Rebels of Gor

by John Norman

  But wait, the sky, I noted, was not unblemished. There was, high above, a dot, something moving.

  “Ho!” I cried. I rose to my feet, looking upward. I pointed. “Beware!” I cried. “Do not move!” I cried to Sumomo. “Do not move!”

  “Move!” cried one of the Ashigaru on the platform to Sumomo.

  “Do not move!” I cried.

  Beside me, Lord Akio, the shogun, and nearby officers, rose up, ignoring what might be the compromise to their dignity, following my gaze.

  “It is an assassin!” cried Lord Akio, snapping open his war fan to shield the shogun.

  “No!” I said. “It is a tarnsman, out for sport, out for chain luck!”

  The shogun, angrily, thrust aside the war fan.

  “What is chain luck?” inquired Lord Akio.

  “See!” cried an officer. “It is diving!”

  The bird was not diving, not from the ambush of the sun, as it might strike the unsuspecting tabuk, commonly breaking its back, but, wings spread was engaged in a soaring descent.

  It was approaching rapidly.

  The tarn is very beautiful in flight. It is little wonder that men will risk their lives to join such fellows in the sky.

  Many in the crowd, now, were aware of the disturbance, the impending arrival of an uninvited guest. I did not doubt but what the brave, displayed, fluttering banners of Lord Yamada had well proclaimed the venue of the afternoon’s fearful proceedings.

  “Summon Tyrtaios!” called the shogun. “He must be in the saddle within Ehn!”

  Haruki, I thought, wildly, had not failed! The tiny message, fastened to the left foot of the vulo, held in its flight against its belly, half hidden in its plumage, days ago, had made its way to the cot in the holding of Temmu!

  Suddenly the vast shadow of the mighty bird darkened the stands, and put in flickering, tumultuous shade the disquiet waters of the wide pool, for the tarnsman had pulled the bird up short, and, wings beating, holding its place, the bird shuddered, and hovered but yards below the high board.

  “Jump, slave!” screamed Tajima.

  Surely he knew she was not a slave!

  Crying out in confusion, and misery, Sumomo, obedient, bound and blindfolded, leaped from the board’s edge into nothing, and plummeted downward, the skirt of her sheetlike garment torn high about her thighs, and was caught in the arms of Tajima, who threw her on her belly to the saddle apron and wheeled the tarn to the right, and upward, and, as two glaives, hurled from the platform, passed him, one below, and one to the left, spun the bird about and streaked from the stadium.

  Consternation reigned below.

  “Tyrtaios to the saddle!” cried the shogun.

  Tajima, I noted, had addressed the hapless criminal as “slave,” had addressed her by this lowest and most degraded of appellations, so utterly and keenly meaningful to a woman, and it was under this demeaning designation that she had unhesitantly responded, obedient to his command.

  I smiled to myself.

  She had obeyed under the designation, “slave.” She had obeyed as immediately and unquestioningly as a new purchase, entered into the domicile of her master.

  Did she realize what she had done?

  Did she even know, in her helplessness, who had issued the command? Surely it could not be the loathed Tajima, for whom she entertained only contempt.

  I watched the tarn climb and depart, and, soon, it was little more than a dot in the sky.

  Many were now crowding out of the stadium.

  Sumomo, I now realized, though I was not surprised, had lovely legs. This had been clear enough in her leap downward, in which the light garment in which she had been placed, lifted, had billowed about her, trailing her leaping body. Too, when Tajima had put her to her belly, flinging her to the saddle apron before him, holding her in place with his left hand, while grasping the tarn reins in his right hand, he had apparently given little thought to the modesty due to a shogun’s daughter. So high on her thighs was the disarranged garment that she might have been a scarcely clad slave, briefly tunicked, taken from a high bridge, awaiting her turning to her back.

  Yes, I thought, Sumomo might bring a good price off a slave block.

  “What is chain luck?” asked Lord Akio.

  “That,” I said, pointing to the sky, and the departing tarn, now scarcely visible, with its rider and prisoner.

  “I do not understand,” said Lord Akio.

  “One of the first missions of a young tarnsman,” I said, “is to capture a young woman from an enemy city, one with an alien Home Stone. She is taken home and collared. At his victory feast she dances, and serves him, he first, of all present. She then serves others, as his slave. That night, chained to her master’s couch, she is taught her collar. She may thereafter be kept as a personal slave, or given away, or sold. It is up to her master.”

  “It is done thus on the continent?” asked Lord Akio.

  “Such things are not unprecedented,” I said.

  “This is not the continent,” said Lord Akio.

  “Tajima,” I said, “is familiar with the ways of the continent.”

  “Sumomo,” he said, “is a free woman.”

  “But what if she should be collared?” I said.

  “Unthinkable,” he said.

  “But, if so?” I said.

  “Then she is worthless,” he said, “only a slave.”

  “Precisely,” I said.

  I considered the bared legs of Sumomo. By now, I suspected she was on her back, stretched over the saddle apron, buckled in place, wrists and ankles.

  “Most regrettable,” said Lord Akio.

  “Many do not find it so,” I said.

  “I do not understand,” he said.

  “It is nothing,” I said.

  On the continent, free women, in public, particularly those of the upper castes, are muchly concealed. There are the robes of concealment, the veils, the gloves, the slippers, and such. If a free woman had been as much exposed as Sumomo, she might, in her humiliation, repudiate her compromised, outraged freedom, and seek the collar, regarding herself as now worthy of no more. In the high cities, free women are not permitted in paga taverns. If one is found within the precincts, she is often stripped and put out, into the street. Then, commonly, she begs to be admitted once more, then to know the iron and be fastened in the collar. It is difficult to know about women. Why do some undertake perilous journeys, wander outside guarded walls, frequent lonely streets in poor districts, insult strangers, as though it might be done with impunity, walk the high bridges unescorted in the moonlight, and such? This is sometimes spoken of as “courting the collar.” It is almost as though they wished to find themselves at the feet of a master.

  There were few left now in the stands.

  I was uneasy that Tajima had taken the tarn so high into the sky, and flown north.

  Surely those of Lord Yamada, Tyrtaios, and, I thought, one other, for he had two tarns at his disposal, might soon be aflight. Those birds would be rested. Tajima’s tarn might have been aflight for an Ahn or more, I did not know, and it was carrying two.

  I would have kept the tarn low, for that reduces sightings, and would not have struck out directly north, which suggests a narrow route which might be swiftly determined and followed. It would have been better, I supposed, to go a different direction, and then another, and another, and then, possibly, approach the holding of Temmu, or the tarn encampment, if one wished, from the east, west, or even north. This considerably enlarges the territory which would have to be considered by pursuers, and there would be aflight, at least as far as I knew, at most two.

  How soon, I wondered, might Tyrtaios, and perhaps another, be asaddle. Surely Tajima must have considered the possibility of pursuit. I feared he would be an unlikely match for the dangerously skilled Tyrtaios, who, I was confident, was of the black caste, trained in tenacity and guile. The entitlements appertaining to the black dagger are not bestowed lightly. One earns one’s position in the b
lack ranks by slaying one’s competitors.

  I must move swiftly.

  The masked Ashigaru, Lord Yamada’s secret death squad, the ten who had been waiting at the foot of the platform, and the two who had taken Sumomo to its perilous height, had now departed the stadium.

  I must move swiftly, indeed.

  Haruki had risked much for me.

  As I left the stadium I noted, to my dismay, the departure of two tarns, northward.

  There was little I could do.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  What Occurred Outside the Stadium

  “Do not gainsay me,” I said, angrily, to the guard on the road, that leading to the palace. “Have you not heard? The daughter of the shogun was carried away. Tonight there is no festival.”

  “I have no authority to release the prisoners,” said the guard.

  “I am the authority,” I said, severely. “I bring the command of the shogun. Release them from the posts and straw jackets, rope them together and I shall conduct them to the designated pen.”

  “Who are you?” inquired the guard.

  “Is that not clear from my habiliments?” I said, impatiently.

  “Those of the secret executioners of the shogun,” said the guard, uncertainly.

  “Do you wish me to remove my mask?” I asked.

  “You are not to be known,” he said.

  I reached to the mask, as though to tear it from my head.

  “No! No, noble warrior!” he said.

  My hand was tight on the mask, angrily so.

  “It would be my head, were I to see your face,” he said.

  “Precisely,” I said.

  “The prisoners will be released and bound,” he said.

  “And deliver them into my keeping,” I said.

  “What pen is designated?” he asked.

  “Are you curious?” I asked.

  “No!” he said. “No, noble one!”

  He summoned other guardsmen to assist him. There were twenty prisoners, bound to posts, each heavily enwrapped in a bulky straw jacket, the sort worn by peasants in foul weather. Now, of course, each jacket was dry, tinder dry.

  “It is disappointing,” said the guard.

  “Doubtless,” I said.

  “We had hoped for a splendid feast,” he said.

  “It was planned,” I said.

  “Fortunately,” said the guard, “we had not yet added colored resins and chromatic oils.”

  “Yes,” I said, “most fortunate.”

  I gathered that these additions to the jacket, surely superfluous in a prosaic, routine execution, were connected with the celebratory nature of the intended feast, presumably resulting in more colorful, fiercer, longer lasting flames.

  Soon the twenty were well bound, and roped together, relieved of the thick straw jackets, which remained by the posts.

  The guard surveyed the coffle of prisoners.

  “We can burn them later,” he said, “when the occasion is happier, and more auspicious.”

  “Perhaps,” I said.

  “Perhaps then, too,” he said, “we might add the tarnsman and Sumomo to the festivities.”

  “Perhaps,” I said.

  “How many men do you wish to accompany you?” he asked.

  “None,” I said.

  “Surely some,” he said.

  “The location of the designated pen,” I said, “is not to be revealed.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  This is not unusual, that prisoners will be held in undisclosed locations. There are two major reasons for this. First, it is intended to complicate, if not frustrate, attempts to communicate with prisoners, attempts to rescue them, and such. Second, it is thought to instill fear in the general populace. Who knows where the prisoners have been taken, how long they will be held, and what is being done with them in these unknown locations? By such means an authority may see to a population’s alarm, lack of ease, and intimidation.

  “And,” I said, annoyed, lifting the glaive, “do you fear that I, a wearer of the mask, and he chosen to convey the command of the shogun, am incapable of managing a small herd of twenty tarsks, helpless and tied together?”

  “No, noble one,” he said.

  “Thus,” I said, “you keep your head.”

  “The noble one is gracious,” he said.

  I did not wish to talk further with the guard, and I waved him, and his fellows, away. The Ashigaru from whom I had borrowed the robes and mask was in a nearby shed, bound and gagged. I had not broken his neck. I assumed he would, after a bit, regain consciousness. Sooner or later, of course, he would be missed, and a search would be mounted.

  I addressed myself to the bound prisoners.

  “Follow me!” I said. I then turned about and made my way toward several of the ancillary buildings in the vicinity of the palace. I did not even look behind me. I knew they would follow me, in line. Pani of the peasant classes tend to be polite, stolid, resigned, and reconciled, at least until a breaking point is reached, at which time they may become as secretive and clever as the urt, as subtle as the ost, as dangerous as the cornered sleen, as fierce as the enraged larl, discovering the claiming stains of a competitor in his territory.

  Once we were out of sight, I would introduce myself to Haruki. He would know where it was, it was somewhere here about, here, outside the palace grounds, the concealed entry to the secret tunnel which led to the garden. With some fortune we might conceal ourselves in the tunnel until dark, after which it would be every man for himself. Surely I thought that I had long enough prevailed on the hospitality of the shogun, and might now, with good grace, take my leave.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  We Have Departed from the Tunnel

  “Wade,” said Haruki. “There will be no tracks.”

  Hundreds of paddies, like ridged, geometrical lakes, now reflecting the orbs of the moons, dotted the landscape for pasangs about the lands of Lord Yamada. This is also the case about the holdings of many daimyos, and, of course, about local villages, most of which were subject to one daimyo or another.

  The only weapon I bore was a dagger, a tanto, relieved from the fellow I had dealt with following my exit from the stadium. As he had not been a warrior, he had not carried the two swords. I had discarded the glaive for it was large, and impossible to carry in a concealed manner. I supposed it would have been speculated that it might have been retained. If so, its presence might have been noted, provoking an investigation. The glaive combines the features of the stabbing spear and ax. It can take a man’s head off, but, in the thick of battle, shoulder to shoulder with one’s fellows, one would seldom have the opportunity to employ it with such an end in view. It is used more to stab and slash. It may be thrown but in battle this is seldom done. Certainly it lacks the lightness and fleetness of the javelin and the weighty penetration of the typical Gorean war spear, familiar on the continent. It can function, rather as the heavy staff, though bladed, both defensively and offensively. Rather, too, as the pike and halberd, it may be used both to break an enemy’s ranks and, when necessary, to keep him at bay. If the Pani had access to the lofty kaiila I would not doubt that the glaive would be designed additionally, like the halberd, with its hook, to dismount a rider, putting him at the mercy of the dagger. On the continent, street contingents, raised in times of need to supplement a city’s standing troops, commonly make do with knives, clubs, sharpened poles, and stones. Some cities maintain semi-military units, skirmishers, light bowmen, and slingers. Slingers may use stones or metal pellets. These are more dangerous than many understand, particularly at a short distance, and in great numbers, when a sheet of missiles in their thousands can strike foes as might a deadly hail. Certainly one of these hornet-like projectiles, almost invisible in flight, can blind a man, break a head, and cut him open. Tuchuks, incidentally, commonly do not close with the enemy, certainly not in masses, but depend on the bow and the cast quiva, or saddle knife. Whereas shield and lance may be used for fencing
with an isolated foe, commonly another Tuchuk, they are most often used for riding down isolated enemies who are afoot. In battle, if troops are massed, the kaiila can be penned in, and immobilized, this rendering it susceptible to a common form of attack, being stabbed from beneath in the belly, by a crouching, lunging foe, following which the animal becomes unmanageable, is likely to throw the rider, and may eventually bleed to death. As mentioned, Tuchuks seldom close with their foe. It is not necessary. In this sense, in their way, they resemble the caste of peasants, masters of the great bow.

  It had been dark in the tunnel.

  There was no candle, no lamp. In such as place even the sleen would be blind.

  I had conjectured it was in the vicinity of the Twentieth Ahn. The nineteen prisoners who had been sentenced to the straw jacket with Haruki had slipped, one by one, from the tunnel.

  “Are you still there?” I asked Haruki.

  “Yes, noble one,” he said, from, I judged, a few feet away.

  “The others have gone, have they not?” I said.

  “One by one,” he said.

  “I heard no cries, no warnings, no clash of arms,” I said.

  “They are of the countryside,” he said. “They are indistinguishable from many others. Few concern themselves with such men. They move silently. They will avoid the searching torches.”

  “They will return to their villages?” I said.

  “They will be accepted in others,” he said.

  “Though strangers?” I said.

  “There is fear and dissatisfaction in the fields,” he said. “He of one village in such times may not be a stranger to those in another village.”

  In Gorean, as in several languages, the same word is used for “enemy” and “stranger.”

  “It seems there might be retaliation on a fugitive’s village,” I said.

  “It is possible,” said Haruki, “were the village known, and the fugitive considered dangerous. But it is not customary to punish the innocent for the crimes of the guilty. Such a practice is not likely to elevate respect for the law.”