Norman, John - Gor 25 - Magicians of Gor.txt

by Magicians of Gor [lit]

  “Of course not,” I said. “If they are there, with their facilities, they have

  probably already been copied, and perhaps more than once, and who knows where

  those copies might be stored, either there or about the city. Besides there are

  slave girls there.”

  “Such as the Ubara,” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  I suddenly stopped.

  (pg. 242)

  “What is it?” he asked, instantly alert.

  “Listen,” I said.

  We could hear footsteps approaching, rapidly. We moved back, against a wall.

  A brawny figure, in the darkness, passed.

  I was not sure, but it seemed I had seen it somewhere, some place.

  “Not everyone is observant of the curfew,” remarked Marcus.

  “You are out,” I said.

  “We have armbands,” he said.

  “I think there is another coming,” I said.

  We kept back, in the shadows.

  Another fellow was in the street, approaching, but suddenly detected us, shadows

  among shadows. He whipped free a sword and mine, and that of Marcus, too, left

  its sheath. He seemed startled, for a moment. I, too, was startled. Then, not

  sheathing the blade, he hurried on.

  “Are there others?” whispered Marcus.

  “Probably,” I said, “but on other streets, each taking a separate way.”

  Marcus put back his sword. I, too, sheathed mine.

  “Did you recognize the first fellow?” I asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “I think he was of the peasant levies,” I said. “I first saw him outside the

  walls. He had come from the west, and had survived the final defeat of Ar.” I

  thought I remembered him. he was a shaggy giant of a man. He had won the game of

  standing on the verr skin. He had cut the skin. I remembered the wine, soaking

  the ground, like blood. He had stood upon the skin and regarded us. “I have

  won,” he had said. He had been of the peasants. I would have expected him to

  have left the vicinity of the city. To be sure, his village may have been one of

  several nearby villages put to the torch, its supplies gathered in by foragers,

  or burned. Such villages, after all, had furnished their quotas for the

  defensive levies. Indeed, a good portion of youth, many not old enough to know

  how to handle a weapon.

  “You recognized the second fellow?” said Marcus.

  “I think so,” I said.

  “I think he may have recognized us as well,” he said.

  “Perhaps,” I said.

  “Plenius,” said he, “from the delta.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I hear cries in the street,” said Marcus.

  (pg. 243) “There is an alarm bar, as well,” I said.

  “Look there!” said Marcus.

  “I see it,” I said.

  The sky was red in the east. It was a kind of radiance, flickering and pulsing.

  “That is not the dawn,” said Marcus grimly.

  “I think we should return to our quarters,” I said.

  Some men ran past us now, towards the east, toward the light. We could hear more

  than one alarm bar now.

  “Surely the curfew is still in effect,” said Marcus.

  “It will be hard to enforce now,” I said.

  “What is going on?” I called to a fellow hurrying past us, carrying a lantern.

  “Have you not heard?” he asked. “It is the house of records. It is afire!”

  “Perhaps we should have gone to a tavern,” said Marcus.

  “They close at the eighteenth Ahn now,” I said.

  “True,” he said, irritatedly.

  I supposed that the taverners must be much put out by the curfew law, and would

  have lost much business. But perhaps they could open earlier.

  I then, the rope and hook beneath my cloak, accompanied Marcus back toward the

  Metallan district. I could share his chagrin. Indeed, we might as well have

  spent the evening in a paga tavern, enjoying the swaying, pleading bodies of

  former free women of Ar, and considering on the ankles of which, on the cord

  there, wrapped several times about the ankle, and tied, we would consent to

  thread a pierced metal token, five of which might be purchased for a tarsk bit.

  At the time of the closing of the tavern these women were whipped if they did

  not have at least ten such tokens on their ankle cord. They jingled when they

  moved.

  16 In the Vicinity of the Teiban Market

  “Ho!” cried the mercenary. “Behold! We have captured one of the Delta Brigade!”

  “One side! One side!” cried his fellow, pushing men back.

  “Will no one rescue me?” cried the bearded, bound fellow, struggling in the

  grasp of the mercenary who had first cried out.

  “Are you not men?”

  (pg. 244) We were at Teiban and Venaticus, at the southwest corner of the Teiban

  Sul Market. It was morning, the eight Ahn, on the second day of the week.

  Naturally there were many folks about in such a place, at such a time.

  “Careless,” said Marcus, “that these fellows, not even guardsmen, should so

  boldly, so publicly, conduct their prisoner to this area, where hostility toward

  Cos might be rampant.”

  “Certainly an apparent lack of judgment,” I granted him.

  “Release me!” cried the bearded fellow to the two mercenaries. “I demand to be

  freed!”

  “Silence, despicable sleen!” shouted one of the guardsmen, cuffing the prisoner,

  who reacted as though he might have been struck with great force.

  “Sleen of a traitor to Cos!” said the other mercenary, adding a blow, to which

  the bearded prisoner once again reacted.

  “I think I could have struck him harder than that,” speculated Marcus.

  “Release him!” cried a vendor of tur-pah, pushing through baskets of the

  vinelike vegetable.”

  “Do not interfere!” warned one of the mercenaries.

  “Back, you disgusting patriots of Ar!” exclaimed the other.

  “Strange,” remarked Marcus, “that the prisoner has on his sleeve the armband

  with the delka upon it.”

  “Doubtless that is how the mercenaries recognized him as a member of the Delta

  Brigade,” I said.

  “The work of Seremides would be much simpler, to be sure,” said Marcus, “if all

  fellows in the Delta Brigade would be so obliging.”

  “Perhaps they could all wear a uniform,” I suggested, “to make it easier to pick

  them out.”

  “There are only two of them!” cried the bearded prisoner. “Take me from them!

  Hide me! Glory to the Delta Brigade!”

  None in the crowd, it seemed, dared echo this sentiment, but there was no

  mistaking its mood, one of sympathy for the fellow, and of anger toward the

  mercenaries, and there was a very definite possibility, one thing leading to

  another, that it might take action.

  “Help! Help, if there be true men of Ar here!” cried the prisoner.


  One of the fellows from the market pushed at a mercenary who thrust him back,

  angrily.

  “Make way! Make way!” cried the mercenary.

  “Let him go!” cried a man. Men surged about the two mercenaries.

  (pg. 245) “It is my only crime that I love Ar and am loyal to her!” cried the

  prisoner.

  “Release him!” cried men. More than one fellow in the crowd had a staff, that

  simple weapon which can be so nimble, so lively, so punishing, in the hands of

  one of skill. This was only to be expected as many of the vendors in the market,

  were peasants, come in with produce from outside the walls. Indeed, in many

  places they could simply enter through breaches in the wall, or climb over

  mounds of rubble, and enter the city. With respect to the staff, it serves of

  course not only as a weapon but, more usually, and more civilly, as an aid in

  traversing terrain of uncertain footing. Too, it is often used, yokelike, fore

  and aft of its bearer, to carry suspended, balanced baskets. Weaponwise,

  incidentally, there are men who can handle it so well that they are a match for

  many swordsmen. My friend Thurnock, in Port Kar, was one. Indeed, many sudden

  and unexpected blows had I received in lusty sport from that device in his

  hands. Eventually, under his tutelage, I had become proficient with the weapon,

  enabled at any rate to defend myself with some efficiency. But still I would not

  have cared to meet him, or such a fellow, in earnest, each of us armed only in

  such terms. I prefer the blade. Also, of course, all things being equal, the

  blade is a far more dangerous weapon. The truly dangerous peasant weapon is the

  peasant bow, or great bow. It is in virtue of that weapon that thousands of

  villages of Gor have their own Home Stones.

  “Release him!” cried a man.

  “What is to be done with him?” inquired another.

  “Doubtless to be impaled,” said one of the mercenaries.

  “No! No!” cried men.

  “I wonder if those mercenaries realize they are in danger,” said Marcus.

  “I trust that they are being well paid,” I said. “Otherwise they are certainly

  being exploited.”

  “Save me!” cried the bearded fellow. “Do not let them take me! Save me, if there

  be true men of Ar here!”

  “Back, sleen of Ar!” cried the mercenary with the prisoner in hand.

  “Back!” cried the other.

  “Certainly they are not being very politic,” said Marcus.

  “Nor very courteous,” I said.

  “Help!” cried the prisoner, struggling. His hands were bound behind him and

  there were some ropes, as well, about his upper body, binding his arms to his

  sides.

  “There is one hopeful sign here,” said Marcus. “there is obviously sympathy for

  the Delta Brigade.”

  (pg. 246) “Yes,” I said.

  “Help!” cried the prisoner.

  “Does it seem to you that there are secret guardsmen about?” I asked Marcus. I

  had been trying to determine this.

  He, too, surveyed the crowd, and area. “I do not think so,” he said.

  “Perhaps then,” I said, “it is time to remove our armbands and reverse our

  cloaks, and adjust our wind scarves.”

  “Yes,” said Marcus, grimly, “as the poor fellow is surely in desperate need of

  rescue.”

  In a moment then, our armbands removed, and certain adjustments effected in our

  garmenture, we thrust through the crowd.

  “Unhand him!” I cried. It was not for nothing that I had once been granted a

  tryout with the troupe of Boots Tarsk-Bit. To be sure, the tryout had come to

  naught.

  “Who are you?” cried one of the mercenaries. I did not think he was bad either.

  Surely he knew whom to expect, at any rate, in this situation. The prisoner’s

  face suddenly beamed. With our wind scarves in place, and our blades drawn,

  there would be little doubt who we would be, at least in general.

  “The Brigade!” whispered men, elated, about us.

  “Unhand them!” cried one of the men about.

  A fellow flourished a staff. I trusted the crowd would not now close with the

  mercenaries, for if it did I genuinely feared there would be little but pulp

  left of them. But, still, it seemed, they did not recognize that they were in

  actual danger. So little respect they had, it seemed, for the men of Ar. On the

  other hand, perhaps they read the crowd better than I. But I really doubt it. I

  think I was much more aware, and had been earlier from my position and

  perspective, and my awareness of the mood of Ar, of its tenseness, its

  readiness, its ugliness, like a dark sky that might suddenly, without warning,

  blaze and shatter with destruction and thunder. Indeed, it was the mercenaries

  whom Marcus and I, I believe, as it was turning out, were rescuing.

  “We yield to superior force,” said the first mercenary.

  “We have no choice,” said the second, apparently similarly resigned, the one who

  had the prisoner in hand.

  A murmur of victory, of elation, coursed through the crowd.

  “There are only two of us,” I said to the mercenary who I took it was first of

  the two. “Let us have it out with blades.”

  “No, no, that is all right,” he said.

  “Here is seems you have many allies,” said the second.

  “I am sure they will be good fellows and not interfere,” I said.

  (pg. 247) “No, we will not interfere!” said a fellow enthusiastically.

  “Clear some space,” said another.

  The crowd began to move back.

  “I tell you,” we surrender the prisoner,” said the first, somewhat unpleasantly.

  “We are surrendering him. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “We are yielding to superior force,” he said.

  “There is no choice for us,” said the second.

  “Very well,” I said.

  They then turned about, and expeditiously withdrew.

  “You must now escape,” said a man. “They will inform guardsmen, they will return

  with reinforcements.”

  “I do not think so,” I said.

  Men looked at me, puzzled.

  “My thanks, brothers!” said the prisoner. “But our brethren of Ar are right! We

  must flee! Take me with you, hide me!”

  I sheathed my blade, and so, too, did Marcus his.

  “Hurry! Untie me! Let us make away!” said the prisoner.

  “You do not seem to be well tied,” I said, inspecting his bonds.

  “What are you doing?” he cried. “Ugh!”

  “Now,” I said, “you are well tied.”

  He struggled briefly, startled, frustratedly. Then he understood his

  helplessness.

  “What is the meaning of this?” he said.

  “What are you doing?” asked a fellow, puzzled.

  I bent down and pushed the prisoner’s ankles together, and then looped a thong

  a
bout them, that they might not be able to move more than a hort or two apart.

  He could not now run. To be sure, he could stand.

  “Untie me!” he said. “We must escape!”

  “You are of the Delta Brigade?” I inquired.

  “Yes,” he said, “as must be you!”

  “Why do you say that?” I inquired.

  “You have rescued me,” he said.

  “You regard yourself as rescued?” I said.

  “Surely you, like myself, are of the Delta Brigade!” he said.

  “I do not think I know you,” I said.

  “I am not of your component,” he said.

  “But perhaps we are not of the Delta Brigade,” I said.

  “But who then?” he said.

  “Perhaps we are loyal fellows of Ar,” I said, “who, as is presumably appropriate

  for those of the new Ar, hate the Delta Brigade, and are opposed to it, who see

  in it a threat to Ar’s (pg. 248) ignominious surrender, that is, to harmony and

  peace, who see in it a challenge to the imperious governance of Cos, that is, to

  the glorious friendship and alliance of the two great ubarates?”

  “He speaks like the public boards,” said a fellow.

  “Like part of them, at any rate,” said another.

  “I thought only the pusillanimous, and naïve adolescents, took such twaddle

  seriously,” said another.

  “I do not understand,” said the prisoner uncertainly.

  “Are you for the old Ar or the new Ar?” I asked.

  “I am of the Delta Brigade!” he said. “And there is only one Ar, the old Ar, the

  true Ar!”

  “Yes!” said a man.

  “Brave fellow!” said a man.

  “Release him, and hide him!” urged another.

  “No,” said the prisoner. “They are right. They must make certain of me! In their

  place I would do the same.”

  “Make certain quickly then,” said a man. “There may be little time!”

  “Do not fear,” I said.

  The prisoner now stood straighter, more proudly, more assuredly. He now

  suspected he was being tested. Indeed, he was, but not in the sense he thought.

  “You then acknowledge,” I asked him, “that the only Ar, and the true Ar, is the

  Ar of old, the Ar which was betrayed and which stands in defiance of Cos?”