Marauders of Gor (45 page)

           
The commander of a military Kur, thus, might better be thought
 
of 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 Kurii
 
are 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 higher
 
the 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, or
 
what is involved in moving
 
from 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 are
 
based 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 male
 
or 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 Gorean
 
males, 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.