John Norman - Beasts of Gor

Two more tabuk bounded through.

“Kill him!” I heard the chief of those guardsmen say. Four more tabuk trotted past.

There would not be enough tabuk! The guards now crept more close, blades ready.

“Aja! Aja!” I heard, from behind the fence. “Aja! Hurry, my brothers! Aja!”

There was a cheer from those who labored at the destruction of the wall.

Forty or more tabuk suddenly, with startling rapidity, a tawny blur, trotted past me. They were led by a magnificent animal, a giant buck, fourteen hands at the shoulder, with swirling horn of ivory more than a yard in length. It was the leader of the herd of Tancred.

“Aja!” I heard from behind the fence.

Suddenly it was as though a dam had broken. I threw myself back against the logs. The guardsmen broke and fled.

Floodlike, like a tawny, thundering avalanche, blurred, snorting, tossing their heads and horns, the tabuk sped past me. I saw the leader, to one side, on a hillock, stamping and snorting, and lifting his head. He watched the tabuk streaming past him and then he bounded from the hillock, and, racing, made his way to the head of the herd. More tabuk now, a river better than sixty feet wide, thundered past me. I heard logs splintering, and saw them breaking and giving way. They fell and some, even, on the backs of the closely massed animals, were carried for dozens of yards, wood floating and churned, tossed on that tawny, storming river, that relentless torrent of hide and horn, turned toward the north. I moved to my left as more logs burst loose. In minutes the river of tabuk was more than two hundred yards wide. The ground shook beneath me. I could hardly see nor breathe for the dust.

I was aware of Imnak near me, grinning.

I tied her wrists together. There was a great cheer from my men.

As I had anticipated there had been little actual fighting.

Once the wall had been broken, Drusus, of the Assassins, had departed with several men.

Several guardsmen, too, their discipline broken, had sought supplies and fled south. The wall broken there seemed little point to them to remain and die.

We had little difficulty with the guards and work crews east of the break in the wall. It had been a simple matter to don the uniforms of guards and seem to march a new chain of men east. The men in the chain, of course, were not locked within, save for those at the end of the chain who had been former guards, now clad in the rags of laborers. I was of the warriors, and Ram, as it turned out, was quite skillful with the sword. Confronted with us and the majority of the putatively chained laborers, suddenly throwing off their chains and encircling them, they offered little resistance. Soon they, like their colleagues, wore locked manacles and laborers’ rags. At the eastern end of the wall a similar ruse surprised the camp of hunters. We lost some of these as they fled south but others we captured and chained, acquiring several longbows, which might he used at the latitude of the wall, and several hundred arrows. Some nine men among our forces were of the peasants. To these I gave the bows.

At the end of the wall Imnak wept, seeing the strewn fields of slaughtered tabuk. The fur and hide of the tabuk provides the red hunters not only with clothing, but it can also be used for blankets, sleeping bags and other articles. The hides can serve for harnesses for the snow sleen and their white-skinned, female beasts. Too they may be used for buckets and tents, and for kayaks, the light, narrow hunting canoes of skin from which sea mammals may be sought. Lashings, harpoon lines, cords and threads can he fashioned from its sinews. Carved, the bone and horn of the animal can function as arrow points, needles, thimbles, chisels, wedges and knives. Its fat and bone marrow can be used as fuel. Too, almost all of the animal is edible. Even its eyes may be eaten and, from its stomach, the half-digested mosses on which it has been grazing.

Fluttering jards, covering many of the carcasses like gigantic flies, stirred, swarming upward as Imnak passed them, and then returned to their feasting.

He looked about, at the slaughtered animals. Only one in ten had been skinned.

The sinew had not been taken, nor the meat nor bones. Some hides had been taken, and some horn. But the mission of the hunters had not been to harvest from the herd of Tancred. Their mission had been to desttoy it.

With a sudden cry he fell upon a bound hunter. I prevented him from killing the man.

“We must go,” I said. I vomited. My stomach had been turned by the stench.

I used capture knots on her wrists. There was a great cheer from my men.

“I am your prisoner, Captain,” she said.

I did not speak to her, but handed her, her wrists bound before her body, to one of my men.

“We shall hold you to your word,” said Sorgus, the hide bandit, uneasily.

“It is good,” I told him.

He, with his men, some forty, who had taken refuge in the wooden hail, that serving as the headquarters of the wall commander, filed tensely between the ranks of my men. I had permitted them their weapons. I had little interest in the slaughter of minions.

The men and guardsmen who had been at the wall’s center, in the buildings there, and west along the wall, including the hunters at that termination of the structure, learning the breaking of the wall and the freeing and arming of many laborers, had for the most part fled. Others, however, under the command of Sorgus, had boldly rallied to turn the tides of victory in their favor. They had not at that time, however, realized that nine of our men, peasants, gripped bows of yellow Ka-la-na wood. Behind each of these nine stood men bearing sheafa of arrows. Of the original force of Sorgus, some ninety-five men, fifty had succumbed to the fierce rain of steel-tipped arrows which had struck amongst them. Only five of his men had been able to reach the bowmen. These I slew. Sorgus, with some forty cohorts then, seeing me deploy bowmen to his rear, broke for the hail and barricaded himself within.

“He is waiting,” said Ram, “for the return of the tarnsmen, those on patrol.”

We would have little protection from attack from the air.

The arrow flighted from a diving tarn, allied with gravity and the momentum of the winged beast, can sink a foot into solid wood.

Such an attack would necessitate the scattering of my men, their seeking cover. Defensive archery, directed upward from the ground, fighting against the weights of gravity, is reduced in both range and effectiveness. The dispersal of my men, of course, would provide Sorgus and his men with their opportunity, under the covering fire of their tarnsmen aloft, to escape from the hall.

“When are the tarnsmen due to return from patrol?” I asked.

“I do not know,” said Ram.

“Sorgus!” I had called, to he within the headquarters.

“I hear you,” he responded.

“Surrender!” I called.

“I do not!” he said. Arrows were trained on the door through which he spoke.

“I do not wish to slay either you or your men,” I called to him. “If you surrender now I will permit you to retain your weapons and withdraw in peace.”

“Do you think me a fool?” he called.

“When do you expect your tarnsmen to return?” I asked.

“Soon!” said he.

“It could be days,” said Ram.

“I hope, for your sake, Sorgus,” I called, “that they return within the Ahn.”

I positioned my archers at the openings to the hall, with armed men to defend them. I encircled the hall with my men. They carried stones and clubs.

“What do you mean?” called Sorgus.