There were more cries for torches, but I did not see any lit.
And then I heard the clash of sword steel, wildly, blindly.
And then I heard one cry out "They are aboard! We are boarded! Fight!"
Telima had poled us some thirty yards out into the marsh, and I stood there, arrow to string, in case any should bring another torch.
None did.
I heard men running on the gangway between the rowers' benches.
I heard more cries of pain, the screams of terrified slaves trying to crawl beneath their benches.
There was another splash.
I heard someone crying out, perhaps the officer, ordering more men aft to repel the boarders.
From the other direction I heard another voice ordering men forward, commanding his warriors to take the boarders in the flank.
I whispered to Telima to bring the rence craft in again, and put down my bow, taking out the steel sword. Again at the side of the fourth barge I thrust over the side, driving my blade into one of the milling bodies, then withdrawing.
There were more cries and clashings of steel.
Again and again, on the fourth and the third barges, on one side and then the other, we did this, each time returning to the marsh and waiting with the bow.
When it seemed to me there was enough screaming and cursing on the barges, enough clashing of weapons and cries, I said to Telima, "It is now time to sleep."
She seemed startled but, as I told her, poled the rence craft away from the barges.
I unstrung the great bow.
When the rence craft was lost, some hundred yards from the barges, among the reeds and sedge, I had her secure the craft. She thrust the oar-pole deep into the mud of the marsh, and fastened the rence craft to this mooring by a length of marsh vine.
In the darkness I felt her kneel on the reeds of the rence craft.
"How can you sleep now?" she asked.
We listened to the shouts and cries, the clash of weapons, the screams, carrying to us over the calm waters of the marsh.
"It is time to sleep," I told her. Then I said to her, "Approach me."
She hesitated, but then she did. I took a length of marsh vine and bound her wrists behind her back, and then, with another bit of marsh vine, crossed and bound her ankles. Then I placed her lengthwise in the craft, her head at the up-curved stern end of the vessel. With a last length of marsh vine, doubled and looped about her throat, its free ends tied about the up-curved stern, I secured her in place.
She, an intelligent, and proud girl, understanding the intention of these precautions, neither questioned me nor protested them. She was bound and secured in complete silence.
I myself was bitter.
I, Tarl Cabot, hating myself, no longer respected or trusted human beings. I had done what I had done that day for the sake of a child, one who had once been kind to me, but who no longer existed. I knew myself for one who had chosen ignominious slavery over the freedom of honorable death. I knew myself as coward. I had betrayed my codes. I had tasted humiliation and degradation, and most at my own hands, for I had been most by myself betrayed. I could no longer see myself as I had been. I had been a boy and now I had come to the seeings of manhood, and found within myself, disgusting me, something capable of cowardice, self-indulgence, selfishness, and cruelty. I was no longer worthy of the red of the warrior, no longer worthy of serving the Home Stone of my city, Ko-ro-ba, the Towers of the Morning; it seemed to me then that there were only winds and strengths, and the motions of bodies, the falling of rain, the movements of bacilli, the beating of hearts and the stopping of such beatings. I found myself alone.
And then, hearing still the cries, the alarms in the night, I fell asleep. My last thought before the sweet darkness of sleep was the remembrance that I was one who had chosen ignominious slavery to the freedom of honorable death, and that I was alone.
* * * *
I awakened stiff in the cold of the marsh dawn, hearing the movement of the wind through the dim sedges, the cries of an occasional marsh gant darting among the rushes. Somewhere in the distance I heard the grunting of tharlarion. High overhead, passing, I heard the squeals of four Uls, beating their way eastward on webbed, scaled wings. I lay there for a time, feeling the rence beneath my back, staring up at the gray, empty sky.
Then I crawled to my knees.
Telima was awake, but lay, of course, where I had left her, bound.
I untied the girl and she, not speaking, painfully stretched, and rubbed her wrists and ankles. I gave her half of the food and water that we had left and, in silence, we ate.
She wiped the last of the crumbs of rence cake from her mouth with the back of her left hand. "You have only nine arrows left," she said.
"I do not think it matters," I said.
She looked at me, puzzled.
"Pole us to the barges," I said.
She unfastened the rence craft from the oar-pole which had served as a mooring and, slowly, drew up the pole from the mud of the marsh.
Then she poled us to the vicinity of the barges. They seemed lonely and gray in the morning light. Always keeping us shielded by thickets of rush and sedge, she circled the six barges, fastened together.
We waited for an Ahn or so and then I told her to move to the sixth barge.
I restrung the great bow, and put the nine arrows in my belt. In my scabbard was the short sword, carried even at the siege of Ar.
Very slowly we approached, almost drifting, the high, carved sternpost of the sixth barge.
We remained beneath it for several Ehn. Then, silently, I motioned Telima to scrape the oar-pole on the side of the barge, just touching the planks.
She did so.
There was no response.
I then took the helmet from my things on the rence craft, that without insignia, with empty crest plate, and lifted it until it cleared the side of the barge.
Nothing happened. I heard nothing.
I had Telima pole us back away from the barge and I stood regarding it, for some Ehn, the great bow quarter-drawn, arrow to string.
Then I motioned for her, silently, to move abeam of the prow of the sixth barge. There was a girl, naked, miserable, bound to the prow, but, tied as she was, she could not turn to see us. I do not even think she was aware of our presence.
I put the bow back on the reeds of the rence craft, and removed the arrows from my belt.
I did not take up the shield, for in climbing it would have encumbered me.
I did place over my features the curved helmet, with its Y-like opening, of the Gorean warrior.
Then, slowly, making no sound, I lifted no more than my eyes over the side of the barge, and scanned the interior. Shielding myself from the fifth barge by the back of the prow of the sixth I climbed aboard. I looked about. I was its master.
"Make no sound," I said to the girl at the prow.
She almost cried out, terrified, and struggled to turn and see who stood behind her, but could not, bound, do so.
She was silent.
Slaves, chained at the benches, haggard, wild-eyed, looked up at me.
"Be silent," said I to them.
There was only a rustle of chain.
The slaves from the rence islands, lying between the rowers' benches, like fish, bound hand and foot, had their heads to the stern of the vessel.
"Who is there?" asked one.
"Be silent," I said.
I looked over the side to Telima, and indicated that she should hand me my shield, and, with difficulty, she did so.
I looked about more. Then I placed the shield by the rail, and extended my hand for the great bow, with its nine arrows.
Telima gave them to me.
Then I motioned that she should come aboard and, tying the rence craft fast to the small mooring cleat just abaft of the prow, she did so.
She now stood beside me on the foredeck of the sixth barge.
"The punt is gone," she said.
I did not
respond to her. I had seen that the punt had been gone. Why else would I have come as early as I had to the barges?
I unstrung the great bow and handed it, with its arrows, to Telima.
I took up my shield. "Follow me," I told her.
I knew she could not string the bow. I knew, further, that she could not, even were the weapon strung, draw it to the half, but further I knew that, at the range she might fire, the arrow, drawn even to the quarter, might penetrate my back. Accordingly she would follow me bearing the weapon unstrung.
I looked upon her, evenly and for a long time, but she did not drop her head, but met my gaze fully, and fearlessly.
I turned.
There were no men of Port Kar on the sixth barge, but, as I stepped from the foredeck of the sixth barge to the tiller deck of the fifth, I saw some of their bodies. In some were the arrows of the great bow. But many had apparently died of wounds inflicted with spear and sword. A number of others had doubtless been, in the darkness and confusion, thrust overboard.
I indicated those who had met the arrows of the great bow.
"Get the arrows," I told Telima.
I had used simple-pile arrows, which may be withdrawn from a wound. The simple pile gives greater penetration. Had I used a broad-headed arrow, or the Tuchuk barbed arrow, one would, in removing it, commonly thrust the arrow completely through the wound, drawing it out feathers last. One is, accordingly, in such cases, less likely to lose the point in the body.
Telima, one by one, as we passed those that had fallen to the great bow, drew from their bodies the arrows, adding them to those she carried.
And so I, with my shield and sword, helmeted, followed by Telima, a rence girl, carrying the great bow, with its arrows, many of them now bloodied, taken from the bodies of those of Port Kar, moved from barge to barge.
On none of them did we find a living man of Port Kar.
Those that had lived had doubtless fled in the punt. In the darkness, presumably, they had seized upon it and, either amidst the shouting and the blind fighting, or perhaps afterwards, in a terrifying quiet, the prelude perhaps to yet another putative attack, had climbed over the side and, poling away desperately, had made their escape. It was also possible that they had eventually realized that boarders were not among them or, if they had been, were no longer, but they did not wish to remain trapped in the marsh, to fall victim to thirst, or the string-flung arrows of the yellow bow. I supposed the punt could not carry many men, perhaps eight or ten, if dangerously crowded. I was not much concerned with how those of Port Kar had determined who would be passenger on that fugitive vessel. I expected that some of those dead on the barges had been, by their own kind, denied such a place.
We now stood on the foredeck of the first barge.
"They are all dead," said Telima, her voice almost breaking. "They are all dead!"
"Go to the tiller deck," I told her.
She went, carrying the great bow, with its arrows.
I stood on the foredeck, looking out over the marsh.
Above me, her back to the front of the curved prow of the barge, was bound the lithe, dark-haired girl, whom I well remembered, she who had been so marvelously legged in the brief rence tunic. I recalled how she had knelt before me, early on the day of the festival, looking up, smiling, before being ordered away, with the other girls, by Ho-Hak. She was curved over the prow nude, her wrists cruelly bound behind it, and was further held tightly in place by binding fiber at her ankles, her stomach and throat.
I recalled I had been bound rather similarly at the pole early on the day of the festival, and then, later, on the night of the festival, when she had danced her contempt of me.
"Please," she begged, trying to turn her head, "who is it?"
I did not answer her, but turned, and left the foredeck, walking back along the gangway between the rowers' benches. She heard my footsteps retreating. The slaves at the benches did not stir as I passed between them.
I ascended the steps of the tiller deck.
There I looked down into Telima's eyes.
She looked up at me, joy on her face. "Thank you, Warrior," she whispered.
"Bring me binding fiber," I said.
She looked at me.
I indicated a coil of binding fiber that lay near the foot of the rail, below the tiller deck, on my left.
She put down the great bow, with its arrows, on the tiller deck. She brought me the coil of binding fiber.
I cut three lengths.
"Turn and cross your wrists," I told her.
With the first length of binding fiber I tied her wrists behind her back; I then carried her and placed her, on her knees, on the second of the broad steps leading up to the tiller deck, two steps below that in which is fixed the chair of the oar-master; she now knelt below that chair, and to its left; there, with the second length of fiber, I tied together her ankles; with the third length I ran a leash from her throat to the mooring cleat on the aft larboard side of the barge, that some five yards forward of the sternpost.
I then sat down cross-legged on the tiller deck. I counted the arrows. I now had twenty-five. Several of the warriors struck by the arrows had plunged into the water; others had been thrown overboard by their fellows. Of the twenty-five arrows, eighteen were sheaf arrows and the remaining seven were flight arrows. I put the bow beside me, and laid the arrows out on the planking of the tiller deck.
I then rose to my feet and began to make my way, barge by barge, to the sixth barge.
Again the slaves, chained at their benches, facing the stern of each barge, did not so much as move as I passed among them.
"Give me water," whispered a bound rencer.
I continued on my way.
As I walked from barge to barge I passed, at each prow, tied above my head, a bound, nude girl. On the second prow of the six barges, only a few feet from the tiller deck of the first barge, it had been the tall, gray-eyed girl, who had held marsh vine against my arm, she who had danced with such excruciating slowness before me at the pole. On the third prow it had been the shorter, dark-haired girl, she who had carried the net over her left shoulder. I remembered that she, too, had danced before me, and, as had the others, spit upon me.
Bound as they were to the curved prows of the barges, these captives could see only the sky over the marsh. They could hear only my footsteps passing beneath them, and perhaps the small movement of the Gorean blade in its sheath.
As I walked back, from barge to barge, I walked as well among bound rencers, heaped and tied like fish among the benches of slaves.
I wore the heavy Gorean helmet, concealing my features. None recognized the warrior who walked among them. The helmet bore no insignia. Its crest plate was empty.
No one spoke. I heard not even the rattle of a chain. I heard only my footsteps, and the occasional sounds of the morning in the marsh, and the movement of the Gorean blade in my sheath.
When I reached the tiller deck of the sixth barge I looked back, surveying the barges.
They were mine now.
Somewhere I heard a child crying.
I went forward to the foredeck of the sixth barge and there freed the rence craft of its tether to the mooring cleat and climbed over the side, dropping into the small craft. I pulled the oar-pole from the mud at its side, and then, standing on the wide, sturdy little craft which Telima had fashioned from the rence I had gathered, I poled my way back to the first barge.
The slaves, those at the benches, and those who lay bound between them, as I passed the barges, were silent.
I refastened the rence craft at the first barge, to the starboard mooring cleat just abaft of the prow.
I then climbed aboard and walked back to the tiller deck, where I took my seat on the chair of the oar-master.
Telima, haltered, bound hand and foot, kneeling on the second broad step of the stairs leading up to the tiller deck, looked up at me.
"I hate rencers," I told her.
"Is that why you have sav
ed them," she asked, "from the men of Port Kar?"
I looked at her in fury.
"There was a child," I said, "one who was once kind to me."
"You have done all this," she asked, "because a child was once kind to you?"
"Yes," I said.
"And yet now," she said, "you are being cruel to a child, one who is bound and hungry, or thirsty."
It was true. I could hear a child crying. I now could place that the sound came from the second barge.
I rose from the chair of the oar-master, angrily. "I have you all," I told her, "and the slaves at the benches as well! If I wish, I will take you all to Port Kar, as you are, and sell you. I am one man armed and strong among many chained and bound. I am master here!"
"The child," she said, "is bound. It is in pain. It is doubtless thirsty and hungry."
I turned and made my way to the second barge. I found the child, a boy, perhaps of five years of age, blond like many of the rencers, and blue-eyed. I cut him free, and took him in my arms.
I found his mother and cut her free, telling her to feed the child and give water to it.
She did, and then I ordered them both back to the tiller deck of the first barge, making them stand on the rowing deck, below the steps of the tiller deck, to my left near the rail, where I might see them, where they might not, unnoticed, attempt to free others.
I sat again on the chair of the oar-master.
"Thank you," said Telima.
I did not deign to respond to her.
In my heart there was hatred for the rencers, for they had made me slave. More than this, they had been my teachers, who had brought me to cruelly learn myself as I had no wish to know myself. They had cost me the concept that I had taken for my reality; they had torn from me a bright image, an illusion, precious and treasured, an unwarranted reflection of suppositions and wishes, not examined, which I had taken to be the truth of my identity. They had torn me from myself. I had begged to be a slave. I had chosen ignominious slavery over the freedom of honorable death. In the marshes of the delta of the Vosk I had lost Tarl Cabot. I had learned that I was, in my heart, of Port Kar.
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