I wondered if my holding still stood.
I had meat brought for the tarn, great chunks of tarsk, thighs and shoulders, which I had thrown before it, on the cold deck. It tore at them greedily. I had had the bones removed from the meat. If it had been bosk I would not, but the bones of the tarsk are thinner and splinter easily. Then I had water brought for the tarn, in a leather bucket, the ice broken through that coated the water like a lid. It drank.
"I am coming with you," said the boy.
In the belt of his tunic he had thrust the sword that I had had the officer give him before the battle.
I shook my head. "You are only a boy," I told him. "No," he said, "I am a man." I smiled at him.
"Why would you come to my holding?" I asked.
"It is to be done," he said.
"Does the girl Vina mean so much to you?" I asked.
He looked at me, and, flustered, looked down at the deck. He kicked at the deck. "She is a mere slave," he said.
"Of course," I said.
"And," said he, defiantly, "a man does not concern himself for a mere female slave."
"of course not," I admitted.
"Even if it were not for her," he said, looking up, angrily, "I would accompany you."
"Why?" I asked.
"You are my captain," he said, puzzled. "Remain here," I told him, gently. He drew the sword I had had given him.
"Test me!" he demanded.
"put away", I said, "the tools of men."
"Defend yourself!" be cried.
My blade leaped from its sheath and I parried his blow. He had come to me much more swiftly than I had expected.
Men gathered about. "It is sport," said one of them.
I moved the blade toward the boy and he parried it. I was impressed, for I had intended to touch him that time.
Then, moving about, on the pitching deck, in the sleet, we matched blades. After an Ehn or two I replaced my blade in its sheath. "At four times," I said, "I could have killed you."
He dropped his blade, and looked at me agonized.
"But," I said, "You have learned your lessons well. I have fought with warriors who were less swift than you."
He grinned. Some of the seamen pounded their left shoulders with their right fists.
The boy, Fish, was a favorite with them. How else, I asked myself, had he been able to take an oat on the long. boat in the canals when I had gone to the hall of the Council of Captains, or been able to board the Dorna, or taken his place in the longboat that had ferried me to the round ship? I, too, was not unfond of the boy. I saw in him, in this boy, wearing a collar, branded, clad in the garment of a kitchen slave, as most others would not, a young Ubar. "You may not come with me," I told him. "You are too young to die." "At what age," asked he, "is a man ready for death?"
"To go where I am to go," I told him, "and do what I must do, is the action of a fool."
He grinned. I saw a tear in his eye.
"Yes," said he, "Captain."
"It is the action of a fool!" I told him.
"Each man," said the boy, "has the right, does he not, to perform, if he wishes, the act of a fool?"
"Yes," I said, "each man may, if he wishes, choose such acts."
"Then," said he, "Captain, the bird having rested, let us be on our way." "Bring a woolen cloak for a young fool," I told a seaman. "And, too, bring a belt and scabbard."
"Yes, Captain," cried the man.
"Do you think you can cling," asked I, "to a knotted rope for hours." "Of course, Captain," said he.
In a few moments the tarn spread his wings before the black wind and, caught in the blast, was hurled before the Dorna, and began, in dizzying circles, to climb in the wind and slee't. The boy, his feet braced on a knot in the swaying rope, his hands clenched on its fibers, swung below me. Far below I saw the Dorna, lifting and failing in the troughs of the waves, and, separated from her, tlae ships of the fleet, round ships and tarn ships, storm sails set, oars dipping, flying before the storm.
I did not see any of the ships of Cos or Tyros.
Terence of Treve, mercenary captain of the tamsmen, had refused to return to Port Kar before the return of the fleet. The environs of Port Kar might now be filled with tarnsmen, other mercenaries, but in the hire of the re- bellious Ubars, and Claudius, regent of Henrius Sevarius. "We men of Treve are brave," had said be, "but we are not mad."
The bird was buffeted by the storm, but it was a strong bird. I did not know the width of the storm, but I hoped its front- would be only a few pasangs. The bird could not fly a direct line to Port Kar, because of the wind, and we managed an oblique path, cutting away from the fleet. From time to time the bird, tiring, its wings wet, cold, coated with sleet, would drop sickeningly downward, but then again it would beat its way on the level, half driven by the wind, half flying.
The boy, Fish, cold, numb, wet, his hair and clothing iced with sleet, clung to the rope dangling beneath the bird.
Once the bird fell so low that the boy's feet and the bottom of the rope on which he stood splashed a path in the — churning waters, and then the bird, responding to my fierce pressures on the one-strap, beat its way up again and again flew, but then only yards over the black, rear- ing waves, the roaring sea.
And then the sleet became only pelting rain, and the rain became only a cruel wind, and then the cruelty of the wind yielded to only the cold rushing air at the fringe of the'storm's garment.
And Thassa beneath us was suddenly streaked with the cold sunlight of Se'Kara, and the bird was across and through the storm. In the, distance we could see rocky beaches, and grass and brushland beyond, and beyond that, a woodland, with Tur and Ka-la-na trees.
We took the shuddering bird down among the trees. Fish leaped free as I let the bird hover, then alight. I unsaddled it and let it shake the water from its wings and body. Then I threw over it the admiral's cloak. The boy and I built a fire, over which we might dry our clothes and by which we might warm ourselves. "We will return to Port Kar after the fall of darkness," I told him. "Of course," he said.
The boy, Fish, and I now stood in the dimly lit great hall of my house, where, the night before, had been celebrated the feast of my victory.
The only light in the huge high-roofed hall was furnished by a single brazier, whose coals, through the iron basket, now glowed redly.
Our footsteps sounded hollow on the tiles of the hall. We had left the tam outside on the promenade fronting on the lakelike courtyard.
We had encountered no tamsmen over the city.
The city itself was much darkened.
We had flown over the city, seeing below us the dark- ened buildings, the reflection of the three moons of Gor Bickering in the dark canals.
Then we had come to my holding and now we stood, together, side by side, in the apparently deserted, almost darkened great hall of my holding.
Our blades were unsheathed, those of an admiral of the fleet and a slave boy. We looked about ourselves.