Renegades of Gor (47 page)

emotion. He surveyed the scene below him. smoke was rising from somewhere in the

citadel.

“Aemilianus himself agrees to surrender his person into your hands!” called the

officer.

Aemilianus lay back on the litter, on the stone of the landing, his eyes closed.

“Terms!” called the officer. “We ask terms!”

(pg.314) The figure on the height of the wall lifted his hand, a small gesture.

“No!” cried the officer below.

He stepped back, the hand which held the white sheet lowered. “No!” he cried.

At the gesture of the commander on the wall two of the fellows flanking him,

crossbowmen, had set quarrels into their bows.

“No!” cried the officer below, backing away.

I saw the two quarrels leave the bows like metal birds. The snap of the cable

and its vibration carried even to the landing.

“Shield wall!” I cried. “All with shields here! Form the wall!”

Men with shields hurried to where I stood, lifting the shields, overlapping

them.

I forced my way among them, sometimes literally thrusting shields into position.

Quarrels struck about me. I saw in one wild instant the officer who had

addressed the wall now facing us, he having turned about. He had a look of

dismay, of disbelief, on his face. Then he fell, the two quarrels in his chest.

“Back!” I cried to the screaming women and children, “Get as close to the wall

as you can! Back! Back!”

But many fled toward us.

I saw a fellow tumble from the wall, a quarrel in his chest, though it was not

finned. It had apparently been only a sharpened rod. I saw the young fellow who

had had the this penning the people below between the water and the wall,

holding them there, like verr for the slaughter.

I crouched down behind the shield wall. “Take the commander, shielded,” I said,

“to the piers.”

“I will remain here,” said Aemilianus.

(pg.314) “You will command,” I said, “from interior lines.”

“I will stay here!” he said.

I gestured to the bearers of his litter, who lifted it, the two fellows with the

spears thrust through the net, Aemilianus stretched his hand toward me, and I

clasped it. The bearers, then, crouching down, behind four fellows holding

shields between them and the wall, hurried toward the walkway.

The women and children closest to the wall were in little immediate danger from

quarrels. It was hard to strike them with quarrels from the height of the wall.

I looked wildly to the height of the wall. The commander was no longer visible.

I then sent forth men from the shield wall, singly, and in squads, to ferry the

women and children, one at a time, or the women carrying children in their arms,

beneath the cover of their shields, to the walkway. Once they were beyond

quarrel range they hurried back to conduct still others to temporary safety.

There were cries of rage from the wall.

I saw the young crossbowman, under the cover of a shield, held by his friend,

the other young fellow from the front wall, harvesting quarrels from the

walkway. There were fine quarrels, crafted by metal workers, not sharpened rods,

not blunt sticks, fit for stunning birds. He distributed these to cohorts behind

the shield wall, neglecting not to retain some for himself. He was young but his

aim was fearsomely accurate. He had been trained on the wall, in a hundred

assaults.

I looked at the gate. It was at the end of the corridor we had followed, which

had led out, to the landing. Some men were guarding it. Naturally it opened

inward, to the advantage of the citadel. We had no adequate way, given the time

and materials at our disposal, of barring it from the outside.

Now some of the fellows on the wall were hurling stones and tiles down on the

figures huddled below.

I saw one fellow doing this suddenly pitch back, his hands clutching at the

shaft of a quarrel. Its passage upward through his head had been arrested by the

back of his helmet.

The young fellow with the crossbow set another quarrel to his weapon.

(pg.315) I sent some men forward, to try to shield the huddled noncombatants,

before they could be conducted away from the wall, but it was of little use.

Many of the noncombatants broke and ran.

Many were cut down before they could reach our shield wall.

“Stay closer to the wall!” I cried. “Get closer to the wall!”

I saw another fellow, his hands on a large stone, it held over his head, turn

and fall within the rampart, struck by a quarrel.

The young crossbowman set yet another quarrel to his weapon.

“It is harder for them then they would like,” said a fellow.

“They will be pouring through the gate in a moment!” said a fellow.

“And over the wall,” said another grimly.

He had hardly spoken when the interior gate, leading out to the landing, swung

inward, and a stream of Cosians waiting within, a moment later, helmeted, with

shields, thrusting with spears, slashing with swords, pressed out against the

defenders. At the same time a hundred ropes, along the wall, were thrown

downward and men, one after the other, began to lower themselves to the landing.

The women and children then, suddenly, screaming, panic-stricken, fled away from

the walls. The shield wall was disrupted, the frightened women and children

rushing through it, tearing at it, plunging toward the walkway behind us. As

shields were turned and lifted quarrels sped down from the walls and men

screamed, twisting, hit.

“Forward!” I cried, seizing up the shield of a fellow fallen. “To the wall!”

Behind us we heard the screams of women and children, crowding toward the

walkway. We heard, too, the sounds and screams of those swept, as by a flood,

from the landing, and from the sides of the walkway, striking into the water. In

the panic most of the women and children had fled from the wall. Whereas this

more exposed them to the fire from above it also, for us, cleared a killing

space. A fellow dropped from a rope before me, and before he could regain his

feet, he was dead. Another screamed, his (pg.316) legs hacked. Another leapt

from the rope onto the spear of a fellow near me. He was kicked from it. The

spear was then driven into another. Butchery at the foot of the wall occurred.

Some tried to descend with one hand, fighting with the other. Sometimes two men

seized an end of the rope and swung it out and back against the wall, dashing

men from it. Cosians feared then to lower themselves into the waiting blades,

like steel teeth, waiting for them. Some tried to press down, past others who,

seeing what awaited them below, clung ever more desperately to the rope. Men

fell to the foot of the wall, to be cut to pieces. Some tried to climb back up

the rope but could not do so for the others above them. Some, reaching the

crenelation again, were struck back by the jabbing spears of their own men,

screaming at them. In their fall they not unoften took others with them, the

some seventy feet or so, to the landing, the wall lower on the harbor side then

the land side.

Others clung wildly to the ropes, unable to move. Of these flighted quarrels, at

the leisure of calm marksmen, took bloody tolls. Some men below stood even on

bodies trying to reach men above them on ropes. More stones and tiles rained

down. I saw a fellow struck to one knee by a tile hitting on his shield. For a

moment he seemed in shock. Then he struggled up, again, unsteadily, to guard his

yard of wall. More quarrels were flighted over us. They hit the walkway like

hail. “Back to the wall!” I supposed that many of the bowsmen on the wall, from

the safety of the crenelation, were continuing tenaciously, following their

original orders, to seal off, as they could, the walkway, keeping the pen

closed, so to speak. A child ran screaming past me to press himself against the

wall, cowering there. In a moment he had been overtaken by a woman who crouched

down, wrapping him in her cloak. We were buffeted by women.

“Get out of the way!” cried one of our men. A Cosian slid down a rope, shielded

by the women. He thrust one aside, putting his blade into a fellow. Another,

though, from the other side, caught him, and he backed against the wall, then

turned, scratching at it, spitting blood. The child wrapped in the cloak,

soothed by the woman, watched him as he sank to the foot of the wall. The woman

was weeping. A glance (pg.317) about showed that the danger was at the gate

where the Cosians, in their hundreds, were pressing out, swelling forth, onto

the landing. I hurried along the wall, to the left of the gate, as one faces it

from the landing.

“To the gate!” I cried to every other man. “To the gate!” Their swords bloodied

they turned and sped to the vicinity of the gate. I hurried about the fighting

there and detailed men from the right, as well, to the gate. In the layered

leather of my shield bristled quarrels.

I returned to the wall. Few descended now the ropes. It could be seen from the

wall even more clearly than from the landing, I suppose, the steady, blade by

blade, stroke by stroke, expansion of Cosian territory below, its burgeoning

from the gate. When it reached the walkway the walkway would be indeed closed.

That was what I wanted most desperately to prevent. I was not interested in

holding the landing itself, except in so far as it protected the walkway. My

primary objective was to evacuate the landing and withdrew to the piers. Indeed,

I myself would wish to close the walkway once this evacuation was complete. I

seized two fellows and issued orders. I was surrendering the wall. One raced to

the wall to the left, the other to the right. Two lines were formed, one to the

left, one to the right, of fellows with shields. There two lines, converging,

the fighting in the center, by the gate, between them, led to the walkway, and

then out on the walkway, for better than forty yards.

The men in these lines crouched down, their shields between themselves and the

wall, creating an open fence of shields, a poor, broken cover, given the paucity

of their numbers, but better than none. Some fellows near the wall urged the

women and children to stream behind these, trying to reach the piers. Crouching

down many did, and, it seemed, all with children. I saw the one woman, still

clutching the child in her cloak, darting from shield to shield. Other women

chose not, either from fear or prudence, to risk this dangerous run. I saw some

looking up, in fear, at the ropes, still dangling there, and pull away their

veils, thrust back their hoods and put their hands to the collars of their

robes.

A woman clutched at me, then sank to her knees beside me, holding me. I looked

down, angrily. Her eyes, over the veil, looked up at me. It was Lady Claudia, in

the provocative (pg.318) rags that have been designed by the former Lady Publia,

that she might hope to be of interest to Cosians. A free woman, bundled in the

robes of concealment, spit on her as she passed. “Slave!” she hissed. Lady

Claudia looked up at me, clutching me. I pressed her away with my foot, to the

landing. “Traitress!” I said to her. She crawled back to me and brushed aside

her veil, to press her lips piteously to my feet. “To the piers!” I said to her.

She leaped up, sobbing, and fled toward the walkway.

Now that the wall was freed I saw more Cosians descending on ropes. I saw, too,

happily, some small boats from the piers, manned apparently by fishermen and

others, fellows who had made it to the piers earlier, making their way toward

the landing. I had little doubt that these were the results of the commands of

Aemilianus, now out on the piers somewhere, hoping that they might, in their

small way, aid in the evacuation of the landing. To be sure, for the quarrels,

it would take great courage to bring these to the landing. I could see, too, the

backs and fins of sharks crowded about the lower edge of the walkway, near the

landing. They were so thick there it seemed they constituted a surface. It was

almost as though one might walk upon them. Yet I could not have cared to tread

that shifting, treacherous, churning surface. The water, close to the landing,

by the walkway, was white with their thrashing. I think perhaps they attacked

one another as often as those in the water.

I saw more than one woman, struck from the walkway, reaching out, seizing the

walkway, pulled again, screaming to its safety, even in the midst of the frenzy

at its edge. Among the free women running to, and on, the walkway, under the

partial cover of the shields, I saw female slaves, too, barefoot and bare-armed,

in their tiny skirts, their necks in their light steel collars. The heads of the

women who were not hooded I could see were shorn and those of the slave females

cropped the shortest of all. Among those hastening on the walkway I then saw a

naked figure, stumbling, being dragged by a free woman behind her on a leash.

The naked figure’s wrists were thonged together behind her back. Her head was

covered by a hood, improvised from a part of a man’s tunic. The gag would still

be in her mouth. It was she who had been Lady Publia. I recalled that she had

not had her (pg.319) hair shorn until I had done it, with a shaving knife, in