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themselves.
At last, a silence fell. Pugnarses was knotting his fists together, and every now and again he would smash
his fist into the earth of the floor. Genal, I saw, was close to tears, but he did not break down. He was
looking at me. I saw that look. I knew the time for hard facts was near. Bolan, a giant man with a head
that gleamed all naked and shining in the light, grunted. He had been shaved as a slave once, and his hair
had never grown back. He could lift stone blocks that took three other men to shift.
 What do you say, Stylor? he asked me directly, without artifice, like a charging chunkrah.  You have
only dismay and doom for us  can you prophesy to any more effect?
 Yes, Stylor, cried Genal and one or two of the others.  Tell us a plan. I noticed that Pugnarses did
not join in.
Well, he would confirm and conform, for this was the only way he could achieve his heart s desire as to
an overlordship. I told them.
There was nothing clever about the plan. It s only dreamers who believe they can develop something so
entirely new that the suns of Kregen have not shone down on it before  always excepting, of course,
the men of science and art.
 The merits of the plan are obvious, I said eventually.  And its drawbacks, too. It will take longer than
we would wish.
Pugnarses started up.  Long! Yes, too long! Give us the weapons and we will kill the overlords and all
their beast guards!
 But, Pugnarses, Bolan said, rubbing his naked skull.  Stylor has just told us, and I believe what he says
is true. You cannot beat the overlords and the mercenaries by a mob of workers and slaves with a few
swords and balass sticks!
 You must train, I said, and I put force into my words.  We will forge an army from the workers and
slaves of Magdag so that slavery can be abolished from Magdag.
They nodded, still only half convinced. I enlarged on what I wanted to do, and I admit that it is all
elementary and obvious, but to a man who slaves in the sun the thought of a single extra day under the
lash between him and freedom is intolerable.
 Give me your help and backing; bestow on me your authority so that I may so order and organize that
the workers will rise as a strong and keen weapon. I stared challengingly at them. I was beginning to feel
alive again, and the shame of that reawakening as to its means may not be mitigated as to its ends; but it
is in my nature to rise to a challenge and to strike down first he who would seek to kill me.
 I will fashion you a cadre of men who will use the weapons I shall bring, and the weapons we will
make. I want production of certain weapons that I shall designate, and no others. I value freedom and
liberty more than most men, for I have been deprived of freedom  in ways you cannot comprehend 
but if I tell you that a galley slave knows about slavery, you will not argue with me, I know. I was
jumbled, garbled in what I said, but I convinced them. I obtained total authority over the fashioning of this
military weapon from the slaves. I had to. I could see this struggle only in military terms, now; for that
was the only way to keep a sense of sanity and proportion. I wanted a small well-trained little army that
could blitzkrieg the overlords so that the great mass of slaves and workers might follow and devour the
struck-down carcass.
Sentiment had gone. I had seen the misery of the slaves; I had experienced it. I knew of the aspirations
of the laborers and artificers  and I was well aware of possible conflicts of interest between slave and
worker. I was born, you will recall, in 1775 and this year, I venture to believe, has a certain significance
on Earth. On Kregen there were more complex antagonisms even than those surrounding, say, the
combatants and theorists caught up in the French Revolution. I determined now to look at the revolt of
the slaves of Magdag in purely military terms. Then, I would see that they turned their successful rebellion
into a true revolution. That, as I conceived it, was what the Star Lords desired.
Also  my Krozairs of Zy and all of Sanurkazz would benefit.
In the days and nights that followed I took greater and greater risks in sneaking out of the Emerald Eye
Palace. I would climb out of my high window and use the ropy vines of the ivy-like plants that clothed the
walls to clamber down and so over the wall and astride the waiting sectrix. Vomanus, of course, had to
be a party to my mysterious disappearances, and he sweated out many a sleepless night waiting for my
return. He thought I had a girl somewhere in the city. While cursing me for my stupidity in not sipping
from the flower under my lips, he had a grudging admiration for my foolhardiness in taking wing to sip
elsewhere.
The cadre began to train with wooden staves. I had them cut to a modest twelve-foot length. A number
of soldiers slaving on the buildings were spirited away by Holly, who used her underground route to good
purpose, and these men were only too happy to join us. Their vacancies had to be explained. A death of
a slave was a common event in Magdag, and even though the overlords were aware, as Glycas often
complained to me, that there were slaves hiding in the workers warrens, the expeditions to rout them out
had to be undertaken with due military care. Glycas loved to ride into the outskirts of the ghetto warrens.
He and his sectrix-mounted friends would cut down the workers and slaves not clever enough to run at
the first sounds. I suppose between them they killed a thousand or so slaves a season; this was a number
scarcely missed in the hundreds of thousands who labored on the buildings of Magdag.
Then the overlords would ride out in their mail and their glory and raid adjacent cities who owed them
suzerainty. They had a jolly old life of it, the overlords of Magdag.
The slave soldiers we took in were sworn to secrecy with vows that made their hair curl and their
bowels turn to water. They were set to work to drill and discipline the volunteer workers. I personally
scrutinized every man at this stage. The soldiers  men of Zair mostly, but there was a sprinkling of the
fair-haired men of Proconia, and a number of Ochs, Fristles, Rapas  could make little of the
twelve-foot staves. They called them staves, thinking that was their function. I did not disillusion them at [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]