The King th-3 Read online

  “It is an Otung horseman,” said one of the Heruls. He had met Otung horsemen long ago, in the spring and summer of 1103, in the chronology of the imperial claiming stone, set up in Venitzia, when Venitzia had been no more than a small military camp.

  The new rider retained the long sword. Its flat was across the back of the animal.

  The leader of the Heruls, too, remembered the Otung horsemen, those of the Otung Vandals.

  “Do you remember them?” asked the Herul who had first spoken.

  “Yes,” said the leader of the Heruls.

  “They fought well,” said the Herul who had first spoken.

  “Yes,” said the leader of the Heruls.

  “They were very brave,” said the Herul.

  “Yes,” said the leader of the Heruls, holding in his mount. Then he drew a circle in the air.

  “Yes!” said the third Herul, elatedly.

  The Otung horsemen, though valiant, had been, with their massive horses, dense formations and shock tactics, no match for the illusive, swarming, lighter-armed, more mobile Heruls, appearing, disappearing, attacking, drawing back, striking from behind, shifting the point of attack, hanging on the flanks, choosing the time and place of war, engaging only when it was to their advantage.

  “Exercise care,” said the leader.

  The attack of the circle is usually directed against an isolated horseman, whether isolated, oddly, in the tumult of battle or elsewhere more naturally, as in a meadow, a field, or a snowy plain. It means no more than a surrounding attack, and, for it, obviously, even two riders would suffice. One engages and defends, and the other, or others, attack. The engagement and defense, and the attack, of course, can be, and commonly is, transferred among riders, these modalities shifting as seems appropriate under the circumstances.

  The newly mounted rider kicked back into the flanks of his mount, instantly seizing the initiative, and it lunged forward toward the Heruls, that it might with its rider strike into their very midst, but the beast was slowed, from its wound, and the snow, and the Heruls, though taken aback, though startled for a moment, not having expected this audacity, recovered and parted, one to the left, two to the right, and the rider’s horse, leaping and struggling, struck through the snow amongst them, the flash of the great blade better than a yard from the nearest foe. The rider turned swiftly toward one of the Heruls but he drew away from the charge. Each Herul now had freed the buckler from the side of his saddle. It could withstand the thrust of a lance, the slash of the saber, the deft flight of the scimitar, but the weight of the mightier blade must be turned, or slipped, else the buckler itself might be cut, or the hand within its single grip broken at the wrist, or the rider beaten down, perhaps out of the saddle. Too, the spinal cord of the mount, in a carelessly slipped thrust, might be severed. The Heruls were not eager to come within the thunder, the sweep, of that blade.

  The rider turned his bleeding mount in the snow. The Heruls were now about him.

  It was the circle.

  He plunged his horse between two of the riders.

  But in a moment they were with him, and then one was well ahead, and turned, waiting for him, lance ready, and the other two were behind him, one behind to his left, the other behind to his right. The rider reined in his mount. With a stronger, sounder mount, perhaps on a faster surface, he might have found open ground, and separated them in a line of pursuit, the swiftest closest to him, the second swiftest, in a minute or two, significantly behind, the slowest out of the fray, until it came back to him, in turn, but he had now reined in. The false flight, separating the pursuers, and the sudden turning back, to deal with them singly, was not practical. The rider was now surrounded. The four combatants stood still, mounted. The three Heruls formed the points of a triangle. Within this triangle was the newly mounted rider, alone. The distance of each of the Heruls to the target was some ten yards. The triangle, as a whole, was some forty or fifty yards out into the plain, out from the trampled snow about the sledge. It seemed quiet then on the snowy field.

  “It is over,” called the leader of the Heruls to the young, blond rider.

  The young fellow turned to face him. The leader had been behind the young fellow, to his left.

  The young fellow grasped the hilt of the mighty sword in two hands.

  His mount sank a little down, into the snow, its back legs unsteady beneath it.

  Angrily, struggling to maintain his seat, the young man urged the horse up again.

  Then it was on its feet once more.

  The snow was red beneath it.

  A little wind blew some snow toward the rider farthest from the sledge, he at the point, or apex, so to speak, of the triangle.

  Very warily the three Heruls began to close in on the isolated horsemen amongst them.

  They stopped some four or five yards from him, on their attack lines.

  The leader of the Heruls looked from one of his men to the other.

  He was satisfied.

  “What is wrong?” suddenly called the leader of the Heruls to the Herul farthest out from the sledge, at the apex, so to speak, of the diminished triangle.

  “It is the horse,” said the fellow. “It is the horse!”

  The horse, suddenly, had lifted its head. It threw its head back and forth. Its eyes were like round balls. It seemed to fear to put its paws down to the snow. It began to prance. It reared. It squealed. Its nostrils were wide, like cups, opening and closing. It showed its teeth. It tore at the bit.

  The newly mounted rider, he in the midst of the Heruls, spun about on his mount’s back, pulling back on the reins, and in that instant there rose up from the snow, from that desolate, bleak landscape, snarling, almost at his side, like an explosion, like a blizzard of white fire, springing, shedding snow, like a torrent of teeth and claws, a vi-cat!

  It was a giant white.

  The vi-cat was upon the hindquarters of the wounded beast, its claws sunk inches into its loins, its teeth buried in its rump, and its weight and twisting threw the squealing horse to its side in the snow, trapping the rider, by one leg, beneath it.

  The horses of the Heruls bolted. For a moment they were unmanageable. The Heruls, struggling to retain their seats, dragged on reins, fighting for control. They screamed at the animals. The horses spun about, frantic, maddened, lost in the snow. The Heruls beat them with the butts of their lances. Back, again and again, jerked the bits. Blood gushed from the mouths of the terrified horses, washing about the jaws, drenching the lacerating metal.

  Ravenously the vi-cat tore at its prey, feeding, holding it down with its paws, digging in it, its mouth and jaws thick with hair and blood.

  The rider of the animal drew his leg loose from beneath the squealing horse, and stood unsteadily in the snow, half staggering, the leg almost buckling beneath him.

  The sword was to one side, half in the snow, half visible.

  The vi-cat fed, its ears back, its head half lost in the body of the horse, obliviously, deliriously, not more than two yards from where he stood.

  The young man saw the sword.

  The Heruls, the leader first, then the other two, brought their mounts under control.

  The young man looked back to the vi-cat.

  He must reach the sword.

  The vi-cat paused in its feeding, suddenly.

  It lifted its head from the body of the horse.

  The young man stood extremely still. The sword was feet away.

  He must not move, not perceptibly.

  The rolling eyes of the horse turned wildly, piteously, toward him.

  At the same time the vi-cat saw him. It snarled.

  The young man was not a stranger to the vi-cat, for he, and other villagers, long ago, had hunted them, though not such as this one, not the giant white. He had killed his first vi-cat at the age of fourteen, one which had unexpectedly doubled back on hunters. Even at that age he had been larger and stronger than most men. He had killed the beast with an ax. He had given the skin
to his best friend, Gathron. Later, years later, he and Gathron had had a fight. In this fight he had killed Gathron. The fight had been over a woman. He had soon left the village. He would go to Venitzia, and from there, elsewhere, anywhere, seek his fortune. He had worked his passage on a freighter. He had disembarked on Terennia. It was on Terennia that was to be found the school of Pulendius, in which gladiators were trained, for diverse games on diverse worlds.

  The critical distance for the vi-cat tends to range from ten to twenty yards. Outside this range, if it is not hunting, and man, in any event, is not its common game, man and beast can usually pretend to ignore one another. The man turns aside, and the beast slinks away, into the high grass, as though it had not seen the man. Within this range, closer than ten to twenty yards, the particular distance tending to depend on the disposition, even the indolence, of the beast in question, this game of man and beast is not played. Within the critical distance the beast tends to approach, and investigate, and, from this point, things tend to rapidly and often unpleasantly escalate. It will also, often, without warning, charge within this distance. It might also be noted that even outside the critical distance it is important to avoid obvious eye contact with the beast. Once the beast knows it has been seen it is almost, oddly, as if a matter of honor had become involved, and that retreat would somehow result in a loss of face. This interpretation seems somewhat anthropomorphic, but the serious question is not whether or not it is anthropomorphic, but whether or not it is correct. It may be, you see, that a concept of honor is not unique to rational species, but that its rudiments, or such, lie much farther down the phylogenetic scales of different animal kingdoms. A sense of rightness, of fittingness, and such, may not be an invention of rational species but, in a sense, an inheritance of such species, later interpreted, naturally enough, in conceptual terms. It might be proposed, of course, that the animals which recognized themselves seen, or challenged, and responded aggressively, tended to replicate their genes, and that more casual organisms, indifferent to intruders, tolerant of strangers, and such, tended to be eliminated. But, if this is the case, this would seem to suggest merely that the rudiments of honor, or such, have been themselves selected for. This is not incomprehensible, of course. For example, it seems clear that the blind mechanisms of natural selection have produced, and perhaps inevitably, what is commonly taken to be their antithesis, thought, intentionality, consciousness, planning and reason. Civilization may be an inevitable precipitate of the jungle. Certainly within itself it bears the traces of dark origins. Indeed, there is some speculation that civilization is not a successor to, nor a replacement of, the jungle, but merely a transformation of the jungle, merely another of its many faces. And the jungle, too, you see, is not really a chaos, but, in its way, a highly articulated structure, with its habits and patterns, its history, its proven, tested, developed ways, its relationships, its ranks, its distances, its hierarchies.

  The eyes of the man and beast met.

  The man dove for the hilt of the blade, emergent from the snow, as the beast, snarling, scrambled over the trembling, shaking body of the expiring horse.

  The man threw himself to the snow, scratching within it, and the beast was on him, pawing away the snow, biting at the half-buried back.

  “Do not interfere,” said the leader of the Heruls to his fellows.

  Their mounts, their sides heaving, blood frozen about the jaws, like threads of ice, their breath like fog bursting from their mouths and nostrils, were now under control.

  The vi-cat tore away the back of the man’s coat, shaking it. It seemed puzzled.

  The figure rolled to the side in the snow and leapt upon the vi-cat from the side, his arms about its neck, and the cat, enraged, reared up, lifting the man a yard from the snow. The man clung to its neck, his head down, at the base of the animal’s neck, down, away from the massive, turning head, and fangs. The beast sought futilely to reach him with its forepaws, the curved claws, four inches in length, extended, brandished, then flung itself down in the snow, rolling, and one could not see the man, and then one could, as, again and again, he was first submerged in the snow, and then again, body and hair a mass of snow, torn upward into view. The beast, roaring, tried to scrape him away, against the horse, now dead. The beast then stopped, and gasped, startled. It shook its head, and the man was flung to one side and the other. The man, as he could, tightened his grip. He could not slip his arms beneath the forelegs of the beast, and up then, behind the back of the neck, given the size of the beast. In such a way might a smaller animal’s neck be broken. Such things were learned, though with an intended application to men, in the school of Pulendius, on Terennia. Then the beast threw itself to its side in the snow, squirming down, to the frozen soil. Then, slowly, pressing itself against the ice, it, with its mighty bulk, began to turn itself, inch by inch. The man, in his garments, with his own bulk, could not then turn with the animal. He was wedged between the body of the beast and the soil, like cement, and the beast, inch by inch, was turning, moving in the grip of the man, bringing its jaws about, inch by inch, closer to the man’s head.

  The vi-cat, gasping in the snow, continued to turn, inch by inch.

  The man released the beast’s throat and scrambled to his feet in the snow, and the beast, too, scrambled up.

  The beast stood there for a moment, sucking in air, blinking, snow about its eyes, looking for the man.

  The man reached to the great sword and had it in his hand, half lifting it as the beast charged, and the man was struck from his feet, the sword lost, and the beast had stopped. Then it backed away, puzzled. It eyed the man, and licked at its own blood.

  The man, bleeding, recovered the sword.

  He lifted it unsteadily, half to the ready, and the beast was upon him, again, charging and snarling.

  A yard of the blade disappeared into the chest of the beast.

  A blow from the right paw of the beast smote the man at the side of the head, and he was struck to the side, and the blade, to which he clung, slid sideways in the animal, and, as the man fell to the snow, the blade, still in his grasp, was mostly out of the body.

  The beast backed away, a foot or two, which movement slipped the blade further from its body, and, at the same time, drew it away from the hands of the fallen man. Then the beast shook itself, as though it might be shedding water. The blade was flung to the side.

  “The Otung is dead,” said one of the Heruls.

  The beast returned to the still warm body of the horse, and its feeding. Its own blood mingled with that of the horse. There was little sound then except the breathing of the horses of the Heruls, and the feeding of the vi-cat.

  The figure struck down in the snow staggered to its feet. It felt about for the great sword. It had it again in its hands.

  Blood was now coming from within the lungs of the vi-cat, and it gushed forth from its mouth and nostrils, and, as it fed, it drank its own blood.

  The man staggered toward the vi-cat with the blade raised, but fell into the snow before he could reach it.

  The vi-cat died feeding.

  “The Otung is dead,” said a Herul.

  “He would be worth running for the dogs,” said another.

  “He is dead,” said the Herul who had first spoken.

  “I do not think so,” said the leader of the Heruls. “Tie him. Put him on the sledge.”

  Olar and Varix, who were Basung Vandals, were put in the traces of the sledge, to draw it.

  The horse whose leg had been broken was killed, with a blow of the ax of Varix.

  In a few moments the three Heruls left the trampled, bloody snow.

  They did not bury their fellows, but left them, as was their common wont, for the beasts of the plains.

  They cut some meat from the dead horses, for provender on the trip back to the wagons and herds.

  They also skinned the vi-cat, for such a pelt was of great value. Indeed, from such a pelt might be fashioned the robe of a king.


  CHAPTER 20

  “He is awakening,” she said.

  “Do not hurt me,” she said.

  The blond giant’s hand had grasped her wrist. His brow was wet, from the cloth with which she had wiped it.

  He released her wrist.

  “Leave,” said a voice, that of a Herul, who was sitting back, in the shadows.

  Not speaking, she gathered her pan of warm water, and, with the cloth and sponges, and a whisk of her long skirt, hurried away.

  It was a woman of his own species, or seemed so. Heruls kept such, he knew, for labor, and diversion. The giant did not object, as they were females.

  “She is the daughter of an Otung noble,” said the Herul.

  The giant moved his legs a little. The clasp of the chains was then evident.

  “You have been unconscious for four days,” said the Herul.

  “You are old-for a Herul,” said the giant.

  “You are surprised?” asked the Herul.

  “Yes,” said the giant.

  Heruls kill the old and the weak, the stupid, the lame, the deformed.

  “I am still hardy,” said the Herul. “If I am to be killed, someone must do it. I have killed four. They will let me alone now, I think, for a time.”

  “You are a warrior,” said the giant.

  “I have ridden,” admitted the Herul. “Would you like to have her, tonight?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said the giant.

  “She is a slave,” said the Herul. “Do not fail to use her as such.”

  “I will not,” said the giant.

  “You are in the wagon of my friend,” said the Herul. “It was he who captured you, who brought you in. He was the leader of a party of seven, three only of which returned.”

  “Who are you?” asked the giant.

  “It does not matter,” said the Herul.

  “What is to be done with me?”

  “You must regain your strength,” said the Herul. “I will have broth brought to you, and, in a day, curds, and then, later, meat.”

  “Mujiin is proud of you,” said the Herul.