“Some fifteen or twenty on the ground then,” said the spokesman.
“We do not know,” said Portus.
“Archers?”
“I hope not many,” said Fel Doron.
“The soldiers will be Cosian regulars,” said Portus Canio. “We are not going to meet them blade for blade.”
“If they think their feast is set,” said the spokesman lifting his weapon, “they have not calculated wisely.”
He then left.
“We may yet owe our lives to our enemies,” said Portus Canio.
Mirus, too, turned away.
“I think not,” said Selius Arconious. “A business disrupted may be easily resumed.”
“Consider the beasts,” said Fel Doron. Kardok, hunched down, large-eyed, was viewing them.
The spokesman, bent over, was counseling his men. What he said could not be heard at the wagon.
“Master!” wept Ellen, from her place beneath the wagon.
“Be silent!” he said.
She put her head down, frightened, and was silent. When she lifted her head again, Selius Arconious was gone. Tears ran down her cheeks.
Somehow the men had fanned out, separated, perhaps prone in the grass. She could see the tharlarion of Mirus grazing a few yards away.
She heard two shots, and a cry of surprise, and pain. There was then another pair of shots, this time from behind her. She lay on her belly, putting her cheek to the grass, frightened.
When she lifted her head a little, she saw the bootlike sandals of a Cosian soldier not ten feet away. There was another shot and he suddenly slipped to the earth, his knees giving way.
She heard a cry from somewhere to the east.
A great smooth, sweeping, soaring shadow momentarily darkened the grass and she knew a tarn with its basket had passed, its archers doubtless looking for targets. It would not have been more than fifty feet above her.
She suddenly heard the fierce scratching of a tharlarion’s paws in the turf and she saw Mirus, low in the saddle, racing toward her. He was at the side of the wagon in a moment, fiercely pulling up the saddle tharlarion, rearing, its head jerked back, and he leapt from the saddle, almost at her side. There was a knife in his hand.
She shrank back, and he seized the neck rope, tied about the axle, and slashed it apart. He then dragged her from under the wagon by a bound arm, to the tharlarion. He had a foot in the stirrup, and drew himself up with his left hand, retaining his grasp on the slave with his right hand, hauling her upward with him. An arrow she sensed sped past, like a whisper in the wind.
The tharlarion reared and squealed.
She was then half across the saddle, twisted, on her side, before him. She tried to squirm free and then it seemed her head exploded with pain. His hand was so twisted in her hair she feared great gouts of it would be torn free. Tears burst from her eyes.
“Do not struggle,” said he, “slave girl!”
Then he had her well across the saddle, on her belly, and she, wedged between the pommel and his body, was helpless.
“If I cannot have you,” he said, “no one shall!”
“No, please, Master!” she cried.
“The word suits you well, slut, and always did!” he laughed.
She sobbed wildly. The world seemed to spin as the tharlarion turned and leaped.
“You look well on a leash,” he said, fiercely, “on a rope leash, leashed like the bitch you are!”
She was conscious in the swirl of a helmet before him, but the tharlarion, forced forward, struck into the man and he fell away, reeling backward.
She was dimly, half-consciously aware of a figure leaping on the fallen man, a knife flashing.
“On, on!” he cried to the tharlarion.
As the tharlarion reared again she was aware of Mirus cursing, and a weight, a body, was hanging onto the bridle, pulling the animal down, fiercely, yanking downward, twisting its neck.
The animal suddenly lost its balance and went wildly to its side, Ellen being thrown free, rolling to the turf, and then the beast, a moment later, rose up, scrambling, and squealing, and rushed away, out into the grasslands.
“You!” cried Mirus, in fury.
Before him stood Selius Arconious, his body bloody, filthy from war, his tunic torn and soiled, gasping for breath, regarding Mirus furiously, balefully.
“I believe you have something of mine,” he said.
Mirus in fury reached to his belt and drew his pistol, and it was centered on the heart of Selius Arconious.
Ellen, lying to one side, cried out, “No, Master, please!” A vision went through her mind of the wood on the back of the wagon leaping into the air, the sound of the shot, the smell of the expended cartridge, the exploding splinters bursting into the air, now weirdly in slow motion in her memory.
Surely Selius Arconious knew the meaning of that weapon. Yet he faced Mirus with equanimity.
“You do not deserve a slave,” he said.
Mirus hesitated, confused.
“For you are not a man,” said Mirus.
“I will show you who is a man!” snarled Mirus, and steadied the weapon in two hands.
“Why are you not at your post?” asked Selius Arconious.
Mirus lowered the weapon.
“Now,” said Selius Arconious, “you know the meaning of Gor.”
With a cry of anger Mirus hurried away.
Selius Arconious, looking about, lifted the bound slave, enwrapping her in his arms. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“Is it of concern to Master?” inquired the slave.
Selius scowled, and then smiled. “No,” he said. He then, looking about, carried her back to the wagon. “Stay here,” he said.
She turned away from him, under the wagon, kneeling, lifting her bound wrists to him. “Master’s slave wears his collar,” she said. “Perhaps he will untie her?”
“Is it not foolish for a slave,” he asked, “kneeling, to face away from a man as you are doing, with her wrists bound like that?”
“Perhaps, Master,” she said.
“What if I order you to put your head to the turf?” he asked.
“Then I must instantly obey my master,” she said.
There was a pair of shots from the west, and Selius Arconious hurried away. She watched him move away, half bent over, moving swiftly. She saw a Cosian, his upper body, rise from the grass. There was another shot, and he fell.
She realized there had been little firing.
“Ammunition!” she heard, a cry in English from the north.
She saw the spokesman, his robes torn, drawing back. Another man was with him, come from the west.
“Ammunition!” she heard again.
The spokesman called back, in English. “There is no more, fool! The extra rounds were in the saddle bags. It is gone with the tharlarion! We have used the last rounds, those from the stores of the slain tharlarion.”
Ellen, who understood this discourse, trembled with apprehension.
A Cosian, helmeted, rose to his feet, carefully, his bow half drawn, some fifty yards away.
Then, beside him, carefully, there rose another.
A tarn, with suspended basket, soared near. The spokesman replaced his now-useless weapon in his belt, and lifted his hands. He was not fired on from the basket. The tarn swung about. “No more lightning!” called the spokesman to the fields. “No more lightning! We surrender!”
Ellen recalled that when she had seen Selius Arconious he had no longer had the crossbow. The quarrels, too, she surmised, had been expended.
More Cosians emerged from the grass, some with bows, about the camp.
They began to close in.
Selius Arconious, with Fel Doron, and Portus Canio, slowly, upright, wearily, approached the wagon. Another of Portus’s men came, too, from a different direction. Ellen saw no more of his group.
Selius Arconious motioned that Ellen should emerge from under the wagon, and the slave complied, and came to kneel at the feet of her master, frightened.