What could on say to them? If the joint fleets of Cos and Tyros were indeed almost upon us, there was little to do but flee, or fight. We were truly read to do neither. Even had the fortunes I had brought from the treasure fleet been applied immediately after my return to the city, we could not, in the time, have outfitted a fleet to match that which must be decending upon us.
"What would be your estimate of the size of the fleet of Cos and Tyros," I asked Tab.
He did not hesitate. "Four thousand ships," he said.
"Tarn ships?" I asked.
"All," he said.
His surmise agreed closely with the reports of my spies. The fleet would consist, according to my information, of forty-two hundred ships, twenty-five hundred from Cos and seventeen hundred from Tyros. Of the forty-two hundred, fifteen hundred would be galleys heavy class, two thousand medium-clas galleys, and seven hundred light galleys. A net, a hundred pasangs wide, was closing on Port Kar.
It seemed that only the departure date of the fleet had eluded my spies. I laughed, yet I could not blame them. One scarcely advertises such matters. And ships may be swiftly outfitted and launched, if materials and crews are at hand. The council and I had apparently miscalculated the damage done by the capture of the treasure fleet to the war plans of Cos and Tyros. We had not expected the launching of the fleet ot take places until the spring. Besides, it was now in Se'Kara, late in the season to launch tarn ships. Most sailing, save by round ships, is done in the spring and summer. In Se'Kara, particularly later in the month, there are often high seas on Thassa. We had been taken totally unprepared. It was dangerous to attack us now. In this bold stroke I saw not the hand of Lurius, Ubar of Cos, but of the brilliant Chenbar of Kasra, Ubar of Tyros, the Sea Sleen.
I admired him. He was a good captain.
"What shall we do, Captain?" ask teh officer once more.
"What do you propose?" I asked him, smiling.
He looked at me, startled. "There is only one thing to do," he said, "and that is to ready our ships, take our treasure and slaves aboard, and flee. We are strong, and may take an island on our own, one of the northern islands. There you can be Ubar and we can be your men."
"Many of the captains," said another officer, "are already weighing anchor for the northern islands."
"And others," said another, "for the southern ports."
"Thassa is broard," said another officer. "There are many islands, many ports." "And what of Port Kar?" I asked.
"She has no Home Stone," said one of the men.
I smiled. It was true. Port Kar, of al the cities on Gor, was the only one that had no Home Stone. I did not know if men did not love her because she had on Home Stone, or that she had no Home Stone because men did not love her. The officer had proposed, as clearly as one might, that the city be abandoned to the flames, and to the ravaging seamen of Cos and Tyros.
Port Kar had no Home Stone.
"How many of you think," I asked, "that Port Kar has no Home Stone?" The men looked at one another, puzzled. All knew, of course, that she had no Home Stone.
There was silence.
Then, after a time, Tab said, "I think that she might have one."
"But," said I, "she does not yet have one."
"No," said Tab.
"I," said one of the men, "wonder what it would be like to live in a ctiy where there is a Home Stone."
"How does a city obtain a Home Stone?" I asked.
"Men decide that she hasll have one," said Tab.
"Yes," I said, "that is how it is that a city obtains a Home Stone." The men looked at one another.
"Send the slave boy Fish before me," I said.
The men looked at one another, not understanding, but one went to fetch the boy. I knew that none of the slaves would have fled. They would not have been able to. The alarm had come in the night, and, at night, in a Gorean household, it is common for the slaves to be confined; certainly in my house, as a wise percaution, I kept my slaves well secured; even Midice, when she had snuggled against me in the love furs, when I had finished with her, was always chained by the right ankle to the slave ring set in the bottom of my couch. Fish would have been chained in the kitchen, side by side with Vina.
The boy, white-faced, alarmed, was shoved into my presence.
"Go outside," I told him, "and find a rock, and bring it to me."
He looked at me.
"Hurry!" I said.
He turned about and ran from the room.
We waited quietly, not speaking, until he returned. He held in his hand a sizable rock, somewhat bigger than my fist. It was a common rock, not very large, and gray and heavy, granular in texture.
I took the rock.
"A knife," I said.
I was handed a knife.
I cut in the rock the initials, in block Gorean script, of Port Kar. Then I held out in my hand the rock.
I held it up so that the men could see.
"What have I here?" I asked.
Tab said it, and quietly, "The Home Stone of Port Kar."
"Now," said I, facing the man who had told me there was but one choice, that of flight, "shall we fly?"
He looked at the simple rock, wonderingly. "I have never had a Home Stone before," he said.
"Shall we fly?" I asked.
"Not if we have a Home Stone," he said.
I held up the rock. "Do we have a Home Stone?" I asked the men.
"I will accept it as my Home Stone," said the slave boy, Fish. None of the men laughed. The first to accept the Home Stone of Port Kar was only a boy, and a slave. But he had spoken as a Ubar.
"And I!" cried Thurnock, in his great, booming voice.
"And I!" cried Clitus.
"And I!" said Tab.
"And I!" cried the men in the room. And, suddenly, the room was filled with cheers and more than a hundred weapons left their sheaths and saluted the Home Stone of Port Kar. I saw weathered seamen weep and cry out, brandishing their swords. There was joy in that room then such as I had never before seen it. And there was a belonging, and a victory, and a meaningfulness, and cries, and the clashing of weapons, and tears and, in that instant, love.
I cried to Thurnock. "Release all the slaves! Send them throughout the city, to the wharves, the taverns, the arsenal, the piazzas, the markets, everywhere! Tell them to cry out the news! Tell them to tell everyone that there is a Home Stone in Port Kar!"
Men ran from the room to carry out orders.
"Officers," I cried, "to your ships! Form your lines beyond the harbor four pasangs west of the wharves of Sevarius!"
"Thurnock and Clitus," I said, "remain in the holding."
"No!" they cried together.
"Remain!" I ordered.
They looked at one another in dismay.
I could not send them to their deaths. I had no hopes that Port Kar could muster enough ships to fend off the joint fleet of Cos and Tyros.
I turned away from them, and, with the stone, strode from the room. Outside the holding, on the broad promenade before of the holding, bordering on the lakelike courtyard, with the canal gate beyond, I ordered a swift, tharlarionprowed longboat made ready.
Even from where I was I could hear, beyond the holding, the cries that there was a Home Stone in Port Kar, and could see torches being borne along the narrow walks which, in most places, line the canals.
"Ubar," I heard, and I turned to take Telima in my arms.
"Will you not fly?" she begged, tears in her eyes.
"Listen," I told her. "Hear them? Hear what they are crying outside?" "They are crying that there is a Home Stone in Port Kar," she said, "but there is no Home Stone in Port Kar. Everyone knows that."
"If men will that there be a Home Stone in Port Kar," I said, "then in Port Kar there will be a Home Stone."