by John Norman
"I am Pa-Kur," said the man.
It was he, the Master Assassin of Ar, leader of the assembled horde.
"We meet again," I said.
The eyes, like glass or stone, revealed nothing.
"The cylinder at Ko-ro-ba," I said. "The crossbow."
He said nothing.
"You failed to kill me that time," I taunted. "Perhaps you would care to risk another shot now. Perhaps the mark would be more suited to your skills."
The men behind Pa-Kur muttered at my impudence. He himself showed no impatience.
"My weapon," he said, simply extending his hand. A crossbow was immediately placed in his grip. It was a large steel bow, wound and set, the iron quarrel placed in the guide.
I prepared to welcome the bolt flashing through my body. I was curious to know if I would be conscious of its strike. Pa-Kur raised his hand with an imperious gesture. From somewhere I saw a small, round object sailing high into the air, out over the river. It was a tarn disk hurled by one of Pa-Kur's men. Just as the tiny object, black against the blue sky, reached its apogee, I heard the click of the trigger, the vibration of the string, and the swift hiss of the quarrel. Before the tarn disk could begin its fall, the quarrel pierced it, carrying it, I would judge, some two hundred and fifty yards out into the river. The men of Pa-Kur stamped their feet in the sand and clanged their spears on their shields.
"I spoke as a fool," I said to Pa-Kur.
"And you will die the death of a fool," he said. He spoke with no trace of anger or emotion of any kind.
He motioned to the men to thrust the frame out into the river, where it would be swept away.
"Wait," I said, "I ask your favor." The words came hard.
Pa-Kur gestured to the men to desist.
"What have you done with the girl?"
"She is Talena, daughter of the Ubar Marlenus," said Pa-Kur. "She will rule in Ar as my queen."
"She would die first," I said.
"She has accepted me," said Pa-Kur, "and will rule by my side." The stone eyes regarded me, expressionless. "It was her wish that you die the death of a villain," he said, "on the Frame of Humiliation, unworthy to stain our weapons."
I closed my eyes. I should have known that the proud Talena, daughter of a Ubar, would leap at the first chance to return to power in Ar, even though it be at the head of a plundering host of brigands. And I, her protector, was now to be discarded. Indeed, the Frame of Humiliation would be ample vengeance to satisfy even Talena for the indignities she had suffered at my hands. It, if anything, would wipe out forever from her mind the offensive memory that she had once needed my help and had pretended to love me.
Then, each of the men of Pa-Kur, as is the custom before a frame is surrendered to the waters of the Vosk, spit on my body. Lastly, Pa-Kur spit in his hand and then placed his hand on my chest. "Were it not for the daughter of Marlenus," said Pa-Kur, his metallic face as placid as the quicksilver behind a mirror, "I would have slain you honorably. That I swear by the black helmet of my caste."
"I believe you," I said, my voice choked, no longer caring if I lived or died.
The spear butts pressed against the frame, shoving it away from the bank. The current soon caught it, and it began to spin in slow circles farther and farther out into the midst of that vast force of nature called the Vosk.
The death would not be a pleasant one. Bound helplessly, without food or water, my own body would torture me by its weight dragging on the hand and ankle ropes, suspended a few inches above the roiling, muddy surface under the fiery sun. I knew that I would not, some days hence, reach the delta of the Vosk and the cities in the delta except perhaps as a bound corpse, withered by exposure and the lack of water. Indeed, it was unlikely my body would reach the delta at all. It was far more likely that one of the water lizards of the Vosk or one of the great hook-beaked turtles of the river would seize my body and drag it and the frame under the water, destroying me in the mud below. There was also the chance that a wild tarn might swoop down and feed on the helpless living morsel fastened to that degrading frame. Of one thing I was certain—there would be no human assistance or even pity, for the poor wretches on the frames are none but villains, betrayers, and blasphemers against the Priest-Kings, and it is a sacrilegious act even to consider terminating their sufferings.
My wrists and ankles had turned white and were numb. The oppressive, blinding glare of the sun, the heavy weight of its heat bore down on me. My throat was parched, and, hanging only an inch or so above the Vosk, I burned with thirst. Thoughts, like prodding needles, vexed my brain. The image of the treacherous, beautiful Talena, in her dancing silks, as she had lain in my arms, tormented me—she who would gladly give her kisses to the cold Pa-Kur for a place on the throne of Ar, she whose implacable hatred had sent me to this terrible death, not even permitting me the honor of a warrior's end. I wanted to hate her—so much I wanted to hate her—but I found that I could not. I had come to love her. In the glade by the swamp forests, in the grain fields of the empire, on the great highway of Ar, in the regal, exotic caravan of Mintar, I had found the woman I loved, a scion of a barbaric race on a remote and unknown world.
The night came with infinite slowness, but at last the blinding sun was gone and I welcomed the chill, windy darkness. The water lapped against the side of the frame, the stars sparkled above in frosty detachment. Once, to my horror, a scaled body crested under the frame, its glistening hide rubbing my body as it snapped its tail and suddenly darted beneath the water. It apparently was not carnivorous. Oddly enough, I cried out to the stars in joy, still clinging to life, unwilling to lament the fact that my miseries must now be prolonged.
The sun swept into the sky again, and my second day on the Vosk began. I remember being afraid that I would never be able to use my hands and feet again, that they would never withstand the punishment of the ropes. Then I remember laughing foolishly, like a madman, when I considered that it wouldn't matter, that I would never have any further use for them.
Perhaps it was my wild, almost demented laughter that attracted the tarn. I saw him coming, making his silent strike with the sun at his back, his talons extended like hooks. Savagely those vast talons struck and closed on my body, forcing the frame for an instant beneath the water, then the tarn was beating the air angrily with his wings, struggling to lift his prey, and suddenly both myself and the heavy frame were pulled free from the water. The sudden weight of the frame swinging against my roped wrists and ankles, while the talons of the bird gripped my body, almost tore me apart. Then, mercifully, the ropes, not meant to sustain the weight of the heavy frame, broke loose, and the tarn triumphantly climbed skyward, still clutching me in his wild talons.
I would have a few moments more of life, the same brief reprieve nature grants the mouse carried by the hawk to its nest; then on some barren crag my body would be torn to pieces by the beast whose prey I was. The tarn, a brown tarn with a black crest like most wild tarns, streaked for that vague, distant smudge I knew marked the escarpments of some mountain wilderness. The Vosk became a broad, glimmering ribbon in the distance.
Far below, I could see that the burned, dead Margin of Desolation was dotted here and there with patches of green, where some handfuls of seed had blindly asserted themselves, reclaiming something of that devastated country for life and growth. Near one of the green stretches I saw what I first thought was a shadow, but as the tarn passed, it scattered into a scampering flock of tiny creatures, probably the small, three-toed mammals called qualae, dun-colored and with a stiff brushy mane of black hair.
As nearly as I could determine, we did not pass over or near the great highway that ran to the Vosk. Had we done so, I might have seen the war horde of Pa-Kur on its way to Ar, with its marching columns, its lines of tharlarion riders, its foraging cavalries of tarnsmen, its supply wagons and pack animals. And somewhere in that vast array, among the flags and the booming of tarn drums, would have been the girl who had betrayed me.
A
s well as I could, I opened and closed my hands and moved my feet, trying to restore in them some semblance of feeling. The flight of the tarn was serene, and I, grateful to be free at last of the painful Frame of Humiliation, found myself, strangely enough, almost reconciled to the savage but swift fate I knew awaited me.
But suddenly the flight of the tarn became much more rapid and then in another minute almost erratic and frenzied. He was fleeing! I twisted about in his claws, and my heart seemed to jerk spasmodically in my breast. My hair froze as I heard the shrill, angry cry of another tarn; he was an enormous creature as sable as the helmet of Pa-Kur, his wings beating like whips, bearing down relentlessly on my captor. My bird swerved dizzily, and the great assailant's talons passed harmlessly. Then he attacked again, and my bird swerved again, but the attacking tarn had allowed for the maneuver, compensating for it an instant before my own bird turned, with the result that it met my bird in full collision.
I was conscious in that mad, terrible instant of the flash of steel-shod talons at the breast of my bird, and then my bird shook as though seized with a convulsion and opened his talons. I began to drop toward the wastes below. In that wild instant I saw my bird beginning to fall, flopping downward, and saw his attacker wheeling in my direction. Falling, I twisted madly, unsupported in the air, a wordless cry of anguish in my throat, and watched in horror as the ground seemed to rush upward to meet me. But I never reached it, for the attacking bird had swooped to intercept me and seized me in his beak much as one gull might seize a fish dropped by another. The beak, curved like an instrument of war, slit with its narrow nostrils, closed on my body, and I was once more the prize of a tarn.
Soon my swift captor had reached his mountains, and the vague, distant smudge that I had seen had become a lonely, frightening, inaccessible wilderness of reddish cliffs. High on a sunlit mountain ledge, the sable tarn dropped me to the sticks and brush of its nest and set one steel-shod taloned foot across my body, to hold me steady as the great beak did its work. As the beak reached down for me, I managed to get one leg between it and my body and kicked it back, cursing wildly.
The sound of my voice had an unusual effect on the bird. He tilted his head to one side quizzically. I shouted at him again and again. And then, fool that I was, half demented with hunger and terror, I only then realized that the tarn was none other than my own! I shoved on the steel-shod foot that pressed me into the sticks of the nest, uttering my command with ringing authority. The bird lifted his foot and backed away, still uncertain as to what to do. I sprang to my feet, standing well within the reach of his beak, showing no fear. I slapped his beak affectionately, as if we were in a tarn cot, and shoved my hands into his neck feathers, the area where the tarn can't preen, as the tarn keepers do when searching for parasites.
I withdrew some of the lice, the size of marbles, which tend to infest wild tarns, and slapped them roughly into the mouth of the tarn, wiping them off on his tongue. I did this again and again, and the tarn stretched out his neck. The saddle and reins of the tarn were no longer on the bird and had undoubtedly rotted off or had been rubbed from his back by scraping against the rock escarpment backing its nest ledge. After a few minutes of my ministrations the tarn, satisfied, spread his wings and took flight, to continue the search for food which had been interrupted. Apparently, in his limited fashion, he no longer conceived of me as being in the immediate category of the edible. That he might soon change his mind, particularly if he found nothing on the plains below, was only too obvious. I cursed because I had lost the tarn-goad in the quicksands of Ar's swamp forest. I examined the ledge for some means of escape, but the cliffs above and below were almost smooth.
Suddenly a great shadow covered the ledge. My tarn had returned. I looked up and, to my horror, saw that it was not my tarn. It was another tarn, a wild tarn. He lit on the ledge, snapping his beak. This time I had none of the careful conditioning of the tarn keepers working in my favor.
I frantically looked about for a weapon, and then, hardly believing my eyes, I saw, woven roughly into the nest sticks, the remains of my harness and saddle. I seized my spear from the saddle sheath and turned. The beast had waited a moment too long; he had been too confident of his trapped quarry. As he stalked forward, oblivious of the spear, I hurled the broad-headed weapon deep into his breast. His legs gave way, and his body, wings outspread, sank to the granite flooring of the ledge. Head jerking and eyes glassy, the bird twitched and trembled uncontrollably—a cluster of spasmodic reflexes. He had died the instant the spear had entered his heart. I withdrew the weapon and, using it as a lever, rolled the twitching body to the brink of the ledge and sent it flopping to the depths below.
I returned to the nest and salvaged what I could of the tarn harness and saddle. The crossbow and longbow, with their respective missiles, were nowhere in evidence. The shield was also gone. With the spear blade I cut into the locked saddle pack. It contained, as I'd known it would, the Home Stone of Ar. It was unimpressive, small, flat, and of a dull brown color. Carved on it, crudely, was a single letter in an archaic Gorean script, that single letter which, in the old spelling, would have been the name of the city. At the time the stone was carved, Ar, in all probability, had been one of dozens of inconspicuous villages on the plains of Gor.
Impatiently I set the stone aside. The pack also contained, and more importantly from my point of view, the balance of my supplies, intended for the home flight to Ko-ro-ba. The first thing I did was unseal one of the two water flasks and open the dried rations. And there on that windy ledge, in that abode of the tarn, I ate the meal that satisfied me as no other had ever done, though it consisted only of some mouthfuls of water, some stale biscuits, and a wrapper of dried meat.
I poked through the other contents of the saddle pack, delighted to find my old maps and that device that serves Goreans as both compass and chronometer. As nearly as I could determine from the map and my memory of the location of the Vosk and the direction I had been carried, I was somewhere in the Voltai Range, sometimes called the Red Mountains, south of the river and to the east of Ar. That would mean that I had unknowingly passed over the great highway, but whether ahead of or behind Pa-Kur's horde I had no idea. My calculations as to my locale tended to be confirmed by the dull reddish color of the cliffs, due to the presence of large deposits of iron oxide.
I then took the binding fiber and extra bowstrings from the pack. I would use them in repairing the saddle and harness. I cursed myself for not having carried an extra tarn-goad somewhere in the saddle gear. Also, I should have carried an extra tarn whistle. Mine had been lost when Talena had thrown me from the back of the tarn shortly after we had fled the walls of Ar.
I wasn't sure I could control the tarn without a tarn-goad. I had used it sparingly in my flights with him, even more sparingly than is recommended, but it had always been there, ready to be used if needed. Now it was no longer there. Whether I could control the tarn or not would probably, at least for a time, depend on whether or not he had been successful in his hunt and on how well the tarn keepers had done their work with the young bird. And would it not also depend on how deep the bite of freedom had been felt by the bird, how ready he would be to be controlled once more by man? With my spear I could kill him, but that would not rescue me from the ledge. I had no desire to die eventually of starvation in the lonely aerie of my tarn. I would leave on his back or die.
In the hours that remained before the tarn returned to his nest, I used the binding fiber and bowstrings to repair, as well as I could, the harness and saddle. By the time my great mount had settled again on his ledge, I had finished my work, even to restoring the gear in my saddle pack. Almost as an afterthought I had included the Home Stone of Ar, that simple, uncomely piece of rock that had so transformed my destiny and that of an empire.
Gripped in the talons of the tarn was the dead body of an antelope, one of the one-horned, yellow antelopes called tabuks that frequent the bright Ka-la-na thickets of Gor. The antelope's ba
ck had been broken, apparently in the tarn's strike, and its neck and head lolled aimlessly to one side.
When the tarn had fed, I walked over to him, speaking familiarly, as if I might be doing the most customary thing on Gor. Letting him see the harness fully, I slowly and with measured care fastened it around his neck. I then threw the saddle over the bird's back and crawled under its stomach to fasten the girth straps. Then I calmly climbed the newly repaired mounting ladder, drew it up, and fastened it to the side of the saddle. I sat still for a moment and then decisively drew back on the one-strap. I breathed a sigh of relief as the black monster lifted himself in flight.
13
Marlenus, Ubar of Ar
I set my course for Ko-ro-ba, carrying in my saddle pack the trophy that was now, at least to me, worthless. It had done its work. Its loss to Ar had already riven an empire and, for the time at least, had guaranteed the independence of Ko-ro-ba and her hostile sister cities. Yet my victory, if victory it was, brought me no satisfaction. My mission might have been concluded, but I did not rejoice. I had lost the girl I had loved, cruel and treacherous though she might have been.
I took the tarn high, to bring a circle of some two hundred pasangs or so under my view. In the far distance I could see the silver wire I knew must be the great Vosk, could see the abrupt shift from the grassy plains to the Margin of Desolation. From the height I could look down on a portion of the Voltai Range, with its arrogant reddish heights, as it faded away to the east. To the southwest I could see dimly the evening light reflected from the spires of Ar, and to the north, approaching from the Vosk, I could see the glow from what must be thousands of cooking fires, the night's camp of Pa-Kur.
As I was drawing on the two-strap, to guide the tarn to Ko-ro-ba, I saw something I did not expect to see, something directly below, which startled me. Shielded among the crags of the Voltai, invisible except from directly above, I saw four or five small cooking fires, such as might mark the camp of a mountain patrol or a small company of hunters, perhaps after the agile and bellicose Gorean mountain goat, the long-haired, spiral-horned verr, or, more dangerously, the larl, a tawny leopardlike beast indigenous to the Voltai and several of Gor's ranges, standing an incredible seven feet high at the shoulder and feared for its occasional hunger-driven visitations to the civilized plains below. Curious, I dropped the tarn lower, not willing to believe the fires belonged to either a patrol or to hunters. It did not seem likely that one of Ar's patrols would be presently bivouacked in the Voltai, nor did it seem likely the fires below would be those of hunters.
