Norman, John - Gor 08 - Hunters of Gor.txt
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the Laurius River, due to the treachery of a tavern keeper of Laura, by name,
Hesius, and four paga slaves. I recalled the girls, with momentary irritation,
red-haired Vinca, the two other girls, and the slim, light-skinned, dark0haired
Earth girl, she of Denver, Colorado, to whom I had given the slave name, Ilene.
U was not pleased with her. She had not been completely open with me. Too, she
was a lovely weakling, petty, timid and selfish, fir only to be the slave of men
of Gor. I would have her sold in Port Kar.
Now, sullen, angry, at the edge of the forest, I saw a slave chain of twenty-one
men. There were fastened together by the neck, and the hands of each were
manacles behind his back. the neck chains and wrist manacles, now, however, had
been changed to lock chains, that they might be separated, rechained, and
regrouped in a matter of seconds, depending on what contingencies were
encountered by their masters.
Seventy-five men had been abandoned in the forest, still wearing the chains that
had been hammered about their necks and wrists. Sarus had not had them slain.
Doubtless he had feared the great bow. His earlier attempt to slay slaves had
been unsuccessful. No one, after I had felled the first who had dared to lift
his sword to such a purpose, had dared to threaten a slave. On the other hand,
on the orders of Sarus, the seventy-five men had been chained in a large circle,
about some ten large trees. When I had come upon them, thought I had not made my
presence known to them, I had seen that each still wore his neck chain, and that
the hands of each were still manacled behind his back. the long set of chains
and collars, securing them, had been fastened about several trees, in a great
circle,. They no longer wore ankle chains, of course. There had been struck off
earlier in the march, that the entire column might move more quickly. They could
not be freed, save by tools, for they did not wear lock bonds.
It was intelligently done by Sarus.
Abandoned in the forest they would die of thirst, or hunger, or of exposure or
the attacks of beasts. To protect them, would, of course divert the forces of
the enemy; to free them, should the enemy not possess heavy tools, which I did
not, would be almost impossible. Either the chains must be broken or the trees
cut. It was an excellent plan.
Sarus was not a fool.
Then, of course, after having laid this impediment in the path of his pursuer or
pursuers, he, with his choice male prisoners, Marlenus chief among them, and the
twenty-four captured slave girls, including Cara, Grenna and Tina, continued
their flight to the shores of gleaming Thassa and their projected rendezvous
with the Rhoda and the Tesephone.
After having taken the majority of Hura’s girls, drugged at the camp, slave, I
had not struck further at Sarus, and his me, or Hura, and her minions. She, with
twenty-one girls left, including Mira, had come with Sarus to the sea. The men
of Sarus had controlled the slave chain of prize male slaves; the girls of Hura
had controlled the coffle of beauties , each with her wrists still in binding
fiber confined behind her body, each still fastened to her sisters in bondage by
the strong, supple linking of the binding fiber knotted about her throat.
How easy it is, I thought, to control women. How simply they may be secured.
Each, incidentally, following a standard Gorean slave-keeping procedure, under
such circumstances, was tightly gagged at night. That way, of course, they may
not chew through the biding fiber in the darkness.
In the morning, they are still as well secured as ever.
I heard the cries of gladness of Hura’s girls as they emerged through the trees
and came to the beach.
In the brief skins of panther girls, they ran to the water and waded in it, the
cold salt water coming to their calves.
They were laughing and crying out.
Now, behind them, led by bound, stripped Sheera, her body marked with scarlet
stripes from the switch, came the coffle of enslaved women. I saw Cara behind
her, in the bit of white wool still left her, and behind her, Tina, in the
shreds of her simple garment of wool. Behind Tina was Grenna, also in the
branch-lashed, white-woolen tatters of a slave garment, for she had been
enslaved in my camp before her capture by the men of Tyros. Behind Grenna came
the first of Verna’s women, still in their skins of panthers. The panther skins,
of course, had stood well the strikings of branches and the tearing of the
closely set thickets of their flight. In the midst of the panther girls, now
futilely fighting her bonds, was Verna. The only remainder of the luscious slave
silk in which she had been marched was a yellow tatter about her neck, caught in
Marlenus’ collar, which still she wore. I recalled how superbly she had
responded, a helpless female slave, to the masterful touch of the great Marlenus
of Ar, the incredible Ubar of Ubars. Now, unable to free herself, she stood
disconsolately in the coffle, fastened as helplessly in it as any other woman
would be. She still wore large, golden earrings. Behind her came the balance of
her girls, in panther skins, and behind them, concluding the coffle, slave girls
who had belonged to Marlenus and had served him, and his men, in his camp. They
belonged in the coffle simply as captured property.
It interested me that none of the twenty-four girls had been abandoned. But I
was not surprised. The female slave, celebrated on Gore for her beauty, her
skills and her delights is prize booty. Female slaves are almost never abandoned
by Gorean men. He does not care to release such a prize. He keeps it.
Mira went to the coffle of slave beauties and, about in its center, before
Verna, seized the throat leather and pulled the girls in a “V” toward the shore.
“Come, Slaves!” she ordered.
I gathered that Mira still stood high among the girls of Hura, that her part, or
her knowing part, in the drugging of the large number of panther girls in the
former camp was not understood.
I recalled that she had submitted herself to me as a slave girl. I saw her
dragging the girls down the beach toward the water. I smiled. She belonged to
me. Doubtless she hoped to escape. She would not.
“To the water,” ordered Sarus.
Marlenus straightened and, proudly, naked, a chain on his neck, his wrist
manacled behind him, took his way down the beach toward the water. The other
twenty men, Rim behind him, and then Arn, and then men of Marlenus, chained,
followed him.
They no longer wore the chain which had been on their left ankle. It has been
removed, that they might move more rapidly through the forest, eluding those who
pursued the men of Tyros and the girls of Hura.
Further, that they might be more easily managed, and individuals removed from
the chain, and perhaps abandoned, they were now fastened in lock chains. If
necessary, all might have been, in a moment, abandoned, secured perhaps about
trees or rocks, save Marlenus, their chief prize, the central object of their
endeavors, their expedition of abduction. Sarus, was wise in the ways of slave
co
ntrol. No longer could I count on the slaves constituting for my enemy an
impediment to his motions and strategies.
In the last two days, following the night of the drugging of many of Hura’s
girls, I had not struck further at the men of Tyros with the swift arrows of the
great bow.
I had not done so, and had deliberately not done so.
I wished them, once again, to grow confident.
They had not known the numbers or nature of the enemy that pursued them.
Perhaps the enemy had been a group of slavers. There was reason for them to be
of this opinion. None of the arrows had felled a woman. only men. And women, one
by one, or in groups of twos and threes, had disappeared, quite possibly to find
their fair limbs in the sudden, inflexible clasp of slave steel. The pattern of
strikes had not been unlike that which might have distinguished the predations
of slavers.
They probably believed their unseen antagonists to be slavers.
Mira, of course, knew better, but she could not speak without revealing her
knowing role in the drugging of Hura’s women.
Her mouth was sealed. She wished to live.
Even Mira, by my intent, did not know the number of their stalkers.
Doubtless she believed I worked with a band, perhaps a large one, of panther
girls.
I watched my enemies from the thicket.
There were no signs of sails on the breadth of gleaming Thassa. The great circle
of the horizon was empty. There were swift, white clouds in the sky. I heard the
cry of sea birds, broad-winged gulls and the small, stick-legged tibits, pecking
in the sand for tiny mollusks. There was a salt smell in the air, swift and
bright in the wind. Thassa was beautiful.
Sarus and his men, pressed by my relentless pursuit, had moved much more swiftly
to the sea than doubtless he had intended. I counted, accordingly, on his being
early for his rendezvous with the Rhoda and Tesephone.
Doubtless Sarus and his men, not attacked since the night of the girl’s
druggings, were convinced that the “slavers” who had harried them at last were
satisfied. Surely they had left behind, scattered, sprawled in helpless stupor,
enough beauty to satisfy the Harl rings of almost any slaver’s chain. What would
it matter to Sarus that more than eighty of his fair allies might even now, in
chains, in a slaver’s camp, be screaming to the iron’s kiss. He, with his men,
and Marlenus of Ar, had escaped. Indeed, doubtless even Hura was not
dissatisfied with the bargain. What did she care if most, or all, of her girls
fell slave, as long as it was not she who found the bracelets locked on her
wrists, as long as it was not she who must now live cowering as a collared girl
subject to a man’s pleasure, to his touch, and to the steel of his chains and
the leather of his whip.
Sarus and Hura had come safely to the sea.
And it the “slavers” who had pursued them wished more plunder, they had left
them seventy-five strong male slaves, helpless for their harvesting to their own
chains.
Surely that would be enough to satisfy any slaver.
Sarus had reasoned well.
Only I was not a slaver.
I looked down to the beach.
My enemies, and their prisoners, stood at the water’s edge.
Sarus and Hura had come safely to the sea.
I smiled.
Marlenus in his chains, with Rim and Arn, and the others, stood ankle deep in
the water. They were looking out to sea. I saw the fists of the great Ubar
clench in his manacles. He stood before the glaring, sunlit waters. He stood
facing in the direction in which would lie Tyros. Again those massive fists
clenched.
Under the orders of Mira, the twenty-four slave girls in their coffle knelt on
the sand, near the water’s edge, in the position of pleasure slaves.
They, too, in their bonds, faced toward Tyros.
The men in the tunics of Tyros threw their yellow caps into the air and cheered,
and splashed water on one another, laughing. The forest was behind them. They
had come safely to the sea. In the darkness of the forest, I smiled.
During the afternoon I observed the slave girls, tied in pairs, by the neck,
each pair under the guard of a man of Tyros, and a panther girl, gathering
driftwood and, from the forest’s edge, broken branches.
They placed this wood at a point on the beach some twenty yards above the line
of high tide, forming with it a great beacon.
Lit, this beacon would constitute the prearranged signal to the ships.
I noted that Cara and Tina were tied together, forming one pair of slave girls.
Sheera and Grenna, both former panther girls, formed another pair. Two men of
Tyros watched that pair. Sheera was obviously regarded as a troublemaker. Two
men also guarded the pair that contained Verna. I saw that her slave bells had
been removed. I was pleased with the way the pairs were determined. It accorded
with my plans.
Meanwhile, in good order, with confidence, several men of Tyros entered the
forest and cut large numbers of stout saplings. I did not interfere with them.
These cuttings they sharpened at both ends. One end they forced into the ground
high on the beach, among the stones. The other end stood exposed as a defensive
point. In this fashion, sapling by sapling, a rude semicircular palisade, of
some one hundred feet in length, swiftly took form. It shielded them from the
forest. Across the open side, wood was gathered for animal fires, facing the
beach. This shelter would protect them from arrows, should they come, from the
forest, and, by means of the fires, should discourage the too close approach of
either panthers or sleen, which animals, in any case, seldom leave the forest,
seldom prowl on the beach. It was growing dark. It was doubtless for that reason
that the palisade was not closed.
Leading from the open side of the palisade to the great beacon was a column of
pairs of fires.
By means of these, protected by their flames, in case animals should approach
too closely, the great beacon could be fed.
I could not well fire into the palisade without approaching near the water,
without leaving the shelter of the forest. Moreover, I was not interested in
doing so.
“Light the beacon!” called Sarus. There was a great cheer as, in the falling
darkness, the torch thrust down into the oil-soaked wood.
I was not much observed, standing in the background, wearing the yellow of
Tyros.
In a moment, like a wind-torn explosion, flame leaped in a breadth of a dozen
feet on the still shores, on that lonely beach, of Thassa. The men of Tyros were
hundreds of pasangs from civilization, but the flames of that blaze brought
pleasure to them. It was their beacon to the Rhoda and Tesephone. The men of
Tyros began to sing, standing near it. In the back of the semicircular stockade,
miserable, chained, lay Marlenus and Rim and Arn, and the other male slaves.
They lay on their stomachs. The manacles on the wrists of slaves, thus, may be
easily checked by a guard, with a torch, as he makes his rounds. Further, their
heads faced toward the wall of the stockade. The less that a slav
e can know or
see the more easily controlled he is. Lastly, for the night, their ankles were
crossed and lashed together with binding fiber. There were quite helpless.
Similar precautions were taken with the female slaves. Each now, it being night,
was tightly gagged. Further, they were alternated, the ankles of one being
crossed and bound, and fastened to the throat of the next. This makes it
impossible for the girls to rise to their feet. Their wrists, of course, were
still secured, with Gorean perfection, behind their backs. I would have no
allies within the stockade.
Marlenus and the other male slaves lay closest to the back wall of the stockade.
Then, on the other side of them, closer to the sea, lay the gagged, helplessly
thonged slave girls; then came the blankets and supplies of Hura’s twenty-one
women’ them came the equipment of the fifty-five men of Tyros, almost at the
margin of the animal fires.
Again and again the men of Tyros and their fair allies, the women of Hura,
cheered.
I slipped back, unnoticed, into the darkness. I must make rendezvous with the
Rhoda and Tesephone before Sarus.
I would need, however, help for my plan to succeed. I would see that I had such
help.
Now I must be patient. And I would, for some Ahn, sleep.
I awaken after some two or three Ahn, judging by the flight of the moons.
I washed with a bit of water from a stream, ate some tabuk strips from my
wallet, and went again to the edge of the forest. The tunic of Tyros, in a tight
roll, was tied across my back. I wore green, now black in the darkness, and
moved with stealth, as a warrior moves who hunts men, mixing with the shadows,
one darkness among others, a movement and a silence.
To my satisfaction I saw that the great beacon was burning low. It would need
replenishment.
It was not long that I waited in the shadows before I heard, from within the
stockade, commands and the piteous remonstrances of pleading slave girls. I then
heard, again and again, the fierce, snapping crack of the slave lash. It fell
again and again on the vulnerable, secured bodies of girls in bondage. Its
searing cruelty would teach them, and swiftly, that no choice was theirs but
immediate complete and abject obedience. I heard no screaming. A girl cannot