by John Norman
I saw the fists of Aemilianus, in the improvised litter, clench.
There was laughter from the wall.
"Let your women strip themselves stark naked," called a fellow down from the wall, "and present themselves one by one at the gate for our appraisal." "Perhaps some will be found pleasing," said another fellow.
"The throats of the others will be cut!" laughed another from the height of the wall.
The tall figure on the height of the wall, the standards behind him, betrayed no emotion. He surveyed the scene below him. smoke was rising from somewhere in the citadel.
"Aemilianus himself agrees to surrender his person into your hands!" called the officer.
Aemilianus lay back on the litter, on the stone of the landing, his eyes closed. "Terms!" called the officer. "We ask terms!" The figure on the height of the wall lifted his hand, a small gesture. "No!" cried the officer below.
He stepped back, the hand which held the white sheet lowered. "No!" he cried. At the gesture of the commander on the wall two of the fellows flanking him, crossbowmen, had set quarrels into their bows.
"No!" cried the officer below, backing away.
I saw the two quarrels leave the bows like metal birds. The snap of the cable and its vibration carried even to the landing.
"Shield wall!" I cried. "All with shields here! Form the wall!" Men with shields hurried to where I stood, lifting the shields, overlapping them.
I forced my way among them, sometimes literally thrusting shields into position. Quarrels struck about me. I saw in one wild instant the officer who had addressed the wall now facing us, he having turned about. He had a look of dismay, of disbelief, on his face. Then he fell, the two quarrels in his chest. "Back!" I cried to the screaming women and children, "Get as close to the wall as you can! Back! Back!"
But many fled toward us.
I saw a fellow tumble from the wall, a quarrel in his chest, though it was not finned. It had apparently been only a sharpened rod. I saw the young fellow who had had the this penning the people below between the water and the wall, holding them there, like verr for the slaughter.
I crouched down behind the shield wall. "Take the commander, shielded," I said, "to the piers."
"I will remain here," said Aemilianus. "You will command," I said, "from interior lines."
"I will stay here!" he said.
I gestured to the bearers of his litter, who lifted it, the two fellows with the spears thrust through the net, Aemilianus stretched his hand toward me, and I clasped it. The bearers, then, crouching down, behind four fellows holding shields between them and the wall, hurried toward the walkway.
The women and children closest to the wall were in little immediate danger from quarrels. It was hard to strike them with quarrels from the height of the wall. I looked wildly to the height of the wall. The commander was no longer visible. I then sent forth men from the shield wall, singly, and in squads, to ferry the women and children, one at a time, or the women carrying children in their arms, beneath the cover of their shields, to the walkway. Once they were beyond quarrel range they hurried back to conduct still others to temporary safety. There were cries of rage from the wall.
I saw the young crossbowman, under the cover of a shield, held by his friend, the other young fellow from the front wall, harvesting quarrels from the walkway. There were fine quarrels, crafted by metal workers, not sharpened rods, not blunt sticks, fit for stunning birds. He distributed these to cohorts behind the shield wall, neglecting not to retain some for himself. He was young but his aim was fearsomely accurate. He had been trained on the wall, in a hundred assaults.
I looked at the gate. It was at the end of the corridor we had followed, which had led out, to the landing. Some men were guarding it. Naturally it opened inward, to the advantage of the citadel. We had no adequate way, given the time and materials at our disposal, of barring it from the outside.
Now some of the fellows on the wall were hurling stones and tiles down on the figures huddled below.
I saw one fellow doing this suddenly pitch back, his hands clutching at the shaft of a quarrel. Its passage upward through his head had been arrested by the back of his helmet.
The young fellow with the crossbow set another quarrel to his weapon. I sent some men forward, to try to shield the huddled noncombatants, before they could be conducted away from the wall, but it was of little use. Many of the noncombatants broke and ran.
Many were cut down before they could reach our shield wall.
"Stay closer to the wall!" I cried. "Get closer to the wall!"
I saw another fellow, his hands on a large stone, it held over his head, turn and fall within the rampart, struck by a quarrel.
The young crossbowman set yet another quarrel to his weapon.
"It is harder for them then they would like," said a fellow.
"They will be pouring through the gate in a moment!" said a fellow. "And over the wall," said another grimly.
He had hardly spoken when the interior gate, leading out to the landing, swung inward, and a stream of Cosians waiting within, a moment later, helmeted, with shields, thrusting with spears, slashing with swords, pressed out against the defenders. At the same time a hundred ropes, along the wall, were thrown downward and men, one after the other, began to lower themselves to the landing. The women and children then, suddenly, screaming, panic-stricken, fled away from the walls. The shield wall was disrupted, the frightened women and children rushing through it, tearing at it, plunging toward the walkway behind us. As shields were turned and lifted quarrels sped down from the walls and men screamed, twisting, hit.
"Forward!" I cried, seizing up the shield of a fellow fallen. "To the wall!" Behind us we heard the screams of women and children, crowding toward the walkway. We heard, too, the sounds and screams of those swept, as by a flood, from the landing, and from the sides of the walkway, striking into the water. In the panic most of the women and children had fled from the wall. Whereas this more exposed them to the fire from above it also, for us, cleared a killing space. A fellow dropped from a rope before me, and before he could regain his feet, he was dead. Another screamed, his legs hacked. Another leapt from the rope onto the spear of a fellow near me. He was kicked from it. The spear was then driven into another. Butchery at the foot of the wall occurred. Some tried to descend with one hand, fighting with the other. Sometimes two men seized an end of the rope and swung it out and back against the wall, dashing men from it. Cosians feared then to lower themselves into the waiting blades, like steel teeth, waiting for them. Some tried to press down, past others who, seeing what awaited them below, clung ever more desperately to the rope. Men fell to the foot of the wall, to be cut to pieces. Some tried to climb back up the rope but could not do so for the others above them. Some, reaching the crenelation again, were struck back by the jabbing spears of their own men, screaming at them. In their fall they not unoften took others with them, the some seventy feet or so, to the landing, the wall lower on the harbor side then the land side.
Others clung wildly to the ropes, unable to move. Of these flighted quarrels, at the leisure of calm marksmen, took bloody tolls. Some men below stood even on bodies trying to reach men above them on ropes. More stones and tiles rained down. I saw a fellow struck to one knee by a tile hitting on his shield. For a moment he seemed in shock. Then he struggled up, again, unsteadily, to guard his yard of wall. More quarrels were flighted over us. They hit the walkway like hail. "Back to the wall!" I supposed that many of the bowsmen on the wall, from the safety of the crenelation, were continuing tenaciously, following their original orders, to seal off, as they could, the walkway, keeping the pen closed, so to speak. A child ran screaming past me to press himself against the wall, cowering there. In a moment he had been overtaken by a woman who crouched down, wrapping him in her cloak. We were buffeted by women.
"Get out of the way!" cried one of our men. A Cosian slid down a rope, shielded by the women. He thrust one aside, putting his bla
de into a fellow. Another, though, from the other side, caught him, and he backed against the wall, then turned, scratching at it, spitting blood. The child wrapped in the cloak, soothed by the woman, watched him as he sank to the foot of the wall. The woman was weeping. A glance about showed that the danger was at the gate where the Cosians, in their hundreds, were pressing out, swelling forth, onto the landing. I hurried along the wall, to the left of the gate, as one faces it from the landing.
"To the gate!" I cried to every other man. "To the gate!" Their swords bloodied they turned and sped to the vicinity of the gate. I hurried about the fighting there and detailed men from the right, as well, to the gate. In the layered leather of my shield bristled quarrels.
I returned to the wall. Few descended now the ropes. It could be seen from the wall even more clearly than from the landing, I suppose, the steady, blade by blade, stroke by stroke, expansion of Cosian territory below, its burgeoning from the gate. When it reached the walkway the walkway would be indeed closed. That was what I wanted most desperately to prevent. I was not interested in holding the landing itself, except in so far as it protected the walkway. My primary objective was to evacuate the landing and withdrew to the piers. Indeed, I myself would wish to close the walkway once this evacuation was complete. I seized two fellows and issued orders. I was surrendering the wall. One raced to the wall to the left, the other to the right. Two lines were formed, one to the left, one to the right, of fellows with shields. There two lines, converging, the fighting in the center, by the gate, between them, led to the walkway, and then out on the walkway, for better than forty yards.
The men in these lines crouched down, their shields between themselves and the wall, creating an open fence of shields, a poor, broken cover, given the paucity of their numbers, but better than none. Some fellows near the wall urged the women and children to stream behind these, trying to reach the piers. Crouching down many did, and, it seemed, all with children. I saw the one woman, still clutching the child in her cloak, darting from shield to shield. Other women chose not, either from fear or prudence, to risk this dangerous run. I saw some looking up, in fear, at the ropes, still dangling there, and pull away their veils, thrust back their hoods and put their hands to the collars of their robes.
A woman clutched at me, then sank to her knees beside me, holding me. I looked down, angrily. Her eyes, over the veil, looked up at me. It was Lady Claudia, in the provocative rags that have been designed by the former Lady Publia, that she might hope to be of interest to Cosians. A free woman, bundled in the robes of concealment, spit on her as she passed. "Slave!" she hissed. Lady Claudia looked up at me, clutching me. I pressed her away with my foot, to the landing. "Traitress!" I said to her. She crawled back to me and brushed aside her veil, to press her lips piteously to my feet. "To the piers!" I said to her. She leaped up, sobbing, and fled toward the walkway.
Now that the wall was freed I saw more Cosians descending on ropes. I saw, too, happily, some small boats from the piers, manned apparently by fishermen and others, fellows who had made it to the piers earlier, making their way toward the landing. I had little doubt that these were the results of the commands of Aemilianus, now out on the piers somewhere, hoping that they might, in their small way, aid in the evacuation of the landing. To be sure, for the quarrels, it would take great courage to bring these to the landing. I could see, too, the backs and fins of sharks crowded about the lower edge of the walkway, near the landing. They were so thick there it seemed they constituted a surface. It was almost as though one might walk upon them. Yet I could not have cared to tread that shifting, treacherous, churning surface. The water, close to the landing, by the walkway, was white with their thrashing. I think perhaps they attacked one another as often as those in the water.
I saw more than one woman, struck from the walkway, reaching out, seizing the walkway, pulled again, screaming to its safety, even in the midst of the frenzy at its edge. Among the free women running to, and on, the walkway, under the partial cover of the shields, I saw female slaves, too, barefoot and bare-armed, in their tiny skirts, their necks in their light steel collars. The heads of the women who were not hooded I could see were shorn and those of the slave females cropped the shortest of all. Among those hastening on the walkway I then saw a naked figure, stumbling, being dragged by a free woman behind her on a leash. The naked figure's wrists were thonged together behind her back. Her head was covered by a hood, improvised from a part of a man's tunic. The gag would still be in her mouth. It was she who had been Lady Publia. I recalled that she had not had her hair shorn until I had done it, with a shaving knife, in the cell. One could not see it under the hood, but I had made it slave short. It seemed to me then that most of the women who wished, or dared, to attempt the walkway had done so. It was will for the men were being beaten back, almost to the beginning of the walkway. I saw the snout of more than one shark rising from the water. Cosians pressed about. More swarmed through the gate to the landing. More descended on the ropes. I issued orders, dispatching the fellows nearest me to convey them to their respective destinations. The two lines which had to some extent protected the women and children now withdrew to protect the flanks of the center. Then I, standing at the walkway, man by man, as was opportune, sent fellows back along the walkway, retreating to the piers. These mostly backed along, protecting their retreat with their shields, making their way in a file between the fellows still in position on the walkway, on each side of it, those I had placed there to afford protection to the women and children. The lines thinned to the sides of me, and before me, and the Cosians pressed in, yet more closely.
I held my ground, as men of Ar's Station, one by one, backed past me, onto the walkway. I had been behind the fighting, directing it. Now I was but a line or two from the front ranks. There were screams from near the wall. Some of the Cosians, many just coming forth from the citadel, not yet entered into the fighting, indeed, not being readily able to reach it, for their fellows, had turned aside to attend to the females there. "They are taking the women!" cried on the fellows, a few ranks in the Cosian press. He, and some others, then back, turned back. There was a momentary hesitation in the Cosian advance. I took advantage of this to pull in the flanks and send them back over the walkway, and then drew the fellows before me closer, freeing some, the lines then being shortened, to follow their fellows back. I myself withdrew some ten feet or so. There were more screams of women from the wall, women being seized to be made slaves. Again the Cosians hesitated. "The women are being taken behind you," I cried to the Cosians, "taken by those who have not even nicked their steel!" "Forward!" cried a Cosian officer. "Forward!" "You are losing slaves!" I cried to the Cosians.
"There are more slaves before you lads, on the piers!" cried the officer. "See them strip themselves, eager to be made your slaves!" I cried. Some of the Cosians in the rearward ranks turned about. I ordered more of my men back. We did not press them.
"They are pretty!" I cried, "begging for their nose rings!"
To be sure, many of the women had torn away their clothing, and were now kneeling on the landing, by the wall, some with their hands clasped, others with them piteously extended, in various attitudes or petition and supplication. Among them strode men, some with bloodied swords. I saw small wrists being tied together and ropes being put on lovely necks. Those who were slaves were picked first, as most desirable, surely at least at the moment, before the disciplining and training of the others.
I saw one free woman backed against the wall, a sword at her belly. Then she pulled her robes away from her shoulders and breasts, and then, a moment later, at an impatient movement of the sword, which made her wince, thrust them down over her hips, and let them slip to her knees. Then she straightened up. The sword was then again at her belly, only now it was bared to the sharpened steel. She turned her head to the side, in misery, in terror, being assessed. Then, at a movement of the blade, and ordered, doubtless, she looked at the fellow. It seemed then she was suddenly st
artled. Then she began to tremble. I had little doubt she had seen in him her master. It is an interesting moment for a woman, the first time she finds herself looking as a slave into the eyes of her master. She quickly knelt, as though fearful of displeasing him. I saw her turned about, rudely and thrust up, closely, against the wall. Her hands were bound behind her. She was leashed. I saw more than one female slave, kneeling before a Cosian, her hands fastened behind her, put her head far back, to facilitate the insertion of the nose ring. I saw a free woman, similarly kneeling, similarly bound, watch this in terror, and then, quickly and exactly, imitate the action of the slaves.
Some of the women, in one fashion or another, were being marked, or tagged. Sometimes this was being done with a circular or oblong pin, rather like the temporary nose ring, put through the lobe of the left ear, from which a disk or tag dangled. Sometimes the disk or tag was affixed similarly but by means of a simple wire passed through the ear lobe, closed and twisted shut. Women so marked, of course, could later have their ears pierced. Some fellows fastened tags, or other devices, to the nose rings themselves, or to the looped cord dangling from the nose ring. With others, the cord itself is color coded. Some women were marked by as little as a tag on a thong, fastened about their neck, wrist or ankle. Others had their body itself written upon, as with a grease pencil. The marking is usually on the upper portion of the left breast. Slavers, too, commonly mark women in this fashion, for temporary purposes, for example, with lot numbers for sales, and such. Permanent markings are usually done with hot irons.
"You are losing slaves!" I called out, again, to the Cosians.
"The distribution will be made later!" cried the officer to his men. "To whom will they be distributed?" I asked. "To you fellows sweating in the front ranks, or to suppliers, officers, and agents? Who says there will be any distribution to you fellows, at all? If there is, will you get your pick? Will the best women be distributed? What of hundreds of wenches already on their way to Brundisium, and Cos and Tyros? Have they been distributed? Did you get your hands on them? I think you will have to bid on the leftovers in camp auctions! Is not that the way it has been done before? You are fighting for Cos now, not in a free company, whose captain will look out for you, who will see what beauties figure in your pay!"