All were armed, and their hands seemed instinctively to seek their hilts as they stood glaring at me, their shaggy heads thrust forward in their apelike manner.
“Thak!” one exclaimed, or rather roared—all their voices were as gusty as a sea wind—“he’s conscious!”
“Do you suppose he can speak or understand human language?” rumbled another.
All this while I had stood glaring back at them, wondering anew at their speech. Now I realized that they were not speaking English.
The thing was so unnatural that it gave me a shock. They were not speaking any Earthly language, and I realized it, yet I understood them, except for various words which apparently had no counterpart on Earth. I made no attempt to understand this seemingly impossible phenomenon, but answered the last speaker.
“I can speak and understand.” I grunted. “Who are you? What city is this? Why did you attack me? Why am I in chains?”
They rumbled in amazement, with much tugging of mustaches, shaking of heads, and uncouth profanity.
“He talks, by Thak!” said one. “I tell you, he is from beyond the Girdle!”
“From beyond my hip!” broke in another rudely. “He is a freak, a damned, smooth-skinned degenerate misfit which should not have been born, or allowed to exist.”
“Ask him how he came by the Bonecrusher’s poniard,” requested yet another.
“Did you steal this from Logar?” he demanded.
“I stole nothing!” I snapped, feeling like a wild beast being prodded through the bars of a cage by unfeeling and critical spectators. My rages, like all the emotions on that wild planet, were without restraint.
“I took that poniard from the man who carried it, and I took it in a fair fight,” I added.
“Did you slay him?” they demanded unbelievingly.
“No,” I growled. “We fought with our bare hands, until he tried to knife me. Then I knocked him senseless.”
A roar greeted my words. I thought at first they were clamoring with rage; then I made out that they were arguing among themselves.
“I tell you he lies!” one bull’s bellow rose above the tumult. “We all know that Logar the Bonecrusher is not the man to be thrashed and stripped by a smooth-skinned hairless brown man like this. Ghor the Bear might be a match for Logar. No one else.”
“Well, there’s the poniard,” someone pointed out.
The clamor rose again, and in an instant the disputants were yelling and cursing, and brandishing their hairy fists in one another’s faces, hands fumbled at sword hilts, and challenges and defiances were exchanged freely.
I looked to see a general throat-cutting, but presently one who seemed in some authority drew his sword and began banging the hilt on the rude bench, at the same time drowning out the voices of the others with his bull-like bellowing.
“Shut up! Shut up! Let another man open his mouth and I’ll split his head!” As the clamor subsided and the disputants glared venomously at him, he continued in a voice as calm as if nothing had occurred. “It’s neither here nor there about the poniard. He might have caught Logar sleeping and brained him, or he might have stolen it, or found it. Are we Logar’s brothers, that we should seek after his welfare?”
A general snarl answered this. Evidently the man called Logar was not popular among them.
“The question is, what shall we do with this creature? We’ve got to hold a council and decide. He’s evidently uneatable.” He grinned as he said this, which was apparently meant as a bit of grim humor.
“His hide would make good leather.” suggested another in a tone that did not sound as though he was joking.
“Too soft,” protested another.
“He didn’t feel soft while we were carrying him in,” returned the first speaker. “He was hard as steel springs.”
“Tush,” deprecated the other. “I’ll show you how tender his flesh is. Watch me slice off a few strips.” He drew his dagger and approached me while the others watched with interest.
All this time my rage had been growing until the chamber seemed to swim in a red mist. Now, as I realized that the fellow really intended trying the edge of his steel on my skin I went berserk. Wheeling, I gripped the chain with both hands, wrapping it around my wrists for more leverage. Then, bracing my feet against the floor and walls I began to strain with all my strength. All over my body the great muscles coiled and knotted; sweat broke out on my skin, and then with a shattering crash the stone gave way, the iron ring was torn out bodily, and I was catapulted on my back onto the floor, at the feet of my captors who roared with amazement and fell on me en masse.
I answered their bellows with one strident yell of blood-thirsty gratification, and heaving up through the melee, began swinging my heavy fists like caulking mallets. Oh, that was a rough-house while it lasted! They made no attempt to knife me, striving to swamp me with numbers. We rolled from one side of the chamber to the other, a gasping, thrashing, cursing, hammering mass, while with the yells, howls, earnest profanity, and impact of heavy bodies, it was a perfect bedlam. Once I seemed to catch a fleeting glimpse of the door thronged with the heads of women similar to the one I had seen, but I could not be sure; my teeth were set in a hairy ear, my eyes were full of sweat and stars from a vicious punch on the nose, and what with a gang of heavy forms romping all over me my sight was none too good.
Yet, I gave a good account of myself. Ears split, noses crumpled and teeth splintered under the crushing impact of my iron-hard fists, and the yells of the wounded were music to my battered ears. But that damnable chain about my waist kept tripping me and coiling about my legs, and pretty soon the bandage was ripped from my head, my scalp wound opened anew and deluged me with blood. Blinded by this I floundered and stumbled, and gasping and panting they bore me down and bound my arms and legs.
The survivors then fell away from me and lay or sat in positions of pain and exhaustion while I, finding my voice, cursed them luridly. I derived ferocious satisfaction at the sight of all the bloody noses, black eyes, torn ears and smashed teeth which were in evidence, and barked in vicious laughter when one announced with many curses that his arm was broken. One of them was out cold, and had to be revived, which they did by dumping over him a vessel of cold water that was fetched by someone I could not see from where I lay. I had no idea that it was a woman who came in answer to a harsh roar of command.
“His wound is open again,” said one, pointing at me. “He’ll bleed to death.”
“I hope he does,” snarled another, lying doubled up on the floor. “He’s burst my belly. I’m dying. Get me some wine.”
“If you’re dying you don’t need wine,” brutally answered the one who seemed a chief, as he spat out bits of splintered teeth. “Tie up his wound, Akra.”
Akra limped over to me with no great enthusiasm and bent down.
“Hold your damnable head still,” he growled.
“Keep off!” I snarled. “I’ll have nothing from you. Touch me at your peril.”
He exasperatedly grabbed my face in his broad hand and shoved me violently down. That was a mistake. My jaws locked on his thumb, evoking an ear-splitting howl, and it was only with the aid of his comrades that he extricated the mangled member. Maddened by the pain, he howled wordlessly, then suddenly gave me a terrific kick in the temple, driving my wounded head with great violence back against the massive bench leg. Once again I lost consciousness.
When I came to myself again I was once more bandaged, shackled by the wrists and ankles, and made fast to a fresh ring, newly set in the stone, and apparently more firmly fixed than the other had been. It was night. Through the window I glimpsed the star-dotted sky. A torch which burned with a peculiar white flame was thrust into a niche in the wall, and a man sat on the bench, elbows on knees and chin on fists, regarding me intently. On the bench near him stood a huge gold vessel.