Free Savages of Gor by John Norman Page A

you see, would be useful in dealing with them."
    "I see," I said.
    "What is your answer?" said Kog.
    "No," I said.
    "Is that your final decision?" asked Kog.
    "Yes," I said.
    Kog and Sardak suddenly howled. The table between us flung upwards. Samos and I, buffeted, stumbled back. The dark lantern, scattering flaming oil, struck a wall to the side of the room. "Beware, Samos!" I cried. I stood ready with the sword in the guard position. Kog hesitated, tearing at the boards with his clawed feet.
    "Guards!" cried Samos. "Guards!" Burning oil was adhering to the rained wall to our right. I saw the eyes of the two creatures glinting like fiery copper plates. Sardak reached down and seized up the huge spear, which Kog had earlier placed to the side. "Beware, Samos!" I cried.
    Guards, with crossbows, rushed into the room, behind us. With a cry of rage Sardak hurled the great spear. It missed Samos and shattered half through the wall some forty feet behind us. Kog hurled the shield towards us and, like a great, shallow, concave bowl, it skimmed through the air, between us, and broke boards loose near the roof behind us. "Fire," cried Samos to his men. "Fire!"

With the titanic beating of wings the two tarns, the creatures mounted on them, took flight from the ruins of the tarn cot. I staggered back in the wind from the wings. I half shut my eyes against the dust and debris, which struck, against my face. The flames from the burning oil on the wall to my right leaped almost horizontally backwards, torn and lashed by the wind. Then they burned again, as they had a moment before. I saw the creatures mounted on the tarns, silhouetted against one of Gor's three moons, fleeing over the marshes. "They have escaped," said Samos.
    "Yes," I said. They had restrained themselves as long as they had been able to. What a titanic effort of will must have been necessary for them, creatures so ferocious and savage, to have control themselves as long as they had. They had done particularly well considering the numerous provocations to which, deliberately, I had subjected them to test the depth of their commitment to their mission and the depth of their need of human help.
    "Look at this," said one of Samos' men, working loose the great spear from the wall.
    "And this," said another, lifting up the huge shield.
    Samos' men examined the spear and shield.
    "Forget what you have seen here this night," said Samos.
    "What were they?" asked one of Samos' men, standing beside me.
    "We call them Kurii, Beasts," I said.
    2       I Will Go to the Barrens
    "It was a trick," said Samos, "to lure you into the Barrens, where they might have slain you with impunity."
    Samos and I rode inside the squarish, covered barge in which we had earlier come to the tam complex in the marshes. It was now shortly after dawn. We were making our way through the canals of Port Kar. Here and there, on the walks at the edges of the canal, men were moving about. Most were loading or readying small boats, or folding nets. I saw, through the small, slatted window near me, a slave girl drawing water from the canal, with a rope and bucket.
    "Surely so elaborate a hoax would not have been necessary if our destruction had been their only end in view," I said.
    "Perhaps," said Samos.
    "They might have attacked us almost immediately in the tarn complex, and presumably have made good their escape," I said.
    "True," said Samos. It was unlikely that we could have adequately defended ourselves against a sudden onslaught of such foes at that short a distance.
    I saw a man outside on the walk, a few yards away, mending a net. Ovoid, painted floats lay beside him. On my knees, rolled, was the hide, which had been displayed to us by Kog and Sardak in the tarn complex. We had retrieved it from the burning complex. Too, at our feet, dented, but still operational, as we had determined, was the boxlike translator. We had left the burning complex behind us in the marshes, its smoke ascending in the