John Norman - Marauders of Gor

The body of the dead Kur, inert, lay heavy, crooked, in the dirt. The bloodied ax was to one side. The shield arm was twisted in one of the straps. The other strap was broken.

The eyes of the leader of the Kurii, whom I knew to be my enemy, blazed upon me. His horror, seeing his fallen brother of the killing blood, had now become rage, outrage. I, one of the herd, of the cattle, had dared to strike one of the master species, a superior form of life. A Kur had been killed.

I set myself.

Again in the hall of Svein Blue Tooth rang the blood shriek of the Kurii. On each side of the leader, plunging toward us, howling, swept Kurii. Too, they pressed in from the sides, axes falling.

I do not choose to speak in detail of what followed. Kurii themselves, axes like sheets of iron rain, shattered that fearful throng, splitting it into hundreds of screaming fragments of terror. A man not more than a yard from me was cut half in two, from the head to the belt, in one stroke. I managed, as the Kur was twisting his ax, trying to free it of the body, to drive my blade through its neck, under the left ear.

I saw Ivar Forkbeard, his sword gone, lost in the body of a nearby Kur, his knife in his hand, one hand thrusting away and upward

the jaws of a Kur, repeatedly plunge his knife into the huge chest of the beast. There was uneven footing in the hall. We slipped in the blood. It filled the pit of the long fire. It was splashed about our trousers and tunics.

Near one wall I yanked a spear free from the hands of a fallen man-at-arms. Momentarily I sickened at the sight of the exposed lungs, sucking air, the hand scratching at the wall beside him. I hurled the spear. It had a shaft of seven foot Gorean, a head of tapered bronze, some eighteen inches in length. At close range it can pierce a southern shield, shatter its point through a seven-inch beam. It passed half through the body of a Kur. Its ax fell. My act had saved a man. But, in the next instant, he had fallen beneath the ax of another.

I pressed my back against the wall. A beam fell, burning, from the roof at the southeastern corner of the hall. I heard bond-maids screaming. Kurii looked upward. Their nostrils were shut against the smoke. The eyes of many of them, commonly black-pupiled, yellowish in the cornea, seemed red, swollen, veined. I saw one, suffering in the smoke and sparks, look up from feeding, and then again thrust his head down to the meat, clothes torn away from the chest, on which it was feeding. I saw Ivar Forkbeard, with a spear, set himself against the charge of an unarmed Kur. He set the butt of the spear deep in the earth behind him. The spear's shaft gouged a trench six inches deep behind him, and then stopped, and the Kur, biting in the air, eyes like fire, backed away, and fell backward; Ivar leaped away as another ax sought him.

I saw, across the room, the leader of the Kurii, it with the golden band on its arm.

I recalled its words on the platform of the assembly, in the field of the thing. In rage it had cried, "A thousand of you can die beneath the claws of a single Kur!"

There were perhaps now no more than a hundred or a hundred and fifty men left alive in the hall.

"Follow me!" cried Svein Blue Tooth. His ax, and those of his men, had shattered through the rear of the hall. Like panic-stricken urts, thirty-five or forty men thrust through the hole, sometimes jamming themselves momentarily within it, some tearing the flesh from their bodies and the sides of their faces on the splintered wood. "Hurry! Hurry!" cried the Blue Tooth. His garments were half torn from him but, still, about his neck, on its chain, was the tooth of the Hunjer whale, dyed blue, by which men in Torvaldsland knew him. Svein thrust two more of his men through the aperture. Kurii were between me and the opening. Ivar Forkbeard, and others, too, were similarly cut off. Another beam fell, flaming and smoking from the roof, striking into the dirt floor, and leaning against the wall. The hangings which had decorated the hall were now gone, burned away, the walls scorched behind them. The only portion of the wall that was clearly afire, however, and threatening to cave in, was the eastern edge of the southern wall.

I saw ten Kurii leap to the back of the hall, to where Svein Blue Tooth and his men had made their opening, to prevent the escape of others.

They stood before the opening, axes lifted, snarling. One man who approached too closely was slashed to the spine with a sweep of the bluish ax. One who begged mercy in the center of the hall was cut in twain, the blade of the ax driving into the very dirt itself, emerging covered with dirt and blood, streaked with ash.

"The lamps!" cried the Forkbeard to me. "Red Hair," he cried, "the lamps!"

Another beam from the roof, burning, dropped heavily to the floor of the hall.

I saw the Kur who held the leashes of the caught bond-maids dragging the girls from the hall. He held the leashes, several in each hand, of more than forty catches. The collars were of thick leather, with metal insert locks, flat metal bolts slipping, locking, into spring catches; when closed, two rectangular metal plates adjoined; sewn into each collar was a light, welded metal ring; about this was closed the leash snap; the action of the leash snap was mechanical but, apparently, it was beyond the strength of a woman to open it. The leashes were some fifteen feet in length, allowing in this radius one Kur to hold several captives at once. The Kur left the hall. Screaming, stumbling, helplessly, the caught women followed their beast master.

I saw Kurii, methodically, blow after blow, striking the fallen, lest any might have sought to hide among the dead. Some men, tangled in the bodies, screamed, the axes falling upon them. The wounded, too, were methodically dispatched. I observed the patterns; they were regular, linear, of narrow width; no body was missed. The Kurii, I realized, were efficient; they were, of course, intelligent; they were, of course, like men, rational animals. One man leaped screaming to his feet and ran. He was cut down immediately, running almost headlong into a Kur, one of the Kurii set before the killing line, to intercept such fugitives. Men, it seemed to me, could be no match for such animals.

Kurii now encircled the group of men near the western wall of the hall. Most of them moaned, crying out with misery; many fell to their knees.

I saw two Kurii turn in my direction.

I saw Ivar Forkbeard standing among the huddled men near the western wall of the hall. He was easily visible, being one of the few standing. He looked red and terrible in the reflection of the flames; the veins on his forehead looked like red cables; his eyes, almost like those of the Kurii themselves, blazed. His long sword, now again in his hand, which he had recovered from the body of the Kur in which he had left it, was again bloodied, and freshly so; his left sleeve was torn away; there were claw marks on his neck. "On your feet!" he cried to the men. "On your feet! Do battle!" But even those who stood seemed numb with terror. "Are you of Torvaldsland?" he asked. "Do battle! Do battle!" But no man dared to move. In the presence of Kurii they seemed only cattle.

I saw the lips of Kurii draw back. I saw axes lift.

Then again the Forkbeard's voice, through the smoke, the sparks, suddenly half choking, drifted across the hall to me.

"The lamps!" he cried again, as he had before. "Red Hair," he cried, "the lamps!"

Then I understood him, as I had not before. The tharlarion-oil lamps, on their chains, hanging from rings on the roof beams! The apertures in the ceiling of the hall, through which smoke might pass! He had intended that I would escape.

But I had played Kaissa with him.

"First," I called, "the Forkbeard!" I would not leave without him. We had played Kaissa.