had been taken totally unprepared. It was dangerous to attack us now. In this bold stroke I saw not the hand of Lurius, Ubar of Cos, but of the brilliant Chenbar of Kasra, Ubar of Tyros, the Sea Sleen.
I admired him. He was a good captain.
'What shall we do, Captain?' ask teh officer once more.
'What do you propose?' I asked him, smiling.
He looked at me, startled. 'There is only one thing to do,' he said, 'and that is to ready our ships, take our treasure and slaves aboard, and flee. We are strong, and may take an island on our own, one of the northern islands. There you can be Ubar and we can be your men.'
'Many of the captains,' said another officer, 'are already weighing anchor for the northern islands.'
'And others,' said another, 'for the southern ports.'
'Thassa is broard,' said another officer. 'There are many islands, many ports.' 'And what of Port Kar?' I asked.
'She has no Home Stone,' said one of the men.
I smiled. It was true. Port Kar, of al the cities on Gor, was the only one that had no Home Stone. I did not know if men did not love her because she had on Home Stone, or that she had no Home Stone because men did not love her. The officer had proposed, as clearly as one might, that the city be abandoned to the flames, and to the ravaging seamen of Cos and Tyros.
Port Kar had no Home Stone.
'How many of you think,' I asked, 'that Port Kar has no Home Stone?' The men looked at one another, puzzled. All knew, of course, that she had no Home Stone.
There was silence.
Then, after a time, Tab said, 'I think that she might have one.'
'But,' said I, 'she does not yet have one.'
'No,' said Tab.
'I,' said one of the men, 'wonder what it would be like to live in a ctiy where there is a Home Stone.'
'How does a city obtain a Home Stone?' I asked.
'Men decide that she hasll have one,' said Tab.
'Yes,' I said, 'that is how it is that a city obtains a Home Stone.' The men looked at one another.
'Send the slave boy Fish before me,' I said.
The men looked at one another, not understanding, but one went to fetch the boy. I knew that none of the slaves would have fled. They would not have been able to. The alarm had come in the night, and, at night, in a Gorean household, it is common for the slaves to be confined; certainly in my house, as a wise percaution, I kept my slaves well secured; even Midice, when she had snuggled against me in the love furs, when I had finished with her, was always chained by the right ankle to the slave ring set in the bottom of my couch. Fish would have been chained in the kitchen, side by side with Vina.
The boy, white-faced, alarmed, was shoved into my presence.
'Go outside,' I told him, 'and find a rock, and bring it to me.'
He looked at me.
'Hurry!' I said.
He turned about and ran from the room.
We waited quietly, not speaking, until he returned. He held in his hand a sizable rock, somewhat bigger than my fist. It was a common rock, not very large, and gray and heavy, granular in texture.
I took the rock.
'A knife,' I said.
I was handed a knife.
I cut in the rock the initials, in block Gorean script, of Port Kar. Then I held out in my hand the rock.
I held it up so that the men could see.
'What have I here?' I asked.
Tab said it, and quietly, 'The Home Stone of Port Kar.'
'Now,' said I, facing the man who had told me there was but one choice, that of flight, 'shall we fly?'
He looked at the simple rock, wonderingly. 'I have never had a Home Stone before,' he said.
'Shall we fly?' I asked.
'Not if we have a Home Stone,' he said.
I held up the rock. 'Do we have a Home Stone?' I asked the men.
'I will accept it as my Home Stone,' said the slave boy, Fish. None of the men laughed. The first to accept the Home Stone of Port Kar was only a boy, and a slave. But he had spoken as a Ubar.
'And I!' cried Thurnock, in his great, booming voice.
'And I!' cried Clitus.
'And I!' said Tab.
'And I!' cried the men in the room. And, suddenly, the room was filled with cheers and more than a hundred weapons left their sheaths and saluted the Home Stone of Port Kar. I saw weathered seamen weep and cry out, brandishing their swords. There was joy in that room then such as I had never before seen it. And there was a belonging, and a victory, and a meaningfulness, and cries, and the clashing of weapons, and tears and, in that instant, love.
I cried to Thurnock. 'Release all the slaves! Send them throughout the city, to the wharves, the taverns, the arsenal, the piazzas, the markets, everywhere! Tell them to cry out the news! Tell them to tell everyone that there is a Home Stone in Port Kar!'
Men ran from the room to carry out orders.
'Officers,' I cried, 'to your ships! Form your lines beyond the harbor four pasangs west of the wharves of Sevarius!'
'Thurnock and Clitus,' I said, 'remain in the holding.'
'No!' they cried together.
'Remain!' I ordered.
They looked at one another in dismay.
I could not send them to their deaths. I had no hopes that Port Kar could muster enough ships to fend off the joint fleet of Cos and Tyros.
I turned away from them, and, with the stone, strode from the room. Outside the holding, on the broad promenade before of the holding, bordering on the lakelike courtyard, with the canal gate beyond, I ordered a swift, tharlarionprowed longboat made ready.
Even from where I was I could hear, beyond the holding, the cries that there was a Home Stone in Port Kar, and could see torches being borne along the narrow walks which, in most places, line the canals.
'Ubar,' I heard, and I turned to take Telima in my arms.
'Will you not fly?' she begged, tears in her eyes.
'Listen,' I told her. 'Hear them? Hear what they are crying outside?' 'They are crying that there is a Home Stone in Port Kar,' she said, 'but there is no Home Stone in Port Kar. Everyone knows that.'
'If men will that there be a Home Stone in Port Kar,' I said, 'then in Port Kar there will be a Home Stone.'
'Fly,' she wept.
I kissed her and leaped down into the longboat, which was now beside the promenade.
The men shoved off with the oars.
'To the Council of Captains,' I told them.
The tharlarion head of the craft turned toward the canal gate.
I turned to lift my hand in farewell to Telima. I saw her standing there, near the entryway to my holding, in the garment of the Kettle Slave, under the torches. She lifted her hand.
Then I took my seat in the longboat.
I noted that at one of the oars sat the slave boy Fish.
'It is a man's work that must now be done, Boy,' I said to him.
He drew on the oar. 'I am a man,' he said, 'Captain.'
I saw the girl Vina standing beside Telima.
But Fish did not look back.
The ship nosed through the canals of Port Kar toward the hall of the Council of Captains.
There were torches everywhere, and lights in the windows.
We heard the cry about us sweeping the city, like a spark igniting the hearts of men into flame, that now in Port Kar there was a Home Stone.
A man stood on a narrow walks, a bundle on his back, tied over a spear. 'Is it true, Admiral?' he cried. 'Is it true?'
'If you will have it true,' I told him, 'it will be true.'
He looked at me, wonderingly, and then the tharlarion-prowed longboat glided past him in the canal, leaving him behind.
I looked once behind, and saw that he had thrown the bundle from his spear, and was following us, afoot.
'There is a Home Stone in Port Kar!' he cried.
I saw others stop, and then follow him.
The canals we traversed were crowded, mostly with small tharlarion boats, loaded with goods, moving this way and that. All who could, it seemed, were fleeing the city.
