To be sure, all had not gone as smoothly as it might have for the invaders because, eventually, sporadic acts of resistance occurred. These were generally attributed to the work of a small group of resistance fighters, which became known as the Delta Brigade. Because of the vast, triangular spreading of the Vosk river, into dozens of smaller rivers, often mutually interfluent, flowing into the Tamber Gulf, which leads to Thassa herself, the sea, that area is known in Gorean as the Delka, or, better, the Delka of the Vosk. “Delka” is a triangular letter in Gorean, the fourth letter in her alphabet, derived, it seems, from the Greek letter “Delta.” The core of the Delta Brigade was surmised to be composed of veterans returned from the misdirected and ill-fated campaign in the Vosk’s delta, and thus the term “Delta Brigade.”
“Tell me of the rising, the rebellion,” I said.
“Woe to Cos and Tyros,” said a fellow. “Marlenus returned.”
“Where had he been, what had been his fate?” I asked.
“Much is unclear,” said one of the fellows. “It seems he was injured in a fall, whilst hunting, lost his sense of self, wandered perhaps, no longer knew himself.”
“Some think he might have been captured, and imprisoned in Treve,” said a fellow.
“Impossible,” said another.
“In any event,” said a bearded fellow, “it seems he emerged from the Voltai, thought himself somehow of the Peasants, and labored with them.”
“He was eventually recognized, in Ar,” said another.
“It was said by a mere slave,” said another.
“Interesting,” I said.
“A female,” said another.
“Was she then freed?” I asked.
Several of the men laughed.
“Forgive me,” I said. “I spoke foolishly.”
Gorean slaves were seldom freed. Indeed, there is a saying that only a fool frees a slave girl.
“Soon others recognized him, as well,” said another.
“Then he was concealed by partisans,” said another.
“He recovered his memory,” I said.
“It was strange,” said another.
“We know only the stories,” said another.
“He was like a child, it seems,” said another, “a powerful, dangerous child. He listened to what he was told. He learned what had occurred in the city, as it was patiently explained to him. He grew sorrowful, and then, slowly, angry. Then he said, ‘But where is Marlenus?’”
“This elated his sheltering partisans,” said another, “that he could recall that name. ‘Where is Marlenus?’ he asked, again, and again. ‘He must return,’ he was told. ‘Where is he?’ he asked. ‘In the city, it is thought,’ he was told.”
“He did not know himself Marlenus?” I said.
“No,” said one of the men.
“Continue,” I said.
“‘Who rules in Ar?’ he asked,” said the bearded fellow.
“‘Truly, or in name?’ inquired his interlocutor,” said another. “And he wished to know in truth who ruled, and he was told Lurius of Jad, in far Cos, but through Myron, the polemarkos, with the collusion of Seremides, master of the Taurentians, the palace guard. And then he asked who then ruled in name, and men feared to tell him, that it was she who had once been his daughter, before her dishonoring, and disownment, for the slur she had once cast on his honor.”
I knew something of this.
She had once been captured and enslaved by the tarnsman, Rask, of Treve, but he, having become, however unaccountably, enamored of a blond barbarian slave named El-in-or, gave her to Verna, a leader of Panther Girls, who took her to the northern forests. Later, on the northern coast, she was exposed for sale. There she had come within the cognizance of a slaver, Samos, first Captain in the Council of Captains of Port Kar. Eager to escape the toils of her cruel mistresses, and hoping that she might be returned to civilization, and even freed, she had begged him to buy her. And thusly had she performed a slave’s act, begging to be purchased, for in this act one acknowledges oneself purchasable, and thus a slave. I, later, at the time unable to walk, and muchly paralyzed by the poison of Sullius Maximus, encountered her in the house of Samos. I had had her freed and returned to Ar. It was by then common knowledge how she had been slave, and in what fashion she had come into the keeping of Samos. The honor and pride of a man such as Marlenus of Ar, Ubar of Ar, Ubar of Ubars, refused to sustain indignities of this enormity. Such affronts could not be brooked by an honor such as his. What an insult, profound and grievous, was this to his blood, and to the throne of Ar! He thus disowned her as his daughter, and had had her sequestered in the Central Cylinder, that her shame might be concealed from the city and the world.
Had she not been free when she was delivered to Ar it is quite probable she would have been whipped and sold out of the city.
Had she, when free, and not slave, been guilty of a stain on the honor of Ar she might well have been publicly impaled.
“But he asked, again, and again, in his slow, childlike way, who now, be it only in name, ruled in Ar,” said one of the men on the beach, “and the partisans took council, and decided to risk the disclosure, though they knew not what effect it might have.”
“‘Talena,’ he was told,” said another, “’daughter of Marlenus of Ar.’”
“Then,” said another, “as the story has it, he lifted his head, and his whole mien changed, and his body seemed to become larger and filled with power, and his eyes took on a strange, fierce, wicked gleam, and he said, quietly, and not in his slow, innocent, puzzled, childlike voice, but in another voice, a voice like iron and ice, ‘Marlenus of Ar has no daughter.’”
“The partisans looked to one another, their eyes alight,” said a man.
“It is then,” said another, “as the story goes, that he stood upright amongst the partisans, like a larl amongst panthers, and said, ‘Bring me a banner of Ar.’”
“‘Who are you?’ he was asked, ‘that you dare ask for a banner of Ar?’” said another. “’They have been forbidden,’ said a partisan. ‘They are concealed.’”
“‘Bring me a banner,’ he said, ‘one large, and broad.’ ‘Furled or unfurled?’ he was asked. ‘Furled,’ he said, ‘that it may then be unfurled.’”
“The partisans then gasped, realizing who it was who then stood amongst them.”
“‘Who would dare unfurl the banner of Ar?’ he was asked.”
“‘I,’ he said, ‘Marlenus, Ubar of Ar.’”
The unfurling of a furled banner, in given circumstances, when this is accomplished deliberately, slowly, and ritualistically, is far more than a sign of war; it is a sign of unappeasable purpose, of unmitigated intent, of implacable resolution. More than once the surrender of cities has not been accepted, but they have been leveled and burned, simply because a banner had been unfurled.
“‘How many swords have we?’ he is said to have asked, and then demanded maps of the city, that he might be shown the locations of intrusive garrisons. The men about him he appointed high officers, by his word alone.”