Free The Steel of Raithskar by Randall Garrett

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Gorilla gorilla
, and they held themselves more naturally erect.
    Their faces were definitely apelike. The head sloped back steeply from the supraorbital ridge, leaving little room for prefrontal lobes. The lower jaw was massive and muscular, and the great canines made my own look ridiculously small. Their faces and bodies were covered with short, curly fleece, as though they had grown pubic hair all over. It was a light tan in color, not much darker than Keeshah’s fur. But where Keeshah carried his pale bulk with grace, these lumbering brutes were even uglier for their pallor.
    To add to their grotesqueness, they were wearing gray-brown shorts and were wielding push-brooms. And as I watched, a third one followed them from the crowd; he was pushing a wheelbarrow-like cart.
    No one else was in the least disturbed by their presence or their appearance. Shoppers stepped out of their way automatically as they passed. Apparently they were a normal sight on the streets of Raithskar, a simple street-cleaning detail, sweeping up sand and leaves, and leftovers from passing vleks.
    Then one of the broom-pushers caught the cart-pusher in the side with the end of the broom handle. It was purely accidental, a miscalculated backstroke. But Cart-pusher roared, spun the cart out of his way and cuffed Broom-pusher on the side of the head from behind. Broom-pusher swung around, his broom cutting a wide arc and knocking the wind out of Cart-pusher.
    The Gandalaran pedestrians were paying attention now, scattering away from the fight. The two vineh were literally at each other’s throats, grappling and snarling and trying with single-minded determination to kill each other. The second broom-pusher turned and looked, crouched and eager to join the brawl. I had the feeling that the only thing that stopped him was having to decide which side to join.
    A man in a yellow tunic, whom I had seen near the vineh but hadn’t really noticed, pushed against the outward tide of people and ran toward the fray, shouting with authority. “Break it up!” he ordered the struggling vineh, who paid him no attention. The third ugly took a step toward the other two, but stopped in confusion when the man yelled, “Gooloo, you stay out of this!”
    He was carrying a thick baton nearly as long as his arm. He thrust it between the two fighters, but they ignored it.
    “Stop it, you fleabitten filth-heads! Stop, I say!” They pulled out of their clinch for a second, and, with a quick flick of his wrist, the man gave each one of the pair a painful smack on the nose.
    Both vineh roared their indignation, forgot their quarrel, and turned on the man, who backpedaled quickly. “Back! Back! Stay back!” he ordered. But the note of authority in his voice had been replaced by one of terror. He was the one who was backing, trying to hold the brutes off by jabbing with his baton like an inept fencer.
    His heel caught in an irregularity in the hard clay surface of the street and he went down, flat on his back. The two vineh who had been fighting were close now, and the third was converging on them. This decision, obviously, was easier to make. It was going to be a slaughter.
    I had to do something. Without my even thinking about it, my bronze sword was suddenly in my hand, and I was sprinting toward the fallen man, who was still poking upward with his baton to ward off the beasts. One of them grabbed, jerked, and took it away from him. I tried to put on more speed.
    But before I could reach them, the attack stopped as quickly as it had begun.
    The vineh who had grabbed the baton dropped it, looked stupidly around, and went back to pick up his broom. The other went back to the cart. He was limping slightly, and both of them were bleeding slowly from gashes and bites. I marveled at the toughness of their hides. They picked up their equipment and continued along the street as though nothing at all had happened. The third, who had been halfway to the scene of the fight,