Sheera, I knew, lay at one end of the line. In an instant with my blade, I cut her free. I quickly moved down the line of bound women, tightly thonged slave girls. They were tied alternately, in a common manner for securing slave girls, the lashed ankles of one tied to the throat of the next. I counted, placing my hand swiftly on the head of one, gagged, the crossed ankles, bound, of the next. Cara and Tina were no longer in the coffle. I was looking for the girl who would now be ninth. I felt the squirming, tied ankles of the eighth girl, heard her muffled, gagged whimper, sensed her body rearing in its bonds. Then my hand was on the head of the ninth girl. I felt beneath my fingers a woman’s head and hair, and, in her ear, a large ring of gold. She struggled. I cut Verna loose. I felt myself, briefly, illuminated in the glare of a torch, nor more than a yard from me.
“He is here!” I heard cry.
The torch fell in the darkness. My blade whipped back, freed of the body. “Torches!” cried Sarus. “Rebuild the fire!” I moved again. Another man fell. And another.
“I have him!” cried a man. “I have slain him!”
But it was not I whom he had struck.
I thrust again. Another man of Tyros, reeled away from me, stumbling, falling against the chained slaves.
Then I struck another.
Two torches were raised.
In their light I could see the men of Tyros, blades drawn, back to back, eyes wild.
Behind them, tied, on their knees, were Hura and her women. Some were screaming. “Free us!” cried Hura. “Free us!” “Free the women!” suddenly, cried Sarus. “Free them!” He had need of them.
I saw two men of Tyros running, breaking suddenly for the gate.
They began to thrust back the beam.
“Stop!” cried Sarus.
The men paid Sarus, their leader, no heed. Four other men, too, broke, running to the gate.
A yellow-clad man of Tyros suddenly thrust at me with a spear. I did not know if her knew me for the enemy or not.
I twisted.
The head of the spear stabbed past me. His thrust had brought him within range of my blade.
He fell from the spear, leaving it in my hand.
Now there stood a man with a torch at the gate. “Open it!” he cried. Four men thrust on the beam, lifting it, shoving it, in its looped, leather brackets.
“Hurry!” cried the man with the torch.
“Stop. Cowards!” screamed Sarus. “Stop!”
They paid him no heed. Rather, other men ran, too, to the gate.
I thrust my sword into the dirt at my feet, and held the spear.
The beam began to slide free of the leather brackets. The spear, a Gorean war spear, its head tapered of bronze, some eighteen inches long, its shaft more than an inch and a half in thickness, more than six feet in length, sped from my grasp.
I seized again my sword, and moved again, to one side, mixing in the shadows. The men fell back from the gate. One of them, through the back, was pinned to the beam, fastening it in place. It could no longer slip through the leather bracket.
“Sarus has slain his own men!” cried the fellow with the torch.
The men at the gate turned wildly. Several of them stood with blades drawn. “Not I, fool!” screamed Sarus. “The enemy! The enemy!” “Attack!” cried the man with the torch.
Four of the men at the gate, thinking to protect themselves, ran against other men of Tyros.
I saw Hura darting free, cut loose by a man of Tyros.
I moved about the inside of the stockade wall. I encountered a man of Tyros, back against the wall. He struck out wildly. I left him at the foot of the wall. I must hold the gate.
Some six men of Tyros, near the center of the stockade, some fifteen yards from the gate, were engaged with blades, striking at one another. I saw two fall. “Do not fight!” screamed Sarus. “Locate the enemy! The enemy!” The men fought. Now some eight or ten were engaged. They were half crazed in fear.
“Do not fight!” screamed Sarus.
I saw two more fall.
I saw Mira, free, leap to one side. Other panther women, too, were being cut free.
One of them, I saw, found her weapons.
A shape leaped from the darkness, tumbling her to the dirt, rolling with her. It was Sheera.
At the gate two men, frenzied, worked at the spear that fastened their fellow to the beam. Four others crowded about. The man who held the torch at the gate was facing the fighting in the center of the stockade.
Four times my blade thrust, and four men of Tyros slipped back, stumbling from the gate.
The two men working at the spear jerked it free of the wood and the body, impaled, was rudely thrown aside.
They turned and saw me.
Twice more my blade struck.
The man, then, with the torch, turned to face the gate. The torch fell. The gate was again in darkness.
“Get your weapons!” screamed Hura.
In the center of the stockade, two torches were lifted. I placed my sword in the dirt before the gate and, turning the impaled body on its back, drew free the great war spear, pulling the shaft through the body, holding the body beneath my foot to free the shaft.
“Our bowstrings have been cut!” wailed a panther woman. Others, too, cried out. I heard, from one side, the laughter of Verna, and saw her briefly, a sleen knife in her hand.
Then she disappeared in the shadows.
“We must escape!” cried one of the panther girls. “Escape!” cried others. “Stand where you are!” cried Hura, her voice shrill. ”We do not know where he is!” “Take knives!” cried another girl.
They scrambled among their discarded skins and accouterments.
“They are gone!” cried one of the girls.
“Our spears, too, are gone!” cried another.
I saw, in the light of two torches, men fighting, still in the center of the stockade. I saw two more men of Tyros fall, one with Sarus, one with those who had attempted to flee.
Then there was the light of only one torch, for the Gorean war spear had left my hand.
Another man of Tyros fell, at the hands of one of his fellows, and then another. “Stop fighting!” cried Sarus. “Stop fighting!” Still blades clashed.
I breathed heavily, standing at the gate, in the darkness.
“Stop!” cried Sarus. “Stop, in the name of Chenbar!”
The men of Tyros, wild-eyed, half crazed with fear, fell back.
I knew then how in Tyros stood the word of Chenbar.
“Stand side by side,” ordered Sarus. “Form a circle!”
“We are weaponless!” cried Hura. “Let us within your circle!”
None knew where within the stockade I stood.
The girls looked about, crouching and cowering. They had no weapons. They were naked. Their wrist doubtless still bore the deep, red, circular marks of Gorean binding fiber. About the necks of most, knotted still, was a tight loop of binding fiber, though it had been cut on both sides, to free them from the coffle. They were terrified.
“Please!” wept Hura.
They were defenseless. And they knew I stood, somewhere, within the stockade, unseen, with a steel blade.
Perhaps I stood at their very side.
Would the blade, suddenly, without warning, from the darkness leap forward to claim them? “Please let us within your circle!” cried Hura. “Please!”
“Please!” cried Mira. “Please!” cried others.
“Be silent!” snapped Sarus, looking about, peering into the darkness. He had little concern with the women, particularly inasmuch as their weapons had been destroyed, or had vanished.
He had freed them, it seemed, for nothing.
“You are men!” cried Hura. “We are only women!” She fell to her knees before Sarus. “As women,” she cried, “we beg your protection!” “Proud Hura!” sneered Sarus.
“Please, Sarus!” she wept.
“Into the circle,” he snapped.
Gratefully the women, weaponless and naked, defenseless, crept within the circle.
“Bosk of Port Kar!” called Sarus. “Bosk of Port Kar!”
I did not, of course, answer him.