I saw a fellow, aflame, running below, beyond the wall, then he fell and rolled in the dirt.
The pounding of the ram below continued. It had a different sound now than before. I did not understand why.
Men leaped back from towers to the wall, their work done on them. Two swung back on ropes and climbed through the crenelation, almost as though they might have been Cosians.
I thought I heard the scraping of a ladder against the wall near me. This startled me, as the battlements here, in the vicinity of the gate, were higher, surely, than even the long, bending single-pole ladders used along the wall.
I saw more Cosians spew forth from a tower, over its bridge, and fall into tarn wire, and meet the pikes of defenders. From where I stood I could see, outside and below, hundreds of Cosians, and their mercenaries and allies. These fellows were back about a hundred yards. Many seemed at their ease, watching the walls, the ladders, the grapnel men, what they could see of the fighting.
In places along the wall defenders sought to get their poles under the bridges, between them and the crenelation, and, using the wall as a fulcrum, to lift the bridges back up. Sometimes Cosians and defenders, fighting, were on the very bridges being pried upward. At two towers the poles had thrust the bridges up and back. Men tried to hold them braced. But other men, Cosians, within, dozens, some with axes, half breaking the bridges apart, from the inside, forced them down again.
I heard the bellowing of an agonized tharlarion from below, and saw some led from burning towers, their harnesses cut. One, tearing itself free, heedless of the cries and blows of its keeper, ran blindly back toward the city, the men among the engines breaking apart, or climbing on the engines, to let it pass.
To my amazement then I saw two uprights of a ladder, a two-upright ladder, not one of the single-pole ladders, suddenly appear but feet from me. I ran to the place and thrust through the crenelation at a fellow, his hand already half over the wall. He tumbled back, into space. The next fellow had his shield before him. I could not get at him, nor he, because of it, at me. I crouched in the crenelation, bracing myself with my left arm. He climbed another rung and I kicked out, turning the shield to the side. He was half pulled from the ladder by the shield straps but he slipped down a foot or two, recovering himself. He looked up. I could not reach him. Something, slipped past, hardly sensed, like a snake, leaving a thread of sound in the air. Another thing cut the mask at the side of my face, like a knife. One fellow was trying to climb past the nearest fellow on the ladder. This fellow, in one hand, grasped a spear. He was then on the same rung with the fellow with the shield, and then one rung higher. The spear blade thrust up, scratched the inside of the crenel. I seized the shaft behind the head. He held it with both hands. I wanted the spear. I could use it to thrust against the uprights. He would not release it. Then he was pulled free of the ladder and hung in the air. A quarrel struck the outside of the wall a foot or so from my face. It was like an ice pick suddenly driven into ice, but what burst forth was not ice but stone. He hung tenaciously to the spear. Did he not truly, in that moment of terror, I wonder, comprehend what was supporting him, that it was not the spear, but I? Despairing of gaining the spear I released it. His hand reached out wildly then, belatedly, for the ladder, but his hand could not close on it. I drew back. Another movement sped past, like a puff of breath passing my ear. Below I heard yet another fellow trying to climb higher, and another. There were shouts. I looked through an adjacent crenel. The fellow with the shield hung half off the ladder. Another fellow had passed him and was almost up. I returned to my original place to meet him, but suddenly, just as he was coming within reach, I heard a sound like a fist striking leather, it came from his back, and he looked surprised, and then stiffened on the ladder and threw back his arms and head, and, twisting, plunged downward. I caught sight of a quarrel’s fins protruding from his back. Another fellow was behind him, and I met him. He blocked my blow with his blade. He blocked my blow again with his blade. Then he did not block my blow. Clutching the uprights, grimacing, coughing, spattered with blood, he slipped back some rungs, until he was a few feet below me. I looked about, wildly. I thrust my sword through my belt, to which were attached my pouch and knife sheath, both on the left side. I raced to the impaling spear, hoisted it up, some five feet, from its mount. The slave who had been Lady Publia, its burden by means of the ropes, the sheath and sword belt, twisting wildly, throwing her head about as though bewildered, as though she would try to see through the hood, uttered a tiny, terrified, questioning, miserable, helpless noise, her oral orifice, of course, remaining subject to the closure I had imposed upon it. I leveled the spear, then cast it to the ground. I was in a hurry. She was a slave. I then, lifting the spear up a bit, her head down, thrust her with my foot, in her ropes, with the sword belt and sheath, from the spear. I then hurried back to where the ladder was. Another fellow had just appeared in the opening in the crenelation and I pushed out at him with the long impaling spear. Its point is a dull one, designed for an unpleasantly lengthy penetration. Even so with the force I slid it across the stone it jammed between his ribs, entered his body, and carried him out from the ladder. He dangled on it and then slipped from it, unable to cling to it with his hands. I think he struck the ladder again, some feet further down. I heard another man cry out, a few feet below. There was then a scream. Armed with the spear, which is some fifteen feet in length, like a third- or fourth-rank phalanx spear, I reached over the wall and managed to get it against the top rung of the ladder. A pressure at the center exerts the best leverage. No one was close to me then. The highest fellow was the man with the shield, who had withdrawn earlier. He looked up, discarded his shield, started to climb madly toward the spear, then stopped. The ladder leaned out, a yard or so from the wall. I thrust back further, and the ladder straightened. Some men leaped from it. Others tried to throw their weight against it, to force it forward again. Some dared not move. I thrust again. The ladder tottered. Men were trying to hold it from below. It must fall backward! But it did not. The spear, pressed, slipped, with its dull point, and scratched free of the rung. The ladder crashed forward, against the wall. I thrust at it again, and the top rung broke. I thrust again, this time against the edge of the right upright. The ladder moved out, turned slightly. It was some two to three feet from the wall. The spear, given the trembling of the ladder, from the movement and weight of the men upon it, and its twisting, slid loose from its precarious anchorage in the upright’s edge, and the ladder, twisting, plunged forward again, again crashing against the wall. I wished that I had had one of the tridents or one of the sharpened, steel crescents fixed on a metal pole, useful in such work. The fellow who had had the shield now again climbed toward me. This time I managed to get the spear into the center of the right upright. I could now better push back. He was higher now. He was at the spear. He struck the point free from the wood, gouging the wood, but before the ladder could fall again against the wall, I shifted and caught him under the arm and pushed back more. I hoped to use his own fear against him, his unwillingness to release the ladder, but before I could push back enough, past the center of balance, he released one hand and twisted, hanging to a rung with his free hand. But then, again, I managed to get the point on the upright. The ladder straightened, and I thrust out another foot, and then another, moving my hands on the spear, my hands sweaty, and then the ladder seemed, for an instant, to lean oddly back, away. For an instant I was not clear that it would fall. But then men were screaming and leaping from it, up and down its length, and I saw it turn on one upright, doubtless more from their movements and the shifts in weight than from anything of my doing, and then it fell back, and I heard it snap and break. At the same time I drew back, as a pair of quarrels flashed past. I think it probable that some had been fired at me when I had struggled with the spear for I saw at least one new, irregular scratch in the stone near where I had labored. Yet, oddly enough, though there must have been noise, I had not even noticed it at the time. I
t was only now, oddly, in recollection that it seemed to me I might have heard something there, cutting at the stone, and other things, too, like hissed whispers about me.
A young fellow, one of the two of an age to be lads whom I had seen on the wall, appeared on the steps leading to the upper battlements. He had only two quarrels left, one in the guide, the other grasped in his hand, with the bow, not really quarrels even, only sharpened rods. Even the blunt-headed wooden quarrels, suitable for stunning birds, were gone. I had used him, and the other, he between the command post and the west, the other between the command post and the east, as messengers, hoping in this way to keep them within the semblance of interior lines, out of the thickest fighting. “They cannot hold on the west walkway!” he cried. “They give way!”
I issued orders and he raced back. My plan, even if successful, would keep the walkway, nearer the command post, only for a few Ehn. I looked to the east. There more Cosians leapt from the bridge of a tower, clambering and stumbling over the bodies of others, tangled lifeless and wounded in the wire. Men struggled to meet them, with pikes and axes. I became aware then again of the blows of the ram below. The sound had been different for the last few Ehn. How had the ladder I had repelled managed to reach the height of the wall? I went to my left and bent over the crenelation, leaning over the wall. I saw then that the roof of the ram shed sloped upward. A hill, literally, of debris, of sand, rock and bodies, had been built there, before the gate, and the shed thrust up this incline. This brought the blows of the ram high on the gate, presumably over the rocks and sand, and such, which had been heaped behind it by the defenders. That accounted for the difference in the sound of the ram. What effort it must have taken to force the long ram shed up this incline, how much more arduous must be the labor of those within the shed, hauling on the ropes, swinging the great ram upward! I could hear, too, between the heavy, periodic strokes of the ram, the blows of hammers and axes, and the smiting on punches and chisels, and the sounds of creaking metal, as men sought to cut and punch openings in the facing on the gate, then twisting and prying it back. Plates of facing buckled and were torn away. It was on this artificial hill, built before the gate, that the ladder which had reached to the height of the battlements had been mounted. From where I now stood, because of the shed, I could not see the remains of the ladder. I went to my right then to survey what might be the case on the west. I watched. Then, suddenly the defenders there, holding the west walkway, withdrew. They had been fighting behind a breastwork of fallen bodies, those of both Cosians and defenders. The Cosians seemed for a moment bewildered, but then, with a great cry, swarmed over the bodies in pursuit. Scarcely were the defenders drawn back than the great cauldron of oil, its oil now ignited, now aflame, into which the buckets on long handles had been dipped, was overturned with poles and flooded the walkway behind them. The bulk of the Cosians stopped at this wall of flames some forty feet in width. Some, however, raced into it. Of these some perished in the flames. Others, half afire, screaming, turned about, fleeing back to their fellows. Some crossed it, and were cut down on the other side. This retreat, though it surrendered the western walkway, decreased the amount of area to be held, and, with these new numbers, increased the defenders there. The Cosians then within the wall, in the center, were much harder pressed. Some withdrew, even, to the towers, some of which were aflame. I saw the bridges, burned through, collapse beneath some of them, plunging them to the ground. I went again to my left. There, on the east, I saw that the Cosians had gained yards, and that they were now beyond the wire. The defenders, foot by foot, were being pressed back. More Cosians leapt from the bridge of a tower, down onto the bodies and wire, climbing over them, hurrying to join the fray. The east walkway could not be long held. I went, wearily, to where the roped, naked, gagged, hooded slave lay, on the stones. With my foot I turned her to her back. I unbuckled the sword belt from about her, and then, crouching beside her, turned her to her stomach. I withdrew the sheath from between her back and the ropes. It was distended, where it had received the spear, almost to the bottom. I pressed it as flat as I could, with my hands and foot. The blade then, again, but not well, fitted into it. I rebuckled the belt and put it about me, the strap over my right shoulder, the sheath at the left hip, as one wears it on the march. That is a stabler carry. The advantage of the left shoulder carry, the sheath at the left thigh, is the ease of discarding the belt and sheath, thereby ridding oneself of a possible encumbrance.
I looked down at the trussed slave.
She must have heard the tumult of battle about her, the trumpets, the alarms, the shouting, the clash of weapons.
How frightening this must have been for her, she lying there, bound, in the darkness of the hood, so helpless, so vulnerable.
She lay precisely where I had left her, after I had freed her from the spear.
Though I had earlier unthonged her ankles, to make her apparent mounting on the impaling spear seem more authentic, she had not so much as risen to her feet.
She was now on her stomach, as I had placed her. Her head, on the stones, was turned to the left.
It would have been foolish for her, of course, hooded, and trussed, to have risen to her feet, perhaps drawing attention to herself, perhaps even in the melee being taken for a target, and utter madness to have done so and moved about. A false step on the narrow battlements might have plunged her to her death. Most importantly, she had been left as she was. She had not been given permission to rise, or move. She was a slave. She would wait to see what was to be done with her, and whether or not she would be spared, and kept, for the collar, or slain.
I had not spoken to her, so she, helpless in the darkness of the hood, would not know, actually, who it was who had busied himself about her. She would know, however, that whoever it was had handled her as what she now was, a slave.
The young fellow with the crossbow climbed to the upper battlements. He now had only one quarrel left. “The flames on the west walkway are lessening,” he said. He looked down at the slave. “She is still alive,” he said, puzzled.
“Yes,” I said.
A tiny sound from within the hood, and a movement of her fair body, indicated to me that the slave recognized my voice. The slight, delicious movement of her body suggested to me, too, her relief, and reassurance, that I was about. How naive this was of her! Yet I had spared her from the spear, and this doubtless encouraged her to suppose that I might display toward her a similar lenience in the future. The most lenience she might hope for, of course, would be that of a master for a slave. The point of enslaving a woman, of course, is not to slay her, or hurt her, but to master her, and have from her all the obedience and delicious perfections that a man can possibly want from a woman.
“How can it be?” he asked.
“How do you think?” I asked.
“A trick?” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“But I saw her on the spear,” he said.
“She was hung on it,” I said, “not mounted upon it, not impaled with it.”
“Are you going to kill her now?” he asked.
“No,” I said, “at least not immediately, unless perhaps she should be in some respect displeasing.”
“You speak of her as though she were a slave,” he said.
“Are you a slave?” I asked the girl. “Whimper once for ‘Yes,’ twice for ‘no.’”
She whimpered once.
“Do you desire to please men?” I asked.
She whimpered once.
I patted her. “Show us,” I said.
She lifted her behind, piteously, placatingly.
“That is not Lady Claudia!” said the young fellow.
“No, it is not,” I said. But I smiled to myself as I said it. Did he not know that Lady Claudia would have been quite as quick, if not quicker, to lift herself, hoping to please?
“Who is it?” asked the lad.
“I have not yet named her,” I said.
“Who was it?” he as
ked.
“Do not concern yourself with the matter,” I said.
“Where then is Lady Claudia, the traitress?” he asked.
“I do not know,” I said.
“It is as Caledonius said,” he said. “You are not Marsias.”
“No,” I said. “I am not Marsias.”
“Who, then, are you?” asked he.
“One whom you have acknowledged as your captain,” I said.
“Yes, Captain,” said he, lifting his bow in salute.
I issued orders, with the injunction that he should, when they were delivered, return to the upper battlements.
He hastened down the stairs to the right.
I then returned my attention to the slave. From my pouch I took the thong by means of which her small, fair ankles had earlier, before her seeming placement on the spear, been so securely bound, the one to the other. I looped the thong in and about the ropes at her back. This would make possible to whomsoever might be so inclined a convenient and swift immobilization of the slave.
It is not unusual for a slave to carry about with her the means of her own constraint. Some wear bracelets or cuffs, which may be conveniently linked to one another. The common camisk is usually belted with binding fiber, and so on.
At that moment the other young fellow, who had seemed so mature, who was serving as my messenger to the eastern walkway, gasping, ascended to the upper battlements.
“We are giving way!” he said.
I had been waiting for him.
He, too, seemed startled to see the slave.
“It is not Lady Claudia,” I said. “It is only a nameless slave.”
“They are calling up from below,” he said, paying the female no more attention. “The gate is being sundered!”
Renegades of Gor Page 35