"Vance, Jack - Planet of Adventure 01 - City of the Chasch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

The man advanced on the cringing girl, who stood with fists pressed to her mouth. He struck her, kicked her, pushed her out into the compound, cursing and bawling insults: "disgusting intimacy with an outland slave; is this your regard for the purity of the race?"

"Slave?" Reith picked himself up from the floor of the shed. The word rang in his mind. Slave?

The girl ran off to huddle under one of the towering wagons. Traz Onmale came to look into the uproar. The warrior, a stalwart buck of about Reith's own age, pointed a quivering finger toward Reith. "He is a curse, a dark omen! Was not all this foretold? Intolerable that he should spawn among our women! He must be killed, or gelded!"

Traz Onmale looked dubiously toward Reith. "It seems that he did small damage."

"Small damage indeed! But only because I happened past! With so much energy for ardor, why is he not put out to work? Must we pamper his belly while he sits on pillows? Geld him and set him to toil with the women!"

Traz Onmale gave a reluctant assent, and Reith, with a sinking heart, thought of his survival kit dangling from the tree, with its drugs, transcom, spanscope, energy pack, and, most especially, weapons. For all their present benefit to him they might as well be with the Explorator IV.

Traz Onmale had summoned the butcher-woman. "Bring a sharp knife. The slave must be made placid."

"Wait!" gasped Reith. "Is this any way to treat a stranger? Have you no tradition of hospitality?"

"No," said Traz Onmale. "We do not. We are the Kruthe, driven by the force of our Emblems."

"This man struck me," protested Reith. "Is he a coward? Will he fight? What if I took his emblem from him? Would I not then be entitled to his place in the tribe?"

"The emblem itself is the place," Traz Onmale admitted. "This man Osom is the vehicle for the emblem Vaduz. Without Vaduz he would be no better than you. But if Vaduz is content with Osom, as must be so, you could never take Vaduz."

"I can try."

"Conceivably. But you are too late; here is the butcherwoman. Be good enough to disrobe."

Reith turned a horrified glance upon the woman, whose shoulders were broader than his own and inches thicker, and who advanced upon him wearing a face-splitting grin.

"There is still time," muttered Reith. "Ample time." He turned upon Osom Vaduz, who snatched forth his rapier with a shrill whine of steel against hard leather. But Reith had stepped in close, within the six-foot reach of the blade. Osom Vaduz tried to leap back; Reith caught his arm, which was hard as steel; in his present condition Osom Vaduz was by far the stronger man. Osom Vaduz gave his arm a mighty jerk to fling Reith to the ground. Reith pulled in the same direction, swung around to drag Osom Vaduz reeling off-balance. Reith thrust up his shoulder, Osom Vaduz rolled across his hip and crashed to the ground. Reith kicked him in the head, grounding his heel into Osom Vaduz's throat, to crush the windpipe. As Osom Vaduz lay twitching and croaking his hat rolled off; Reith reached for it but the Chief Magician snatched it away.

"No, by no means!" cried the magician in a passion. "This is not our law. You are a slave; a slave you remain!"

"Must I kill you too?" asked Reith, edging ominously forward.

"Enough!" cried Traz Onmale peremptorily. "There has been enough killing. No more!"

"What of the emblem?" asked Reith. "Do you not agree it is mine?"

"I must consider," declared the youth. "In the meanwhile, no more. Butcher-woman, take the body to the pyre. Where are the Judgers? Let them come forth and judge this Osom who carried Vaduz. Emblems, bring forth the engine!"

Reith moved off to the side. A few minutes later he approached Traz Onmale. "If you wish, I will leave the tribe and go off by myself."

"You will know my wishes when they are formulated," declared the lad, with the absolute decisiveness conferred upon him by the Onmale. "Remember, you are my slave; I ordered back the blades which would have killed you. If you try to escape, you will be tracked, taken, flogged. Meanwhile you must gather fodder."

It seemed to Reith as if Traz Onmale were straining for severity, perhaps to divert attention-his own as well as everyone else's-from the unpleasant order he had given to the butcherwoman and which, by implication, he had rescinded.

For a day the dismembered body of Osom, who once had carried the emblem Vaduz, smoldered within a special metal kiln, and the wind blew a vile stench through the camp. The warriors uncovered the monstrous catapult, started the engine and brought it into the center of the compound.

The sun sank behind a bank of graphite-purple clouds; sunset was an angry welter of crimson and brown. Osom's corpse had been consumed; the fire was ashes. With all the tribe crouching in murmurous ranks, the Chief Magician kneaded the ashes with beast-blood to form a cake, which was then packed into a box and lashed to the head of a great shaft.