The Chieftan th-1 Read online

  “I belong on a rope,” she laughed.

  “And so does every woman,” he said.

  “Yes, Master!” she said.

  “But we must leave the vehicle soon,” he said. “We must learn this world.”

  “Do you think it populated, Master?” she asked.

  “I do not know,” he said.

  “Perhaps we should build a shelter somewhere else,” she said, looking about herself, frightened.

  “It is late,” he said.

  Before they retired for the evening, he thrust the vehicle higher on the bank. He also put some branches about it, to conceal its outline.

  Early that afternoon, miles upriver, over an area of several square miles in extent, there were heavy rains. This was not understood by either the gladiator or the exquisite young slave, Janina, she whom he had won, a lovely prize in a contest. Doubtless they had been exhausted by their ordeal, the escape from the Alaria, the long weeks in space, the terrors of the landing, the awesomeness of finding themselves on an unfamiliar world, a new, seemingly primitive, surely beautiful, perhaps uncharted, world. In any event, the waters from upriver, flowing from innumerable rivulets, from dozens of streams, from several tributaries, like veins in the surface of the earth, draining an area more than a hundred square miles, began to move downstream, slowly at first, and then with gathering force. These swelling waters, borne by the now swift current, crept up the banks at many points, even higher than most of the diverse levels already recorded in the clay, indeed, until, here and there, they almost touched the grass, and, at shallower places, were plentifully overflowing the banks. The capsule, even thrust higher as it had been, was lifted from the bank, and the gladiator awakened suddenly, the capsule lifting, then rocking, then beginning to turn, beginning to wash downward toward the current. He had aroused the slave instantly and together, as it seemed clear the capsule might be lost, they had flung certain supplies, a medical kit, blankets, the rifle and the pistol, though these were now without ammunition, and such, out the hatch, high onto the bank, above where the water now reached. This they did in the darkness, and in a driving rain, and in the midst of thunder and lightning, for their area, too, was now much affected by storms, quite possibly a portion of the same weather system which had been active upstream earlier.

  The gladiator emerged from the capsule, the water to his thighs, half-blinded by the wind and rain, and pressed against it with his hands, where they slipped on the slick surface. He slipped in the water. He tried to get his back to the vehicle and turn it, to thrust it up the bank. It was rocking. It was hard to grasp. He cut his arm on the stabilizer. The vehicle spun about.

  Janina, her clothing soaked with rain, stood on the bank. She had, moments before, wading, made her way ashore.

  To the gladiator’s right a great dark branch, its leaves beaten down by rain, swept past.

  The capsule turned in the overflowing waters. The gladiator lost his hold on it, and, slipping, moved about it, to get once more between it and the main channel of the river.

  Water streamed from the capsule.

  It would be suddenly illuminated, eerily, whitely, in flashes of lightning.

  So, too, was the slave on the bank, and the trees behind her.

  “I cannot hold it!” cried the gladiator.

  It was at that point that Janina had waded forth into the black, swirling waters, to lend her small strength to his.

  Too, almost at the same time, no more than a moment or two later, he had, unexpectedly, managed to brace himself on some solid surface on the overflowed bank, doubtless an outjutting rock.

  Janina was waist-deep in the water, about the capsule, to his right, as he was braced.

  He did not even understand, at that time, where she was, or what she was doing.

  “I have it!” he cried. He thrust it back a bit, toward the bank. He felt with his feet for another purchase, one six inches closer to the bank.

  It was at that point that Janina had lost her footing in the rushing water. She clutched at the capsule but her hands could close on nothing. They slipped on the large, slick, oval surface. She fell to her back in the water, her hands losing contact with the capsule. It was at this point, as the current took her, and she had begun to be swept downstream, that she had cried out. “Master, I cannot swim!” she cried.

  The gladiator turned to seize her but she was swept past him. For a moment or two the air trapped in her robes would hold her to the surface. He saw her hand, the robes falling from it, lifted. “Master!” she screamed. He left the side of the capsule and plunged after her, wading, but she was already yards away. He then began to swim toward a point at which he hoped to intercept her. But she was not there. So swift was the current. He saw her then, in a flash of lightning, yards downstream, clinging to a rock, the waters rushing about it. But when he reached the rock she had been swept from it. He pushed away from the rock, slipping, and hastened downstream. He turned in a minute, fighting the current. Might she not be near? Something struck his leg and he reached down, but it was a branch. “Master! Master!” he heard, and once more he hastened downstream, lashing the water. He saw, in another flash of lightning, her head disappear under the roiling surface of the dark waters. As he swam he tried to judge the feel of the current on his body, its turnings, its deflections, as it was shaped by the contour of the banks, the irregularities of the riverbed. At times the water rushed over his head, and he rose, shaking his head, looking wildly about. He saw the capsule moving downstream, to his right, tipped, awry in the current. A scream was before him in the darkness to the left. Again he sped toward a projected rendezvous, the location dictated by an instant’s calculation of the physics of time and current. But, of course, she was not an inert object, but one which moved, and straggled, and the robes, too, clinging about her, influenced her movements. How could one judge such things, and in the darkness, the turbulence? She was, again, not at the projected point of rendezvous, or, if she was, it was in the darkness, or perhaps even momentarily beneath the surface, eluding his grasp, perhaps by inches. “Master!” he heard, a scream half choked with water. Then he sped directly downstream, anything to be somewhere ahead of her. He crested the current and rushed before it, half borne by it, half racing it. Then he turned about in the water, fighting against the current. “Scream!” he cried. “Cry out!” He wondered if she were under the water, perhaps feet away, speeding toward him. He wondered if she was drowned. Then, in a flash of lightning, he saw a fold of garment, and, in another stroke of lightning, he got his hand on it. He jerked her head out of the water. Then, swept downstream, he struck against something. In the center of the stream, temporarily arrested there, caught on a rock, was the large branch, almost a tree in itself, which must have washed away from some bank, and which had passed them earlier. They were then, in the pouring rain, enmeshed in the smaller branches. He reached for branches, and they broke off. He steadied himself against the wet, black trunklike main branch. He gasped for breath. Her head was back, her eyes wild. “I have you, slave,” he said. “Master!” she cried, her face streaming with water. The branch then, pressed in the current, suddenly, unexpectedly, awkwardly, moved, slipping away from the rock. It was then loose in the current, and spinning downstream. Then it rolled and the smaller branches, like a barrel of spokes, forced them both under the water. The gladiator reached up, partly climbing, partly tearing through branches. His fingernails were bloodied from tearing at the bark. Then he emerged into the storm again, his left arm about the slave’s neck. In a flash of lightning he saw the escape capsule, far downstream, deep in the water, listing. The river churned inches from the opened hatch. He did not doubt, from its depth in the water, that the capsule had already shipped a considerable amount of water. He was afraid to release the branch. He did not know if he could reach the shore. An uprooted tree swept past. “Look!” he cried, clinging to the branch. Downstream, in the darkness, there was a sudden bluish glow, and then the escape capsule, its entire large, oval sur
face, began to crackle with sparks and flame. Then again there was darkness. “Beware!” he said, and braced himself, for the trunk of a tree, like a spear, smote into the branch to which they clung, spinning it about.

  “Are you all right?” asked the gladiator.

  “Yes, Master,” cried the slave.

  There was now, under the roar of the storm, another roar, somewhere ahead, a roar which grew progressively louder. The gladiator tried to peer through the darkness and rain. He fought for breath. The water must have reached yet another system in the escape capsule, for, far downstream, it began again to glow, but this time with an orangish color. And then, suddenly, it was dark. It was as though the glow had been suddenly snapped off, like a light. A part of a tree swept by, a catlike beast clinging to its trunk. Its fur was sleek with rain. The branch to which the gladiator and the slave clung caught for a moment on another rock. “What is the noise, not the storm?” the gladiator asked himself, confused. “Is it a thousand beasts? Is it thunder from afar?” “Too,” he asked himself, “what of the capsule? How did it cease so suddenly to glow?” The roar was now becoming even louder. It competed with the wind, the storm. Suddenly he heard a wild screech of terror from ahead, which then faded suddenly. It had to be the animal which they had seen, but moments before. Now the roaring was deafening. In the darkness the gladiator, as the slave cried out in terror, in protest, thrust away from the branch, and, with one arm, as he could, fought for the shore. He was swept muchly downstream, but twice caught against rocks. Then, when the roar was unmistakable, even to one confused in the darkness, one wrought with titanic strain, one exhausted from physical effort, he got the mud and gravel of the riverbed beneath his feet, and, the slave terrified and bedraggled in his arms, made his way to the bank. In the next flash of lightning he saw, holding the slave, the edge of the falls, some yards away. Curious he went to its brink. The drop was something in the nature of a hundred feet. He saw the sopped, catlike beast slide through the water, its ears back, and scratch its way up to the shore. It was possible, he thought, that they might have survived the fall. To be sure, it is difficult to make judgments on such matters. He did not see the capsule. He did not know if it were still afloat or not. After resting for a time, he once again lifted the slave in his arms, who was trembling, and began to make his way back upstream, to where they had salvaged some of their goods. After a time the rains stopped. He had then managed to build a small fire. This was managed with leaves and brush from rain-sheltered places. The fire was lit with the lighter, from the survival kit, one of the objects removed earlier from the capsule. They had then stripped and set about drying their clothes. His had dried first, easily, as they were lighter, less voluminous, less cumbersome. Janina had been kneeling near the fire, drying her hair, when they first heard the horns.

  “There are several horns now,” said Janina.

  “They are on this side of the river,” said the gladiator. “We will cross.”

  “Not the river!” said Janina.

  “The level is much subsided,” said the gladiator.

  “I fear the river!” said Janina.

  “This,” said the gladiator, “will prevent you from being swept away.”

  He knotted a rope about her neck.

  “That is its only purpose, is it not, Master?” she asked.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  She looked down, shyly, smiling. Janina, in the arms of strong masters, had learned her womanhood.

  The remains of the armor he had cast into the river. Its utility was grievously impaired, it having been muchly damaged on the Alaria, and he feared, too, that on this world it would constitute little more than a clumsy, weighty encumbrance. Could one manage edged or pointed weapons, even staves or clubs, well, if one were so housed? Might one not be tripped, or caught, or be for most practical purposes helpless in such garb? Would it turn the blow of an ax, for example, or be of much service if one were caught in a noose, cast from a tree? Too, men seen in such things might be taken to be the barbarians of the ships, and he doubted that such would be likely to be popular with primitively armed rustic or sylvan populations, if they knew of them, at all. The armor, of this sort, which weighed in the vicinity of a hundred pounds, had its place, surely, in a world of fire pistols, and weapons of a similar sort, but it did not seem that it would be of great value in a primitive, natural, savage world, one where survival was more likely to be a function of speed and agility, and will, intelligence and ferocity, than an arrangement of relative impenetrabilities.

  The gladiator prepared a bundle, consisting of most of the materials they had salvaged from the capsule, including some rations, and also Janina’s clothing. This bundle the slave would bear. He himself slung the empty Telnarian rifle across his back. He retained the belt from the armor, and housed the empty fire pistol in its holster. He also put on the belt a sheathed knife, from the survival kit. He was, for the most part, however, unencumbered. He cut himself a staff, both as a weapon, and to assist in the transit of the river. He then, leading the slave on her rope, she bearing the bundle of supplies, and such, on her head, steadying it with her hands, waded into the river. In a few minutes they had safely crossed.

  On the other side he wound the free end of Janina’s rope about her neck. There were then several coils about her neck. He tucked in the free end.

  “You will follow me,” he said.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  In this fashion she would bear the rope herself, and it would be conveniently at hand, obviously ready for a variety of employments.

  Toward noon they heard the horns again.

  The horns, now, were on their side of the river.

  One seemed to be behind them, and another to their right. They then began to move left, through the thick, dark forest.

  But, in an hour, they heard a horn before them.

  They then resumed their original march, away from the river.

  “They are closer, Master,” said Janina, a little later.

  “Yes,” said the gladiator.

  “Those are hunting horns, Master?” asked Janina.

  “Yes,” said the gladiator.

  “What are they hunting, Master?” asked Janina.

  “Us,” he said.

  CHAPTER 16

  “Keep behind me,” said the gladiator.

  Janina, the rope on her neck, crouched down, behind him.

  The gladiator stood with his back to a large rock. There was a clearing here, in the forest, and several such outcroppings.

  “Abandon me, Master,” Janina had begged.

  But he had turned about, in anger, and cuffed her to silence.

  She had not even requested permission to speak.

  To be sure, he had not made a practice of requiring this deference of Janina.

  She had then knelt at his feet and gratefully kissed them.

  He had seen shadows in the forest, about them.

  Shortly thereafter he had come to the open place, and had gone to the rock, a large, high, broad rock, where he had turned about and placed himself as he now stood.

  There had been more blasts of horns, some doubtless summoning blasts, others perhaps signaling that the quarry had been brought to bay, and then, in a few minutes, the shadows among the trees, darknesses among darknesses, had become numerous.

  Nothing emerged from the forest.

  The gladiator sat down, cross-legged, then, waiting.

  He picked up pebbles, after a time, and threw them about.

  Janina continued to crouch behind him, eyeing the forests.

  Then, something like a quarter of an hour later, a man emerged from the forest. He had a leather headband. He was clad in skins. There was a large ax tied across his back.

  He sat down, also cross-legged, back near the trees. He was some twenty yards from the gladiator.

  After a time the gladiator called to him. “Can you understand my speech?”

  “Yes,” said the man.

&n
bsp; After a time the man called to the gladiator. “You are Drisriak.”

  “No,” said the gladiator.

  “You have their weapons,” said the man.

  “I am not Drisriak,” said the gladiator.

  “There are too many of us for you to kill,” said the man.

  “I mean you no harm,” said the gladiator.

  “We have bowmen,” said the man. “A hundred arrows, in an instant, could strike you.”

  “If you are marksmen, only one would be needed,” said the gladiator.

  There was an angry sound from the forest behind the man, and he lifted his hand, to silence it.

  “You are bold, Drisriak,” said the man.

  “I am not Drisriak,” said the gladiator.

  “You have not come for the tribute?”

  “No,” said the gladiator.

  “We keep our produce, our pelts, our women, for ourselves,” said the man.

  “I mean you no harm,” said the gladiator. “I shall put my weapons aside.”

  “Only a fool disarms himself,” said the man.

  The gladiator very slowly, very carefully, unslung the Telnarian rifle and put it to the side. He, too, undid his belt and placed it to the side, with its holstered fire pistol, and the sheathed knife.

  “You are without ammunition,” said the man.

  “You are discerning,” said the gladiator.

  “Why do you not try to threaten us,” asked the man, “because you are somehow without your ship, without your armor, without usable weapons?”

  “I am not Drisriak.”

  “What is your people?”

  “I have no people,” said the gladiator.

  “Everyone has a people,” said the man.

  “No,” said the gladiator. “In the empire there are millions who are alone, who have no people.”

  “I have heard of the empire,” said the man.

  “It is far away,” said the gladiator.

  “Who are you?” asked the man.

  “I am called ‘Dog,’ “said the gladiator.