Blood Brothers of Gor (11 page)

"She is only my maiden," said Bloketu.

"Where is her collar?" asked Hci.

"I do not put her in one," said Bloketu.

"She is no longer a child," said Hci. "She is a grown woman now. She is old enough, now, for the garb and collar of a slave. She is old enough, now, for a warrior."

Iwoso looked down, angrily.

"Yellow-Knife woman," said Hci, bitterly.

She looked up at him, angrily.

"A Yellow Knife did this to me," said hci, pointing to the long, jagged scar at his chin, on the left side.

"He struck you well!" said Iwoso, angrily.

"I slew him," said Hci.

Hci then again, turned his attention to Bloketu.

"Punish him!" said Bloketu, pointing to Cuwignaka.

"Her?" said Hci.

"Her!" said Bloketu.

"I am a warrior," said Hci. "I do not mix in the squabbles of females."

"Oh," cried Bloketu, angrily.

I smiled to myself. It seemed to me that Hci had handled this business well. Surely it would have been beneath his dignity

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to meddle in such a business. Too, as a Sleen Soldier, on the day of a hunt, during their tenure of power, he had matters much more important to attend to than the assuagement of a female's offended vanity.

"The herd is too close," said Hci. "You are all to withdraw from this place."

We prepared to turn about.

"Separately," said Hci.

The hair rose again on the back of my neck.

"There," said Hci, pointing to the southwest, "is a fallen bull, a Cracked-Horns, of thirty winters."

"That is not good meat, or good hide," said Bloketu, puzzled.

"Attend to it, Bloketu," said Hci.

"Yes, Hci," she said. The two women, then, Bloketu and Iwoso, the travois poles making the grass behind their kaiila, took their way away. I watched the grass springing up behind them. In a few minutes it would be difficult for anyone but a skilled tracker, looking for broken stems, to determine that they had gone that way.

"Over there," said Hci, to us, pointing east by southeast, "there is a draw. In the draw there is a fallen bull, a Smooth Horns, no more than some six winters in age. Attend to it."

"Yes, Hci," said Cuwignaka, obediently. A Smooth Horns is a young, prime bull. Its horns are not yet cracked from fighting and age. The smoothness of the horns, incidentally, is not a purely natural phenomenon. The bulls polish them, themselves, rubbing them against sloping banks and trees. Sometimes they will even paw down earth from the upper sides of washouts and then use the harder, exposed material beneath, dust scattering about, as a polishing surface. This polishing apparently has the function of both cleaning and sharpening the horns, two precesses useful in intraspecific aggression, the latter process imporving their capacity as fighting instruments, in slashing and goring, and the former process tending to reduce the amount of infection in a herd resulting from such combats. Polishing behavior in males thus appears to be selected for. It has consequences, at any rate, which seem to be in the best intrests of the kailiauk as a species.

"There," said Hci, "your kaiila will be tired. Unharness them from the travois. Let them gaze. Picket them close to where you are working."

"Yes," said Cuwignaka, angrily.

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"Go now," said Hci, pointing.

"Yes, Hci," said Cuwignaka.

I was sweating, as the young Sleen Soldier rode away. "What was that all about?" I asked.

"This meat on our travois," said Cuwignaka, "is to be destroyed."

"I do not understand," I said.

"We will go to the draw," said Cuwignaka.

"Very well," I said.

Chapter 6

WHAT OCCURRED IN THE DRAW

It was nearly dusk.

"This will be our fifth load of meat." I said.

"Oh, yes," said Cuwignaka, bitterly.

"Wait," I said.

Cuwignaka, too, lifted his head. We were in a long, narrow, generally shallow draw. Tey, where we worked, where the Smooth Horns had been felled, the sides were reletively steep, some twenty feet or so on our left, some thirty feet on our right.

I could feel tremors in the earth now beneath our feet.

"They are coming," said Cuwignaka. He bent swiftly to the twisted leather hobbles, almost like slave hobbles, on the forelegs, almost at the paws, of our kaiila. He thrust the paws free of the twisted, encircling leather. We had already, as Hci had commanded, freed the kaiila of the two travois.

"How many are there?" I asked.

"Two, maybe three hundred," said Cuwignaka, climbing lightly to the silken back of his kaiila.

I could not hear the sound, clearly. It carried through the draw, the deep thudding, magnified by, intisified by, that narrow corridor, open to the sky, of dirt and rock.

"Mount up," said Cuwignaka. "Hurry."

I looked at the meat.

Almost at the same time, suddenly, about a bend in the draw, turning, lurching, its shoulder striking the side of the draw, its feet almost slipping out from under it, in its turn, in the soft footing, covered with dust, its eyes wild and red, foam at its nostrils and mouth, some twenty-five hundred

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pounds or better in weight, snorting, kicking duse behind it, hurtled a kailiauk bull.

I leaped to the side and it rushed past me. I could almost have touched it. My kaiila squealed and, as I headed it off, it tried to climb the side of the draw, scrambling at it, then slipping back, falling, rolling, to the side.

Another bull, then, bellowing, hurtled past.

I seized the reins of the kaiila. The draw was now filled with dust. The ground shook under our feet. The thudding now became thunderous, striking about the walls, seeming all about us. The kaiila of Cuwignaka squealed and reared. He held it in his place, mercilessly. As my beast scrambled up, regaining its feet, I mounted it, and turned it away, down the draw. Cuwignaka and I, then, not more than a few yards ahead of the animals, which, in a body, buffeting and storming, tridents down, their heads low, as the kailiauk runs, came streaming, flooding, bellowing, torrentlike, about that bend in the draw, raced to safety.

We stod in the grass, about a hundred yards from the draw. I kept my hand on my kaiila's neck. It was still trembling. The mass of the animals which, stampeded, had come running through the draw, was now better than a pasang away. Here and there single animals roamed. Some even stopped, lowering their heads to graze.

"Let us return to the draw," said Cuwignaka, mounting up.

I joined him and, slowly, our kaiila at a walk, we returned to the narrow draw. Its floor was torn with the passage of the animals. Many of the hoofprints were six and seven inches deep.

"The animals were probably isolated in the other end of the draw," said Cuwignaka. "Then a bull was cut out and run down the draw, to be felled where we found him."

"Is that likely?" I asked.

"I think so," said Cuwignaka. "Sometimes animals take shelter in a draw, or, running into one, begin to mill, and, for a time, will stay there, sometimes until morning."

"It was a trap," I said.

"Not really," said Cuwignaka. "We were told to unharness the kaiila. We were told to picket them, in effect, at hand."

I nodded.

"No harm was intended to come to us," said Cuwignaka.

We then, on our kaiila, entered the draw, straightening

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ourselves on our kaiila as they descended the sloping entrance between the dirt sides.

"The meat is gone," said Cuwignaka, in a moment. "It is torn apart, destroyed, trampled, scattered."

Here and there I could see pieces of meat, trodden into the dust.

"We could save some of it," I said, "gather it and wash it later, at the camp."

"Leave it for the flies," said Cuwignaka.

"The travois, too, are destroyed," I said.

"Yes," siad Cuwignaka.

The poles were broken and splintered; the cross pieces were shattered; the hides were rent. Bindings and harness were scatered about.

I surveyed the ground floor of the draw, the trampled, half-buried meat, the remains of the travois. Many of the bones even, of the animal on which we had been working were crushed and flung about. The carcass itself, most of it, had been moved several feet and flattened, and lay half sunk in the dust of the draw. The force of even a single kailauk, with its speed and weight, can be a fearful thing. In numbers, it is awsome to contemplate their power.

Cuwignaka dismounted and began to gather in the rawhide bindings and pieces of harness from the shattered travios. They might be used again.

"I will help you," I said. I dismounted, and joined him. Our kaiila, not moving much, stayed close to us.

"The head is there," said Cuwignaka, indicating the head of the beast we had skinned, and had been fleshing.

"Yes" I said.

"When we are finished," said Cuwignaka, "we will take it out of the draw. We will take it up to the surface."

"All right," I said.

"Someone is coming," I said.

We looked down to the bend in the draw. About it, slowly, his kaiila walking, came a single rider.

"It is Hci," said Cuwignaka.

Hci halted his kaiila a few yards from us. He was naked save fr the breechclout and moccasisns. About his neck was the necklace of sleen claws. Across his thighs was a bow. At his left hip was his quiver. His arrows, extracted from their targets, the meat identified, at this time of day, would have been wiped clean of blood, even the lightning grooves inscribed

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in the long shafts. Stains would remain, of course, at the base of some of the feathers.

"Hou, Cuwignaka," said Hci.

"Hou, Hci," said Cuwignaka.

Hci looked about the draw. "You have lost the meat," he said.

"Yes," said Cuwignaka.

"That is not good," said Hci.

"No," said Cuwignaka.

"Your travois, too, have been destroyed," said Hci.

"Yes," said Cuwignaka.

"I told you the herd was too close," said Hci. "I told you to withdraw from this place."

Cuwignaka was furious, but did not speak. We knew that these words of Hci, to that extent, could be sworn to by Bloketu and Iwoso.

"But you did not listen," said Hci. "You chose, rather, to deliberately disobey a warden of the hung."

"Why did you do this?" asked Cuwignaka.

"Now you have lost the meat," said Hci.

"It is you who have destroyed the meat!" said Cuwignaka. "You have destroyed meat!"

Hci sat quietly on the kaiila. "I could kill you now, both of you," he said, "but I do not choose to do so."

I did not doubt but what Hci spoke the truth. We had only one knife with us, a cutting knife. Hci was mounted, and had his bow.

Hci then, quietly, rode towards us. When he reached our vicinty he stopped his kaiila. He indicated the head of the kailiauk. "That is to be taken out of the draw," he said. "Take it up to the surface."

"I will do so," said Cuwignaka.

Hci then, not hurrying, rode past us and made his way up the draw, some pebbles slipping back, on its slope, from the movement of his kaiila paws.

We finished our work, coiling the rent harness and bindings from the travois. We slung them about our shoulders.

"I must leave the Isbu," said Cuwignaka.

"Why?" I asked.

"I am a shame to my brother," said Cuwignaka.

"This head will be heavy," I said. "If we are going to get it out of the draw, let us do so now."

"Yes," said Cuwignaka. We then, between us, carried the

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head up, out of the draw, and, some fifty yards or so from the draw, placed it on the level.

"Why are we doing this?" I asked.

"The kailiauk is a noble animal," said Cuwignaka. "Let the sun shine upon it."

"This is interesting to me," I said.

"What?" asked Cuwignaka.

"This business," I said.

"What business?" he asked.