Norman, John - Gor 25 - Magicians of Gor.txt

Norman, John - Gor 25 - Magicians of Gor.txt Page 35

by Magicians of Gor [lit]

  them of their sorry lot, their political and military weakness, of the loss of

  their goods, their city and pride, to injure them, to strike yet (pg. 235)

  another blow at their staggering manhood, yet you did not do so. Rather you

  encouraged it, you permitted it to grow, if only a little. Word of this will be

  in all the taverns by nightfall!”

  “Cos will not be pleased,” warned a man.

  “It is dangerous in these times to remind men of their past glories.”

  “What if we should be tempted to reclaim them?” asked another.

  “Surely you understand how dangerous is the thing you do?” said another.

  “How is it that you are in the fee of Cos?” asked another, indicating the

  armbands of Marcus and myself.

  “Men may be in the fee of Cos,” I said.

  “True,” said a fellow.

  “Surely you are of Ar,” said a man.

  “No,” I said. “I am of Port Kar.”

  “It is a lair of pirates,” said a fellow, “a den of cutthroats.”

  “There is now a Home Stone in Port Kar,” I said.

  “That is more than there is in Ar,” said a man.

  “If you are of Port Kar,” said a man, “I say ‘Glory to Port Kar!’”

  “Glory to Port Kar!” whispered another.

  “Your fellow is surely of Ar,” said another.

  “No, his fellow is not,” said Marcus, angrily. “I am of Ar’s Station! Glory to

  Ar’s Station!”

  “The city of traitors?” asked a man.

  Marcus’ hand flew to the hilt of his sword, but I placed my hand quickly over

  his.

  “Ar’s Station is no city of traitors!” said he. “Rather by those of Ar she was

  betrayed!”

  “Enough of this,” I said.

  “If you are of Ar’s Station,” said the fellow who had spoken before, “I say,

  ‘Glory, too, to Ar’s Station!’”

  Marcus relaxed. I removed my hand from his.

  “Glory to Port Kar, and Ar’s Station!” said a man.

  “Yes!” said another.

  “Glory, too, to Ar,” I said.

  “Yes!” whispered men, looking about themselves. “Glory to Ar!”

  I heard the ripping down of a sheet from the public boards and saw a young

  fellow casting it aside. Then, with a knife, he scratched a delka, deeply, into

  the wood. He turned to face us and brandished the knife. “Glory to Ar!” he

  cried.

  “Gently, lad,” I said.

  Who knew who might hear?

  (pg. 236) Spies could be anywhere.

  “I would cry out!” he said.

  “The knife is no less a knife,” I said, “because it makes no sound.”

  “Glory to Ar!” grumbled the lad, and sheathed the knife, and stalked away.

  We regarded the delka.

  “Glory to Ar!” whispered men. “Glory to Ar!”

  I was pleased to see that not all the youth of Ar were in the keeping of Cos,

  that in the hearts of some at least there yet burned the fire called patriotism.

  Too, I recalled some would take the oath of citizenship only facing their Home

  Stone, now in far-off Cos. Others, in the streets and alleys, I speculated,

  could teach their elders courage.

  “You spoke,” I said to a man, “of a veteran who was to have been taken in for

  questioning, who drew forth a concealed weapon, who slew two Cosians, and

  disappeared.”

  “Yes,” said a man.

  “Know you his name?” I asked.

  “Plenius,” said a man.

  I found that of interest, as I had known a Plenius in the delta. To be sure,

  there are many fellows with that name.

  I looked again to the defiant delka cut into the boards.

  “I do not think I would care to be found in the presence of this delka,” I said,

  “so prominent on the public boards, so freshly cut.”

  “True,” said more than one man.

  The crowd dissipated.

  Marcus regarded the delka.

  “I fear reprisals,” he said.

  “Not yet,” I said. “That is contrary to the fundamentals policy of the

  government. The whole pretense here is that Cos is a friend and ally, that she

  and Ar, in spite of the earlier errors of Ar’s ways, so generously forgiven now,

  are as sisters. This posture is incompatible with reprisals. It is one thing to

  tax, expropriate and confiscate in the name of various rights and moral

  principles, all interestingly tending to the best interests of particular

  parties, and quite another to enact serious reprisals against a supposedly

  allied cititzenry.”

  “But sooner or later, surely, as you put it, Cos must unsheath her claws.”

  “I fear so,” I said. “But by that time hopefully you will be free of the city

  with the Home Stone of Ar’s Station.”

  “And when will you begin to work on this portion of your plan?” he asked.

  (pg. 237) “We have already been doing so,” I said.

  “Ho!” I cried out, hailing a squad of Cosian regulars. “Here! Here!”

  They hurried across the avenue to the boards.

  “Behold!” I said.

  “Another cursed delka!” snapped the officer.

  “And on the boards,” I said.

  “Have you been here long?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Did you see who did this?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “The cowards are fled,” he said, looking about.

  “They are all urts,” said the subaltern.

  “It is only a delka,” I said.

  “There are too many about,” said the officer.

  “It is all they can do,” laughed the subaltern.

  The officer studied the delka.

  “It was cut deeply, swiftly,” he said, “with strength, probably in hatred.”

  “These signs are doubtless the works of only a few,” said the subaltern.

  “But they may be seen by many,” said the officer.

  “There is nothing to fear,” said the subaltern.

  “I will have this board replaced,” said the officer.

  “Shall we continue our rounds?” I asked the officer.

  “Yes,” said the officer.

  Marcus and I turned about then, and continued as we had been originally, south

  on the Avenue of the Central Cylinder.

  “What will be the move of Cos?” asked Marcus.

  “The city championships in the palestrae games will take place soon,” I said.

  “So?” asked Marcus.

  “That is her overt move, that things should proceed as though nothing had

  happened, as though nothing were afoot.”

  “I see,” he said.

  “And in the meantime, I expect,” I said, “she will turn her attentions to

  matters of internal security.”

  “The officer was not pleased to see the delka,” said Marcus.
>
  “Do you think he was afraid?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “I do not think so.”

  “Perhaps he would have been more afraid if it had been cut with more care, with

  more methodicality.”

  “Perhaps,” said Marcus.

  “It is one thing to deal with sporadic protest,” I said. “It is another to deal

  with a determined, secret, organized enemy.”

  (pg. 238) “Like the Cosian propagandists, infiltrators and spies during the

  war?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But there is no such determined, secret, organized enemy to challenge Cos,” he

  said.

  “I do not know,” I said.

  “Certainly we are not such,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “We are not such.”

  “I do not understand,” he said.

  “The matter may be no longer in our hands,” I said.

  “Interesting,” he said.

  15 Fire

  “It will be dangerous,” I said to Marcus.

  “I am of Ar’s Station,” said he.

  “What we do now will have little effect, I fear,” I said, “on the fortunes of

  Ar’s Station.”

  “Here is the rope,” he said.

  I took it. It was fastened to a one-pronged grappling iron, no more than a

  simple hook.

  It was about the second Ahn, a dark, cloudy night. We had approached the house

  of records.

  This afternoon, on the Avenue of Turia, a cart, putatively carrying the records

  of the veterans of the delta, supposedly on its way from the house of records to

  the war office in the Central Cylinder, had been surrounded by a group of

  youths, crying out against the veterans of the delta, almost as if it had been

  months ago, a time in which there had been several abusive demonstrations

  against the delta veterans, whose crime seemed to be that they had been loyal to

  the Home Stone and that they had been so foolish as to have served Ar, and

  suffered for her, in the north. Those demonstrations, of course, had been

  instigated at the behest of Cos, and carefully planned and organized by Cosian

  agents. Such demonstrations, in spite of the apparent beliefs of many of their

  participants, do not somehow materialize by magic, in response to some

  requirement of appropriateness. They are structured events, serving certain

  purposes. In brief, however, these lads, some dozens of them, had surrounded the

  cart and its guards, screaming out reproaches against the delta veterans,

  spitting on the records, and (pg. 239) such. The guards, I think, Cosians, were

  not certain how to respond to the demonstration. They tried to push back the

  youths, but their lines were crowded through, while them themselves were being

  greeted as heroes. Soon one or two youths, seemingly overcome with hatred, had

  leaped upon the records, and were tearing them apart and hurling them to the

  gathered crowd. In another moment a torch had been brought. Marcus and I,

  knowing the movement was to take place, and, indeed, it had been on the public

  boards, had come to watch. Men drew swords but the officer restrained them. The

  papers had then been burned and the youths had withdrawn in triumph, singing

  songs to the glory of Cos. I had recognized the first youth to spring upon the

  cart. It had been he who, some days before, had cut the defiant delka deeply

  into one of the public boards on the Avenue of the Central Cylinder.

  “Those are brave lads,” I had said to Marcus later.

  “But surely,” he said, “the destroyed papers were not the records of the delta

  veterans.”

  “No,” I said. “They would have been moved secretly.”

  “What was the purpose of all this?” asked Marcus.

  “Many associate the veterans of the delta with the Delta Brigade,” I said. “This

  was undoubtedly a trap set by Seremides. In pretending to move the records,

  records from which the identities of the delta veterans might be obtained, to a

  place of safer keeping, he hoped to lure an attack by the Delta Brigade.

  Certainly there were many guards, near the cart, far more than one might expect,

  and there were a great many others, if I am not mistaken, in the crowd, in plain

  garments, with concealing cloaks. They moved, at any rate, with the cart.”

  “How will Cos understand this demonstration?” he asked.

  “It was not an armed attack,” I said. “The demonstrators were young, they seemed

  sincere. Cos may even take this action as one favorable to themselves. They have

  lost nothing and have apparently received a confirmation of the effectiveness of

  their propaganda.”

  “Do you think Seremides will be fooled?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “I do not think so.”

  “The Ubara?” he asked.

  “I do not know,” I said.

  “She was at the palestrae games last week,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “Some woman in her robes was.”

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “She was in sandals,” I said, “and a hort taller than the Ubara.”

  (pg. 240) “You know the Ubara?” he asked.

  “Once,” I said.

  “You are sure?” he asked.

  “I know where she comes upon me.”

  “You were brave to approach her so closely,” he said.

  “I permitted her to approach me, as I stood to one sides and she passed, with

  her guards.”

  “What if she had been the true Ubara, and recognized you?” he said.

  “I was muchly hooded,” I said, “but I did not think there was much danger. It

  would not be the true Ubara.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “No longer would Cos choose to risk her in public,” I said.

  “Because of the Delta Brigade?

  “Of course,” I said. “There is growing hatred in the city for our darling

  Ubara.”

  “Where is she, then?”

  “In the Central Cylinder, I would conjecture,” I said.

  “As a virtual prisoner?” he asked.

  “Probably as much so,” I said, “as when she was kept there, sequestered in her

  shame by Marlenus.”

  “But she is still Ubara,” he said.

  “Of course,” I said, “under Cos.”

  “Where do you think the records are?” he asked.

  “I do not know,” I said.

  “Why then are we going to the house of records, with a rope and iron?” he asked.

  “They may be there,” I said.

  “You would take such risks, one which are not only unnecessary, but perhaps

  meaningless, just to keep the records out of the hands of Cos?”

  “You do not need to accompany me,” I said.

  “Be serious,” he said.

  “The fact that Seremides, if I read him right, set such a trap for the Delta

  Brigade, supposedly with the delta records, indicates if nothing else that he
is

  quite serious in his suspicion of the delta veterans, and that he may act

  against them.”

  “They are not all bad fellows in all cities,” I said. “Even in Ar’s Station.”

  “Perhaps,” grumbled Marcus.

  “Certainly,” I assured him.

  (pg. 241) “What is your plan?” he asked.

  “To approach the house of records over adjoining roofs, eschewing the use of

  patrolled streets,” I said, “then to hurl the iron and rope from the roof of a

  nearby building to the roof of the house of records, and thence, later, by means

  of its displuviate atrium, to obtain entrance.” The atrium is the house of

  records, I had learned, was open to the sky, which opening, as in many public

  and private Gorean buildings in the south, serves to admit light. The

  displuviate atrium is open in such a way as to shed rainwater outwards, keeping

  most of it from the flooring of the atrium below. This would also facilitate the

  use of the rope and iron. The alternative atrium, if unroofed, of course, is

  impluviate, so constructed as to guide rainwater into an awaiting pool below.

  This sort of atrium is less amenable to the rope and iron because of the pitch

  of the roof.

  “You are confident you can recognize the records?”

  “Not at all,” I said.

  “Surely you do not expect to carry them off?”

  “Not at all,” I said, “that would be impractical.”

  “You are going to burn them?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “How will you know what to burn?” he asked.

  “I do not think that will present a problem,” I said.

  “Why not?’ he asked.

  “I plan on burning the entire building,” I said.

  “I see,” he said. “What if the fire spreads throughout the entire district, and

  then burns down Ar?”

  “I had not considered that,” I admitted.

  “Well,” he said. “It is hard to think of everything.”

  “Yes,” I granted him. He was right, of course.

  “What if the records are in the Central Cylinder,” he asked, “already at the war

  office?”

  “That I where I suspect they are,” I said.

  He groaned.

  “But they may be here.”

  “You are not planning on burning down the Central Cylinder, are you?” he asked.

 

‹ Prev Next ›