Beasts of Gor coc-12

by John Norman

“There was only one ship,” I said. “And I had not realized the difficulty of getting the supplies to where they would be most needed.”

  “Do my ears deceive me?” asked Imnak. “I cannot believe what I am hearing. Did I hear a white man say be had made a mistake?”

  “I made a mistake,” I said. “One who is wise in the south may be a fool in the north.”

  This admission took Imnak aback for a moment.

  “You are wiser than I,” I added, for good measure.

  “No,” he said, “you are wiser than I.”

  “Perhaps I am wiser in the south,” I said, “but you are wiser in the north.”

  “Perhaps,” he said.

  “And you are a great hunter,” I said.

  He grinned. “I have done a little hunting,” he said.

  “Rouse up! Rouse up!” called a guard, beating on the wooden bars of the pen with his spear. “It is time for your gruel, and thence to your labors.”

  Two guards were then amongst us, prodding men awake and up.

  “Release this man from the chain,” said Ram, indicating me. “Yesterday he was beaten with the snake.”

  It was not unusual that men died under the lash of the snake, that heavy coil laced with wire and flecks of iron.

  “It is ordered,” said the guardsman, “that he labors today.”

  Ram looked at me, startled. I was already on my feet. My lovely captor, I recalled, had said that I would labor today. I was to well understand whose prisoner I was. “I am hungry,” I said.

  The guard backed away from me. He went to check the ankle chains of the others.

  We were soon shuffled from the pen. In making our way to the cook shack we passed the large, wooden dais on which the whipping frame had been erected. It was some twelve feet square, and some four feet in height, its surface reached by steps. The whipping frame itself, vertical, consisted of two heavy uprights, some six inches square and eight feet high, and a crossbeam, some six inches square and some seven feet in length. Each upright was supported by two braces, each also six inches square. A heavy ring was bolted on the underside of the high crossbeam; it was from this ring that a prisoner, bound by the wrists, might be suspended. A matching ring was bolted in the beams of the dais, under the upper ring. It was to the lower ring that the prisoner’s feet, some six inches above the wood, crossed and tied, might be bound. This prevents undue swinging under the lash.

  We were knelt outside the cook shack. We were given wooden bowls. We were served gruel, mixed with thick chunks of boiled tabuk, by the blond, she who had once been Barbara Benson, now Thimble, and the dark-haired girl, who had once been the rich girl, Audrey Brewster, now the slave girl, Thistle. Thimble had been made first girl. She made Thistle carry the metal bucket of gruel while she, with a ladle, filled the bowls. Neither girl any longer wore the strings on her throat, identifying them as a hunter’s beasts, nor her brief furs nor the fur wrappings on their feet. Both had been placed in belted woolen camisks, an open-sided garment sometimes worn by female slaves. Though it was chilly both were barefoot.

  Blond Thimble cried out, seized by one of the men in the chain. She struck at him with the ladle. She was thrown to the ground beneath him. Instantly guards were on the fellow, striking him with spear butts and pulling him from the girl. They struck him cruelly. “She is for the guards,” they told him.

  Terrified, Thimble, her camisk half torn away, stumbled back, away from the chain.

  “Fill their bowls again,” said the head guard. ‘They have much work to do today.”

  Thimble and Thistle began again at the far end of the line to my right. They swayed back, frightened, as far as they could from the line, in their serving.

  They knew the terror of slave girls, among men hungry for women.

  There were some forty men in my chain. Along the some seventy pasangs of the wall there were several such chains, with their own pens and facilities. Somewhere between three and four hundred men, with their guards, labored at one place or another along the wall. I do not think it was a mistake that I was in one of the more central chins. My lovely captor, doubtless, had so decreed it. She was quite proud of my capture, which she regarded as a function of her own merits. She wanted me in a position of maximum security, nearer the wall’s center, closer to her headquarters. Too, I think she relished the pleasure of seeing me in her chains.

  We were marched past the high platform overlooking the wall.

  She was on the platform, with two guards.

  “She is up early this morning,” said one of the men.

  Near the platform there were piled some logs and heavy stones, carried there by other laborers the preceding afternoon. Tools, also, wrapped in hide, were there.

  “Lift these logs,” said a guard. “Carry these stones.”

  I, with Ram and Imnak, and Tasdron, who had been the captain in the fee of Samos, he whose ship had been lost to the tarnsmen, shouldered one of the logs.

  My lovely captor looked down on us. Her face was flushed with pleasure.

  “She wears a man’s furs,” said Ininak.

  That was true, at least from the point of view of a red hunter. Women of the red hunters are furred differently from the hunters. Their boots, soft, of sleenskin, are high, and reach the crotch, instead of the knee. Instead of trousers of fur they wear brief panties of fur. When they cover their breasts it is commonly with a shirt of beaded lartskin. In cold weather they, like the men, wear one or more hooded parkas of tabuk hide. Tabuk hide is the warmest pelt in the arctic. Each of the hairs of the nothern tabuk, interestingly, is hollow. This trapped air, contained in each of the hollow hairs, gives the fur excellent insulating properties. Air, incidentally, is extremely important, generally, in the effectiveness of the clothing of the red hunters. First, the garments, being of hide, are windproof, as most other garments are not. Cold air, thus, cannot penetrate the garment. The warming factor of the garment is a function of air trapped against the skin. This air, inside the garment, is warmed by the body, of course, The garment, because of the hood, and the weight of the garment on the shoulders, tends to trap this warm air inside. It does not escape from the bottom because warm air, being less dense than cold air, tends to rise. The major danger of these garments, interestingly, is the danger of the wearer becoming overheated. Perspiration in the arctic winter, which can freeze on the body, and soak the clothing, which can then become like ice, brittle and useless, is a peril to be avoided if at all possible. Yet the garment’s design permits this danger to be nullified. When the hunter becomes overheated he pulls down the neck of the parka. This permits the warm air to escape and its place is taken by fresh, cold air from the bottom. He thus, by closing or opening the throat of the garment, regulates its effectiveness according to his needs. The warmth of most normal clothing, incidentally, is a function of layers of cloth, not of trapped, warmed air. These many layers of clothing are, of course, heavy, cumbersome and difficult to work in. Also, of course, since this sort of clothing is not normally windproof cold air penetrates the garment and, meeting the warm air of the body, tends to precipitate moisture. The garments thus become wet and more heavy, and more dangerous, at low temperatures. Also, there is no simply way of avoiding this danger. One may, of course, remove layers of clothing, but this, in arctic temperatures, can be dangerous in itself. Also, when one wishes to replace the clothing, it may be, by then, frozen. At arctic temperatures moisture in a garment can turn to ice in a matter of seconds. The armholes in a parka, incidentally, are cut large enough to allow a man to pull his arms and hands inside and warm them, if he wishes, against the body. The clothing of the arctic hunter seems ideally suited to his needs in the north. It is warm, light in weight and permits great freedom of movement.

  “Work well, Tarl Cabot,” cailed my lovely captor from the height of the platform.

  “Move,” said a guardsman.

  We strode forth, moving in unison, on the left foot. Our right ankles, chained in coffle, followed.


  The log was heavy.

  “It is like stone,” said Ram. He drove the iron bar, which he gripped in fur, downward. It struck the layer of permafrost, and rang.

  I, too, drove the bar into the hole. A bit of frozen dirt was chipped away.

  We made our hole at a diagonal, for the logs we were to set now were bracing logs, which would help support the wall at this place. It was some half a pasang from the platform. It was weakened at this point. I had heard of this yesterday, be-fore I had been conducted by my fair captor from her headquarters. Some work had been done yesterday, with logs and stone. More remained to be done now. This weakness was to the left of the platform, looking out toward the tabuk. The center of the wall had been built across the main run of the tabuk migration. The animals, frustrated, sometimes tended to press against the wall. Sometimes, too, animals at the wall were forced against it, pinned against it, by the weight of animals behind them. Sometimes, in open places, huge, massive bucks, heads down, would charge and strike the wall with their horns. The animals did not understand this obstruction in their path. It was incomprehensible to them, and, to many, maddening. Why did it not yield?

  Two or three times, at certain points, I learned, the wall had buckled, but, each time, men managed to repair it in time.

  “Put stone here,” said a guardsman.

  Men, carrying stone, placed it against the wall. Such support, however, would not be as effective as the log braces which we were laboring to set in place.

  On the other side of the wall there were thousands of tabuk. New thousands arrived each day, from the paths east of Torvaldsland.

  “With the permafrost,” I said to Ram, “the logs of the wall cannot be too deeply fixed.”

  “They are deeply enough fixed,” he said. “They could not be withdrawn without sufficient labor.”

  “Surely we have sufficient labor,” I said.

  “Perhaps you could discuss the matter with the guards,” he said.

  “They might not be agreeable,” I pointed out.

  “What is your plan?” he asked.

  We two were chained together, but apart from the others, to facilitate our labors. Several other pairs, too, were so chained. The coffle, in virtue of the arrangements of chains and ankle rings, could be broken up into smaller work units.

  “Imnak,” I said, “would you like to go home?”

  “I have not seen the performance of a drum dance in four moons,” he said.

  “Tasdron,” said I, “would you like a new ship?”

  “I would fit it to fight tarnsmen,” said he. “Let them then try to take her.”

  “Do not be foolish,” said a man. “Escape is hopeless. We are chained. Guards, if not here, are many.”

  “You have no allies,” said another man.

  “You are mistaken,” I said, “our allies number in the thousands.”

  “Yes!” said Ram. “Yes!”

  The keys to our ankle rings were in the keeping of the chief guard, the master of our coffle.

  “Speak less,” said a guard. “You are here to reinforce the wall, not spend your time in talk like silly slave girls.”

  “I fear the wall is going to buckle here,” I said, indicating a place at the wall..

  “Where?” he asked, going to the wall, examining it with his hands.

  I did not think it wise on his part to turn his back on prisoners.

  I thrust his head, from behind, into the logs. It struck them with considerable force. I gestured to the men about, that they join me at the wall. The fallen guard could not be seen amongst us. His sword I now held in my hand.

  “What is going on there?” called the chief guard.

  “You will get us all killed,” said a man.

  He pushed his way amongst us, striking to the left and right. Then he saw his fallen fellow. He turned, white-faced, his hand at the hilt of his sword. But the sword I carried was at his breast.

  Ram relieved him swiftly of the keys he bore. He released me, and then himself, and then gave the keys to Tasdron.

  “There is no escape for you,” said the chief guard. “You are pinned with the wall on one side, the guardsmen who may be swiftly marshaled on the other.”

  “Call your fellow guards to your side,” I said.

  “I do not choose to do so,” he said.

  “The choice is yours,” I granted him. I drew back the blade.

  “Wait,” he said. Then he called out, “Jason! Ho-Sim! To the wall!”

  They hurried over. We had then four swords, and two spears. They did not carry shields, for their duties had only involved the supervision of a work crew.

  “Captain!” called another guard, from some forty yards away. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes!” he called.

  But the man had apparently seen the movement of a spear among the workers.

  He turned suddenly and, bolting, fled toward the platform and main buildings.

  “A spear!” I said.

  But by the time it was in my grasp the man was well out of its range.

  “He will give the alarm,” said the chief guard. “You are finished. Return to me my weapons and place yourselves again in chains. I will petition that your lives be spared.”

  “Well, Lads,” said I, “let us now to work with a good heart. I do not think we will have a great deal of time to spare.”

  With a will, then, they set themselves to the opening of the wall.

  “You are insane!” said the chief guard. “You will all be trampled.”

  As soon as one log was tortured out of the earth and lifted away Imnak slipped through the opening, out among the tabuk.

  “He at least will escape,” said one of the men.

  “He will be killed out there,” said another.

  I was disappointed that Imnak had fled. I had thought him made of sterner stuff.

  “Quickly, Lads,” I said. “Quickly!”

  Another log was pulled out of the earth, levered up by bars and, by many hands, heaved to the side.

  We could hear the alarm bar ringing now. Its sound carried clearly in the clear, cold air north of Torvaldsland.

  “Quickly, Lads!” I encouraged them.

  “You, too,” I said, gesturing to the three guards who were conscious. “Work well and I may spare your lives.”

  Angrily, then, they, too, set themselves to the work of drawing logs out of that cruel turf.

  Suddenly a tabuk, better than eleven hands at the shoulder, thrust through the opening, buffeting men aside.

  “Hurry!” I said. “Back to work!”

  “We will be killed!” cried the chief guard. “You do not know these beasts!”

  “Guards are coming,” moaned a man.

  Hurrying toward us we could now see some forty or fifty guardsmen, weapons at the ready.

  “Surrender!” said the chief guard.

  “Work,” I warned him.

  He saw that I was ready to make an example of him. Earnestly he then bent sweating to his work.

  “I surrender! I surrender!” cried a man, running toward the guards.

  We saw him cut down.

  I took again the spear which had earlier been pressed into my grasp.

  I hurled it into the guards, some fifty yards now away. I saw a man fall.

  The guards stopped, suddenly. They did not have shields. I took the other spear.

  “Work!” I called to the men behind me.

  “Heave!” I heard Ram call.

  Two more tabuk bounded through the rupture in the wall. There would not be enough. They did not know the wall was open. Some four more tabuk, as though sensing freedom, trotted past.

  There would not be enough.

  I threatened the guards with the spear. They fanned out, now, wisely, warily.

  Another log was rolled aside.

  Two more tabuk bounded through.

  “Kill him!” I heard the chief of those guardsmen say. Four more tabuk trotted past.

  There would not b
e enough tabuk! The guards now crept more close, blades ready.

  “Aja! Aja!” I heard, from behind the fence. “Aja! Hurry, my brothers! Aja!”

  There was a cheer from those who labored at the destruction of the wall.

  Forty or more tabuk suddenly, with startling rapidity, a tawny blur, trotted past me. They were led by a magnificent animal, a giant buck, fourteen hands at the shoulder, with swirling horn of ivory more than a yard in length. It was the leader of the herd of Tancred.

  “Aja!” I heard from behind the fence.

  Suddenly it was as though a dam had broken. I threw myself back against the logs. The guardsmen broke and fled.

  Floodlike, like a tawny, thundering avalanche, blurred, snorting, tossing their heads and horns, the tabuk sped past me. I saw the leader, to one side, on a hillock, stamping and snorting, and lifting his head. He watched the tabuk streaming past him and then he bounded from the hillock, and, racing, made his way to the head of the herd. More tabuk now, a river better than sixty feet wide, thundered past me. I heard logs splintering, and saw them breaking and giving way. They fell and some, even, on the backs of the closely massed animals, were carried for dozens of yards, wood floating and churned, tossed on that tawny, storming river, that relentless torrent of hide and horn, turned toward the north. I moved to my left as more logs burst loose. In minutes the river of tabuk was more than two hundred yards wide. The ground shook beneath me. I could hardly see nor breathe for the dust.

  I was aware of Imnak near me, grinning.

  11. What Further Events Occurred In The Vicinity Of The Wall; I Again Turn My Eyes Northward; I Pause Only To Reduce A Woman To Slavery

  I tied her wrists together. There was a great cheer from my men.

  As I had anticipated there had been little actual fighting.

  Once the wall had been broken, Drusus, of the Assassins, had departed with several men.

  Several guardsmen, too, their discipline broken, had sought supplies and fled south. The wall broken there seemed little point to them to remain and die.

  We had little difficulty with the guards and work crews east of the break in the wall. It had been a simple matter to don the uniforms of guards and seem to march a new chain of men east. The men in the chain, of course, were not locked within, save for those at the end of the chain who had been former guards, now clad in the rags of laborers. I was of the warriors, and Ram, as it turned out, was quite skillful with the sword. Confronted with us and the majority of the putatively chained laborers, suddenly throwing off their chains and encircling them, they offered little resistance. Soon they, like their colleagues, wore locked manacles and laborers’ rags. At the eastern end of the wall a similar ruse surprised the camp of hunters. We lost some of these as they fled south but others we captured and chained, acquiring several longbows, which might he used at the latitude of the wall, and several hundred arrows. Some nine men among our forces were of the peasants. To these I gave the bows.