodies, and to make determinations as to what might be absorbed profitably into their own systems and what not. To be sure, putting it in this fashion suggests a teleology. The compounds which, for example, were uninhibited in self-predation tended to perish, and those who found poisonous substances acceptable, or even attractive, for ingestion would be expected, too, statistically, over time, to fail to replicate their genes. Presumably the organ, too, as parthenogenesis came to be supplanted by sexual reproduction, was useful in identifying members of its own species, or type. Later, it doubtless functioned in mate identification, and recognition, for Herul conception, proceeding in stages, requires a considerable period. And later, too, as life forms developed, and tribalities became of selective advantage, it doubtless proved its value for group integrity and consolidation, much as might have a nest odor among certain social insects or a pack odor among social rodents. It may, too, have some sort of bonding effect among individuals. In any event, it is an interesting, and rare, organ, particularly among rational species. The butt of the lance, grasped in the right hand of the Herul, was sheathed in the right stirrup holster.

One of the two dismounted Heruls, in response to the leader’s injunction to break up the sledge, picked up the ax of Varix, which was in the snow.

In a moment he was before the sledge.

“Ota!” he said, an exclamation of surprise.

“What is it?” called the leader of the Heruls.

“There is something here,” he said.

“What?” called the leader.

“A body,” he said.

“It is dead?” said the leader.

“I think so,” said the Herul.

He gingerly pushed at the shape, lying within the ribs of the headless, half-eaten horse on the sledge.

“Yes,” said the Herul. “It does not move. It is dead.”

“There is a pelt on the sledge,” said the leader of the Heruls, referring to the folded, mottled pelt toward the back of the sledge.

“Doubtless it is that fellow’s bait trap,” said one of the mounted Heruls.

“What is he?” asked the leader of the Heruls.

“An Otung, I think,” said the Herul.

“Here?” asked the leader.

“It seems so,” said the Herul.

The leader of the Heruls and he closest to him exchanged glances.

Basungs would have been expected, in this vicinity, if they dared to cross the Lothar.

“Proceed with your work,” said the leader of the Heruls.

The Herul at the sledge, putting the ax into the snow beside him, head down, the handle upright in the snow, broke to the side two, then three, of the ribs of the horse.

He then reached within the remains of the rib cage to draw the body out of the cavity.

In a moment the leader of the Heruls looked back toward the sledge.

“Utinn?” he asked.

The Herul stood by the sled, upright, waist deep in the snow, as it had drifted there, not moving.

“Hurry!” said the leader.

There was something odd about the attitude of the figure, as it stood.

“The head, the head is wrong!” said the Herul nearest the leader.

“Atlar!” said the leader.

The other dismounted Herul was reluctant to approach.

“Atlar!” snapped the leader.

The second Herul waded through the snow to his fellow. He put his hands on him, and lowered him, half to the snow. He moved the head, and looked back at the leader. “The neck is broken,” he said. “He is dead.”

“How can it be?” asked one of the Heruls.

“Utinn is a shaman,” said the Herul nearest the leader. “He has died to go to the land of spirits, and will come back, with knowledge, and secrets and medicine.”

“Utinn was not a shaman,” said the leader of the Heruls, looking about, uneasily.

“He will come back,” said one of the Heruls.

“One does not come back from broken necks,” said another. “It is not like the coming back from the magic death, the sleep death, the trance.”

“It is done by spirits, in the pay of the men of Ifeng,” said another Herul. Venitzia was known among the Heruls as Ifeng. Among several of the other tribes of the area it was known as Scharnhorst.

“It is the magic of the brothers of the festung of Sim Giadini,” said one of the Heruls.

The brothers had not discouraged such beliefs among the Heruls.

To be sure, it was unlikely the Heruls posed any great threat to the festung itself. They did pose, of course, a possible threat to festung villages.

“Utinn did it to himself,” said one of the Heruls.

“Then he is a shaman,” said another.

“He was not a shaman,” said the leader.

“How did it come about?” asked one of the Heruls.

“I do not know,” said another.

“I am afraid,” said the Herul nearest the leader.

The leader of the Heruls looked about. The country was desolate. The snow was white, and calm.

He then returned his attention to Atlar, the body of Utinn, and the sledge, half buried, half lost, half obscured, in the snow.

“Atlar,” called the leader of the Heruls, calmly, at the same time freeing the butt of his lance from the stirrup holster.

“Yes?” rejoined the Herul addressed, releasing the head of Utinn, which, loosely, as though tied on with rope, dropped into the snow, near the body’s left shoulder.

“Step back,” said the leader, quietly.

The Herul moved back, wading backward in the snow.

“Pick up the ax,” said the leader, quietly.

Atlar, uncertainly, not taking his eyes off the sledge, put out his right hand, as we shall have it, as is our practice, for the sake of ease, and simplicity, and grasped the ax.

“Lift the ax,” said the leader of the Heruls, patiently.

Atlar lifted the ax, with two hands, the tentacles wrapped about the shaft, back, over his head, puzzled, and looked to the leader, astride his mount, a few yards away, in the snow.

“Kill it! Kill it!” suddenly screamed the leader of the Heruls, gesturing toward the sledge, with its weights, with the point of the lance.

But at that very moment with a cry of rage and power, a cry, perhaps, even of war, a mighty figure, more than half again the size of a common man, seemed to rise up from the surface of the sledge, unexpectedly, suddenly, like lightning, like a springing lion, seemed to rise up even from the body of the horse, stark, dried, cold ribs of the horse, brittle and dead in the cold, breaking, bones scattering in its emergence, like a striking snake, like a lion, springing through sticks and straw, seeming to rise up, like a hurricane, like a lion, snow flung to all sides, and Atlar, a yard of a great blade emergent from his back was lifted over the figure’s head, impaled, the ax lost in the snow.

The figure stood there, in rage, snarling, surely more animal than man, for just a moment it stood there, the body of Atlar held high, squirming, bleeding, over its head.

But in that moment, in that brief instant, we may surmise, as would be expected of one trained in the school of Pulendius, it had located each of the Heruls.

Of the mounts of the Heruls about, of which there were seven, five of which Heruls were astride, and two standing nearby, without riders, in the snow, hobbled, their two front feet tied together with the reins dangling from their bridled snouts, the five shifted, startled, one bucking, throwing his rider into the snow, while of the two hobbled, one sank to its knees, squealing, a leg broken, and the other, trying to run, fell to its side, rolling, struggling, in the snow.

The war cry tends to inspirit and energize its utterer, but, perhaps more importantly, it can, if not anticipated, momentarily freeze the responses of the enemy or prey. The roar of the lion has a similar role, it would seem, at least in the latter particular. The moment of inactivity is often all the predator needs to effect his purpose, to strike a blow, to reach a critical point, to shorten a distance.

With another cry the mighty figure, snow thrashing about its legs, they forcing that great body through the snow, had hurled Atlar from the blade and rushed upon the nearest Herul and mount. An upward sweep of the great blade smote away the head of the horse, and it spun away, and there was a burst of blood which drenched the snow for yards about. The rider slid off the back of the horse. The mighty figure turned about, again, and again the blade flashed forth cutting through a Herul’s leg at the thigh, cutting even the girth strap holding the saddle and the horse, too, sank to its knees a lateral slash marking the blade’s passage. Another horse reared over the figure and the blade slashed out opening the belly, disemboweling the animal, the rider pitching away, scrambling up, in the snow. The horse thrashed, squealing, rolling about, its legs caught in the loops of its own intestines, its frantic movements tearing them out of its own body. The leader of the Heruls wheeled his mount away, some yards in the snow, and then turned it, his lance descendant, at the ready. He called to his men. There had been six. Utinn and Atlar were dead. Another, Utak, had crawled away, dragging a bleeding stump, leaving a river of blood in the snow. He had collapsed ten yards from the sledge. The rider who had been thrown, his horse bolting at the sudden, unexpected appearance of the figure, had now recovered his seat. Another rider, whose horse had been decapitated in the figure’s rush forward had hurried to Atlar’s frightened, hobbled animal, slashed the hobble, beat the horse to its feet, and mounted. The rider who had lost his saddle when his rearing horse had been fended back, with the fierce stroke of the terrible blade, some five feet in length, hurried, afoot, away from the sledge, to join the leader of the Heruls. The figure with the hilt of that terrible weapon in his two-handed grasp, panting, stepped away from the horse, which, wide-eyed, rolled about amongst its own intestines, these gushed forth upon the snow, bright, steaming from body heat, glistening and tangled, enmeshed.

Four Heruls there were then, three mounted.

One lowered his lance and charged.

“Wait!” cried the leader of the Heruls, but the fellow had already, with a cry of rage, kicked back with his spurs, and his mount, squealing in pain, was plunging forward through the snow.

The horse was to the figure in the snow almost instantly. The figure, trying to evade the charge, lost its footing in the snow, staggering, stumbling. It struggled to keep its balance. The lance thrust down. The Herul cried out in frustration. The figure in the snow, lurching, had managed, but barely, to turn the thrust with the flat of the blade. The horse wheeled. The figure in the snow felt the heat of its body, fiercely, its oily pelt, the fur-clad boot of the rider. The figure, buffeted, was struck to the snow. The sword was gone. The figure rolled from beneath the descending, clawed feet, the claws tearing in the snow. The rider wheeled the horse away, and then, again, aligned it, bringing it back once more to the attack line. The figure was now, again, on its feet, wary, hands out, the snow to its thighs, the sword somewhere to the side, somewhere inches beneath a dark cleft in the snow, not within reach, not before the horse, and the lance, could reach it. The horse, sped forward by the spurs, its flanks bleeding, charged, frenziedly. The figure evaded the thrust, forcing it up with a movement of his right forearm. At the next wheeling, and thrust, the figure, again buffeted, caught the lance behind the blade. The rider, startled, thought briefly to contest the possession of the implement, to struggle for it, to cling to it, but the shaft might as well have been rooted in the ground as be in whose grasp it was, and the rider suddenly found himself, as his horse shied to the left, unbalanced to the right, and he released the weapon, and grasped for the pommel of the saddle, and, in a flurry of snow, kicked up by the mount, half slid from the horse. As the horse turned, again, confused, wheeling in the snow, a hand on the Herul’s jacket tore him from the mount and flung him on his back in the snow. The Herul, down in the snow, perhaps a foot or more deep, doubtless half blinded by snow, may not have seen the lance lifted over him. Its point splintered away, stopped only by the icy ground. The startled mount, which had now veered away, its flanks bleeding from spur wounds, was gathered in by the formerly dismounted Herul. In an instant, he was in its saddle, bending over, seizing a lance from the snow where he had thrust it a moment before. The figure from the sledge stood for an instant near the downed Herul. The formerly dismounted Herul, now again mounted, was now back with the leader of the Heruls, and the other Herul. There were, then, three Heruls, all mounted. In the chest of the downed Herul, the lance shaft stood upright. It was like a marker, distinct against the snow. The figure hurried to the depression, or slit, or cleft in the snow and felt downward for the sword, and, in a moment, lifting it, cold, had it in his two hands.

The three would charge, in a coordinated fashion. He could see the leader, some yards away, with gestures, and quick words, organizing the attack. He had, perhaps, three or four seconds in which to act. He had no realistic expectation, afoot, armed as he was, of successfully resisting the coordinated attack of three such horsemen. These creatures were Heruls. Many learned to ride, clinging to a neck strap or harness, before they learned to walk. Peoples such as Heruls had given rise, long ago, on diverse worlds to tales of centaurs, and such creatures, creatures which were at one time man and horse, so much one with the mount they were. Imperial cavalry, if similarly armed, would not meet them in the field.

Four horses lay in the bloodied snow, one headless; one dying, disemboweled; one hobbled, with a broken leg, it snapped, broken against the hobble, in its earlier alarm; and one wounded, that whose body had been partially shielded by the leg of its rider, he dying in the snow to one side, the leg lost at the thigh, and the girth strap.

The figure in the snow tore his way to the wounded horse, seized its bridle near the jaws, cried out, kicked the animal, jerked its head upward, twice, and the horse, squealing, got its legs under itself and staggered up to its feet, turning, unsteady, eyes rolling, its paws, wet, crusted with ice, trampling its own blood down into the snow.

Almost at the same time the first Herul made his passage, but the horse was now between them.

The same-line attack is often used against an enemy afoot. Two riders, or more, are required for its prosecution. It is supposed that the first passage may fail of its mark, and particularly against an agile, ready foe. But the first rider, if he is evaded, in effect sets the target for the second rider. For example, if the target, seeking to avoid the first lance, moves to, or is moved to, a given position then that, of course, determines the line of the second rider, following closely on the heels of the first. With three riders, of course, the probabilities of a hit are considerably increased.

The second rider, too, plunged past, he, too, following as closely as he did, unable to move to the opposite side of the horse.

The leader of the Heruls, pulled his horse up, and it reared, squealing, scratching at the air.

The first two riders turned their mounts, the animals struggling in the snow.

The figure who had been in the snow was then on the back of the wounded horse.

At a call from the leader the two Heruls, urging their horses through the snow, rejoined him.

There was no saddle on the newly mounted fellow’s horse as it had been lost in the earlier stroke.

The weight on its back, and the activity of movement, freshened the blood on the horse’s right side.

Its rider, the newly mounted fellow, unfamiliar, strange to the horse, surely not a Herul, had learned something of horsemanship on a distant world, Vellmer, an imperial world, at the villa, or holding, of a citizen of Telnaria, one Julian, of the Aurelianii, a patrician, even of the senatorial class. He had even practiced riding bareback, for one might not always have time to saddle one’s horse, and had, in the saddle and bareback, familiarized himself with the lance, light and shock, and the scimitar and saber. But it is one thing to approach targets, and practice the address, the parry and thrust with the lance, the wielding of blades, of diverse weights, lengths, and curvatures, such things, from horseback, against wands and garlands, and quite another against men, and yet another, surely, against creatures such as Heruls. His lessons had not been, at that time, learned in the school of battle, the most pitiless of houses of instruction. He was not at that time a horsemen, not in the sense that worlds, and even Heruls, would know him, and fear him, later. He was at that time young, a very young man really, though with a terrible maturity for his age. He was, at that time, no more than a creature of dreadful, awesome promise. Too, the animal was unfamiliar, and wounded. Yet, even so, the Heruls drew back.

“It is an Otung horseman,” said one of the Heruls. He had met Otung horsemen long ago, in the spring and summer of 1103, in the chronology of the imperial claiming stone, set up in Venitzia, when Venitzia had been no more than a small military camp.

The new rider retained the long sword. Its flat was across the back of the animal.

The leader of the Heruls, too, remembered the Otung horsemen, those of the Otung Vandals.

“Do you remember them?” asked the Herul who had first spoken.

“Yes,” said the leader of the Heruls.

“They fought well,” said the Herul who had first spoken.

“Yes,” said the leader of the Heruls.

“They were very brave,” said the Herul.

“Yes,” said the leader of the Heruls, holding in his mount. Then he drew a circle in the air.

“Yes!” said the third Herul, elatedly.

The Otung horsemen, though valiant, had been, with their massive horses, dense formations and shock tactics, no match for the illusive, swarming, lighter-armed, more mobile Heruls, appearing, disappearing, attacking, drawing back, striking from behind, shifting the point of attack, hanging on the flanks, choosing the time and place of war, engaging only when it was to their advantage.

“Exercise care,” said the leader.

The attack of the circle is usually directed against an isolated horseman, whether isolated, oddly, in the tumult of battle or elsewhere more naturally, as in a meadow, a field, or a snowy plain. It means no more than a surrounding attack, and, for it, obviously, even two riders would suffice. One engages and defends, and the other, or others, attack. The engagement and defense, and the attack, of course, can be, and commonly is, transferred among riders, these modalities shifting as seems appropriate under the circumstances.

The newly mounted rider kicked back into the flanks of his mount, instantly seizing the initiative, and it lunged forward toward the Heruls, that it might with its rider strike into their very midst, but the beast was slowed, from its wound, and the snow, and the Heruls, though taken aback, though startled for a moment, not having expected this audacity, recovered and parted, one to the left, two to the right, and the rider’s horse, leaping and struggling, struck through the snow amongst them, the flash of the great blade better than a yard from the nearest foe. The rider turned swiftly toward one of the Heruls but he drew away from the charge. Each Herul now had freed the buckler from the side of his saddle. It could withstand the thrust of a lance, the slash of the saber, the deft flight of the scimitar, but the weight of the mightier blade must be turned, or slipped, else the buckler itself might be cut, or the hand within its single grip broken at the wrist, or the rider beaten down, perhaps out of the saddle. Too, the spinal cord of the mount, in a carelessly slipped thrust, might be severed. The Heruls were not eager to come within the thunder, the sweep, of that blade.

The rider turned his bleeding mount in the snow. The Heruls were now about him.

It was the circle.

He plunged his horse between two of the riders.

But in a moment they were with him, and then one was well ahead, and turned, waiting for him, lance ready, and the other two were behind him, one behind to his left, the other behind to his right. The rider reined in his mount. With a stronger, sounder mount, perhaps on a faster surface, he might have found open ground, and separated them in a line of pursuit, the swiftest closest to him, the second swiftest, in a minute or two, significantly behind, the slowest out of the fray, until it came back to him, in turn, but he had now reined in. The false flight, separating the pursuers, and the sudden turning back, to deal with them singly, was not practical. The rider was now surrounded. The four combatants stood still, mounted. The three Heruls formed the points of a triangle. Within this triangle was the newly mounted rider, alone. The distance of each of the Heruls to the target was some ten yards. The triangle, as a whole, was some forty or fifty yards out into the plain, out from the trampled snow about the sledge. It seemed quiet then on the snowy field.

“It is over,” called the leader of the Heruls to the young, blond rider.

The young fellow turned to face him. The leader had been behind the young fellow, to his left.

The young fellow grasped the hilt of the mighty sword in two hands.

His mount sank a little down, into the snow, its back legs unsteady beneath it.

Angrily, struggling to maintain his seat, the young man urged the horse up again.

Then it was on its feet once more.

The snow was red beneath it.

A little wind blew some snow toward the rider farthest from the sledge, he at the point, or apex, so to speak, of the triangle.

Very warily the three Heruls began to close in on the isolated horsemen amongst them.

They stopped some four or five yards from him, on their attack lines.

The leader of the Heruls looked from one of his men to the other.

He was satisfied.

“What is wrong?” suddenly called the leader of the Heruls to the Herul farthest out from the sledge, at the apex, so to speak, of the diminished triangle.

“It is the horse,” said the fellow. “It is the horse!”

The horse, suddenly, had lifted its head. It threw its head back and forth. Its eyes were like round balls. It seemed to fear to put its paws down to the snow. It began to prance. It reared. It squealed. Its nostrils were wide, like cups, opening and closing. It showed its teeth. It tore at the bit.

The newly mounted rider, he in the midst of the Heruls, spun about on his mount’s back, pulling back on the reins, and in that instant there rose up from the snow, from that desolate, bleak landscape, snarling, almost at his side, like an explosion, like a blizzard of white fire, springing, shedding snow, like a torrent of teeth and claws, a vi-cat!

It was a giant white.

The vi-cat was upon the hindquarters of the wounded beast, its claws sunk inches into its loins, its teeth buried in its rump, and its weight and twisting threw the squealing horse to its side in the snow, trapping the rider, by one leg, beneath it.

The horses of the Heruls bolted. For a moment they were unmanageable. The Heruls, struggling to retain their seats, dragged on reins, fighting for control. They screamed at the animals. The horses spun about, frantic, maddened, lost in the snow. The Heruls beat them with the butts of their lances. Back, again and again, jerked the bits. Blood gushed from the mouths of the terrified horses, washing about the jaws, drenching the lacerating metal.

Ravenously the vi-cat tore at its prey, feeding, holding it down with its paws, digging in it, its mouth and jaws thick with hair and blood.

The rider of the animal drew his leg loose from beneath the squealing horse, and stood unsteadily in the snow, half staggering, the leg almost buckling beneath him.

The sword was to one side, half in the snow, half visible.

The vi-cat fed, its ears back, its head half lost in the body of the horse, obliviously, deliriously, not more than two yards from where he stood.

The young man saw the sword.

The Heruls, the leader first, then the other two, brought their mounts under control.

The young man looked back to the vi-cat.

He must reach the sword.

The vi-cat paused in its feeding, suddenly.

It lifted its head from the body of the horse.

The young man stood extremely still. The sword was feet away.

He must not move, not perceptibly.

The rolling eyes of the horse turned wildly, piteously, toward him.

At the same time the vi-cat saw him. It snarled.

The young man was not a stranger to the vi-cat, for he, and other villagers, long ago, had hunted them, though not such as this one, not the giant white. He had killed his first vi-cat at the age of fourteen, one which had unexpectedly doubled back on hunters. Even at that age he had been larger and stronger than most men. He had killed the beast with an ax. He had given the skin to his best friend, Gathron. Later, years later, he and Gathron had had a fight. In this fight he had killed Gathron. The fight had been over a woman. He had soon left the village. He would go to Venitzia, and from there, elsewhere, anywhere, seek his fortune. He had worked his passage on a freighter. He had disembarked on Terennia. It was on Terennia that was to be found the school of Pulendius, in which gladiators were trained, for diverse games on diverse worlds.

The critical distance for the vi-cat tends to range from ten to twenty yards. Outside this range, if it is not hunting, and man, in any event, is not its common game, man and beast can usually pretend to ignore one another. The man turns aside, and the beast slinks away, into the high grass, as though it had not seen the man. Within this range, closer than ten to twenty yards, the particular distance tending to depend on the disposition, even the indolence, of the beast in question, this game of man and beast is not played. Within the critical distance the beast tends to approach, and investigate, and, from this point, things tend to rapidly and often unpleasantly escalate. It will also, often, without warning, charge within this distance. It might also be noted that even outside the critical distance it is important to avoid obvious eye contact with the beast. Once the beast knows it has been seen it is almost, oddly, as if a matter of honor had become involved, and that retreat would somehow result in a loss of face. This interpretation seems somewhat anthropomorphic, but the serious question is not whether or not it is anthropomorphic, but whether or not it is correct. It may be, you see, that a concept of honor is not unique to rational species, but that its rudiments, or such, lie much farther down the phylogenetic scales of different animal kingdoms. A sense of rightness, of fittingness, and such, may not be an invention of rational species but, in a sense, an inheritance of such species, later interpreted, naturally enough, in conceptual terms. It might be proposed, of course, that the animals which recognized themselves seen, or challenged, and responded aggressively, tended to replicate their genes, and that more casual organisms, indifferent to intruders, tolerant of strangers, and such, tended to be eliminated. But, if this is the case, this would seem to suggest merely that the rudiments of honor, or such, have been themselves selected for. This is not incomprehensible, of course. For example, it seems clear that the blind mechanisms of natural selection have produced, and perhaps inevitably, what is commonly taken to be their antithesis, thought, intentionality, consciousness, planning and reason. Civilization may be an inevitable precipitate of the jungle. Certainly within itself it bears the traces of dark origins. Indeed, there is some speculation that civilization is not a successor to, nor a replacement of, the jungle, but merely a transformation of the jungle, merely another of its many faces. And the jungle, too, you see, is not really a chaos, but, in its way, a highly articulated structure, with its habits and patterns, its history, its proven, tested, developed ways, its relationships, its ranks, its distances, its hierarchies.

The eyes of the man and beast met.

The man dove for the hilt of the blade, emergent from the snow, as the beast, snarling, scrambled over the trembling, shaking body of the expiring horse.

The man threw himself to the snow, scratching within it, and the beast was on him, pawing away the snow, biting at the half-buried back.

“Do not interfere,” said the leader of the Heruls to his fellows.

Their mounts, their sides heaving, blood frozen about the jaws, like threads of ice, their breath like fog bursting from their mouths and nostrils, were now under control.

The vi-cat tore away the back of the man’s coat, shaking it. It seemed puzzled.

The figure rolled to the side in the snow and leapt upon the vi-cat from the side, his arms about its neck, and the cat, enraged, reared up, lifting the man a yard from the snow. The man clung to its neck, his head down, at the base of the animal’s neck, down, away from the massive, turning head, and fangs. The beast sought futilely to reach him with its forepaws, the curved claws, four inches in length, extended, brandished, then flung itself down in the snow, rolling, and one could not see the man, and then one could, as, again and again, he was first submerged in the snow, and then again, body and hair a mass of snow, torn upward into view. The beast, roaring, tried to scrape him away, against the horse, now dead. The beast then stopped, and gasped, startled. It shook its head, and the man was flung to one side and the other. The man, as he could, tightened his grip. He could not slip his arms beneath the forelegs of the beast, and up then, behind the back of the neck, given the size of the beast. In such a way might a smaller animal’s neck be broken. Such things were learned, though with an intended application to men, in the school of Pulendius, on Terennia. Then the beast threw itself to its side in the snow, squirming down, to the frozen soil. Then, slowly, pressing itself against the ice, it, with its mighty bulk, began to turn itself, inch by inch. The man, in his garments, with his own bulk, could not then turn with the animal. He was wedged between the body of the beast and the soil, like cement, and the beast, inch by inch, was turning, moving in the grip of the man, bringing its jaws about, inch by inch, closer to the man’s head.

The vi-cat, gasping in the snow, continued to turn, inch by inch.

The man released the beast’s throat and scrambled to his feet in the snow, and the beast, too, scrambled up.

The beast stood there for a moment, sucking in air, blinking, snow about its eyes, looking for the man.

The man reached to the great sword and had it in his hand, half lifting it as the beast charged, and the man was struck from his feet, the sword lost, and the beast had stopped. Then it backed away, puzzled. It eyed the man, and licked at its own blood.

The man, bleeding, recovered the sword.

He lifted it unsteadily, half to the ready, and the beast was upon him, again, charging and snarling.

A yard of the blade disappeared into the chest of the beast.

A blow from the right paw of the beast smote the man at the side of the head, and he was struck to the side, and the blade, to which he clung, slid sideways in the animal, and, as the man fell to the snow, the blade, still in his grasp, was mostly out of the body.

The beast backed away, a foot or two, which movement slipped the blade further from its body, and, at the same time, drew it away from the hands of the fallen man. Then the beast shook itself, as though it might be shedding water. The blade was flung to the side.

“The Otung is dead,” said one of the Heruls.

The beast returned to the still warm body of the horse, and its feeding. Its own blood mingled with that of the horse. There was little sound then except the breathing of the horses of the Heruls, and the feeding of the vi-cat.

The figure struck down in the snow staggered to its feet. It felt about for the great sword. It had it again in its hands.

Blood was now coming from within the lungs of the vi-cat, and it gushed forth from its mouth and nostrils, and, as it fed, it drank its own blood.

The man staggered toward the vi-cat with the blade raised, but fell into the snow before he could reach it.

The vi-cat died feeding.

“The Otung is dead,” said a Herul.

“He would be worth running for the dogs,” said another.

“He is dead,” said the Herul who had first spoken.

“I do not think so,” said the leader of the Heruls. “Tie him. Put him on the sledge.”

Olar and Varix, who were Basung Vandals, were put in the traces of the sledge, to draw it.

The horse whose leg had been broken was killed, with a blow of the ax of Varix.

In a few moments the three Heruls left the trampled, bloody snow.

They did not bury their fellows, but left them, as was their common wont, for the beasts of the plains.

They cut some meat from the dead horses, for provender on the trip back to the wagons and herds.

They also skinned the vi-cat, for such a pelt was of great value. Indeed, from such a pelt might be fashioned the robe of a king.