by John Norman
"Yes," I said.
"Then she valued her life more than my honor."
Suddenly my feeling of numbness, of incapacity, departed as if in a lightning flash of fury. "Damn your honor!" I shouted. "Damn your precious stinking honor!"
Without realizing what I was doing, I had shaken the two restraining tarnsmen from my arms as if they had been children, and I rushed on Marlenus and struck him violently in the face with my fist, causing him to reel backward, his face contorted with astonishment and pain. I turned just in time to knock the impaling lance aside as, carried by two men, it plunged toward my back. I seized it, twisting it, and, using it like a bar held by the men, leaped into the air, kicking at them. I heard two screams of pain and found that I held the lance. Some five or six tarnsmen ran toward the wide opening of the shallow cave, but I rushed forward, holding the lance parallel to my body, striking them with almost superhuman strength and forcing them over the ledge near the mouth of the cave. Their screams mingled with shouts of rage as the other tarnsmen rushed forward to capture me.
One tarnsman leveled a crossbow, and in that instant I hurled the lance and he toppled backward, the shaft of the weapon protruding from his chest, the bolt from his crossbow ricocheting from the rock above my head with a flash of sparks. One of the men I had kicked lay writhing at my feet. I seized the sword from his scabbard. I engaged and dropped the first of the tarnsmen to reach me and wounded the second, but was pressed back toward the rear of the cave. I was doomed, but resolved to die well.
As I fought, I could hear the lion laughter of Marlenus behind me, as what had been a simple impalement turned into a fight of the sort after his own heart. As I found a moment's respite, I spun to face him, hoping to have it out with the Ubar himself, but as I did so, the shackles that I had worn struck me forcibly in the face and throat, thrown like a bolo by Marlenus. I choked, and shook my head to clear the blood from my eyes, and in that instant was seized by three or four of the Ubar's tarnsmen.
"Well done, young warrior," acclaimed Marlenus. "I thought I would see if you would die like a slave." He addressed his men, pointing to me. "What say you?" he laughed. "Has this warrior not earned his right to the tarn death?"
"He has indeed," said one of the tarnsmen, who held a wadded lump of tunic over his slashed rib cage.
I was dragged outside, and binding fiber was fastened to my wrists and ankles. The loose ends of the fiber were then attached by broad leather straps to two tarns, one of them my own sable giant.
"You will be torn to pieces," said Marlenus. "Not pleasant, but better than impalement."
I was fastened securely. A tarnsman mounted one tarn; another tarnsman mounted the other tarn.
"I'm not dead yet," I said. It was a stupid thing to say, but I felt that it was not yet my time to die.
Marlenus did not deride me. "You it was who stole the Home Stone of Ar," he said. "You have luck."
"No man can escape the tarn death," said one of the men.
The warriors of the Ubar moved back, to give the tarns room.
Marlenus himself knelt in the darkness to check the knots in the binding fiber, tightening them carefully. As he checked the knots at my wrists, he spoke to me.
"Do you wish me to kill you now?" he asked softly. "The tarn death is an ugly death." His hand, shielded from his men by his body, was on my throat. I felt it could have crushed it easily.
"Why this kindness?" I asked.
"For the sake of a girl," he said.
"But why?" I asked.
"For the love she has for you," he said.
"Your daughter hates me," I said.
"She agreed to be the mate of Pa-Kur, the Assassin," he said, "in order that you might have one small chance of life, on the Frame of Humiliation."
"How do you know this?" I asked.
"It is common knowledge in the camp of Pa-Kur," replied Marlenus. I could sense him smiling in the darkness. "I myself, as one of the Afflicted, learned it from Mintar, of the Merchant Caste. Merchants must keep their friends on both sides of the fence, for who knows if Marlenus may not once more sit upon the throne of Ar?"
I must have uttered a sound of joy, for Marlenus quickly placed his hand over my mouth.
He asked no more if he should kill me, but rose to his feet and walked away, under the snapping wing of one of the tarns, and waved farewell. "Good-bye, Warrior," he called.
With a sickening lurch and sharp jolt of pain the two tarnsmen brought their birds into the air. For a moment I swung between the birds, and then, perhaps a hundred feet in the air, the tarnsmen, at a prearranged signal—a sharp blast of a tarn whistle from the ground—turned their birds in opposite directions. The sudden wrenching pain seemed to rip my body. I think I inadvertently screamed. The birds were pulling against one another, stabilized in their flight, each trying to pull away from the other. Now and again there would be a moment's giddy respite from the pain as one or the other of the birds failed to keep the ropes taut. I could hear the curses of the tarnsmen above me and saw once or twice the flash of the striking tarn-goad. Then the birds would throw their weight again on the ropes, bringing another flashing wrench of agony.
Then, suddenly, there was a ripping sound as one of the wrist ropes broke. Without thinking, but responding blindly, with a surge of joy, I seized the other wrist rope and tried to force it over the wrist. When the bird drew again, there was a sharp pain as flesh was torn from my hand, but the rope darted off into the darkness, and I was swinging by my ankles from the other ropes. It might take a moment for the tarnsmen to realize what had happened. The first guess would be that my body had torn in two, and the darkness would conceal the truth for a moment, until the tarnsman himself would try the ropes, to test the weight of their burden.
I swung myself up and began to climb one of the two ropes leading to the great bird above me. In a few wild moments I had gained the saddle straps of the bird and hauled myself nearly to the weapon rings.
Then the tarnsman saw me and shouted in rage, drawing his sword. He slashed downward, and I slipped down one talon of the bird, which screamed and became unmanageable. Then, with one hand, while clinging to the talon, I loosened the girth straps. In a moment, given the wild motion of the bird, the entire saddle, to which the tarnsman was fixed by the saddle straps, slid from the bird's back and flew wildly into the depths below.
I heard the scream of the tarnsman and then the sudden silence.
The other tarnsman would be alerted now. Each moment was precious. Daring everything, I leaped in the darkness for the reins of the bird and with one scrambling hand managed to seize the guiding collar. The sudden tug downward caused the bird to respond as I had hoped it would, as if pressure had been exerted on the four-strap. It immediately descended, and a minute later I was on the ground, on a sort of rough plateau. There was a rim of red light over the mountains, and I knew it was nearly dawn. My ankles were still fastened to the bird, and I quickly untied the ropes.
In the first streak of the early light I saw a few hundred yards away what I had hoped to find—the saddle and twisted body of the tarnsman. I released the bird, ran to the saddle, and removed the crossbow which, to my joy, was intact. None of the bolts had escaped from the specially constructed quiver. I set the bow and fitted one of them on the guide. I could hear the flight of another tarn above me. As it swept in for the kill, its tarnsman, too late, saw my leveled bow. The missile left him sagging lifeless in the saddle.
The tarn, my sable giant from Ko-ro-ba, landed and stalked majestically forward. I waited uneasily until he thrust his head past me, over my shoulder, extending his neck for preening. Good-naturedly, I scratched out a handful or two of lice which I slopped on his tongue like candy. Then I slapped his leg with affection, climbed to the saddle, dropped the dead tarnsman to the ground, and fastened myself in the saddle straps.
* * * *
I felt ebullient. I had weapons again, and my tarn. There was even a tarn-goad and saddle gear. I rose into flight,
not thinking about Ko-ro-ba again or the Home Stone. Foolishly perhaps, but with invincible optimism, I lifted the tarn above the Voltai and turned it toward Ar.
15
In Mintar's Compound
Ar, beleaguered and dauntless, was a magnificent sight. Its splendid, defiant shimmering cylinders loomed proudly behind the snowy marble ramparts, its double walls—the first three hundred feet high; the second, separated from the first by twenty yards, four hundred feet high—walls wide enough to drive six tharlarion wagons abreast on their summits. Every fifty yards along the walls rose towers, jutting forth so as to expose any attempt at scaling to the fire of their numerous archer ports. Across the city, from the walls to the cylinders and among the cylinders, I could occasionally see the slight flash of sunlight on the swaying tarn wires, literally hundreds of thousands of slender, almost invisible wires stretched in a protective net across the city. Dropping the tarn through such a maze of wire would be an almost impossible task. The wings of a striking tarn would be cut from its body by such wires.
Within the city the Initiates, who had seized control shortly after the flight of Marlenus, would have already tapped the siege reservoirs and begun to ration the stores of the huge grain cylinders. A city such as Ar, properly commanded, might withstand a siege for a generation.
Beyond the walls were Pa-Kur's lines of investment, set forth with all the skill of Gor's most experienced siege engineers. Some hundreds of yards from the wall, just beyond crossbow range, a gigantic ditch was being dug by thousands of siege slaves and prisoners. When completed, it would be fifty or sixty feet wide, and seventy or eighty feet deep. In back of the ditch slaves were piling up the earth which had been removed from the ditch, packing and hardening it into a rampart. On the summit of the rampart, where it was completed, were numerous archer blinds, movable wooden screens to shield archers and light missile equipment.
Between the ditch and the walls of the city, under the cover of darkness, thousands of sharpened stakes had been set, inclined toward the walls. I knew that the worst of such devices would be invisible. Indeed, several of the spaces between the stakes were probably occupied by covered pits, more sharpened stakes being fixed in the bottom. Also, half buried in the sands among the stakes and set in wooden blocks would be iron hooks, much like those used in ancient times on Earth and sometimes called spurs. Behind the great ditch, separated from it by some hundred yards, there was a smaller ditch, perhaps twenty feet wide and twenty feet deep, also with a rampart formed from the excavated earth. Surmounting this rampart was a palisade of logs, sharpened at the tips. In the walls, every hundred yards or so, was a log gate. Behind this wall were the innumerable tents of Pa-Kur's horde.
Here and there among the tents siege towers were being constructed. Nine towers were in evidence. It was unthinkable that they should top the walls of Ar, but with their battering rams they would attempt to break through at the lower levels. Tarnsmen would make the attack at the summit of the walls. When it came time for Pa-Kur to attack, bridges would be constructed over the ditches. Over these bridges the siege towers would be rolled to the walls of Ar; over them his tharlarion cavalry would march; over them his horde would flow. Light engines, mostly catapults and ballistae, would be transported over the ditches by harnessed tarn teams.
One aspect of the siege which I knew would exist but which I obviously could not witness would be the sensitive duel of mine and countermine which must be taking place between the camp of Pa-Kur and the city of Ar. There would be numerous tunnels being worked even now toward the walls of Ar, and, from Ar, countertunnels to meet them. Some of the most hideous fighting in the siege would undoubtedly take place far under the earth in the cramped, foul, torchlit confines of those serpentine passageways, some of them hardly large enough to permit a man to crawl. Many of the tunnels would be collapsed and others flooded. Given the depth of the foundations of Ar's mighty walls and the mantle of rock on which they were fixed, it would be extremely unlikely that her walls could be successfully undermined to the extent of bringing down a significant section, but it was surely possible that if one of the tunnels managed to pass unnoticed beneath the ramparts, it could serve to spill a line of soldiers into the city at night, enough men to overcome a gate crew and expose Ar to the onslaught of Pa-Kur's main forces.
I noted one thing that seemed puzzling for a moment. Pa-Kur had not protected his rear with the customary third ditch and rampart. I could see foragers and merchants moving to and from the camp unimpeded. I reasoned that Pa-Kur had nothing to fear and consequently chose not to employ his siege slaves and prisoners in unnecessary and time-consuming works. Still, it seemed that he had committed an error, if only according to the manuals of siege practice. If I had had a considerable force of men at my disposal, I could have exploited that error.
I brought the tarn down near the far ranges of Pa-Kur's tents, where his camp ended, seven or eight miles from the city. I was not too surprised when I was not challenged; Pa-Kur's arrogance, or simply his rational assurance, was such that no sentries, no signs and countersigns, had been arranged at the rear of the camp. Leading the tarn, I entered the camp as casually as I might have strolled into a carnival or fair. I had no realistic or clearheaded plan, but was determined somehow to find Talena and escape, or die in the attempt.
I stopped a hurrying slave girl and inquired the way to the compound of Mintar, of the Merchant Caste, confident that he would have accompanied the horde back to the heartland of Ar. The girl was not pleased to be delayed on her errand, but a slave on Gor does not wisely ignore the address of a free man. She spit the coins she carried in her mouth into her hand, and told me what I wanted to know. Few Gorean garments are deformed by pockets. An exception is the working aprons of artisans.
Soon, my heart beating quickly, my features concealed by the helmet I had taken from the warrior in the Voltai, I approached the compound of Mintar. At the entrance to the compound was a gigantic, temporary wire cage, a tarn cot. I tossed a silver tarn disk to the tarn keeper and ordered him to care for the bird, to groom and feed it and see that it was ready on an instant's notice. His grumbling was silenced by an additional tarn disk.
I wandered about the outskirts of Mintar's compound, which was separated, like many of the merchant compounds, from the main camp by a tough fence of woven branches. Over the compound, as if it were a small city under siege, was stretched a set of interlaced tarn wires. The compound of Mintar enclosed several acres of ground and was the largest merchant compound in the camp. At last I reached the section of the tharlarion corrals. I waited until one of the caravan guards passed. He didn't recognize me.
Glancing about to see that no one was watching, I lightly climbed the fence of woven branches and dropped down inside among a group of the broad tharlarions. I had carefully determined that the corral into which I dropped did not contain the saddle lizards, the high tharlarions, those ridden by Kazrak and his tharlarion lancers. Such lizards are extremely short-tempered, as well as carnivorous, and I had no intention of attracting attention to myself by beating my way through them with a spear butt.
Their more dormant relatives, the broad tharlarions, barely lifted their snouts from the feed troughs. Shielded by the placid, heavy bodies, some as large as a bus, I worked my way toward the interior side of the corral.
My luck held, and I scaled the interior corral wall and dropped to the trampled path between the corral and the tents of Mintar's men. Normally, the merchant camp, like the better-organized military camps, not the mélange that constituted the camp of Pa-Kur, is laid out geometrically, and, night after night, one puts up one's tent in the same relative position. Whereas the military camp is usually laid out in a set of concentric squares, reflecting the fourfold principle of military organization customary on Gor, the merchant camp is laid out in concentric circles, the guards' tents occupying the outermost ring, the craftsmen's, strap-masters', attendants', and slaves' quarters occupying inner rings, and the center being reserved for the m
erchant, his goods, and his bodyguard.
It was with this in mind that I had climbed the fence where I had. I was searching for Kazrak's tent, which lay in the outer ring near the tharlarion corrals. My calculations had been correct, and in a moment I had slipped inside the domed framework of his tent. I dropped the ring that I wore, with the crest of Cabot, to his sleeping mat.
For what seemed an interminable hour, I waited in the dark interior of the tent. At last the weary figure of Kazrak, helmet in hand, bent down to enter the tent. I waited, not speaking, in the shadows. He came through the opening, dropped his helmet on the sleeping mat, and began to unsling his sword. Still I would not speak, not while he controlled a weapon; unfortunately, the first thing a Gorean warrior is likely to do to the stranger in his tent is kill him, the second is to find out who he is. I saw the spark of Kazrak's fire-maker, and I felt the flush of friendship as I saw his features briefly outlined in the glow. He lit the small hanging tent lamp, a wick set in a copper bowl of tharlarion oil, and in its flickering light turned to the sleeping mat. No sooner had he done so than he fell to his knees on the mat and grasped the ring.
"By the Priest-Kings!" he cried.
I leaped across the tent and clapped my hands across his mouth. For a moment we struggled fiercely. "Kazrak!" I said. I took my hand from his mouth. He grasped me in his arms and crushed me to his chest, his eyes filled with tears. I shoved him away happily.
"I looked for you," he said. "For two days I rode down the banks of the Vosk. I would have cut you free."
"That's heresy," I laughed.
"Let it be heresy," he said. "I would have cut you free."
"We are together again," I said simply.
"I found the frame," Kazrak said, "half a pasang from the Vosk, broken. I thought you were dead."
The brave man wept, and I felt like weeping, too, for joy, because he was my friend. With affection I took him by the shoulders and shook him. I went to his locker near the mat and got out his Ka-la-na flask, taking a long draught myself and then shoving it into his hands. He drained the flask in one drink and wiped his hand across his beard, stained with the red juice of the fermented drink.