The Captain th-2

by John Norman

  The screaming of Tuvo Ausonius’s colleague could be heard from the outer room.

  The men, half choking with dust, kicked the panel open, which was now awry on its hinges, and reentered the room.

  The colleague of Tuvo Ausonius ran to him. Her eyes were wild. She gasped. It was almost as though she wished to throw herself to her knees before him.

  At almost the same time several men, guards at the holding, armed, rushed into the room.

  “We are all right,” Julian assured them.

  He then turned to face Tuvo Ausonius and his colleague.

  “You are under arrest, of course, both of you,” he said.

  Their hands were tied behind their backs and they were conducted from the room.

  “There is little left of the case,” said Otto, looking about.

  “The only prints on it, even on the fragments,” said Julian, “would be those of its messenger.”

  “Milord,” said a man, entering, “there is a party approaching, climbing the trail.”

  “They are clad in white robes,” said Julian, “there are thirteen of them, twelve preceding, carrying rods and axes, and one following, bearing a scroll case.”

  “Yes, milord!” said the man.

  “Open the gate,” said Julian. “Admit them.”

  “Wait!” called Julian.

  “Milord?” said the man, turning.

  “Secure all slaves,” said Julian.

  “Yes, milord,” said the man.

  CHAPTER 29

  “What is going on?” cried Flora.

  She ran to the door of her cell.

  The door at the end of the short corridor had been flung open and Flora saw some five slaves being thrust forward. All were in brief tunics. All were hooded. Their hands were cuffed behind their backs. They were on a common neck chain. She was sure that Renata was among them. Small, stifled noises came from some of the hoods. Doubtless, beneath the hoods, they were gagged.

  The door to her cell was flung open.

  “Stand! Hands behind you!” ordered a guard.

  Two guards entered the cell.

  Her hands were cuffed behind her back. A gag was fixed on her, making it impossible for her to speak. A hood was drawn over her head and buckled shut, about her neck. She was then thrust from the cell. In a moment she felt a collar locked on her neck, and the draw of a chain, before and behind. She then was forced along the passage, and down a sloping passage.

  In a few moments she felt damp stone beneath her bared feet, and tiny puddles of water.

  She was forced to her belly. Her head was forced down. She could feel the stone of the floor through the hood, on the left side of her face. She felt the collar removed from her neck, but, in a moment, another collar, a heavier one, snapped about her neck. A chain ran from this collar to a staple, fixed in the stone. She determined this, feeling it with the side of her face, through the hood.

  She felt the dampness of the floor through her gown.

  She did not know where she was.

  She tried to call out, or inquire, but could utter no more than tiny, helpless sounds.

  She then lay there, prone, somewhere, unable to speak, in the darkness of the hood, her hands cuffed behind her, chained.

  The chain on her neck, running to the floor, was a short one, only some six inches in length. It would hold her head quite close to the staple. Somewhere, seemingly faraway, she heard gunfire.

  CHAPTER 30

  “He is escaping!” called Otto.

  The magistrate was climbing the interior stairwell, leading to the parapet, that to the left of the left gate tower, as one would view the gate from within.

  The magistrate clutched a scroll case in one hand, a pistol in the other.

  He fired toward the portal of the left gate tower. There was a shower of stone from the wall. The muzzles of rifles protruded inward from the towers. There were marksmen, too, behind barricades, arranged on the walkways of the walls. Others had fired from the sides of the walls, and others from the external walls of the inner bailey, from gunports.

  “There is no escape for him,” said Julian.

  The magistrate looked over the wall, and then turned back, wildly. He fired once down, into the outer yard. A tile buckled and leapt up, blackened, to Julian’s right.

  Then the figure on the wall, a mass of blood and fire, tumbled into the yard.

  Julian lowered his pistol.

  “That is all of them,” said Julian.

  “No,” said Otto. “There is another, somewhere.”

  “He from the summer world,” said Julian.

  “There were several from that world,” said Otto.

  About the outer yard there were several bodies, twelve bodies, as one counted.

  These wore white robes. Near eleven of them, and parts of them, their blood run on the tiles, were weapons, assault rifles which had been concealed within the bundles of rods, each with its ax.

  The firing had been brief and fierce, the sudden unbundling of the rods, the revelation of the weapons, but the guards in Julian’s holding had been in place and, almost instantly, almost before fingers had found the triggers of weapons, the white-clad bodies, startled, several blown open, reeling, twisting about, searching for their concealed foes, had begun to succumb to the storm of fire from all sides.

  Julian considered the bodies.

  “They did not have a chance,” said Julian.

  “One is still at large,” said Otto, looking about.

  “He lost his rifle,” said Julian. “He is not to be feared.”

  “There are only eleven axes here,” said Otto, walking among the bodies.

  “We will make a search,” said Julian.

  “I do not think he will know how to use the ax,” said Otto. He himself bent down and picked up one of the long-handled axes, double-headed, which had protruded from one of the bundles of rods. The bundles of rods and axes, carried before high officials on certain occasions, are an ancient symbol, one perhaps now rather familiar, almost benign and innocuous, but one once, one supposes, of the power of the state, of its might and terror, its capacity to chastise, and, if it wishes, to kill.

  “Be careful,” said Julian.

  Otto entered the inner bailey, and made his way upward, slowly, to its parapet. He looked about himself. He saw two guards, adjusting the slings on their weapons. Other than this the parapet was deserted.

  Their attention would presumably have been directed to the outer yard, below.

  In the forest one notices little things when one is hunting, and many of the skills of war, of course, are much like those of hunting. Perhaps that is one reason that those who live by arms are often fond of the hunt.

  A crushed leaf, the dislodgement of a twig, indicated by the tiny depression in which it had formerly lain, such tiny things, can mark a trail.

  Accordingly the tiny drop of blood on the stones of the parapet required no great discernment, or acuteness, to interpret.

  The opening to one of the towers was nearby.

  Otto held his ax ready, in the guard position. Twice, in the arena, he had fought in labyrinth games, where the spectators, tense, silent, as quiet as though holding their breath, observed, from the height and safety of their seats, the men looking for one another, in the maze.

  Sometimes they would cry out in excitement, or exultation, as contact, sometimes sudden, and brutal, was made.

  Otto entered the tower, and looked up the spiral stairwell leading to its height.

  The stairwells in such towers almost invariably ascend in a clockwise fashion.

  One might suppose that there is no particular reason for this surprising conformity of structure, but, if one did so, one’s surmise would be in error.

  Most men, you see, are right-handed, and will, accordingly, handle weapons with their right hand. In this fashion one who ascends the stairwell, presumably an intruder, must, in order to employ his weapon, expose more of his body, whereas one who is higher on the s
tairwell, presumably a defender, in such an employment of weaponry, in virtue of the shielding of the masonry, may expose less of his body.

  Suddenly the blade of an ax, from above, slashed down, diagonally, and stone spit out from the side of the shaft.

  It had not come close to Otto.

  Had the wielder of the ax been frantic, too eager, foolish, or had he merely intended to appear so?

  Otto took another step upward, slowly.

  And then another step.

  “Stay away!” he heard.

  Otto did not think it was wise of the man to have cried out. The voice had sounded frantic.

  Was the man frantic, or had he merely intended to seem so?

  Otto did not think the man would know the ax.

  But Otto did not hurry his ascent.

  There was a drop of blood on the steps.

  Then Otto heard the sound of steps on the tile of the level above, a different sound from that of the stone stairs.

  He ascended the steps. He did this with great care. He was then at the landing. It was the highest landing within the tower. From it, three openings, each with a heavy door, led outward, onto a semicircular walkway. Two of the doors were latched. Such doors can be latched only from the inside. This provides some protection in the event of a successful escalade. Otto glanced upward. The trap leading to the roof of the tower, too, was still latched. It, too, for the same reason, could not be latched from the other side. In this fashion the defenders can keep others out, at least for a time, and cannot themselves be locked in.

  “Stay away!” he heard, a scream.

  It came from the walkway outside, from behind the one unlatched door.

  A blow of Otto’s ax cut the latch away from the door, so that it might not be latched behind him.

  He drew the door open.

  “Stay away!” screamed the voice.

  “You!” cried the voice, in terror.

  The figure stood at bay, in a tunic, its back to the parapet, holding the ax. The white robes had been torn away, and discarded. They would have been an encumbrance. They lay near the man’s feet. They were bloody.

  “Yes,” said Otto.

  It was a man he had met some days earlier, in the streets, on the summer world, the leader of those who had addressed him with rudeness.

  Otto recalled another, as well, the one who had made the mistake of touching him. That one he had lifted from his feet, and thrust, not gently, against a wall. The man had sunk down, against the wall, leaving blood on it, behind him, marking his descent. That fellow now lay below, in the outer bailey, blown apart. Several of the others, too, among the white-robed figures below, Otto had noted, had been among those who had swarmed about him, and Julian, in the streets.

  The man rushed at Otto, striking down, wildly, with the ax. Otto blocked three blows, two handle to handle, one with the blade of his own ax, blade to blade. Sparks flashed from the metal, showering about them.

  The man backed away.

  The wind, ascending the stairwell from below, swirling in the interior of the tower, swung the door a little.

  The creak of its hinges could be heard.

  “I once speculated that you would not stand up well against an ax attack,” said Otto. “Now we shall see if I was right.”

  The man screamed with fear and hurled the ax at Otto.

  One of the blade edges sunk deeply into the heavy timber jamb on the left side of the door.

  The handle vibrated for a moment.

  “I am disarmed!” cried the man.

  “It was not I who disarmed you,” said Otto.

  “Civilitas!” cried the man.

  “I have no intention of leaving one like you behind me,” said Otto.

  “Civilitas!” screamed the man.

  “Barbaritas,” said Otto.

  The man turned about and leapt into the crenel behind him, stood there for a moment, and then lept down.

  Otto went to the wall, and looked down. The man’s leap had carried him to the height of the transparent dome, some twenty feet below, now muchly scarred and blackened from the fire of the car which had brought Tuvo Ausonius to the holding. That dome, in its halves, sheltered the office and certain private chambers in the holding.

  Otto watched as the man tried to keep his grip on the dome. Perhaps if he had landed higher on the dome, where its slope was less precipitous, or if he had managed to get his fingernails in some of the fissures left by the attack, things might have turned out differently.

  Otto watched him, screaming, slipping slowly, inch by inch, from the surface of the dome, until, looking upward, wildly toward Otto, he fell from it, to the rocks more than two hundred feet below.

  Otto then left the parapet, and descended to the inner bailey.

  He had stopped only to wrench loose the ax, imbedded in the jamb of the portal, that leading to the walkway.

  There was little sound then on the height of the parapet, only the whisper of the wind, and the movement of the door, swinging a little now and then on its hinges.

  CHAPTER 31

  Flora walked unsteadily down the hall, almost unable to keep her balance.

  She was not with a guard, and on a leash, as a slave is often taken to the room of a guest, whom she is to serve. Rather she had just been told the room, and sent on her way.

  Bitter tears ran down her cheeks.

  How joyous she had been, but moments before.

  “I have a surprise for you,” had said Julian, of the Aurelianii, to his friend. “Behold! I have had her brought from Varna, and boarded, and trained, to some extent, on the summer world, and thence brought to Vellmer, now a more knowledgeable slave.”

  She had thought, for a moment, when she had entered, as the eyes of the barbarian giant had first looked upon her, that there had been recognition, and elation, on that often fierce countenance which she had hoped to soften with kindness, or at least with some tiny bit of consideration or regard for her, but, almost instantly, his visage, as though he had forced himself to recollect what despicable thing it was that hurried to kneel before him, the fragile, delicate slave flower in its hands, became cold and hard, cold like the wintry sheathing of dark rivers, deeply flowing, hard like stone in the month of Igon.

  She had knelt, her emotions in tumult, stirred, a chaos of joy, confusion, and pain. It was he who had been her master on Varna, and now, it seemed, still was, for it was before him that she had been signaled to kneel. She remembered him even from Terennia, and the first time he had looked upon her, a look that had stripped away her dark, judicial robes, and all she wore, and had been, revealing the naked, vulnerable slave beneath. She had seized the railing behind which she stood, that she might not fall. She had fought in herself the instantaneous, almost overwhelming desire to hurry to him, to kneel and perform obeisance. How startled she had been with these feelings, how furious with herself!

  Let her mother, the judge, proceed with the prosecution of the fellow!

  But he had survived in the arena, and had later obtained his freedom.

  Through a complex set of circumstances she, who had been an officer of the very court which had condemned him to the arena, her mother the very judge who had pronounced the sentence, had become his slave.

  She dared not meet his eyes, so fierce they were upon her.

  On the ill-fated Alaria, kneeling at his feet in the darkness, not even knowing it was he, she had become, technically, and legally, a slave. But he, at that time, had unaccountably treated her well and not enforced her bondage. Indeed, in a vital matter, pertaining to his plan to escape the Alaria, he had trusted her word, that she would remain silent, on this word refusing to subject her to the efficient indignities of the gag. But she had broken this word, betraying him and his party, calling out, alerting enemies. Shortly thereafter they had become separated, but each, in their own way, in different capsules, had managed to escape the Alaria. She had later, on Varna, come again into this possession. This time he had not seen fit to show
her indulgence but had had her branded and tagged. She now wore on her thigh a mark in virtue of which there would be no mistaking what she was, a mark which would be recognized throughout galaxies.

  “I thought you would be pleased,” said Julian.

  “She is a faithless, treacherous, lying slave,” said Otto.

  “Please, no, Master,” she had whispered.

  “She is well curved,” said Julian.

  “So are millions on thousands of worlds,” said Otto.

  “I love you, Master. I want to serve you,” she whispered.

  “Surely she is exquisite,” said Julian.

  “As are innumerable others, all for one price or another,” said Otto.

  “She bears the slave flower, to offer it to you,” said Julian.

  “She is a collared slut,” said Otto. “She will offer it to whomsoever her master decides.”

  “I think she would offer it to you,” said Julian.

  “She is worthless,” said Otto.

  “She might bring a decent price in a market,” said Julian.

  “Perhaps,” said Otto.

  There was little doubt as to this.

  The slave’s handlers, who had prepared her for presentation to her master, had left little of her beauty to the imagination. Her breasts strained against the mockery of a skimpy bandeau of scarlet silk. A narrow, black, cloth cord was put twice, snugly, about her waist, and knotted, with a slip knot, at the left hip. This cord supported two narrow rectangles of scarlet silk. It also supplied a means whereby, if it were removed, she might be bound. Such features are not unusual in slave garments. A common variation on such a theme is a leather thong wound several times about the left ankle, and tied there. Is it an attractive decoration? Certainly, but it may also serve, with similar decorative appeal, as a bond. Her dark hair was bound back with a scarlet ribbon. On her neck there was a close-fitting, steel slave collar.