The officer came away from the window, angrily, and looked down at the benches. Several of them had the varnish worn from them. The barge, in its day, I suspected, had frequently plied the delta, probably between Port Kar, and other cities, and Turmus and Ven. Slave girls are normally transported nude.
"And so," said the officer, angrily, "we have spent days pursuing a slave barge."
"It seems so," I said.
"The Cosians, then," he said, "must still be in front of us.
I was silent. This did not seem to me likely, or at least not in numbers.
At this moment we heard some shouting outside, some cries.
The officer looked up, puzzled, and then, paying me no mind, went up the stairs to the stern deck.
I followed him.
"We seldom saw them!" cried a fellow. "It was as though the rence were alive!"
I emerged onto the stern deck, blinking against the sun, where my keeper, who was waiting for me, unlooping the rope leash from the yoke, and, keeping me on a short tether, about a foot Gorean in length, the remaining portion of the leash coiled in his hand, recovered my charge.
"We had no chance," wept a fellow from the water. "We did not even see them!"
"Where?" demanded the officer, at the barge rail.
"On the right!" called up a fellow.
Following my keeper, who, too, was curious, I went to the rail. In the water, below, with the many others who had originally surrounded and charged the barge, were some six or seven other fellows, distraught, haggard, wild-eyed, some bleeding, some supporting their fellows.
"Numbers?" inquired the officer.
"There must have been hundreds of them, for pasangs," said a fellow from below, in the water.
"We could not fight," said another. "We could not find them. There seemed little, if anything, to draw against!"
"Only a shadow," wept a man, "a movement in the rence, a suspicion, and then the arrows, and the arrows!"
"What were the casualties?" asked the officer.
"It was a rout, a slaughter!" cried a fellow.
"What is your estimate of the casualties?" repeated the officer, insistently.
"The right flank is gone!" wept a man.
"Gone!" cried another.
I could see other fellows making their way towards us, through the rence, some dozens, more survivors, many wounded.
I did not personally think the right flank was gone, but I gathered it had grievously suffered, that it had undergone severe losses, that it was routed, that it was decimated. These fellows near us, for example, were from the right flank. They had not been able, it seemed, to rally, or reform. When one has been in a disastrous action, particularly a mysterious one which has not been anticipated, one which one does not fully understand, there is a tendency of the survivors to overestimate casualties. A fellow, for example, who has seen several fall near him, in his own tiny place of war, often as narrow as a few yards in width, has a tendency to suppose these losses are typical of the entire field, that they characterize the day itself. Similarly, of course, there are occasions in which a fellow, victorious in his purview, learns only later, and to his dismay, that his side is in retreat, that the battle, as a whole, was lost. Still, I did not doubt but what the losses were considerable. The entire right flank might have to be reorganized.
"We will counterattack," said the officer.
"Your foe will not be there," I said.
"This is a tragic day for Ar," said a fellow.
More soldiers were wading, some staggering, toward us, these come from the right.
"The first engagement to Cos," said a fellow bitterly.
"Who would have thought this could happen?" said a man.
"Vengeance upon the Cosian sleen!" cried a man.
"The missiles used against you were not quarrels, not bolts," I said.
"No," said a fellow, "arrows."
"Arrows," said I, "sped from the peasant bow." In the last few years, the use of the peasant bow, beginning in the vicinity of the tidal marshes, had spread rapidly eastward throughout the delta. The materials for the weapon and its missiles, not native to the delta, are acquired largely through trade. Long ago the rencers had learned its power. They had never forgotten it. By means of it they had become formidable foes. The combination of the delta, with its natural defenses, and the peasant bow, made the rencers all but invulnerable.
The officer looked at me.
"You are not dealing with Cosians," I said. "You are dealing with rencers."
"People of scaling knives, of throwing sticks, and fish spears!" laughed a fellow.
"And of the peasant bow," I said.
"Surely you jest?" said the officer.
"Did you hear, before the attack," I asked, "the cries of marsh gants?"
"Yes," said one of the fellows in the water.
"It is by means of such cries that rencers communicate during the day," I said. "At night they use the cries of Vosk gulls."
"We will counterattack," said the officer.
"You will not find them," I said.
"We will send out scouts," he said.
"They would not return," I said. To be sure, it was possible to scout rencers, but normally this could be done only by individuals wise to the ways of the delta, in most cases other rencers. The forces of Ar in the delta, if I were not mistaken, would not have experienced scouts with them. Even so small a thing as this constituted yet another indication of the precipitateness of Ar, her unreadiness to enter the delta.
"We must not allow them to press their advantage," said the officer.
Men were still streaming in from the right.
"They will not press their advantage-as yet," I said.
" 'As yet'?" he asked.
"It is a different form of warfare," I said.
"It is not warfare," said a man. "It is brigandage, it is ambush and banditry!"
"I would not pursue them," I said. "They will melt away before you, perhaps to close on your flanks."
"What is your recommendation?" he asked.
"I would set up defense perimeters," I said.
"Labienus is in command," said a fellow, angrily. 'Labienus' was the name of the officer.
"Do not listen to him," said another. "Surely he is in sympathy with them."
"He may be one of them!" said another.
"He is an enemy!" said another.
"Kill him!" said another.
"You anticipate another attack?" asked the officer.
"Perimeters against infiltration," I said. "Preferably with open expanses of delta. Beware of straws, or rence, which seem to move in the water."
"You do not anticipate another attack?" asked the officer.
"The element of surprise gone," I said, "I would not anticipate another attack, not now, at least, not of a nature similar to that which has apparently just occurred."
You speak of simple rencers as though they were trained warriors, of ruses, of strategems and tactics which might be the mark of a Maximus Hegesius Quintilius, of a Dietrich of Tarnburg."