Raiders of Gor (23 page)

through the door.

They were the last of the captains.

Over their heads in the doorway I flung the great table.

Its great weight, to screams of horror, fell crushing upon men who, with shields

and swords, were closely pressing the captains.

I saw, wide with horr in the apertures of their helmets, the eyes of men pinned

beneath its beams.

“Bring curule chairs!” I ordered the captains.

Though many were wounded, though all could scarcely stand, they leaped to gather

up chairs and hurl them into the doorway.

Crossbow bolts flashed through the chairs, splintering their backs and sides.

“More tables!” I cried.

Men, and scribes, and pages, too, came forward, four and six men to a table,

adding the tables ot our barricade.

From the outside some men tried to climb the barricade, and break it down.

On its height they met Bosk, in his hands the wine-tempered steel of a Ko-ro-ban

blade.

Four men fell reeling backward, tumbling down the chairs and tables.

Crossbow bolts flashed about my head.

I laughed, and leaped down. No more men were trying to climb the wood of the

barricade.

“Can you hold this door?” I asked the captains, and the scribes and pages there.

“We will,” they said.

I gestured to the side door, through which Lysias and, I assumed, he who had

been scribe for Henrius Sevarius, had escaped. Several of the pages,

incidentally, and some of the scribes had also fled through that door. “Secure

that door,” I told four of the captains.

Immediately they went to the door, calling scribes and pages to help.

I myself, taking with me two captains, went to a rear corner of the great

chamber, whence, via a spiraling stairwell, the roof of the hall of council

might be attained.

We soon found ourselves on the sloping roof of the hall of the council, shielded

and turrets and decorative embrasures at its edge.

From there, in the late afternoon sun, we could see smoke from the wharves and

arsenal to the west.

“There are no ships from Cos or Tyros in the harbor,” said one of the captains

standing near me.

I had seen this.

I indicated wharves. “Those wharves,” I said, “are those of Chung and Eteocles?”

“Yes,” said one of the captains.

“And those,” I asked, indicating other wharves, farther to the south, “are those

of Nigel and Sullius Maximus.”

“Yes,” said the other captain.

“Doubtless there is fighting there,” said the first captain.

“And along the wharves generally,” said the second.

“It seems,” I said, “that the holdings of Henrius Sevarius, patron of the

captain Lysias, are untouched.”

“It does indeed,” said the first captain, through gritted teeth.

Below in the streets we heard trumpets. Men were shouting.

We saw some waving banners, bearing the design of the house of Sevarius.

They were trying to urge men into the streets to support them.

“Henrius Sevarius,” they were crying, “Ubar of Port Kar.”

“Sevarius is proclaiming himself Ubar,” said the first captain.

“Or Cladius, his regent,” said the other.

We were joined by another captain. “It is quiet now below,” he said.

“Look there,” I said. I pointed down to some of the canals, cutting between the

buildings. Slowly, moving smoothly, there oars dipping in rhythm, from various

sides, we saw tarn ships moving toward the hall of the council.

“And there!” cried another captain, pointing to the streets.

There we saw crossbowmen fleeing, in lines along the edges of the buildings.

Some men-at-arms were joining them.

“It appears,” said one of the captains at my side, “that Henrius Sevarius in not

yet Ubar of Port Kar.”

At the far edge of the piazza, in one of the bordering canals, nosing forward to

take a berth between two tiled piers, we saw a ram-ship, medium class. Her mast,

with its long yard, was lashed to the deck. Doubtless her sail was stored below.

These are the arrangements when a galley moves through the city, or when she

enters battle. On a line running from the forward starboard mooring cleat to the

stem castle, furnishing cover for archers and spearmen, there flew a flag,

snapping in the wind. It was white with vertical green stripes on its field and,

over these, in black, the head of a Bosk.

I could see, even at the distance, leaping from the prow of the ship to the

tiles of the piazza, running across the large, oblique-looking, colored squares

toward the Hall of the Council of Captains, the great Thurnock, with his yellow

bow, followed by Clitus, with his net and trident, and by Tab, with my men.

“Estimate for me,” I said, “the damage to the arsenal,”

“It appears,” said one, “to be the lumber sheds and the dry docks.”

“The warehouses of pitch and that of oars, too,” said the other.

“Yes,” said the first. “I think so.”

“There is little wind,” said another.

I was not dissatisfied. I was confident that the men of the arsenal, in their

hundreds, almost to the count of two thousand, would, given the opportunity,

control the fire. Fire has always been regarded as the great hazard to the

arsenal. Accordingly many of her warehouses, shops and foundries are built of

stone, with slated or tinned roofs. Wooden structures, such as her numerous

sheds and roofed storage areas tend to be separated from one another. Within the

arsenal itself there are numerous basins, providing a plenitude of water. Many

of these basins, near which, in red-painted wooden boxes, are stored large

numbers of folded leather buckets, are expressly for the purpose of providing a

means for fighting fires. Some of the other basins are large enough to float

galleys; these large basins connect with the arsenal’s canal system, by means of

which heavy materials may be conveyed about the arsenal; the arsenal’s canal

system also gives access, at two points, to the canal system of the city and, at

tow other points, to the Tamber Gulf, beyond which lies gleaming Thassa. Each of

these four points are guarded by great barred gates. The large basins, just

mentioned, are of two types: the first, unroofed, is used for the underwater

storage and seasoning of Tur wood; the second, roofed, serves for heavier

fittings and upper carpentry of ships, and for repairs that do not necessitate

recourse to the roofed dry docks.

Already it seemed to me there was less smoke, less fire, from the areas of the

arsenal.

The wharves of Chung, Eteocles, Nigel and Sullius Maximus, I conjectured, from

the blazings along the waterfront on the west and south, would not fare well.

The fires at the arsenal, I supposed, may have been even, primarily, a

diversion. They had surely served to draw the captains of Port Kar into the

ambush prepared for them outside the hall of council. I supposed Henrius

Sevarius might not have wished to seriously harm the arsenal. Could he come to

be the Ubar of Port Kar, it would constitute a considerable element of his

wealth, indeed, the major one.

I, and the three other captains, stood on the sloping roof of the hall of the

council and watched the ships burning the wharves.

“I am going to the arsenal,” I said. I turned to one of the captains. “Have

scribes investigate and prepare reports on the extent of the damage, wherever it

exists. Also have captains ascertain the military situation in the city. And

have patrols doubled, and extend their perimeters by fifty pasangs.”

“But surely Cos and Tyros--” said one of the Captains.

“Have the patrols doubled, and extend their perimeters by fifty pasangs,” I

repeated.

“It will be done,” he said.

I turned to another man.

“Tonight,” I said, “the council must meet again.”

“It cannot--” he protested.

“At the twentieth hour,” I told him.

“I will send pages through the city with torches,” he said.

I looked out over the city, at the arsenal, at the burning wharves on the west

and south.

“And summon the four captains,” I said, “who are Chung, Eteocles, Nigel and

Sullius Maximus.”

“The Ubars!” cried a captain.

“The captains,” I said. “Send for them only a single page with guard, with his

torch. Summon them as captains.”

“But they are Ubars,” the man whispered.

I pointed to the burning wharves.

“If they do not come,” I told him, “tell them they will no longer be captains in

the eyes of the council.”

The captains looked at me.

“It is the council,” I said, “that is now the first power in Port Kar.”

The captains looked at one another, and nodded.

“It is true,” said one of them.

The power of the captains had been little diminished. The coup intended to

destroy them, ,swift as the falling of the assassin’s blade, had failed.

Escaping into and barricading themselves within the hall of the Council, most

had saved themselves. Others, fortunately as it had turned out for them, had not

even been in attendance at the meeting. The ships of the captains were usually

moored, beyond this, within the city, in the mooring lakes fronting on their

holdings and walled. And those who had used the open wharves did not seem to

have suffered damage.

The only wharves fired were apparently those of the four Ubars.

I looked out over the harbor, and over the muddy Tamber to the gleaming vastness

beyond, my Thassa.

At any given time most of the ships of Port Kar are at sea. Five of mine were,

at present, at sea. Two were in the city, to be supplied. The ships of the

captains, returning, would further guarantee their power in the city, their

crews being applicable where the captains might choose. To be sure, many of the

ships of the Ubars were similarly at sea, but men pretending to the Ubarate of

Port Kar commonly keep a far larger percentage of their power in port than would

a common captain. I expected the power of the four Ubars, Chung, Eteocles, Nigel

and Sullius Maximus, might have been, at a stroke, diminished by half. If so,

they might control, among themselves, a force of about one hundred and fifty

ships, most of which were still at sea. I did not expect the Ubars would

cooperate with one another. Further, if necessary, the council of captains, with

its power, might intercept and impound their ships, as they returned, one by

one. I had long felt that five Ubars in Port Kar, and the attendant anarchy

resulting from this division of power, was politically insufferable, with its

competition of extortions, taxes and decrees, but more importantly, I felt that

it jeopardized my own interests. I intended, in Port Kar, to accumulate fortunes

and power. As my projects developed I had no wish to suffer for not having

applied for client-hood to one Ubar or another. I did not wish to have to be sue

for the protection of a strong man. I preferred to be my own. Accordingly I

wished for the council to consolidate its power in the city. It seemed that now,

with the failure of the coup of Henrius Sevarius, and the diminishment of the

power of the other Ubars, she might well do so. The council, I expected, itself

composed of captains, men much like myself, would provide a political structure

within which my ambitions and projects might well prosper. Nominally beneath its

aegis, I might, for all practical purposes, be free to augment my house as I saw

fit, the House of Bosk, of Port Kar.

I, for one, would champion the council.

I expected that there would be support for this position, both from men like

myself, self-seeking men, wise in political realities, and from the inevitable

and useful fools, abundant even in Port Kar, hoping simply for a saner and more

efficient governance of their city. It seemed the interests of wise men and

fools lay for once conjoined.

I turned and faced the captains.

“Until the twentieth hour, Captains,” said I.

Dismissed, they left the roof.

I stood alone on the roof, and watched the fires. A man such as I, I thought,

might rise high in a city such as this, squalid, malignant Port Kar.

I then left the roof to go to the arsenal, to see for myself what might be the

case there.

It was now the nineteenth hour.

Above us, in the chamber of the council of captains, I could hear feet moving

about on wooden floor, chairs scraping.

Each captain in Port Kar had come to the meething, saving some of those most

closely associated with the house of Sevarius.

It was said, even, that the four Ubars, Chung, Eteocles, Nigel and Sullius

Maximus, sat now, or would soom sit, upon their thrones.

The man on the rack near me screamed in agony.

He was one of those who had been captured.

“We have the reports on the damage to the wharves of Chung,” said a scribe,

pressing into my hands the documents. I knew that the fiers on the wharves of

Chung still blazed, and that they had spread northward to the free wharves south

of the arsenal. The reports, accordingly, would be incomplete.

I looked at the scribe.

“We will bring you further reports as soon as they arrive,” he said.

I nodded, and he sped away.

The fires were now substantially out in the properties of Eteocles, Nigel and

Sullius Maximus, though a warehouse of the latter, in which was stored