Mariners of Gor

by Norman, John;

  Again I heard the drum.

  Some sense of the situation at the front must have now been relayed to the rear echelons. A channel of communication, after all, is of little value unless it, like a road or river, can be symmetrically traversed.

  Although I could not read the signal, its import was clear.

  An archer charge is hazardous, of course, unless directed upon an inert enemy. The whole rationale of the war bow is to strike from the safety of distance.

  The archers, many of their quivers almost emptied, now began to edge forward.

  It would be difficult to elude the shafts at close range. Few had brought shields ashore.

  There was a sudden cry from Lord Nishida and our fellows cast aside the bodies, bristling with arrows, and leaped upon the startled, disconcerted archers, only feet away, few of whom could train or loose more than a single arrow before dying. I saw more than one quiver empty, a last arrow spilled beside a fallen bow in the moist, scarlet dust. Some archers fled back, but the ranks had now been closed against them. Some were slain with thrusts of glaives, others with swords. Several knelt docilely before their own men, shamed, and a headsman went from figure to figure, I gathered, restoring their honor.

  By now it seemed, with the return and departure of the galleys, many of our men might have been returned to the ship.

  I saw Tarl Cabot leave his position beside Lord Nishida, and move to the rear, where I sensed some stirring, doubtless amongst some of our men.

  I did not understand the point of his departure.

  I was more concerned with the Pani forces before us, presumably awaiting the issuance of its orders.

  Cabot was shortly back, and I was aware of a message, or some form of communication, being passed throughout our lines, even to the left and right flanks.

  “Be prepared to obey,” said a fellow to me, and then repeated this message to others.

  If that were the message, it seemed pointless to me. What soldier is not prepared to obey?

  I stood up, and looked back. Some new fellows were behind us, almost as shadows, and, down at the beach, some others, I sensed, might have been approaching. I could see some lanterns, on small boats, and one on the stern of a galley. From torches I could sense, as well, a number of men at the water’s edge. Our own position was precarious, but I was sure the defensive lines which Cabot and I had joined, commanded by Lord Nishida, had won the time needed for the withdrawal of most of our surviving forces.

  They, at least, would return to the ship.

  We waited in place, as did our foes, for the signal of the drum.

  When it began to sound, we witnessed, as expected, the movement down the defile, marked by a hundred or more torches, of the mass of Pani reserves.

  It did not seem likely we would return to the ship.

  A fellow two or three men to my left, suddenly turned and fled toward the beach.

  I felt much like following him, and a wash of panic and terror seemed to seize my whole body. Boats were at the shore. I could surely reach one in time. What was I doing here? This was not my war! It was no choice of mine! It was an accident that I was here, at all. It was not of my will that I was here. I was Cosian, not Pani. This was not my business. Too, I was only one man. What did it matter if one ran? The others would stay, and protect my back, my flight. I felt that I must move, run, flee, if only to do something. But I remained in place.

  “Steady,” I heard a fellow say, to someone, somewhere to my right, on the other side of Lord Nishida, who stood like a rock, unmoving, in the center of our line.

  “They are coming,” said a fellow beside me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  I did not know why we were whispering. Too, was it not obvious that the enemy was massing, and approaching?

  I heard a stirring to my left.

  The fellow who had fled had returned.

  He must have reached the water’s edge, and then turned back, to take his place in the line. No one paid him any attention. He had never left.

  The beat of the drum increased.

  I supposed Lord Nishida, and the Pani, or some of them, might have read the drum. On the other hand, it was easy to read the movements before us, to see the torchlight on helmets and weapons, to hear, drawing closer, the rustle of steel, leather, and accouterments.

  “Be prepared to obey!” called Cabot.

  I thought the enemy before us, on the whole, had been directed rationally, its forces distributed intelligently, and applied judiciously, in such a way as not to crowd its attacks, or impede its own movements. In this way, one applies one’s resources in a measured manner, conserving them as much as possible and maximizing their effectiveness. Similarly, timing the engagements of elements is important. On the other hand, I had the sense that the commander of the opposing forces had now come to the end of his patience, such as it might have been, and, contemptuous of care and delay, finished with military sobriety, and conscious of his numbers, intended to conclude matters with one crude, costly, irresistible, massive blow.

  Men began to run toward us, some falling, stumbling, pushed from behind, jostled, some weapons down, some not lowered. In the torchlight I could see the almost random thicket of glaives, like bunched tem wood in the wind. In the darkness and torches it was almost like a flood of darkness on darkness, a storm of bodies. Some, from the sound, and cries, were trampled by others. The drum struck, again and again, wildly. I think many fell, thrust from behind, and many may have been the wounds inflicted by exposed weapons, edges run against, points buffeted, blades fallen upon. This mad, rushing wall of darkness, squandering men, swept forward.

  “Tragic,” said Lord Nishida.

  “All tall,” exclaimed Cabot. “Brace yourself for the impact!”

  How could one brace oneself for such an impact? More easily might the talender resist the stamping boot. More easily might the stand of delicate Sa-Tarna turn back the scythe.

  But is not deception the key to war?

  Our standing masked what lay behind us, and our charging foes prepared to meet us, as we stood, tumultuous crowd to man.

  The great flood of darkness, confused, proximate, rushing, pounding, imminent, was some five yards from our steel when Cabot cried out, “Down!”

  We all crouched down, instantly, and, from behind us, over our heads, into the confused, rushing mass of men before us there poured a rain of arrows sped from the small, saddle-clearing Tuchuk bow. The leading, confused ranks of our foes probably did not understand what killed them, but they fell, and succeeding rows, four or five, stumbled over them, fell, rose, climbed over them, and met death. A mound of darkness began to form, hills of men. And as succeeding ranks surmounted their fellows, they, too, encountered the rapid fire of the small, powerful, swift bows, developed over generations of warfare amongst the Wagon Peoples of the Southern Plains. It was perhaps only the sixth or seventh ranks of the enemies, impelled by their fellows, who, in the light of the torches, some flung amongst us, realized they were facing archers, and of a sort with which they were unfamiliar. Some cried out, some turned, some stood, as they were, and died. They had no return fire. They had no cover. They could not reach the enemy with their glaives, or swords. Some, escaping arrows, rushed upon us, to fall amongst our blades. Many stood, confused, suddenly realizing they were defenseless, and doomed. The strike of the Tuchuk bow, short, of curved horn, requiring much strength to draw, is heavy, and, at close range, terrible, capable, like the thrust spear, of penetrating the typical four-layered shield. So hapless might be a shieldless swordsman viewing the crossbow, the ready quarrel leveled, set in its guide.

  The flood stopped, and, like startled, turned verr, the enemy began to mill, and fearful words were carried to farther ranks, and men who could not even see us received reports so magnified that they must exceed the horror of reality. “Demons!” “Dragons!” we heard.

  Had we had stakes and trenches before us, the trenches would have been filled, the stakes heavy with the impaled me
at of death.

  The enemy turned, and began to flee.

  Some enemy officers struck about themselves with swords, trying to stop the rout, but these, too, were as often struck by terrified men who, in the darkness, were unclear as to their foe, his power, or even his nature.

  Some of our bowmen climbed over bodies, and from the grisly height of such hills, formed of inert or bleeding men, plied their craft, playing, as it is said, tunes on the lyre of death.

  I thought there would be much feasting here for Thassa’s gulls.

  Tor-tu-Gor, Light-upon-the-Home-Stone, began to rise in the east.

  I looked back toward the water. There were now three galleys at the beach, and several small boats. Men stood about them, waiting.

  “Honorable friends,” said Lord Nishida, “let us return to the ship.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I First See the Castle of Lord Temmu;

  Landfall Will Be Made

  “It is there,” said Tarl Cabot. “See?”

  He pointed high, toward the mountains, their peaks soft with fog, off the port bow.

  “No,” I said.

  “Higher,” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  “A moment,” he said. “Wait.”

  “Yes!” I said, suddenly.

  It seemed tiny in the distance, suddenly visible in the parted fog, and, then again, it was obscured. Small as it seemed now, I knew, given the proportion of the mountains, and the high cliff it dominated, it would be mighty in closer prospect.

  “I am told,” said Tarl Cabot, “that is the castle of Temmu, the holding, the fortress, of the shogun, Temmu.”

  Lords Nishida and Okimoto, each a lesser lord, or daimyo, had eaten of the rice of Temmu.

  We had been coasting north for four days, perhaps a pasang offshore, this following the altercation attendant on the ill-advised landing.

  It was, accordingly, now the seventh day of the Sixth Month.

  I was now in attendance on Tarl Cabot, commander of the tarn cavalry. Though he did not so speak it, I think this may have had to do with the fate of the oarsman, Aeson, but more of that anon. In any event, in his service, I was entitled to be legitimately armed on board. None could then gainsay me a blade. I was pleased, though my swordsmanship was not unusual, to have steel at my hip. That endows one with a modicum of comfort, however modest might be one’s powers. Surely, to have the chance of defending oneself is to be preferred to the lack of such a chance. Vulnerability is no virtue; it is peril for the vulnerable, and a fault for fools. Who will deny to the tiny ost the shield and threat of its venom, who convince the tarsk boar to put aside his short, curved tusks? How will the unarmed larl defend his territory, or life; how would the unarmed sleen defend its burrow, its brood, its life? Who most desires you to be disarmed? He who will himself be armed, secretly, or by means of another. Who, unarmed, is wise to dispute the will of the armed? Who wishes you to be most vulnerable, most helpless? He who will not make himself so.

  Let slaves and beasts be disarmed, helplessly, and totally. That is fitting for them, as their collars and tethers. It is fitting for them, and perfectly, as they are slaves and beasts.

  Let the slave, collared, and scarcely clad, know that she is at the mercy of men, at the mercy of masters—totally, and without recourse.

  “There is a cove,” said Cabot, “a harbor of sorts, protected from the sea, at the foot of a walled trail, leading upward, to the castle.”

  “You have not been there,” I said.

  “No,” he said, “but others have.”

  “I have never seen such a castle, such a fortress,” I said.

  “I have seen representations of such structures, pictures of such structures,” said Cabot, “but it was long ago, and faraway.”

  To me the slopes, the curves, the peaks, of roofs, and such, were profoundly unfamiliar, but, in their way, awesome, and beautiful. It was hard for me to imagine that so different and beautiful, so artistic, a structure, might be, in effect, a fortress, a place of harrowing might, a holding of formidable power, a housing for a hundred companies, a resister of sieges, a coign of vantage, from which might issue dragons of war, and a closed portal behind which they might, in security, withdraw.

  “The men are uneasy,” I said. “No longer are they eager to go ashore.”

  “Who could blame them?” said Cabot.

  After the misfortune of the mutiny, we had retained something like one hundred and forty tarns, and seventeen hundred mariners and armsmen. Following that time, too, Lords Okimoto and Nishida had retained something like four hundred and fifty Pani warriors in their commands. Later losses in the Vine Sea and otherwise had not much affected these figures. Whereas we had lost no tarns in the recent tragedy of the ill-advised landing, we had suffered a severe loss of men, Pani and otherwise, in the fighting, in the defile, and later, on the beach. Had it not been for the stubborn rear-guard action of Lord Nishida and others, later reinforced from the ship, and the hasty, nocturnal, massive evacuation of our trapped forces from the beach, it seems clear that the enterprise of Lords Nishida and Okimoto, whatever might be its nature, would have been devastatingly crippled, if not precluded altogether. Proportionately the Pani, unflinching, ever foremost in battle, underwent the greatest loss. Few of the original fifty survived, and of others, of those landed, only some two hundred survived to return to the ship. Of common mariners and armsmen, who, over Ahn, had swarmed ashore, often without authorization, in greater numbers than I had originally conjectured, some twelve hundred had returned to the ship. I estimated our losses as one hundred Pani warriors and three hundred armsmen and mariners. That left us with some three hundred and fifty Pani warriors, and some fourteen hundred mariners and armsmen. These figures, of course, are partly conjectural, as the actual figures, in accord with common military practice, are not revealed to the men.

  Some of our casualties, of course, had not taken place in the defile, or on the beach, but in the water, presumably at the side of the boats, or in an attempt to swim to the ship from shore. I had witnessed at least one attack, what I could see of it, of a marine predator, most likely a shark, within a few yards of the beach. One anomaly might be mentioned. Aeson, an excellent oarsman, was found in the water, at the side of the great ship, amongst the small boats, his throat pierced frontally, not laterally cut, a straightforward, cleanly inflicted wound. Obviously he could not have so swum from shore, and would not have been transported in such a condition. Moreover, interestingly, two of the fellows who had shared his boat, insisted that he had been whole at his oar, and that he had been the first to seize a rope, and climb toward the rail, far above. An accident, presumably, had somehow taken place in the darkness, somewhere above, perhaps at the rail itself, the stray movement of a weapon, a running against an anchored blade, or such. Perhaps he had been mistaken for an unwelcome boarder. Tereus, his fellow, who had found the body, drawing it from the water, in the half light of dawn, had howled with rage and demanded the apprehension and searching of the wretched cripple, Rutilius of Ar. This was soon accomplished. He was discovered on a lower deck. He was unarmed. The matter remained unresolved. I had seen such a stroke more than once, twice in the early morning, in a park in Ar, once shortly after dawn on the Plaza of Tarns. The next day Tereus, violent and distraught, had twice sought out Rutilius of Ar, or Seremides, as I better knew him, goading him, jeering him, apparently tempting him to seize up a weapon, or die. Finally the deck watch, disgusted at this bullying, this attempt to intimidate and threaten a substantially helpless man, castigated Tereus roundly and ordered him away, that he might desist in such unmanly, unseemly behavior, wanton abuse, inflicted upon an unfortunate who could not be expected to defend himself. When Tereus withdrew, storming away, in compliance with the instructions of the deck watch, it is said the eyes of Rutilius, glistening, followed him, and that he smiled, and then turned about, and hobbled away, poking at the deck with his makeshift crutch.