She put her head against my shoulder.
'Beautiful Lara,' I said, 'forgive me.' I held her more closely. 'I cannot take you to the Sardar. I cannot leave you here. You would be destroyed by beasts or returned to slavery.'
'Must you return me to Tharna?' she asked. 'I hate Tharna.'
'I have no city to which I might take you,' I said. 'And I believe you can make Tharna such that you will hate it no longer.'
'What must I do?' she asked.
'That you must decide yourself,' I said.
I kissed her.
Holding her head in my hands I looked into her eyes.
'Yes,' I said proudly, 'you are fit to rule.'
I wiped the tears from her eyes.
'No tears,' I said, 'for you are Tatrix of Tharna.'
She looked up at me and smiled, a sad smile. 'Of course, Warrior,' she said, 'there must be no tears — for I am Tatrix of Tharna and a Tatrix does not cry.'
She pulled the talender from her hair.
I reached to her feet and repleced it.
'I love you,' she said.
'It is hard to be first in Tharna,' I said, and led her down the hillock, away from the Sardar Mountains.
The fires which had begun to burn in the Mines of Tharna had not been quenched. The revolt of the slaves had spread from the mines to the Great Farms. Shackles had been struck off and weapons seized. Angry men, armed with whatever tools of destruction they might find, prowled the land, evading the sorties of Tharna' s soldiers, hunting for granaries to rob, for buildings to burn, for slaves to free. From farm to farm spread the rebellion and the shipments to the city from the farms became sporadic and then ceased. What the slaves could not use or hide, they cut down or burned.
Not more than two hours from the hillock where I had made the decision to return Lara to her native city the tarn had found us, as I had thought he would. As at the Pillar of Exchanges the bird had haunted the vicinity and now, for the second time, its patience was rewarded. It lit some fifty yards from us and we ran to its side, I first and Lara after me, she still apprehensive of the beast.
My pleasure was such that I hugged the neck of that sable monster. Those round blazing eyes regarded me, those great wings lifted and shook, his beak was lifted to the sky and he screamed the shrill cry of the tarn. Lara cried out in terror as the monster reached for me with his beak. I did not move and that great terrible beak closed gently on my arm. Had the tarn wished, with a wrench of its glorious head, it might have torn the limb from my body. Yet its touch was almost tender. I slapped its beak and tossed Lara to its broad back and leaped up beside her.
Again the indescribable thrill possessed me and I think this time that even Lara shared my feelings. 'One- strap!' I cried, and the tarn' s monstrous frame addressed itself once more to the skies.
As we flew, many were the fields of charred Sa-Tarna we saw below us. The tarn' s shadow glided over the blackened frames of buildings, over broken pens from which livestock had been driven, over orchards that were now no more than felled trees, their leaves and fruit brown and withered. On the back of the tarn Lara wept to see the desolation that had come to her country.
'It is cruel what they have done,' she said.
'It is also cruel what had been done to them,' I said.
She was silent.
The army of Tharna had struck here and there, at reported hiding places of slaves, but almost invariably they had found nothing. Perhaps some broken untensils, the ashes of campfires. The slaves, forewarned of their approach by other slaves or by impoverished peasants, supplanted by the Great Farms, would have made good their departure, only to strike when ready, when unexpected and in strength.
The sorties of tarnsmen were more successful, but on the whole the slave bands, now almost regiments, moved only at night and concealed themselves during the day. In time it became dangerous for the small cavalries of Tharna to assault them, to brave the storm of missile weapons which would seem to rise almost from the very ground itself.
Often indeed ambushes were laid wherein a small band of slaves would allow itself to be trailed into the rocky passes of the ridge country about Tharna, where their pursuers would be assailed by hidden cohorts; sometimes tarnsmen would descend to capture a slave only to meet the arrows of a hundred men concealed in covered pits.
Perhaps in time, however, the undisciplined but courageous bands of slaves would have been scattered and destroyed by the units of Tharna, save that the very revolution which had begun in the mines and spread to the Great Farms now flamed in the city itself. Not only slaves of the city raised the banner of defiance but men of low caste, whose brothers or friends had been sent to the mines or used in the Amusements, now dared at last to seize the instruments of their trade and turn on guardsmen and soliders. It was said the rebellion in the city was led by a short, powerful man with blue eyes and short-cropped hair, formerly of the Caste of Metal Workers. Certain portions of the city had been burned to exterminate the rebellious elements and this cruel act of repression had only rallied confused and undecided men to the side of the rebels. Now it was said that entire portions of the city were in rebel hands. The silver masks of Tharna, when they were able, had escaped to the porions of the city still in the command of the soldiers. Many were reported to cower in the confines of the royal palace itself. The fate of those who had nor escaped rebel hands was not clear.
It was late in the afternoon of the fifth day that we saw in the distance the grey walls of Tharna. We were not threatened nor investigated by patrols. It was true that we could see tarnsmen and their mounts here and there among the cylinders, but none came to challenge us.
At several places in the city long ropes of smoke spiraled upward and then unravelled into vague, dark strands.
Down below a door hung open on its hinges, and small isolated figures scurried in and out. There were no tharlarion wagons or lines of woodsmen or pedlars making their way to or from the city. Outside the walls several small buildings had been burned. On the wall itself over the gate in huge letters there was scrawled the legend 'Sa' ng- Fori', literally 'Without Chains' but perhaps better translated simply as «Freedom» or «Liberty». We brought the tarn down on the walls near the gate. I freed the bird. There was no tarn cot at hand in which to enclose him, and moreover, even if there had been, I would not have trusted him to the tarn-keepers of Tharna. I did not know who was and who was not in rebellion. Perhaps mostly I wanted the bird to be free in case my hopes met with disaster, in case the Tatrix and I were to perish in some back street of Tharna. On the summit of the wall we encountered the crumpled form of a fallen guardsman. It moved slightly. There was a small sound of pain. He had apparently been left for dead and was only now recovering consciousness. His grey garment with its scarlet strip of cloth on the shoulder was stained with blood. I unbuckled the helmet strap and gently removed the helmet.
One side of the helmet had been cracked open, perhaps by the blow of an axe. The helmet straps, the leather inside, and the blond hair of the soldier were soaked with his blood. He was not much more than a boy. As he felt the wind on the walls reach his head he opened his greyish blue eyes. One hand attempted to clutch his weapon but the sheath had been emptied.
'Don' t struggle,' I said to him, looking at the wound. The helmet had largelt absorbed the blow but the blade of the striking instrument had creased the skull, accounting for the flow of blood. Most likely the force of the blow had rendered him unconscious and the blood had suggested to his assailant that the job was finished. His assailant had apparently not been a warrior.
With a portion of Lara' s cloak I bound the wound. It was clean and not deep.
'You' ll be all right,' I said to him.
His eyes looked from one of us to the other. 'Are you for the Tatrix?' he asked.
'Yes,' I said.
'I fought for her,' said the boy, lying back against my arm. 'I did my duty.'
I gathered that he had not enjoyed the performance of his duty, and that perhaps his heart lay with the
