“That sounds like a slave,” I said.
“Yes, it does,” he said.
We heard the small boats behind us, drawing up, near the pilings beneath the walkway.
“It is my supposition,” he said, “that no female was impaled.”
“That is an interesting supposition,” I granted him.
“If it is true,” he said, “Lady Claudia, whom I suspect is somewhere about, probably in the rags of Lady Publia, is still entitled to look forward to her impalement.”
I saw that the woman in thumb cuffs was now on her knees on the landing, and that her head was pushed down to the stone. The cord from her nose ring was lying beside her head on the stone. She was then put to use. I saw her wrists lifting, her fingers, beside her confined thumbs, jerking, opening and closing. Then she was pulled to her feet by the cord on the nose ring and hurrying after her master.
“Do you not think so?” he asked.
“They are marshaling at the end of the walkway,” I said.
I heard axes behind us, attacking the pilings of the walkway.
“Do you not think so?” he asked.
“You are certainly a zealous fellow,” I said. “I have seldom encountered so single-minded a devotion to duty.”
“Obviously, if you did not impale her,” he said, “you did not wish her impaled, and you have done service to Ar’s Station, whatever may be your own Home Stone. That is one reason I am beside you now, that I may guiltlessly evade, if possible, my very unpleasant duty, but clear duty, in that matter.”
“I did not understand,” I said. “I am sorry.”
“But if we should survive,” he said, “you understand that we must attempt to apprehend the prisoner and see that the sentence is carried out upon her, even if it means only weights on her ankles and a sharpened pole on a pier.”
“The Cosians!” I cried.
Then, with shield and sword, with the ringing of metal, with shouts, with cries of war, the six of us, I, Marsias, the grizzled fellow, and the three who had come originally to the cell, struck by charging Cosians, almost swept back, struggled to hold the walkway.
19
The Walkway
It was on the long walkway leading out to the piers that we fought.
Behind us, some fifteen yards back, the walkway was afire.
Portions of it, hewn and chopped from the small boats, sank into the water. Most of these boats were of Ar’s Station, those which had been out at the piers. Other boats trying to flank our position, for using their crossbows, were met and turned back by those of Ar’s Station. Indeed, the walkway for a dozen yards, closer to the landing, was covered by these boats, until the camp commander sent his own crossbowmen out on the walkway, to keep them their distance. Fourteen times did the Cosians assault us. In the fifth assault Marsias was grievously wounded, and one other, one who had come originally to the cell. At that time the walkway was still intact, though flaming, behind us, and they could be withdrawn through the fire and smoke to the piers. Their places were taken, to my amazement, by other stout fellows of Ar’s Station. Behind us it seemed men vied to join us. Then, in the seventh assault, two others of our original band, the other two who had come originally to the cell, were forced back, bleeding, unable to stand. They were lowered by fishermen into waiting small boats. From these two others climbed to the walkway, to take their place. Of the original band this left only myself and the grizzled fellow. Fins slid through the water circling the boats, and back and forth beneath the walkway, among the pilings. Sometimes, converging, they suddenly knifed toward a splash in the water, as one fellow or another lost his footing, or fell, bloodied, from the walkway. There were screams from the water and extended hands, and wild eyes. Then there would be churning froths, and blood swirling up, and reachings out, graspings with nothing to grasp, and then we would see bodies drawn under the water. Sometimes we could see them being drawn under the walkway, being taken into its shadows. Sometimes we could see, too, less easily, the long dark shapes, a yard or so beneath the water, conducting them, and the movements of the powerful, vertical tails. Often the fish fought for their prey, sometimes under the walkway itself. We could sometimes feel the movements of their bodies against the pilings beneath us. I saw one fellow of Ar’s Station, standing in a small boat, scream with hatred and strike down at one of the shapes with a pike. I think he cut its back. I saw another fellow, a fellow of Cos, spend a quarrel on a fish that was scouting his boat. It descended rapidly, as though stung, the metal fins of the quarrel disappearing under the water with the dorsal fin.
In between the assaults we gasped for breath and crouched behind our shields, resting their rims on the walkway. To lift such a device for Ehn at a time, and receive blow after blow upon it, bearing up under them, in time makes the arm desperately tired and sore. It is little wonder warriors often train with weighted shields. In the early Ahn of battle a common cause of casualties, particularly with young warriors, is recklessness, and the failure to use the shield properly to protect oneself. In the late Ahn of a battle, however, an even more common cause of casualties, interestingly enough, is the simple inability to lift, control and maneuver the shield. There is a great temptation to lower it, to ease the pain of the screaming muscles. This compounds, of course, with arm weariness, the result of wielding the sword, and the slowing of reflexes and reaction time, resulting from general fatigue. The same problems, of course, normally afflict one’s enemy. When one understands these factors, and that battles often last several hours, and are sometimes renewed for two or three days, it is easier to understand certain things which might otherwise seem anomalous in this form of warfare, for example, the respites between assaults, the fluctuations of lines, the occasional, apparently incredible truces which can occur by mutual consent here and there in the pockets of a battle, men standing about, looking at one another, sometimes even conversing, and the great importance of the judicious distribution of, and application of, reserves. For those who are interested in such matters, it might be pointed out that factors such as these seem to be playing their part in the gradual replacement of the phalanx with the square in Gorean warfare. It is not simply that the squares are more tactically flexible, being capable of functioning on broken terrain, and such, but also that they facilitate substitutions in the front lines, permitting the swift injection of fresh troops at crucial points. The success of many generals, in my opinion, is largely a function of their intelligent use of reserves. Dietrich of Tarnburg, for example, though one often thinks of him in terms of innovations such as the oblique advance and the use of siege equipment in the field, is also, in my opinion, based on my studies of his campaigns, for example, in the commentaries of Minicius and the “Diaries,” which some ascribe to Carl Commenius, of Argentum, a military historian, a master of the use of reserves. Some claim, incidentally, that Commenius was himself once a mercenary. I do not know if this is true or not, but his diaries, if, indeed, they are his, suggest that he was not a stranger to the field. I do not think it likely that all the incidents in them, in their detail, are merely based on the reports of others. His accounts of Rovere and Kargash, for example, suggest to me the fidelity, the authenticity, of a perceptive eyewitness. It seems to me, for example, that a common soldier would not be likely to supply a detail such as the loosing of water by a confused, terrified tharlarion in the field. The common soldier would be aware of such things, and, indeed, would even take them for granted, but they are not the sorts of details which he would be likely to include in his accounts of battles. Too, one wonders how a simple scholar could have come by the numerous beautiful slaves and fortresslike villa of a Carl Commenius. I suspect that at one time, perhaps long ago, he may not have been a stranger to the distributions of loot.
“They are drawing back,” said a fellow near me.
“They have nothing more to gain here,” said another.
We looked behind ourselves, wearily. Much of the walkway was now gone, or burning. Great lengths of it, so
me half submerged, tilting, others at, or almost at, the surface, floated in the water. Some of these lengths had turned, and hewn pilings, in an inch or two of water irregularly moving about over the now-upturned undersides of the lengths, like heavy, coarse wooden points, jutted up.
“We have held the walkway,” said a man.
“Yes,” said another.
We stood on the blood-stained boards.
It was true, we had held the walkway.
It was the middle of the afternoon. I looked about. It seemed odd, where we were, at the new end of that walkway, at the end of what now seemed a meaningless, eccentric bridge leading out from the landing but stopping abruptly in hewn, charred wood. The walkway had been cut behind us. Some of the fellows in the small boats had even drenched the boards behind us with water, to keep the fire from us, while others had hacked away at the pilings. Even so we had felt the heat of the flames at our back. There had been smoke, too, but not enough to affect what occurred on the walkway. Twice, when the wind had turned, it had drifted past us. There was far more smoke from the citadel, which, given the prevailing winds, the force of which had much diminished since the late morning and early afternoon, drifted out over the harbor, toward the river.
“Shall we now swim for the piers?” asked a fellow.
“Certainly,” said another.
“I, myself,” said another, “will prefer waiting for the boats.”
“And why might that be?” inquired another of our number.
“I do not like getting my feet wet,” responded the first.
We watched the fins moving about in the water. Here and there there was a stirring at the surface, as though there might be violent agitation some feet beneath. Too, in places the harbor water suddenly muddied, the mud from the bottom rising to the surface. These upswirling discolorations marked places, I supposed, where, below, unseen, a few yards beneath the surface, the long fish, pulling and fighting, snapping and tugging, stirred the mud.
A small boat struck gently against the piling near us, to the left.
There were now eleven of us on the walkway. Two were wounded. One of these was the grizzled fellow, who had been among the first to stand with me on the walkway. He had been wounded in the last assault, the fourteenth. So, too, had the other fellow. We lowered these two into the boat. Two others, too, joined them. The small boat rocked, and was almost swamped.
“Wait,” said the fellow at the oars, alarmed, holding up his hand.
The rest of us, seven men, watched the small boat pull away from the walkway.
It made slow progress back toward the piers.
“There are fewer fish about now,” said a fellow.
“Stay where you are,” I advised him. To be sure, he was right. Many of the fish had apparently departed. Indeed, I was sure that many of them, with bodies, and parts of bodies, in their jaws, had sped away, toward the piers, or had gone out farther in the harbor, beyond them, or had even returned to the river, perhaps sometimes followed by several of their brethren. It was, however, I was sure, still dangerous. Sometimes river sharks, like Vosk eels, hang about piers and pilings, in their shade, and are, I am afraid, often rewarded by garbage, or other organic debris. One could still see, here and there, streaks of blood in the water.
“Look!” said a fellow. He pointed toward the landing. There it seemed that a number of small boats was being mustered and not a few raftlike structures, doubtless improvised from materials within, and about, the citadel.
“They will be coming out to the piers to finish their work,” said a man.
“What we have done has been for naught,” said another.
“The harbor is closed with Cosian ships and the chain of rafts,” said another. “There is no escape.”
“Apparently it is not their intent to starve us out, on the piers,” said another.
“They are impatient fellows,” observed a man.
“They have waited a long time,” said another. “They would like to finish their business this afternoon.”
“It should not prove difficult,” said another.
“It will be a slaughter on the piers,” said a fellow. “There is no shelter there. They are open, exposed. What can a handful of shields do there? Little, or nothing. They can do as they wish. They can pick their targets from boats, and rafts. They can attack in force.”
“They will probably signal the other fellows, out where the harbor is closed,” said a man, “so that they can attack on two sides at once.”
“It is all finished,” said another fellow.
“It will be done in two or three Ahn,” said another.
“You two in this boat,” I said to two of them, as another of the small craft touched against the piling. The oarsman stood up, a fisherman, and extended his hand, to help the two fellows into the boat. We had overloaded the last boat.
We, the five of us remaining on the walkway, watched this second small boat pull away, moving slowly toward the piers.
“I would like to say good-bye to my companion,” said one of the fellows.
“Perhaps she is still alive out there,” said another.
“When do you think it will be over?” asked one of the fellows.
“By the fifteenth Ahn,” said another, grimly.
“Good,” said a fellow.
“‘Good’?” asked the other.
“Yes,” he said, “then we will not have to miss another supper.”
“How would you like to get your feet wet?” asked the grim fellow.
“Not I,” replied the other.
In a bit another one of the tiny boats had come to the walkway and the two fellows embarked in it.
There were then three of us left on the walkway.
“It is the women and children I feel most sorry for,” said the fellow beside me, looking back toward the piers. They were crowded with noncombatants. I suppose there must have been somewhere between two thousand and twenty-five hundred women and children crowded on the piers. By now there were probably not more than two or three hundred able-bodied men. In a few moments another small boat arrived.
“I will wait with you,” said one of the fellows.
“No,” I said. “Go.”
The two fellows then stepped down, carefully, into the small boat.
I was then left alone on the walkway.
I saw a piece of the broken walkway, half submerged, off to the right.
I looked up, from where I crouched behind the shield. Then I rose up, lifting the shield once more.
A solitary figure, with no shield, but in helmet, and with sheathed sword, approached. It seemed a long walk, coming toward me, on the walkway. I could hear his steps when he came within a few yards of me. The water lapped about the pilings beneath the walkway. There was the cry of a Vosk gull overhead. I could see the smoke still lifting from the citadel, then drifting out, toward the river.
“Do not come closer,” I told him.
“The day belongs to Cos,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“There remains to be accomplished only the slaughter on the piers.”
I did not respond.
“Thus what you have done here has gone for naught.”
I did not respond. What had been done here, however, had been entered into the annals of reality. The meaning of history is its own terrain, its own mountains and summits, here and there, wherever they be found. It is not all prologue to a last act, following which comes nothing.
“It is speculated that you are not of Ar’s Station,” he said.
I shrugged.
He did not attempt to come closer.
“It is speculated that you are a mercenary,” he said. “Cos has use of such. I come on behalf of Aristimines, Commander of Cos in the north. He is pleased with your work, though it has been to his own cost. I have here a purse of gold. Contract your sword to Cos and it is yours.” He dropped the leather purse, drawn shut with strings, to the boards of the walk. He then stepped back. “Se
e?” he said. “We do not cut at your neck, as you bend to take it.”
“I am not taking fee today,” I said.
“You are, then, of Ar’s Station, or Ar herself?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“With the gold,” said he, “comes a command, and women, slaves trained to please men in all ways, domestic and lascivious.”
“Aristimines is generous,” I said.
“Your answer?” he asked.
“I am not taking fee today,” I said.
“But what of the women?” he asked.
“I will take my own,” I said.
He approached the gold, bent down and picked it up. He did not even watch me as he did this. I accepted this tribute to my honor.
He tucked the gold back in his tunic. “You are not a mercenary, then?” he said.
“I did not say that,” I said.
“Choose for Cos,” he said.
“Not today,” I said.
“Yet today, I think,” said he, glancing out to the piers, “would be a good day to choose for Cos.”
“Why did not relief come to Ar’s Station?” I asked.
“It was not the will of Lurius of Jad, Ubar of Cos,” said he.
“I see,” I said. How lofty then, I thought, must be the heights of treachery within the walls of Ar.
“And the will of Lurius has not yet been accomplished in the north,” said he.
I did not understand this.
“I have brought you the gold of Cos,” he said. “When I return, you understand, I must bring her steel.”
“The walkway is meaningless,” I said to him.
“Not to Aristimines,” he said.
“I wish you well,” I said.
“And I, too, wish you well,” said he. He then turned and walked rapidly back toward the landing. He had not taken more than five steps before a number of Cosians, who had been waiting on the landing, hurried onto the walkway. He was for a moment like a rock in the midst of their stream, and then he turned, facing me. At the same time some small craft set out from the landing. Two of the fellows hurrying toward me were too eager, separating themselves from their fellows. One’s shield, he charging, I struck obliquely to the side, and he, in the grip of his own momentum, lost the walkway. I cut at the other below the shield, above the knee, and he slipped to the boards. “Hold, fellows,” called the officer, behind the men, he who had come with the gold on the walkway. “Good,” he said. “Together now, gently fellows, spears down. Look for your chance. Forward, carefully. There is only one man there. Swordsmen for flanking, behind spearmen. To each side, fellows. Forward.”
Renegades of Gor Page 40