Chapter 12
In the Tarn's Nest
MY WRISTS AND ANKLES WERE bound to a hollow, floating frame. The ropes sawed into my flesh as the weight of my body drew on them. I turned my head, sick to my stomach, and threw up into the turbid waters of the Vosk. I blinked my eyes against the hot sun and tried to move my wrists and ankles.
A voice said, 'He's awake.'
Dimly I felt spear butts thrust against the side of the hollow frame, ready to edge it out into the current.
I cleared my head as best I could, and into my uncertain field of vision moved a dark object, which became the black helmet of a member of the Caste of Assassins. Slowly, with a stylized movement, the helmet was lifted, and I found myself staring up into a gray, lean, cruel face, a face that might have been made of metal. The eyes were inscrutable, as if they had been made of glass or stone and set artificially in that metallic mask of a countenance.
'I am Pa-Kur,' said the man.
It was he, the Master Assassin of Ar, leader of the assembled horde.
'We meet again,' I said.
The eyes, like glass or stone, revealed nothing.
'The cylinder at Ko-ro-ba,' I said. 'The crossbow.'
He said nothing.
'You failed to kill me that time,' I taunted. 'Perhaps you would care to risk another shot now. Perhaps the mark would be more suited to your skills.'
The men behind Pa-Kur muttered at my impudence. He himself showed no impatience.
'My weapon,' he said, simply extending his hand. A crossbow was immediately placed in his grip. It was a large steel bow, wound and set, the iron quarrel placed in the guide.
I prepared to welcome the bolt flashing through my body. I was curious to know if I would be conscious of its strike. Pa-Kur raised his hand with an imperious gesture. From somewhere I saw a small, round object sailing high into the air, out over the river. It was a tarn disk hurled by one of Pa-Kur's men. Just as the tiny object, black against the blue sky, reached its apogee, I heard the click of the trigger, the vibration of the string, and the swift hiss of the quarrel. Before the tare disk could. begin its fall, the quarrel pierced it, carrying it, I would judge, some two hundred and fifty yards out into the river. The men of Pa-Kur stamped their feet in the sand and clanged their spears on their shields.
'I spoke as a fool,' I said to Pa-Kur.
'And you will die the death of a fool,' he said. He spoke with no trace of anger or emotion of any kind.
He motioned to the men to thrust the frame out into the river, where it would be swept away.
'Wait,' I said, 'I ask your favor.' The words camehard.
Pa-Kur gestured to the men to desist.
'What have you done with the girl?'
'She is Talena, daughter of the Ubar Marlenus,' said Pa-Kur. 'She will rule in Ar as my queen.'
'She would die first,' I said.
'She has accepted me,' said Pa-Kur, 'and will rule by my side.' The stone eyes regarded me, expressionless.
'It was her wish that you die the death of a villain,' he said, 'on the Frame of Humiliation, unworthy to stain our weapons.'
I closed my eyes. I should have known that the proud Talena, daughter of a Ubar, would leap at the first chance to return to power in Ar, even though it be at the head of a plundering host of brigands. And I, her protector, was now to be discarded. Indeed, the Frame of Humiliation would be ample vengeance to satisfy even Talena for the indignities she had suffered at my hands. It, if anything, would wipe out forever from her mind the offensive memory that she had once needed my help and had pretended to love me.
Then, each of the men of Pa-Kur, as is the custom before a frame is surrendered to the waters of the Vosk, spit on my body. Lastly, Pa-Kur spit in his hand and then placed his hand on my chest. 'Were it not for the daughter of Marlenus,' said Pa-Kur, his metallic face as placid as the quicksilver behind a mirror, 'I would have slain you honorably. That I swear by the black helmet of my caste.'
'I believe you,' I said, my voice choked, no longer caring if I lived or died.
The spear butts pressed against the frame, shoving it away from the bank. The current soon caught it, and it began to spin in slow circles farther and farther out into the midst of that vast force of nature called the Vosk.
The death would not be a pleasant one. Bound helplessly, without food or water, my own body would torture me by its weight dragging on the hand and ankle ropes, suspended a few inches above the roiling, muddy surface under the fiery sun. I knew that I would not, some days hence, reach the delta of the Vosk and the cities in the delta except perhaps as a bound corpse, withered by exposure and the lack of water. Indeed, it was unlikely my body would reach the delta at all. It was far more likely that one of the water lizards of the Vosk or one of the great hook beaked turtles of the river would seize my body and drag it and the frame under the water, destroying me in the mud below. There was also the chance that a wild taro might swoop down and feed on the helpless living morsel fastened to that degrading frame. Of one thing I was certain there would be no human assistance or even pity, for the poor wretches on the frames are none but villains, betrayers, and blasphemers against the Priest-Kings, and it is a sacrilegious act even to consider terminating their sufferings.
My wrists and ankles had turned white and were numb. The oppressive, blinding glare of the sun, the heavy weight of its heat bore down on me. My throat was parched, and, hanging only an inch or so above the Vosk, I burned with thirst. Thoughts, like prodding needles, vexed my brain. The image of the treacherous, beautiful Talena, in her dancing silks, as she had lain in my arms, tormented me — she who would gladly give her kisses to the cold Pa-Kur for a place on the throne of Ar, she whose implacable hatred had sent me to this terrible death, not even permitting me the honor of a warrior's end. I wanted to hate her — so much I wanted to hate her — but I found that I could not. I had come to love her. In the glade by the swamp forests, in the grain fields of the empire, on the great highway of Ar, in the regal, exotic caravan of Mintar, I had found the woman I loved, a scion of a barbaric race on a remote and unknown world.
The night came with infinite slowness, but at last the blinding sun was gone and I welcomed the chill, windy darkness. The water lapped against the side of the frame, the stars sparkled above in frosty detachment. Once, to my horror, a scaled body crested under the frame, its. glistening hide rubbing my body as it snapped its tail and suddenly darted beneath the water. It apparently was not carnivorous. Oddly enough, I cried out to the stars in joy, still clinging to life, unwilling to lament the fact that my miseries must now be prolonged.
The sun swept into the sky again, and my second day on the Vosk began. I remember being afraid that I would never be able to use my hands and feet again, that they would never withstand the punishment of the ropes. Then I remember laughing foolishly, like a madman, when I considered that it wouldn't matter, that I would never have any further use for them.
Perhaps it was my wild, almost demented laughter that attracted the tare. I saw him coming, making his silent strike with the sun at his back, his talons extended like hooks. Savagely those vast talons struck and closed on my body, forcing the frame for an instant beneath the water, then the tam was beating the air angrily with his wings, struggling to lift his prey, and suddenly both myself and the heavy frame were pulled free from the water. The sudden weight of the frame swinging against my roped wrists and ankles, while the talons of the bird gripped my body, almost tore me apart. Then, mercifully, the ropes, not meant to sustain the weight of the heavy frame, broke loose, and the tam triumphantly climbed skyward, still clutching me in his wild talons.
I would have a few moments more of life, the same brief reprieve nature grants the mouse carried by the hawk to its nest; then on some barren crag my body would be torn to pieces by the beast whose prey I was. The taro, a brown tarn with a black crest like most wild tarns, streaked for that vague, distant smudge I knew marked the escarpments of some mountain wilderness. The Vosk became a broad, glimmering ribbon in the distance.
Far below, I could see that the burned, dead Margin of Desolation was dotted here and there with patches of green, where some handfuls of seed had blindly asserted themselves, reclaiming something of that devastated
