Raiders of Gor (11 page)

I threw the body into the marsh.

“Yes,” I said. “He was once kind to me.”

It was the boy who had brought me the bit of rence cake when I had been bound at

the pole, he who had been punished for doing this by his mother.

I looked at Telima. “Bring me my weapons,” I said to her.

She looked at me.

“It will take long, will it not,” I asked, “for the barges so heavily laden to

reach Port Kar?”

“Yes,” she said, startled, “it will take long.”

“Bring me my weapons,” I said.

“There are more than a hundred warriors,” she said, her voice suddenly leaping.

“And among my weapons,” I said, “bring me the great bow, with its arrows.”

She cried out with joy and sped from my side.

I looked again westward, after the long barges, and looked again into the marsh,

where it was now quiet.

Then I began to gather rence, drawing it from the surface of the island itself,

long strips, with whick a boat might be made.

8
     
What Occurred in the Marshes

I had gathered the rence and Telima, with marsh vines, and her strong hands and

skill, had made the craft.

While she worked I examined my weapons.

She had concealed them in the rence, far from her hut, weaving the reeds again

over them. They had been protected.

I had again my sword, that wine-tempered blade of fine, double-edged Gorean

steel, carried even at the siege of Ar, so long ago, with its scabbard; and the

rounded shield of layered boskhide, with its double sling, riveted with pets of

iron and bound with hoops of brass; and the simple helmet, innocent of insignia,

with empty crest plate, of curved iron with its “Y”-like opening, and cushioned

with rolls of leather. I had even, folded and stained from the salt of the

marsh, the warrior’s tunic, which had been taken from me even in the marsh,

before I had been brought bound before Ho-Hak on the island.

And there was, too, the great bow, of yellow, supple Ka-la-na, tipped with

notched bosk horn, with its cord of hemp, whipped with silk, and the roll of

sheaf and flight arrows.

I counted the arrows. There were seventy arrowns, fifty of which were sheaf

arrows, twenty flight arrows. The Gorean sheaf arrow is slightly over a yard

long, the flight arrow is about forty inches in length. Both are metal piled and

fletched with three half-feathers, from the wings of the Vosk gulls. Mixed in

with the arrows were the leather tab, with its two openings for the right

forefinger and the middle finger, and the leather bracer, to shield the left

forearm from the flashing string.

I had told Telima to make the rence craft sturdy, wider than usual, stabler. I

was not a rencer and, when possible, when using the bow, I intended to stand;

indeed, it is difficult to draw a bow cleanly in any but a standing position; it

is not the small, straight bow used in hunting light game, Tabuk, slaves and

such.

I was pleased with the craft, and, not more than an Ahn after we returned to the

island from our concealment in the marsh, Telima poled us away from its shore,

setting out course in the wake of the narrow, high-prowed marsh barges of the

slavers of Port Kar.

The arrows lay before me, loose in the leather wrapper opened before me on the

reeds of the rence craft.

In my hand was the great bow. I had not yet strung it.

The oar-master of the sixth barge was doubtless angry. He had had to stop

calling his time.

The barges in line before him, too, had slowed, then stopped, their oars half

inboard, waiting.

It is sometimes difficult for even a small rence craft to make its way through

the tangles of rushes and sedge in the delta.

A punt, from the flagship, moved ahead. Two slaves stook aft in the small,

square-ended, flat-bottomed boat, poling. Two other slaves stood forward with

glaves, lighter poles, bladed, with which they cut a path for the following

barges. That path must needs be wide enough for the beam of the barges, and the

width of the stroke of the oars.

The sixth barge began to drift to leeward, a slow half circle, aimless, like a

finger drawing in the water.

The oar-master cried out angrily and turned to the helmsman, he who held the

tiller beam.

The helmsman stood at the tiller, not moving. He had removed his helmet in the

noon heat of the delta. Insects, undistracted, hovered about his head, moving in

his hair.

The oar-master, crying out, leaped up the stairs to the tiller deck, and angrily

seized the helmsman bu the shoulders, shaking him, then saw his eyes.

He released the man, who fell from the tiller.

The oar-master cried out in fear, summoning warriors who gathered on the tiller

deck.

The arrow from the great yellow bow, that of supple Ka-la-na, had passed through

the head of the man, losing itself a hundred yards distant, dropping unseen into

the marsh.

I do not think the men of Port Kar, at this time, realized the nature of the

weapon that had slain their helmsman.

The knew only that he had been alive, and then dead, and that his head now bore

two unaccountable wounds, deep, opposed, centerless circles, each mounted at the

scarlet apex of a stained triangle.

Uncertain, fearing, they looked about.

The marsh was quiet, They heard only, from somewhere, far off, the piping cry of

a marsh gant.

Silently, swiftly, with the stamina and skill of the rence girl, Telima,

unerringly taking advantage of every break in the marsh growth, never making a

false thrust or motion, brought our small craft soon into the vicinity of the

heavy, slowed barges, hampered not only by their weight but by the natural

impediments of the marsh. I marveled at her, as she moved the craft, keeping us

constantly moving, yet concealed behind high thickets of rush and sedge. At

times we were but yards from the barges. I could hear the creak of the oars in

the thole ports, hear the calling of the oar-master, the conversation of

warriors at their leisure, the moans of bound slaves, soon silenced with the

lash and blows.

Telima poled us skillfuly about a large, floating tangle of marsh vine, it

shifting with the movements of the marsh water.

We passed the fifth barge, and the fourth and third. I heard the shouts being

passed from barge to barge, the confusion.

Soon, shielded by rushes and sedge, we had the first of the narrow, high-prowed

barges abeam. This was their flagship. The warriors in the craft, climbing on

the rowing benches, were crowed amidships and aft, even on the tiller deck,

looking back at the barge line behind them, trying to make out the shouting, the

confusion. Some of the slaves, chained at their benches, were trying to stand

and see what might be the matter. On the small foredeck of the barge, beneath

the high, curved prow, stood the officer and Henrak, both looking aft. The

officer, angrily, was shouting the length of the barge to its oar-master, who

now stood on the tiller deck, looking back toward the other barges, his hands on

the sternrail. On the high, curved prow, to which was bound, naked, the lithe,

darkhaired girl, there stood a lookout, he, too, looking backward, shielding his

eyes. Below the prow, in the marsh water, the slaves in the punt stopped cutting

at the sedge and marsh vine that blocked their way.

I stood in the small craft, shielded by rushes and sedge. My feet were spread;

my heels were aligned with the target; my head was sharply turned to my left; I

drew the sheaf arrow to its pile, until the three half-feathers of the Vosk gull

lay at my jawbone; I took breath and then held it, sighting over the pile; there

must be no movement; then I released the string.

The shaft, at the distance, passed completely through his body, flashing beyond

him and vanishing among the rushes and sedges in the distance.

The man himself did not cry out but the girl, bound near him, screamed.

There was a splash in the water.

The slaves standing in the punt, the two with their poles, the other two with

their glaves, cried out in fear. I heard a thrashing in the water on the other

side of the barge, the hoarse grunting of a suddenly emerged marsh tharlarion.

The man had not cried out. Doubtless he have been dead before he struck the

water. The girl bound to the prow, however, startled, hysterical, seeing the

tumult of the tharlarion below her, each tearing for a part of the unexpected

prize, began to scream uncontrollably. The slaves in the punt, too, striking

down with their glaves, shoving away tharlarion, began to cry out. There was

much shouting. The officer, bearded and tall, with the two golden slashes on the

temples of his helmet, followed by Henrak, still with the scarf bound about his

body, ran to the rail. Telima, silently, poled us back further among the rushes,

skillfully turning the small craft and moving again toward the last barge. As we

silently moved among the growths of the marsh we heard the wild cries of men,

and the screaming of the girl bound to the prow, until, by a whi[ slave, she was

lashed to silence.

“Cut! Cut! Cut!” I heard the officer cry out to the slaves in the punt and,

immediately, almost frenzied, they began to hack away at the tangles of marsh

vine with their bladed poles.

Throughout the afternoon and evening, unhurried, Telima and I, like a prowling

sleen, circled the barges, and, when it pleased us, loosed another of the long

shafts of the great bow.

I struck first their helmsman, and soon none would ascend to the tiller deck.

Then warriors climbed down to punt, to help the slaves cut marsh vine and sedge,

to clear the way, but these warriors, exposed, fell easy prey to the birds of

the bow. Then more slaves were put in the punt, and ordered to cut, and cut

more.

And when some growth had been cleared and an oar-master would dare to take his

seat to call the time for the rowers he, too, like the helmsmen, would taste in

his heart the touch of the metal-piled shaft.

And then none would dare take the place of the oar-master.

As darkness fell in the marsh the men of Port Kar lit torches on the sides of

the barges.

But by the light of these torches the great bow found the enjoyment of various

victories.

Then the torches were extinguisehd and, in the darkness, fearing, the men of

Port kar waited.

We had struck from various sides, at various times. And Telima had often raised

the piping cry of the marsh gant. The men of Port Kar knew, as I had not, that

rencers communicate in the marshes by the means of such signals. The face,

delightful to me, taht Telima’s skill was such that actuall marsh gants

frequently responded to her cries was, I expect, less delightful to those of

Port Kar. In the darkness, peering out, not seeing, they had no way of knowing

which was a marsh gant and which an enemy. For all they knew, they were

encirclesd by rencers, somehow masters of the great bow, That the great bow was

used they understood from the time I struck the second helmsman, pinning him to

the tiller beam.

Occassionally they would fire back, and the bolts of crossbows would drop into

the marshes about us, but harmlessly. Usually they fell far wide of our true

positon, for, following each of my fired shafts, Telima would pole us to a new

point of vantage, whence I might again, when ready, pick a target and loose yet

another of the winged shafts. Sometimes merely the movement of a tharlarion or

the flutter of a marsh gant, something completely unrelated to us, would summon

a great falling and hissing of bolts into the marsh.

In the darkness, Telima and I finished some rence cake we had brought from the

island, and drank some water.

“How may arrows have you left?” she asked.

“Ten,” I said.

“It is not enough,” she said.

“That is true,” I said, “but now we have the cover of darkness.”

I had cut some marsh vine and had, from this formed a loop.

“What can you do?” she asked.

“Pole me to the fourth barge,” I said.

We had estimated that there had been more than a hundred warriors on the six

barges, but not, perhaps, many more. Counting the kills, and other men we had

seen, the barges’ hulls, there might be some fifty men left, spread over the six

barges.

Silently Telima poled our small craft to the fourth barge.

The most of the warriors, we had noted, were concentrated in the first and last

barges.

The barges, during the afternoon, had been eased into a closer line, the stem on

one lying abeam of the stern of the next, being made fast tehre by lines. This

was to prevent given barges from being boarded separately, where the warriors on

one could not come to the aid of the other. They had no way of knowing how many

rencers might be in the marshes. With this arrangement they had greater mobility

of their forces, for men might leap, say, from one foredeck of one barge to the

tiller deck of the other. If boarding were attepmpted toward the center of the

line, the boarding party could thus be crushed on both flanks by warriors

pouring in from adjacent barges. This arrangement, in effect, transformed the