Norman, John - Gor 23 - Renegades of Gor.txt

Norman, John - Gor 23 - Renegades of Gor.txt Page 40

by Renegades of Gor [lit]

(pg.312) “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.

  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!”

  (pg.314) 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.

  (pg.314) “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.

  (pg.315) 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 childrenr />
  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 (pg.316) 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 blade 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 (pg.317) 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 (pg.318) 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, scre
aming 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 (pg.319) 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

 

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