landing.”
“Does one know whom to trust?” I asked.
“No,” said Cabot.
“There may be enemies in the castle of Lord Temmu,” I said.
“It is not impossible,” said Cabot. “I gather from Lords Okimoto and Nishida that their movements in the war, in the fighting, were often anticipated. One fears their plans were often as clear to the enemy as to themselves.”
“I see,” I said.
“To be sure,” said Cabot, “a brilliant strategist, an acute tactician, can often anticipate an opponent’s moves. In the kaissa of steel such an opponent is quite dangerous.”
“Perhaps one such as Lord Yamada?” I said.
“Perhaps,” said Cabot.
“There may be enemies aboard, as well,” I said.
“Quite possibly,” said Cabot.
“Enemies even from the original camp?” I asked.
“Possibly,” he said.
“What is the power here, the forces?” I asked.
“I gather,” said Cabot, “that the forces with whom Lords Okimoto and Nishida are aligned are relatively few, and that little remains to Lord Temmu other than the great holding and, doubtless, some adjacent lands within its purview, which might be defended from the holding, and perhaps, as well, some obscure mountain valleys, or such, terraced, on which the holding may in part depend, valleys perhaps protected as much by the inaccessibility of the terrain as the castle’s armsmen, its
“What hope is there of reversing the tides of war?” I asked.
“Very little,” said Cabot.
“That may do for the Pani,” I said, “but it is not likely to do for others.”
“True,” said Cabot, grimly.
“I would like to speak my mind clearly,” I said. “I assume I may do so.”
“Certainly,” said Cabot.
“Most rational men,” I said, “will be reluctant to commit themselves to a lost cause, to expend themselves in such a cause, particularly if the cause is not their own. Our men, who are mercenaries, and hired as such, save for the Pani, prefer to choose their wars intelligently, to weigh odds, to balance gold carefully against blood, to fight for a presumed victory, with loot and pay in the offing, not for defeat, not for the chains of a slave, not for a likely death in a strange land, amongst an alien folk.”
“These things are clear to me,” said Cabot.
“On the beach,” I said, “they have met the foe, and have some sense of his prowess and numbers.”
“True,” said Cabot.
“Muchly then,” I said, “have the odds shifted.”
“Doubtless,” said Cabot.
“Further,” I said, “the lockers of the men, their kits, their sea bags, from the despoiling of a hundred ships in the Vine Sea, already burst with treasure, with silver, with gold, silk, pearls, and jewels.”
“That is my understanding, at least substantially,” said Cabot.
“Have they not then already been paid, have they not already acquired more loot than war might augur?”
“Particularly,” said Cabot, “if the war seems foolish and dangerous, and the prospects of victory thin, if not hopeless.”
“I do not think the men will fight,” I said.
“They may have to,” said Cabot.
“I do not understand,” I said.
“They may have no choice,” he said.
“I do not understand,” I said.
“I think,” said Cabot, “we can better see the holding of Lord Temmu now.”
“Yes,” I said. It was more toward noon now, and the fog had been largely dispelled.
“We should enter the cove by nightfall,” said Cabot. “Lords Okimoto and Nishida will go ashore, to greet Lord Temmu, to gain intelligence, and prepare for the sheltering of tarns. In the morning, most of the men will follow, including the slaves, suitably coffled. Weapons and supplies will be also disembarked. Little will be left on the ship.”
“The treasure?” I said.
“That is to remain on the ship,” said Cabot, “at least for now.”
“I see,” I said.
Some men will betray a Home Stone before a tarn disk, being more willing to forsake the one than the other. So simple an arrangement can minimize desertion. To be sure, it is one thing to desert in Victoria, in Market of Semris, in Besnit, in Temos, in Ar, and quite another at the World’s End.
“Tonight, under the cover of darkness,” said Cabot, “the tarns will be flown.”
“The treasure remains on board?”
“Yes.”
“Our voyage then is ended?” I said.
“It seems so,” said Cabot.
“Men will soon think in terms of another,” I said.
“Lords Okimoto and Nishida,” said Cabot, “are well aware of that.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The stone-set walls were high, on both sides of the steep, winding, cobbled trail, some ten feet in width, better than a pasang in length, leading tortuously upward to the castle of Lord Temmu.
Ashore the men were armed.
Some Pani folk, shuffling, heads down, ill-clad, had threaded their way past us to where lay the wharf, against which, last night, we had moored the great ship. These new Pani, so different from the aloof, proud warriors with which we had become familiar, seemed scarcely to exist. At the wharf, under the direction of higher Pani, in trip after trip, they would gather burdens, hundreds of bundles, bails, and boxes. These were lowered in nets, swung out by booms, to the wharf. These, shouldered, or hung on poles, or sometimes on yokes, they began to transport up the trail. The only paraphernalia we were allowed to carry were weapons and accouterments. The lower Pani, so to speak, were discouraged from touching such things. I had earlier shouldered a box, but one of the ship’s Pani warned me to leave that for others. I gathered we were armsmen, and not the bearers of burdens. Perhaps Lord Temmu wished it to be clear that warriors had landed, and not porters. The Pani world was one of complex arrangements and degrees, and many proprieties, and formalities, at least to me, were mysterious. Whereas all natural societies are characterized by rank, distance, and hierarchy, acknowledged or not, I think there is no Gorean caste, from the highest to the lowest, which does not regard itself as the equal or superior, in one way or another, to that of every other. Where would society be without the Builders, the Merchants, the Metal Workers, the Cloth Workers, the Wood Workers, the Leather Workers, the Peasant, with the great bow, the ox on whom the Home Stone rests?
The trail upward was steep.
I was with the second contingent landed, some two hundred men, making its way down the ropes and rail nets.
Tarl Cabot, commander of the tarn cavalry, and his men, were not with us. Last night, under the cover of darkness, the tarns had been flown, to some undisclosed location.
