"Do you have food?" called a voice.
"No!" I said.
"Go away!" it said. The basket, on its rope, maddeningly, drew upward some yards.
"Admit me!" I called. "Look! I have diplomatic pouch, too, taken from a courier of Artemidorus. It may contain matters of moment! Admit me!"
"It seems you offer us many inducements to admit you," called a fellow. "Admit me!" I cried, urgently. "Do not fire!" I called out to the fellow with the crossbow.
"Go away!" said one of the voices.
"You would be mad to enter this place," said another voice.
"He is a spy, who would see behind our walls, who would inquire into our defenses," said another.
"No!" I said. "Blindfold me, if you will. Take me to Aemilianus!" "You have been seen," said another fellow, the voice drifting down to me. I saw his hand, pointing out, toward the Cosian lines.
I turned about. I could see one or two fellows standing at the height of the trench.
"Your friends call to you," said a voice. "Make it back to them, if you can." I saw the crossbow move. Then, in another crenel, I saw another.
"Do not fire!" I called.
"Spy!" called one of the fellows.
"No!" I said.
"If you were not of Cos, you could not have come through their lines," he called.
"No!" I said.
"How came you through the lines?" called another.
"By trickery," I said.
I heard laughter, unpleasant laughter.
"Admit me!"
"Return to your friends," laughed another fellow.
"I am of Port Kar!" I cried. "I am a courier of Gnieus Lelius. Summon Aemilianus, if no other can admit me!"
"Your friends are in the trench," called a fellow. "They come to support you! perhaps you can make it to the trench. Run!"
I made no move to approach the trench. I looked back. To be sure, there seemed to be movement in the trench. I could see it here and there, from the embankment, in the openings between the wooden coverings.
"Admit me!" I cried. Then I raced, suddenly, to the foot of the wall. Two quarrels struck into the embankment where I had stood.
"Admit me!" I cried upward, from the foot of the wall. It would be hard to be struck from the wall in such a place.
"If you are a friend, show yourself," called a fellow.
"Come out where we can see you, friend," called another voice, enticingly. A quarrel then, suddenly, from the direction of the sapping trench chipped the wall, beside my head.
"They are firing on him!" said someone, from above.
Even before he had spoken two answering quarrels from the wall had leaped toward the trench, one skittering off one of the boulders there, then bounding oddly away, end over end, to the right, another passing half through some of the planking spread over the trench.
I heard the basket, scraping against the wall, dropping down, on the rope. I saw a fellow rise up, in the trench, his bow leveled. I moved, faster, then slower, laterally, watching him, toward the rope. His bolt struck the wall, flashing against it, ahead of me. He had overled his shot. I then had my hands on the rope, above the basket. I swung wildly, kicking away from the wall, and was then, for a moment, half climbing, half being drawn upward. "Fire!" I heard from the trench. Two more quarrels struck near me. "Fire!" I heard from above. I continued upward, sometimes climbing hand over hand, feverishly, as I could, the rope momentarily arrested, at other time then, the rope moving rapidly upward, doing little more than clinging to it, sometimes, again, both climbing and being drawn upward. I swung as I could, too, and kicked away from the wall, that the target of the men in the trench would move in more than one plane. More quarrels struck about me, bursting chips from the wall, some striking me like stinging pebbles, then, at last, after a seemingly endless ascent, hands burning and raw, I was at the height of the wall, some eighty feet above the embankment, and hands reached out, seized me, and pulled me inward, through a crenel. "My thanks!" I gasped.
I was flung to my stomach on the walkway behind the parapet. Hands held me down. My weapons and pouch were removed.
"Strip him and chain him," said a voice.
In a moment, lying on my stomach, on the walkway behind the parapet, I was stripped and chained, my hands manacled behind me, a chain running from the manacles down to join another chain, one strung between the shackles on my ankles.
"I am Tarl, of Port Kar," I said, "a courier, from Gnieus Lelius, regent of Ar!" "Hood him," said a voice. "Use that white cloth."
The white cloth I had brought with me, as a truce flag, apparently doubled, or folded, was put over my head and tied under my chin.
"Kneel him," said the voice.
I was dragged up, to my knees.
"Here are the things he had with him," said a fellow.
Inside the improvised hood I could see very little. I could make our shapes about me.
"Put a rope on his neck," said the voice.
A shape bent toward me. I was neck-roped.
"Release me," I said. "Take me to Aemilianus! The message in my pouch is for him. He may be, too, interested in the contents of the diplomatic pouch. I do not know. I took it from a courier of Artemidorus, south of here, on the Vosk Road, at an inn, the Crooked tarn!"
"Hooded, and on a rope, I do not think you will learn much of our defenses," said a voice.
"Take me to Aemilianus," I said.
"Silence, spy," said a voice.
"I am not a spy!" I said, angrily.
"Let us hang him," said a voice. "Let us show the sleen of Cos that we do not waste time with spies."
"I am not a spy!" I said.
"Good," said another voice, approvingly.
"Fasten the rope here," said a fellow, to my left, "and show them that their spy is thrown over the wall, hanging against the stone, within Ihn of his entry into the city.
"Excellent!" said another.
I felt the rope jerked on my neck.
I felt hands on my arms.
"They fired upon me! You saw it! I said.
"But they did not hit you," said a fellow.
"Would you rather that they had?" I asked.
"It might have been better for you, had they done so," said another, grimly. I was pulled to my feet.
"The rope is secure," said a voice.
"I came under a flag of truce," I said. "Is this how those of Ar's Station respect the conventions of war?"
The hands of the men were tight upon my arms. I could feel a breeze through the crenel to my left. Through the whiteness of the hood I could make out the opening.
"Hold," said a voice.
I heard the rope being unfastened. It was now, again, a tether.
"We had almost forgotten our honor," said the voice. "We are grateful to you for having recalled it to us. To be sure, it shames us that this should have been done by a sleen of Cos. Yet it does not matter. That it should be remembered is what is most important."
"I had not realized until now," said a man, "that we had suffered so much. I had not realized until now that we had been so deeply hurt, that our wounds were so grievous."
"Behind the trenches I think the Cosians are forming," said a fellow. "It is the morning assault," said another fellow, wearily.
"Stranger," said the voice which had first spoken of honor to me, "know that you have been spared now, in your entry into the city, because of the flag you bore. And tragically, I confess, nearly it was not so. But, now, beneath its aegis, beneath its shelter, guarded within its folds, you are as safe as through ringed by walls of iron. The honor of Ar's Station has it so. I give you thus the option, if you wish it, to return to those of Cos."
"Take me to Aemilianus," I said.
"I think you are a spy," he said. "I am not a spy," I said.
"You understand that if you go now to Aemilianus," he said, "that you forfeit the protection of the flag you bore."
"I understand," I said.
"Take him to Aemilianus," he said.