Almuric, Robert E. Howard [love books to read .txt] 📗

my

new life as a naked savage, now took the next step on the ladder of

evolution and became a barbarian. For the men of Koth were barbarians,

for all their silks and steel and stone towers. Their counterpart is

not on Earth today, nor has it ever been. But of that later. Let me

tell first of my battle with Ghor the Bear.

 

My chains were removed and I was taken to a stone tower on the wall,

there to dwell until my wounds had healed. I was still a prisoner.

Food and drink were brought me regularly by the tribesmen, who also

tended carefully to my wounds, which were unimportant, considering the

hurts I had had from wild beasts, and had recovered from unaided. But

they wished me to be in prime condition for the wrestling, which was

to decide whether I should be admitted to the tribe of Koth, or—well,

from what they said of Ghor, if I lost there would be no problem as to

my disposition. The wolves and vultures would take care of that.

 

Their manner toward me was noncommittal, with the exception of Thab

the Swift, who was frankly cordial to me. I saw neither Khossuth, Ghor

nor Gutchluk during the time I was imprisoned in the tower, nor did I

see the girl Altha.

 

I do not remember a more tedious and wearisome time. I was not

nervous because of any fear of Ghor; I frankly doubted my ability to

beat him, but I had risked my life so often and against such fearful

odds, that personal fear had been stamped out of my soul. But for

months I had lived like a mountain panther, and now to be caged up in

a stone tower, where my movements were limited, bounded and

restricted—it was intolerable, and if I had been forced to put up

with it a day longer, I would have lost control of myself, and either

fought my way to freedom or perished in the attempt. As it was, all

the constrained energy in me was pent up almost to the snapping point,

giving me a terrific store of nervous power which stood me in good

stead in my battle.

 

There is no man on Earth equal in sheer strength to any man of Koth.

They lived barbaric lives, filled with continuous peril and warfare

against foes human and bestial. But after all, they lived the lives of

men, and I had been living the life of a wild beast.

 

As I paced my tower chamber, I thought of a certain great wrestling

champion of Europe with whom I had once contested in a friendly

private bout, and who pronounced me the strongest man he had ever

encountered. Could he have seen me now, in the tower of Koth! I am

certain that I could have torn out his biceps like rotten cloth,

broken his spine across my knee, or caved in his breastbone with my

clenched fist; and as for speed, the most finely trained Earth athlete

would have seemed awkward and sluggish in comparison to the tigerish

quickness lurking in my rippling sinews.

 

Yet for all that, I knew that I would be strained to the uttermost

even to hold my own with the giant they called Ghor the Bear. He did,

indeed, resemble a shaggy rusty-hued cave-bear.

 

Thab the Swift narrated some of his triumphs to me, and such a

record of personal mayhem I never heard; the man’s progress through

life was marked by broken limbs, backs and necks. No man had yet stood

before him in barehanded battle, though some swore Logar the

Bonecrusher was his equal.

 

Logar, I learned, was chief of Thugra, a city hostile to Koth. All

cities on Almuric seemed to be hostile to each other, the people of

the planet being divided into many small tribes, incessantly at war.

The chief of Thugra was called the Bonecrusher because of his terrible

strength. The poniard I had taken from him had been his favorite

weapon, a famous blade, forged, Thab said, by a supernatural smith.

Thab called this being a gorka, and I found in tales concerning the

creature an analogy to the dwarfish metalworkers of the ancient

Germanic myths of my own world.

 

Thab told me much concerning his people and his planet, but of these

things I will deal later. At last Khossuth came, found my wounds

completely cured, eyed my bronzed sinews with a shadow of respect in

his cold brooding eyes, and pronounced me fit for battle.

 

Night had fallen when I was led into the streets of Koth. I looked

with wonder at the giant walls towering above me, dwarfing their human

inhabitants. Everything in Koth was built on a heroic scale. Neither

the walls nor the edifices were unusually high, in comparison to their

bulk, but they were so massive. My guides led me to a sort of

amphitheater near the outer wall. It was an oval space surrounded by

huge stone blocks, rising tier upon tier, and forming seats for the

spectators. The open space in the center was hard ground, covered with

short grass. A sort of bulwark was formed about it out of woven

leather thongs, apparently to keep the contestants from dashing their

heads against the surrounding stones. Torches lighted the scene.

 

The spectators were already there, the men occupying the lower

blocks, the women and children the upper. My gaze roved over the sea

of faces, hairy or smooth, until it rested on one I recognized, and I

felt a strange throb of pleasure at the sight of Altha sitting there

watching me with her intent dark eyes.

 

Thab indicated for me to enter the arena, and I did so, thinking of

the old-time bare-knuckled bouts of my own planet, which were fought

in crude rings pitched, like this, on the naked turf. Thab and the

other warriors who had escorted me remained outside. Above us brooded

old Khossuth on a carven stone elevated above the first tier, and

covered with leopardskins.

 

I glanced beyond him to that dusky star-filled sky whose strange

beauty never failed to fascinate me, and I laughed at the fantasy of

it all—where I, Esau Cairn, was to earn by sweat and blood my right

to exist on this alien world, the existence of which was undreamed by

the people of my own planet.

 

I saw a group of warriors approaching from the other side, a giant

form looming among them. Ghor the Bear glared at me across the ring,

his hairy paws grasping the thongs, then with a roar he vaulted over

them and stood before me, an image of truculence incarnate—angry

because I had chanced to reach the ring before him.

 

On his rude throne above us, old Khossuth lifted a spear and cast it

earthward. Our eyes followed its flight, and as it sheathed its

shining blade in the turf outside the ring, we hurled ourselves at

each other, iron masses of bone and thew, vibrant with fierce life and

the lust to destroy.

 

We were each naked except for a sort of leather loin-clout, which

was more brace than garment. The rules of the match were simple, we

were not to strike with our fists or open hands, knees or elbows,

kick, bite or gouge. Outside of that, anything went.

 

At the first impact of his hairy body against mine, I realized that

Ghor was stronger than Logar. Without my best natural weapons—my

fists—Ghor had the advantage.

 

He was a hairy mountain of iron muscle, and he moved with the

quickness of a huge cat. Accustomed to such fighting, he knew tricks

of which I was ignorant. Lastly, his bullet head was set so squarely

on his shoulders that it was practically impossible to strangle that

thick squat neck of his.

 

What saved me was the wild life I had lived which had toughened me

as no man, living as a man, can be toughened. Mine was the superior

quickness, and ultimately, the superior endurance.

 

There is little to be said of that fight. Time ceased to be composed

of intervals of change, and merged into a blind mist of tearing,

snarling eternity. There was no sound except our panting gasps, the

guttering of the torches in the light wind, and the impact of our feet

on the turf, of our hard bodies against each other. We were too evenly

matched for either to gain a quick advantage. There was no pinning of

shoulders, as in an Earthly wrestling match. The fight would continue

until one or both of the contestants were dead or senseless.

 

When I think of our endurance and stamina, I stand appalled. At

midnight we were still rending and tearing at each other. The whole

world was swimming red when I broke free out of a murderous grapple.

My whole frame was a throb of wrenched, twisted agony. Some of my

muscles were numbed and useless. Blood poured from my nose and mouth.

I was half blind and dizzy from the impact of my head against the hard

earth. My legs trembled and my breath came in great gulps. But I saw

that Ghor was in no better case. He too bled at the nose and mouth,

and more, blood trickled from his ears. He reeled as he faced me, and

his hairy chest heaved spasmodically. He spat out a mouthful of blood,

and with a roar that was more a gasp, he hurled himself at me again.

And steeling my ebbing strength for one last effort, I caught his

outstretched wrist, wheeled, ducking low and bringing his arm over my

shoulder, and heaved with all my last ounce of power.

 

The impetus of his rush helped my throw. He whirled headlong over my

back and crashed to the turf on his neck and shoulder, slumped over

and lay still. An instant I stood swaying above him, while a sudden

deep-throated roar rose from the people of Koth, and then a rush of

darkness blotted out the stars and the flickering torches, and I fell

senseless across the still body of my antagonist.

 

Later they told me that they thought both Ghor and I were dead. They

worked over us for hours. How our hearts resisted the terrible strain

of our exertions is a matter of wonder to me. Men said it was by far

the longest fight ever waged in the arena.

 

Ghor was badly hurt, even for a Kothan. That last fall had broken

his shoulder bone and fractured his skull, to say nothing of the minor

injuries he had received before the climax. Three of my ribs were

broken, and my joints, limbs and muscles so twisted and wrenched that

for days I was unable even to rise from my couch. The men of Koth

treated our wounds and bruises with all their skill, which far

transcends that of the Earth; but in the main it was our remarkable

primitive vitality that put us back on our feet. When a creature of

the wild is wounded, he generally either dies quickly or recovers

quickly.

 

I asked Thab if Ghor would hate me for his defeat, and Thab was at a

loss; Ghor had never been defeated before.

 

But my mind was soon put to rest on this score. Seven brawny

warriors entered the chamber in which I had been placed, bearing a

litter on which lay my late foe, wrapped in so many bandages he was

scarcely recognizable. But his bellowing voice was familiar. He had

forced his friends to bring him to see me as soon as he was able to

stir on his couch. He held no malice. In his great, simple, primitive

heart there was only admiration for the man who had given him