Renegades of Gor (27 page)

were wider on the outside then inside, constituting embrasures. This affords a

wider range of fire by missile weapons.

“Do you have food?” called a voice.

“No!” I said.

“Go away!” it said.

(pg.180) The basket, on its rope, maddeningly, drew upward some yards.

“Admit me!” I called. “Look! I have diplomatic pouch, too, taken from a courier

of Artemidorus. It may contain matters of moment! Admit me!”

“It seems you offer us many inducements to admit you,” called a fellow.

“Admit me!” I cried, urgently. “Do not fire!” I called out to the fellow with

the crossbow.

“Go away!” said one of the voices.

“You would be mad to enter this place,” said another voice.

“He is a spy, who would see behind our walls, who would inquire into our

defenses,” said another.

“No!” I said. “Blindfold me, if you will. Take me to Aemilianus!”

“You have been seen,” said another fellow, the voice drifting down to me. I saw

his hand, pointing out, toward the Cosian lines.

I turned about. I could see one or two fellows standing at the height of the

trench.

“Your friends call to you,” said a voice. “Make it back to them, if you can.” I

saw the crossbow move. Then, in another crenel, I saw another.

“Do not fire!” I called.

“Spy!” called one of the fellows.

“No!” I said.

“If you were not of Cos, you could not have come through their lines,” he

called.

“No!” I said.

“How came you through the lines?” called another.

“By trickery,” I said.

I heard laughter, unpleasant laughter.

“Admit me!”

“Return to your friends,” laughed another fellow.

“I am of Port Kar!” I cried. “I am a courier of Gnieus Lelius. Summon

Aemilianus, if no other can admit me!”

“Your friends are in the trench,” called a fellow. “They come to support you!

perhaps you can make it to the trench. Run!”

I made no move to approach the trench. I looked back. To (pg.181) be sure, there

seemed to be movement in the trench. I could see it here and there, from the

embankment, in the openings between the wooden coverings.

“Admit me!” I cried. Then I raced, suddenly, to the foot of the wall. Two

quarrels struck into the embankment where I had stood.

“Admit me!” I cried upward, from the foot of the wall. It would be hard to be

struck from the wall in such a place.

“If you are a friend, show yourself,” called a fellow.

“Come out where we can see you, friend,” called another voice, enticingly.

A quarrel then, suddenly, from the direction of the sapping trench chipped the

wall, beside my head.

“They are firing on him!” said someone, from above.

Even before he had spoken two answering quarrels from the wall had leaped toward

the trench, one skittering off one of the boulders there, then bounding oddly

away, end over end, to the right, another passing half through some of the

planking spread over the trench.

I heard the basket, scraping against the wall, dropping down, on the rope.

I saw a fellow rise up, in the trench, his bow leveled. I moved, faster, then

slower, laterally, watching him, toward the rope. His bolt struck the wall,

flashing against it, ahead of me. He had overled his shot. I then had my hands

on the rope, above the basket. I swung wildly, kicking away from the wall, and

was then, for a moment, half climbing, half being drawn upward. “Fire!” I heard

from the trench. Two more quarrels struck near me. “Fire!” I heard from above. I

continued upward, sometimes climbing hand over hand, feverishly, as I could, the

rope momentarily arrested, at other time then, the rope moving rapidly upward,

doing little more than clinging to it, sometimes, again, both climbing and being

drawn upward. I swung as I could, too, and kicked away from the wall, that the

target of the men in the trench would move in more than one plane. More quarrels

struck about me, bursting chips from the wall, some striking me like stinging

pebbles, then, at last, after a seemingly endless ascent, hands burning and raw,

I was at the height of the wall, some eighty feet above the embankment, and

hands (pg.182) reached out, seized me, and pulled me inward, through a crenel.

“My thanks!” I gasped.

I was flung to my stomach on the walkway behind the parapet. Hands held me down.

My weapons and pouch were removed.

“Strip him and chain him,” said a voice.

In a moment, lying on my stomach, on the walkway behind the parapet, I was

stripped and chained, my hands manacled behind me, a chain running from the

manacles down to join another chain, one strung between the shackles on my

ankles.

“I am Tarl, of Port Kar,” I said, “a courier, from Gnieus Lelius, regent of Ar!”

“Hood him,” said a voice. “Use that white cloth.”

The white cloth I had brought with me, as a truce flag, apparently doubled, or

folded, was put over my head and tied under my chin.

“Kneel him,” said the voice.

I was dragged up, to my knees.

“Here are the things he had with him,” said a fellow.

Inside the improvised hood I could see very little. I could make our shapes

about me.

“Put a rope on his neck,” said the voice.

A shape bent toward me. I was neck-roped.

“Release me,” I said. “Take me to Aemilianus! The message in my pouch is for

him. He may be, too, interested in the contents of the diplomatic pouch. I do

not know. I took it from a courier of Artemidorus, south of here, on the Vosk

Road, at an inn, the Crooked tarn!”

“Hooded, and on a rope, I do not think you will learn much of our defenses,”

said a voice.

“Take me to Aemilianus,” I said.

“Silence, spy,” said a voice.

“I am not a spy!” I said, angrily.

“Let us hang him,” said a voice. “Let us show the sleen of Cos that we do not

waste time with spies.”

“I am not a spy!” I said.

“Good,” said another voice, approvingly.

“Fasten the rope here,” said a fellow, to my left, “and (pg.183) show them that

their spy is thrown over the wall, hanging against the stone, within Ihn of his

entry into the city.

“Excellent!” said another.

I felt the rope jerked on my neck.

I felt hands on my arms.

“They fired upon me! You saw it!’ I said.

“But they did not hit you,” said a fellow.

“Would you rather that they had?” I asked.

“It might have been better for you, had they done so,” said another, grimly.

I was pulled to my feet.

“The rope is secure,” said a voice.

“I came under a flag of truce,” I said. “Is this how those of Ar’s Station

respect the conventions of war?”

The hands of the men were tight upon my arms. I could feel a breeze through the

crenel to my left. Through the whiteness of the hood I could make out the

opening.

“Hold,” said a voice.

I heard the rope being unfastened. It was now, again, a tether.

“We had almost forgotten our honor,” said the voice. “We are grateful to you for

having recalled it to us. To be sure, it shames us that this should have been

done by a sleen of Cos. Yet it does not matter. That it should be remembered is

what is most important.”

“I had not realized until now,” said a man, “that we had suffered so much. I had

not realized until now that we had been so deeply hurt, that our wounds were so

grievous.”

“Behind the trenches I think the Cosians are forming,” said a fellow.

“It is the morning assault,” said another fellow, wearily.

“Stranger,” said the voice which had first spoken of honor to me, “know that you

have been spared now, in your entry into the city, because of the flag you bore.

And tragically, I confess, nearly it was not so. But, now, beneath its aegis,

beneath its shelter, guarded within its folds, you are as safe as through ringed

by walls of iron. The honor of Ar’s Station has it so. I give you thus the

option, if you wish it, to return to those of Cos.”

“Take me to Aemilianus,” I said.

“I think you are a spy,” he said.

(pg.184) “I am not a spy,” I said.

“You understand that if you go now to Aemilianus,” he said, “that you forfeit

the protection of the flag you bore.”

“I understand,” I said.

“Take him to Aemilianus,” he said.

“Give me something,” I said, as I was turned to the side, “if even a shred of my

tunic, to cover myself.”

“There are many Cosians forming,” said a fellow, near the wall.

“You came as a spy,” said the voice. “It is to Aemilianus as a caught spy that

you will go.”

Hands closed tightly on my arms.

“Take him away,” said the voice.

11
   
Aemilianus

(pg.185) “There,” said a voice.

I was forced down, on a hard surface, tiles, I thought, on my knees.

The white cloth I had used as the truce flag was removed from my head. I

blinked, looking about myself.

I knelt, on tiles, to be sure, before a curule chair, on a stepped dais.

To one side of the curule chair, kneeling below it, on one of the broad steps,

collared and briefly tunicked, was a pale, blond slave.

“You may leave us, Shirley,” said the man on the chair.

“Yes, Master,” she said. Her head had been turned to the side, and her eyes had

been averted. I was a free man and, had she looked upon me, without permission,

she might have been punished. Slave girls do, upon the streets, occasionally

look upon stripped free prisoners, sometimes even taunting them, and such, but

they are not likely to do so, without permission, beneath the very eyes of their

masters.

The name ‘Shirley’ is an Earth-girl name but I suspected that she was not an

Earth girl. Her accent, at any rate, did not suggest it. She might have been of

Earth, of course. After a few months on Gor it often becomes very difficult to

distinguish Earth girls from Gorean girls, at least without a careful

examination of their bodies, for example, for fillings in the teeth, or an

inquiry, they kneeling before you, into their (pg.186) specific antecedents.

Goreans sometimes give Earth-girl names to Gorean girls, as they think of them

as excellent slave names. To a Gorean ear names such as ‘Jean’ or ‘Joan’ have an

exotic flavor, and are regarded as fit names for slaves brought in from such

far-off, mysterious places as “Tennessee” or “Oregon.” Such girls, too, coming

to understand the sensuous connotations of their names on Gor come to regard

them then no longer as common, or plain, names, but, like the Goreans, as

thrilling, beautiful names, and come to revel in them, and try to live up to

them, as superb slaves. To be sure, they know they wear them now only as slave

names, theirs only by the will of a master.

It is true that Earth girls are regarded as slave stock by Goreans, but I think,

at least these days, that there is nothing special about this, really. As the

girl left I watched her. She was quite thin. Once, I through, she would probably

have been much more fully bodied in her beauty. Once she might have been

luscious, perhaps even voluptuous. By such signs I conjectured the paucity of

rations in Ar’s Station. I suppose, however, that she, and others like her,

might be quickly enough returned to a former condition of desirability by so

simple a means as the restoration of a proper diet, both with respect to

quantity and quality. By such means do dealers prepare women, grateful for food,

to bring higher prices upon the slave block. Her blond hair, too, had been

cropped. In these times, I suspected there would be few unsheared free women. In

the case of the slave girls, of course, their hair would simply be taken from

them. The hair of the free women, on the other hand, would presumably have been

donated, as a contribution to the defense of the city.

“Yes,” said the fellow sitting on the curule chair, a strongly built man,

through one now seemingly weary, one with a bloodied bandage about his head,”

she was once quite beautiful.”

I turned my attention to the man. He had, with him, on his lap, the diplomatic

pouch, opened, and the letter cylinder taken from my pouch. It had been sealed

with wax and ribbon, the wax bearing the seal of Gnieus Lelius, regent of Ar.

(pg.187) “Are you Aemilianus,” I asked, “commander in Ar’s Station?”

“I am,” he said, looking at me.

I glanced toward the retreated slave, who had turned to regard me.

The fellow on the curule chair smiled. “She has dared to look upon you?”

“No,” I said.

“They are so curious,” he said.

I did not respond.

“Shirley!” he called, without turning to look at her.

“Master?” she answered, from near a side door in the back.

“Remind me, tonight,” he said, “to whip you.”

“Yes, Master!” she sobbed. She turned, then, and fled from the room.

“They are women,” I said. “They cannot help themselves.”

“I do not object that she did what she did,” he said. “It is only that, as she

has done it, she is to be whipped.”

“I see,” I said.

“Even in hard times,” he said, “it is good to maintain discipline.”

“Doubtless,” I said.

“Do you know where you are?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“You are in the citadel,” he said.

“I thought I might be,” I said. It seemed a likely place to house the