Renegades of Gor (43 page)

some with axes, half breaking the bridges apart, from the inside, forced them

down again.

I heard the bellowing of an agonized tharlarion from below, and saw some led

from burning towers, their harnesses cut. One, tearing itself free, heedless of

the cries and blows (pg.288) of its keeper, ran blindly back toward the city,

the men among the engines breaking apart, or climbing on the engines, to let it

pass.

To my amazement then I saw two uprights of a ladder, a two-upright ladder, not

one of the single-pole ladders, suddenly appear but feet from me. I ran to the

place and thrust through the crenelation at a fellow, his hand already half over

the wall. He tumbled back, into space. The next fellow had his shield before

him. I could not get at him, nor he, because of it, at me. I crouched in the

crenelation, bracing myself with my left arm. He climbed another rung and I

kicked out, turning the shield to the side. He was half pulled from the ladder

by the shield straps but he slipped down a foot or two, recovering himself. He

looked up. I could not reach him. something, slipped past, hardly sensed, like a

snake, leaving a thread of sound in the air. another thing cut the mask at the

side of my face, like a knife.

One fellow was trying to climb past the nearest fellow on the ladder. This

fellow, in one hand, grasped a spear. He was then on the same rung with the

fellow with the shield, and then one rung higher. The spear blade thrust up,

scratched the inside of the crenel. I seized the shaft behind the head. He held

it with both hands. I wanted the spear. I could not get leverage from where I

was, to move the uprights. He would not release it. Then he was pulled free of

the ladder and hung in the air. a quarrel struck the outside of the wall a foot

or so from my face. It was like an ice pick suddenly driven into ice, but what

burst forth was not ice but stone. He hung tenaciously to the spear. Did he not

truly, in that moment of terror, I wonder, comprehend what was supporting him,

that it was not the spear, but I? Despairing of gaining the spear I released it.

His hand reached out wildly then, belatedly, for the ladder, but his hand could

not close on it. I drew back. Another movement sped past, like a puff of breath

passing my ear. Below I heard yet another fellow trying to climb higher, and

another. There were shouts. I looked through an adjacent crenel. The fellow with

the shield hung half off the ladder. Another fellow had passed him and was

almost up. I returned to my original place to meet him, but suddenly, just as he

was coming within reach, I heard a sound like a fist striking leather, it came

from his back, and he looked surprised, (pg.289) and then stiffened on the

ladder and threw back his arms and head, and, twisting, plunged downward. I

caught sight of a quarrel’s fins protruding from his back.

Another fellow was behind him, and I met him. He blocked my blow with his blade.

He blocked my blow again with his blade. Then he did not block my blow.

Clutching the uprights, grimacing, coughing, spattered with blood, he slipped

back some rungs, until he was a few feet below me. I looked about, wildly. I

thrust my sword through my belt, to which were attached my pouch and knive

sheath, both on the left side. I raced to the impaling spear, hoisted it up,

some five feet, from its mount. The slave who had been Lady Publia, it burden by

means of the ropes, the sheath and sword belt, twisting wildly, throwing her

head about as though bewildered, as though she would try to see through the

hood, uttered a tiny, terrified, questioning, miserable, helpless noise, her

oral orifice, of course, remaining subject to the closure I had imposed upon it.

I leveled the spear, then cast it to the ground. I was in a hurry. She was a

slave. I then, lifting the spear up a bit, her head down, thrust her with my

foot, in her ropes, with the sword belt and sheath, from the spear.

I then hurried back to where the ladder was. Another fellow had just appeared in

the opening in the crenelation and I pushed out at him with the long impaling

spear. Its point is a dull one, designed for an unpleasantly lengthy

penetration. Even so with the force I slid it across the stone it jammed between

his ribs, entered his body, and carried him out from the ladder. He dangled on

it and then slipped from it, unable to cling to it with his hands. I think he

struck the ladder again, some feet further down. I heard another man cry out, a

few feet below. There was then a scream.

Armed with the spear, which is some fifteen feet in length, like a third- or

fourth-rank phalanx spear. I reached over the wall and managed to get it behind

the top rung of the ladder. No one was close to me then. Then highest fellow was

the man with the shield, who had withdrawn earlier. He looked up, discarded his

shield, started to climb madly toward the spear, then stopped. The ladder leaned

out, a yard or so from the wall. I pried back further, and the ladder

straightened, and then it leaned back further, held in place only by the

friction with the spear. Some men leaped from it. Others tried to (pg.290) throw

their weight against it, to force it forward again. Some dared not move. I slid

the spear back and up. The ladder tottered. It must fall backward! But it did

not. It crashed forward, against the wall. I pried at it again, and the top rung

broke. I wished that I had had one of the tridents or one of the sharpened,

steel crescents fixed on a metal pole, useful in such work. The fellow who had

had the shield now climbed toward me. This time, however, the ladder leaning out

from the wall, I managed to get the point of the spear free from under a rung

and on one of the uprights itself. I could now push back. He tried to dislodge

the point from the wood but I shifted and caught him under the arm and pushed

back more. I hoped to use his own fear against him, his unwillingness to release

the ladder, but before I could push back enough, past the center of balance, he

released one hand and twisted, hanging to a rung with his free hand. But then,

again, I managed to get the point on an upright. The ladder straightened, and I

thrust out another foot, and then another, moving my hands on the spear, my

hands sweaty, and then the ladder seemed, for an instant, to lean oddly back,

away. For an instant I was not clear that it would fall. But then men were

screaming and leaping from it, up and down its length, and I saw it turn on one

upright, doubtless more from their movements and the shifts in weight than from

anything of my doing, and then it fell back, and I heard it snap and break. At

the same time I drew back, as a pair of quarrels flashed past. I think it

probably that some had been fired at me when I had struggled with the spear for

I saw at least one new, irregular scratch in the stone near where I had labored.

Yes, oddly enough, though there must have been noise, I had not even noticed it

at the time. it was only now, oddly, in recollection that it seemed to me I

might have heard something there, cutting at the stone, and other things, too,

like hissed whispers about me.

A young fellow, one of the two of a age to be lads whom I had seen on the wall,

appeared on the steps leading to the upper battlements. He had only two quarrels

left, one in the guide, the other grasped in his hand, with the bow, not really

quarrels even, only sharpened rods. Even the blunt-headed wooden quarrels,

suitable for stunning birds, were gone. I had used him, and the other, he

between the command post (pg.291) and the west, the other between the command

post and the east, as messengers, hoping in this way to keep them within the

semblance of interior lines, our of the thickest fighting.

“They cannot hold on the west walkway!” he cried. “They give way!”

I issued orders and he raced back. My plan, even if successful, would keep the

walkway, nearer the command post, only for a few Ehn. I looked to the east.

There more Cosians leapt from the bridge of a tower, clambering and stumbling

over the bodies of others, tangled lifeless and wounded in the wire. Men

struggled to meet them, with pikes and axes. I became aware them again of the

blows of the ram below. The sound had been different for the last few Ehn. How

had the ladder I had repelled managed to reach the height of the wall? I went to

my left and bent over the crenelation, leaning over the wall. I saw then that

the roof of the ram shed sloped upwards. A hill, literally, of debris, of sand,

rock and bodies, had been built there, before the gate, and the shed thrust up

this incline. This brought the blows of the ram high on the gate, presumably

over the rocks and sand, and such, which had been heaped behind it by the

defenders. That accounted for the difference in the sound of the ram. What

effort it must have taken to force the long ram shed up this incline, how much

more arduous must be the labor of those within the shed, hauling on the ropes,

swinging the great ram upward! I could hear, too, between the heavy, periodic

strokes of the ram, the blows of hammers and axes, and the smiting on punches

and chisels, and the sounds of creaking metal, as men sought to cut and punch

openings in the facing on the gate, then twisting and prying it back. Plates of

facing buckled and were torn away. It was on this artificial hill, built before

the gate, that the ladder which had reached to the height of the battlements had

been mounted. From where I now stood, because of the shed, I could not see the

remains of the ladder.

I went to my right then to survey what might be the case on the west. I watched.

Then, suddenly the defenders there, holding the west walkway, withdrew. They had

been fighting behind a breastwork of fallen bodies, those of both Cosians and

defenders. The Cosians seemed for a moment bewildered, but then, with a great

cry, swarmed over the bodies in (pg.292) pursuit. Scarcely were the defenders

drawn back than the great cauldron of oil now ignited, now aflame, into which

the buckets on long handles had been dipped, was overturned with poles and

flooded the walkway behind them. The bulk of the Cosians stopped at this wall of

flames some forty feet in width. Some, however, raced into it. Of these some

perished in the flames. Others, half fire, screaming, turned about, fleeing back

to their fellows. Some crossed it, and were cut down on the other side. This

retreat, though it surrendered the western walkway, decreased the amount of area

to be held, and, with these new numbers, increased the defenders there. The

Cosians then within the wall, in the center, were much harder pressed. Some

withdrew, even, to the towers, some of which were aflame. I saw the bridges,

burned through, collapse beneath some of them, plunging them to the ground.

I went again to my left. There, on the east, I saw that the Cosians had gained

yards, and that they were now beyond the wire. The defenders, foot by foot, were

being pressed back. More Cosians leapt from the bridge of a tower, down onto the

bodies and wire, climbing over them, hurrying to join the fray. The east walkway

could not be long held.

I went, wearily, to where the roped, ankle-thonged, naked, gagged, hooded slave

lay, on the stones. With my foot I turned her to her back. I unbuckled the sword

belt from about her, and then, crouching beside her, turned her to her stomach.

I withdrew the sheath from between her back and the ropes. It was distended,

where it had received the spear, almost to the bottom. I pressed it as flat as I

could, with my hands and foot. The blade then, again, but not well, fitted into

it. I rebuckled the belt and put it about me, the strap over my right shoulder,

the sheath at the left hip, as one wears it on the march. That is a stabler

carry. The advantage of the left shoulder carry, the sheath at the left thigh,

is the ease of discarding the belt and sheath, thereby ridding oneself of a

possible encumbrance.

The young fellow with the crossbow climbed to the upper battlements. He now had

only one quarrel left. “The flames on the west walkway are lessening,” he said.

He looked down at the slave. “She is still alive,” he said, puzzled.

“Yes,” I said.

(pg.293) “How can it be?” he asked.

“How do you think?” I asked.

“A trick?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“But I saw her on the spear,” he said.

“She was hung on it,” I said, “not mounted up in it, not impaled with it.”

“Are you going to kill her now?” he asked.

“No,” I said, “at least not immediately, unless perhaps she should be in some

respect displeasing.”

“You speak of her as though she were a slave,” he said.

“Are you a slave?” I asked the girl. “Whimper once for ‘Yes,’ twice for ‘no.’”

She whimpered once.

“Do you desire to please men?” I asked.

She whimpered once.

I patted her. “Show us,” I said.

She lifted her behind, piteously, placatingly.

“That is not Lady Claudia!” said the young fellow.

“No, it is not,” I said,. But I smiled to myself as I said it. Did he not know

that Lady Claudia would have been quite as quick, if not quicker to lift