Swordsmen of Gor

Chapter Thirty-Three I HOLD CONVERSE WITH LORD NISHIDA

“Your plans, I understand it,” I said to Lord Nishida, “have been advanced.”

“Necessarily,” he said, “for our project is no longer secret. The attack at Tarncamp, repulsed, has made that clear. Foes will come again, in much greater strength.”

“Who is the foe?” I asked.

“One of great wealth and power,” he said.

“I do not understand,” I said.

Did these things have to do with Priest-Kings or Kurii, each of which faction was skilled in utilizing humans as their instrumentalities?

I wondered what kaissa was being played, and who were the gamesmen. I did have some sense of the pieces.

“This is a skirmish,” said Lord Nishida. “The war is elsewhere.”

“Where?” I asked.

“I trust,” he said, “you will learn.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “I might be now enlightened.”

“I think not, at present,” he said.

“I think,” I said, “I have served sufficiently.”

“Alas,” said he, “we cannot permit our friends, now so informed, to withdraw from our service.”

“Do you think you can stop me?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, “but I would greatly regret having to do so.”

“What is your war,” I asked. “Where is it to be fought?”

“The war,” he said, “is far away, and its nature you may learn.”

“It has to do with a far shore?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “I see that you are interested.”

“I choose my wars with care,” I said.

“One does not always have that option,” said Lord Nishida.

“Allegiances, dynasties?” I asked.

“Perhaps,” he said.

“Men such as you,” I said to Lord Nishida, “are rare in what we sometimes think of as ‘known Gor’.”

“So?” he said.

“How came you here?” I asked.

Surely they had not come to these shores by such a ship or ships. How, then, had they come? And why, then, could they not return as they had come?

A cloud seemed to move in the narrow eyes of Lord Nishida.

I suddenly realized, with a start, that he might know as little of this as I.

“I think,” said Lord Nishida, “that a wager is involved, or perhaps a contest of sorts, amongst spirits, powerful beings.”

“How so?” I said.

“There were battles, several,” said Lord Nishida. “Losses were heavy. Lands were lost. The camps were crowded with the wounded and starving. Our forces were divided. We were pushed to the shore. Our world reeled.”

“You are here,” I said.

“A straight-eyed, raving man, a barbarian, such as yourself, was washed upon our shore, while we awaited our doom. He spoke of a world we did not know, of strange ships, and great birds.”

“Tersites?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“You were on Cos, or Tyros, or one of the Farther Islands?” I said.

“No,” he said. “No.”

How, I wondered, might the mad, half-blind shipwright, Tersites, have found himself on a remote shore.

He had been brought there.

“How is it that you speak Gorean?” I asked.

“Strange men, dour men with shaven heads and white robes, appeared amongst our ancestors, mysteriously so, long ago, very long ago, claiming to speak for the gods.”

“Initiates,” I said.

I supposed some might have been placed amongst the Pani by Priest-Kings. Apparently the Priest-Kings wanted there to be at least one commonly spoken language on Gor, by means of which they could communicate with at least a majority of Gorean human beings. Perhaps they thought that that would lead to harmony, peace, and understanding. It had not. Amongst themselves the Priest-Kings communicated by scent. On the rare occasions when they dealt with human beings directly, translators were utilized.

“We must learn their language or be destroyed,” said Lord Nishida. “Some recalcitrants and zealots were consumed by fire, streaming from the sky.”

That would be the Flame Death. It was commonly used for enforcing the technology laws, and, doubtless, could serve other purposes, as well.

“So Gorean was learned?” I said.

“Who disputes the will of the gods?” asked Lord Nishida.

“Who, indeed?” I said.

“Other things were brought, as well,” said Lord Nishida, “recipes, seeds, serums, and such.”

Normally such gifts would be received through cultural diffusion, through trade, and such. I gathered that this was impractical in the case of the Pani.

“But these strange men,” said Lord Nishida, “attempted to rule us.”

“I see,” I said.

“They were crucified,” said Lord Nishida.

“There were no retaliations from the sky?” I said.

“No,” said Lord Nishida.

Their purposes served, it seems the Priest-Kings had no further need of their missionaries, so to speak.

“What of Tersites, and your fate?” I pressed.

“It was the night before the final battle,” said Lord Nishida, “when we were to be swept into the sea.”

“Yes?” I said.

“A great darkness came suddenly over the moons, watch fires mysteriously ceased to burn, guards struggled to remain awake at their posts, we fought, crying out, and beating on drums, and blowing trumpets, to rouse ourselves, to stay awake, but we were overcome, and in Ehn we lay down to die.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“We awakened in many places, on the shores of what you have spoken of as ‘known Gor’, though, I assure you, it was not known to us. I myself awakened in the vicinity of what I learned was Brundisium.”

“I know it,” I said. It was a major port. Indeed, it had been used as the port of entry for the invasion forces of Cos and Tyros, bound for Ar.

“We encountered, and were dealt with,” said Lord Nishida, “by many Goreans, prepared to welcome and direct us. Too, these barbarians had at their disposal considerable wealth, abetting that which had been sent with us from our home, not only from our camp, but apparently from elsewhere, as well, perhaps even from the stores of our enemies. In any event, when our foes attacked in the morning they would find an empty camp, picked clean as though by centuries of looters. Doubtless they were much displeased, at the loss of gain, and perhaps the mysterious loss of much of their own wealth, as well. Their anger would not be lightly dissipated.”

Lord Nishida shuddered, and I did not inquire the cause of his concern. It had to do, doubtless, with those left behind, not in the camp, not at the edge of the sea, but others, for whom they had fought, perhaps hundreds of vulnerable thousands of others, townsmen, retainers, peasants and such, in undefended districts, then perhaps at the undisputed mercy of some disappointed, vindictive foe.

“I understand little of this,” I said.

“I fear,” said Lord Nishida, “it is a game, which we are to resolve on another’s board.”

“I do not understand,” I said.

“The gods wager,” he said. “Doubtless they have their sport, their interest in which drop of water will be first to reach a sill, which insect will be the first to cross a line.”

My blood seemed for a moment to turn cold.

I then began to suspect that it was not in the toils of Priest-Kings that we labored, or in those of Kurii, to achieve their ends. It was our own game, in its way, but one on which more powerful beings, Priest-Kings or Kurii, in a moment of recreation, or perhaps truce, had seen fit to wager.

“This is madness,” I said. “It cannot be.”

“Much has been prepared,” said Lord Nishida, quietly.

“The attack,” I said.

“Must not each god have a side,” he asked, “a favored outcome?”

Surely, I thought, the foes of Lord Nishida and Lord Okimoto will have their resources and allies, as well.

A wager?

Perhaps.

Yet, too, surely each party would have darker, more remote thoughts in mind.

“I see now,” I said, “why your plans were to be advanced.”

“Of course,” said Lord Nishida.

“But the other side has already won,” I said.

“How so?” asked Lord Nishida, interested.

“You intended to winter here, until spring, did you not?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“You are trapped,” I said.

“How so?” he inquired.

“Your project is no longer secret,” I said. “One attack was beaten away, but there will be, I gather, others, in greater force, most likely, I would suppose, on foot through the forests, muchly inaccessible to tarn attack, and you will be unable to escape.”

“I have not been quite candid with you, Tarl Cabot, tarnsman,” said Lord Nishida.

“This revelation does not take me by surprise,” I said.

“Such a force,” said Lord Nishida, “is already on the march.”

“You are undone,” I said.

“How so?” he asked.

“You will be trapped in your winter camp, the river will freeze.”

“When the enemy arrives,” said Lord Nishida, “he will find only ashes.”

“Abandon the camp and ships,” I said, “and flee, saving what you can, in a thousand directions.”

“No,” he said.

“You cannot stay here,” I said.

“That is true,” he said.

“Flee,” I said.

“No,” he said.

“What will you do?” I asked.

“Soon,” said Lord Nishida, “the ship will sail.”

“The time of year is wrong,” I said.

“Soon,” said Lord Nishida.

“You cannot be intending to descend the Alexandra,” I said.

“To Thassa,” said he.

“Winter is coming,” I said.

“That is why we must not loiter,” said Lord Nishida. “Any day ice may form in the river. Already, upstream, in tributaries, some hundred pasangs north, plate ice has been detected.”

This discovery would have been made by tarn scouts.

“You cannot be serious about taking the ship to sea,” I said.

“We have no choice,” said Lord Nishida.

“The ship cannot sail,” I said.

“Tersites believes it can withstand the winter sea,” he said.

“Tersites is not a captain, not a mariner, he is a shipwright, and he is mad,” I said.

“I do not doubt his madness,” said Lord Nishida, “but, too, I do not doubt his genius. It is his ship, and his design.”

“Beware of Thassa,” I said. “She is not your ally, not your friend.”

“We cannot remain here,” said Lord Nishida.

“Winter looms,” I warned.

“Ice has already been seen in the north,” he said.

“Thassa,” I said, “will tear the sails from your ship, snap her masts, break her keel, crush her sides, lift her a hundred feet, two hundred feet, into the air, and then drop her like a broken toy, plunging to the waves below. One does not go upon Thassa in the winter. It is madness.”

“Soon,” he said, “she will sail.”