Swordsmen of Gor cog[oc-29

by John Norman

  “I see,” I said.

  These things I muchly knew.

  I recalled that Dietrich of Tarnburg had fought a tenacious holding action at Torcodino, to delay the advance on Ar, to give her time to meet the avalanche, the swift confluences, of armed men who would descend upon her. But his action had been unavailing, and Ar had remained quiescent, even inert, though surely the screams of the tarns of war must have somehow reached her walls. Could they not heed the plaints of refugees, hear the drums of spearmen, sense the ponderous tread of war tharlarion? It soon became clear to many that conspiracy and treachery reigned within the Central Cylinder, and that the throne itself might now be festooned with the promises and wealth of the island ubarates. Ar, pathetic, confused, disorganized, and distraught, was unable to muster more than the feeblest of resistances, and these were muchly betrayed by commands from the Central Cylinder. Many of the best forces of Ar, her finest troops, her best officers, by intent, to divert them from the defense of the city, had been earlier ordered to the vast delta of the Vosk, to engage there in an alleged punitive expedition against supposed incursions from Cos and Tyros. These troops were deliberately undersupplied and misled. They were deliberately subjected to orders which were obscure or confused, even contradictory, orders the compliance with which would be almost suicidal in the terrain. These troops, as planned, had been decimated in the delta of the Vosk, and largely lost, the prey of heat and insects, of salt water and quicksand, of armed rencers, of serpents and tharlarion. Few, proportionately, had returned home. Some, dazed and starving, half mad, had reached the southern dikes of Port Kar, separating her from the delta. And when some managed to reach Ar, they found her surrendered to the enemy, garrisoned by the foe. Myron, polemarkos of the continental forces of Cos, he of Temos, cousin to Lurius of Jad, of Cos, was in command of the city, though he maintained a headquarters outside her pomerium. In this fashion it was proclaimed that Ar had been liberated and a new day had come about, one of harmony, peace, and amicability. Meanwhile the citizens of Ar were to believe their loss was a gain, their defeat a victory. They must atone now for the erstwhile glory of Ar, regret her former might, influence, and power. Now they must acknowledge her misdeeds, and celebrate her redemption by her friends and allies, the benign forces of Cos, Tyros, and their allies. And many sang, and congratulated themselves on their newly found virtue, while dismantling their walls to the scornful music of flute girls. Meanwhile, of course, the invaders tightened their controls and, for months, either randomly, as it pleased them, or systematically, in accord with the directives of the polemarkos, began to loot Ar of its wealth, its silver and gold, its jewelries and gems, its medical elixirs, its ointments and scents, its pagas and wines, its manufactures, its beasts, its slaves, and, in many cases, its free women, some put in paga taverns and brothels, others stripped and coffled, to be led to foreign markets, and some even, after transport from Brundisium, to Cos and Tyros themselves.

  To be sure, all had not gone as smoothly as it might have for the invaders because, eventually, sporadic acts of resistance occurred. These were generally attributed to the work of a small group of resistance fighters, which became known as the Delta Brigade. Because of the vast, triangular spreading of the Vosk river, into dozens of smaller rivers, often mutually interfluent, flowing into the Tamber Gulf, which leads to Thassa herself, the sea, that area is known in Gorean as the Delka, or, better, the Delka of the Vosk. “Delka” is a triangular letter in Gorean, the fourth letter in her alphabet, derived, it seems, from the Greek letter “Delta.” The core of the Delta Brigade was surmised to be composed of veterans returned from the misdirected and ill-fated campaign in the Vosk’s delta, and thus the term “Delta Brigade.”

  “Tell me of the rising, the rebellion,” I said.

  “Woe to Cos and Tyros,” said a fellow. “Marlenus returned.”

  “Where had he been, what had been his fate?” I asked.

  “Much is unclear,” said one of the fellows. “It seems he was injured in a fall, whilst hunting, lost his sense of self, wandered perhaps, no longer knew himself.”

  “Some think he might have been captured, and imprisoned in Treve,” said a fellow.

  “Impossible,” said another.

  “In any event,” said a bearded fellow, “it seems he emerged from the Voltai, thought himself somehow of the Peasants, and labored with them.”

  “He was eventually recognized, in Ar,” said another.

  “It was said by a mere slave,” said another.

  “Interesting,” I said.

  “A female,” said another.

  “Was she then freed?” I asked.

  Several of the men laughed.

  “Forgive me,” I said. “I spoke foolishly.”

  Gorean slaves were seldom freed. Indeed, there is a saying that only a fool frees a slave girl.

  “Soon others recognized him, as well,” said another.

  “Then he was concealed by partisans,” said another.

  “He recovered his memory,” I said.

  “It was strange,” said another.

  “We know only the stories,” said another.

  “He was like a child, it seems,” said another, “a powerful, dangerous child. He listened to what he was told. He learned what had occurred in the city, as it was patiently explained to him. He grew sorrowful, and then, slowly, angry. Then he said, ‘But where is Marlenus?’”

  “This elated his sheltering partisans,” said another, “that he could recall that name. ‘Where is Marlenus?’ he asked, again, and again. ‘He must return,’ he was told. ‘Where is he?’ he asked. ‘In the city, it is thought,’ he was told.”

  “He did not know himself Marlenus?” I said.

  “No,” said one of the men.

  “Continue,” I said.

  “‘Who rules in Ar?’ he asked,” said the bearded fellow.

  “‘Truly, or in name?’ inquired his interlocutor,” said another. “And he wished to know in truth who ruled, and he was told Lurius of Jad, in far Cos, but through Myron, the polemarkos, with the collusion of Seremides, master of the Taurentians, the palace guard. And then he asked who then ruled in name, and men feared to tell him, that it was she who had once been his daughter, before her dishonoring, and disownment, for the slur she had once cast on his honor.”

  I knew something of this.

  She had once been captured and enslaved by the tarnsman, Rask, of Treve, but he, having become, however unaccountably, enamored of a blond barbarian slave named El-in-or, gave her to Verna, a leader of Panther Girls, who took her to the northern forests. Later, on the northern coast, she was exposed for sale. There she had come within the cognizance of a slaver, Samos, first Captain in the Council of Captains of Port Kar. Eager to escape the toils of her cruel mistresses, and hoping that she might be returned to civilization, and even freed, she had begged him to buy her. And thusly had she performed a slave’s act, begging to be purchased, for in this act one acknowledges oneself purchasable, and thus a slave. I, later, at the time unable to walk, and muchly paralyzed by the poison of Sullius Maximus, encountered her in the house of Samos. I had had her freed and returned to Ar. It was by then common knowledge how she had been slave, and in what fashion she had come into the keeping of Samos. The honor and pride of a man such as Marlenus of Ar, Ubar of Ar, Ubar of Ubars, refused to sustain indignities of this enormity. Such affronts could not be brooked by an honor such as his. What an insult, profound and grievous, was this to his blood, and to the throne of Ar! He thus disowned her as his daughter, and had had her sequestered in the Central Cylinder, that her shame might be concealed from the city and the world.

  Had she not been free when she was delivered to Ar it is quite probable she would have been whipped and sold out of the city.

  Had she, when free, and not slave, been guilty of a stain on the honor of Ar she might well have been publicly impaled.

  “But he asked, again, and again, in his slow, childlike way, who now, be it only
in name, ruled in Ar,” said one of the men on the beach, “and the partisans took council, and decided to risk the disclosure, though they knew not what effect it might have.”

  “‘Talena,’ he was told,” said another, “’daughter of Marlenus of Ar.’”

  “Then,” said another, “as the story has it, he lifted his head, and his whole mien changed, and his body seemed to become larger and filled with power, and his eyes took on a strange, fierce, wicked gleam, and he said, quietly, and not in his slow, innocent, puzzled, childlike voice, but in another voice, a voice like iron and ice, ‘Marlenus of Ar has no daughter.’”

  “The partisans looked to one another, their eyes alight,” said a man.

  “It is then,” said another, “as the story goes, that he stood upright amongst the partisans, like a larl amongst panthers, and said, ‘Bring me a banner of Ar.’”

  “‘Who are you?’ he was asked, ‘that you dare ask for a banner of Ar?’” said another. “’They have been forbidden,’ said a partisan. ‘They are concealed.’”

  “‘Bring me a banner,’ he said, ‘one large, and broad.’ ‘Furled or unfurled?’ he was asked. ‘Furled,’ he said, ‘that it may then be unfurled.’”

  “The partisans then gasped, realizing who it was who then stood amongst them.”

  “‘Who would dare unfurl the banner of Ar?’ he was asked.”

  “‘I,’ he said, ‘Marlenus, Ubar of Ar.’”

  The unfurling of a furled banner, in given circumstances, when this is accomplished deliberately, slowly, and ritualistically, is far more than a sign of war; it is a sign of unappeasable purpose, of unmitigated intent, of implacable resolution. More than once the surrender of cities has not been accepted, but they have been leveled and burned, simply because a banner had been unfurled.

  “‘How many swords have we?’ he is said to have asked, and then demanded maps of the city, that he might be shown the locations of intrusive garrisons. The men about him he appointed high officers, by his word alone.”

  This was possible, as the word of the Ubar takes precedence over councils.

  “Had we known Marlenus was in the city,” said a man, “we should have withdrawn.”

  “Word,” said another, “was soon in the streets, and it swept from insula to insula, and to the lesser cylinders.”

  “But we were not immediately aware of this,” said a man. “Surely the great bar had not yet rung, signaling the rising.”

  “They planned swiftly, and well,” said another fellow, shuddering.

  “Weapons had been forbidden to the populace,” said another, but many had been concealed, and there is little which may not figure as a weapon, axes and hammers, the implements of agriculture, planks, poles and sticks, the very stones of the streets.”

  I nodded. A tyrant state always wishes to disarm the public, for it understands its secret intents with respect to that public, and wants it at its mercy. This disarming is always, of course, alleged to be in the public’s best interest, as though the public would be safest when least capable of defending itself.

  “Many of Ar, particularly in the higher, richer cylinders,” said a fellow, “had collaborated with us, had abetted the occupation, had shared in the looting of the city.”

  I supposed that was true. There were always such, in all cities, attentive to the directions of shifting winds.

  “Proscription lists had been prepared,” said another.

  I shuddered.

  “It was safer to be in the blue of a Cosian regular,” laughed a man, “than in the satin robes of traitors.”

  I feared then for Talena, arrogant traitress, puppet Ubara, occupant of the throne on the sufferance of invaders, sullier of her Home Stone.

  Marlenus had returned!

  “We awakened at dawn,” said a man, “startled, bewildered, to the ringing of the great bar, and rushed into the streets, to be met with steel and stones. They swarmed from everywhere, struck from everywhere. An arsenal had been seized. The cry of battle, ‘For Glorious Ar,’ was all about us. We cut down what we could, but they were everywhere, screaming, rushing at us. A fellow would kill two, and have his throat cut by a third.”

  “We were outnumbered, dozens to one,” said a man.

  “They were maddened, merciless,” said another. “Like starving blood-maddened sleen!”

  “They had planned well,” said another. “A thousand avenues of escape were closed, even to the spilling of walls into the streets. We lost many, surmounting such obstacles, fighting our way toward the open.”

  “Luckily,” said another, “much of the walling of Ar had been earlier dismantled by her own citizens, or we might have been unable to reach the fields, the marshes, the Viktel Aria.”

  “What of Myron,” I asked, “his troops?”

  “He was drunk in his tent,” said another, bitterly.

  “Many of his troops,” said another, “those of the mercenary captains, given the emptying of Ar, and the lessening of loot, had deserted.”

  “There were regulars, surely,” I said.

  “Too few,” said another man. “It had been thought that Ar was pacified, that she required little attention, that the propaganda of Tyros and Cos had done its work, weakening and confusing Ar, dividing her and turning her against herself. Many troops had been recalled to the island ubarates themselves, others to the Cosian principalities on the Vosk.”

  “They did engage,” said another man, “but not as they would have preferred. They had little time to form, as enraged thousands, many now armed with captured weapons, rushed forth from the city to deal with them.”

  Commonly a large Gorean military camp is square, or rectangular. It is carefully laid out, and is usually severally gated, which allows for the issuance of forces from the interior in a variety of manners. Too, it is ditched, and palisaded, with lookout towers at the corners of the palisade. Watches are routinely maintained, and not unoften patrols reconnoiter the locality. I recalled, however, from when I had been last in Ar, that many of these provisions had not been supplied by the polemarkos. Though Myron had had his weaknesses, for paga, and, occasionally, for a slave, he was not a poor officer. The nonfortifying of the camp had been deliberate, a part of the charade that Tyros, Cos, and their allies, had come to Ar not as conquerors but as liberators.

  “We soon heard,” said one of the men on the beach, “that a banner had been unfurled.”

  “And that Marlenus had returned,” said another.

  “That broke the spirit of hundreds,” said another.

  It is interesting, I thought, what may be the effect of will, and a given leader, on a course of events, how such things, will and a given leader, as though by magic, can generate storms, can shake the earth, may turn even urts into larls, jards to tarns.

  How does the leader know this will occur, I wondered. Or does he know?

  “Hundreds escaped with their lives,” said a man.

  “And thousands did not,” said another.

  “The streets of Ar ran with blood,” said a fellow. “Traitors, hundreds, gathered together from the proscription lists, were taken outside the city and impaled.”

  “The great road, the Viktel Aria, was lined, on both sides, for pasangs, with the bound, squirming, whimpering bodies,” said a man.

  I nodded.

  The vengeance of a Marlenus, I knew, would be a frightful thing.

  “Many bodies were hurled, like beasts, into the marshes, for tharlarion,” said a fellow.

  “Or into carnariums,” said another.

  These were deep pits outside the city, used for the disposal of filth, of garbage, and such. Occasionally a new one was dug, and an old one covered over. Occasionally one was opened, even generations after its closure, that it might be reused, and the lingering stench might still overcome even a strong man. Usually these pits were tended by male slaves, with shovels, with the lower parts of their faces wrapped in scarves.

  “The walls of Ar,” I said, “are doubtless being
rebuilt.”

  I must not make my serious concerns too obvious.

  “With soaring hearts and singing,” said a fellow.

  “And the flute girls who so tormented and mocked the earlier dismantlers of the walls?” I asked.

  “Collared, naked, sweating, under the lash,” said a fellow, “they now struggle to bear stones to the builders.”

  “They will be distributed later, as officers deem fit,” said another.

  “Excellent,” I said.

  I tried to keep my voice steady.

  “And what of Talena?” I asked.

  “A great price has been put upon her head,” said a fellow.

  “Ten thousand tarns of gold,” said a fellow.

  “Tarn disks of double weight,” said another.

  “Then she escaped the city,” I said. “She has not been captured.”

  “You seem pleased,” said a man.

  “He is a bounty hunter,” laughed a fellow.

  “You will not have much of a chance to get your capture rope on her,” said another.

  “Every bounty hunter on Gor will seek her,” said another.

  “Where would she go? How would she escape capture?” asked another. “I wager she is already captured, and her hunter is pondering how he might get her safely to Ar.”

  “He may be negotiating for a better price, even now,” said another.

  “Perhaps she was concealed, and sped to Cos,” I said. “Surely they owe her much. She did them much service.”

  “Ar has risen,” said a man. “If she is in Cos, Lurius will deliver her to Marlenus as a peace offering, as a sign of reconciliation and proposed amity.”

  “I do not think she is in Cos,” said a fellow, “or Tyros, either.”

  “Where then?” said a man.

  “I know not,” he replied.

  “Where would she go?” asked the fellow who had spoken earlier. “Who would shelter her? She cannot just enter another city, even a village.”

  I realized the fellow’s point. There would be the matter of clan, of caste, of identity, of Home Stone. The veils of anonymity are not easily donned in a closely-knit society.