that the blades of the pincers might strike simultaneously, as though wielded by a single hand and will.
I let the builders' glass, attached to the strap about my shoulder, fall to my side. I crammed the last of the tarsk meat into my mouth and, chewing, climbed down the narrow rope ladder, fastened to the deck near the mast well. I leaped from the ladder to the deck of the Doma and waved my hand to Antisthenes, some hundred yards away on the stem castle of the command ship of the reserves. He, in turn, ran a flag up the halyard running to the height of the stem turret.
I climbed to my own stem castle.
To cries of wonder from my men, and those of other ships nearby, the deck planking of the ten round ships was lifted and thrown aside.
The tam is a land bird, generally of mountainous origin, though there are brightly-plumaged jungle tarns. The tarns crowded into the holds of the round ships were hooded. Feeling the wind and the cold suddenly strike them they threw back their heads and beat their wings, pulled against the chains that bound them to the keel timbers.
One was unhooded, the straps that bound its beak un- buckled.
It uttered its scream, that pierced even the freezing winds of Thassa. Men shook with fear.
It is extremely difficult to take a tarn far out over the water.
I did not know if they could be controlled at sea.
Generally even tarn goads cannot drive them from the sight of land. I took the glass of the builders, and its strap, from my shoulder. I handed them to a seaman.
'Lower a longboat,' I told an officer.
'in this sea?'
'Hurry!' I cried.
The boat was lowered to the water. At one of the oars, as though he belonged there, was the slave boy Fish. The oar-master took the longboat's tiller. We approached the first of the round ships on its leeward side.
Soon I stood on the deck of the round ship.
'You are Terence,' I asked, 'mercenary captain of Treve?'
The man nodded.
Treve is a bandit city, high among the crags of the lari-prowled Voltai. Most men do not even know its location. Once the tamsmen of Treve had withstood the tarn cavalries of even Ar. In Treve they do not grow their own food but, in the fall, raid the harvests of others. They live by rapine and plunder. The men of Treve are said to be among the proudest and most ruthless on Gor. They are most fond of danger and free women, whom they bind and, steal from civilized cities to carry to their mountain fair as slave girls. It is said the city can be reached only on tarnback. I had once known a girl from Treve. Her name laad been Vika.
'You have, in the ten round ships,' I said, 'one hundred tarns, with riders.' 'Yes,' said he, 'and, as you asked, with each tam a knotted rope and five of the seamen of Port Kar.'
I looked down into the open hold of the round ship. The wicked, curved, scimitarlike beak of the unhooded tarn lifted itself. Its eyes blazed. It looked like a good bird. I regretted that it was not Ubar of the Skies. It was a reddish brown tam, a fairly common coloring for the great birds. Mine own had been black-plumaged, a giant tam, glossy, his great talons shod with steel, a bird bred for speed and war, a bird who had been, in his primitive, wild way, my friend. I had driven him from the Sardar.
'I will have a hundred stone of gold for the use of these birds and my men,' said Terence of Treve.
'You shall have it,' I said.
'I wish payment now,' said the captain of Treve.
I whipped my blade from its sheath, angrily, and held it to his throat. 'My pledge is steel,' I said.
Terence smiled. 'We of Treve' he said, 'understand such a pledge.'
I lowered the blade.
'Of all the tarnsmen in Port Kar,' I said, 'and of an the captains, you alone have accepted the risks of this venture, the use of tams at sea.'
There was one other who had been in Port Kar, whom I thought might, too, have undertaken the risks, but he, with his thousand men, had not been in the city for several weeks. I speak of lean, scarred Ha-Keel, who wore about his neck, on a golden chain, a worn tarn disk, set with diamonds, of the city of Ar. He had cut a throat for that coin, to buy silks and perfumes for a woman, but one who fled with another man; Ha-Keel had hunted them, slain in combat the man and sold the woman into slavery. He had been unable to return to Ar. His forces were now engaged, I had learned, by the city of Tor, to quail incursions by tarn-riding desert tribesmen. The services of Ha-Keel and his men were available to the highest bid- der. I knew he had once, through agents, served the Others, not Priest-Kings, who contested surreptitiously for this world, and ours. I had met Ha-Keel at a house in Turia, the house of Saphrar, a Merchant.
'I will want the hundred stone,' said Terence, 'regardless of the outcome of your plan.'
'Of course,' I said. Then I regarded him. 'A hundred stone,' I said, 'though a high price, seems small enough considering the risks you will encounter. It is hard for me to believe that you ride only for a hundred stone of gold. And I know that the Home Stone of Port Kar is not yours.'
'We are of Treve,' said Terence. 'Give me a tarn goad,' I said.
He handed me one of the instruments.
I threw off the robes of the Admiral. I accepted a wind scarf from another man. It had begun to sleet now.
The tarn can scarcely be taken from the sight of land. Even driven by tarn goads he will rebel. These tarns had been hooded. Whereas their instincts apparently tend to keep them within the sight of land, I did not know what would be the case if they were unhooded at sea, and there was no land to be found. Perhaps they would not leave the ship. Perhaps they would go mad with rage or fear. I knew tarns had destroyed riders who had attempted to ride them out Over Thassa from the shore. But I hoped that the tarns, finding themselves out of the sight of land, might accommodate themselves to the experience. I was hoping, that, in the strange intelligence of animals, it would be the departure from land, and not the mere positioning of being out of the sight of land, that would be counter-instinctual for the great birds.
Doubtless I would soon know.
I leaped down to the saddle of the unhooded tarn. It screamed as I fastened the broad purple safety strap. The tarn goad was looped about my right wrist. I wrapped the wind scarf about my face.
'If I can control the bird,' I said, 'follow me, and keep the instructions I have given you.'
'Let me ride first,' said Terence of Treve.
I smiled. Why would one who had been a tamsman of Ko-ro-ba, the Towers of the Morning, let one of Treve, a traditional enemy, take the saddle of a tam before him? it would not do, of course, to tell him this.
'No,' I said.
There was a pair of slave manages wrapped about the pommel of the saddle, also a length of rope. These things I thrust in my belt.
I gestured and the tam hobble, fastening the right foot of the great bird to a huge bolt set in the ship's keel, was opened.
I drew on the one-strap.
To my delight the tarn, with a snap of its wings, leaped from the hold. He stood on the deck of the round ship, opening and closing his wings, looking about himself, and then threw bark his head and screamed. The other tarns below in the hold, some ten of them, shifted and rattled their hobbles.
The sleet struck down cutting my face.
I drew again on the one-strap and again the bird's wings snapped, and he was on the long, sloping yard on the round ship's foremast.
His head was very high and every nerve in his body seemed alert, but puzzled. He looked about himself.
I did not hurry the bird.
I slapped the side of its neck, and spoke to it, gently, confidently. I drew on the one-strap. The bird did not move. His talons clutched the sloping yard.
I did not use the tarn goad.
I waited for some time, stroking it, and talking to it.
And then, suddenly, I gave a cry and jerked on the one-strap and the bird, by training and instinct, flung itself into the sleeting wind and began to climb the dark, running sky.
I was again on tamback!
The bird climbed until I released the one-strap and then it began to circle. Its movements were as sure and as swift as though it might have been over the familiar crags of the Voltai or the canals of Port Kar.
I tested its responses to the straps. They were im- mediate and eager. And suddenly I realized that the bird was trembling with excitement and pleasure, finding itself swift and alive and strong in a new world to his senses. Already, below me, I saw tarns being unhooded, and the straps that bound their beaks being unbuckled, and cast aside. Riders were climbing into the saddles. I saw tarns leaping to the decks of the round ships, and I saw the knotted ropes being attached to the saddles, and picked seamen, experts with the sword, five to a rope, taking their positions. And besides these seamen, each tarnsman, tied to his saddle, carried a shielded, protected ship's lantern, lighted, and, in the pockets of leather aprons, tied together and thrown across the saddles numerous clay flasks, corked with rags. These flasks I knew, were filled with tharlarion oil, and the rags that corked them had been soaked in the same substance.
Soon, behind me, there were some hundred tarnsmen, and below each, dangling, hanging to the knotted ropes, were five picked men.
I saw that the fleets of my fifth wave, the two fleets of forty ships apiece, under the command of Chung and Nigel, were well engaged in their strikes on the flanks of the great fleet.
At this time, before their numbers could have been well ascertained by the enemy, before the enemy could be much aware of anything more than the unexpected flanking attacks, I, followed by the tarnsmen, with the picked seamen, darted through the sleeting, windy skies over the locked fleets.
In the turmoil below, primarily of tam ships locked in battle, and the great round ships trying to close with enemy tam ships, I saw, protected by ten tam ships on each side, and ten before and ten behind, the flagship of Cos and Tyros. It was a great sNp, painted in the yellow of Tyros, with more than two hundred oarsmen.
It was the ship of Chenbar. It would carry, besides its oarsmen, who were all free, fighting men, some one hundred bowmen, and another hundred men, seamen, artillery men, auxiliary personnel and officers.
I drew on the four-strap. Almost instantly the ship was the center of a great beating of wings and descending tams.
My own tarn landed on the stern castle itself, and I leaped from its back. I whipped the sword from its sheath. Startled, Chenbar himself, LJbar of Tyros, the Sea
