“Yd” howled the others, agreeing, and the chief snarled a reluctant order, for it had not been his idea. He took command of the situation with a sweep of his arm. “Pick them all up, all the live ones, and bring them. We’ll see if this man really is from the ship. If he isn’t, we’ll find out what he really is.”
The others shouted agreement and turned their attention to the fallen nemet, Kta first. Him they shook and slapped until he began to fight them again, and then they twisted his hands behind him and tied him.
Two other nemet they found not seriously hurt and treated in similar fashion. A third man they made walk a few paces, but he could not do so, for his leg was pierced with a shaft. One of them kicked his good leg from under him and smashed his skull with an ax.
Kurt twisted away, chanced to look on Kta’s face, and the look in the nemet’s eyes was terrible. Two more of his men they killed in the same way, and at each fall of the ax Kta winced, but his gaze remained fixed. By his look they could as well have killed him.
XV
The ship rested as Kurt remembered it, tilted, the port still open. About it now were camped a hundred of the Tamurlin, hide-clothed and mostly naked, their huts of grass and sticks and hides encircling the shining alloy landing struts.
They came running to see the prizes their party had brought, these savage men and women and few starveling children. They shouted obscene threats at the nemet, but shied away, murmuring together when they realized Kurt was human. One of the young men advanced cautiously- though Kurt’s hands were tied-and others ventured after him. One pushed at Kurt, then hit him across the face, but the chief snatched him back, protective of his property. “What band is he from?” one of them asked. “Not from us,” said the chief. “None of ours.” “He is human,” several of the others argued the obvious. The chief took Kurt by the collar and pulled, taking his pel down to the waist, pushed him forward into their midst. “He’s not ours, whatever he is. Not of the tribes.”
Their reaction was near to panic, babbling excitement.
They put out their filthy hands, comparing themselves with
him for their hides were sun-browned and creased with
premature wrinkles from weather and wind, with dirt and
grease ground into the crevices. They prodded at Kurt with
leathery fingers, pulled at his clothing, ran their hands over
his skin and howled with amusement when he cursed and
kicked at them. .
It was a game, with them running in to touch him and out again when he tried to defend himself; but when he tired of it and let them, that spoiled it and angered them. They hit, and this time it was in earnest. One of them in a fit of offended arrogance pushed him down and kicked him repeatedly in the side, and the lot of them roared with laughter at that, even more so when a little boy darted in and did the same. Kurt twisted onto his knees and tried to rise, and the chief seized him by the arm and hauled him up.
“Where from?” the chief asked.
“Offworld,” said Kurt from bloodied lips. He saw the ship beyond the chiefs shoulder, a sanctuary out of his own time that he could not reach. He burned with shame for their treatment of him, and for the nemet’s eyes on these his brothers, these shaggy, mindless, onetime lords of the earth. “That ship brought me here.”
“The Ship,” the others took it up. “The holy Ship! The Starship!”
“This is not the Ship,” the chief shouted them down and pointed at it, his hand trembling with passion. “The curse-sign on it-this man is not what the Articles say.”
The Alliance emblem. Kurt had forgotten the sunburst emblem of the Alliance that was blazoned on the ship. They were Hanan. He followed the chief’s pointing linger, wondering with a sickness at the pit of his stomach how much of the war these savages recalled.