One of the tarnsmen of Marlenus thrust his hand in my hair and forced my lips down to his sandal. I forced my head up and kept my back straight, my eyes granting my captor no satisfaction. I knelt on the granite floor of a shallow cave in one of the Voltai peaks, a sheltered fire on each side of me. Before me, on a rough throne of piled rocks, sat Marlenus, his long hair over his shoulders, his great beard reaching almost to his sword belt. He was a gigantic man, larger even than the Older Tarl, and in his eyes, wild and green, I saw the masterful flame which had, in its way, also burned in the eyes of Talena, his daughter. Die though I must at the hands of this magnificent barbarian, I could feel no ill will toward him. If I had had to kill him, I would have done so not with hatred or rancor, but rather with respect.
Around his neck he wore the golden chain of the Ubar, carrying the medallion like replica of the Home Stone of Ar. In his hands he held the Stone itself, that humble source of so much strife, bloodshed and honor. He held it gently, as though it might have been a child.
At the entrance of the cave two of his men had set a tharlarion lance, of the sort carried by Kazrak and his men, in a crevice obviously prepared to receive it. I supposed it was to serve for my impalement. There are various ways in which this cruel mode of execution can be accomplished, and, needless to say, some are more merciful than others. I did not expect that I would be granted a swift death.
"You are he who stole the Home Stone of Ar," said Marlenus.
"Yes," I said.
"It was well done," said Marlenus, looking at the Stone, holding it so the light reflected variously from its worn surface.
I waited, kneeling at his feet, puzzled that he, like the others in his camp, evinced no interest in the fate of his daughter.
"You realize clearly that you must die," said Marlenus, not looking at me.
"Yes," I said.
Holding the Home Stone in both hands, Marlenus leaned forward.
"You are a young and brave and foolish warrior," he said. He looked into my eyes for a long time, then leaned back against his rough throne. "I was once as young and brave as you," he said, "and perhaps as foolish — yes, perhaps as foolish." The eyes of Marlenus F stared over my head, into the darkness outside. "I risked my life a thousand times and gave the years of my youth to the vision of Ar and its empire, that there might be on all Gor but one language, but one commerce, but one set of codes, that the highways and passes might be safe, that the peasants might cultivate their fields in peace, that there might be but one Council to decide matters of policy, that there might be but one supreme city to unite the cylinders of a hundred severed, hostile cities — and all this you have destroyed." Marlenus looked down at me. "What can you, a simple tarnsman, know of these things?" he asked. "But I, Marlenus, though a warrior, was more than a warrior, always more than a warrior. Where others could see no more than the codes of their castes, where others could sense no call of duty beyond that of their Home Stone, I dared to dream the dream of Ar — that there might be an end to meaningless warfare, bloodshed, and terror, an end to the anxiety and peril, the retribution and cruelty that cloud our lives. I dreamed that there might arise from the ashes of the conquests of Ar a new world, a world of honor and law, of power and justice."
"Your justice," I said.
"Mine, if you like," he agreed.
Marlenus set the Home Stone on the ground before him and drew his sword, which he laid across his knees; he looked like some remote and terrible god of war.
"Do you know, Tarnsman," he asked, "that there is no justice without the sword?" He smiled down on me grimly. "This is a terrible truth," he said, "and so consider it carefully." He paused. "Without this," he said touching the blade, "there is nothing — no justice, no civilization, no society, no community, no peace. Without the sword there is nothing."
"By what right," I challenged, "is it the sword of Marlenus that must bring justice to Gor?"
"You do not understand," said Marlenus. "Right itself — that right of which you speak so reverently — owes its very existence to the sword."
"I think that is false," I said. "I hope it is false." I shifted, even that small movement irritating the whip cuts on my back.
Marlenus was patient. "Before the sword," he said, "there is no right, no wrong, only fact — a world of what is and what is not, rather than a world of what should be and what should not be. There is no justice until the sword creates it, establishes it, guarantees it, gives it substance and significance." He lifted the weapon, wielding the heavy metal blade as though it were a straw. "First the sword" he said, "then government — then law — then justice."
"But," I asked, "what of the dream of Ar, that dream of which you spoke, that dream that you believed it right to bring about?"
"Yes?" said Marlenus.
"Is that a right dream?" I asked.
"It is a right dream," he said.
"And yet," I said, "your sword has not yet found the strength to bring it into being."
Marlenus looked at me thoughtfully, then laughed. "By the Priest-Kings," he said, "I think I have lost the exchange."
I shrugged, somewhat incongruously in the chains; it hurt.
"But," went on Marlenus, "if what you say is true, how shall we separate the right dreams from the wrong dreams?"
It seemed to me a difficult question.
"I will tell you," laughed Marlenus. He slapped the blade fondly. "With this!"
The Ubar then rose and sheathed his sword. As if this were a signal, some of his tarnsmen entered the cave and seized me.
"Impale him," said Marlenus.
The tarnsmen began to unlock the shackles, that I might be impaled freely on the lance, perhaps so that my struggles might provide a more interesting spectacle to the onlookers.
I felt numb, even my back, which presumably would have been a riot of pain if I had not felt myself near death.
"Your daughter, Talena, is alive," I said to Marlenus. He had not asked and did riot now appear to have much interest in the matter. Still, if he was human at all, I assumed this remote, kingly, dream-obsessed man would want to know.
"She would have brought a thousand tarns," said Marlenus. "Proceed with the impalement."
The tarnsmen grasped my arms more securely. Two others removed the tharlarion lance from its crevice and brought it forward. It would be forced into my body, and I would then be lifted, with it, into place.
"She's your daughter," I said to Marlenus. "She's alive."
"Did she submit to you?" asked Marlenus.
"Yes," I said.
"Then she valued her life more than my honor."
Suddenly my feeling of numbness, of incapacity, departed as if in a lightning flash of fury. "Damn your honor!" I shouted. "Damn your precious stinking honor!"
Without realizing what I was doing, I had shaken the two restraining tarnsmen from my arms as if they had been children, and I rushed on Marlenus and struck him violently in the face with my fist, causing him to reel backward, his face contorted with astonishment and pain. I turned just in time to knock the impaling lance aside as, carried by two men, it plunged toward my back. I seized it, twisting it, and, using it like a bar held by the men, leaped into the air, kicking at them. I heard two screams of pain and found that I held the lance. Some five or six tarnsmen ran toward the wide opening of the shallow cave, but I rushed forward, holding the lance parallel to my body, striking them with almost superhuman strength and forcing them over the ledge near the mouth of the cave. Their screams mingled with shouts of rage as the other tarnsmen rushed forward to capture me.
One tarnsman leveled a crossbow, and in that instant I hurled the lance and he toppled backward, the shaft of the weapon protruding from his chest, the bolt from his crossbow ricocheting from the rock above my head with a flash of sparks. One of the men I had kicked lay writhing at my feet. I seized the sword from his scabbard. I engaged and dropped the first of the tarnsmen to reach me and wounded the second, but was pressed back toward the rear of the cave. I was doomed, but resolved to die well.