Then the two beasts, as though they had satisfied themselves, squatted down, their hind legs under them, facing one another. To a superficial observer, they might ahve seemed somnolent. But I could sense the ripple of muscle, the tingle of nerve, beneath the fur in those mighty bodies. They were somnolent as a gun is somnolent, one with a finger tensed, poised, upon its trigger.
Suddenly, as one, both beasts leapt at one another, and seemed, grappling, biting and tearing, claws raking, almost as if they were a single, blurred animal cutting and tearing at its own body. There was a scraching of claws on the stony trail. They rolled and tore at one another and blood, from drenced fur, marked the stone, leaving the pattern of the fur.
They then backed away from one another again, and again began to circle.
It had been no more than a passage at arms.
Again they sprang towards one another and again, sometimes, thier movements were so rapid, turning and grappling, biting and tearing, that I could not even follow them. The energy and speed of such beats is awesome.
Then they had again separated.
The medicine men of the Yellow Knives looked at one another, frightened. There was blood on the rock. Such things, then, could bleed.
Zarendargar, Half-Ear, my friend, had then, I suspected, made his determinations. I do not think Sardak understood this, at the time.
I lifted an arrow to the string of my bow.
Once more the beasts charged and met with fierce impact. Then Zarendargar was behind Sardak. Sardak flung his head back, to close the space between the skull and the vertebrae, his eyes like wild moons, but it was too late. The massive jaws of Zarendargar, inch by inch, Sardak held in his arms, forced the head forward. Then with a sound of tearing muscle and skin, and crushed bone, Zarendargar's jaws closed. Men watched, horrified, as Zarendargar, holding it by the neck, it half bitten through, in his jaws, shook the body, fiercely. He then flung it from him and leaped up and down, scratching at his chest. He flung his head up to the sun and howled his victory. For a moment or two the body on the rock still bled, the movements of te heart marked in the gouts of fluid that surged over the fur. The head lay askew, to one side, held by vessels and skin. Zarendargar screamed and leaped onthe stone, and, scatching, climbed a bit up the rock face from teh trail, and then, fell back, and leaped again. The sun and sky were again saluted by the victory cry of the Kur. There was blood and fur at his mouth. I could see the double row of fangs, streaked with red, the long, dark dongue emergent like a serpent from the spittle and blood, the foam, of the kill. Kurii, I reminded myself, are not men.
Yellow Knives shrank back.
Zarendargar then lifted the body of Sardak in his hands and held it over his head. The arm of Sardak, with its two rings of reddish alloy, hung limp. The head hung a foot from the body. Then Zarendargar flung the body from the trial, down, down, onto the rocks below.
I loosedned the arrow from my bow into the heart of Kog. He stiffened, the feathers almost lost in the fur, and then fell.
Kaiila warriors had now appeared on the ledges beside me, and were visible now, armed, at the barricade.
The Yellow Knives began to back downward. The war chief cried out to them, presumably ordering them to remain in place. A medicine man turned and fled. Kurii looked about, at one another. None seemed eager to advance on Zarendargar.
Zarendargar stood before the barricade, his arms lifted, snarling, his face and body bloody.
"Hold!" cried Alfred to those about him. "Hold! Do not fall back! Attack! Attack!" he cried out in Gorean. There were few there, I supposed, except for the handful of soldiers with him, who understood him. No one moved decisively. "Attack! Attack!" cried Alfred. He took a step forward but none, clearly, intended to follwo him, "Attack!" he cried.
The Yellow Knives looked at one another. They were undecided. The Yellow Knives wavered. It seemed their medicine had failed them. They had lost their medicine.
At this moment Ubar of the Skines appeared behind me, outlined against the sky. He extended his mighty wings and smote them against the air. He uttered the challenge scream of the tarn.
The Yellow Knives then turned and fled.
Kaiila swarmed over an through the barricade, with clubs and lances, and shields and knives. There was confusion below.
Arrows were loosened from the height of the escarpment into the fleeing Yellow Knives. Fighting took place at a dozen places on the trail. Some of our men who were transmen brough thier tarns into the fray, ranking down at the Yellow Knives. Yellow Knives, crowding, fleeing, forced many of their own number from the trail.
"Look!" I said. In the distance, coming from the west, were columns of dust.
"They are coming!" cried Cuwignaka, elatedly.
"Yes," I said.
These would be the Dust Legs, the Sleen and Fleer, tribes to whom we had sent riders.
We had been the bait, on Council Rock, to lure the Yellow Knives and soldiers into a trap, a trap which these other tribes, acting in coalition, were to spring shut. Clearly their best intrests were involved in doing so. The Yellow Knives, in cooperating with white soldiers, had betrayed the Memory. In such a way, according to the Memory, an earlier tragedy,
now almost lost in legends, had begun. The Barrens must be protected. Too, sacrilege had been performed, in the attack on a summer camp. Was this not to be avenged? Even more seriously Kinyanpi had come to the more western countries. Such alliances, those of Yellow Knives with forces such as those of the white soldiers and the Kinyanpi, threatened the delicat tribal balances in the Barrens. Such events might produce dislocations, interfering with the migrations of the Pte, the Kailiauk, and forcing tribes from ancestral hunting grounds. Our agents' aruments had been, it seemed, persuasive. Too late had the newcomers arrived to aid in the fray. Not to late, however, were they to close off a hundred avenues of retreat, to interfere with a thousand escapes, to wreak havoc among a withdrawing, demoralized, terrorized enemy.
I saw Alfred struck down from behind with the heavy, balled knob of a carved wooden canhpi.
Iwoso was white with terror, roped to her post, seeing the retreat of Yellow Knives.
Treading his way among the fighting groups on the trail, slowly making his way upward, was he who had been the third of the three war chiefs at the summer camp.
I pointed him out to Hci.
"I have seen him," said Hci.
The man was carrying a bow and arrows. He moved with purpose. An arrow was fitted to the string.
His face, under the fearsome pain, was controted with rage. He stopped below us, on the trail. Iwoso, helplessly roped to her post, moaned. She cried out something to him, pleadingly. She was in clear view, only a few feet above him. She was well displayed. Her ankles were roped back against the post; at the waist, too, she was fastened to it, the rawhide ropes deep in her belly, and deep, too, in the notch behind the post; he rneck, too, was tied to the post; and her hands, as well, in tight, rawhide loops, rather at her sides and slightly behind her. She cried out again to him, pleadingly. She could do little more than squirm in her bonds, and scarcely that. I had seen to it. The arrow, from below, was aligned on her heart. It leapt from the string, speeding woard the naked, roped beauty. Hci interposed his shield, and the arrow, deflected, caromed off a hundred feet in the air. The Yellow Knife below, with a cry of rage, turned then, and fled down the trail.
"I have business," said Hci. Lightly, moving swiftly, discarding his shield, armed now only with his knife, he made his way from our position, to the trail summit, and to the barricade. I then saw him, in a moment, making his way down the trail.
Iwoso gasped, and tried to turn her head away, her neck in the ropes.
"Look," said Hci.
Iwoso looked, helplessly, commanded.
The scalp, freshly cut, bloody, dripping, hung before her face, held in Hci's fist.
"It is the scalp of he who would have slain you," said Hci, "he with whom you conspired."
"Look," said Hci.
She opened her eyes, looking again upon the bloody trophy.
"Do you understand?" asked Hci.
"Yes, my captor," she said, in a small voice.
Hci then put the scalp in his belt. Blood from it ran down his leg, down his naked thigh, as he wore the breechclout.