Norman, John - Gor 23 - Renegades of Gor.txt

by Renegades of Gor [lit]

  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  the man with the shield, who had withdrawn earlier.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.

&
nbsp; 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

  herself, hoping to please?”

  “Who is it?” asked the lad.

  “I have not yet named her,” I said.

  “Who was it?” he asked.

  “Do not concern yourself with the matter,” I said.

  “Where then is Lady Claudia, the traitress?” he asked.

  “I do not know,” I said.

  “It is as Calendonius said,” he said. “You are not Marsias.”

  “No,” I said. “I am not Marsias.”

  “Who, then, are you?” asked he.

  “One whom you have acknowledged as your captain,” I said.

  “Yes, Captain,” said he, lifting his bow in salute.

  I issued orders, with the injunction that he should, when they were delivered,

  return to the upper battlements.

  He hastened down the stairs to the right.

  I then returned my attention to the slave. I unknotted the thong by means of

  which her small, fair ankles had been so securely bound, the one to the other. I

  looped the thong in and about the ropes at her back.

  (pg.294) At that moment the other young fellow, who had seemed so mature, who

  was serving as my messenger to the eastern walkway, gasping, ascended to the

  upper battlements.

  “We are giving way!” he said.

  I had been waiting for him.

  He, too, seemed startled to see the slave. “It is not Lady Claudia,” I said. “It

  is only a nameless slave.”

  “They are calling up from below,” he said, paying the female no more attention.

  “The gate is being sundered!”

  I issued him orders, orders parallel to those I had given the other young

  fellow, with the injunction that he, too, after their delivery, return to the

  upper battlements.

  I then went to the wall and looked out, once more, on the vast panoply before

  me, across the burned, leveled ground, at the engines, the troops, the hulks and

  shells of buildings in the distance. In the eastern part of the city there was

  still smoke. There had been fires in the city for days. I could even see the

  outside wall, far off. It seemed a long time ago, now, that it had been

  breached. I then, slowly, drew down the flag of Ar’s Station from the citadel.

  That would not be done by Cosians. I did not raise another cloth in its place.

  “We have withdrawn to just west of the west gate stairs,” said the young fellow,

  reporting from the western walkway.

  “Take the slave,” I said, “and put her on the central walkway, behind the upper

  battlements. You will find slave rings there, in the wall. Fasten her to one,

  kneeling, by her leash.” Such things are common conveniences in Gorean cities,

  in public places, and such. Even when the slave it seldom attached to one, she

  sees them, and this has its psychological effect with her. She knows that they

  are for the tethering of such as she. Here, within the citadel, of course, such

  rings, though usually called slave rings, could serve a large variety of

  purposes. They are not merely for girls chained there on furs in the moonlight,

  for the use of strollers, off-duty guards and such. They may be used, for

  example, for such purposes as anchoring war engines, to keep them, in their

  reaction, from backing off the walkway, restraining guard sleen, and securing

  prisoners. “The return to your fellows, and watch for my signal. It will be

  delivered from the central walkway, behind the upper battlements.”

  “Yes, Captain,” he said.

  (pg.295) “On your knees, woman,” he said.

  The slave struggled to her knees.

  :On your feet, woman,” he said.

  She who had once been Lady Publia rose unsteadily to her feet. It was hard for

  her to stand. She had not stood for some times, and her ankles, for some time,

  had been closely bound.

  The young fellow, seeing her difficulty, took her leash close to the collar,

  that he might, if necessary, steady her, and keep her from falling. He then drew

  her along quickly, she stumbling, after him. he was in age no more than a lad

  and she was a mature, fully grown, beautiful woman but in accord with nature’s

  decisions, given the differential parameters involved, those of his size and

  strength, contrasting so markedly with hers of slightness, delicacy, softness,

  and beauty, he handled her with ease.

  I watched then descending the steps to the central walkway. She half fell once,

  losing her footing, striking against the right side of the stone stairwell, but

  he kept h
er upright, his hand then literally about her thick leather collar, and

  then, in a moment, now again on a short leash, I saw her drawn about the corner,

  toward the line of rings below and in back of the upper battlements.

  I turned about and the other young fellow, he who was my messenger to the

  eastern walkway, climbed to the upper battlements from the eastern stairwell.

  “The flag!” he cried.

  I handed it to him.

  “Keep it,” I said. “One day it may fly again.”

  There were tears in his eyes.

  “Return now to your fellows,” I said, “and watch for my signal. It will be given

  from behind the upper battlements.”

  He hurried away.

  I looked to the western walkway and saw the other young fellow with the fellows

  there. He was behind their lines, facing the central walkway. His presence there

  informed me that the slave, her upper body so wound about with ropes as to

  almost conceal her beauty, would be at a slave ring, behind and below the upper

  battlements, kneeling there, hooded and gagged, fastened to it by her leash.

  I looked to the eastern walkway. I saw the other young (pg.296) fellow there

  now, clutching the flag in his arms. He, too, was looking back, toward the

  central walkway.

  It was important to me to coordinate the withdrawal of both wings, to keep

  balance in the positions, to prevent flanking movements. Too, I thought I might

  buy some time for them by seeming to offer the Cosians an enviable prize, the

  capture of the wall commander. I thought this might be of particular interest to

  them, given the losses they had suffered this afternoon.

  From below, in front of the wall, I could hear the buckling and tearing of plate

  on the gate, the pounding of the ram, the groaning and cracking of wood.

  I then descended to the central walkway. There were bodies there, as elsewhere

  about the walkway, those of Cosians, those of defenders. A Cosian, wounded,

  seeing me, tried to struggle to this feet. He was a mass of blood. It was dried

  in his beard. His helmet was gone. He could hardly lift his black.

  “How are things in Cos?” I asked him.

  “Well,” he said.

  “Put down your blade,” I suggested.

  He thought for a moment and then shrugged. He could scarcely hold it.