Gor - Raiders Of Gor Part 40

The boy, white-faced, alarmed, was shoved into my presence.

"Go outside," I told him, "and find a rock, and bring it to me."

He looked at me.

"Hurry!" I said.

He turned about and ran from the room.

We waited quietly, not speaking, until he returned. He held in his hand a sizable rock, somewhat bigger than my fist. It was a common rock, not very large, and gray and heavy, granular in texture.

I took the rock.

"A knife," I said.

I was handed a knife.

I cut in the rock the initials, in block Gorean script, of Port Kar.

Then I held out in my hand the rock.

I held it up so that the men could see.

"What have I here?" I asked.

Tab said it, and quietly, "The Home Stone of Port Kar."

"Now," said I, facing the man who had told me there was but one choice, that of flight, "shall we fly?"

He looked at the simple rock, wonderingly. "I have never had a Home Stone before," he said.

"Shall we fly?" I asked.

"Not if we have a Home Stone," he said.

I held up the rock. "Do we have a Home Stone?" I asked the men.

"I will accept it as my Home Stone," said the slave boy, Fish. None of the men laughed. The first to accept the Home Stone of Port Kar was only a boy, and a slave. But he had spoken as a Ubar.

"And I!" cried Thurnock, in his great, booming voice.

"And I!" cried c.l.i.tus.

"And I!" said Tab.

"And I!" cried the men in the room. And, suddenly, the room was filled with cheers and more than a hundred weapons left their sheaths and saluted the Home Stone of Port Kar. I saw weathered seamen weep and cry out, brandishing their swords. There was joy in that room then such as I had never before seen it. And there was a belonging, and a victory, and a meaningfulness, and cries, and the clashing of weapons, and tears and, in that instant, love.

I cried to Thurnock. "Release all the slaves! Send them throughout the city, to the wharves, the taverns, the a.r.s.enal, the piazzas, the markets, everywhere!

Tell them to cry out the news! Tell them to tell everyone that there is a Home Stone in Port Kar!"

Men ran from the room to carry out orders.

"Officers," I cried, "to your ships! Form your lines beyond the harbor four pasangs west of the wharves of Sevarius!"

"Thurnock and c.l.i.tus," I said, "remain in the holding."

"No!" they cried together.

"Remain!" I ordered.

They looked at one another in dismay.

I could not send them to their deaths. I had no hopes that Port Kar could muster enough ships to fend off the joint fleet of Cos and Tyros.

I turned away from them, and, with the stone, strode from the room.

Outside the holding, on the broad promenade before of the holding, bordering on the lakelike courtyard, with the ca.n.a.l gate beyond, I ordered a swift, tharlarionprowed longboat made ready.

Even from where I was I could hear, beyond the holding, the cries that there was a Home Stone in Port Kar, and could see torches being borne along the narrow walks which, in most places, line the ca.n.a.ls.

"Ubar," I heard, and I turned to take Telima in my arms.

"Will you not fly?" she begged, tears in her eyes.

"Listen," I told her. "Hear them? Hear what they are crying outside?"

"They are crying that there is a Home Stone in Port Kar," she said, "but there is no Home Stone in Port Kar. Everyone knows that."

"If men will that there be a Home Stone in Port Kar," I said, "then in Port Kar there will be a Home Stone."

"Fly," she wept.

I kissed her and leaped down into the longboat, which was now beside the promenade.

The men shoved off with the oars.

"To the Council of Captains," I told them.

The tharlarion head of the craft turned toward the ca.n.a.l gate.

I turned to lift my hand in farewell to Telima. I saw her standing there, near the entryway to my holding, in the garment of the Kettle Slave, under the torches. She lifted her hand.

Then I took my seat in the longboat.

I noted that at one of the oars sat the slave boy Fish.

"It is a man's work that must now be done, Boy," I said to him.

He drew on the oar. "I am a man," he said, "Captain."

I saw the girl Vina standing beside Telima.

But Fish did not look back.

The ship nosed through the ca.n.a.ls of Port Kar toward the hall of the Council of Captains.

There were torches everywhere, and lights in the windows.

We heard the cry about us sweeping the city, like a spark igniting the hearts of men into flame, that now in Port Kar there was a Home Stone.

A man stood on a narrow walks, a bundle on his back, tied over a spear. "Is it true, Admiral?" he cried. "Is it true?"

"If you will have it true," I told him, "it will be true."

He looked at me, wonderingly, and then the tharlarion-prowed longboat glided past him in the ca.n.a.l, leaving him behind.

I looked once behind, and saw that he had thrown the bundle from his spear, and was following us, afoot.

"There is a Home Stone in Port Kar!" he cried.

I saw others stop, and then follow him.

The ca.n.a.ls we traversed were crowded, mostly with small tharlarion boats, loaded with goods, moving this way and that. All who could, it seemed, were fleeing the city.

I had heard already that men with larger ships, hundreds of them, had put out to sea, and that the wharves were packed with throngs, bidding exorbitant amounts of gold for a pa.s.sage from Port Kar. Many fortunes, I thought, would be made this night in Port Kar.

"Make way for the Admiral!" cried the man in the bow of the longboat. "Make way for the admiral!"

We saw frightened faces looking out from the windows. Men were hurrying along the narrow walks lining the ca.n.a.ls. I could see the shining eyes of urts, their noses and heads dividing the torchlit waters silently, their pointed, silken ears laid back against the sides of their heads.

"Make way for the Admiral!" cried the man in the bow of the longboat.

Our boat mixed oars with another, and then we shoved apart and continued on our way.

Children were crying. I heard a woman scream. Men were shouting. Everywhere dark figures, bundles on their backs, were scurrying along the sides of the ca.n.a.ls.

Many of the boats we pa.s.sed were crowded with frightened people and goods.

Many of those we pa.s.sed asked me, "Is it true, Admiral, that there is a Home Stone in Port Kar," and I responded to them, as I had to the man before, "If you will have it true, it will be true."

I saw a man at the tiller of one of the boats put about.

There were now torches on both sides of the ca.n.a.ls, in long lines, following us, and boats, too, began to follow us.

"Where are you going?" asked a man from a window of the pa.s.sing throng.

"I think to the Council of Captains," said one of the men on the walk. "It is said that there is now a Home Stone in Port Kar."

And I heard men behind him cry, "There is a Home Stone in Port Kar! There is a Home Stone in Port Kar!" This cry was taken up by thousands, and everywhere I saw men pause in their flight, and boats put about, and men pour from the entryways of their buildings onto the walks lining the ca.n.a.ls. I saw bundles thrown down and arms unsheathed, and behind us, in throngs of thousands now, came the people of Port Kar, following us to the great piazza before the halls of the Council of Captains.

Even before the man in the bow had tied the tharlarion-prowed longboat ot a mooring post at the piazza, I had leaped up to the tiles and was striding, robes swirling, across the squares of the broard piazza toward the great door of the hall of the Council of Captains.

Four members of the Council Guard, beneath the two great braziers set at the entrance, leaped to attention, the b.u.t.ts of their pikes striking on the tiles.

I swept past them and into the hall.

Candles were lit on several of the tables. Papers were strewn about. There were few scribes or pages there. Of the usual seventy or eighty, or so, captains of the approximately one hundred and twenty ent.i.tled to sit in the council, only some thirty or forty were present.

And even as I entered some two or three left the hall.

The scribe, haggard behind the great table, sitting before the book of the council, looked up at me.

I glanced about.

The captains sat silently. Samos was there, and I saw that short-cropped white hair buried in his rough hands, his elbows on his knees.

Two more captains rose to their feet and left the room.

One of them stopped beside Samos. "Make your ships ready," he said. "There is not much time to flee."

Samos shook him away.

I took my chair. "I pet.i.ton," said I to the scribe, as though it might be an ordinary meeting, "to address the council."

The scribe was puzzled.

The captains looked up.

"Speak," said the Scribe.

"How may of you," asked I of the captains, "stand read to undertake the defense of your city?"

Dark, long-haired Bejar was there. "Do not jest," said he, "Captain." He spoke irritably. "Most of the captains have already fled. And hundreds of the lesser captains. The round ships and the long ships leave the harbor of Port Kar. The people, as they can, flee. Panic has swept the city. We cannot find ships to fight."

"The people," said Antisthenes, "flee. The will not fight. They are truly of Port Kar."

"Who knows what it is to be truly of Port Kar?" I asked Antisthenes.

Samos lifted his head and regarded me.

"The people flee," said Bejar.

"Listen!" I cried. "Hear them! They are outside!"

The men of the council lifted their heads. Through the thick walls, and the high, narrow windows of the hall of the Council of Captains, there came a great, rumbling cry, the thunderous mixture of roiling shouts.

Bejar swept his sword from his sheath, "They have come to kill us!" he cried.