JК
Tarnsman of Gor :: Норман Джон
Страница: 132 из 145I was sick at the sight that confronted me. Some fifteen tarns were feeding on the remains of a dozen or so guardsmen, detaching and devouring limbs. Several tams were dead; some were flopping about awkwardly on the marble floor, pierced by arrows. There were no living guardsmen in sight. Those who had survived had fled from the room, per haps up the long, wide, circling stairwell that climbed the inside of the cylinder.
Leaving my tarn below, I climbed the stairs, my sword drawn. When I reached that portion of the stairwell adjoining the upper floors, devoted to the private use of the Ubar, I saw some twenty or thirty guardsmen, behind them a barricade of tile and taro wire which they had erected. It was not simply that my sword was drawn. To them, my presence was unauthorized, and my Assassin's garb, far from being a safe-conduct, was an incitement to attack. Some of the guardsmen had undoubtedly fought below with the tarns. They were drenched with sweat; their clothing was torn; their weapons, drawn, were red with blood. They would associate me with the tarn attack. Without waiting to call for my identity or engage in any protocol whatever, they raced toward me.
"Die, Assassin!" one of them screamed, and struck downward with his blade.
I slipped under the blade and ran him through. The others were upon me. Much of what took place then is jumbled in my memory, like the fragments of some bizarre, incomprehensible dream. I remember them pressing downward, so many, and my blade, terrible, moving as if wielded by a god, meeting their steel, cutting its path upward. One man, two, three sprawled down the stairs, and then another and another. I struck and parried and struck again, my sword flashing forth and drinking blood again and again. I seemed to be beside myself and fought as if I might not be what I knew I was, what I thought myself to be — Tarl Cabot, a simple warrior, one man. The thought flamed through me in the violent delirium of battle that in those moments I was many men, an army, that no man could stand against me, that it was not my blade or my heart they faced but something I myself only dimly sensed, something intangible but irresistible, an avalanche, a storm, a force of nature, the destiny of their world, something I could not name but knew in those moments could not be denied or conquered.
Suddenly I stood alone on the stairs, except for the dead. I became dimly aware that I was bleeding from minor cuts in a dozen places.
Slowly I climbed the remainder of the stairs until I came to the barricade which had been erected by the guardsmen.
Leaving my tarn below, I climbed the stairs, my sword drawn. When I reached that portion of the stairwell adjoining the upper floors, devoted to the private use of the Ubar, I saw some twenty or thirty guardsmen, behind them a barricade of tile and taro wire which they had erected. It was not simply that my sword was drawn. To them, my presence was unauthorized, and my Assassin's garb, far from being a safe-conduct, was an incitement to attack. Some of the guardsmen had undoubtedly fought below with the tarns. They were drenched with sweat; their clothing was torn; their weapons, drawn, were red with blood. They would associate me with the tarn attack. Without waiting to call for my identity or engage in any protocol whatever, they raced toward me.
"Die, Assassin!" one of them screamed, and struck downward with his blade.
I slipped under the blade and ran him through. The others were upon me. Much of what took place then is jumbled in my memory, like the fragments of some bizarre, incomprehensible dream. I remember them pressing downward, so many, and my blade, terrible, moving as if wielded by a god, meeting their steel, cutting its path upward. One man, two, three sprawled down the stairs, and then another and another. I struck and parried and struck again, my sword flashing forth and drinking blood again and again. I seemed to be beside myself and fought as if I might not be what I knew I was, what I thought myself to be — Tarl Cabot, a simple warrior, one man. The thought flamed through me in the violent delirium of battle that in those moments I was many men, an army, that no man could stand against me, that it was not my blade or my heart they faced but something I myself only dimly sensed, something intangible but irresistible, an avalanche, a storm, a force of nature, the destiny of their world, something I could not name but knew in those moments could not be denied or conquered.
Suddenly I stood alone on the stairs, except for the dead. I became dimly aware that I was bleeding from minor cuts in a dozen places.
Slowly I climbed the remainder of the stairs until I came to the barricade which had been erected by the guardsmen.