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I swung, wildly. My right sleeve caught afire. I heard a kur below me scream with pain; I looked down, and hauled myself up to avoid the stroke of an ax; one kur reeled about; the left side of its furred head, wet, drenched in oil, was aflame; it screamed hideously; it clawed at its left eye. Hand over hand I crawled up the chain; then the chain shook, wildly; I struggled to hold it; the fire at my right sleeve snapped back and forth; I lost my breath; I feared my neck would break; blood was on the chain; I held it; kurii howled beneath me; I moved further up the chain; then the chain stretched down, taut; an ax flew wheeling past, half cutting into one of the crossbeams in the roof; I climbed higher; then, suddenly, I realized why the chain had been pulled taut; the beam, above me, creaked; the chain was now tight, like a cable; the links strained, grating on one another; it now bore, besides mine, the weight of a kur, rapidly climbing; the ring above me, through which the chain passed, pulled part way from the wood; I scrambled up the last few feet of the chain; I threw my arm over the beam; I felt claws seize at my leg, then close about it; I released the beam, screaming the war cry of Ko-ro-ba, falling tearing and ripping with fingers and teeth about the neck and head of the startled kur; stiffened fingers, like daggers, drove at its eyes; my teeth tore at the veins in its wrist, in the arm that held the chain; in that instant the kur realized, and, I realized, too, for the first time, that there were on the surface of Gor animals as savage as its kind, slighter animals, smaller, weaker, but no less vicious, in their way no less terrible; fending me away, screaming, biting, it released me, but I clung about its shoulders and neck; I bit through half of its ear; I pulled myself up to the beam; an orifice, red, projecting fangs like white nails, stretched below me; I drew the sword and, as it climbed, eyes bleeding, ear torn, after me, I cut away its hand; it fell back, growing smaller, until it struck heavily on the reeded earth, stained with its churned, reddish mud, forty feet below; it broke its neck; I tore away the flaming sleeve of my garment and thrust it, on the sword point, into the face of the next kur; the hand of the first still clung to the chain, with its six multiple jointed fingers; the kur, with a shake of its head, dislodged the burning cloth and pulled its pierced face from the sword; it bit at the sword, cutting its mouth; it reached to the beam; I cut at the fingers; it lost its balance; it, too, fell backward. "Come!" I heard. I saw the Forkbeard on a nearby beam. "Hurry!" he cried. - (Marauders of Gor, Chapter )