Raiders of Gor (46 page)

men climbing.

Telima, wildly, her two hands on the sword, struck a man from behind in the neck

and he fell away from the blade. Then she had lost the blade, as an invader

struck it from her hand. He raised his own to strike her but I had my steel

beneath his left shoulder blade and had turned again before he could deliver his

blow.

I saw a man on the parapet fall screaming backward, struck by a rock as large as

his head, hurled from the small hands of Luma. Vina, with a shield, whose weight

she could hardly bear, was trying to cover the boy, Fish, as he fought. I saw

him drop his man, and turn, seeking

another.

I threw a man whom I had struck, even before he died, over the parapet, striking

another, who, clinging desperately to the siege pole, carried it back in a long

arc with him as he fell. I saw one of my former slaves, with a spear shaft,

beating another man from the wall.

Samos thrust his blade into the “Y”-shaped opening of a helmet, parried a spear

thrust from his body, and met the steel of another man.

We heard the trumpet of retreat, and killed six as they tried to escape back

over the wall.

We, panting, bloody, looked about ourselves.

“The next attack,” said Samos, indifferently, “will be the last.”

Samos survived, and I, and the boy, Fish, and the three girls, and, beyond

these, other than the dancer, Sandra, who had remained below, only five men,

three who had come to my holding with Samos, and two of my own, one a simple

mercenary, one who had once been a slave.

I looked out over the delta.

We heard, behind walls, within the holding, the rnarshalling of men, the click

of arms. It would not, this time, be a long wait.

I went to Samos. “I wish you well,” I said to him. The heavy, squarish face

regarded me, still so much the countenance of the predator. Then he looked away.

“I, too,” said he, “wish you well, Warrior.”

He seemed embarrassed to say what he had. I wondered why he had called me

Warrior.

I took Telima in my arms. “When they. come again,” I said, “hide below. If you

fight you will doubtless be slain. When they come below, submit to them. They

may spare you.” And then I looked to Vina and Luma. “You, also,” I said. “Do not

mix in the matters of men.”

Vina looked to the boy, Fish.

He nodded. “Yes,” he saiid, “go below.”

“I, for one,” said Telima, “find it stuffy below.”

“I, too,” smiled Luma.

“Yes,” said Vina, firmly “It is very stuffy below.”

“Very well,” I said, “then it will be necessary, before the next attack, to bind

you to the foot of the ladder below.”

“I think,” said Samos, looking over the parapet, “you will not have time for

that.” We heard the trumpets signaling a new attack. We heard the rush of

hundreds of feet on the stones below.

“Go below!” I cried to the girls.

They stood away, feet fixed apart, in- the garments of slaves, obdurate,

rebellious.

“We acknowledge ourselves your slave girls!” screamed Telima. “If we do not

please you, beat us or slay us!”

A crossbow quarrel swept overhead. “Go below!” screamed Fish to Vina.

“If I do not please you,” she screamed, “beat me or kilI me!”

He kissed her swiftly, and turned to defend a wall.

The girls took up stones and swords, and stood beside us.

“Good-bye, my Ubar,” said Telima.

“Farewell,” said I, “Ubara.”

With a great cry the hundreds of men swarmed to the foot of the keep. Again we

heard the striking against the walls of siege poles. Again irons, on their

ropes, looped over the parapet wall. And across from the keep, on the delta

wall, boldly, there stood crossbowmen, now without fear, for our arrows and

bolts were gone, to cover the climbing men.

We heard the men nearing us, on the other side of the wall, the scraping of

swords and spears on the vertical stones of the keep.

On the delta wall, opposite, I saw the leader of the ssbowmen, standing even on

the parapet of the delta wall itself, directing his men.

I heard the climbers approaching even more closely. Then, to my amazement, I saw

something, like a streak of light, leap from the delta behind the wall, and the

leader of the crossbowmen spun about as though struck with a war hammer and

dropped, inert, from the wall. “You're hurting me!” cried Telima.

My hand clutched her arm.

I leaped to my feet.

“Stay down!” cried Samos.

Suddenly more than a hundred irons with ropes struck the delta wall, wedging in

the crenels, and I saw the irons tighten in the crenels and strain with the

weight on them. One of the crossbowmen looked over the delta wall and flew

backwards off the wall, his hands not reaching his head. Protruding from his

forehead, its pile stopped by the metal helmet in the back, was the long shaft

of an arrow, one that could be only from the peasant bow.

We saw crossbowmen fleeing from the wall.

We heard the men climbing closer on the siege poles. Then, swarming over the

delta wall, were hundreds of men.

“Rencers!” I cried.

But each of these men, over his back, carried a peasant bow. In perfect order

they stood in line within the para- pet on the delta wall. As one their arrows

leaped to the string, as one the great bows bent, and I saw Ho-Hak on the height

of the wall bring down his arm with a cry, and I saw, like sheets of oblique

rain, the torrent of gull- feathered shafts leap toward the keep. And I saw,

too, on the wall, with Ho-Hak, Thurnock, the Peasant, with his bow, and beside

him, with net and trident, Clitus. There was a great screaming from the siege

ladders, and I heard men crying out with death, and terror, and heard the

scraping of the ladders and then their falling back, showering bodies on those

crowded below, waiting to scale them. Again and again the great line blasted

shafts of pile-tipped tem-wood into those packed at the foot of the keep. And

then the invaders began to scatter and run, but each archer picked his target,

and few there were who reached cover other than the side of the keep away from

the archers. And now archers were running down the side walls, and leaping to

other roofs, that every point at the foot of the keep might be within the

assailing orbit of the string-flung missiles, and the girls, and the men, too,

flung stones from the top of the keep down on the men trying to hide behind it,

and then, again, the invaders scattered, running back toward the holding. For an

instant, white- faced, wild, I saw below Lysias, with his helmet with its crest

of sleen hair, and beside him, with the string of pearls of the Vosk sorp about

his forehead, the rencer Henrak, who had, long ago, betrayed the rencers for the

gold of Port Kar. And behind them, in a rich swirling cloak of the fur of the

white, spotted sea sleen, sword in hand, looking wildly about, was another man,

one I did not know.

“It is Claudius!” cried the boy, Fish, beside me. “Claudius!”

So that, I thought, was Claudius, who had been regent for Henrius Sevarius, and

who, doubtless, had attempted to have him killed.

The boy's fists were clenched on the parapet.

Then the three men, with some others, fled into my holding.

On the wall Thumock waved his great bow over his head.

“Captain!” he cried.

Clitus, too, raised his hand.

I, too, lifted my hand, acknowledging their salute. And I lifted my hand, too,

to Ho-Hak, the rencer. I saw how his men used their bows. I had little doubt

that having been taught the might of the great bow in the marshes, when I had

freed them from the slavers in the barges, they had traded for the weapons and

now had made them their own, and proudly, as much as the peasants. I did not

think the rencers would any longer be at the mercy of the men of Port Kar. Now,

with weapons and courage, perhaps for the first time, they were truly free men,

for they could now defend their freedoms, and those who cannot do this are not

truly free; at best they are fortunate.

“Look!” cried Samos.

From the height of the keep, we could see over my holding, even to the canal and

sea gate beyond the lake- like courtyard.

Men were fleeing from my holding but, even more important, approaching down the

canal, oars flashing, mast down, came a tarn ship, and then another.

“It is the Vennal” I cried. “And the Tela!”

Standing at the prow of the Venna, shield on his arm, helmeted, spear in hand,

was Tab.

He must have brought the Venna and the Tela into the wind, cutt g away even the

storm sails, and risked the destruction of the two ships in the high sea, not to

be driven from Port Kar, and then, when the storm had lulled, they had put about

and raced for the harbor. The rest of the fleet was still doubtless a hundred or

more pasangs to the south.

“A seaman truly worthy of Port Kar,” said Samos.

“Do you love the city so?” I asked.

Samos smiled. “It is the place of my Home Stone,” he said.

I grinned.

We saw the two ships, the Venna and her sister ship, the Tela, knife into the

courtyard and swing about, their bowmen firing on the men running on the

Promenade and trying to escape about the edges of the courtyard.

We saw men throwing down their weapons and kneeling. They would be roped

together as slaves.

I seized Telima in my arms. She was laughing and crying.

I then seized one of the ropes attached to a grappling iron wedged in one of the

crenels and began to descend the outer side of the keep wall. Fish and Samos

were not far behind me.

With other ropes the men behind would lower the girls, and then follow

themselves.

At the foot of the keep we met Thurnock, Clitus and Ho-Hak.

We embraced.

“You have learned the lesson of the great bow well,” I said to Ho-Hak.

“You well taught it to us, Warrior,” said Ho-Hak.

Thurnock and Clitus, with Thura and Ufa, had gone for aid to the rencers,

traditionally enemies of those of Port Kar. And the rencers, to my astonishment,

had come to risk their lives for me.

I decided I did indeed know little of men.

“Thank you,” said I to Ho-Hak.

“it is nothing,” said he, “Warrior.”

It is such nothings, I thought, that are our manhood and our meaning.

“Three are cornered within,” said a seaman.

Samos and I, and Fish, and Thurnock, Clitus and Ho Hak, and others, went within

the holding.

In the great hall, surrounded by crossbowmen, stood three men, at bay. Lysias,

Claudius and Henrak.

“Greetings, Tab,” said I, saluting him as I entered the room.

“Greetings, Captain,” said he.

By now the three girls, Telima, Vina and Luma, had been lowered from the height

of the keep, and were close behind us.

Lysias, seeing me, flung himself at me. I met his attack The exchange was sharp.

Then he fell at my feet, his helmet rolling to the side, blood on the sleen-hair

crest, that marking it as that of a captain.

“I am rich,” said Claudius. “I can pay for my freedom.”

“The Council of Captains of Port Kar,” said Samos, “has business with you.”

“My business is first,” said a voice.

We turned to see the slave boy, Fish, his sward in hand.

“You!” cried Claudius. “You!”

Samos looked at the boy, curiously. Then he turned to Claudius. “You seem

disturbed,” said be, “at the sight of a mere slave boy.”

I recalled that there was a price on the head of the young Ubar, Henrius

Sevarius.

And he stood there, though branded, though collared, though in the miserable

garment of a slave, as a young Ubar. He was no longer a boy. He had loved, and

he had fought. He was a man.

Claudius, with a cry of rage, the cloak of white, spotted fur of sea sleen

swirling behind him, leaped at the boy, sword high, raining blows upon him.

The boy smartly parried them, not striking his own blows.

“Yes,” said the boy, “I am not an unskilled swordsman. Now let us fight.”

Claudius threw aside his swirling cloak and, warily, approached the boy.

Claudius was an excellent swordsman, but, in moments, the boy, Fish, had stepped

away from him, and wiped his blade on the flung-aside cloak. Claudius stood

unsteadily in the center of the great hall, and then, he fell forward, sprawling

on the tiles.

“Remarkable,” said Samos. “Claudius is dead. And slain only by a slave.”

The boy, Fish, smiled.

“This one,” said Ho-Hak, indicating Henrak, “is a rencer, and he is mine.”

Henrak regarded him, white-faced.

Ho-Hak regarded him. “Eechius was killed at the rence island,” he said to

Henrak. “Eechius was my son.”

“Do not hurt me!” cried Henrak.

He turned to run, but there was no place to run.

Ho-Hak, solemn and large, removed his weapons, drop- ping them to the floor.

About his neck there was still the heavy iron collar he had worn as a galley

slave, with its links of heavy, dangling chain. His large ears laid themselves

flat against his head.

“He has a knife!” cried Luma.

Ho-Hak, carefully, approached Henrak, who held a knife poised.

When Henrak struck, Ho-Hak caught his wrist. Slowly Ho-Hak's great hand,

strengthened from years at the oar, closed on Henrak's wrist, and the knife, as