Swordsmen of Gor

“A female,” said another.

“Was she then freed?” I asked.

Several of the men laughed.

“Forgive me,” I said. “I spoke foolishly.”

Gorean slaves were seldom freed. Indeed, there is a saying that only a fool frees a slave girl.

“Soon others recognized him, as well,” said another.

“Then he was concealed by partisans,” said another.

“He recovered his memory,” I said.

“It was strange,” said another.

“We know only the stories,” said another.

“He was like a child, it seems,” said another, “a powerful, dangerous child. He listened to what he was told. He learned what had occurred in the city, as it was patiently explained to him. He grew sorrowful, and then, slowly, angry. Then he said, ‘But where is Marlenus?’”

“This elated his sheltering partisans,” said another, “that he could recall that name. ‘Where is Marlenus?’ he asked, again, and again. ‘He must return,’ he was told. ‘Where is he?’ he asked. ‘In the city, it is thought,’ he was told.”

“He did not know himself Marlenus?” I said.

“No,” said one of the men.

“Continue,” I said.

“‘Who rules in Ar?’ he asked,” said the bearded fellow.

“‘Truly, or in name?’ inquired his interlocutor,” said another. “And he wished to know in truth who ruled, and he was told Lurius of Jad, in far Cos, but through Myron, the polemarkos, with the collusion of Seremides, master of the Taurentians, the palace guard. And then he asked who then ruled in name, and men feared to tell him, that it was she who had once been his daughter, before her dishonoring, and disownment, for the slur she had once cast on his honor.”

I knew something of this.

She had once been captured and enslaved by the tarnsman, Rask, of Treve, but he, having become, however unaccountably, enamored of a blond barbarian slave named El-in-or, gave her to Verna, a leader of Panther Girls, who took her to the northern forests. Later, on the northern coast, she was exposed for sale. There she had come within the cognizance of a slaver, Samos, first Captain in the Council of Captains of Port Kar. Eager to escape the toils of her cruel mistresses, and hoping that she might be returned to civilization, and even freed, she had begged him to buy her. And thusly had she performed a slave’s act, begging to be purchased, for in this act one acknowledges oneself purchasable, and thus a slave. I, later, at the time unable to walk, and muchly paralyzed by the poison of Sullius Maximus, encountered her in the house of Samos. I had had her freed and returned to Ar. It was by then common knowledge how she had been slave, and in what fashion she had come into the keeping of Samos. The honor and pride of a man such as Marlenus of Ar, Ubar of Ar, Ubar of Ubars, refused to sustain indignities of this enormity. Such affronts could not be brooked by an honor such as his. What an insult, profound and grievous, was this to his blood, and to the throne of Ar! He thus disowned her as his daughter, and had had her sequestered in the Central Cylinder, that her shame might be concealed from the city and the world.

Had she not been free when she was delivered to Ar it is quite probable she would have been whipped and sold out of the city.

Had she, when free, and not slave, been guilty of a stain on the honor of Ar she might well have been publicly impaled.

“But he asked, again, and again, in his slow, childlike way, who now, be it only in name, ruled in Ar,” said one of the men on the beach, “and the partisans took council, and decided to risk the disclosure, though they knew not what effect it might have.”

“‘Talena,’ he was told,” said another, “’daughter of Marlenus of Ar.’”

“Then,” said another, “as the story has it, he lifted his head, and his whole mien changed, and his body seemed to become larger and filled with power, and his eyes took on a strange, fierce, wicked gleam, and he said, quietly, and not in his slow, innocent, puzzled, childlike voice, but in another voice, a voice like iron and ice, ‘Marlenus of Ar has no daughter.’”

“The partisans looked to one another, their eyes alight,” said a man.

“It is then,” said another, “as the story goes, that he stood upright amongst the partisans, like a larl amongst panthers, and said, ‘Bring me a banner of Ar.’”

“‘Who are you?’ he was asked, ‘that you dare ask for a banner of Ar?’” said another. “’They have been forbidden,’ said a partisan. ‘They are concealed.’”

“‘Bring me a banner,’ he said, ‘one large, and broad.’ ‘Furled or unfurled?’ he was asked. ‘Furled,’ he said, ‘that it may then be unfurled.’”

“The partisans then gasped, realizing who it was who then stood amongst them.”

“‘Who would dare unfurl the banner of Ar?’ he was asked.”

“‘I,’ he said, ‘Marlenus, Ubar of Ar.’”

The unfurling of a furled banner, in given circumstances, when this is accomplished deliberately, slowly, and ritualistically, is far more than a sign of war; it is a sign of unappeasable purpose, of unmitigated intent, of implacable resolution. More than once the surrender of cities has not been accepted, but they have been leveled and burned, simply because a banner had been unfurled.

“‘How many swords have we?’ he is said to have asked, and then demanded maps of the city, that he might be shown the locations of intrusive garrisons. The men about him he appointed high officers, by his word alone.”

This was possible, as the word of the Ubar takes precedence over councils.

“Had we known Marlenus was in the city,” said a man, “we should have withdrawn.”

“Word,” said another, “was soon in the streets, and it swept from insula to insula, and to the lesser cylinders.”

“But we were not immediately aware of this,” said a man. “Surely the great bar had not yet rung, signaling the rising.”

“They planned swiftly, and well,” said another fellow, shuddering.

“Weapons had been forbidden to the populace,” said another, but many had been concealed, and there is little which may not figure as a weapon, axes and hammers, the implements of agriculture, planks, poles and sticks, the very stones of the streets.”

I nodded. A tyrant state always wishes to disarm the public, for it understands its secret intents with respect to that public, and wants it at its mercy. This disarming is always, of course, alleged to be in the public’s best interest, as though the public would be safest when least capable of defending itself.

“Many of Ar, particularly in the higher, richer cylinders,” said a fellow, “had collaborated with us, had abetted the occupation, had shared in the looting of the city.”

I supposed that was true. There were always such, in all cities, attentive to the directions of shifting winds.

“Proscription lists had been prepared,” said another.

I shuddered.

“It was safer to be in the blue of a Cosian regular,” laughed a man, “than in the satin robes of traitors.”

I feared then for Talena, arrogant traitress, puppet Ubara, occupant of the throne on the sufferance of invaders, sullier of her Home Stone.

Marlenus had returned!

“We awakened at dawn,” said a man, “startled, bewildered, to the ringing of the great bar, and rushed into the streets, to be met with steel and stones. They swarmed from everywhere, struck from everywhere. An arsenal had been seized. The cry of battle, ‘For Glorious Ar,’ was all about us. We cut down what we could, but they were everywhere, screaming, rushing at us. A fellow would kill two, and have his throat cut by a third.”

“We were outnumbered, dozens to one,” said a man.

“They were maddened, merciless,” said another. “Like starving blood-maddened sleen!”

“They had planned well,” said another. “A thousand avenues of escape were closed, even to the spilling of walls into the streets. We lost many, surmounting such obstacles, fighting our way toward the open.”