“Ah,” said the first rider, as though resigned. “Then who will move first?”
Ellen, the rude leash dangling from her neck, and then over her left shoulder, behind her, her hands roped tightly behind her, knelt in terror on the grass. She was afraid to move. She feared that the smallest movement, the tiniest sound, the most diminutive influence, might prove critical, like the smallest jarring, or jostling, like a small thing which might tip a balance, a carelessly dislodged pebble that releases an avalanche, the particle of static electricity which triggers the bolt of lighting, the tiny movement, even a hesitant, uncertain, false step, which causes a gingerly held device, reposing in its container, to awaken, exploding, crying out, showering bricks, gouging asphalt, striking away roofs and walls for a hundred yards about.
There was the sound of the feeding of the sleen.
The sky was a bright blue. A gentle wind stirred stalks of grass.
“Tarnsmen!” said Selius Arconious. “Tarnsmen!”
Men tensed, the hands of riders almost darted to their weapons.
“Do you think we are fools?” asked the first rider.
The other riders laughed, but did not take their eyes from the men of Portus Canio.
“You do us little honor, tarnster,” said the first rider.
“Tarnsmen,” repeated Selius Arconious.
Portus Canio lifted his gaze a fraction.
Ellen gasped.
“Your trick is older than the Sardar itself,” said the first rider.
“Tarnsmen,” said Portus Canio.
“Desist,” snarled the first rider. His hand tightened on the weapon he had rested on the saddle.
But at that moment there was indeed a beating of wings in the sky, a whirl of wind, a blasting of grasses, the screams of mighty forms overhead, wild gigantic darting shadows darkening the grass, the shouts of men, the piercing sounds of tarn whistles.
“Aii!” cried the first rider, wheeling in the saddle.
“Take cover!” shouted Portus Canio.
Selius Arconious flung himself toward Ellen, dragged her to the earth and covered her body for an instant with his own, crouching over it, looking up, wildly. Arrows struck into the turf. Ellen saw an arrow hit the turf not a yard away. It was so suddenly there, not there, then there, almost upright, quivering, a third of its length in the dirt. In an odd almost still instant she saw the breeze ruffle its fletching, and then cried out as Selius Arconious dragged her to her feet by a bound arm and, looking upward, rushed her stumbling to the wagon, and hurled her savagely, she rolling, beneath it. Then he was gone.
Her shoulder hurt.
The sleen lifted their heads from their feeding, looked upward, and then, their snouts bloody, thrust their jaws again into the mass of blood, cloth and meat under their paws, between the riders and the back of the wagon.
Ellen heard the sound of gunfire.
One of Portus’s men who had held the two crossbows wheeled away from the back of the wagon, stumbling, the weapon discharged, fallen to the grass. An arrow transfixed his throat. His hands were on the shaft, and he broke it, it snapping with a sharp sound, but then, his eyes glazed, blood running from his mouth, and from about the splintered shaft lodged in his throat, he sank to the grass.
The tharlarion swung its head about, bellowing. Its heavy tail lashed, pounding the earth. It twisted in the traces. The wagon rocked, half off the ground, tipped, and then righted itself. Ellen heard an arrow strike into the wagon bed above her. An angry metal point seemed suddenly to have grown from the splintered wood above her.
Two of Portus’s men, weapons in their hands, now crouched under the wagon with her, taking cover from the fire from above. Two others were crouched behind the tharlarion. There were cries of rage from the mounted men about. Their mounts wheeled about, squealing. Men struggled to control them. Two men had dismounted and were looking upward. The beasts howled. One tore at the grass. Another, in frustration, sprang upward, again and again, reaching upward, as if it might clutch and tear the clouds themselves. The sleen fed, now more placidly. There was more gunfire. And then it was suddenly quiet.
Ellen crawled on her knees from under the wagon.
A great bird, a tarn, lay thrashing in the grass fifty yards away, amidst the debris of a tarn basket.
Cosian men at arms, some armed with short bows, such as may be used with convenience from tarn baskets, which may clear the bulwarks and fire amongst the ropes, saddle bows, actually, such as are favored for similar reasons by tarnsmen, were drawing away, afoot. One or two bodies lay near the thrashing tarn. In the distance, but turning now, obviously withdrawing, but not abandoning the field, were four more tarns, each with a tarn basket slung beneath it.
She heard Portus Canio say, “They will come again.”
She then saw, with a gasp of relief, Selius Arconious. In his hand, but empty now, was the second crossbow. He who had held it earlier was to one side. In his inert body there were four arrows. Ellen supposed that the crossbowmen would be the prime targets of the aerial archers, as they would suppose, at least initially, that only those would be able to respond to their attack. That the tarns had withdrawn as they had, so quickly, suggested that the attackers had not anticipated the resistance they had encountered. Doubtless they were startled, and perhaps dismayed, and disconcerted, perhaps even frightened, by the noise of the gunfire, and the damage it might have wreaked amongst them. They would not have expected this. Probably nothing in their experiences would have prepared them for this. Surely they would fear, at least, that these noises, these harms, were the effects of what they had only heard of in stories, the effects of instruments they might have hitherto supposed merely fanciful, the effects of forbidden weapons.
The tarns were now alighting, several hundred yards away.
“They will come again, some on foot,” said Portus Canio. Then he regarded Selius Arconious. “You shot well,” he said.
Selius Arconious shrugged. “I fear not well enough.”
“Two will no longer draw the bow,” said Portus Canio.
“I saw Tersius Major in one of the baskets,” said Fel Doron.
“I, too,” said Portus Canio.
“He was not hit,” said Fel Doron.
“No,” said Portus Canio.
“As I said,” said Selius Arconious, “I did not shoot well enough.”
“How many quarrels are there left?” asked Portus Canio.
“I have two, Loquatus has another,” said Arconious.
“Then we are finished,” said Portus Canio.
“The tharlarion is hit,” said a man.
“I do not think badly,” said another. “The arrow struck away, not lodging in the flesh.”
“There is a wound. It is bleeding,” said a man.
“Attend to it,” said Portus Canio.
The tharlarion was browsing, calmly, in its traces.
The sleen were lying near the body of the translator, their jaws bloody, dried blood even on the fur of their throats. One had its paw on the body. They were now somnolent, their eyes half shut.
Ellen struggled to her feet, beside the wagon.
Those who had been with Mirus had drawn to one side. Two of the beasts were dead. Kardok, standing near them, lifted his head, and turned his eyes toward the wagon, toward Portus’s group.
“Load the bow,” said Portus Canio.
Two of the men who had been with Mirus lay on the grass. One was apparently dead, the other wounded. There had been six humans in the party of Mirus, including himself. Their forces, with the slaying of the translator, whose weapon had apparently been retrieved in the fray by one of those with Mirus, now numbered four, one of whom was wounded. He who had substantially been their spokesman, whom Ellen took to be the leader, who had shot the translator, was unhurt, as was Mirus. Only one of their mounts was both at hand and unhurt. Some may have thrown their riders and fled into the grassland. Two had been killed with arrows. As with the crossbowmen the mounts had been prime targets, as their availability might have facilitated the escape of scattering, fleeing foes. I have heard that there is a saying amongst one of the many Gorean peoples, in this case the “Red Savages of the Barrens,” as they are spoken of, to the effect that an enemy afoot is an enemy dead. I know little of the Barrens. They are supposedly an area of vast prairies somewhere far away, far to the east. Of Portus’s men, who had numbered nine, there were five left.