Marauders of Gor (49 page)

           
"I am not a Kur girl," she cried. Indeed, she did not wear the heavy leather collar, with ring and lock, which Kurii fastened on their female cattle. She wore a collar of gold, and earrings, and, torn and muddied, a slip of golden silk, of the sort with which masters sometimes display their girl slaves. It was incredibly brief. "I have a human master," she said, angrily, "to whom I demand to be imrnediately returned."

           
"We took her, Honey Cake and I," said Olga.

           
"Your master," said Ivar, thinking, recollecting the captain behind whom he had seen her heeling at the thing, "is Rolf of Red Fjord." Rolf of Red Fjord, I knew, was a minor captain. He, and his men, had participated in the fighting.

           
"No!" laughed the girl. "After the contest of beauty, in which, through the cheating of the judges, I lost, I was sold to the agent of another, a much greater one than a mere Rolf of Red Fjord. My master is truly powerful! Release me this instant! Fear him!"

           
Olga, to the girl's outrage, tore away her golden silk, revealing her to the Forkbeard. "Oh!" she cried, in fury. Gunnhild had won the contest, and won it fairly. But I was forced to admit that the wench now before us, struggling to free her wrists, now revealed to us, luscious, sensuous, short, squirming, infuriated, was incredibly desirable; we considered her body, her face, her obvious intelligence; she would bring a high price; she would make a delicious armful in the furs.

           
"How is it that you have dared to strip me!" demanded the girl.

           
"Who is your master?" inquired Ivar Forkbeard.

           
She drew herself up proudly.
 
She threw back her shoulders. In
 
her eyes, hot with fury, was the arrogance of the high-owned slave. She smiled insolently, contemptuously. Then she said, "Thorgard of Scagnar."

           
"Thorgard of Scagnar!" called a voice, that of Gorm. We turned. Thorgard of Scagnar, raiment torn, bloodied, a broken spear shaft bound behind his back and before his arms, his wrists pulled forward, held at the sides of his rib cage, fastened by a rope across his belly, herded by men with spears, stumbled forward. A length of simple, coarse tent rope, some seven feet in length, had been knotted about his neck. By this tether Gorm dragged him before Ivar Forkbeard.

           
The golden girl regarded Thorgard of Scagnar with horror. Then, eyes terrified, she regarded Ivar Forkbeard, of Forkbeard's Landfall. "You are mine now," said the Forkbeard. Then he said to Honey Cake, "Take my new slave to the pen."

           
"Yes, Master," she laughed. Then she took the golden girl, the southern girl, by the hair. "Come, Slave," she said. She dragged the bound silk girl, bent over, behind her. "I think," said Ivar Forkbeard, "I will give her for a month to Gunnhild, and my other wenches. They will enjoy having their own slave. Then, when the month is done, I will turn her over to the crew, and she will be, then, as my other bond-maids, no more or less."

           
Ivar turned to regard Thorgard of Scagnar. He stood proudly, bound, feet spread.

           
Hilda, naked, in her collar, knelt to one side and behind the Forkbeard. She covered herself with her hands as best she could, her head down.

           
The Forkbeard gestured to the several captive slave girls, loot from Thorgard's tent, kneeling, wrists bound behind their backs, in their brief, mired silk, in throat coffle, those girls Olga, light-heartedly, had secured for him. "Take them to the pen," he said to Olga.
 
Olga slapped her switch in the palm of her hand. "On your feet, Slaves," she said. The girls struggled to their feet. "To the pen, hurry!" she snapped. "You will be given to men!" The girls began to run. As each one passed Olga, she, below the small of the back, was expedited with a sharp stroke of the switch. Then Olga, much pleased, laughing, trotting beside them, herded the running, weeping, stumbling coffle toward the pen.

           
Now the Forkbeard returned his attention to Thorgard of Scagnar, who regarded him evenly.

           
"Some of his men escaped," said Gorm. Then Gorm said, "Shall we strip him?"

           
"No," said the Forkbeard.

           
"Kneel," said Gorm to Thorgard of Scagnar, roughly. He prodded him with the butt of a spear.

           
"No," said the Forkbeard.

           
 
The two men faced one another. Then the Forkbeard said, "Cut him loose."

           
It was done.

           
"Give him a sword,"said the Forkbeard.

           
This, too, was done, and the men, and the girl, too, Hilda, stepped back, clearing a circle for the two men. Thorgard gripped the hilt of the sword. It was cloudy. "You were always a fool," said Thorgard to the Forkbeard.

           
"No man is without his weakness," said Ivar.

           
Suddenly, crying with rage, his beard wild behind him, Thorgard of Scagnar, a mighty foe, now armed, rushed upon the Forkbeard, who fended away the blow. I could tell the weight of the stroke by the way it fell on the blade, and how the Forkbeard's blade responded to it. Thorgard was an immensely strong man. I had little doubt that he could beat the arm of a man to weakness, and then, when it was slowed, tired, no longer able to respond with sureness, with reflexive swiftness, in a great attack, he would hack through to
 
the body. I had seen such men fight before. Once the sheer weight of the attacker's blows had turned and driven, interposed, his opponent's sword half through the man's own neck. But I did not think the Forkbeard would weary. On his own ship he, not unoften, drew oar. He accepted the driving blows, like iron thunderbolts, on his own blade, turning them aside. But he struck little. Hilda, her hand before her mouth, eyes frightened, watched this war of two so mighty combatants. Too, of course, the weight of such blows, particularly with the long, heavy swords of Torvaldsland, take their toll from the striking arm, as well as the fending arm.

           
Suddenly Thorgard stepped back. The Forkbeard grinned at him. The Forkbeard was not weakened. Thorgard stepped back another step, warily. The Forkbeard followed him. I saw stress in the eyes of Thorgard, and, for the first time, apprehension. He had spent much strength.

           
"It is I who am the fool," said Thorgard.

           
"You could not know," said the Forkbeard.

           
Then Ivar Forkbeard, as we followed, step by step, drove Thorgard back. For more than a hundred yards did he drive him back, blow following blow.

           
They stopped once, regarding one another. There seemed to be now little doubt as to the outcome of the battle.

           
Then we followed further, even up the slope of the valley, and to a high place, cliffed, which overlooked Thassa.

           
It puzzled me that the Forkbeard had not yet struck the final blow.

           
At last, his back to the cliff, Thorgard of Scagnar could retreat no further. He could no longer lift his arm.

           
Behind him, green and beautifill, stretched Thassa. The sky was cloudy. There was a slight wind, which moved his hair and beard.

           
"Strike," said Thorgard.

           
On Thassa, some hundreds of yards offshore, were ships. One of these I noted was Black Sleen, the ship of Thorgard. Gorm had told us that some of his men had escaped. They had managed to flee to the ship, and make away.

           
Beside me, agonized, I saw the eyes of Hilda.

           
"Strike," said Thorgard.

           
It would have been a simple blow. The men of Ivar Forkbeaard were stunned.

           
Ivar returned to us. "I slipped," he said.

           
Gorm and others ran to the cliff. Thorgard, seizing his opportunity, had turned and plunged to the waters below. We could see him swimming. From Black Sleen we saw a small boat being lowered, rowing toward him.

           
"It was careless of me," admitted the Forkbeard.

           
Hilda crept to him, and knelt before him. She put her head softly to his feet, and then lifted her head and, tears in her eyes, looked up at him. "A girl is grateful," she said, "-my Jarl."

           
"To the pen with you, Wench," said the Forkbeard.

           
"Yes," she said, "my Jarl! Yes!" She leapt up. When she turned about, the Forkbeard dealt her a mighty blow, swift and stinging, with the flat of his sword. She was, after all, only a common bond-maid. She cried out, startled, sobbing, and stumbled more than a dozen steps before she regained her balance. Then she turned and, sobbing, laughing, cried out joyfully, "I love you, my Jarl! I love you!" He raised the weapon again, flat side threatening her, and she turned and, laughing, sobbing, only one of his girls, fled to the pen.

           
The Forkbeard and I, and the others, returned to the tents of Thorgard of Scagnar.

           
Svein Blue Tooth was there. We saw, in a long line, shackled, fur matted, Kurii being herded with spear butts through the camp. "The bridge of jewels worked well," said Svein Blue Tooth to Ivar Forkbeard. "Hundreds, fleeing, were slain by our archers. Arrows of Torvaldsland found the slaughter pleasing."

           
"Did any escape?" inquired Ivar.

           
The Blue Tooth shrugged. "Several," he said, "but I think the men of Torvaldsland now need fear little the return of any Kur army."

           
I thought what he said doubtless true. Single, or scattered, Kurii
 
might, as before, forage south, but I did not think they would again regroup in vast numbers. They had learned and so, too, had the men of Torvaldsland, that men could stand against them. This fact, red with blood of both beasts and men, had been demonstrated in a remote valley of the north. I smiled to myself. The demonstration would not have been lost, either, on the advanced Kurii of the steel worlds. It was ironic. I, Tarl Cabot, who had abandoned the service of Priest-Kings, had yet, in this far place, been instrumental in their work. The Forkbeard and I, it had been, who had found the arrow of war in the Torvaldsberg, who had touched it to other arrows, which, in hundreds of villages and camps, over thousands of square pasangs of rugged, inlet-cleft terrain, had been carried to the free men of the north, that they might fetch their weapons, rally and, shoulder to shoulder, do battle. And, too, I had fought. It was strange, as it seemed to me, that it should be so. I thought of golden Misk, the Priest-King, of once, long ago, when his antennae had touched the palms of my uplifted hands, and Nest Trust had been pledged between us. Then I dismissed the thought.

           
I saw, to one side, large Hrolf, from the East, who had fought with us, he leaning on his spear.

           
We knew little of him. But he had fought well; What else need one know of a man?

           
"What is to be done with these captive Kurii?" I asked Svein Blue Tooth, indicating the line of imprisoned beasts, some wounded, being driven past us, survivors of the slaughter on the Bridge of Jewels.

           
"We shall break the teeth from their jaws," he said. "We shall tear the claws from their paws. They, suitably chained will be used as beasts of burden."

           
The great plan of the Others, of the Kurii of the steel worlds, their most profound and brilliant probe of the defenses of Priest-Kings, had failed. Native Kurii, bred from ship's survivors over centuries, would not, it seemed, if limited to the primitive weapons permitted men, be capable of conquering Gor, isolating the Priest-Kings in the Sardar, until they could be destroyed, or, alternatively, be used to lure the Priest-Kings into a position where they would be forced to betray their own weapons laws, arming men, which would be dangerous, or utilizing their own significant technology, thereby, perhaps, revealing the nature, location and extent oftheir power, information that might then be exploited at a later date by the strategists of the steel worlds. The plan had been brilliant, though careless of the value, if any, placed on Kurii life. I supposed native Kurii did not command the respect of the educated, trained Kurii of the ships. They were regarded, perhaps, as a different, lesser, or inferior breed, expendable in the strategems of their betters. The failure of the Kurii invasion, of course, moved the struggle to a new dimension. I wondered what plans now, alternate plans doubtless formed years or centuries ago, would now be implemented. Perhaps, already, such plans were afoot. I looked at the ragged line of defeated, shackled Kurii. They had failed. But already, I suspected, Kurii, fresh, brilliant, calculating, masters in the steel worlds, in their command rooms, their map rooms and strategy rooms, were, even before the ashes in this remote valley in the
 
north had cooled, engaged in the issuance of orders. I looked about at the field of battle, under the cloudy sky. New coded instructions, doubtless, had already been exchanged among the distant steel worlds. The Kur is a tenacious beast. It seems well equipped by its remote, savage evolution to be a dominant life form. Ivar Forkbeard and Svein Blue Tooth might congratulate themselves on their victory. I, myself, more familiar with Kurii, with the secret wars of Priest-Kings, suspected that men had not yet heard the last of such beasts.