The Chieftan th-1 Read online

  But the girl was not in such a garment, one so comparatively modest.

  She was in a different form of garment, that called the keb. The garment, before it is worn, resembles a long, narrow sash. The material of this keb was a loosely woven gray corton. It is put on the slave by first haltering her breasts, snugly, the knot behind her back. The long, dangling end is then taken down, behind her back, and up, snugly, between her legs. There it is held at the waist with one hand while the other takes the continuing free end about the body. When the free end has circled her body, it is passed about the portion which was being held, holding it in place, and is then tied.

  “How dreadful a garment,” said the woman in the pantsuit, approvingly.

  “Yes,” whispered the officer of the court.

  Yet the garment was not, really, too different from the intimacies which she herself wore beneath her “same garb,” only there, down there on the sand, of course, the woman was publicly so revealed.

  The keb, of course, can be fastened on a slave in a variety of manners. For example, it need not be used to conceal the beauties of her breasts. It may simply be wrapped about the hips, and tucked in. An advantage of the keb, too, of course, is that it may serve a variety of purposes when not on the slave, such as hooding her, blindfolding her, gagging her, binding her, and such. Too, it might be remarked that it may be used as a sling for the carrying of burdens.

  “You understand, of course,” said the minor officer, addressing the woman in the pantsuit, “that she would not be in even the keb at the stake, if this were not a civilized pleasure cruise.”

  “Ah!” said the woman in the pantsuit, delightedly.

  “Doubtless you are concerned for her,” said the minor officer, smiling.

  “No,” said the woman in the pantsuit. “She is only a slave.”

  The officer of the court, trembling, looked down to the sand.

  Janina, who seemed frightened, and perhaps had never been at the stake before, clung to the metal of the pipe, pressing herself fearfully against it, the palms of her small hands, too, up, against the metal.

  “Any ladies who care to do so may now leave,” suggested Pulendius, considerately.

  But not a woman stirred in the tiers.

  Pulendius smiled.

  The officer of the court felt weak.

  Pulendius turned to the barbarian, and, with his hand, indicated the girl at the pipe. “What do you

  think of her?”

  “She is merely another slave,” said the barbarian.

  Janina moved a little, her chains making a tiny sound against the pipe.

  “I do not understand,” said Pulendius.

  “Like these others,” said Ortog, prince of the Drisriaks, king of the Ortungen, waving his hand toward the tiers.

  Women shrank back. Many cried out in rage, in protest. Even men cried out, in anger.

  “You let your slaves out of their collars,” said the barbarian.

  “Those are free women!” cried Pulendius, as though offended.

  “At best, slaves,” said Ortog, his arms folded across his chest.

  “Absurd!” cried Pulendius.

  Ortog then turned toward the young naval officer, he with the three purple cords at his left shoulder.

  “Let them kneel before true men, and learn to be women,” said Ortog.

  The young naval officer met his gaze dispassionately.

  The officer of the court put her hand to her breast. How conscious was she then of the intimate garments she had concealed beneath her “same garb,” beneath the “frame-and-curtain.”

  “Hinak!” called Pulendius, angrily.

  Hinak came forth, half bent, his hands ready, toward the center of the sand.

  The barbarian assumed a similar position.

  They began to circle one another.

  “Wait! Separate!” said Pulendius.

  The contestants backed away from one another.

  The door had opened, you see, that main door leading into the hold, and a minor officer had entered. He hurried about the ring, before the tiers, and spoke quickly, seemingly urgently, certainly confidentially, to the captain. The young naval officer watched, curiously.

  The barbarian, too, interestingly, observed this intrusion.

  In a moment the captain rose, and turned to the crowd. “Forgive me,” he said, smiling. “It is nothing. There is a small matter to attend to.” He then left, followed by the first officer and the minor officer, he who had just entered that section of the hold.

  “Please continue,” said the second officer, he now of highest rank in the room.

  “Begin!” said Pulendius to the contestants in the ring.

  In a moment all attention was returned to the contest.

  Madly was beating the heart of the officer of the court. She had never understood anything could be so real, so meaningful. Here, on the sand, knelt a girl, scarcely clad, a helpless prize, chained to a pipe, the stake. There, on the sand, men prowled about, eyeing one another, in a combat that might well issue in death for one of them.

  A strange, wild, primitive dimension of possible existences opened up then before the startled, expanded imagination of the officer of the court, vistas of terrifying battles and rude kingdoms, with savage ways, vistas of huts and shelters, of halls and tents, of pavilions and palaces, of fortresses and castles, within which men were men and women, women, totally so, and other vistas, too, vistas of green leaves, and rocks, and the feel of wet earth beneath bare feet, vistas of dark forests, of the weaving of coarse cloths, of the cooking by open fires, of waiting anxiously, hopefully, for the hunters to return, vistas of truth and reality she had suspected, but had scarcely admitted could exist. How far away then seemed the dusty tomes of the law, the tedium of litigation, the procedures of the courts, the endless, meaningless trivialities of protocol, civility and discourse, which things seemed then but the remote semblance of a reality, a reality always somewhere else. There was reality here, the reality of the growth of crops, rising out of the moist earth, of rainfall, and storms, of the truths of animals, and of men and women. She had never realized the nature of reality before, that it was not documents and legalities, and banal conversation, and pretense, and hypocrisy, but that it was different, that it was as hard, and perfect, and as natural, and as simple, and as uncompromising, as wood, and stone, and iron and steel. The true world, the unsheltered world, was as real, she suspected, as a coiled rope or a diaphanous, clinging sheet of silk, as real as a weighty golden coin or the leather of a whip.

  “Stop!” cried Pulendius, in alarm.

  One of the guards rushed to the barbarian, holding his fire pistol to his temple.

  The barbarian held Hinak from behind, his arms under Hinak’s, his hands clasped behind the back of Hinak’s neck, pressing slowly forward, and down.

  With a grunt the barbarian released his hold, and Hinak went forward, on his knees, in the sand.

  In another moment surely his neck would have been snapped.

  Hinak rose up, and hurried away. Grateful he was to leave the sand alive.

  “The barbarian has defeated a professional fighter,” said the woman in the pantsuit, wonderingly.

  “By some trick of wrestling, not with weapons,” said the minor officer to her right.

  At that moment there was a soft cry of surprise from many in the tiers. The officer of the court, as well, felt her body move backward, swaying back, just a little, on the tier.

  “The ship is accelerating,” said the minor officer.

  “Am I not victorious?” asked Ortog.

  Janina looked up at Ortog. Her small hands were pressed against the pipe to which she was chained.

  “Oh, the contest is not yet done,” Pulendius assured him.

  The officer of the court noted how closely the steel encircled Janina’s small wrists. They were small cuffs. The officer of the court realized, suddenly, they had been made for women. They would fit her as well as Janina. The collar was abo
ut Janina’s throat. Had she been in such a collar she could have slipped it no more than the slave.

  Ortog threw back his head and laughed knowingly.

  “Why did you not kill him?” asked the young naval officer.

  “I choose whom I kill,” said Ortog.

  The question of the young officer had made it clear to those who might be perceptive in the tiers that the barbarian was not intended to survive the evening. Perhaps he might then have availed himself of the satisfaction of destroying one enemy, perhaps in the same moment that the trigger on the fire pistol could have been pulled.

  “Ambos!” called Pulendius, irritably. This fighter was from the world, Ambos, and was known professionally by that name. This was not uncommon in the arena, naming the fighters for worlds, or cities, or animals, or appearance. He was the fellow who had been successful in the last mock match, that with what were intended to represent the two-headed spears of Kiros. We do not know his real name. One account gives it as ‘Elbar.’ More importantly, for our purposes, he had once wrestled professionally on Ambos, before applying to the arena masters.

  Ambos came forth.

  “Kill him,” said Pulendius, indicating the barbarian. He then stepped back. There was to be no mock adjudication of holds, of breaks, and such, in this match.

  Ambos, of course, had watched the previous match, and had noted the fate of Hinak. The barbarian was clearly not a trained wrestler, but he was unusually strong, and that made him dangerous. Ambos had no intention of taking him lightly.

  “Close! Finish him!” said Pulendius.

  But the two men, together in the center of the ring, only thrusted, feinted, and reached for holds.

  “Finish him!” said Pulendius.

  Suddenly the two men grappled, locked together, swaying back and forth.

  “Finish him!” cried Pulendius.

  But to the horror of Pulendius and those in the tiers the barbarian, slowly, by sheer strength, drew Ambos from his feet, and then slowly turned him, and placed his back over his knee, his hands pressing down, the knee as the fulcrum, the spine a doomed lever, subjected to terrible force at each termination, surely in a moment to snap, surely incapable of withstanding such pressure.

  But then the barbarian let Ambos, gasping, wild-eyed, slip to the sand.

  The barbarian rose to his feet.

  “Am I not victorious?” he asked.

  “You did not kill him,” observed the young naval officer.

  “I did not choose to do so,” said the barbarian.

  Ambos was helped from the sand by two of Pulendius’s men.

  “And whom would you choose to kill?” asked the young naval officer.

  “One worthy,” said the barbarian, his arms folded.

  “Me?” asked the young naval officer, quietly, amused.

  The barbarian turned about and lifted his arm. He pointed at the gladiator with whom we have been hitherto acquainted, he who had been raised in a small festung village, that of Sim Giadini, he who had been behind Pulendius, and to his right, on the evening of the captain’s table, he who had looked upon the officer of the court, who was even of the blood, as though she might be naught but a common slave, one such that she might be purchased in any market, and thence put to the common purposes of slaves.

  “He!” said the barbarian.

  “Why?” asked the young officer, puzzled.

  The barbarian was silent.

  “Who is he? Who do you think he is?” asked the young officer, leaning forward, keenly interested.

  Again the barbarian refused to respond.

  “Where are you from, fighter?” asked the young officer of the gladiator.

  “From the festung village of Sim Giadini, milord,” said the gladiator. He also identified the world, but we think it best, again, at this point, in order not to anticipate, to withhold its name. It was, however, we recall, one of the claimed worlds within the imperial system.

  “No,” said the barbarian. “No.”

  “It will be with weapons!” said Pulendius, angrily.

  “Let him live,” called a man.

  “He has been victorious!” called another. “Free him!”

  Pulendius looked angrily toward the source of such cries.

  “Kill him!” cried a woman.

  “Kill him!” cried the woman in the pantsuit.

  “Kill him!” cried another woman, a young woman. The officer of the court saw that it was the salesgirl, she from the ship’s shop, from whom, earlier that day, she had made certain purchases. She had not noticed her in the tiers before. She was terribly embarrassed, now, to see her there. After all, she knew the nature of those purchases. Had the salesgirl seen her here, had she looked at her? Would she have wondered if she, from Terennia, had such things on, beneath the “same garb,” beneath the “frame-and-curtain.” But of course she did. But would the salesgirl suspect that? How embarrassing! Too, what right had the salesgirl to be here, such a person, a mere employee of the line, at an entertainment for passengers! How embarrassing, the whole business!

  “Let him live!” cried a man.

  “Kill him!” cried the woman in the pantsuit.

  “Kill him!” cried the salesgirl.

  “It will be with weapons, and we shall choose!” said Pulendius.

  “The barbarian is finished now,” said the minor officer to the woman in the pantsuit.

  “The short sword, without buckler,” said Pulendius.

  “Excellent,” said the minor officer.

  Suddenly, again, there was an unsteadiness on the tiers, and some soft cries of surprise. One of the guards went down to one knee, his balance briefly lost, and then, again, stood.

  “A change in course,” explained the minor officer to the woman in the pantsuit.

  To be sure, the change in course was one rather abrupt for such a ship.

  “We have a dog to set on you,” said Pulendius.

  There was laughter from some of his men.

  “Dog!” summoned Pulendius.

  The gladiator, he with whom we have been hitherto acquainted, stepped forward, over the wooden ring, onto the sand.

  Women gasped, for the figure was a mighty one, that of he who had now come onto the sand, well into the light.

  “I am Ortog,” said Ortog, announcing himself to the gladiator, as he had not to the others, “prince of the Drisriaks, king of the Ortungs.”

  “Do you know the short sword?” asked the gladiator.

  “No,” said Ortog.

  “Choose some other weapon,” advised the gladiator.

  “The small blade will be satisfactory,” said Ortog.

  “Some regard me as reasonably skilled with the weapon,” said the gladiator.

  There was laughter from the men of Pulendius.

  The gladiator, you see, was, of all the school of Pulendius, he who was most skilled with that blade. It had served him well on four worlds, and in ten arenas. Pulendius had even hopes that his skills might carry him to the imperial arenas of the Telnarian worlds themselves. Often Pulendius had wondered at his almost incomprehensible aptitude with such weapons. The naturalness, the quickness, the ease, with which he handled such weapons was not to be expected in one who was a peasant. One might expect that gigantic strength to be sometimes found in a peasant but seldom, if ever, such speed, such subtlety and finesse. It was almost as if the use of such things was as natural to him as that of teeth to the vi-cat, of talons to the hawk. It was almost as though the use of such things were somehow bred in him, were somehow in the blood itself.

  “I choose the short sword,” said Ortog.

  “It is my assumption then,” said the gladiator, “that you are familiar with the weapon.”

  Two such weapons, wrapped in scarlet silk, were brought.

  The gladiator tested each, and then indicated that Ortog might have his choice of blades.

  Ortog took one and backed to the opposite side of the circle.

  “Is it that you wish to die?
” asked the young officer of the barbarian.

  “If I am to die,” said Ortog, “it is not unfitting that it be at the hands of such.”

  “A common gladiator?”

  “You think him such?” asked Ortog.

  The young officer shrugged.

  Ortog laughed, and hefted the blade. It seemed he liked its balance.

  “It is much like a knife,” he said.

  It did have something of the advantages of a double-edged knife, the capacity to slash on both the forestroke and the backstroke, the capacity to shift direction quickly, the capacity to thrust, at close quarters. On the other hand it had some of the advantages of the sword. It was long enough to keep a knife at bay, to outreach a knife, and to make fencing, parrying and disengaging, and such, practical.

  “He is indeed a dog,” said Ortog, viewing the gladiator. “But that is not his name.”

  “His name is ‘Dog,’ “said Pulendius.

  “What is your name?” asked Ortog of the gladiator.

  “I am called ‘Dog,’ milord,” he said.

  “Do you think I do not know your house?” asked Ortog.

  “I am Dog, of the school of Pulendius,” said the gladiator.

  “Do not kill him immediately,” whispered Pulendius to the gladiator. “Carry him for a bit, for the crowd.”

  This remark was overheard by Ortog, and his eyes glistened wildly, just for an instant.

  He looked about himself, at the enclosing steel walls of the ship.

  At that moment the ship swerved and people on the tiers cried out, surprised. More than one lost his balance, and fell against others. Those standing on the sand, Pulendius, and the gladiator, and Ortog, almost lost their balance. The girl, Janina, she in the keb, chained at the pipe, was thrown to her left, and only kept from falling further by the handcuffs, the chain of which, fastened in place through the ring, pulled against the pipe. Then, again, the ship steadied itself.

  The second officer rose briefly to his feet. “It is all right,” he said. “These are adjustments in our course. There is no reason to be alarmed.”

  The crowd then, somewhat uneasily, returned its attention to the sand.