"You are confident you can recognize the records?"
"Not at all," I said.
"Surely you do not expect to carry them off?"
"Not at all," I said, "that would be impractical."
"You are going to burn them?"
"Yes," I said.
"How will you know what to burn?" he asked.
"I do not think that will present a problem," I said.
"Why not? he asked.
"I plan on burning the entire building," I said.
"I see," he said. "What if the fire spreads throughout the entire district, and then burns down Ar?"
"I had not considered that," I admitted.
"Well," he said. "It is hard to think of everything."
"Yes," I granted him. He was right, of course.
"What if the records are in the Central Cylinder," he asked, "already at the war office?"
"That I where I suspect they are," I said.
He groaned.
"But they may be here."
"You are not planning on burning down the Central Cylinder, are you?" he asked. "Of course not," I said. "If they are there, with their facilities, they have probably already been copied, and perhaps more than once, and who knows where those copies might be stored, either there or about the city. Besides there are slave girls there."
"Such as the Ubara," he asked.
"Yes," I said.
I suddenly stopped.
"What is it?" he asked, instantly alert.
"Listen," I said.
We could hear footsteps approaching, rapidly. We moved back, against a wall. A brawny figure, in the darkness, passed.
I was not sure, but it seemed I had seen it somewhere, some place.
"Not everyone is observant of the curfew," remarked Marcus.
"You are out," I said.
"We have armbands," he said.
"I think there is another coming," I said.
We kept back, in the shadows.
Another fellow was in the street, approaching, but suddenly detected us, shadows among shadows. He whipped free a sword and mine, and that of Marcus, too, left its sheath. He seemed startled, for a moment. I, too, was startled. Then, not sheathing the blade, he hurried on.
"Are there others?" whispered Marcus.
"Probably," I said, "but on other streets, each taking a separate way."
Marcus put back his sword. I, too, sheathed mine.
"Did you recognize the first fellow?" I asked.
"No," he said.
"I think he was of the peasant levies," I said. "I first saw him outside the walls. He had come from the west, and had survived the final defeat of Ar." I thought I remembered him. he was a shaggy giant of a man. He had won the game of standing on the verr skin. He had cut the skin. I remembered the wine, soaking the ground, like blood. He had stood upon the skin and regarded us. "I have won," he had said. He had been of the peasants. I would have expected him to have left the vicinity of the city. To be sure, his village may have been one of several nearby villages put to the torch, its supplies gathered in by foragers, or burned. Such villages, after all, had furnished their quotas for the defensive levies. Indeed, a good portion of youth, many not old enough to know how to handle a weapon.
"You recognized the second fellow?" said Marcus.
"I think so," I said.
"I think he may have recognized us as well," he said.
"Perhaps," I said.
"Plenius," said he, "from the delta."
"Yes," I said.
"I hear cries in the street," said Marcus.
"There is an alarm bar, as well," I said.
"Look there!" said Marcus.
"I see it," I said.
The sky was red in the east. It was a kind of radiance, flickering and pulsing. "That is not the dawn," said Marcus grimly.
"I think we should return to our quarters," I said.
Some men ran past us now, towards the east, toward the light. We could hear more than one alarm bar now.
"Surely the curfew is still in effect," said Marcus.
"It will be hard to enforce now," I said.
"What is going on?" I called to a fellow hurrying past us, carrying a lantern. "Have you not heard?" he asked. "It is the house of records. It is afire!"
"Perhaps we should have gone to a tavern," said Marcus.
"They close at the eighteenth Ahn now," I said.
"True," he said, irritatedly.
I supposed that the taverners must be much put out by the curfew law, and would have lost much business. But perhaps they could open earlier.
I then, the rope and hook beneath my cloak, accompanied Marcus back toward the Metallan district. I could share his chagrin. Indeed, we might as well have spent the evening in a paga tavern, enjoying the swaying, pleading bodies of former free women of Ar, and considering on the ankles of which, on the cord there, wrapped several times about the ankle, and tied, we would consent to thread a pierced metal token, five of which might be purchased for a tarsk bit. At the time of the closing of the tavern these women were whipped if they did not have at least ten such tokens on their ankle cord. They jingled when they moved.
16 In the Vicinity of the Teiban Market
"Ho!" cried the mercenary. "Behold! We have captured one of the Delta Brigade!"
"One side! One side!" cried his fellow, pushing men back.
"Will no one rescue me?" cried the bearded, bound fellow, struggling in the grasp of the mercenary who had first cried out.
"Are you not men?"
We were at Teiban and Venaticus, at the southwest corner of the Teiban Sul Market. It was morning, the eight Ahn, on the second day of the week. Naturally there were many folks about in such a place, at such a time.
"Careless," said Marcus, "that these fellows, not even guardsmen, should so boldly, so publicly, conduct their prisoner to this area, where hostility toward Cos might be rampant."
"Certainly an apparent lack of judgment," I granted him.
"Release me!" cried the bearded fellow to the two mercenaries. "I demand to be freed!"
"Silence, despicable sleen!" shouted one of the guardsmen, cuffing the prisoner, who reacted as though he might have been struck with great force.
"Sleen of a traitor to Cos!" said the other mercenary, adding a blow, to which the bearded prisoner once again reacted.
"I think I could have struck him harder than that," speculated Marcus.
"Release him!" cried a vendor of tur-pah, pushing through baskets of the vinelike vegetable."
"Do not interfere!" warned one of the mercenaries.
"Back, you disgusting patriots of Ar!" exclaimed the other.
"Strange," remarked Marcus, "that the prisoner has on his sleeve the armband with the delka upon it."
"Doubtless that is how the mercenaries recognized him as a member of the Delta Brigade," I said.
"The work of Seremides would be much simpler, to be sure," said Marcus, "if all fellows in the Delta Brigade would be so obliging."
"Perhaps they could all wear a uniform," I suggested, "to make it easier to pick them out."
"There are only two of them!" cried the bearded prisoner. "Take me from them! Hide me! Glory to the Delta Brigade!"
None in the crowd, it seemed, dared echo this sentiment, but there was no mistaking its mood, one of sympathy for the fellow, and of anger toward the mercenaries, and there was a very definite possibility, one thing leading to another, that it might take action.
"Help! Help, if there be true men of Ar here!" cried the prisoner.
One of the fellows from the market pushed at a mercenary who thrust him back, angrily.
"Make way! Make way!" cried the mercenary.
"Let him go!" cried a man. Men surged about the two mercenaries.
"It is my only crime that I love Ar and am loyal to her!" cried the prisoner.
"Release him!" cried men. More than one fellow in the crowd had a staff, that simple weapon which can be so nimble, so lively, so punishing, in the hands of one of skill. This was only to be expected as many of the vendors in the market, were peasants, come in with produce from outside the walls. Indeed, in many places they could simply enter through breaches in the wall, or climb over mounds of rubble, and enter the city. With respect to the staff, it serves of course not only as a weapon but, more usually, and more civilly, as an aid in traversing terrain of uncertain footing. Too, it is often used, yokelike, fore and aft of its bearer, to carry suspended, balanced baskets. Weaponwise, incidentally, there are men who can handle it so well that they are a match for many swordsmen. My friend Thurnock, in Port Kar, was one. Indeed, many sudden and unexpected blows had I received in lusty sport from that device in his hands. Eventually, under his tutelage, I had become proficient with the weapon, enabled at any rate to defend myself with some efficiency. But still I would not have cared to meet him, or such a fellow, in earnest, each of us armed only in such terms. I prefer the blade. Also, of course, all things being equal, the blade is a far more dangerous weapon. The truly dangerous peasant weapon is the peasant bow, or great bow. It is in virtue of that weapon that thousands of villages of Gor have their own Home Stones.