“I will not leave without her,” said Julian, indicating Gerune.
She looked at him, wildly.
“You love me!” cried Gerune.
“You can judge of that when you are whipped,” exclaimed Julian, angrily.
“Dog!” she wept.
“We must flee!” said Otto, seizing Julian by the arm.
“It is no use,” said a man. “We are surrounded.”
On the surface of the flaming, blackened, splintered dais, Ortog stood, alone, cursing, firing his pistol into the air, at the ships. He had not been fired upon. No one had returned his fire. Then, cursing, he flung his empty pistol from him.
Already, in the enclosure, men were standing, their hands lifted, their weapons cast aside.
Some of the slaves, who were out in the enclosure, knelt, lifting their chained wrists imploringly, beseechingly, to the ships. Then they put their heads down to the ground. Others, whose wrists were fastened behind them, already knelt with their heads to the ground, weeping, hoping to be spared, rendering obeisance to they knew not whom.
“Slaves, out,” called one of the surrendering men, his hands raised.
The slaves who had taken refuge under the dais, with the exception of the three display slaves, who were chained in place, crept out, and went to the center of the enclosure, to kneel there, with the others. The three display slaves emerged from beneath the dais, and knelt there, as they had before. Their chains would permit them no more.
Ortog stood on the surface of the dais, alone.
Otto and Julian emerged from beneath the dais.
Otto went toward the center of the enclosure. He did not raise his hands, but he was unarmed, and he stood in full view of the ships. It was obvious that he did not intend to offer any resistance. “Do not raise your arms,” said Otto to Julian. “We are not as the others, and I want them to understand that.”
And so resistance was ended within the enclosure. There were slaves there, and priestesses, and acolytes, and many men, traders and others. Most of the men, with the exception of Ortog, and Otto, and Julian, stood with their arms raised.
They were vulnerable to the ships.
Too, they were clearly surrounded. They could see armed warriors about, many of them even within the remains of the enclosure, the tattered, burned yellow silk here and there fluttering from shattered, awry poles, like flags.
Then a ship, moving very slowly, appeared above the remains of the wall of silk. It approached the center of the enclosure, and then stopped there, and remained in place, some twenty feet in the air. A man stood at the bow, with his hands on the gunwales of the small vessel.
“It is Abrogastes,” said a man, “lord of the Drisriaks.”
CHAPTER 11
“Aii!” cried men, drawing back.
The sound is difficult to describe, but it is one that, once heard, is not to be soon forgotten.
It is too swift to be a tearing sound.
But, too, it is not like the descending ease of a curved blade, little more than a momentary whisper, the stroke delivered from behind, dividing the vertebrae, opening the neck, then arrested, with the small, sharp sound of touching wood.
It is much more crude than that.
It is more analogous to the blow of an ax, held in two hands, delivered downward, striking crosswise into a felled log, except that it lacks that ring, the resonance of men making their marks on the world, shaping wood to their ends. It is more like the sudden chopping through a different material, through, say, a twisted vine, and thence further vegetable matter, the sound not altogether unlike that of splitting a gourd or melon, the blow then stopped, muffled, the sound not clean or sharp, by the weighty, rude, scarred surface of the base. The muffling of the sound has to do with the damping effect, the insulation, so to speak, provided by the intervening material, that between the instrument and the base. There is little splintering, too, or what there is, better, tends to be obscured, the intervening material providing shielding from the bursting chips and needles of wood that would attend, say, the blow of an ax into wood. Too, of course, the base tends to be washed with fluid, after each stroke, suddenly, plentifully, and this causes many of the small particles of wood, drenched, to run down the sides of the base. The wielder of the instrument, wearing a large, leather workman’s apron, stands before his work. In this fashion, the blood, for the most part, of which there is a great quantity, and which tends to leave the body with considerable force, sometimes to a distance of several feet, reaches him. Indeed, one cannot stand before the object of attention without being drenched with it. Indeed, sometimes the operator, or workman, if you prefer, is even temporarily blinded by it, and must wipe it from his eyes with the back of a forearm. This orientation, that before, or behind, if one wished, the object of attention, has to do with the manner in which the blade is fixed on the haft, or handle. If it were an ax, for example, the operator, or workman, so to speak, would merely have to stand to one side or the other, each operator, or workman, in such a business, having his preferred side, some preferring the left, others the right. One normally stands before the object of attention, of course, rather than behind it, because this orientation provides a much better access to it. The blow may be more accurately, and surely, delivered. The sound, it might be mentioned, is also conditioned by the fact that the blade is, purposefully, not ground as closely as that of an ax. It is, by intent, duller. The whole matter then has a certain roughness about it. One dares not speak of terribleness, or brutality here, for fear of injecting value judgments into the narrative. My purpose is not to praise or blame, but to recount, simply to relate, what happened. There is a conjecture that the adz is used, incidentally, imperfect implement as it might seem for such a purpose, precisely because it, unlike the ax, is not a weapon. Indeed, its deliberate dullness may be intended to emphasize that fact. To die by a weapon, you see, is regarded among certain warrior peoples as a very desirable end. Indeed, there is a thought among many of them that it is not only honorable, but glorious, to so perish, and that those who do so perish are beloved by the gods of war, such as Kragon, and are thence made welcome in a thousand halls and worlds beyond the stars, where they may feast and fight to their heart’s content, until the end of time, until the stars grow cold, and the halls themselves, like the stars, grow dim and vanish. But there is no honor, you see, in dying by the adz. It is shameful to die so. It is not a weapon. It is a tool. Indeed, it is not even wielded by a warrior, but rather, and intentionally, by a workman. And how then, if one should perish so, so shamefully, so disgracefully, could one hope to enter into the far halls? Would one not find at the entrance the spear of Kragon barring one’s way? Perhaps, at best, one might hope to glimpse the lights of such halls from afar, set among distant snowy hills, looking up from one’s labors, those of the lowliest of villeins, in the darkness.