"But I am," I said.
"I ask your favour," said Zosk, his voice thick with emotion. He was pleading. "Say you are not Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba."
"I am Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba," I repeated firmly.
Zosk lifted his ax.
It seemed light in his massive grip. I felt it could have felled a small tree with a single blow. Step by step, he approached me, the ax held over his shoulder with both hands.
At last he stopped before me. I thought there were tears in his eyes. I made no move to defend myself. Somehow I knew Zosk would not strike. He struggled with himself, his simple wide face twisted in agony, his eyes tortured.
"May the Priest-Kings forgive me!" he cried.
He threw down the ax, which rang on the stones of the road to Ko-ro-ba. Zosk sank down and sat cross-legged in the road, his gigantic frame shaken with sobs, his massive head buried in his hands, his thick, guttural voice moaning with distress.
At such a time a man may not be spoken to, for according to the Gorean way of thinking pity humiliates both he who pities and he who is pitied. According to the Gorean way, one may love but one may not pity. So I moved on.
I had forgotten my hunger. I no longer considered the dangers of the road. I would make it to Ko-ro-ba by dawn.
Chapter Four: THE SLEEN
In the darkness I stumbled on towards the walls of Ko-ro-ba, striking the stones of the road with the butt of mt spear, to keep on the road and to drive possible serpents from my path. It was a nightmarish journey, and a foolish one, trying to rush on through the night to find my city, bruising, falling, scraping myself in the darkness, yet driven on by such a torment of doubt and apprehension that I could allow myself no rest until I stood again on the lofty bridges of Ko-ro-ba.
Was I not Tarl of Ko-ro-ba? Was there not such a city? Each pasang stone proclaimed there was — at the end of this road. Yet why was the road untended? Why had it not been traveled. Why had Zosk of the Caste of Carriers of Wood acted as he had? Why did my shield, my helmet, my accouterments not bear the proud sign of Ko-ro-ba?
Once I shouted in pain. Two fangs had struck into my calf. An ost, I thought! But the fangs held fast, and I heard the popping, sucking sound of the bladderlike seed pods of a leech plant, as they expanded and contracted like small ugly lungs. I reached down and jerked the plant from the soil at the side of the road. It writhed in my hand like a snake, its pods gasping. I jerked the two fanglike thorns from my leg. The leech plant strikes like a cobra, and fastens two hollow thorns into its victim. The chemical responses of the bladderlike pods produce a mechanical pumping action, and the blood is sucked into the plant to nourish it. As I tore the thing from my leg, glad that the sting had not been that of the venomous ost, the three hurtling moons of Gor broke from the dark cover of the clouds. I held the quivering plant up. Then I twisted it apart. Already my blood, black in the silvery night, mixed with the juices of the plant, stained the stem even to the roots. In a matter of perhaps two or three seconds, it had drawn perhaps a gill of liquid. With a shudder I hurled the loathsome plant away from the road. Normally such plants are cleared away from the sides of the roads and from inhabited areas. They are primarily dangerous to children and small animals, but a grown man who might lose his footing among them would not be likely to survive.
I prepared to set forth on my journey again, grateful that now the three moons of Gor might guide my path on this perilous road. I asked myself, in a sane moment, if I should not seek shelter, and I knew that I should, but I could not — because questions burned within me that I could not dare to answer. Only the evidence of my eyes and ears could allay my fears, my bewilderment. I sought a truth I did not know, but knew I must discover — and it lay at the end of this road.
I caught a strange, unpleasant scent, much like a common weasel or ferret, only stronger. In that instant every sense was alert.
I froze, an almost animal response.
I was silent, seeking the shelter of stillness and immobility. My head turned imperceptibly as I scanned the rocks and bushes about the road. I thought I heard a slight sniffling, a grunt, a small doglike whine. Then nothing.
It too had frozen, probably sensing my presence. Most likely it was a sleen; hopefully a young one. I guessed it had not been hunting me or I would not have been likely to have smelled it. Perhaps I stood thus for six or seven minutes. Then I saw it, on its six short legs, undulate across the road, like a furred lizard, its pointed, whiskered snout swaying from side to side testing the wind.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
It was indeed a young sleen, not more than eight feet long, and it lacked the patience of an older animal. Its attack, it it should detect my presence, would be noisy, a whistling rush, a clumsy squealing charge. It glided away into the darkness, perhaps not fully convinced that it was not alone, a young animal ready to neglect and overlook those slight traces that can spell the difference between death and survival in Gor" s brutal and predatory world.
I continued my journey.
Black, scudding clouds again obscured the three moons of Gor, and the wind began to rise. I could see the shadows of tall Ka-la-na trees bending against the darkness of the night, their leaves lifting and rustling on the long branches. I smelled rain in the air. In the far distance there was a sudden flash of lightning, and the sound or remote thunder reached me some seconds later.
As I hurried on, I became more apprehensive. By now it seemed to me that I should be able to see the lights of the cylinder city of Ko-ro-ba. The wind gathered force, seeming to tear at the trees.
In a flash of light I spied a pasang stone and eagerly rushed to it. In the mounting wind and darkness I traced the numbering on the stone. It was true. I should now be able to see the lights of Ko-ro-ba. Yet I could see nothing. The city must be in darkness.
Why were the lanterns not hung on the lofty bridges? Why were the lamps of a hundred colours and flames not lit in the compartments of the city, telling in the lamp codes of Gor of talk, or drinking, of love? Why were the huge beacons on the wall not burning, not summoning Ko-ro-ba" s far-roving tarnsmen back to the shelter of her walls?
I stood by the pasang stone, trying to understand. I was confused, uncertain. Now that I had not seen the lights of Ko-ro-ba, as I would have expected, it struck me more forcibly that I had not even seen the lights of peasant cooking fires glowing in the hills surrounding the city, or the torches of rash sportsmen who hunt the sleen by night. Yes, and by now I should have been challenged a dozen times by Ko-ro-ba" s night patrols! A monstrous chain of lightning exploded in the night about me, deafening me with the shock and roar of its thunder, splitting the darkness in violent fragments, breaking it to pieces like a clay bowl struck with a hammer of fire, and with the lightning, the storm descended, fierce cold torrents of icy rain whipped by the wind.
In a moment I was drenched in the icy water. The wind tore at my tunic. I was blinded in the fury of the storm. I wiped the cold water from my eyes, and thrust my fingers in my hair to force it back. The blinding fury of the lightning like a whip of electricity struck again and again into the hills dazzling me for an instant of crashing agony, then vanishing again into the darkness.
A bolt of lightning shattered on the road not fifty yards before me. For an instant it seemed to stand like a gigantic crooked spear poised in my path, luminous, uncanny, forbidding, then vanished. It had fallen in my path. The thought crossed my mind that it was a sign from the Priest- Kings that I should turn back.
I continued forward and stood where it had struck. In spite of the icy wind and rain I could feel the heat of the stones through my sandals. I raised my eyes to the storm, and my spear and shield, and shouted into the storm, a defiant puff of wind hurled against the forces that seemed arrayed against me.