"Speak less," said a guard. "You are here to reinforce the wall, not spend your time in talk like silly slave girls."
"I fear the wall is going to buckle here," I said, indicating a place at the wall…
"Where?" he asked, going to the wall, examining it with his hands.
I did not think it wise on his part to turn his back on prisoners.
I thrust his head, from behind, into the logs. It struck them with considerable force. I gestured to the men about, that they join me at the wall. The fallen guard could not be seen amongst us. His sword I now held in my hand.
"What is going on there?" called the chief guard.
"You will get us all killed," said a man.
He pushed his way amongst us, striking to the left and right. Then he saw his fallen fellow. He turned, white-faced, his hand at the hilt of his sword. But the sword I carried was at his breast.
Ram relieved him swiftly of the keys he bore. He released me, and then himself, and then gave the keys to Tasdron.
"There is no escape for you," said the chief guard. "You are pinned with the wall on one side, the guardsmen who may be swiftly marshaled on the other."
"Call your fellow guards to your side," I said.
"I do not choose to do so," he said.
"The choice is yours," I granted him. I drew back the blade.
"Wait," he said. Then he called out, "Jason! Ho-Sim! To the wall!"
They hurried over. We had then four swords, and two spears. They did not carry shields, for their duties had only involved the supervision of a work crew.
"Captain!" called another guard, from some forty yards away. "Are you all right?"
"Yes!" he called.
But the man had apparently seen the movement of a spear among the workers.
He turned suddenly and, bolting, fled toward the platform and main buildings.
"A spear!" I said.
But by the time it was in my grasp the man was well out of its range.
"He will give the alarm," said the chief guard. "You are finished. Return to me my weapons and place yourselves again in chains. I will petition that your lives be spared."
"Well, Lads," said I, "let us now to work with a good heart. I do not think we will have a great deal of time to spare."
With a will, then, they set themselves to the opening of the wall.
"You are insane!" said the chief guard. "You will all be trampled."
As soon as one log was tortured out of the earth and lifted away Imnak slipped through the opening, out among the tabuk.
"He at least will escape," said one of the men.
"He will be killed out there," said another.
I was disappointed that Imnak had fled. I had thought him made of sterner stuff.
"Quickly, Lads," I said. "Quickly!"
Another log was pulled out of the earth, levered up by bars and, by many hands, heaved to the side.
We could hear the alarm bar ringing now. Its sound carried clearly in the clear, cold air north of Torvaldsland.
"Quickly, Lads!" I encouraged them.
"You, too," I said, gesturing to the three guards who were conscious. "Work well and I may spare your lives."
Angrily, then, they, too, set themselves to the work of drawing logs out of that cruel turf.
Suddenly a tabuk, better than eleven hands at the shoulder, thrust through the opening, buffeting men aside.
"Hurry!" I said. "Back to work!"
"We will be killed!" cried the chief guard. "You do not know these beasts!"
"Guards are coming," moaned a man.
Hurrying toward us we could now see some forty or fifty guardsmen, weapons at the ready.
"Surrender!" said the chief guard.
"Work," I warned him.
He saw that I was ready to make an example of him. Earnestly he then bent sweating to his work.
"I surrender! I surrender!" cried a man, running toward the guards.
We saw him cut down.
I took again the spear which had earlier been pressed into my grasp.
I hurled it into the guards, some fifty yards now away. I saw a man fall.
The guards stopped, suddenly. They did not have shields. I took the other spear.
"Work!" I called to the men behind me.
"Heave!" I heard Ram call.
Two more tabuk bounded through the rupture in the wall. There would not be enough. They did not know the wall was open. Some four more tabuk, as though sensing freedom, trotted past.
There would not be enough.
I threatened the guards with the spear. They fanned out, now, wisely, warily.
Another log was rolled aside.
Two more tabuk bounded through.
"Kill him!" I heard the chief of those guardsmen say. Four more tabuk trotted past.
There would not be enough tabuk! The guards now crept more close, blades ready.
"Aja! Aja!" I heard, from behind the fence. "Aja! Hurry, my brothers! Aja!"
There was a cheer from those who labored at the destruction of the wall.
Forty or more tabuk suddenly, with startling rapidity, a tawny blur, trotted past me. They were led by a magnificent animal, a giant buck, fourteen hands at the shoulder, with swirling horn of ivory more than a yard in length. It was the leader of the herd of Tancred.
"Aja!" I heard from behind the fence.
Suddenly it was as though a dam had broken. I threw myself back against the logs. The guardsmen broke and fled.
Floodlike, like a tawny, thundering avalanche, blurred, snorting, tossing their heads and horns, the tabuk sped past me. I saw the leader, to one side, on a hillock, stamping and snorting, and lifting his head. He watched the tabuk streaming past him and then he bounded from the hillock, and, racing, made his way to the head of the herd. More tabuk now, a river better than sixty feet wide, thundered past me. I heard logs splintering, and saw them breaking and giving way. They fell and some, even, on the backs of the closely massed animals, were carried for dozens of yards, wood floating and churned, tossed on that tawny, storming river, that relentless torrent of hide and horn, turned toward the north. I moved to my left as more logs burst loose. In minutes the river of tabuk was more than two hundred yards wide. The ground shook beneath me. I could hardly see nor breathe for the dust.
I was aware of Imnak near me, grinning.
11
What Further Events Occurred In The Vicinity Of The Wall; I Again Turn My Eyes Northward; I Pause Only To Reduce A Woman To Slavery
I tied her wrists together. There was a great cheer from my men.
As I had anticipated there had been little actual fighting.
Once the wall had been broken, Drusus, of the Assassins, had departed with several men.
Several guardsmen, too, their discipline broken, had sought supplies and fled south. The wall broken there seemed little point to them to remain and die.
We had little difficulty with the guards and work crews east of the break in the wall. It had been a simple matter to don the uniforms of guards and seem to march a new chain of men east. The men in the chain, of course, were not locked within, save for those at the end of the chain who had been former guards, now clad in the rags of laborers. I was of the warriors, and Ram, as it turned out, was quite skillful with the sword. Confronted with us and the majority of the putatively chained laborers, suddenly throwing off their chains and encircling them, they offered little resistance. Soon they, like their colleagues, wore locked manacles and laborers' rags. At the eastern end of the wall a similar ruse surprised the camp of hunters. We lost some of these as they fled south but others we captured and chained, acquiring several longbows, which might he used at the latitude of the wall, and several hundred arrows. Some nine men among our forces were of the peasants. To these I gave the bows.
At the end of the wall Imnak wept, seeing the strewn fields of slaughtered tabuk. The fur and hide of the tabuk provides the red hunters not only with clothing, but it can also be used for blankets, sleeping bags and other articles. The hides can serve for harnesses for the snow sleen and their white-skinned, female beasts. Too they may be used for buckets and tents, and for kayaks, the light, narrow hunting canoes of skin from which sea mammals may be sought. Lashings, harpoon lines, cords and threads can he fashioned from its sinews. Carved, the bone and horn of the animal can function as arrow points, needles, thimbles, chisels, wedges and knives. Its fat and bone marrow can be used as fuel. Too, almost all of the animal is edible. Even its eyes may be eaten and, from its stomach, the half-digested mosses on which it has been grazing.