Tarnsman of Gor

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 its very existence to the sword."

"I think that is false," I said. "I hope it is false." I shifted, even that small movement irritating the whip cuts on my back.

Marlenus was patient. "Before the sword," he said, "there is no right, no wrong, only fact — a world of what is and what is not, rather than a world of what should be and what should not be. There is no justice until the sword creates it, establishes it, guarantees it, gives it substance and significance." He lifted the weapon, wielding the heavy metal blade as though it were a straw. "First the sword" he said, "then government — then law — then justice."

"But," I asked, "what of the dream of Ar, that dream of which you spoke, that dream that you believed it right to bring about?"

"Yes?" said Marlenus.

"Is that a right dream?" I asked.

"It is a right dream," he said.

"And yet," I said, "your sword has not yet found the strength to bring it into being."

Marlenus looked at me thoughtfully, then laughed. "By the Priest-Kings," he said, "I think I have lost the exchange."

I shrugged, somewhat incongruously in the chains; it hurt.

"But," went on Marlenus, "if what you say is true, how shall we separate the right dreams from the wrong dreams?"

It seemed to me a difficult question.

"I will tell you," laughed Marlenus. He slapped the blade fondly. "With this!"

The Ubar then rose and sheathed his sword. As if this were a signal, some of his tarnsmen entered the cave and seized me.

"Impale him," said Marlenus.

The tarnsmen began to unlock the shackles, that I might be impaled freely on the lance, perhaps so that my struggles might provide a more interesting spectacle to the onlookers.

I felt numb, even my back, which presumably would have been a riot of pain if I had not felt myself near death.

"Your daughter, Talena, is alive," I said to Marlenus. He had not asked and did riot now appear to have much interest in the matter. Still, if he was human at all, I assumed this remote, kingly, dream-obsessed man would want to know.

"She would have brought a thousand tarns," said Marlenus. "Proceed with the impalement."

The tarnsmen grasped my arms more securely. Two others removed the tharlarion lance from its crevice and brought it forward. It would be forced into my body, and I would then be lifted, with it, into place.

"She's your daughter," I said to Marlenus. "She's alive."

"Did she submit to you?" asked Marlenus.

"Yes," I said.

"Then she valued her life more than my honor."

Suddenly my feeling of numbness, of incapacity, departed as if in a lightning flash of fury. "Damn your honor!" I shouted. "Damn your precious stinking honor!"

Without realizing what I was doing, I had shaken the two restraining tarnsmen from my arms as if they had been children, and I rushed on Marlenus and struck him violently in the face with my fist, causing him to reel backward, his face contorted with astonishment and pain. I turned just in time to knock the impaling lance aside as, carried by two men, it plunged toward my back. I seized it, twisting it, and, using it like a bar held by the men, leaped into the air, kicking at them. I heard two screams of pain and found that I held the lance. Some five or six tarnsmen ran toward the wide opening of the shallow cave, but I rushed forward, holding the lance parallel to my body, striking them with almost superhuman strength and forcing them over the ledge near the mouth of the cave. Their screams mingled with shouts of rage as the other tarnsmen rushed forward to capture me.

One tarnsman leveled a crossbow, and in that instant I hurled the lance and he toppled backward, the shaft of the weapon protruding from his chest, the bolt from his crossbow ricocheting from the rock above my head with a flash of sparks. One of the men I had kicked lay writhing at my feet. I seized the sword from his scabbard. I engaged and dropped the first of the tarnsmen to reach me and wounded the second, but was pressed back toward the rear of the cave. I was doomed, but resolved to die well.

As I fought, I could hear the lion laughter of Marlenus behind me, as what had been a simple impalement turned into a fight of the sort after his own heart. As I found a moment's respite, I spun to face him, hoping to have it out with the Ubar himself, but as I did so, the shackles that I had worn struck me forcibly in the face and throat, thrown like a bolo by Marlenus. I choked, and shook my head to clear the blood from my eyes, and in that instant was seized by three or four of the Ubar's tarnsmen.

"Well done, young warrior," acclaimed Marlenus. "I thought I would see if you would die like a slave." He addressed his men, pointing to me. "What say you?" he laughed. "Has this warrior not earned his right to the tarn death?"

"He has indeed," said one of the tarnsmen, who held a wadded lump of tunic over his slashed rib cage.

I was dragged outside, and binding fiber was fastened to my wrists and ankles. The loose ends of the fiber were then attached by broad leather straps to two tarns, one of them my own sable giant.

"You will be torn to pieces," said Marlenus. "Not pleasant, but better than impalement."

I was fastened securely. A tarnsman mounted one tarn; another tarnsman mounted the other tare.

"I'm not dead yet," I said. It was a stupid thing to say, but I felt that it was not yet my time to die.

Marlenus did not deride me. "You it was who stole the Home Stone of Ar," he said. "You have luck."

"No man can escape the tare death," said one of the men.

The warriors of the Ubar moved back, to give the tarns room.

Marlenus himself knelt in the darkness to check the knots in the binding fiber, tightening them carefully. As he checked the knots at my wrists, he spoke to me.

"Do you wish me to kill you now?" he asked softly. "The tare death is an ugly death." His hand, shielded from his men by his body, was on my throat. I felt it could have crushed it easily.

"Why this kindness?" I asked.

"For the sake of a girl," he said.

"But why?" I asked.

"For the love she has for you," he said.

"Your daughter hates me," I said.

"She agreed to be the mate of Pa-Kur, the Assassin," he said, "in order that you might have one small chance of life, on the Frame of Humiliation."

"How do you know this?" I asked.

"It is common knowledge in the camp of Pa-Kur," replied Marlenus. I could sense him smiling in the darkness. "I myself, as one of the Afflicted, learned it from Mintar, of the Merchant Caste. Merchants must keep their friends on both sides of the fence, for who knows if Marlenus may not once more sit upon the throne of Ar?"

I must have uttered a sound of joy, for Marlenus quickly placed his hand over my mouth.

He asked no more if he should kill me, but rose to his feet and walked away, under the snapping wing of one of the tarns, and waved farewell. "Good-bye, Warrior," he called.

With a sickening lurch and sharp jolt of pain the two tarnsmen brought their birds into the air. For a moment I swung between the birds, and then, perhaps a hundred feet in the air, the tarnsmen, at a prearranged signal — a sharp blast of a tarn whistle from the ground turned their birds in opposite directions. The sudden wrenching pain seemed to rip my body. I think I inadvertently screamed. The birds were pulling against one another, stabilized in their flight, each trying to pull away from the other. Now and again there would be a moment's giddy respite from the pain as one or the other of the birds failed to keep the ropes taut. I could hear the curses of the tarnsmen above me and saw once or twice the flash of the striking tarn-goad. Then the birds would throw their weight again on the ropes, bringing another flashing wrench of agony.

Then, suddenly, there was a ripping sound as one of the wrist ropes broke. Without thinking, but responding blindly, with a surge of joy, I seized the other wrist rope and tried to force it over the wrist. When the bird drew again, there was a sharp pain as flesh was torn from my hand, but the rope darted off into the darkness, and I was swinging by my ankles from the other ropes. It might take a moment for the tarnsmen to realize what had happened. The first guess would be that my body had torn in two, and the darkness would conceal the truth for a moment, until the tarnsman himself would try the ropes, to test the weight of their burden.

I swung myself up and began to climb one of the two ropes leading to the great bird above me. In a few wild moments I had gained the saddle straps of the bird and hauled myself nearly to the weapon rings.

Then the tarnsman saw me and shouted in rage, drawing his sword. He slashed downward, and I slipped down one talon of the bird, which screamed and became unmanageable. Then, with one hand, while clinging to the talon, I loosened the girth straps. In a moment, given the wild motion of the bird, the entire saddle, to which the tarnsman was fixed by the saddle straps, slid from the bird's back and flew wildly into the depths below.

I heard the scream of the tarnsman and then the sudden silence.

The other tarnsman would be alerted now. Each moment was precious. Daring everything, I leaped in the darkness for the reins of the bird and with one scrambling hand managed to seize the guiding collar. The sudden tug downward caused the bird to respond as I had hoped it would, as if pressure had been exerted on the four-strap. It immediately descended, and a minute later I was on the ground, on a sort of rough plateau. There was a rim of red light over the mountains, and I knew it was nearly dawn. My ankles were still fastened to the bird, and I quickly untied the ropes.

In the first streak of the early light I saw a few hundred yards away what I had hoped to find — the saddle and twisted body of the tarnsman. I released the bird, ran to the saddle, and removed the crossbow which, to my joy, was intact. None of the bolts had escaped from the specially constructed quiver. I set the bow and fitted one of them on the guide. I could hear the flight of another tarn above me. As it swept in for the kill, its tarnsman, too late, saw my leveled bow. The missile left him sagging lifeless in the saddle.

The tarn, my sable giant from Ko-ro-ba, landed and stalked majestically forward. I waited uneasily until he thrust his head past me, over my shoulder, extending his neck for preening. Good — naturedly, I scratched out a handful or two of lice which I slopped on his tongue like candy. Then I slapped his leg with affection, climbed to the saddle, dropped the dead tarnsman to the ground, and fastened myself in the saddle straps.

I felt ebullient. I had weapons again, and my taro. There was even a tarn-goad and saddle gear. I rose into flight, not thinking about Ko-ro-ba again or the Home Stone. Foolishly perhaps, but with invincible optimism, I lifted the tarn above the Voltai and turned it toward Ar.