Renegades of Gor (42 page)

possible to fire at point-blank range, the shovel of one catapult containing a

thousand bits of rock and metal, the shovel of the other a large boulder,

weighing perhaps fifteen hundred pounds, requiring five men for its loading,

trundling it up the ramp.

The first catapult slung its storm of missiles into the charging men, blinding

them, denting shields, cutting clothing from bodies. The second catapult cast

its load, its boulder, into the midst of startled men and had it not been for

their smitten bodies, dashed back, cushioning the blow would have torn its way

free through the back of the tall, shedlike tower. In both cases defenders then

climbed to the bridges to meet the foe, driving him back, thrusting him down to

the lower level, stopping the ascent at the ladders. At the termination of

another bridge we had broken away an opening in the walkway, enlarging a gap

about stairs. Here charging foes leaping from the wall found no footing but only

an opening beneath them, half pit, half stairs. Men waited below for those who

still moved, with axes. Another charge, rushing forth from the tower, unable to

stop, pushed on by the masses behind them, plunged into flames, where we had

heaped bundles of tarred sticks in their path, the sort that on wires and

chains, flaming, are hung over the walls at night to illuminate ascending foes.

At another bridge, Vosk fishermen, from the vicinity of Ar’s Station, fought,

perhaps men who had merely been trapped in the city when the Cosians had taken

their positions, and, at another bridge, huntsmen, from the interior, perhaps

similarly detained. The fishermen had a net with (pg.283) them, doubtless

brought up from their small boat in the harbor. Such devices are rich in war

uses. They can discommode scalers and grapnel crews. They can block passages.

From behind them one may conveniently thrust pikes and discharge missiles. In

the field they may serve as foundations for camouflage, for example, effecting

concealments from tarnsmen. Questioned, eagerly had I assented to its use,

pleased to have the unexpected and welcome aid of such an object. Nets, too, of

course, are used at sea in the repulsion of boarders. Similarly, nets, often

small and silken, but sturdy and cunningly weighted, are used in the taking of

women. At both these bridges the charge was arrested by the bristling points of

a braced, pike wall, two men to a pike. At the fishermen’s bridge the net was

cast, but its weights were not now stones. Rather was it weighted with two logs

which, at it settled upon its catch, were toppled over the parapet.

At the bridge of the huntsmen loops of tarn wire were cast over the armed,

halted efflux which the foe, to his horror, trying to extricate himself, felt

draw tight and then he, too, snared, was dragged from the bridge. Huntsmen are

skilled in the stringing and weighting of such devices. The wire, in its wide,

supple loops, had settled about its victims, their legs and bodies. Its two free

ends were weighted, secured about heavy posts which were then toppled over the

parapets, this causing at one time the tightening of the loops and the dragging

of the catch not now into the air, where it dangles helplessly, upside down,

awaiting the convenience of the huntsman, perhaps to have its throat cut, but

from the bridge. As with nets, with snares there is a great variety of types and

uses. Some are fine enough to set for field urts and other stout enough for

tharlarion.

At both bridges, following the success of the devices of the fishermen and

huntsmen, the temporary consternation of hesitant successors permitted defenders

to take their place, too, on the shaking bridge, where, in moments, they had

pressed their way back even to the edge of the flooring, that of the highest

level, beneath the roof, at the back of which would be located stairs or

ladders, depending on the structure of the particular tower. At the last tower a

simple garrote of tarn wire, almost invisible, had been thrust forth, secured

between two poles. Such wire is usually handled with gloves. It can usually

(pg.284) cut to the bone. It can take a wing from a tarn. I do not think the

first fellows hurrying down the bridge even saw it. Their bodies, lacerated,

impeded the flow of their fellows. Pikes thrust forth from behind the parapet,

and at the sides, and over the planks, of the dropped bridge, where it projected

beyond the crenelation on which it rested. While these things were going on

hundreds of grapnels had looped over the wall and the ropes on them strained

with swiftly climbing men, and the uprights of hundreds of ladders, like a

forest, set themselves against the walls. Between the towers men hurried cutting

ropes, and, where they could, thrusting back the ladders with the long-handled

tridents. Oil was poured on screaming men ascending. Bodies aflame leapt from

wood and rope. But Cosians came over the wall.

“We cannot hold them!” cried a man.

Fellows came then from below. The walkways behind the parapets were swarming

with men.

In two of the towers defenders had won the top level and poured flaming oil

about the floor and down the ladderways. On two others some, with axes,

literally chopped away at the bridge, behind their fellows.

I saw quarrels discharged at point-blank range.

Blades rang.

A Cosian, twisting, fell back from the wall.

I saw one of Ar’s Station run through, and slip to one knee, and then disappear

back, over the interior edge of the walkway, probably to plunge to the rubble

there, and then roll down to the court, behind the wall.

I saw a defender leap back from a tower, a torch in his hand. Smoke flowed from

behind him, out of the opening. Such structures are easier to fire from the

inside than the outside. I saw other fellows carrying bundles of flaming sticks

and tar on their pikes into a tower. It was aflame.

Some defenders leapt back to the wall, and the bridge, cut in pieces, sagged

behind them.

Cosians, sweating, their eyes wild in their helmets, reaching out from ropes,

and ladders, struggled through, and over, the crenels.

The crew of one of the engines had set another great stone into its shovel.

Their backs stained, turning the windlass, winding that huge torsion-powered

device taut. I saw one of (pg.285) them, a quarrel in his back, fall away from

the windlass. Then, suddenly, a lever thrown, the mighty arm of the engine went

forward again a great stone burst against one of the towers. It was half turned

and tottered, but did not fall. The draw bridge hung down, leading now only to

the air.

At one end of the wall I saw Cosians coming through a tower. No longer were they

impeded by tarn wire. They crossed it now literally on the bodies of their

fellows fallen in it, and strewn over it, as one might cross a river on stones

or a bog on planks. I dispatched the few reserves I had to seal off that portion

of the walkway. On such a narrow path I hoped twenty men might hold against a

thousand, for there the thousand could put against them no more than twenty. But

the thousand were nourished and strong, and soldiers, not an aggregation of

half-starved scions of a hundred castes, not one in ten of the warriors, not one

in five trained in arms.

I had taken up my post above the main gate, on the higher battlements, where the

impaling spear was mounted, and the flag of Ar’s Station still snapped

defiantly. This seemed to me the likely place for a command post. It was the

most central location on the land wall. It was there I would have expected to

have found Aemilianus.

More Cosians came over the wall. There were pockets of them, embattled, here and

there along the walkway. The men I had sent to the west end of the land wall,

past the west bastion, had actually sped by them. There are in battle, I have

found, often oddities, which seem inexplicable, and yes they occur. I had

sometimes seen a man walk among combatants, threading his way here and there,

almost as though among crowds in a market, no one bothering to challenge him or

pay him the least attention. But if eye contact is made, then there is not

unoften a fight to the death. Also, I have seen two pairs of men fighting, those

of each pair side by side, as though fellows, and yet they are enemies, and each

engages another foe. The riderless tharlarion or kaiila, like the riderless

horse in battles of Earth, can sometimes be seen whirling about, obeying the

trumpet calls for charging, and retreating, and such, just as though his master

were still in the saddle. Too, sometimes such animals may be found calmly

standing about, or grazing, while the fiercest of fighting surges about them. I

have seen, too, wounded men being carried to the rear, their (pg.286) bearers

unmolested, through clashing ranks, and other fellows pausing to loot a body,

blades flashing about them. Sometimes, too, in a moment’s lull, one notices

little things, to which one has perhaps hitherto paid scant attention, the

movements of an ant, how rain water irregularly stains a rock, moving and

spreading, depending on the texture of its surface.

I remember one fellow telling me about a man who had died near him, in a field.

The man had been lying there, on his back. The last thing he said was,

reportedly, “The sky is beautiful.” My informant told he, however, that the sky

then had looked much the same as it usually does. This is a hard story to

understand. Perhaps then the dying man had seen it differently, or perhaps only

then seen that it was beautiful. I now saw a fellow from Ar’s Station on top one

of the towers, on its roof. He was just standing there. He seemed to be admiring

the view. I had little doubt it was somewhat spectacular. He waved to me. I

lifted my sword to him, in salute.

Suddenly, on the approach from the right, a fellow, breaking away from a knot of

embroiled fighters, raced up the stairs, toward me, sword drawn. It was his

intention, I gathered, rather after the moment, to have had the honor of slaying

the commander on the wall. This occurred to me as he spun about, blood gushing

from beneath his helmet, falling back down the steps.

On the east, and nearer the center portions of the wall, four of the towers were

aflame.

Not seventy feet away, a rope severed, men plunged screaming to the earth below.

Along the wall, at two of the towers, men chopped away at the housings for the

chains which controlled the bridges. Some of the bridges, but most not, were

raised and lowered by ropes. One whose ropes had been cut had its bridge hanging

down, against the front of the tower, useless. Cosians were trying to run planks

out from the tower, to span the crevice between the tower and wall. I did not

doubt but what, sooner or later, the towers might be brought flush to the wall.

This is commonly not done, however, for various reasons. It more exposes the

tower to the defenders, who might then tear the hides from it and smear it with

flaming tar, or enter and attack it at their own choosing. Too, it makes it much

easier to prevent the dropping of the bridges, by blocking them with (pg.287)

beams or poles, or, in some cases, by fouling one or both of the chains, usually

with metal pins. It is better for the attackers, usually, to have the tower

isolated, back from the wall, and to be able to control its bridge without

concern for the defenders. Thus they may lower it when they will and raise it

when they will, perhaps after a retreat, transforming the tower then into what,

in effect, is a small, inaccessible, impregnable keep, with its moat of space, a

keep, however, whose bridge might then, suddenly, at any moment of the day or

night, drop again, once more disgorging its onslaught of attackers.

I saw a fellow, aflame, running below, beyond the wall, then he fell and rolled

in the dirt.

The pounding of the ram below continued. It had a different sound now than

before. I did not understand why.

Men leaped back from towers to the wall, their work done on them. Two swung back

on ropes and climbed through the crenelation, almost as though they might have

been Cosians.

I thought I heard the scraping of a ladder against the wall near me. This

startled me, as the battlements here, in the vicinity of the gate, were higher,

surely, then even the long, bending single-pole ladders used along the wall.

I saw more Cosians spew forth from a tower, over its bridge, and fall into tarn

wire, and meet the pikes of defenders. From where I stood I could see, outside

and below, hundreds of Cosians, and their mercenaries and allies. These fellows

were back about a hundred yards. Many seemed at their ease, watching the walls,

the ladders, the grapnel men, what they could see of the fighting.

In places along the wall defenders sought to get their poles under the bridges,

between them and the crenelation, and, using the wall as a fulcrum, to lift the

bridges back up. Sometimes Cosians and defenders, fighting, were on the very

bridges being pried upward. At two towers the poles had thrust the bridges up

and back. Men tried to hold them braced. But other men, Cosians, within, dozens,