Blood Brothers of Gor

Chapter 51 THE FLEER BRING A VISITOR TO CAMP

"They found it on the prairie," said a man, "the Fleer did. They have brought it here."

Two stout ropes were on its neck, each slung to the saddle of a kaiila, on its opposite sides. Men with lances rode behind it. The creature was weak, and had been much bled. Its upper body was almost covered with ropes, binding its arms tightly to its sides. A heavy branch, about eighteen inches long and three inches thick, had been thrust between its jaws, and its jaws tied shut about it. The claws had been torn out of its feet.

"What is it?" asked a man.

"It is one of those who were with the Yellow Knives," said a man, "those defeated on the trail."

This was the Kur I had come to think of as the eight Kur. It had been apparently separated from its companions at the time of the massacre of the wagon train and the fight between the soldiers and the savages. I had met it once before, when it had returned to the field to feed. It was that Kur which had been threatening the Waniyanpi, and whose attack I had frustrated. As we had not been similarly armed, it alone, afoot, and I with Grunt, he with an armed crossbow, and as it had not rushed upon me, I had not contested its withdrawl from the field. Such had seemed in accordance with codes to which I had once subscrived, codes which I had never forgotten. I had later learned from he who was then Pumpkin, then one of the Waniyanpi, that nine bodies of beasts had been found on the field. These had not been nuried by had been dragged away, into the fields, by the red savages. Thus I had been unable at the time to determine whether or not Kog and Sardak had been among the Kur survivors of the attack. There had been seventeen wagons with the mercenary column which I had conjectured had contained one Kur apiece, given the irritability and territoriality of such beasts. Subracting the nine beasts which had been slain in the fighting, probably mostly by Fleer, who seemed to have less apprehension concerning their appearance than several of the other tribes, I had arrived at a probable figure of eight Kur survivors.

When Cuwignaka and I had spied on the victory celebration of the Yellow Knives and soldiers at the summer camp we had counted only seven Kurii there, including Kog and Sardak. The eighth Kur, then, as I thought of him, seemed clearly to have been separated from his fellows. I had conjectured that he had perhaps perished on the prairie. Now, however, he had paparenly been taken by Fleer, and within the general vicinity. This was, I suspected, no accident. He had probably been following the warriors, conjecturing perhaps that the movements of such large numbers of men might have to do, in one way or another, with the projects of his peers, with whom, doubtless, he had hoped to resume contact.

"What shall we do with him?" asked a man. "The Fleer do not want him. Too, some Fleer are uneasy concerning the killing of such a creature."

"Tell them," I said, "to take him to the lodge of the dark guest."

The man then turned to the Fleer. He pointed to the Kur, and then, with a sweeping guesture, indicated a direction. He then crossed the index fingers of his right and left hand, like lodged poles. He then lifted his head and opened his mouth, as though baring fangs, and lifted a the same time his right hand, the fingers crooked like claws, in a threatening gesture.

The Fleer in charge of the captive nodded and, with a movement of his hand, indicated that his companions, the Kur in their charge, should follow him.

My eyes and those of the Kur met. He, too, I think, recalled our previous encounter.

He was then, shuffling in the dust with bloody feet, from which the claws had been extracted, bound helplessly, dragged on ropes and prodded with the butts of lances, conducted toward the lodge of Zarendargar.