Marauders of Gor (42 page)

           
I rubbed my hands together, and blew on them. My feet too, were cold. The sweat in my shirt, now that I
 
was not climbing, was frozen. The shirt was stiff, cold. In the night on the Torvaldsberg, even in the middle of the summer, without warm garments, a man might freeze. The wind then began to rise, sweeping the ledge. From where we stood we could see the black ruins of Svein Blue Tooth's hall and holdings, the desolated thing fields, the sea, Thassa, with the ships at the beach.

           
I looked at the Forkbeard.

           
"Let us continue our journey," he said.

           
"Let us descend and meet the Kurii, while we still have strength," I said.

           
"Let us continue our journey," he said.

           
Moving carefully, he began to climb. I followed him. After perhaps half an Ahn, I looked back. The two Kurii, by a parallel route, were following.

           
That night on the Torvaldsberg we did not freeze.

           
We huddled on a ledge, between rocks, sheltered from the wind, shivering with cold, miserable, listening for Kurii.

           
But they did not approach.

           
We had chosen our ledge well.

           
Twice rocks rained down to the ledge, but we were protected by an overhang.

           
"Would you like to hear me sing?" asked Ivar.

           
"Yes," I said, "it might drive the Kurii away."

           
Undeterred by my sarcasm, brilliant though it was, Ivar broke into song. He knew, it seemed, a great many songs.

           
No more rocks rained down to the ledge.

           
"Song, you see," said Ivar, "soothes even Kurii."

           
"More likely," I said, "they have withdrawn from earshot."

           
"You jest delightfully," acknowledged the Forkbeard, "I had not thought it in you.

           
"Yes," I admitted.

           
"I will teach you a song," he said, "and we shall sing lt together." The song dealt with the problems of a man attempting to content one hundred bond-maids, one after the other, it is rather repetitious, and the number of bondmaids decreases by one in each round. Needless to say, it is a song which is not swiftly dispatched. I have, incidentally, a very fine singing voice.

           
In singing, we little noticed the cold. Yet, toward dawn, we took turns napping. "We will need our strength," said the Forkbeard.

           
How marvelous in the morning seemed the sun.

           
"If the Kurii are above us," I said, recalling the rain of stones, "is this not out opportunity to descend?"

           
 
"Kurii corner their pray," said the Forkbeard. "In the light, they will be below us. They will wish to keep between us and escape. Further, we would have little opportunity to escape, even if they were above us. The descent is difficult." I recalled the two Kurii, precariously clinging to the wall of rock, one of which had fallen attempting to reach us, the other of which Ivar had struck from the wall with a heavy stone. I shuddered.

           
"There they are," said Ivar, looking over the brink. He waved to them. Then he turned, cheerily, to me. "Let us continue our journey," he said.

           
"You speak," I said, "as though you had some objective."

           
"I do," said the Forkbeard.

           
Again we began climbing. Not long after we had again taken to the rocks, we heard and saw the Kurii, some two hundred feet below and to one side, following us.

           
It was shortly after the tenth hour, the Gorean noon, that we reached the peak of the Torvaldsberg.

           
Although there is much snow on the heights of the Torvaldsberg, there were also, on the peak, many areas of bare rock, swept by the wind which, on the peak, seems almost constant. I crossed a patch of snow, ankle deep, crusted, to ascend a snow-free, rounded rock.

           
I cannot express the beauty of the view from the Torvaldsberg. I have climbed it, I thought. And I am here.

           
There had been danger, there had been the struggle, the challenge, and then, here, suddenly, torturously purchased, humbling me, exalting me, was a victory which I felt was not mine so much as that of a world, that of vision, that of beauty. I had not conquered a mountain; the mountain when I had paid its price, that I might understand the value of the gift, had lifted me to where I might see how insignificant I was and how beautiful and precious was reality and life, and the sun on a bleak, cold land. Ivar stood beside me, not speaking.

           
"You were here once," I said, "as a boy."

           
"Yes," said Ivar. "I have never forgotten it."

           
"Did you come here to die?" I asked.

           
"No," he said. "But I have been unable to find it."

           
I looked at him, puzzled.

           
"I could not find it before,"he said. "I cannot find it now." "What?" I asked.

           
"It does not matter now,"he said.

           
He turned about.

           
Approaching were the two Kurii. We watched them. They, too, interestingly, stopped. They stood together, in the snow, looking out, over the world.

           
Then they regarded us. We loosened our weapons. The Kurii unslung their shields, their axes. We drew our swords. The Kurii fixed on their left arms the heavy, rounded iron shields, took the great axes, seven feet in length, grasped some two feet from the bottom of the handle, in their massive right fists. I had never thought much of it before, but Kurii, like men, were dominantly right handed. I conjectured then, that like men, the left hemisphere of their brains were dominant.

           
Ivar and I leaped from the rock; the two Kurii, one to each of us, approached. Their ears were laid back; they we-re cautious; they leaned slightly forward, shambling, crouching.

           
Priest-Kings, I recalled, regarded Kurii and men as rather equivalent species, similar products of similar processes of evolution, similar products of similarly cruel selections, though on worlds remote from one another.

           
"Kur," I wondered, "are you my brother?"

           
The great ax swept toward me. I rolled over it, hitting the snow, slipping. I tried to drive in to thrust with
 
my blade. I slipped again. The ax fell where I had been. A piece of granite, shattered from the rock, stung me. I stumbled backward. The Kur, not hurrying, ax ready, stalked me. I saw its eyes over the shield, the ax light in its great fist. "Hah!" I cried, feinting as though to charge. The ax tensed, but did not swing. Then it snarled and drew back the ax, to the full length of its long arm. I knew the blade could not reach me in time. I charged. It was what the Kur desired. I had been outwitted. The heavy shield, with fantastic force, with a sidelong motion, a sweep, struck me, fending me away, hurtling me for forty feet through the air. I struck snow rolling, half-blinded. The ax fell again, shattering granite. I was on my feet. Again the shield struck me, like a hammer, the striking surface of which is more than a yard across Again I was hurled to one side. I stumbled to my feet. I could not move my left arm. I thought it broken. The shoulder was like wood. The ax swung again. I stumbled back. Crying out I lost my balance, turning, and plunged from the peak. I fell to a ledge twenty feet below. The ax, like a pendulum, swept down. I hugged the surface of the ledge. The ax swept past me. I saw, to my right, a small, dark opening, irregular, jagged, about a foot in width and height I leaped to my feet and ran to the brink of the edge. There was no descent. The lips of the Kur drew back, revealing the fangs. I saw Ivar, on the flat above, wild-eyed. "Ivarl" I cried. "Ivar!" I heard the blood shriek of an unseen Kur. Ivar turned and leaped to the ledge below, joining me. The two Kurii stood on the flat above, snarling. "Look!" I cried to him, indicating the opening. His eyes saw the opening. They glinted. I moved the fingers of my left hand. There was feeling. I did not know if the arm were broken or not. I thrust the sword into its scabbard. Ivar nodded. One of the Kurii, snarling, leaped to the ledge with us. I hurled a rock at it. The rock struck the shield, bounding with a clang away, down into the abyss. I thrust the Forkbeard toward the hole. He leaped to it, and squirmed through. The second Kur dropped to the ledge. I threw another rock, weightier than the first. It, too, with a sound of granite on metal, was fended away, this time by the shield of the second Kur. I leaped to the hole and forced my body through the opening. The Forkbeard caught my
 
hand and dragged me inside. One of the long arms of a Kur thrust inside, reaching for us. The Forkbeard thrust at it with his sword but the blade was diverted, his arm striking against stone. The Kur withdrew its arm. We crawled back further in the tiny opening. Outside, we could see the heads of the two Kurii, peering within. Their tentacled paws felt the width of the opening. One of them thrust his head within and half a shoulder. The Forkbeard, sword poised, crawled to thrust at it. The Kur withdrew. Then, both of them squatted down, some feet out on the ledge. Kurii are patient hunters. They would wait. I rubbed my left arm and shoulder. I lifted the arm, and moved it. It was not broken. I had learned that the Kur shield could be as devastating a weapon as the war hammer of Hunjer. I wondered how many who had learned that had lived.

           
I looked outside. The Kurii were waiting.

           
"Come with me," said Ivar. His voice was excited. I turned to face him. I wondered how deep might be this little cave. I expected not more than twenty or thirty feet at most. On my hands and knees I crawled to join him.

           
"Here," said Ivar. "On the wall!"

           
He took my fingers and pressed them to the wall. I felt marks, rather vertical, with angular extensions.

           
"You have found it!" he cried. "You have found it, Tarl Red Hair!"

           
"I do not understand," I said.

           
"Follow me!" whispered Ivar Forkbeard. "Follow me!"

           
Chapter 16
                 
The war arrow

           
Following the Forkbeard, on hands and knees, I crawled down the narrow passage, at one point turning to my left side to slide through a narrow aperture. Within this aperture, I extended my hands and then, carefully, hands held up feeling, I stood up. To one side I heard the Forkbeard fumbling about in the darkness. I heard the strike of two small pieces of iron pyrite on one another, taken from the Forkbeard's belt wallet, and saw a scattering of sparks. Then it was dark again. "There is cut moss against the edge," said the Forkbeard. There was another scattering of sparks . This time the sparks fell into a heap, one of several, each about five inches high and four inches wide, of miniscule, lacelike moss twigs. This tinder flared immediately into flame. In that instant I saw we were in a large, squared passage. I saw a torch in a ring, one of others. There was carving in the passage, rune letterings and pictographs, in linear borders Before the bit of flaring moss turned to a million red pin points the Forkbeard took one of the torches and thrust it to the moss. I saw that, near some of the patches of moss, were pieces of flint and steel, near others tiny piles of iron pyrites. I shivered.
   
 

           
The Forkbeard lifted the torch. I, too, took a torch

           
Neither of us spoke.

           
The passage extended beyond us, disappearing in the darkness beyond the light of our torches. It was about eight feet in height and width. It was carved from the living rock. Along its edges, spaced some twelve feet from one another, on both sides, were torch rings, with unlit torches, which might be lit. The piles of tinder and flint and steel, or iron pyrites, lay now behind us, or to one side. I lifted the torch to the borders, running linearly down the chamber, disappearing into the darkness before us. The lettering was in the high, angular script of the north; the pictographs seemed primitive.

           
"These are old runes," said Ivar.

           
"Can you read them?" I asked.

           
"No," said Ivar.

           
My hair rose on the back of my neck. I looked at one of the pictographs. It was a man astride a quadruped.