'They're coming!' I heard cry.
I shook my head, and leaped to my feet.
'My Ubar!' cried Telima. 'This I brought to the keep.'
To my astonishment she handed me the sword that I had brought originally to Port Kar.
I looked at it.
I put aside the admiral's sword.
'Thank you,' I said.
Our lips brushed as I thrust her aside, and ran to the ladder. I slipped the blade into the sheath and began to climb the rungs. I could hear shouts and the feet of men above me.
I climbed the ladder. At my side I now wore the sword that I had brought originally to Port Kar, that which I had carried so many years before, even at the siege of Ar, and in Thama, and in the Nest of Priest-Kings and on the plains of the Wagon Peoples, and in the streets of great Ar itself, when I had seemed to serve Cemus, Master of the House of Cemus, greatest of the slave houses of Ar. It did not have the jeweled hilt or the figured blade of my admiral's sword, but I found it sufficient. Telima had found it among my belongings, and had brought it to the keep, that it might'be waiting for me there. Strangely she had apparent- ly not expected me to do anything other than return to my holding. As I climbed the ladder I was glad that the old blade, the familiar steel, with its memories of another life and time, when I had been Tart Cabot, was at my side. If one must die, how could one better die than with such a blade in hand? We fought on the height of the keep.
The last four arrows of the great yellow bow were fired, and four who threatened us fell from the delta wall beyond the keep, from which they were attempting to cover the climb of the besiegers.
Standing even on the mantelets under the tarn wire, with spears and swords, we thrust at the tarnsmen drop- ping to the wire, leaving go of the ropes to which they had clung.
We heard grappling irons with knotted ropes fly over the parapet, scrape across the stones, and wedge in the crenels. We heard the striking against the walls of the keep of siege poles, like ladders with a single upright, rungs tied transversely on the single axis. We heard the trumpets of the attack, the running feet, the climbing, the clashing of weapons, the shouting of men. Then helmeted heads, eyes wild in the 'Y'-like openings of the helmets, appeared at the crenels, and gauntleted hands and booted feet appeared, and men were swarming at the walls.
I leaped down from the mantelet on which I had stood and flung myself to the wall.
I heard the ringing of the steel of Samos, the cries of the men behind me. I caught sight of the boy, Fish, running past, a spear held over his head in both hands, and heard a horrible cry, long and wailing, ending with the abrupt striking of a body far below on the stones.
'Keep more from coming!' I cried to my men.
They rushed to the walls.
Within the parapets we fought those who had scaled the walls.
I saw one invader climbing down the ladder to the lower levels.
Then he cried out and slipped to the level beneath, his hands off the rungs. I saw Telima's head in the opening. In her teeth was the dagger I had seen. In her right hand, bloody, was the admiral's sword I had discarded.
'Go back!' I cried to her.
I saw Luma and Vina climbing up behind her. They picked up stones from the roof of the keep, and ran to the walls, to hurl them at point-blank range against the men climbing.
Telima, wildly, her two hands on the sword, struck a man from behind in the neck and he fell away from the blade. Then she had lost the blade, as an invader struck it from her hand. He raised his own to strike her but I had my steel beneath his left shoulder blade and had turned again before he could deliver his blow.
I saw a man on the parapet fall screaming backward, struck by a rock as large as his head, hurled from the small hands of Luma. Vina, with a shield, whose weight she could hardly bear, was trying to cover the boy, Fish, as he fought. I saw him drop his man, and turn, seeking another.
I threw a man whom I had struck, even before he died, over the parapet, striking another, who, clinging desperately to the siege pole, carried it back in a long arc with him as he fell. I saw one of my former slaves, with a spear shaft, beating another man from the wall.
Samos thrust his blade into the 'Y'-shaped opening of a helmet, parried a spear thrust from his body, and met the steel of another man.
We heard the trumpet of retreat, and killed six as they tried to escape back over the wall.
We, panting, bloody, looked about ourselves.
'The next attack,' said Samos, indifferently, 'will be the last.'
Samos survived, and I, and the boy, Fish, and the three girls, and, beyond these, other than the dancer, Sandra, who had remained below, only five men, three who had come to my holding with Samos, and two of my own, one a simple mercenary, one who had once been a slave.
I looked out over the delta.
We heard, behind walls, within the holding, the rnarshalling of men, the click of arms. It would not, this time, be a long wait.
I went to Samos. 'I wish you well,' I said to him. The heavy, squarish face regarded me, still so much the countenance of the predator. Then he looked away. 'I, too,' said he, 'wish you well, Warrior.'
He seemed embarrassed to say what he had. I wondered why he had called me Warrior.
I took Telima in my arms. 'When they. come again,' I said, 'hide below. If you fight you will doubtless be slain. When they come below, submit to them. They may spare you.' And then I looked to Vina and Luma. 'You, also,' I said. 'Do not mix in the matters of men.'
Vina looked to the boy, Fish.
He nodded. 'Yes,' he saiid, 'go below.'
'I, for one,' said Telima, 'find it stuffy below.'
'I, too,' smiled Luma.
'Yes,' said Vina, firmly 'It is very stuffy below.'
'Very well,' I said, 'then it will be necessary, before the next attack, to bind you to the foot of the ladder below.'
'I think,' said Samos, looking over the parapet, 'you will not have time for that.' We heard the trumpets signaling a new attack. We heard the rush of hundreds of feet on the stones below.
'Go below!' I cried to the girls.
They stood away, feet fixed apart, in- the garments of slaves, obdurate, rebellious.
'We acknowledge ourselves your slave girls!' screamed Telima. 'If we do not please you, beat us or slay us!'
A crossbow quarrel swept overhead. 'Go below!' screamed Fish to Vina. 'If I do not please you,' she screamed, 'beat me or kilI me!'
He kissed her swiftly, and turned to defend a wall.
The girls took up stones and swords, and stood beside us.
'Good-bye, my Ubar,' said Telima.
'Farewell,' said I, 'Ubara.'
With a great cry the hundreds of men swarmed to the foot of the keep. Again we heard the striking against the walls of siege poles. Again irons, on their ropes, looped over the parapet wall. And across from the keep, on the delta wall, boldly, there stood crossbowmen, now without fear, for our arrows and bolts were gone, to cover the climbing men.
We heard the men nearing us, on the other side of the wall, the scraping of swords and spears on the vertical stones of the keep.
On the delta wall, opposite, I saw the leader of the ssbowmen, standing even on the parapet of the delta wall itself, directing his men.
I heard the climbers approaching even more closely. Then, to my amazement, I saw something, like a streak of light, leap from the delta behind the wall, and the leader of the crossbowmen spun about as though struck with a war hammer and dropped, inert, from the wall. 'You're hurting me!' cried Telima.
My hand clutched her arm.
I leaped to my feet.
'Stay down!' cried Samos.
Suddenly more than a hundred irons with ropes struck the delta wall, wedging in the crenels, and I saw the irons tighten in the crenels and strain with the weight on them. One of the crossbowmen looked over the delta wall and flew backwards off the wall, his hands not reaching his head. Protruding from his forehead, its pile stopped by the metal helmet in the back, was the long shaft of an arrow, one that could be only from the peasant bow.
We saw crossbowmen fleeing from the wall.
We heard the men climbing closer on the siege poles. Then, swarming over the delta wall, were hundreds of men.
'Rencers!' I cried.
But each of these men, over his back, carried a peasant bow. In perfect order they stood in line within the para- pet on the delta wall. As one their arrows leaped to the string, as one the great bows bent, and I saw Ho-Hak on the height of the wall bring down his arm with a cry, and I saw, like sheets of oblique rain, the torrent of gull- feathered shafts leap toward the keep. And I saw, too, on the wall, with Ho-Hak, Thurnock, the Peasant, with his bow, and beside him, with net and trident, Clitus. There was a great screaming from the siege ladders, and I heard men crying out with death, and terror, and heard the scraping of the ladders and then their falling back, showering bodies on those crowded below, waiting to scale them. Again and again the great line blasted shafts of pile-tipped tem-wood into those packed at the foot of the keep. And then the invaders began to scatter and run, but each archer picked his target, and few there were who reached cover other than the side of the keep away from the archers. And now archers were running down the side walls, and leaping to other roofs, that every point at the foot of the keep might be within the assailing orbit of the string-flung missiles, and the girls, and the men, too, flung stones from the top of the keep down on the men trying to hide behind it, and then, again, the invaders scattered, running back toward the holding. For an instant, white- faced, wild, I saw below Lysias, with his helmet with its crest of sleen hair, and beside him, with the string of pearls of the Vosk sorp about his forehead, the rencer Henrak, who had, long ago, betrayed the rencers for the gold of Port Kar. And behind them, in a rich swirling cloak of the fur of the white, spotted sea sleen, sword in hand, looking wildly about, was another man, one I did not know.
'It is Claudius!' cried the boy, Fish, beside me. 'Claudius!'
So that, I thought, was Claudius, who had been regent for Henrius Sevarius, and who, doubtless, had attempted to have him killed.
