Outlaw of Gor (25 page)

The voices of these haggard but transformed men began to sing. I recognised the tune. It was a ploughing song I had first heard from the peasant in the mines. It had become the anthem of the revolution.

Lara, as mystified as I, ran along with the men, staying as close to me as the jostling crowds permitted.

Thus borne aloft, from street to street, in the midst of joyous shouting, weapons raised on all sides in salute, my ears ringing with the ploughing song, once a song of the freeholds of Tharna, long since supplanted by the Great Farms, I found myself brought to that fateful Kal-da shop I remembered so well, where I had dined in Tharna and had awakened to the treachery of Ost. It had become a headquarters of the revolution, perhaps because men of Tharna recalled that it was there they had learned to sing.

There, standing before the low doorway, I looked once more upon the squat, powerful figure of Kron, of the Caste of Metal Workers. His great hammer was slung from his belt and his blue eyes glistened with happiness. The huge, scarred hands of a metal worker were held out to me.

Beside him, to my joy, I saw the impudent features of Andreas, that sweep of black hair almost obliterating his forehead. Behind Andreas, in the dress of a free woman, unveiled, her throat no longer encircled by the collar of a state slave, I saw the breathless, radiant Linna of Tharna.

Andreas bounded past the men at the door and rushed to me. He seized me by the hands and dragged me to the street, roughly grappling my shoulders and laughing with joy.

“Welcome to Tharna!” said he. “Welcome to Tharna!”

“Yes,” said Kron, only a step behind him, seizing my arm. “Welcome to Tharna.”

I ducked my head and shoved open the heavy wooden door of the Kal-da shop. The sign KAL-DA SOLD HERE had been repainted in bright letters. Also, smeared across the letters, written with a finger, was the defiant rallying call of the rebellion–'Sa'ng-Fori'.

I descended the low, wide steps to the interior. This time the shop was crowded. It was hard to see where to step. It was wild and noisy. It might have been a Paga Tavern of Ko-ro-ba or Ar, not a simple Kal-da shop of Tharna. My ears were assailed by the din, the jovial uproar of men no longer afraid to laugh or shout.

The shop itself was now hung with perhaps half a hundred lamps and the walls were bright with the caste colours of the men who drank there. Thick rugs had been thrown under the low tables and were stained in innumerable places with spilled Kal-da.

Behind the counter the thin, bald-headed proprietor, his forehead glistening, his slick black apron stained with spices, juices and wine, busily worked his long mixing paddle in a vast pot of bubbling Kal-da. My nose wrinkled. There was no mistaking the smell of brewing Kal-da.

From behind three or four of the low tables, to the left of the counter, a band of sweating musicians sat happily cross-legged on the rug, somehow producing from those unlikely pipes and strings and drums and disks and wires the ever intriguing, wild, enchanting–beautiful–barbaric melodies of Gor.

I wondered at this for the Caste of Musicians had been, like the Caste of Poets, exiled from Tharna. Theirs, like the Caste of Poets, had been a caste regarded by the sobre masks of Tharna as not belonging in a city of serious and dedicated folk, for music, like Paga and song, can set men's hearts aflame and when men's hearts are aflame it is not easy to know where the flame may spread.

As I entered the room the men rose to their feet and shouted and lifted their cups in salute.

Almost as one they cried out, “Tal, Warrior!”

“Tal, Warriors!” I responded, raising my arm, addressing them by all by the title of my caste, for I knew that in their common cause each was a warrior. It had been so determined at the Mines of Tharna.

Behind me down the stairs came Kron and Andreas, followed by Lara and Linna.

I wondered what impression the Kal-da shop would have on the true Tatrix of Tharna.

Kron seized my arm and guided me to a table near the centre of the room. Holding Lara by the hand I followed him. Her eyes were stunned but like a child's were wide with curiosity. She had not known the men of Tharna could be like this.

From time to time as one of them regarded her too boldly she dropped her head and blushed.

At last I sat cross-legged behind the low table and Lara, in the fashion of the Gorean woman, knelt beside me, resting on her heels.

When I had entered the music had briefly stopped but now Kron clapped his hands twice and the musicians turned to their instruments.

“Free Kal-da for all!” cried Kron, and when the proprietor, who knew the codes of his caste, tried to object, Kron flung a golden tarn disk at him. Delightedly the man ducked and scrambled to pick it up from the floor.

“Gold is more common here than bread,” said Andreas, sitting near us.

To be sure the food on the low tables was not plentiful and was coarse but one could not have known this from the good cheer of the men in the room. It might have been to them food from the tables of the Priest-Kings themselves. Even the foul Kal-da to them, reveling in the first intoxication of their freedom, was the rarest and most potent of beverages.

Kron clapped his hands again and to my surprise there was a sudden sound of bells and four terrified girls, obviously chosen for their beauty and grace, stood before our table clad only in the scarlet dancing silks of Gor. They threw back their heads and lifted their arms and to the barbaric decadence set by the musicians danced before us.

Lara, to my surprise, watched them with delight.

“Where in Tharna,” I asked, “did you find Pleasure Slaves?” I had noted that the throats of the girls were encircled by silver collars.

Andreas, who was stuffing a piece of bread in his mouth, responded, his words a cheery mumble. “Beneath every silver mask,” he averred sententiously, “there is a potential Pleasure Slave.”

“Andreas!” cried Linna, and she made as if to slap him for his insolence, but he quieted her with a kiss, and she playfully began to nibble at the bread clenched between his teeth.

“Are these truly silver masks of Tharna?” I asked Kron, skeptically.

“Yes,” said he. “Good, aren't they?”

“How did they learn this?” I asked.

He shrugged. “It is instinctive in a woman,” he said. “But they are untrained of course.”

I laughed to myself. Kron of Tharna spoke as might any man of any city of Gor–other than a man of Tharna.

“Why are they dancing for you?” asked Lara.

“They will be whipped if they do not,” said Kron.

Lara's eyes dropped.

“You see the collars,” said Kron, pointing to the slender graceful bands of silver each girl wore at her throat. “We melted the masks and used the silver for the collar.”

Other girls now appeared among the tables, clad only in a camisk and a silver collar, and sullenly, silently, began to serve the Kal-da which Kron had ordered. Each carried a heavy pot of the foul, boiling brew and, cup by cup, replenished the cups of the men.

Some of them looked enviously at Lara, others with hatred. Their look said to her why are you not clad as we are, why do you not wear a collar and serve as we serve?

To my surprise Lara removed her cloak and took the pot of Kal-da from one of the girls and began to serve the men.

Some of the girls looked at her in gratitude for she was free and in doing this she showed them that she did not regard herself as above them.

“That,” I said to Kron, pointing out Lara, “is the Tatrix of Tharna.”

As Andreas looked upon her he said softly, “She is truly a Tatrix.”

Linna arose now and began to help with the serving.

When Kron had tired of watching the dancers he clapped his hands twice and with a discordant jangle of their ankle bells they fled from the room.

Kron lifted his cup of Kal-da and faced me. “Andreas told me you intended to enter the Sardar,” he said. “I see that you did not do so.”

Kron meant that if I had entered the Sardar I would not have returned.

“I am going to the Sardar,” I said, “but I first have business in Tharna.”

“Good!” said Kron. “We need your sword.”

“I have come to place Lara once more on the throne of Tharna,” I said.

Kron and Andreas looked at me in wonder.

“No,” said Kron. “I do not know how she has bewitched you but we will have no Tatrix in Tharna!”

“She is everything that we fight against,” protested Andreas. “If she again ascends the throne, our battle will have been lost. Tharna would once more be the same.”

“Tharna,” I said, “will never again be the same.”

Andreas shook his head as if trying to comprehend what I might mean. “How can we expect him to make sense?” asked Andreas of Kron. “After all, he is not a poet.”

Kron did not laugh.

“Or a metal worker,” added Andreas hopefully.

Still Kron did not laugh.

His dour personality formed over the anvils and forges of his trade did not take lightly to the enormity of what I had said. “You would have to kill me first,” said Kron.

“Are we not still of the same chain?” I asked.

Kron was silent. Then regarding me evenly with those steel-blue eyes he said, “We are always of the same chain.”

“Then let me speak,” I said.

Kron nodded curtly.

Several other men had by now crowded about the table.

“You are men of Tharna,” I said. “But the men you fight are also of Tharna.”

One of the men spoke. “I have a brother in the guards.”

“Is it right that the men of Tharna lift their weapons against one another, men within the same walls?”

“It is a sad thing,” said Kron. “But it must be.”

“It need not be,” I protested. “The soldiers and guardsmen of Tharna are pledged to the Tatrix, but the Tatrix they defend is a traitress. The true Tatrix of Tharna, Lara herself, is within this room.”

Kron watched the girl, who was unconscious of the conversation. Across the room she was serving Kal-da to the men whose cups were lifted to her.

“While she lives,” said Kron, “the revolution is not safe.”

“That is not true,” I said.

“She must die,” said Kron.

“No,” I said. “She too has felt the chain and whip.”

There was a murmur of astonishment from the men about the table.

“The soldiers of Tharna and her guardsmen will forsake the false Tatrix and serve the true Tatrix,” I said. “If she lives—” agreed Kron, looking at the innocent girl across the room.

“She must,” I urged. “She will bring a new day to Tharna. She can unite both the rebels and the men who oppose you. She has learned how cruel and miserable are the ways of Tharna. Look at her!”

And the men watched the girl quietly pouring the Kal-da, willingly sharing the labours of the other women of Tharna. It was not what one would have expected of a Tatrix.

“She is worthy to rule,” I said.

“She is what we fought against,” said Kron.

“No,” I said, “you fought against the cruel ways of Tharna. You fought for your pride and your freedom, not against that girl.”

“We fought against the golden mask of Tharna,” shouted Kron, pounding his fist on the table.

The sudden noise attracted the attention of the entire room and all eyes turned toward us. Lara, her back graceful and straight, set down the pot of Kal-da and came and stood before Kron.

“I no longer wear the golden mask,” she said.

And Kron looked on the beautiful girl who stood before him with such grace and dignity, with no trace of pride or cruelty, or fear.

“My Tatrix,” he whispered.

We marched through the city, the streets behind us filled like grey rivers with the rebels, each man with his own weapon, yet the sound of those rivers, converging on the palace of the Tatrix was anything but grey. It was the sound of the ploughing song, as slow and irresistible as the breaking of ice in frozen rivers, a simple, melodic paean to the soil, celebrating the first breaking of the ground.

At the head of that splendid, ragged procession five marched; Kron, chief of the rebels; Andreas, a poet; his woman, Linna of Tharna, unveiled; I, a warrior of a city devastated and cursed of the Priest-Kings; and a girl with golden hair, a girl who wore no mask, who had known both the whip and love, fearless and magnificent Lara, she who was true Tatrix of Tharna.

It was clear to the defenders of the palace, which formed the major bastion of Dorna's challenged regime, that the issue would be decided that day and by the sword. Word had swept ahead as if on the wings of tarns that the rebels, abandoning their tactics of ambush and evasion, were at last marching on the palace.

I saw before us once again that broad, winding but ever narrowing avenue which led to the palace of the Tatrix. Singing, the rebels began to climb the steep avanue. The black cobblestones could be felt clearly through the leather of our sandals.

Once more I noted that the walls bordering the avenue rose as the avenue narrowed, but this time, long before we neared the small iron door, we saw a double rampart thrown across the avenue, the second wall topping the first and allowing missiles to be rained down on those who might storm the first wall. The rampart was thrown between the walls where they stood at perhaps fifty yards from each other. The first rampart was perhaps twelve feet high; the second perhaps twenty.

Behind the ramparts I could see the blaze of weaponry and the movement of blue helmets.

We were within crossbow range.

I motioned to the others to remain back and, carrying a shield and spear in addition to my sword, approached the rampart.

On the roof of the palace beyond the double rampart I could occasionally see the head of a tarn and I heard their screams. Tarns, however, would not be too effective against the rebels in the city. Many of them had cut long bows and many of them were armed with the spears and crossbows of fallen warriors. It would be risky business coming close enough to bring talons into play.

And should the warriors have attempted to use the tarns merely to fire down on the crowd, they would have suddenly found the streets deserted, until the shadow of the bird had passed and the rebels could move another hundred yards closer to the palace. Trained infantry, incidentally, might move rapidly through the streets of a city with shields locked over their heads, much in the fashion of the Roman testudo, but this formation requires discipline and precision, martial virtues not to be expected in high degree of the rebels of Tharna.