Renegades of Gor (50 page)

example, in the commentaries of Minicius and the “Diaries,” which some ascribe

to Carl Commenius, of Argentum, a military historian, a master of the use of

reserves. Some claim, incidentally, the Commenius was himself once a mercenary.

I do not know if this is true or not, but his diaries, if, indeed, they are his,

suggest that he was not a stranger to the field. I do not think it likely that

all the incidents in them, in their detail, are merely based on the reports of

others. His accounts of Rovere and Kargash, for example, suggest to me the

fidelity, the authenticity, of a perceptive eyewitness. It seems to me, for

example, that a common soldier would not be likely to supply a detail such as

the loosing of water by a confused, terrified tharlarion in the field. The

common soldier would be aware of such things, and, indeed, would even take them

for granted, but they are not the sorts of details which he would be likely to

include in his accounts of battles. Too, one wonders how a simple scholar could

have come by the numerous beautiful slaves and fortresslike villa of a Carl

Commenius. I suspect that at one time, perhaps long ago, he may not have been a

stranger to the distributions of loot.

“They are drawing back,” said a fellow near me.

(pg.333) “They have nothing more to gain here,” said another.

We looked behind ourselves, wearily. Much of the walkway was now gone, or

burning. Great lengths of it, some half submerged, tilting, others at, or almost

at, the surface, floated in the water. Some of these lengths had turned, and

hewn pilings, in an inch or two of water irregularly moving about over the

now-upturned undersides of the lengths, like heavy, coarse wooden points, jutted

up.

“We have held the walkway,” said a man.

“Yes,” said another.

We stood on the blood-stained boards.

It was true, we had held the walkway.

It was the middle of the afternoon. I looked about. It seemed off, where we

were, at the new end of that walkway, at the end of what now seemed a

meaningless, eccentric bridge leading out from the landing but stopping abruptly

in hewn, charred wood. The walkway had been cut behind us. Some of the fellows

in the small boats had even drenched the boards behind us with water, to keep

the fire from us, while others had hacked away at the pilings. Even so we had

felt the heat of the flames at our back. There had been smoke, too, but not

enough to affect what occurred on the walkway. Twice, when the wind had turned,

it had drifted past us. There was far more smoke from the citadel, which, given

the prevailing winds, the force of which had much diminished since the late

morning and early afternoon, drifted out over the harbor, toward the river.

“Shall we now swim for the piers?” asked a fellow.

“Certainly,” said another.

“I, myself,” said another, “will prefer waiting for the boats.”

“And why might that be?” inquired another of our number.

“I do not like getting my feet wet,” responded the first.

We watched the fins moving about in the water. Here and there there was a

stirring at the surface, as though there might be violent agitation some feet

beneath. Too, in places the harbor water suddenly muddied, the mud from the

bottom rising to the surface. These upswirling discolorations marked places, I

supposed, where, below, unseen, a few yards beneath the surface, the long fish

pulling and fighting, snapping and tugging stirred the mud.

(pg.334) A small boat struck gently against the piling near us, to the left.

There were now eleven of us on the walkway. Two were wounded. One of these was

the grizzled fellow, who had been among the first to stand with me on the

walkway. He had been wounded in the last assault, the fourteenth. So, too, had

the other fellow. We lowered these two into the boat. Two others, too, joined

them. The small boat rocked, and was almost swamped.

“Wait,” said the fellow at the oars, alarmed, holding up his hand.

The rest of us, seven men, watched the small boat pull away from the walkway.

It made slow progress back toward the piers.

“There are fewer fish about now,” said a fellow.

“Stay where you are,” I advised him. To be sure, he was right. Many of the fish

had apparently departed. Indeed, I was sure that many of them, with bodies, and

parts of bodies, in their jaws, had sped away, toward the piers, or had gone out

farther in the harbor, beyond them, or had even returned to the river, perhaps

sometimes followed by several of their brethren. It was, however, I was sure,

still dangerous. Sometimes river sharks, like Vosk eels, hang about piers and

pilings, in their shade, and are, I am afraid, often rewarded by garbage, or

other organic debris. One could still see, here and there, streaks of blood in

the water.

“Look!” said a fellow. He pointed toward the landing. There it seemed that a

number of small boats was being mustered and not a few raftlike structures,

doubtless improvised from materials within, and about, the citadel.

“They will be coming out to the piers to finish their work,” said a man.

“What we have done has been for naught,” said another.

“The harbor is closed with Cosian ships and the chain of rafts,” said another.

“There is no escape.”

“Apparently is it not their intent to starve us out, on the piers,” said

another.

“They are impatient fellows,” observed a man.

“They have waited a long time,” said another. “They would like to finish their

business this afternoon.”

“It should not prove difficult,” said another.

(pg.335) “It will be a slaughter on the piers,” said a fellow. “There is no

shelter there. They are open, exposed. What can a handful of shields do there?

Little or nothing. They can do as they wish. They can pick their targets from

boats, and rafts. They can attack in force.”

“They will probably signal the other fellows, out where the harbor is closed,”

said a man, “so that they can attack on two sides at once.”

“It is all finished,” said another fellow.

“It will be done in two or three Ahn,” said another.

“You two in this boar,” I said to two of them, as another of the small craft

touched against the piling. The oarsmen stood up, a fisherman, and extended his

hand, to help the two fellows into the boat. We had overloaded the last boat.

We, the five of us remaining on the walkway, watched this second small boat pull

away, moving slowly toward the piers.

“I would like to say goodbye to my companion,” said one of the fellows.

“Perhaps she is still alive out there,” said another.

“When do you think it will be over?” asked one of the fellows.

“By the fifteenth Ahn,” said another, grimly.

“Good,” said a fellow.

“Good?” asked the other.

“Yes,” he said, “then we will not have to miss another supper.”

“How would you like to get your feet wet?” asked the grim fellow.

“No I,” replied the other.

In a bit another one of the tiny boats had come to the walkway and the two

fellows embarked in it.

There were then three of us left on the walkway.

“It is the women and children I feel most sorry for,” said the fellow beside me,

looking back toward the piers. They were crowded with noncombatants. I suppose

there must have been somewhere between two thousand and twenty-five hundred

women and children crowded on the piers. By now there were probably not more

than two or three hundred able-bodied men. In a few moments another small boat

arrived.

“No,” I said. “Go.”

(pg.336) The two fellows then stepped down, carefully, into the small boat.

I was then left alone on the walkway.

I saw a piece of the broken walkway, half submerged, off to the right.

I looked up, from where I crouched behind the shield. Then I rose up, lifting

the shield once more.

A solitary figure, with no shield, but in helmet, and with sheathed sword,

approached. It seemed a long walk, coming toward me, on the walkway. I could

hear his steps when he came within a few yards of me. The water lapped about the

pilings beneath the walkway. There was the cry of a Vosk gull overhead. I could

see the smoke still lifting from the citadel, then drifting out, toward the

river.

“Do not come closer,” I told him.

“The day belongs to Cos,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“There remains to be accomplished only the slaughter on the piers.”

I did not respond.

“Thus what you have done here has gone for naught.”

I did not respond. What had been done here, however, had been entered into the

annals of reality. The meaning of history is its own terrain, its own mountains

and summits, here and there, wherever they be found. It is not all prologue to a

last act, following which comes nothing.

“It is speculated that you are not of Ar’s Station,” he said.

I shrugged.

He did not attempt to come closer.

“It is speculated that you are a mercenary,” he said. “Cos has us of such. I

come on behalf of Aristimines, Commander of Cos in the north. He is pleased with

your work, through it has been to his own cost. I have here a purse of gold.

Contract your sword to Cos and it is yours.” He dropped the leather purse, drawn

shut with strings, to the boards of the walk. He then stepped back. “See?” he

said. “We do not cut at your neck, as you bend to take it.”

“I am not taking fee today,” I said.

“You are then, of Ar’s Station, or Ar herself?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“With the gold,” said he, “comes a command, and women, (pg.337) slaves trained

to please men in all ways, domestic and lascivious.”

“Aristimines is generous,” I said.

“Your answer?” he asked.

“I am not taking fee today,” I said.

“But what of the women?” he asked.

“I will take my own,” I said.

He approached the gold, bent down and picked it up. He did not even watch me as

he did this. I accepted this tribute to my honor

He tucked the gold back in his tunic. “You are not a mercenary, then?” he said.

“I did not say that,” I said.

“Choose for Cos,” he said.

“Not today,” I said.

“Yet today, I think,” said he, glancing out to the piers, “would be a good day

to choose for Cos.”

“Why did not relief come to Ar’s Station?” I asked.

“It was not the will of Lurius of Jad, Ubar of Cos,” said he.

“I see,” I said. How lofty then, I thought, must be the heights of treachery

within the walls of Ar.

“And the will of Lurius has not yet been accomplished in the north,” said he.

I did not understand this.

“I have brought you the gold of Cos,” he said. “When I return, you understand, I

must bring her steel.”

“The walkway is meaningless,” I said to him.

“Not to Aristimines,” he said.

“I wish you well,” I said.

“And I, too, wish you well,” said he. He then turned and walked rapidly back

toward the landing. He had not taken more than five steps before a number of

Cosians, who had been waiting on the landing, hurried onto the walkway. He was

for a moment like a rock in the midst of their stream, and then he turned,

facing me. At the same time some small craft set out from the landing. Two of

the fellows hurrying toward me were too eager, separating themselves from their

fellows. One’s shield, he charging, I struck obliquely to the side, and he, in

the grip of his own momentum, lost the walkway. I cut (pg.338) at the other

below the shield, above the knee, and he slipped to the boards. “Hold, fellow,”

called the officer , behind the men, he who had come with the gold on the

walkway. “Good,” he said. “Together now, gently fellows, spears down. Look for

your chance. Forward, carefully. There is only one man there. Swordsmen for

flanking, behind spearmen. To each side, fellows. Forward.”

“Help!” cried the fellow in the water, grasping upward. He was trying to climb

the piling, but slipped on it. He could not reach the surface of the remains of

the walkway. The piece of broken walkway which had been to the right was now

back, a few feet from the torn end of he walkway, floating in the inner harbor.

“Stop!” I ordered the approaching Cosians.

They, puzzled, stopped.

The fellow whose leg I had cut was backing away, towards his fellows, limping.

Blood flowed down his leg, running among, and over, the thongs of the high,

bootlike sandal he wore. His retreat could be traced in the trail of blood on

the walkway.

I put down my shield on he walkway, and extended my hand down to the fellow in

the water. There were fewer fish about now, I was sure, but I did not think he

would be likely to thrash alone for more than a moment or two. I could already

see two dark shapes beneath him.

“Do not move,” said the officer to his men.

The man in the water, frenzied with terror, his eyes bulging, seized my hand and

I drew him to his stomach, to the walkway. He lay there on the drenched boards,

trembling. I do not think I could have managed this as little as a quarter of an

Ahn earlier. I think it likely he would then have been seized in the jaws of

some fish or other, perhaps one of the visitors from the river, drawn by the

traces of blood in the water.