by John Norman
"Hold the ram!" I heard. A spear thrust at me through the opening. But the ram came forward again. I seized the spear behind the point. Then it was splintered like a twig as the huge head burst again inward. I threw the bit of spear away. The head of the ram was so constructed, and the horns on it so curved back, that it was unlikely, given the forces involved, that it could become lodged in the door. I could not, thus, in any simple fashion, even with the beams and planks about, in the rubble, thrust anything behind it, crosswise, say, behind the horns, to prevent its withdrawal. The sand was useless. The rock, however, suggested a temporary expedient. "Hold the ram!" I heard, from outside. But it must come again, at least once! Men hesitated to rush forward. I then saw the great iron head seemingly become smoothly larger and larger as it swept forward. The bloody metallic configuration burst through again and this time, as soon as it had entered, before it could swing back, I rolled a rock from the debris between it and the lower edge of the rupture. There was a grinding of iron and rock as it swung back and then reared up, against the top of the rupture, and was still. The men on the ropes had not the leverage to swing it back, though they could try to pull it back. They would, of course, attempt to swing it in further, gain leverage, and then try to draw it back again. In this, however, they would lack the momentum generated by the full movement of the ram, utilizing the full arcs of the leather cradles.
A blade thrust through between the head and the wood, and then a spear thrust through, similarly. I saw the great head inch forward and then back, and again stop. Spears tried to force the rock from its position. There seemed to me no point in staying where I was. As soon as the ram was free of the opening, it would presumably be held back, in place, and then men would could through the portal, one by one, or in twos and threes. I could not well defend it, not indefinitely, not against quarrels, as well, with no shield. I saw the head move again, and again stop. I then sheathed my sword and half slid, half ran, down the slope of the debris and reached the stone flooring of the covered way. Aemilianus looked up at me, dully. There were men at the props of the scaffolding holding up the masonry that, when it fell, would block the east corridor. I did not care to be trapped here, between the gate and the rubble in the corridor, when the Cosians entered.
"Assist me," I said to the two fellows loyally with Aemilianus.
"Go," said Aemilianus. "I will stay here."
"I shall carry him, or you shall support him," I said to the two fellows. "Who are you?" asked Aemilianus.
Just then there was a cry from above, and the huge stone, forced from its place by spear butts, rolled down into the covered way. At the same time the great head drew back.
"Stop!" cried Aemilianus, but his two fellows had seized him, one by each arm, and, putting his arms about their shoulders, hurried him toward the east corridor.
I looked up and saw some four or five Cosians creep through the opening at the height of the artificial hill.
I backed toward the eastern corridor.
"It is dark here," said one of the Cosians.
But two men pushed past him, squinting into the dim covered way, from the height of the hill within the gate.
I heard the sound of mallets on wood behind me, heavy blows.
"Do not let them escape!" called a Cosian pointing downward.
"Take them from the sides!" I shouted, as though to men ensconced in an ambuscade.
The ten or twelve Cosians now through the gate crouched down, suddenly, arrested, looking wildly about.
I then backed quickly through the portal of the eastern corridor.
As I did so the final blows were struck at the props supporting the scaffolding of masonry and with a tumble of dust and stone the rocks fell.
I had hardly gone ten paces down the corridor, following the others, when I heard the rubble of masonry being torn away from the outside. Undefended I did not think it would take them more than a few Ehn to open a passage through it. In an Ihn or two I had caught up with the others, Aemilianus, the two fellows supporting him, and the two who had waited behind to block the passage. Suddenly swords were drawn for men blocked the passage, come doubtless from the walls.
Those men I saw, however, did not wear the blue of Cosians regulars but only armloads of blue.
"Ho, lads!" I called to them. "Behold the glint of gold!"
I took from the pouch I wore golden coins. These were the coins which had belonged to the former Lady Publia when she was free, when she could still own things. I had relieved her of the burden of their weight in the cell. She had intended to use them to bargain for her life with Cosians, begging to purchase it from them, even at the frightful cost of Gorean bondage. I then cast the coins behind the fellows, and to my left, into a side passage.
"Gold or steel?" I inquired.
"Why not both?" asked a man, stepping forward.
Then he was dead in the corridor.
"Gold," said one of his fellows, grinning. Then he, and the others with him, backed down the passage down which I had flung the coins. Then, in a moment, they had turned, and were scrambling in the dim light for them.
I wiped my blade on the tunic of the fellow who had opposed us.
"You are not Marsias," said one of the men with us.
"No," I said. I also relieved the fellow of the contents of his purses. He had carried three.
One of the men with us closed the door of the passage down which I had flung the coins.
In a place such as the citadel, under the conditions of war, one is normally very careful about closed doors. One usually either opens them very carefully, or flings or kicks them open, standing back from them, waiting. One does not burst through. One does not know what is on the other side.
"Let us continue," said another man.
"I smell smoke," said one of the fellow, supporting Aemilianus.
"There are looters behind us," said the other.
There was a movement in a side passage.
"Wait," I said. A fellow there swiftly leapt up from a naked woman, one with richly blotched skin and helplessly erected nipple.
"Kneel," he said to her.
She scrambled to her knees.
Her eyes were wild. She could not move her hands together. They were held apart, by her waist. The current position of her left hand was just about her left hip, and of her right hand, just above the right hip. A single narrow cord bound her. The tie is accomplished as follows: One wrist is tightly encircled by the cord and bound within it, about eighteen inches in from one end of the cord. The longer length of the same cord is then taken about her belly and the other wrist is then tied within it, on the other side of her body, leaving some eighteen inches of cord on the other side of the tie. The cord is then drawn back about her belly and the two free ends tied together behind her back, this being done in such a way that the bond is quite snug. The result is that her hands are held apart, on opposite sides of her body, and that neither hand can reach a knot, either at a wrist or behind the back. This tie, it might be noted, positions a girl's hands quite near areas of likely predation by a captor. But, too, because of it, she finds that she is absolutely incapable of interfering with any attentions to which he chooses to subject her. The waist tie, too, of course, in a female, given her marvelous beauty, the flaring excitements of her hips and breasts, cannot be slipped. It is a common capture tie. She looked up at us, gasping. A circular, overlapping pin had been spread and one end inserted through her septum, drawn through and allowed to spring back, forming a nose ring. From this dangled a looped, closed cord, the loop about eighteen inches in length.
The fellow, crouching, now faced us, sword drawn. "I took her fairly," he said. She squirmed in the bonds.
"Was she a free woman?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
"Did she submit herself to you?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
"Keep her," I said. "Of what interest to us is a slave?"
We then continued on our way. "There is light at the end of
the hall," I said. "The gate is open there."
"That is the gate to the landing, and thence to the walkway, leading to the piers," said one of the men.
I did not think about it at the time, but if he had thought me of Ar's Station I do not think he would have said this. I would have known it.
I suspect now that more than one of these fellows suspected who I might be. "You should have left me to die by the gate," said Aemilianus.
"Would you not rather die in the sunlight," I asked, "in the fresh air, under the blue sky, the clouds, in sight of the harbor, the river?"
"I would rather die in sight of the walls of Ar," he said, "that I might spit upon them."
"The reinforcements were never intended to arrive," I said.
"Let us continue on," said the fellow, he who had also spoken earlier. "I hear the press of pursuers."
"I hear women and children," said another.
"It is shame that I should die before them," said Aemilianus. "Leave me here, that I may for a time, while I can hold a sword, detain our pursuers." "Bring him along," I said, and continued toward the gateway.
"And who are you?" asked a fellow.
"One, at least," I said, "who may be thinking a bit more clearly than others this afternoon."
"And why should that be?" asked a man.
"Perhaps I was better fed," I said.
18 The Landing
"Hail, Captain!" called the young fellow with the crossbow, near the gate leading out onto the landing, from which a walkway gave access, across a stretch of harbor water, some two hundred yards in width, to the piers. Beyond the piers, and beyond the wall of rafts, chained together, with which they had closed the harbor, the Cosians had their ships, five of them. In the harbor, within the wall of rafts, there was the burned wreckage of ships, and in some places masts emerged from the water, of ships of Ar's Station, burned in port. "Hail, Captain!" called others, lifting their swords.
The landing was crowded with women and children. Some, too, already, had made their way out to the piers.
"Hail, Commander!" then cried the fellows there, spying Aemilianus. "Why do they call you Captain?" asked Aemilianus.
"He commanded on the wall!" cried a man. I remember him from the wall. He had been there.
"It was you who held the wall so long?" asked Aemilianus.
"I and a couple of hundred of your stout fellows, like these," I said, indicating the elated young men at my side.
"There are Cosians on the interior walls, overlooking the landing," said a man. I looked up. I saw them. Some had their helmets off, cooling their heads in the breeze, more to be felt at that height.
"They can fire into the crowd," said a man.
"But they have not done so," said another.
"They are waiting for the camp commander," said another.
"I will not go to Cos, naked in a cage," said Aemilianus to one of his men, one of the two who had stayed with him. "At the end, then, you know what to do." "As you will, Commander," he said, his voice thick with emotion.
"How many are here?" I asked one of the fellows about. The landing was packed with women and children. More were out on the piers.
"Who knows?" he asked. "I think there must be two to three thousand women and children, and perhaps some four to five hundred men. I do not know."
"Of all the people of Ar's Station?" I asked.
"Some fled months ago," he said, "some even when it was learned the Cosians had landed at Brundisium, others when it was rumored they were marching on Ar's Station. Many escaped before the investment lines were closed. Some bought their way out, which you could do, in the early days, before the Cosian casualties were high."
"Still, I said, "there must have been thousands in the city when the investment lines were closed."
"There were," he said, bitterly.
"And this is all that is left?" I asked.
"There were desertions," he said.
"Still," I said.
"Many perished of hunger or disease," he said. "Doubtless, too, many perished in the fires."
I regarded him.
"Many could not reach the citadel," he said. "Many streets were cut off, even districts."
"I understand," I said.
"Why did the relief of Ar not come?" he asked.
"I do not know," I told him, though I thought I knew.
"It is said the Cosians did much butchery in the city."
"Perhaps," I granted him.
"Beneath the walls of the citadel," he said, "they paraded loot carts, and lines of our women, stripped, and trussed as slaves."
I nodded. I had not been able to see this from the cell, of course, but I did not doubt but what it was true. It was a touch not untypically Gorean.
"Doubtless even now hundreds of them are packed behind the bar of cage wagons, being taken to Brundisium, there to be shaved, and then shackled on the tiered shelves of slave ships, to be embarked for Cos and Tyros."
"Perhaps," I said. In actuality, of course, I surmised that many would be distributed to continental markets, if only to take a quicker profit on them and avoid deflating the market on the islands. I did not doubt, however, that many of the most beautiful would indeed find their way to Cos and Tyros, if only as examples of prize loot. Such, too, might well grace the triumphs of the victors. Beautiful, naked women look well being marched in golden chains before the war beasts of masters. Doubtless many would march before Lurius of Jad, Ubar of Cos, in some grand triumph, though in the fighting he would not have stirred from his palace in Telnus.
"Still," he said, "there are many here."
"Yes," I said, looking about, at the crowded landing, and the piers out toward the river. "There are."
"It will be a terrible slaughter," he said.
Aemilianus was sitting on the landing near me. A man supported him, holding him about the shoulders.
I looked up at the interior wall.
"Commander," I said to him, "many of your people are within missile range from the wall."
Indeed, it would be hard to fire into the crowd without scoring a hit.
"I am tired," he said.
"Many are afraid to go to the piers," said a man. "They are afraid of the Cosian ships, that the walls of rafts will be opened, that they will attack. They fear to leave the landing, the shelter of the wall of the citadel."
"What shelter?" I asked, angrily.
"Many others," said a fellow, "fear to tread the walkway."
"There are sharks about," said one man.
"See the fins in the water," said another. "There, there are two!" "Blood has carried down to the delta," said another bitterly. "River sharks have come from as far west as Turmus. The bodies of delta sharks, leaving the salt water of the delta, bloated, litter the shores between the delta and Ven."
"There is even a greater reason to avoid the walkway," said another man, bitterly.
"What is that?" I asked.
He did not explain himself.
Suddenly Aemilianus looked at me. "What did you say?" he asked.
I crouched down beside him.
"Move your people out to the piers," I said. "The walkway can be destroyed behind them. Then the Cosians can approach only by water."
"There is no food there," said a man.
"There is none here either," I said.
"It makes no difference," said Aemilianus, wearily.
"It is the militarily appropriate action," I said.
"It is hard to see," he said, suddenly.
"Make a litter," I said. "Carry the commander to the piers."
"I have a net," said a fellow.
Two spears were thrust through the net, about two feet apart, and Aemilianus was placed on it.
He opened his eyes.
"There are Cosians on the wall!" he said.
"They have been there," I said.
"Why have the people not been withdrawn to the piers?" he asked.
"The orders have not been issued," I said.
&
nbsp; "Where is Marcus Tulvinius?" he asked.
"Here," said an officer.
"Withdraw to the piers," he said.
"It cannot be done," he said.
Aemilianus struggled to focus his eyes on him.
"The walkway has been interdicted," he said. "The people on the piers made it there earlier, before the Cosians came to the inner wall. You can see the bodies of some of those who tried it later. Make a move toward it, and it will covered by a hundred crossbows." "It seems," said Aemilianus, "that we may choose to die here, or there."
"I would choose to make matters less convenient for Cosians," I said. Aemilianus smiled.
"The situation is hopeless," said the officer. "I shall treat for terms." "With Cosians?" smiled Aemilianus.
"Look!" cried a fellow. "On the wall!"
We now saw a tall figure there, behind the ramparts, one whose helmet was surmounted by a crest of sleen hair. There were standards held behind him. "It is the camp commander!" cried a fellow.
"Commander?" asked the officer.
"Do as you will," said Aemilianus, wearily.
The officer turned about and, drawing from beneath his cloak a white sheet, which he had apparently concealed there, lifted it, and approached the base of the wall.
This action seemed to be greeted with derision from the Cosians. One could see no reaction from the fellow with the helmet, with its crest of sleen hair. "Aemilianus asks terms!" called the officer, up to the wall.