"Yes," said another.
"How far is Cos?" Marcus asked a fellow stirring around in his blankets. "Two days," said the fellow.
"Ar will be defended to the death," said a man.
"Perhaps," said another.
"You are not sure of it?" asked the first.
"No," said the second.
"Have you heard the latest news?" asked a fellow.
"What?" inquired another.
"It was suddenly in Ar," said the fellow. "I heard it just before I was expelled from the city, the gate then closed."
"What?" asked a man.
"Talena, the daughter of Marlenus, has offered to sacrifice herself for the safety of the city."
"I do not understand," said a fellow.
"Tell me of this!" I said.
"Talena has agreed to deliver herself naked, and in the chains of a slave, to the Cosians, if they will but spare Ar!"
"She must never be permitted to do so!" cried a man.
"No!" said another.
"Noble woman!" cried a man.
"Noble Talena!" cried another.
"It is absurd," said another fellow. "She is not the daughter of Marlenus. She was disowned by him."
"And thus," I said, "her offer is of no more import than would be the similar offer of any other free woman of Ar."
"Treason!" said a fellow.
"It is said," said a fellow," that she has been a slave."
"I have heard that," said a man.
"Marlenus did disown her," said a man.
"She does not even have her original name restored," said a man, "but the merely same name, permitted her, after she was freed."
"Long was she sequestered in the Central Cylinder," said another.
"As is Claudia Tentia Hinrabia, of the Hinrabians," said a man. "Remember her?"
"Yes," said a fellow. Claudia Tentia Hinrabie had been the daughter of a former Ubar of Ar, Minus Tentius Hinrabius. When Marlenus had regained the throne he had freed her from a bondage to which Cernus, his foe, who had replaced Minus Tentius Hinrabius on the throne, had seen that she was reduced. I recalled her. She had been a slender, dark-haired beauty, with high cheekbones. She still lived, as I understood it, in the Central Cylinder.
"I, too, have heard it said," I said, "that Talena was once a slave, and I have heard it said, as well, that even now she wears on her thigh the mark of Treve, a souvenir of her former bondage to a tarnsman of that city."
"She is the daughter of Marlenus," said a man, sullenly.
"She should be Ubara," said another.
"Her offer to deliver herself to the Cosians, that the city may be spared," said a fellow, "is preposterous. When they take the city they can have her, and any other number of free women. The whole thing is absurd."
"But incredibly noble!" said a fellow.
"Yes," said another.
"It is an act worthy of one who should be Ubara," said a man.
I considered these matters, rather interested in them. In making an offer of this sort, of course, Talena was implicitly claiming for herself the status of being a Ubar's daughter, else the offer would have been, as one of the fellows had suggested, absurd. This was, in its way, presenting a title to the throne. It was not as though she were merely one, say, of a thousand free women who were making the same offer.
"Is she asking, say, a thousand other free women to join her in this proposal?" I asked.
"No," said the fellow.
The extremely interesting thing to my mind would be the Cosian response to this offer. I had little doubt, personally, from what I had learned of the intrigues in Ar that this offer had some role to play in the complicated political games afoot in that metropolis.
At this point a fellow hurried among us. He had come from the darkness, away from the gate. "Cosians!" he said. Men cried out. Some slaves among us screamed. Some men ran to the wall. Some went to pound and cry at the gate.
"Where?" I asked, standing, my sword drawn. Marcus thrust Phoebe's head farther down, she covered totally by the blanket. He was then beside me, his weapon, too, unsheathed. These were two of the few weapons in the group. These fellows, I realized, could be pinned against the wall and gate, and slaughtered. I made as though to kick the tiny fire out. "No," said the man. "No!"
"Scatter in the darkness!" I said.
"No!" he said.
"They will be on us with blades in an instant!" said a man.
"Let us in!" cried a fellow, upward to the wall, where there were guards. "They are scouts, skirmishers?" asked Marcus.
"I think so," said the man.
"Surely they will attack," said a man.
"Perhaps we can be defended from the walls," said a man. I did not think that quarrel fire from the walls would be much to our advantage. We would be as likely to be hit, I supposed, as Cosians. Too, it was very dark. Few archers will waste quarrels in such light.
"I think we are in no danger, at least now," said the man.
"Why do you say that?" I asked.
"Look," he said. He held his hand near the fire and opened it.
"A silver tarsk!" said a man.
"It was given to me by a Cosian, in the shadows," said the man, wonderingly. "I do not understand," said a man.
"He pressed it into my hand," said the man, "when I thought to be spitted by his blade."
"What did he say?" asked a man.
"That Cos was our friend," said the man.
"How many were there?" I asked.
"Only a few, I think," said the man.
"Scouts, or skirmishers," I said to Marcus.
"It would seem so," he said.
"What shall we do now?" asked a man.
"We will wait her," said a man, "until the gate opens."
"It is only an Ahn until dawn," said a man.
I looked out into the darkness. Out there, somewhere, were Cosians. I then looked at the fellow who had recently joined us. He was sitting by the tiny fire now, trembling. He was perhaps cold. His fist was clenched. In it, I gathered, was a silver tarsk.
"I do not think Ar will choose to defend itself," I said.
"I do not think so either," said Marcus, softly.
"Doubtless that is why there were no recruiting tables," I said.
"Undoubtedly," he said.
6 The Public Boards
Marcus and I turned to the street for a moment, to watch a company of guardsmen, at quick march, hasten by, their bootlike sandals, coming high on the calf, resounding on the stones.
"Ar will defend herself to the death," said a man.
"Yes," said another.
I looked after the retreating guardsmen. I doubted if there were more than fifteen hundred such in the city.
"There is no danger," said a man.
"No," said another.
"The tarn wire will protect us," said a man.
"Our gates are impregnable," said another. "Our walls cannot be breached."
"No," said another.
How little these fellows knew of the ways of war, I thought.
"Here it is," said Marcus, calling back to me, "on the public boards." The public boards are posting areas, found at many points in Ar, usually in plazas and squares. These boards were along the Avenue of the Central Cylinder, and were state boards, on which official communiquA©s, news releases, announcements and such, could be posted. Some boards are maintained by private persons, who sell space on them for advertising, notifications, and personal messages. To be sure, many folks, presumably poorer folks, or at least folks less ready to part with a tarsk bit, simply inscribe their messages, in effect as graffiti, on pillars, walls of buildings, and such. Too, posters, and such, usually hand-inked, are common in public places, usually put up by the owners or managers of palestrae, or gymnasiums, public baths, taverns, race courses, theaters, and such. Sales of tharlarion and slaves, too, are commonly thusly advertised. Heralds and criers, too, and carriers of signs, are not unknown. Some proprietors rent space in their shops or places of business for small postings. So, too, similarly, some homeowners who live on busy streets charge a fee for the use of their exterior walls. There are many other forms of communication and advertising as well, such as the parades of acrobats, jugglers, clowns, animal trainers, mimes and such, and the passage of flatbedded display wagons through the streets on which snatches of performances, intended to whet the viewer's interests, are presented, or, say, slaves are displayed usually decorously clad, in connection with imminent sales at various markets and barns. The viewer, or the male viewer, at any rate, understands that the decorous attire of the imbonded beauties of the moving platform is not likely to be worn in the exposition cages or on the block. There is a Gorean saying that only a fool buys a woman clothed. On these platforms the women are usually chained only by an ankle, that there will be but little interference with their movements and their appeals to the crowds. On the other hand, some owners, who prefer more obvious restraints for their women, who are, after all, slaves, use flatbedded wagons with mounted slave bars of various sorts, sometimes with intricate chainings or couplings. Similarly, stout, multiply locked cage wagons may be used for a similar purpose.