Tribesmen of Gor

“Why did you not eat it?” asked the man near me.

I shrugged. Some salt slaves eat the lelt, raw, taken from the water, or gleaned from their harvesting vessels. The first bite is taken behind the back of the neck.

I regarded the fish.

Perhaps they have some dim awareness of light. Perhaps it is only the heat that draws them. I suppose, in the salt pit, one of our small lamps might seem to those who had in their lives known only darkness like the glory of a thousand suns. We know little about the lelt. We do know it will come from the darkness and lift the blind pits of its eyes toward a source of light.

“You could have given it to me,” said the man near me.

“I did not think of it,” I told him.

We know little about men, too, I thought. We do know they will seek the truth. I do not know if they can see it. Perhaps if they touched it, they would die, burning in its flames. Perhaps we ca

“The lelts have gone,” said the man.

The waters were dark, seemingly empty. The lelts, the salamanders, had gone.

“Waken, T’Zshal,” said the man. The hair rose on the back of my neck. Suddenly then I understood the institution of the ke

“The lelts have gone,” whispered a man.

I glanced at T’Zshal, his heavy head, bearded, resting on his arm, the lance beside him.

I had wondered why men did not kill T’Zshal, and the other ke

I went to the recumbent figure of the ke

T’Zshal opened his eyes. He sat up. With his fingers, and some fresh water, from a skin, he rubbed his eves. He took a drink. He stretched, and stood up on the raft. He studied the waters about the raft, black and quiet. He removed his shirt, and his boots.

The waters were quiet.

He was bare-chested. He wore the kafflyeh and agal. He was barefoot. The dagger was thrust in his sash. He examined the long blade of the lance, ru

There was no stirring, or movement, near the raft.

None of the men spoke.

T’Zshal was the first to see it. We saw it only after we sensed his movement, slight.

It was some forty feet away, aft on the starboard side. Then it disappeared.

T’Zshal took the lance, holding the point down. He gripped it in both hands.

“Stand back from the edge of the raft,” he said.

We moved back.

I felt exhilarated. Gone from my mind suddenly were the brooding on realities and truths that might not be disclosed to men. It is enough to know they exist.

One need not stand forever, one’s face pressed against a wall that may not be penetrated. One must turn one’s back in time upon the impenetrable wall, One must laugh, and cry out, and be a man. Man can think; he must act. In the midst of impenetrable mysteries, not caring for him, beyond him, he behaves, he chooses, he acts. Wisdom decrees that the tree of thought must not be planted where it ca

Within the boundaries of his own being, in that bright realm, let him claim the supremacy which is his; it will remain vacant, unless he seize upon it. It is his; he may take it or not. The choice is up to him. All else is the night and darkness. Music he will make among the stones and silence. He will sing for his own ears; the justification is himself and the song. To what must he be true, if not himself? To what else should he be true? He is born a hunter. Let him not forget the taste of meat.

It erupted from the water not a yard from the raft, hurtling upward, ten feet into the air, towering over the boards and T’Zshal, with a cry of rage, and joy, and I, too, screamed, thrust the lance deep into the body and it turned twisting in the air jaws teeth rows like hooks back bent triangular the gills beneath the jaw the pits in the side of the great head a yard more I could not tell across and then fell back into the water and twisted under the surface and circled away, the dorsal fin, sail-like, scarred from years before, tracing its angry circle.

“Greetings, Old One’’ cried T’Zshal. He held the bloodied lance in his hand, fluid thick, black under the lamps, on the blade.

The Old One now again faced the raft. It scarcely moved in the water. It seemed to be watching us.

“It is not pleased,” said a man. “You have angered it,” said another.

My heart pounded. I thought not then of our comrades of the day before, those slain by the monster in the water. I thought then rather of the beast, the foe, and the bunt. I feared then only that it might forsake the fray.

But I needed not fear, for it was the Old One with whom we dealt.

“Ah, Old One,” crooned T’Zshal, softly across the water, “we meet again.”

I wondered that he had said this.

“Protect the lamps.” said T’Zshal, softly, to us. “Cover them when the water is high.”

If the lamps were lost, and the torches unlit, I did not think it likely we would return to the salt dock.

I saw the water near the tail of the Old One begin to stir. It was moving its tail back and forth. Then it slipped beneath the surface.