by John Norman
From time to time as one of them regarded her too boldly she dropped her head and blushed.
At last I sat cross-legged behind the low table and Lara, in the fashion of the Gorean woman, knelt beside me, resting on her heels.
When I had entered the music had briefly stopped but now Kron clapped his hands twice and the musicians turned to their instruments.
"Free Kal-da for all!" cried Kron, and when the proprietor, who knew the codes of his caste, tried to object, Kron flung a golden tarn disk at him. Delightedly the man ducked and scrambled to pick it up from the floor.
"Gold is more common here than bread," said Andreas, sitting near us.
To be sure, the food on the low tables was not plentiful and was coarse, but one could not have known this from the good cheer of the men in the room. It might have been to them food from the tables of the Priest-Kings themselves. Even the foul Kal-da to them, reveling in the first intoxication of their freedom, was the rarest and most potent of beverages.
Kron clapped his hands again and to my surprise there was a sudden sound of bells and four terrified girls, obviously chosen for their beauty and grace, stood before our table clad only in the scarlet dancing silks of Gor. They threw back their heads and lifted their arms and to the barbaric cadence set by the musicians danced before us.
Lara, to my surprise, watched them with delight.
"Where in Tharna," I asked, "did you find Pleasure Slaves?" I had noted that the throats of the girls were encircled by silver collars.
Andreas, who was stuffing a piece of bread in his mouth, responded, his words a cheery mumble. "Beneath every silver mask," he averred sententiously, "there is a potential Pleasure Slave."
"Andreas!" cried Linna, and she made as if to slap him for his insolence, but he quieted her with a kiss, and she playfully began to nibble at the bread clenched between his teeth.
"Are these truly silver masks of Tharna?" I asked Kron, skeptically.
"Yes," said he. "Good, aren't they?"
"How did they learn this?" I asked.
He shrugged. "It is instinctive in a woman," he said. "But they are untrained, of course."
I laughed to myself. Kron of Tharna spoke as might any man of any city of Gor—other than a man of Tharna.
"Why are they dancing for you?" asked Lara.
"They will be whipped if they do not," said Kron.
Lara's eyes dropped.
"You see the collars," said Kron, pointing to the slender graceful bands of silver each girl wore at her throat. "We melted the masks and used the silver for the collar."
Other girls now appeared among the tables, clad only in a camisk and a silver collar, and sullenly, silently, began to serve the Kal-da which Kron had ordered. Each carried a heavy pot of the foul, boiling brew and, cup by cup, replenished the cups of the men.
Some of them looked enviously at Lara, others with hatred. Their look said to her why are you not clad as we are, why do you not wear a collar and serve as we serve?
To my surprise Lara removed her cloak and took the pot of Kal-da from one of the girls and began to serve the men.
Some of the girls looked at her in gratitude for she was free and in doing this she showed them that she did not regard herself as above them.
"That," I said to Kron, pointing out Lara, "is the Tatrix of Tharna."
As Andreas looked upon her he said softly, "She is truly a Tatrix."
Linna arose and now began to help with the serving.
* * * *
When Kron had tired of watching the dancers, he clapped his hands twice and with a discordant jangle of their ankle bells they fled from the room.
Kron lifted his cup of Kal-da and faced me. "Andreas told me you intended to enter the Sardar," he said. "I see that you did not do so."
Kron meant that if I had entered the Sardar I would not have returned.
"I am going to the Sardar," I said, "but I first have business in Tharna."
"Good!" said Kron. "We need your sword."
"I have come to place Lara once more on the throne of Tharna," I said.
Kron and Andreas looked at me in wonder.
"No," said Kron. "I do not know how she has bewitched you, but we will have no Tatrix in Tharna!"
"She is everything that we fight against," protested Andreas. "If she again ascends the throne, our battle will have been lost. Tharna would once more be the same."
"Tharna," I said, "will never again be the same."
Andreas shook his head as if trying to comprehend what I might mean. "How can we expect him to make sense?" asked Andreas of Kron. "After all, he is not a poet."
Kron did not laugh.
"Or a Metal Worker," added Andreas hopefully.
Still Kron did not laugh.
His dour personality, formed over the anvils and forges of his trade, did not take lightly to the enormity of what I had said.
"You would have to kill me first," said Kron.
"Are we not still of the same chain?" I asked.
Kron was silent. Then regarding me evenly with those steel-blue eyes he said, "We are always of the same chain."
"Then let me speak," I said.
Kron nodded curtly.
Several other men had by now crowded about the table.
"You are men of Tharna," I said. "But the men you fight are also of Tharna."
One of the men spoke. "I have a brother in the guards."
"Is it right that the men of Tharna lift their weapons against one another, men within the same walls?"
"It is a sad thing," said Kron. "But it must be."
"It need not be," I protested. "The soldiers and guardsmen of Tharna are pledged to the Tatrix, but the Tatrix they defend is a traitress. The true Tatrix of Tharna, Lara herself, is within this room."
Kron watched the girl, who was unconscious of the conversation. Across the room she was serving Kal-da to the men whose cups were lifted to her.
"While she lives," said Kron, "the revolution is not safe."
"That is not true," I said.
"She must die," said Kron.
"No," I said. "She too has felt the chain and whip."
There was a murmur of astonishment from the men about the table.
"The soldiers of Tharna and her guardsmen will forsake the false Tatrix and serve the true Tatrix," I said.
"If she lives—" agreed Kron, looking at the innocent girl across the room.
"She must," I urged. "She will bring a new day to Tharna. She can unite both the rebels and the men who oppose you. She has learned how cruel and miserable are the ways of Tharna. Look at her!"
And the men watched the girl quietly pouring the Kal-da, willingly sharing the labors of the other women of Tharna. It was not what one would have expected of a Tatrix.
"She is worthy to rule," I said.
"She is what we fought against," said Kron.
"No," I said, "you fought against the cruel ways of Tharna. You fought for your pride and your freedom, not against that girl."
"We fought against the golden mask of Tharna," shouted Kron, pounding his fist on the table.
The sudden noise attracted the attention of the entire room and all eyes turned toward us. Lara, her back graceful and straight, set down the pot of Kal-da and came and stood before Kron.
"I no longer wear the golden mask," she said.
And Kron looked on the beautiful girl who stood before him with such grace and dignity, with no trace of pride or cruelty, or fear.
"My Tatrix," he whispered.
* * * *
We marched through the city, the streets behind us filled like gray rivers with the rebels, each man with his own weapon, yet the sound of those rivers converging on the palace of the Tatrix was anything but gray. It was the sound of the plowing song, as slow and irresistible as the breaking of ice in frozen rivers, a simple, melodic paean to the soil, celebrating the first breaking of the ground.
At the head of that splendid, ragged procession five marched; K
ron, chief of the rebels; Andreas, a poet; his woman, Linna of Tharna, unveiled; I, a warrior of a city devastated and cursed of the Priest-Kings; and a girl with golden hair, a girl who wore no mask, who had known both the whip and love, fearless and magnificent Lara, she who was true Tatrix of Tharna.
It was clear to the defenders of the palace, which formed the major bastion of Dorna's challenged regime, that the issue would be decided that day and by the sword. Word had swept ahead as if on the wings of tarns that the rebels, abandoning their tactics of ambush and evasion, were at last marching on the palace.
I saw before us once again that broad, winding but ever narrowing avenue which led to the palace of the Tatrix. Singing, the rebels began to climb the steep avenue. The black cobblestones could be felt clearly through the leather of our sandals.
Once more I noted that the walls bordering the avenue rose as the avenue narrowed, but this time, long before we neared the small iron door, we saw a double rampart thrown across the avenue, the second wall topping the first and allowing missiles to be rained down on those who might storm the first wall. The rampart was thrown between the walls where they stood at perhaps fifty yards from each other. The first rampart was perhaps twelve feet high, the second perhaps twenty.
Behind the ramparts I could see the blaze of weaponry and the movement of blue helmets.
We were within crossbow range.
I motioned to the others to remain back and, carrying a shield and spear in addition to my sword, approached the rampart.
On the roof of the palace beyond the double rampart I could occasionally see the head of a tarn and I heard their screams. Tarns, however, would not be too effective against the rebels in the city. Many of them had cut longbows and many of them were armed with the spears and crossbows of fallen warriors. It would be risky business coming close enough to bring talons into play.
And should the warriors have attempted to use the tarns merely to fire down on the crowd, they would suddenly have found the streets deserted, until the shadow of the bird had passed and the rebels could move another hundred yards closer to the palace. Trained infantry, incidentally, might move rapidly through the streets of a city with shields locked over their heads, much in the fashion of the Roman testudo, but this formation requires discipline and precision, martial virtues not to be expected in high degree of the rebels of Tharna.
About a hundred yards from the rampart I put down the shield and spear, signifying a temporary truce.
A tall figure appeared on the rampart and did as I had done.
Though he wore the blue helmet of Tharna I knew that it was Thorn.
Once again I began to approach the rampart.
It seemed a long walk.
Step by step I climbed the black avenue, wondering if the truce would be respected. If Dorna the Proud had ruled upon that rampart rather than Thorn, a Captain, and a member of my own caste, I was certain that a bolt from some crossbow would have pierced my body without warning.
When at last I stood unslain on the black cobblestones at the foot of the double rampart I knew that though Dorna the Proud might rule in Tharna, though it might be she who sat upon the golden throne of the city, that it was the word of a warrior that ruled on those ramparts above me.
"Tal, Warrior," said Thorn, removing his helmet.
"Tal, Warrior," I said.
Thorn's eyes were clearer now than I remembered them, and the large body which had been tending to corpulence had, in the stress of the fighting, hardened into muscular vigor. The purplish patches that marked his yellowish face seemed less pronounced now than before. Two strands of hair still marked his chin in parallel streaks and on the back of his head his long hair was still bound in a Mongol knot. The now clear, oblique eyes regarded me.
"I should have killed you on the Pillar of Exchanges," said Thorn.
I spoke loudly so that my voice might carry to all who manned the double rampart.
"I come on behalf of Lara, who is true Tatrix of Tharna. Sheathe your weapons. No more shed the blood of men of your own city. I ask this in the name of Lara, and of the city of Tharna and its people. And I ask it in the name of the codes of your own caste, for your swords are pledged to the true Tatrix—Lara—not Dorna the Proud!"
I could sense the reaction of the men behind the rampart.
Thorn too now spoke loudly for the benefit of the warriors. "Lara is dead. Dorna is Tatrix of Tharna."
"I live!" cried a voice behind me and I turned and to my dismay I saw that Lara had followed me to the rampart. If she were killed the hopes of the rebels might well be blasted, and the city plunged interminably into civil strife.
Thorn looked at the girl and I admired the coolness with which he regarded her. His mind must have been in tumult, for he could not have expected that the girl produced by the rebels as the true Tatrix would actually be Lara.
"She is not Lara," he said coldly.
"I am," she cried.
"The Tatrix of Tharna," sneered Thorn, looking on the unconcealed features of Lara, "wears a golden mask."
"The Tatrix of Tharna," said Lara, "no longer chooses to wear a mask of gold."
"Where did you get this camp wench, this impostor?" asked Thorn.
"I purchased her from a slaver," I said.
Thorn laughed, and his men behind the barricade laughed too.
"The slaver to whom you sold her," I added.
Thorn laughed no longer.
I called out to the men behind the barricade. "I returned this girl—your Tatrix—to the Pillar of Exchanges where I gave her into the hands of Thorn, this Captain, and Dorna the Proud. Then treacherously I was set upon and sent to the Mines of Tharna, and Dorna the Proud and Thorn, this Captain, seized Lara, your Tatrix, and sold her into slavery—sold her to the slaver Targo, whose camp is now at the Fair of En'Kara, sold her for the sum of fifty silver tarn disks!"
"What he says is false," shouted Thorn.
I heard a voice from behind the barricade, a young voice. "Dorna the Proud wears a necklace of fifty silver tarn disks!"
"Dorna the Proud is bold indeed," I cried, "to flaunt the very coins whereby her rival—your true Tatrix—was delivered into the chains of a slave girl!"
There was a mutter of indignation, some angry shouts from the barricade.
"He lies," said Thorn.
"You heard him," I cried, "say to me that he should have killed me on the Pillar of Exchanges! You know that it was I who stole your Tatrix at the Amusements of Tharna. Why would I have gone to the Pillar of Exchanges if not to surrender her to the envoys of Tharna?"
A voice cried out from behind the barricade. "Why did you not take more men with you to the Pillar of Exchanges, Thorn of Tharna?"
Thorn turned angrily in the direction of the voice.
I responded to the question. "Is it not obvious?" I asked. "He wanted to protect the secret of his plan to abduct the Tatrix and put Dorna the Proud upon her throne."
Another man appeared at the top of the barricade. He removed his helmet. I saw that it was the young warrior whose wound Lara and I had tended on the wall of Tharna.
"I believe this warrior!" he cried, pointing down at me.
"It is a trick to divide us!" cried Thorn. "Back to your post!"
Other warriors in the blue helmets and gray tunics of Tharna had climbed to the top of the barricade, to see more clearly what befell.
"Back to your posts!" cried Thorn.
"You are warriors!" I cried. "Your swords are pledged to your city, to its walls, to your people and your Tatrix! Serve her!"
"I shall serve the true Tatrix of Tharna!" cried the young warrior.
He leaped down from the barricade and laid his sword on the stones at Lara's feet.
"Take up your sword," she said, "in the name of Lara, true Tatrix of Tharna."
"I do so," he said.
He knelt on one knee before the girl and grasped the hilt of the weapon. "I take up my sword," he said, "in the name of Lara, who is true Tatrix
of Tharna."
He rose to his feet and saluted the girl with the weapon. "Who is true Tatrix of Tharna!" he cried.
"That is not Lara!" cried Thorn, pointing to the girl.
"How can you be so certain?" asked one of the warriors on the wall.
Thorn was silent, for how could he claim to know that the girl was not Lara, when presumably he had never looked upon the face of the true Tatrix?
"I am she," cried the girl. "Are there none of you here who have served in the Chamber of the Golden Mask? None of you who recognize my voice?"
"It is she!" cried one of the men. "I am sure!" He removed his helmet.
"You are Stam," she said, "first guardsman of the north gate and can cast your spear farther than any man of Tharna. You were first in the military games of En'Kara in the second year of my reign."
Another warrior removed his helmet.
"You are Tai," said she, "a tarnsman, wounded in the war with Thentis in the year before I ascended the throne of Tharna."
Yet another man took from his head the blue helmet.
"I do not know you," she said.
The men on the wall murmured.
"You could not," said the man, "for I am a mercenary of Ar who took service in Tharna only within the time of the revolt."
"She is Lara!" cried another man. He leaped down from the wall and placed his sword also on the stones at her feet.
Once again she graciously requested that the weapon be lifted in her name, and it was.
One of the blocks of the barricade tumbled into the street. The warriors were dismantling it.
Thorn had disappeared from the wall.
Slowly the rebels, waved ahead by me, approached the wall. They had cast down their weapons and, singing, they marched to the palace.
The soldiers streamed over the barricade and met them in the avenue with joy. The men of Tharna seized one another in their arms and clasped their hands in concord. Rebels and defenders mingled gladly in the street and brother sought brother among those who had minutes before been mortal foes.
My arm about Lara, I walked through the barricade, and behind us came the young warrior, others of the defenders of the barricade, and Kron, Andreas, Linna and many of the rebels.