Outlaw of Gor

Chapter Sixteen: THE PILLAR OF EXCHANGES

Guided by the Tatrix, in perhaps no more than thirty minutes, we saw, gleaming in the distance, the Pillar of Exchanges. It lay about one hundred pasangs northwest of the city, and was a lonely white column of solid marble, perhaps four hundred feet in height and a hundred feet in diameter. It was accessible only on tarnback.

It was not a bad place for the exchange of prisoners, and offered an almost ideal situation from the point of view of avoiding ambush. The solid pillar would not allow entrance to men on the ground, and approaching tarns would be easily visible for miles before they could reach it.

I examined the countryside carefully. It seemed bare. On the pillar itself there were three tarns, and as many warriors, and one woman, who wore the silver mask of Tharna. As I passed over the pillar, a warrior removed his helmet, and signaled for me to bring the tarn down. I saw that it was Thorn, Captain of Tharna. I noted that he and his fellows were armed. "Is it customary," I asked the Tatrix, "for warriors to carry weapons to the Pillar of Exchanges?"

"There will be no treachery," said the Tatrix.

I considered turning the tarn and abandoning the venture.

"You can trust me," she said.

"How do I know that?" I challenged.

"Because I am Tatrix of Tharna," she said proudly.

"Four-strap!" I cried to the bird, to bring it down on the pillar. The bird seemed not to understand. "Four-strap!" I repeated, more severely. For some reason the bird seemed unwilling to land. "Four-strap!" I shouted, commanding it harshly to obey.

The great giant landed on the marble pillar, its steel-shod talons ringing on the stone.

I did not dismount, but held the Tatrix more firmly.

The tarn seemed nervous. I tried to calm the bird. I spoke to it in low tones, patted it roughly on the neck.

The woman in the silver mask approached. "Hail to our Beloved Tatrix!" she cried. It was Dorna the Proud.

"Do not approach more closely," I ordered.

Dorna stopped, about five yards in advance of Thorn and the two warriors, who had not moved at all.

The Tatrix acknowledged the salutation of Dorna the Proud with merely a regal nod of her head.

"All Tharna is yours, Warrior," cried Dorna the Proud, "if you but relinquish out noble Tatrix! The city weeps for her return! I fear there will be no more joy in Tharna until she sits again upon her golden throne!" I laughed.

Dorna the Proud stiffened. "What are your terms, Warrior?" she demanded. "A saddle and weapons," I answered, "and the freedom of Linna of Tharna, Andreas of Tor, and those who fought this afternoon in the Amusements of Tharna."

There was silence. "Is that all?" asked Dorna the Proud, puzzled. "Yes," I said. Behind her, Thorn laughed.

Dorna glanced at the Tatrix. "I shall add," she said, "the weight of five tarns in gold, a room of silver, helmets filled with jewels!"

"You truly love your Tatrix," I said.

"Indeed, Warrior," said Dorna.

"And you are excessively generous," I added.

The Tatrix squirmed in my arms. "Less," said Dorna the Proud, "would insult our Beloved Tatrix."

I was pleased, for though I would have little use for such riches in the Sardar Mountains, Linna and Andreas, and the poor wretches of the arena, might well profit from them.

Lara, the Tatrix, straightened in my arms. "I do not find the terms satisfactory," she said. "Give him in addition to what he asks, the weight of ten tarns in gold, two rooms of silver and a hundred helmets filled with jewels."

Dorna the Proud bowed in gracious acquiescence. "Indeed, Warrior," said she, "for our Tatrix we would give you even the stones of our walls." "Are my terms satisfactory to you?" asked the Tatrix, rather condescendingly I thought.

"Yes," I said, sensing the affront that had been offered to Dorna the Proud.

"Release me," she commanded.

"Very well," I said.

I slid down from the back of the tarn, the Tatrix in my arms. I set her on her feet, on the top of that windy pillar on the borders of Tharna, and bent to remove the golden scarf which restrained her.

As soon as her wrists were free she was once again every inch the royal Tatrix of Tharna.

I wondered if this could be the girl who had had the harrowing adventure, whose garments were tattered, whose body must still be wretched with pain from its sojourn in the claws of my tarn.

Imperiously, not deigning to speak to me, she gestured to the gloves of gold which I had placed in my belt. I returned them to her. She drew them on, slowly, deliberately, facing me all the while.

Something in her mien made me uneasy.

She turned and walked majestically to Dorna and the warriors.

When she had reached their side she turned and with a sudden swirl of those golden robes pointed an imperious finger at me. "Seize him," she said. Thorn and the warriors leaped forward, and I found myself ringed with their weapons.

"Traitress!" I cried.

The voice of the Tatrix was merry. "Fool!" she laughed, "do you not know by now that one does not make pacts with an animal, that one does not bargain with a beast?"

"You gave me your word!" I shouted.

The Tatrix drew her robes about her. "You are only a man," she said. "Let us kill him," said Thorn.

"No," said the Tatrix, imperiously, "that would not be enough." The mask glittered on me, reflecting the light of the descending sun. It seemed, more than ever before, to possess a ferocity, to be hideous, molten. "Shackle him," she said, "and send him to the mines of Tharna." Behind me the tarn suddenly screamed with rage and its wings smote the air. Thorn and the warriors were startled, and in this instant I leapt between their weapons, seized Thorn and a warrior, dashed them together, and threw them both, weapons clattering, to the marble flooring of the pillar. The Tatrix and Dorna the Proud screamed.

The other warrior lunged at me with his sword and I side- stepped the stroke and seized the wrist of his sword arm. I twisted it and thrust it up and high over my left arm, and with a sudden downward wrench snapped it at the elbow. He collapsed whimpering.

Thorn had regained his feet and leaped on me from behind, and the other warrior a moment later. I grappled with them, fiercely. Then, slowly, as they cursed helplessly, I drew them inch by inch over my shoulders, and threw them suddenly to the marble at my feet. In that moment both the Tatrix and Dorna the Proud plunged sharp instruments, pins of some sort, into my back and arm.

I laughed at the absurdity of this, and then, my vision blackening, the pillar whirling, I fell at their feet. My muscles no longer obeyed my will. "Shackle him," said the Tatrix.

As the world slowly turned under me I felt my legs and arms, limp, as weak as fog, thrown roughly together. I heard the rattle of a chain and felt my limbs clasped in shackles.

The merry victorious laugh of the Tatrix rang in my ears.

I heard Dorna the Proud say, "Kill the tarn."

"It" s gone," said the uninjured warrior.

Slowly, though no strength returned to my body, my vision cleared, first in the centre, and then gradually toward the edges, until I could once again see the pillar, the sky beyond and my foes.

In the distance I saw a flying speck, which would be the tarn. When it had seen me fall it had apparently taken flight. Now, I thought, it would be free, escaping at last to some rude habitat where it might, without saddle and harness, without a silver hobble, reign as the Ubar of the Skies that it was. Its departure saddened me, but I was glad that it had escaped. Better that than to die under the spear of one of the warriors. Thorn seized me by the wrist shackles and dragged me across the top of the pillar to one of the three tarns that waited. I was helpless. My legs and arms could not have been more useless if every nerve in them had been cut by a knife.

I was chained to the ankle ring of one of the tarns.

The Tatrix had apparently lost interest in me, for she turned to Dorna the Proud and Thorn, Captain of Tharna.

The warrior whose arm had been broken knelt on the marble flooring of the pillar, bent over, rocking back and forth, the injured arm held against his body. His fellow stood near me, among the tarns, perhaps to watch me, perhaps to steady and soothe the excitable giants.

Haughtily the Tatrix addressed Dorna and Thorn. "Why," she asked them, "are there so few of my soldiers here?"

"We are enough," said Thorn.

The Tatrix looked out over the plains, in the direction of the city. "By now," she said, "lines of rejoicing citizens will be setting out from the city."

Neither Dorna the Proud, nor Thorn, Captain of Tharna, answered her. The Tatrix walked across the pillar, regal in those tattered robes, and stood over me. She pointed across the plains, towards Tharna. "Warrior," said she, "if you were to remain long enough on this pillar you would see processions come to welcome me back to Tharna."

The voice of Dorna the Proud drifted across the pillar. "I think not, Beloved Tatrix," she said.

The Tatrix turned, puzzled. "Why not?" she asked.

"Because," said Dorna the Proud, and I could tell that behind that silver mask, she smiled, "you are not going back to Tharna."

The Tatrix stood as if stunned, not understanding.

The uninjured warrior had now climbed to the saddle of the tarn, to whose ankle ring I lay helplessly chained. He hauled on the one-strap and the monster took flight. Painfully I was wrenched into the air and, cruelly hanging by my shackled wrists, I saw the white column dropping away beneath me, and the figures upon it, two warriors, a woman in a sliver mask, and the golden Tatrix of Tharna.