Shaba lay dead by his couch. Shaba was coughing and spitting blood. The blade of his fang ring, that containing kanda, was exposed, and bloody. I threw myself to the side again and again the great panga fell. The table on which reposed the map case and notebooks of Shaba seemed to explode in two, wood splintering and flying to the sides, the map case and notebooks, scattering, showering upward.
The Kur, roaring and snarling, looked about. For the moment it had lost me. I kept to its blind side. Then, uttering the war cry of Ko-ro-ba, I leaped upon its back, and, an arm about its throat, plunged the dagger to its heart. I felt the great body shuddering under me and I leaped away from it.
I spun about. I saw another Kur at Shaba. Again Shaba interposed the fang ring. I saw the six digits of the paw close on the chain about Shaba's neck, and then the digits released the chain and the beast slipped back, limply. It sat for a moment, and then, unsteadily, fell to the side.
I thrust the bloody dagger between my teeth. On it I tasted the blood of Kur.
I seized up the panga which had been carried by the beast I had slain. It was heavy. I must needs use two hands to wield it.
I looked back once to Shaba, who, head down, was clutching at the blankets of the couch. They were covered with blood. Ngumi ran to him. Shaba lifted his head. 'Fight,' he said. 'Save yourselves.'
'I will never leave you!' cried Ngumi. Then he cried out, half cut in two. I leaped forward and, frontally, struck the Kur which had slain Ngumi. Its broad head was cut open to the neck. I looked down at Ngumi. The tribal stitching on his face, so startling and paradoxical in a scribe, a man of civilization, was identical to that on the face of Shaba.
'Help!' I heard. 'They are breaking through!'
I ran to the threshold and, leaping upon the stones, screaming, struck at the arms and paws which were thrusting back the barrier of lashed poles. Paws and arms, severed, flew bloody from the blade. Kurii, howling, drew back.
'Others are coming over the walls!' I heard.
'Free me!' I heard. I ran to Turgus and slashed his bonds. He seized up a stabbing spear from a fallen askari and ran to fight. I then slashed away the bonds of the huddled, crouching slave girls. 'Master!' cried Janice. They might now have some chance to flee. Yet they were enclosed within the walls. A human female who falls to a male conqueror may sometimes, by submitting herself totally to him as a slave, save her life, at least until he determines whether or not she is sufficiently pleasing. Kurii, on the other hand, generally have little interest in human females except as food.
I turned to meet the attack of another Kur. I blocked his blow with the panga and was, from the force of it, thrown back a dozen feet. He struck again and I was hurled back to the wall. The panga had almost been ripped away from me. My hands stung. He struck again and stone showered out from the wall, to the right of my head. I slipped to the side and caught him with the panga, striking across the hip and lower abdomen. He grunted and stepped back, holding splinters of bone and loops of intestine in its paw. I then struck its head away.
'Kisu, watch out!' I cried.
Kisu turned but a figure interposed itself between him and the attacker. A stabbing spear was thrust into the belly of the Kur, and then, stabbing five times more, in the belly and chest, and throat, the interposing figure forced back the bewildered, enraged beast. An askari then struck the beast from behind, thrusting his stabbing spear deep into its back, below the left shoulder blade. The beast turned to attack its new menace, and he who had been the interposing figure, now behind it, as it had turned, thrust his own stabbing spear deep into its back, as had the askari. The beast sank to its knees and snapping crawled toward the retreating askari for more than a dozen feet until it collapsed on the stones.
Kisu glared at he who had been the interposing figure. 'My thanks, Ubar,' he then said. Then each, Kisu, the rebel, and Bila Huruma, Ubar of the equatorial empire, side by side, addressed themselves to thwarting the attack of new Kurii. I held the panga in two hands. My mouth was bleeding, as I had cut myself on the dagger clenched between my teeth. I looked about. I thrust the dagger through my tunic, it held in place, in the pierced cloth, by its hilt. I wiped blood from my face. I rejoined the fray. I struck a Kur from behind that was towering over a fallen askari, opening the shaggy skull to the nape. Another I struck, too, from behind, severing the spinal column. It had been bent over, pausing to feed. I saw yet more Kurii clambering over the wall. Others pressed again now at the lashed poles over the stones at the threshold. I ran toward the threshold. I hacked them back. They drew back, a leader roaring and gesticulating. Then others brought forth two of the slender tree trunks they had been using to scale the walls. I threw back my head to breathe. I checked that the dagger was still caught in my tunic. I thrust it through another place, too, in the tunic. Too easily, earlier, it might have been lost.
'How have we been surprised?' I asked Ayari, who was at the threshold.
'The guards at the small bridge were surprised and killed,' he said. 'They took the bridge and crossed the moat.'
'It is a slaughter,' I said.
I looked about. The oval leather shields and the stabbing spears of the askaris might have been ideal armament for invincibility in tribal warfare but they afforded little in the way of martial equity when compared to the weighty, slashing pangas of the Kurii. They were not the mighty axes and heavy shields of Torvaldsland.
Bila Huruma was screaming at his men. He himself had discarded his shield, or it had been struck from him. 'Single them out,' he cried. 'Attack in fives, one engage, four strike!'
'He is improvising tactics,' said Ayari.
'He is a Ubar,' I said.
One askari might fend a committed blow of the panga with the iron blade of his stabbing spear. Four others might then, swarming upon the beast, drive their weapons repeatedly into it. These Kurii were, on the whole, wild Kurii, not ship Kurii. Each would be used to fighting alone, terrible and solitary, hunting its own kills in the ancient manner. They might be in proximity to one another, but each functioned, in effect, as an isolated unit. They were horrifying and ferocious, but were not trained.
'There are too many,' I said: 'It is true that we are lost,' said Ayari, 'but we shall make a good fight of it.'
'Well said,' said I, 'small rogue.'
I saw Bila Huruma slip to one knee. A mighty Kur stood over him, his panga raised over his head. Then, from behind Bila Huruma, there was a wild cry of Ukungu, and a raider's spear, in its length, thrust past the Ubar and buried itself in a red wound in the Kur's heart.
'My thanks, Rebel,' said Bila Huruma, regaining his feet. Kisu pulled his weapon free, and grinned. 'I now owe you nothing,' he said.
'True,' said Bila Huruma, and then again, side by side, rebel and Ubar, they fought.
One of the Kur leaders, then, marshaling his forces, formed them in loose lines, that they might no longer be singly attacked. I had little doubt but what he was a ship Kur. I admired his ability to control the degenerate, recruited Kurii he commanded. There was perhaps in them the vestige, or memory, perhaps passed on in an oral tradition, of the disciplines and dignities in their past, notably, doubtless, that of ship loyalty.
'We are finished now,' I said. 'They will fight together.'
Bila Huruma now gathered his men about him. Many were covered with blood. There were probably no more than a hundred left then with him.
I saw more Kurii dropping over the wall.
Suddenly, behind us, there was a splintering of lashed poles, and bindings, too, tore loose. Again and again, then, the trunks of small trees struck at the barrier fending us from the main forces of the attacker.
'We must hold them,' cried Ayari.
'It cannot be done,' I said. The framework of lashed poles, suddenly, broke half apart and Kurii swarmed within, some with pangas, some with clubs and sharpened sticks. We fell back from the stones, literally swept from our rampart by the irruption of the wood and the flood of massive; charging bodies.
The panga then was gone from my hands, wrenched away, lost in the body of the Kur in which I had buried it.
'Form!' I cried. 'Get the wall to your backs!'
Men streamed past me to take a stand by the wall. I leaped upon a Kur's chest, holding to him by my left hand, clenched in fur behind its shaggy neck. I drove the dagger, torn from my tunic, again and again into its chest. The Kur had worn rings of gold in its ears. I had little doubt it was a ship Kur. I slipped free as the animal
