by John Norman
I dropped the tiny carved tabuk I held. It, too, remained upright.
Imnak picked up his tiny carved tabuk and held it over the fur mat.
Arlene made a small noise. I sensed that she was angry that I no longer looked upon her.
Was she not sufficiently beautiful? She had a girl’s vanity. Did she not yet know she was a slave, and that she might account herself fortunate should a free man so much as glance in her direction?
“Try on the first parka,” said Thimble.
Arlene slipped it on, over the head, as such garments, like northern garments generally, are donned.
“Hood,” said Thimble.
Arlene lifted the hood and placed it properly.
“Do I please you, Master?” asked Arlene. She wished attention.
I looked up. Her face was very beautiful, rimmed in the lart fur trimming the hood.
“It is very nice,” I said.
“Thank you, Master,” she said, acidly.
“Put on the second parka and its hood,” said Thimble. Arlene complied. Both the parkas bore, at their left shoulder, the design of looped binding fiber, identifying them as the garments of slaves.
“Master?” asked Arlene.
“Excellent,” I said. ‘The garments are superb, and you are very beautiful in them.”
She flushed. “Thank you, Master,” she said. Then she said, acidly, “A girl is pleased if her master is pleased.”
“It is well,” I said, soberly. She trembled, momentarily.
“Take them off,” said Thimble, “all of them, everything, except the leather on your throat.”
“Yes, Mistress,” said Arlene.
Arlene stripped herself, to the leather collar, in Imnak’s hide tent. Thimble and Thisile were also naked. All were girls, only slave beasts in the tent of their masters.
I dropped the tiny carved tabuk which was mine, that which was my piece in the game. It did not land upright.
“I have won,” said Imnak.
“What are you gambling about?” asked Arlene. She was folding her garments.
“Put away the garments,” I said, “drop to all fours, and come here.”
Arlene put the folded garments to one side in the tent, and, in fury, on her hands and knees, crawled to where we had played.
I put my hand in her hair and pulled her to her stomach. “Here she is,” I told Imnak.
“Master!” she cried.
Imnak took her and turned her over, pulling her on her back across his legs.
“Master!” cried Arlene.
“Imnak has won your use, until he chooses to leave the tent,” I told her. “Obey him as though he were your own master.”
“Please, no!” she cried.
“Obey him,” I said, sternly, “as though he were your own master.”
“Yes, Master,” she said, miserably.
Imnak then dragged her to the side of the hide tent.
Perhaps I was struck most by the absence of trees.
Some five days after I had acquired the slave girl, Arlene, following the herd of Tancred, generally climbing, I came to the edge of Ax Glacier. There I found the camp of Imnak, and Thimble and Thistle.
“I have been waiting for you,” had said Imnak. “I thought you would come.”
“Why did you think this?” I had asked.
“I saw the furs and supplies you put aside for yourself when we were near the wall,” he said. “You have business in the north.”
“It is true,” I said.
He did not ask me my business. He was a red hunter. If I wished to tell him, he knew that I would. I decided that I would speak to him later. In my pouch was the small carving, in bluish stone, of the head of a Kur, one with an ear half torn away.
“I had hoped you would wait for me,” I said. “It might be difficult otherwise for one such as myself to cross the ice.
I knew that he had watched me prepare my pack.
Imnak grinned. “It was you,” said he, “who freed the tabuk.” Then he turned to his girls. “Break camp,” he had told them. “I am anxious to go home.”
With Imnak’s help we would cross Ax Glacier and find the Innuit, as they called themselves, a word which, in their own tongue, means “the People.” I recalled that in the message of Zarendargar he had referred to himself as a war general of the “People.” He had meant, of course, I assumed, his own people, or kind. Various groups are inclined to so identify themselves. It is an arrogance which is culturally common. The Innuit do not have “war generals.” War, in its full sense, is unknown to them. They live generally in scattered, isolated communities. It is as though two families lived separated in a vast remote area. There would be little point and little likelihood to their having a war. In the north one needs friends, not enemies. In good years, when the weather is favorable, there tends to be enough sleen and tabuk, with careful hunting, to meet their needs. One community is not likely to be much better or worse of than another. There is little loot to be acquired. What one needs one can generally hunt or make for oneself. There is little point in stealing from someone what one can as simply acquire for oneself. Within given groups, incidentally, theft is rare. The smallness of the groups provides a powerful social control. If one were to steal something where would one hide or sell it? Besides, if one wished something someone else owned and let this be known, the owner would quite possibly give it to you, expecting, of course, to receive as valuable a gift in return. Borrowing, too, is prevalent among the red hunters. The loan of furs, tools and women is common.
I looked downward, out across the ice of Ax Glacier. Beyond it lay the polar basin.
The north is a hard country. When one must apply oneself almost incessantly to the tasks of survival there is little time to indulge oneself in the luxury of conquest.
Thimble and Thistle dismantled the hides and poles of Imnak’s tent, and began to load them on the sled.
Violence, of course, is not unknown among the Innuit. They are men.
Aside, however, from consideratiolis such as the fewness, comparatively, of their numbers, and their geographical separation, and the pointlessness of an economics of war in their environment, the Innuit seem, also, culturally, or perhaps even genetically, disposed in ways which do not incline one to organized, systematic group violence. For example, they seem generally to be a kindly, genial folk. Hostility seems foreign to them. Strangers are welcomed. Hospitality is generous, honest, open-hearted and sincere. Some animals, doubtless, have better dispositions than others. The Innuit, on the whole, seem to be happy, pleasant fellows.’Perhaps that is why they live where they do. They have been unable, or unwilling, to compete with more aggressive groups. Their gentleness has resulted, it seems, in their being driven to the world’s end. Where no others have desired to live the Innuit, sociable and loving, have found their bleak refuge.
Imnak’s whip cracked down across the bare back of Thimble, the blond, who had been Barbara Benson, and she cried out and wept, “I hurry, Master!” She busied herself with loading the sled. Thistle, the dark-haired girl, who had once been the rich Audrey Brewster, hurried, too, lest it would be her own back which next would feel the lash.
The red hunters, though a genial folk, keep their animals under a firm discipline.
“I see you, too, have a beast,” he said, looking beyond me to the lovely Arlene.
She stood back, in the light snow, frightened of the red hunter. She wore a sleeveless jacket of fur, belted with binding fiber, which depended to her knees; fur leggings; and skins wrapped and tied on her feet. I had improvised these garments for her. I looked at her. She did not even know enough to kneel.
“Those garments,” said Imnak, “will be insufficient in the north.”
“Perhaps you could teach her,” I suggested, “to sew herself more adequate clothing.”
“I have showed my girls,” he said. “They will teach her.”
“Thank you,” I said.
It was rather beneath the dignity of a m
an to show a girl how to sew. Imnak had done this with Thimble and Thistle and did not wish to repeat the task. It is enough for a girl to teach a girl to sew.
“I see you have leather on your throat,” said Thimble to Arlene.
“I see your breasts are uncovered,” said Arlene to Thimble.
“Remove your jacket,” I told Arlene. Angrily, she did so. Imnak’s pupils dilated. He would welcome this lovely she in our small herd.
“Into the traces,” said Imnak.
Thimble and Thistle bent down and each looped the broad band of her trace across her body.
“You are animals, aren’t you?” called Arlene to them.
“Can you rig another trace?” I asked Imnak.
“Of course,” he said.
Soon Arlene, too, to her fury, stood in harness.
Imnak cracked his whip over their heads and they threw their weight against the traces and the long, narrow, freighted sled eased upward, over the rocks, and then slid down onto the ice of Ax Glacier. Imnak and I held the rear of the sled that it not move too rapidly downward. The ice of Ax Glacier, where we crossed it, had been cut by the countless hooves of the herd of Tancred; leaving a trial of marked ice more than one hundred and fifty yards wide. We would follow the herd.
It took ten days to cross Ax Glacier. There are many glacial lines among the rocks and mountains of the north, but Ax Glacier is easily the broadest and most famous. These glaciers, like frozen rivers or lakes of ice, or emptying seas, depend to the shores of Thassa, seeking her, flowing some few feet a year, imperceptibly like stone, to her chill waters. More than once we heard gigantic crashes as hundreds of feet or more of ice broke away from the glacial edge and tumbled roaring into the sea. It is thus, of course, that icebergs are formed. These great pieces and mountains of ice, shattering from the brinks of Ax Glacier and her smaller sisters, in time, drifting, carried by currents, would reach the northern sea, that eastward-reaching extension of Thassa rimming the polar basin. It was in that northern, or polar, sea that there was said to exist, if it were not myth or invention, the “mountain that did not move,” that iceberg which, in defiance of tide, wind and current, stood immobilely fixed. Sometimes we could see, from where we stood, the sea, with these great pieces of ice within it. Some of these pieces of ice reared more than a thousand feet into the air. Sometimes they are even miles long. Their occasional vastnesses, and the might of the forces that have formed them, become even more impressive when it is understood that what one can see above the surface does little more than hint at what lies below. The fresh-water ice from which such blocks are formed is less dense than the salt water in which they float, weighing only about seven eighths as much. Thus, in a given piece of such ice, there is some seven times more beneath the surface than appears visible above it. These pieces of ice, like moving, drifting reefs, can be hazardous to shipping. The smaller ones, especially at night, can be particularly dangerous. Gorean ships, however, seldom run afoul of them. They are, generally, very shallow-drafted, which permits them to come much closer to such ice without the danger that would threaten deeper-keeled craft; too, the Gorean ship, because of the shallow draft, can occasionally run up on such ice, sliding onto it, rather than breaking apart when it strikes it; too, the Gorean vessel, because it is usually light in weight, tends to be extremely responsive to its helm or helms, this permitting such obstacles to be avoided on shorter notice than would be possible with a heavier more sluggish vessel; too, Gorean vessels, except when manned by those of Torvaldsland and the northern islands, usually beach at night; thus, when visibility is poor, they are not abroad; if they do not beach they will sometimes lower their masts and yards and throw over their anchors; that most Gorean ships are oared vessels, too, gives the crewmen recourse in an emergency; they are not at the mercy of the wind and they can, if necessary, back the ship off the ice; lastly, few Gorean ships ply the northern waters in the months of darkness; sufficiently far north, of course, the sea freezes in the winter. A much greater danger to Gorean shipping than the iceberg is the sea itself, when it begins to freeze. A ship caught in the ice, if not constantly cut and chopped free, its men on the ice itself, can become solidly frozen, arrested, in the ice; then it is at the mercy of pressures and bucklings; the ice, grinding, shifting, can shatter a ship, breaking it apart like a lacing of frozen, brittle twigs.
“Har-ta!” said Imnak to the girls. “Har-ta!” The expression ‘har-ta’ is Gorean. “Faster! Faster!” He spoke sometimes to them in his own tongue, and sometimes in Gorean. Imnak himself spoke fair Gorean. He had traded furs and skins south more than once. Many of the red hunters cannot speak Gorean.
Imnak and I, too, applied our strength to the haul, thrusting at the wooden uprights at the back of the sled.
Imnak wished Thimble and Thistle to know Gorean. Would a white trader not pay more to rent one if she could understand his commands?
The nose of the sled tipped upward and then fell to the level on the glacial pebbles, and Ax Glacier, like the broad blade of a Torvaldsland ax, lay behind us.
“Har-ta!” called Imnak. Again we trekked.
There are tiers of mountains, interlaced chains of them, both east of Torvaldaland and north of her. Ax Glacier lies in one valley between two of these chains. These chains, together, are sometimes called the Hrimgar Mountains, which, in Gorean, means the Barrier Mountains. They are surely not a barrier, however, in the sense that the Voltai Mountains, or even the Thentis Mountains or Ta-Thassa Mountains, are barriers. The Hrimgar Mountains are not as rugged or formidable as any of these chains, and they are penetrated by numerous passes. One such pass, through which we trekked, is called the pass of Tancred, because it is the pass used annually by the migration of the herd of Tancred.
Four days after leaving the northern edge of Ax Glacier, we climbed to the height of the pass of Tancred, the mountains of the Hrimgar flanking us on either side. Below the height, the pass sloping downward, we could see the tundra of the polar plain. It is thousands of pasangs in width, and hundreds in depth; it extends, beyond horizons we could see, to the southern edge of the northern, or polar, sea.
I think this was a moving moment for Imnak. He stopped on the height of the pass, and stood there, for a long time, regarding the vastness of the cool tundra.
“I am home,” he said.
Then we eased the sled downward.
I suppose I was not watching well where I was going. I was watching the fellow being tossed in the fur blanket. The leather ball struck my back.
That was not all that struck my back. In a moment a small woman, a girl of the red hunters, fiery and very angry, was striking it. She stopped striking my back primarily because I turned to face her. She was then, however, striking my chest. After a time she stopped and, looking up at me, began to scold me vociferously.
I am pleased in some respects that words are less dangerous than arrows and daggers, else there surely would have been little left of me.
She finally grew weary of berating me. I gather she had done a good job of this from the interest and occasional commendations of the onlookers.
She looked at me, angrily. She wore the high fur boots and panties of the woman of the north. As it was, from their point of view, a hot day, one which was above the freezing point, she, like most of the women of the red hunters, was stripped to the waist. About her neck she wore some necklaces. She seemed pretty, but her temper might have shamed that of a she-sleen. The fur she wore, interestingly, was rather shabby. Her carriage and the sharpness of her tongue, however, suggested she must be someone of importance. I would later learn that the unmated daughters of even important men, namely, good hunters, were often kept in the poorest of furs. It is up to the mate, or husband, if you wish, to bring them good furs. This perhaps is intended as an encouragement to the girls to be a bit fetching, that they may attract a man and, subsequently, have something nice to wear. If this were the plan, however, clearly it had not yet worked in the case of my pretty critic. I was not surpr
ised. It would be a bold fellow indeed who would dare to make her a present of fine feasting clothes.
She tossed her head and turned away. Her hair was worn knotted in a bun on the top of her head, like that generally of the women of the red hunters. Their hair is worn loose, interestingly, out of doors, only during their menstrual period. In a culture where the gracious exchange of mates is commonly practiced this device, a civilized courtesy, provides the husband’s friends with information that may be pertinent to the timing of their visits. This culture signal, incidentally, is not applicable to a man’s slaves in the north. Animals do not dress their hair and slaves, generally, do not either. Imnak sometimes did give Thimble and Thistle a red string to tie back their hair, but often he did not; he did with them what he pleased, and they did for him what they were told. He usually gave them the red string when he took them out with him, as a way of showing them off. Imnak had his vanities. I had not bothered to place Arlene under any strictures in these regards. Sometimes she wore her hair up, and sometimes let it fall loosely about her shoulders.
“You spoiled her kick,” said a man to me, in Goreali.
“I am sorry,” I said.
The girl, with other youths, had been playing a soccerlike game with the leather ball, with goals drawn in the turf. I had not realized, until too late, that I had been traversing the field of play.
“I am sorry,” I said.
“She has a very loud mouth,” said the man.
“Yes,” I granted. “Who is she?”
“Poalu,” he said, “the daughter of Kadluk.” Red hunters, though they are reticent to speak their own names, have little reservation about speaking the names of others. This makes sense, as it is not their name, and it is not as if, in their speaking it, the name might somehow escape them. This is also fortunate. It is sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to get one of these fellows to tell you his own name. Often one man will tell you the name of his friend, and his friend will tell you his name. This way you learn the name of both, but from neither himself. The names of the red hunters, incidentally, have meaning, but, generally, I content myself with reporting the name in their own language. ‘Imnak,’ for example, means “Steep Mountain”; ‘Poalu’ means “Mitten”; ‘Kadluk’ means “Thunder”. I have spoken of ‘Thimble” and ‘Thistle.” More strictly, their names were ‘Pudjortok’ and ‘Kakidlamerk’. However, since these names, respectively, would be ‘Thimble’ and ‘Thistle’, and Imnak often referred to them in Gorean as ‘Thimble” and ‘Thistle” I have felt it would be acceptable to use those latter expressions, they being simpler from the point of view of one who does not natively speak the tongue of the People, or Innuit.