Raiders of Gor (39 page)

Stone in Port Kar!”

Men ran from the room to carry out orders.

“Officers,” I cried, “to your ships! Form your lines beyond the harbor four

pasangs west of the wharves of Sevarius!”

“Thurnock and Clitus,” I said, “remain in the holding.”

“No!” they cried together.

“Remain!” I ordered.

They looked at one another in dismay.

I could not send them to their deaths. I had no hopes that Port Kar could muster

enough ships to fend off the joint fleet of Cos and Tyros.

I turned away from them, and, with the stone, strode from the room.

Outside the holding, on the broad promenade before of the holding, bordering on

the lakelike courtyard, with the canal gate beyond, I ordered a swift,

tharlarionprowed longboat made ready.

Even from where I was I could hear, beyond the holding, the cries that there was

a Home Stone in Port Kar, and could see torches being borne along the narrow

walks which, in most places, line the canals.

“Ubar,” I heard, and I turned to take Telima in my arms.

“Will you not fly?” she begged, tears in her eyes.

“Listen,” I told her. “Hear them? Hear what they are crying outside?”

“They are crying that there is a Home Stone in Port Kar,” she said, “but there

is no Home Stone in Port Kar. Everyone knows that.”

“If men will that there be a Home Stone in Port Kar,” I said, “then in Port Kar

there will be a Home Stone.”

“Fly,” she wept.

I kissed her and leaped down into the longboat, which was now beside the

promenade.

The men shoved off with the oars.

“To the Council of Captains,” I told them.

The tharlarion head of the craft turned toward the canal gate.

I turned to lift my hand in farewell to Telima. I saw her standing there, near

the entryway to my holding, in the garment of the Kettle Slave, under the

torches. She lifted her hand.

Then I took my seat in the longboat.

I noted that at one of the oars sat the slave boy Fish.

“It is a man’s work that must now be done, Boy,” I said to him.

He drew on the oar. “I am a man,” he said, “Captain.”

I saw the girl Vina standing beside Telima.

But Fish did not look back.

The ship nosed through the canals of Port Kar toward the hall of the Council of

Captains.

There were torches everywhere, and lights in the windows.

We heard the cry about us sweeping the city, like a spark igniting the hearts of

men into flame, that now in Port Kar there was a Home Stone.

A man stood on a narrow walks, a bundle on his back, tied over a spear. “Is it

true, Admiral?” he cried. “Is it true?”

“If you will have it true,” I told him, “it will be true.”

He looked at me, wonderingly, and then the tharlarion-prowed longboat glided

past him in the canal, leaving him behind.

I looked once behind, and saw that he had thrown the bundle from his spear, and

was following us, afoot.

“There is a Home Stone in Port Kar!” he cried.

I saw others stop, and then follow him.

The canals we traversed were crowded, mostly with small tharlarion boats, loaded

with goods, moving this way and that. All who could, it seemed, were fleeing the

city.

I had heard already that men with larger ships, hundreds of them, had put out to

sea, and that the wharves were packed with throngs, bidding exorbitant amounts

of gold for a passage from Port Kar. Many fortunes, I thought, would be made

this night in Port Kar.

“Make way for the Admiral!” cried the man in the bow of the longboat. “Make way

for the admiral!”

We saw frightened faces looking out from the windows. Men were hurrying along

the narrow walks lining the canals. I could see the shining eyes of urts, their

noses and heads dividing the torchlit waters silently, their pointed, silken

ears laid back against the sides of their heads.

“Make way for the Admiral!” cried the man in the bow of the longboat.

Our boat mixed oars with another, and then we shoved apart and continued on our

way.

Children were crying. I heard a woman scream. Men were shouting. Everywhere dark

figures, bundles on their backs, were scurrying along the sides of the canals.

Many of the boats we passed were crowded with frightened people and goods.

Many of those we passed asked me, “Is it true, Admiral, that there is a Home

Stone in Port Kar,” and I responded to them, as I had to the man before, “If you

will have it true, it will be true.”

I saw a man at the tiller of one of the boats put about.

There were now torches on both sides of the canals, in long lines, following us,

and boats, too, began to follow us.

“Where are you going?” asked a man from a window of the passing throng.

“I think to the Council of Captains,” said one of the men on the walk. “It is

said that there is now a Home Stone in Port Kar.”

And I heard men behind him cry, “There is a Home Stone in Port Kar! There is a

Home Stone in Port Kar!” This cry was taken up by thousands, and everywhere I

saw men pause in their flight, and boats put about, and men pour from the

entryways of their buildings onto the walks lining the canals. I saw bundles

thrown down and arms unsheathed, and behind us, in throngs of thousands now,

came the people of Port Kar, following us to the great piazza before the halls

of the Council of Captains.

Even before the man in the bow had tied the tharlarion-prowed longboat ot a

mooring post at the piazza, I had leaped up to the tiles and was striding, robes

swirling, across the squares of the broard piazza toward the great door of the

hall of the Council of Captains.

Four members of the Council Guard, beneath the two great braziers set at the

entrance, leaped to attention, the butts of their pikes striking on the tiles.

I swept past them and into the hall.

Candles were lit on several of the tables. Papers were strewn about. There were

few scribes or pages there. Of the usual seventy or eighty, or so, captains of

the approximately one hundred and twenty entitled to sit in the council, only

some thirty or forty were present.

And even as I entered some two or three left the hall.

The scribe, haggard behind the great table, sitting before the book of the

council, looked up at me.

I glanced about.

The captains sat silently. Samos was there, and I saw that short-cropped white

hair buried in his rough hands, his elbows on his knees.

Two more captains rose to their feet and left the room.

One of them stopped beside Samos. “Make your ships ready,” he said. “There is

not much time to flee.”

Samos shook him away.

I took my chair. “I petiton,” said I to the scribe, as though it might be an

ordinary meeting, “to address the council.”

The scribe was puzzled.

The captains looked up.

“Speak,” said the Scribe.

“How may of you,” asked I of the captains, “stand read to undertake the defense

of your city?”

Dark, long-haired Bejar was there. “Do not jest,” said he, “Captain.” He spoke

irritably. “Most of the captains have already fled. And hundreds of the lesser

captains. The round ships and the long ships leave the harbor of Port Kar. The

people, as they can, flee. Panic has swept the city. We cannot find ships to

fight.”

“The people,” said Antisthenes, “flee. The will not fight. They are truly of

Port Kar.”

“Who knows what it is to be truly of Port Kar?” I asked Antisthenes.

Samos lifted his head and regarded me.

“The people flee,” said Bejar.

“Listen!” I cried. “Hear them! They are outside!”

The men of the council lifted their heads. Through the thick walls, and the

high, narrow windows of the hall of the Council of Captains, there came a great,

rumbling cry, the thunderous mixture of roiling shouts.

Bejar swept his sword from his sheath, “They have come to kill us!” he cried.

Samos lifted his hand. “No,” he said, “listen.”

“What is it they are saying?” asked a man.

A page rushed into the hall. “The people!” he cried. “They crowd the piazza.

Torches! Thousands!”

“What is it that they cry!” demanded Bejar.

“They cry,” said the boy, in his silk and velvet, “that in Port Kar there is a

Home Stone!”

“There is no Home Stone in Port Kar,” said Antisthenes.

“There is,” I said.

The captains looked at me.

Samos threw back his head and roared with laughter, pounding the arms of the

curule chair.

Then the other captains, too, laughed.

“There is no Home Stone in Port Kar!” laughed Samos.

“I have seen it,” said a voice near me. I was startled. I looked about and, to

my wonder, saw, standing near me, the slave boy Fish. Slaves are not permitted

in the hall of the captains. He had followed me in, through the guards, in the

darkness.

“Bind that slave and beat him!” cried the scribe.

Samos, with a gesture, silenced the scribe.

“Who are you?” asked Samos.

“A slave,” said the boy. “My name is Fish.”

The men laughed.

“But,” said the boy, “I have seen the Home Stone of Port Kar.”

“There is no Home Stone of Port Kar, Boy,” said Samos/

.The, slowly, from my robes, I removed the object which I had hidden there. No

one spoke. All eyes were upon me. I slowly upwrapped the silk.

“It is the Home Stone of Port Kar,” said the boy.

The men were silent.

The Samos said, “Port Kar has no Home Stone.”

“Captains,” said I, “accompany me to the steps of the hall.”

They followed me, and I left the chamber of the council, and, in a few moments,

stood on the top of the broad marbled steps leading up to the hall of the

Council of Captains.

“It is Bosk,” cried the people. “It is Bosk, Admiral!”

I looked out into the thousands of faces, the hundreds of torches.

I could see the canals far away, over the heads of the people, crowded even to

the distant waters bordering the great piazza. And in those waters beyond there

were crowded hundreds of boats,, filled with men, many of them holding torches,

the flames’ reflection flickering on the walls of the buildings and on the

water.

I said nothing, but faced the crowd for a long moment.

And then, suddenly, I lifted my right arm, and held in my right hand, high over

my head, was the stone.

“I have seen it!” cried a man, weeping. “I have seen it! The Home Stone of Port

Kar!”

There were great cheers, and cries, and shouts, and the lifting of torches and

weapons. I saw men weep. And women. And I saw fathers lift their sons upon their

shoulders that they might see the stone.

I think the cries of joy in the piazza might have carried even to the moons of

Gor.

“I see,” said Samos, standing near to me, his voice indistinct in the wild cries

of the crowd, “that there is indeed a Home Stone in Port Kar.”

“You did not flee,” I said, “nor did the others, nor have these people.”

He looked at me puzzled.

“I think,” I said, “that there has always been a Home Stone in Port Kar. It is

only that until this night it had not been found.”

We looked out over the vast throng, shaken in its jubilation and its tears.

Samos smiled. “I think,” said he, “Captain, you are right.”

Near to me, tears in his eyes, shouting, was the slave boy Fish. And I saw

tears, too, in the eyes of the vast crowds, with their torches, before me.

There was much shouting, and a great crying out.

“Ye, Captain,” said Samos, “I think that you are right.”

17
   
How Bosk Conducted the Affairs of Port Kar Upon Thassa

I stood in the swaying basket at the height of the mast of the Dorna, the glass

of the builders in hand.

It was a very beautiful sight, the great lines of ships in the distance,

extending to the ends of the horizons, the sails like yellow and purple flags,

in their thousands, in the sun of the ninth Gorean hour, an Ahn before noon.

Port Kar had mustered what ships she could.

In the hurrying of our formations and the drawing of battle plans, I was not

even certain of the numbers of ships engaged in our various ventures. The

nearest estimations I could make were that we were bringing, at the time of the

engagement, in the neighborhood of twenty- five hundred ships, fourteen hundred

of them only round ships, against the joint fleet of Cos and Tyros, of some

forty-two hundred ships, all tam ships, now approaching from the west. We had

all of the arsenal ships that were available, some seven hundred out of an

approximate thousand. So many were in the arsenal because of the lateness of the

season. As I may have mentioned, most Gorean sailing, particularly by tarn

ships, is done in the spring and summer. Of the seven hundred arsenal ships,

three hundred and forty were tam ships, and three hundred and sixty were round

ships. Our fleet was further supplemented by some fourteen hundred ships

furnished by private captains, minor captains of Port Kar, most of which were

round ships. Beyond this, we had three hundred and fifty ships furnished by the

captains of the council who had not, prior to the time of the showing of the

Home Stone, fled. Of these three hundred and fifty ships, approximately two

hundred, happily, were tarn ships. my own ships counted in with these of the