Untitled

(Fragment)

Three men sat at a table playing a game. Across

the sill of an open window there whispered a faint

breeze, blowing the filmy curtains about and bearing

to the players the incense of roses and vines and grow-

ing green things.

Three men sat at a tableone was a kingone a

prince of an ancient houseone was the chief of a ter-

rible and barbaric nation.

"Score!" quoth Kull, king of Valusia, as he moved

one of the ivory figures. "My wizard menaces your

warrior, Brule."

Brule nodded. He was not as large a man as the

king, but he was firmly knit, compactly yet lithely

built. Kull was the tiger, Brule was the leopard. Brule

was a Pict and dark like all his race. Immobile fea-

tures set off a fine head, powerful neck, heavy trim

shoulders and a deep chest. These features, with the

muscular legs and arms, were characteristics of the

nation to which he belonged. But in one respect Brule

differed from his tribesmen, for whereas their eyes

were mostly hard scintillant brown or wicked black,

his were a deep volcanic blue. Somewhere in his

blood was a vagrant strain of Celt or of those scat-

tered savages who lived in ice caves close to the Arc-

tic Circle.

"A wizard is a hard man to beat, Kull," said this

man, "in this game or in the real red game of battle--

well, there was once when my life hung on the bal-

ance of power between a Pick-land wizard and mehe

had his charms and I had a well-forged blade"

He paused to drink deeply from a crimson goblet

which stood at his elbow.

Tell us the tale, Brule," urged the third player.

Ronaro, prince of the great Atl Volante house, was a

slim elegant young man with a splendid head, fine

dark eyes and a keen intellectual face. He was the pa-

tricianthe highest type of intelligent aristocracy any

land has ever produced. These other two in a way

were his antithesis. He was born in a palace; of the

others, one had been born in a wattle hut, the other in

a cave. Ronaro traced his descent back two thousand

years, through a line of dukes, knights, princes, states-

men, poets, and longs. Brule could trace his ancestors

vaguely for a few hundred years and he named among

them skin-clad chiefs, painted and feathered warriors,

shamans with bison-skull masks and finger-bone neck-

lacesone or two island kings who held court in mud

huts, and a legendary hero or two, semi-deified for

feats of personal strength or wholesale murder. Kull

did not know who his own parents were.

But in the countenance of all three gleamed an

equality beyond the shackles of birth and circum-

stance-the aristocracy of the Man. These men were

natural patricians, each in his own way. Ronaro's

ancestors were kings; Brule's, skin-clad chiefs; Kull's

might have been slaves or chieftains. But about each

of the three was that indefinable element which sets

the superior man apart and shatters the delusion that

all men were born equal.

"Well," Brule's eyes filled with brooding reminis-

cence, "it happened in my early youth; yes, in my first

war raid. Oh, I had killed a man or so in the fishing

brawls and at the tribal feasts, but I had not yet been

ornamented with the scars of the warrior clan" he

indicated his bare breast where the listeners saw three

small horizontal marks, barely discernible in the sun-

bronze of the Pict's mighty chest

Ronaro watched him with a never-failing interest

as he talked. These fierce barbarians with their primi-

tive vitality and straight-forwardness intrigued the

young prince. Years in Valusia as one of the empire's

strongest allies had wrought an outward change on

the Picthad not tamed him, but had given him a ve-

neer of culture, education and reserve. But beneath

that veneer burned the blind black savage of old. To a

greater extent had this change worked on Kull, once

warrior of Atlantis, now king of Valusia.

"You, Kull, and you, Ronaro," Brule said, "we of

The Islands are all one blood, but of many tribes, and

each tribe has customs and traditions peculiar to itself

alone. We all acknowledge Nial of the Tatheli as over-

king, but his rule is loose. He does not interfere with

our affairs among ourselves, nor does he levy tribute

or taxes, as the Valusians call it, from any except the

Nargi and the Dano and the Whale-slayers who live

on the isle of Tathel with his own tribe. These he pro-

tects against other tribes and for that reason he col-

lects toll. But he takes no toll of my tribe, the Borni,

nor of any other tribe. Neither does he interfere when

two tribes go to warunless some tribe encroaches on

the three who pay tribute. When the war is fought and

won, he arbitrates the matter, and his judgment is fi-

nalwhat stolen women shall be returned, what pay-

ment of war canoes made, what blood price paid, and

so on. And when the Lemurians or the Celts or any

foreign nation or band of reavers come against us, he

sends forth for all tribes to put aside their quarrels

and fight side by side. Which is a good thing. He

might be a supreme tyrant if he liked, for his own

tribe is very strong, and with the aid of Valusia he

might do as he liked-but he knows that though he

might, with his tribes and their allies, crush all the

other tribes, there would never be peace again, but

revolt as long as a Borni or a Sungara or a Wolf-slayer

or any of the tribesmen was left alive."