Norman, John - Gor 08 - Hunters of Gor.txt

by Hunters of Gor [lit]

  along the river.

  The two male slaves I had purchased from Sheera and her band, I had freed. I

  gave them clothing, and two silver tarsks apiece. They had wished to remain with

  me, in my service. I had permitted it.

  “What price did you obtain for the panther girls you sold?” I asked Thurnock.

  I had not been much interested in them. It only now occurred to me to inquire

  what they had gained me.

  “Four pieces of gold,” said Thurnock.

  “Excellent,” I said. That was a high price for a raw girl in the north. They, of

  course, had been beauties. They had been panther women. In the hold of the

  Tesephone, they had learned that they were female. Tana and Ela, I expected,

  would make exquisite slaves.

  We continued along the docks of Lydius, satisfying our curiosity as to the port.

  We passed some fortified warehouse, in which space is available to merchants. In

  such places, there would be gems, and gold, silks, and wines and perfumes,

  jewelries and spices, richer goods not to be left exposed on the docks. In such

  houses, too, sometimes among the other merchandise, there are pleasure slaves,

  trained girls, imported perhaps from Ar. Their sales will either be public or

  private. They are kept in lamplit, low-ceillinged, ornately barred cells. Such

  girls are commonly rare in the north. They bring high prices.

  We passed another paga tavern. I licked my lips.

  Lydius is one of the few cities of the north which has public baths, as in Ar

  and Turia, though smaller and less opulent.

  It is a port of paradoxes, where one finds, strangely mingled, luxuries and

  gentilities of the south with the simplicities and rudenesses of the less

  civilized north. It is not unusual to encounter a fellow with a jacket of sleen

  fur, falling to his knees, sewn in the circle stitch of Scagnar, who wears upon

  his forehead a silken headband of Ar. He might carry a double-headed ax, but at

  his belt may hang a Turian dagger. He might speak in the accents of Tyros, but

  startle you with his knowledge of the habits of wild tarns, knowledge one would

  expect to only find in one of Thentis. Those of Lydius pretend to much

  civilization, and are fond of decorating their houses, commonly of wood, with

  high pointed roofs, in manners they think typical of Ar, of Ko-ro-ba, of Tharna

  and Turia, but to settle points of honor they commonly repair to a skerry in

  Thassa, little more than forty feet wide, there to meet opponents with axes, in

  the manner of those of Torvaldsland.

  I recalled the girl who jostled me earlier. She had been a sensuous little

  thing. Again, through my memory, flashed the vague image of the side of her

  head, as she slipped past, and her hair, moving aside. I could not place what I

  was trying to recall, if anything.

  It was now near noon.

  “Let us return to some paga tavern near the ship,” I suggested.

  “Good,” said Thurnock.

  This very afternoon I wished to begin to purchase supplies.

  We, with Rim, turned about. I was anxious to be on my way.

  Two warriors passed, proud of their red.

  They were probably mercenaries. Their speech reminded me of that of Ar.

  They did not wear, in silver, the medallion of the Ubar. They were not of the

  retinue of Marlenus, whom I now believed to be in Laura, or in the vicinity of

  Laura.

  Yes, I was anxious to be on my way. I wished to reach Verna before Marlenus of

  Ar.

  I expected that I would be successful. I had information, specific information,

  thanks to Tana and Ela, which Marlenus, presumably, lacked.

  “I am hungry now,” remarked Rim.

  We were just passing a paga tavern. Within it, dancing in the sand, chained, was

  a short-bodied, marvelous female slave.

  I laughed. So, too, did Thurnock.

  “The taverns nearer the ship,” I suggested, “are doubtless more crowded.”

  We laughed again, and entered the tavern.

  I was in a good mood. I was sure that I would regain Talenus, and Tana and Ela

  had gone for a good price. We would use part of the proceeds from their sale to

  purchase our lunch.

  We took a table, an inconspicuous one, near the rear of the paga tavern, yet one

  with an unimpeded view. The short-bodied girl was indeed superb. Aside from her

  chains, confining her wrists and ankles, she wore only her collar.

  There was a flash of slave bells at my side, and a dark-haired, yellow-silked

  girl, a paga girl, knelt beside us, where we sat cross-legged behind the small

  table. “Paga, Masters?”

  “For three,” said I, expansively. “And bring bread and bosk, and grapes.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  I felt rather jubilant. Talena would soon again be mine. I had made a good

  profit on Tana and Ela.

  The music of the musicians was quite good. I reached to my pouch, to take from

  it a golden tarn and throw it to them.

  “What is wrong?” asked Thurnock.

  I lifted the strings of the cut pouch. I looked at Rim and Thurnock.

  We looked at one another, and together we laughed.

  “It was the girl,” I said, “the black-haired girl, she who jostled me in the

  crowd.”

  Rim nodded.

  I was quite amazed. It had been done so swiftly, so deftly. She had been quite

  good.

  I had not, until now, realized I had been robbed.

  “I trust,” I said to Thurnock, “that your purse is intact.”

  Thurnock looked down, swiftly. He grinned. “It is,” he said.

  “I too, have some money,” volunteered Rim, “though I am not as rich as two such

  wealthy ones as you.”

  ‘I have the four gold pieces from the selling of the panther wenches,” said

  Thurnock.

  “Good,” I said, “Let us feast.”

  We did so.

  In the midst of the meal I looked up. “That’s is it!” I said and laughed.

  I now recalled clearly what had been only a vague flash of memory, the

  recollection of something seen so swiftly it had, before, scarcely been noticed.

  I laughed.

  “What is the matter?” asked Thurnock, his mouth filled with bosk.

  “I now recall what it was about the girl who robbed me,” I said. “I saw it, but

  did not really see it. It troubled me. Only now do I recall it clearly.”

  “What?” asked Thurnock.

  Rim looked at me.

  “Behind her hair, as she brushed past,” I said.

  “What?” said Thurnock.

  “Her ear,” I said. “Her ear was notched.”

  Rim and Thurnock laughed. “A thief,” said Thurnock, swallowing a mouthful of

  bosk and reaching for the paga goblet.

  “A very skillful one,” I said. “A very skillful one.”

  She had indeed been skillful. I am an admirer of skills, of efficiencies of

  various sorts. I admire the skill of the leather worker with his needle, that of

  the potter’s strong hands, that of the vintner with his wines, that of warriors

  with their weapons.

  I looked to one side. There, lost to the bustle in the tavern, oblivious to the

  music, sat two men across a board of one hundred red and yellow squares, playing

  Kaissa, the game. One was a Player, a master who makes his living, though

  commonly poorly
, from the game, playing for a cup of paga perhaps and the right

  to sleep in the taverns for the night. The other, sitting cross-legged with him,

  was the broad-shouldered, blond giant from Torvaldsland whom I had seen earlier.

  He wore a shaggy jacket. His hair was braided. His feet and legs were bound in

  skins and cords. The large, curved, double-bladed, long-handled ax lay beside

  him. On his large brown leather belt, confining the long shaggy jacket he wore,

  which would have fallen to his knees, were carved the luck signs of the north.

  Kaissa is popular in Torvaldsland as well as elsewhere on Gor. In halls, it is

  often played far into the night, by fires, by the northern giants. Sometimes

  disputes, which otherwise might be settled only by ax or sword, are willingly

  surrendered to a game of Kaissa, if only for the joy of engaging in the game.

  The big fellow was of Torvaldsland. The master might have been from as far away

  as Ar, or Tor, or Turia. But they had between them the game, its fascination and

  its beauty, reconciling whatever differences, in dialect, custom or way of light

  might divide them.

  The game was beautiful.

  The girl who served us was also beautiful. We had finished with our meal. And we

  were now finishing second cups of paga.

  She again knelt beside us. “Do masters wish more?” she asked.

  “What is your name?” asked Rim, his hand in her hair. He turned her head

  slightly to the side.

  She looked at him, for the side of her eyes. “Tendite,” she said, “if it pleases

  Master.”

  It was a Turian name. I had once known a girl by that name.

  “Do masters wish more?” she asked.

  Rim grinned.

  There was, outside, the shouting of men in the street. We looked to one another.

  Thurnock threw down a silver tarsk on the table.

  I, too, was curious. So, too, was Rim. He regarded Tendite.

  She moved to dart away. Quickly, he took her by the hair and pulled her quickly,

  bent over, to a low, sloping side of the room. “Key” he called to the

  proprietor, pointing toward the side of the room. The proprietor hurried over,

  in his apron, and handed Rim a key. It was number six. Rim, taking the key in

  his mouth, put the girl down rudely on her knees, her back to the low wall, took

  her hands back and over her head and snapped them into slave bracelets, dangling

  on a chain, passing through a heavy ring set in the wall. He then took the key,

  which could open the bracelets, and dropped it in his pouch. She looked up at

  him, in fury. It is a way of reserving, for a time, a girl for yourself.

  “I shall return shortly,” he said.

  She knelt there, in the darkness of the side of the room, in her yellow silk,

  her hands locked above and behind her head.

  “Do not run away,” Rim cautioned her.

  He then turned to join us and, together, we left the tavern, to see what the

  commotion might be outside. Many others, too, had left the tavern.

  The girl had left the dancing sand. Even the musicians poured out of the tavern.

  We walked along the front of the street, until we came to a side street, leading

  down to the wharves. It was not more than a hundred yards from the tavern.

  Men, and women and children, were lining the side street, and others were

  pouring in from the street before the tavern.

  We heard the beating of a drum and the playing of flutes.

  “What is going on?” I asked a fellow, of the metal workers.

  “It is a judicial enslavement,” he said.

  With Rim and Thurnock, moving in the crowd, I craned for a look.

  I saw first the girl, stumbling. She was already stripped. Her hands were tied

  behind her back. Something, pushing her from behind, had been fastened on her

  neck. Behind her came a flat-topped wagon, of some four feet in height. It was

  moved by eight tunicked, collared slave girls, two to each wheel, pushing at the

  wheels. It was guided by a man walking behind it, by means of a lever extending

  back, under the wagon, from the front axle. Flanking the wagon, on both sides,

  were musicians, with their drums and flutes. Behind the wagon, in the white

  robes, trimmed with gold and purple, of merchant magistrates, came five men. I

  recognized them as judges.

  A pole extended from the front of the wagon, some eight or nine feet. There was,

  at its termination, a semicircular leather cushion, with a short chain. The

  girl’s neck had been forced back against the cushion, and then the chain had

  been fastened, securing her, standing, in place. As the wagon moved forward, she

  was, thus, forced to walk before it. The pole, projecting out from the wagon,

  isolated her, keeping her from other human beings.

  The music became louder.

  I suddenly recognized the girl. It was she who had cut my purse earlier in the

  day, the sensuous little wench, whose ear had been notched. I gather that she

  had not had such good fortune later in the day. I well knew what the punishment

  was for a Gorean female, following her second conviction for theft.

  On the flat-topped wagon, fastened to one side on a metal plate, already white

  with heat, was a brazier, from which protruded the handles of two irons. Also

  mounted on the wagon was a branding rack, of the sort popular in Tyros. It was,

  I conjectured, another instance of the cultural minglings which characterized

  the port of Lydius.

  The wagon stopped on the broad street, before the wharves, where the crown could

  gather about.

  A judge climbed, on wooden stairs at the back of the wagon, to its surface. The

  other judges stood below him, on the street.

  The girl pulled at the leather binding fiber fastening her wrists behind her

  back. She moved her neck and head in the confinement of the chain and leather,

  at the end of the pole.

  “Will the Lady Tina of Lydius deign to face me?” asked the judge, using the

  courteous tones and terminology with which Gorean free women, often inordinately

  honored, are addressed.

  I looked quickly at Rim ND Thurnock. “Tina!” I said.

  They grinned. “It must be she,” said Rim, “who drugged Arn, and took his gold.”

  Thurnock grinned.

  I, too, smiled. It must indeed be she. Arn, I supposed, would have much relished

  being here.

  I suspected that little Tina would cut few purses in the future.

  “Will the Lady Tina of Lydius please deign to face me?” asked the judge, with

  the same courtesy as before.

  The girl turned in the chain and leather to face her judge, standing removed

  from her and above her, in his white robes, trimmed with two borders, one of

  gold, the other of purple.

  “You have been tried, and convicted, of the crime of theft,” intoned the judge.

  “She stole two gold pieces from me!” cried a man standing in the crowd. “And I

  had witnesses!”

  “It took an Ahn to catch her,” said another man, laughing.

  The judge paid no attention to these speakings.

  “You have been tried and convicted of the crime of theft,” said the judge, “for

  the second time.”

  The girl’s eyes were terrified.

  “It is now my duty, Lady Tina,” said the judge, “to pass sentence on you.”


  She looked up at him.

  “Do you understand?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, “my judge.”

  “Are you prepared now, Lady Tina of Lydius,” said the judge, “to hear your

  sentence?”

  “Yes,” she said, regarding him, “my judge.”

  “I herewith sentence you, Lady Tina of Lydius,” said the judge, “to slavery.”

  There was a shout of pleasure from the crowd. The girl’s head was down. She had

  been sentenced.

  “Bring her to the rack,” said the judge.

  The man who had guided the wagon from the rear, and had now locked the brake on

  the front wheel, went to the bound girl. He unfastened the chain that bound her

  against the curved leather at the end of the pole, and, holding her by the arm,

  her wrists still tied behind her, led her to the rear of the wagon, and up the

  steps. She then stood beside her judge, barefoot on the flat-topped, wooden

  wagon. Her head was down.

  “Lady Tina,” requested the judge, “go to the rack.”

  Wordlessly, the girl went and stood by the rack, her back to the curved stone.

  The man who had brought her to the wagon now knelt before her, locking metal

  clasps on her ankles.

  He then went behind her, and unbound her wrists. “Place your hands over your

  head,” he said. She did so. “Bend your elbows,” he said. She did so. “Lie back,”

  he then said, supporting her. She did so, and was stretched over the curved

  iron. He then took her wrists and pulled her arms almost straight. He then

  locked her wrists in metal clasps, similar to those, though smaller, which

  confined her ankles. Her head was down. He then bent to metal pieces, heavy,

  curved and hinged, which were attached to the sides of the rack, and a bit

  forward. Each piece consisted of two curved, flattish bands, joining at the top.

  He lifted them, and dropped them into place. Then, with two keys, hanging on

  tiny chains at the sides, he tightened the bands. They were vises. She might now

  be branded on either the left or right thigh. There was ample room, I noted,

  between the bands on either side, to press the iron. She was held perfectly. Her

  tanned thigh could not protest so much as by the slightest tremor. She would be

  marked cleanly.

  The man, placing heavy gloves on his hands, withdrew from the brazier a slave

  iron. Its tip was a figure some inch and a half high, the first letter in