Dar-Kosis Pit, the Afflicted are not allowed to depart. Finding this poor fellow in the Voltai, so far from the natural routes and fertile areas of Gor, I suspected he might have escaped, if that was possible, from one of the Pits.
'What is your name?' I asked.
'I am of the Afflicted,' said the weird, cringing figure. 'The Afflicted are dead. The dead are nameless.' The voice was little more than a hoarse whisper.
I was glad that it was night and that the hood of the man was drawn, for I had no desire to look on what pieces of flesh might still cling to his skull.
'Did you escape from one of the Dar-Kosis Pits?' I asked.
The man seemed to cringe even more.
'You are safe with me,' I said. I gestured to the tare, which was impatiently opening and closing his wings. 'Hurry. There are more larls about.'
'The Holy Disease,' the man protested, pointing into the hideously dark recesses of his drawn hood.
'I can't leave you here to die,' I said. I shivered at the thought of taking this dread creature, this whispering corpse, with me. I feared the disease as I had not feared the larl, but I could not leave him here in the mountains to fall prey to one beast or another.
The man cackled a thin, whining noise. 'I am already dead,' he laughed insanely. 'I am of the Afflicted.' Again the weird cackle came from the folds of the yellow shroud. 'Would you like the Holy Disease?' he asked, stretching out one hand in the darkness, as if trying to clutch my hand.
I drew back my hand in horror.
The thing stumbled forward, reaching for me, and fell to the ground with a tiny, moaning sound. It sat on the ground, wrapped in its yellow cerements — a mound of decay and desolation under the three Gorean moons. It rocked back and forth, uttering mad little noises, as if grieving or whimpering.
From perhaps a pasang away I heard the frustrated roar of a larl, probably one of the companions of the beast I had killed, puzzled about the failure of the hunt.
'Get up,' I said. 'There isn't much time.'
'Help me,' whined the yellow mound.
I stilled a shiver of disgust and extended my hand to the object.
'Take my hand,' I said. 'I'll help you.'
From the bent heap of rags that was a fellow human being, a hand reached up to me, the fingers crooked, as though they might have been the claws of a chicken. Disregarding my misgivings, I took the hand, to draw the unfortunate creature to its feet.
To my amazement, the hand that clasped mine firmly was as solid and hardened as saddle leather. Before I realized what was happening, my arm had been jerked downward and twisted, and I had been thrown on my back at the feet of the man, who leaped up and set his boot on my throat. In his hand was a warrior's sword, and the point was at my breast. He laughed a mighty, roaring laugh and threw his head back, causing the hood to fall to his shoulders. I saw a massive, lion like head, with wild long hair and a beard as unkempt and magnificent as the crags of the Voltai itself. The man, who seemed to leap into gigantic stature as he lifted himself into full height, took from under his yellow robes a tarn whistle and blew a long, shrill note. Almost instantly the whistle had been answered by other whistles, responding from a dozen places in the nearby mountains. Within a minute the air was filled with the beating of wings, as some half a hundred wild tarnsmen brought their birds down about us.
'I am Marlenus, Ubar of Ar,' said the man.
Chapter 14
The Tarn Death
SHACKLED IN A KNEELING POSITION, my back open and bleeding from the lash, I was thrown before the Ubar. Nine days I had been a prisoner in his camp, subjected to torture and abuse. Yet this was the first time since I had saved his life that I had seen him. I gathered that he had finally seen fit to terminate the sufferings of the warrior who had stolen the Home Stone of his city.
One of the tarnsmen of Marlenus thrust his hand in my hair and forced my lips down to his sandal. I forced my head up and kept my back straight, my eyes granting my captor no satisfaction. I knelt on the granite floor of a shallow cave in one of the Voltai peaks, a sheltered fire on each side of me. Before me, on a rough throne of piled rocks, sat Marlenus, his long hair over his shoulders, his great beard reaching almost to his sword belt. He was a gigantic man, larger even than the Older Tarl, and in his eyes, wild and green, I saw the masterful flame which had, in its way, also burned in the eyes of Talena, his daughter. Die though I must at the hands of this magnificent barbarian, I could feel no ill will toward him. If I had had to kill him, I would have done so not with hatred or rancor, but rather with respect.
Around his neck he wore the golden chain of the Ubar, carrying the medallion like replica of the Home Stone of Ar. In his hands he held the Stone itself, that humble source of so much strife, bloodshed and honor. He held it gently, as though it might have been a child.
At the entrance of the cave two of his men had set a tharlarion lance, of the sort carried by Kazrak and his men, in a crevice obviously prepared to receive it. I supposed it was to serve for my impalement. There are various ways in which this cruel mode of execution can be accomplished, and, needless to say, some are more merciful than others. I did not expect that I would be granted a swift death.
'You are he who stole the Home Stone of Ar,' said Marlenus.
'Yes,' I said.
'It was well done,' said Marlenus, looking at the Stone, holding it so the light reflected variously from its worn surface.
I waited, kneeling at his feet, puzzled that he, like the others in his camp, evinced no interest in the fate of his daughter.
'You realize clearly that you must die,' said Marlenus, not looking at me.
'Yes,' I said.
Holding the Home Stone in both hands, Marlenus leaned forward.
'You are a young and brave and foolish warrior,' he said. He looked into my eyes for a long time, then leaned back against his rough throne. 'I was once as young and brave as you,' he said, 'and perhaps as foolish — yes, perhaps as foolish.' The eyes of Marlenus F stared over my head, into the darkness outside. 'I risked my life a thousand times and gave the years of my youth to the vision of Ar and its empire, that there might be on all Gor but one language, but one commerce, but one set of codes, that the highways and passes might be safe, that the peasants might cultivate their fields in peace, that there might be but one Council to decide matters of policy, that there might be but one supreme city to unite the cylinders of a hundred severed, hostile cities — and all this you have destroyed.' Marlenus looked down at me. 'What can you, a simple tarnsman, know of these things?' he asked. 'But I, Marlenus, though a warrior, was more than a warrior, always more than a warrior. Where others could see no more than the codes of their castes, where others could sense no call of duty beyond that of their Home Stone, I dared to dream the dream of Ar — that there might be an end to meaningless warfare, bloodshed, and terror, an end to the anxiety and peril, the retribution and cruelty that cloud our lives. I dreamed that there might arise from the ashes of the conquests of Ar a new world, a world of honor and law, of power and justice.'
'Your justice,' I said.
'Mine, if you like,' he agreed.
Marlenus set the Home Stone on the ground before him and drew his sword, which he laid across his knees; he looked like some remote and terrible god of war.
'Do you know, Tarnsman,' he asked, 'that there is no justice without the sword?' He smiled down on me grimly. 'This is a terrible truth,' he said, 'and so consider it carefully.' He paused. 'Without this,' he said touching the blade, 'there is nothing — no justice, no civilization, no society, no community, no peace. Without the sword there is nothing.'
'By what right,' I challenged, 'is it the sword of Marlenus that must bring justice to Gor?'
'You do not understand,' said Marlenus. 'Right itself — that right of which you speak so reverently — owes
