Ursus of Ultima Thule Read Online Free PDF Page A

off. Excitement and happiness had made him heedless and when he heard the low-voiced song in the clearing he had no thought but to see who was singing it.
    It was one of the Painted Men, that was at once obvious — one of the Painted Men whom it was death to see unpainted. By greatest good fortune, though, he had just finished painting himself — and what a curious pattern his skin did present! Almost hideous. Not till the man, still humming his witchery-song, lifted his brush and dipped it in a tiny pot did Arnten realize, cold with horror, that what he was seeing was the man’s naked skin! — that he had only then begun.
    The Painted (or unPainted) Man swung about, panting with shame and rage. Arnten felt the club’s first blow.

Chapter
III
    The old nain stood stolidly where the uneasy soldiers had bade him stand. He could without great effort have broken the ribs of all of them and the necks of most before any of them could stop him — and perhaps it was this that made them uneasy. But perhaps not. The king’s camp and court was an uneasy place in general these days — not that the rest of Thule lay at much ease either. Slots of sunlight came through the smoke hole in the top of the great tent. The king sat back on a pelt-piled bench and the nain thought it seemed they lied who said the king was age-wasted. Indeed, as the Orfas sat there, glaring, hands clenched upon his knees, he seemed all too vigorous.
    Within himself the old nain sighed a slight sigh. Only to the extent that the smoothskins were unpredictable were they predictable at all. Ah, eh. Seasons come and seasons go and ever the race of nains would remain upon the earth. Meanwhile, one endured. Heat, cold, toil, hunger, thirst, a savage beast, an unwise king.
    A witchery queen.
    The soldiers, fumbling and breathing their unhappiness, finished shackling the old nain’s horsehide fetters to one of the roof posts, were angrily waved outside, almost stumbled over each other in their eagerness to obey.
    For a long moment the king continued to glare. Then he said, slowly and with effort, but quite correctly, “Uur-tenokh-tenokh-guur.”
    So, this was something. At least the king remembered the nain’s proper name. Or had learned it. A small courtesy, perhaps. But a courtesy. He would return it. “Orfas,” he said.
    The king’s head snapped up with a jerk. He was not angered, he was not pleased, his attention had been called to something forgotten. Probably it had been long since he had been called by his own name in the Old Tongue, called anything (perhaps) save King or Great Bull Mammont or some other lick-leg flattery such as the smoothskins used. The old nain almost without thinking essayed more syllables in the witchery language, but the king’s swift gesture cut him off.
    “My store of that speech has rusted in my mind,” Orfas said, “as has my store of the iron you have cursed.” His head shifted, his eyes flashed. “
Why
have you cursed it?”
    “We have not. Do you curse your kingdom?”
    “You are the High Smith of the nains. I have not had you brought here to bandy questions with me.”
    “You had not brought me here at all, had I not thought you would keep your word.”
    Bluff and bluster. What? Not kept his word? How?
    “You said I would not be bound.”
    A false and further look of outraged pride, falling into one of faint regret and helplessness at having been stupidly misunderstood. “I said that you would not be bound with iron.”
    “It is by such cunning shift of words that you hope to command either my respect or my assistance?” The king flushed, either in affront or from some vestigial sense of shame. “Do you think me an owl or a bat, unable to see in daylight? I see that none of your captives are bound in iron. It is not out of any honor that I have been bound in thongs of skin, but because you no longer trust iron.” It was a statement, not a question, it went home. The king looked aside, for a moment at a loss.