Jack Vance - Suldrun's Garden

As Aillas watched, they worked the catapults forward to the edge of that vantage overlooking Tintzin Fyral.

Carfilhiot himself strolled out upon the terrace, wearing a pale blue morning gown: apparently he had just risen from bed. Ska archers immediately ran forward and sent a flight of arrows singing across the gorge. Carfilhiot stepped behind a merlon with a frown of annoyance for the interruption of his promenade. Three of his retainers appeared on the roof and quickly erected sections of metal mesh along the parapets so as to ward away Ska arrows, and Carfilhiot was again able to take the morning air. The Ska watched him with perplexity and exchanged ironic comments, meanwhile proceeding to ballast their catapults.

Aillas knew that he must depart, but could not bring himself to leave. The stage was set, the curtains drawn, the actors had appeared: the drama was about to begin. The Ska manned the windlasses. The massive propulsion beams bent backward, groaning and creaking; stone missiles were placed into the projection chutes. The master archers turned screws, perfecting their aim.

All was ready for the first volley.

Carfilhiot suddenly seemed to take cognizance of the threat to his tower. He made an annoyed gesture and spoke a word over his shoulder. Underneath the catapults the stone abutments supporting the vantage collapsed. Down toppled catapults, missiles, rubble, archers, engineers and ordinary troops. They fell a long way, with hallucinatory slowness: down, down, twisting, wheeling, bounding and sliding the last hundred feet, to stop in an unpleasant tangle of stone, timbers and broken bodies. Carfilhiot took a final turn around the terrace, and went into the castle.

The Ska assessed the situation, stern rather than angry. Aillas drew back, beyond the Ska range of vision. High time for him to be on his way, as far and as fast as possible. He looked toward the stone altar in a new spirit of speculation. Carfilhiot was clearly a man of wily tricks. Would he leave so tempting a lookout point for presumptive enemies unprotected? Aillas, suddenly nervous, took a final look toward Tintzin Fyral. Ska work-gangs, evidently slaves, were dragging timbers along the ridge. The Ska, though bereft of their catapults, were not yet abandoning the siege.

Aillas watched for a minute, two minutes. He turned away from the edge of the cliff and found confronting him a patrol of seven men wearing Ska black: a corporal and six warriors, two standing with bows drawn.

Aillas held up his hands. "I am a traveler only; let me go my way."

The corporal, a tall man with a strange wild face, gave a guttural croak of derision. "Up here on the mountain? You are a spy!"

"A spy? For what purpose? What could I tell anyone? That the Ska are attacking Tintzin Fyral? I came up here to find a safe route around the battle."

"You are quite safe now. Come along; even two-legs* have their uses."

*Two-leg: a semi-contemptuous term applied by the Ska to all other men than themselves: a contraction of "two-legged animal," to designate a middle category between "Ska" and "four-leg."

Another common pejorative, nyek "horse-smell" made reference to the difference in body odor between Ska and other races, the Ska seeming to smell, not unpleasantly, of camphor, turpentine, a trace of musk.

The Ska took Aillas' sword and tied a rope around his neck. He was led down from Tac Tor, across the gorge and up to the Ska encampment. He was stripped of his garments, shorn bald, forced to wash using yellow soap and water, then he was given new garments of gray linsey-woolsey, and finally a smith riveted an iron collar around his neck, with a ring to which a chain might be attached.

Aillas was seized by four men in gray tunics and bent face down over a log. His trousers were dropped; the smith brought a red-hot iron and branded his right buttock. He heard the sizzle of burning flesh and smelled the subsequent odor, which prompted him to droop his head and vomit, inducing those who held him to curse and jump aside, but they continued to hold him while a bandage was slapped down over the burn. Then he was hoisted to his feet.

A Ska sergeant called to him. "Pull up your trousers and come over here." Aillas obeyed. "Name?"

"Aillas."

The sergeant wrote in a ledger. "Place of birth?"

"I don't know."

Again the sergeant wrote, then he looked up. "Today luck is your friend; you now may call yourself Skaling, inferior only to a natural Ska. Acts of violence against Ska or Skaling; sexual perversion; lack of cleanliness; insubordination; sullen, insolent, truculent or disorderly behavior are not tolerated.

Forget your past; it is a dream! You are now Skaling, and the Ska way is your way. You are assigned to Group Leader Taussig. Obey him, work faithfully: you shall have no cause for complaint.

Yonder is Taussig; report to him immediately."

Taussig, a short grizzled Skaling, half-walked and half-hopped on one straight and one crooked leg, making tense gestures and squinting through narrow pale blue eyes as if in a state of chronic anger. He gave Aillas a brief inspection and clipped a long light chain to Aillas' collar. "I am Taussig. Whatever your name, forget it. You are now Taussig Six. When I yell 'Six' I mean you. I run a tight squad. I compete in production. To please me, you must compete and try to outdo all the other squads. Do you understand?"

"I understand your words," said Aillas.

"That is not proper! Say 'Yes sir!'"

"Yes, sir."

"Already I feel resentment and resistance in you. Be wary! I am fair but not forgiving! Work your best, or better than your best, so that we all make grade. Slack and shirk, and I suffer as well as you, and this must not be! Come now, to work!"

Taussig's platoon, with the addition of Aillas, was now at its full complement of six. Taussig took them down into a stony sunbaked gully and put them to work dragging timbers up to the ridge and downslope to where Ska and Skaling worked together to build a timber tunnel along the saddle toward Tintzin Fyral, through which a battering ram might then be swung against the castle gate. On the parapets Carfilhiot's archers watched for targets: Ska or Skaling alike. Whenever one such exposed himself an arrow instantly darted down from above.

When the timber passage reached halfway across the saddle, Carfilhiot raised an onager to the turret, and began to launch hundred-pound stones at the timber structure: to no avail; the timbers were elastic and cunningly joined. The stones, striking the timbers, crushed bark, splintered the surface, then tumbled away down into the gulch.

Aillas quickly discovered that his fellows in Taussig's platoon were no more anxious to elevate Taussig's grade than himself.

Taussig, hence, ran bobbing and limping back and forth in a state of frenzy, calling exhortations, threats and abuse. "Shoulders into it, Five!" "Pull, pull!" "Are you all sick?" "Three, you corpse! Pull now!" "Six, I'm watching you! I know your kind!

You're dogging it already!" So far as Aillas could determine Taussig's squad achieved as much as the other, and he heard Taussig's outcries with indifference. The morning's calamity had left him numb; the full scope was only just beginning to make itself felt.

At noon the Skalings were fed bread and soup. Aillas sat on his left buttock, in a state of numb reverie. During the morning Aillas had been teamed with Yane, a taciturn North Ulf, perhaps forty years old. Yane was of no great stature, sinewy and longarmed, with dark coarse hair and a pinched leathery face. Yane watched Aillas a few minutes, then said gruffly: "Eat, lad; keep up your strength. No good comes of brooding."

"I have affairs which I can't neglect."

"Forget them; your new life has started."

Aillas shook his head. "Not for me."