John Norman - Gor 12

by Beasts Of Gor(Lit)

  "You speak clearly for one of the south," he said. He thrust the hock of roast tarsk to me. I took it and, holding it with both hands, cut at it with my teeth. I tore away a good piece of meat. I had not had food since the morning, when I arrived at the fair.

  "My thanks," I said.

  "I am Oleg," he said.

  "I have been called Jarl Red Hair in the north." I said.

  "Jarl!" he cried. "Forgive me, I did not know!"

  "The meat is good," I said. I handed it back to him. It was true that in the north, by the word of Sevin Blue Tooth, I had stood upon the shields as Jarl.

  "I fought with you," he said, "at the camp of the beasts. I saw you once near the tents of Thorgard of Scagnar."

  "It was a good fight," I said.

  "It was," said he, smacking his lips.

  "Is the north quiet?" I asked. "Is there Kur activity in Torvaldsland?"

  "No," said he, "no more than an occasional stray. The north is quiet."

  "Good," I said. The Kurii were not active in Torvaldsland. They had been driven from that bleak, rocky land by the mighty men of the high-roofed halls.

  He grinned at me.

  "Good hunting," said I, "in the slave markets."

  "Yes, Jarl," said he, grinning, lifting the hock of roast tarsk. He turned toward the nearest market. In a few moments he hurled the bone of the tarsk from him, wiping his hands on the sides of his jacket. Over his shoulder hung the great ax of Torvaldsland.

  It had rained in the night, and the streets of the fair were muddy.

  The Sardar fairs are organized, regulated and administered by the Merchant Caste.

  I heard a girl screaming, being lashed. She was on her knees, to one side, between two tents; she was chained at a short stake, about which she had wrapped her arms, holding it for support. The side of her cheek was against the stake. The prohibition against violence at the Sardar, of course, does not extend to slaves. They may there, as elsewhere, be lashed, or tortured or slain, as it should please the master. They are slaves.

  I turned down one of the muddy streets, making my way between booths featuring the wares of pottery and weavers. It seemed to me that if 1 could find the fair's street of coins, that the makers of odds might well have set their tables there. It was, at any rate, a sensible thought.

  "Where is the street of coins?" I asked a fellow, in the tunic of the tarnkeepers.

  "Of which city?" he asked.

  "My thanks," I said, and continued on. The fairs are large, covering several square pasangs.

  I turned another corner.

  "Buy the silver of Tharna," called a man. "Buy the finest silver on all Gor."

  He was behind a counter at a booth. At his belt, as did the men of Tharna, he wore two yellow cords, each about eighteen inches long. At the back of the booth, kneeling, small, her back low, her head and hair down to the mud, naked, collared, was a woman.

  I stepped to one side to make way for a procession of initiates, who, with a ringing of bells, and shaking of bowls on chains, containing burning incense, passed me on their way to the palisade. An initiate in the lead carried a standard on which was mounted the sign of the Priest-Kings, a golden circle, that which has no beginning or end, the symbol of eternity, the symbol of Priest-Kings.

  They were white-robed and chanting, and shaven-headed. The caste of initiates is rich on Gor.

  I glanced to the kneeling woman in the booth of the man from Tharna. She had not dared so much as to raise her head. She had not been given permission. There are few free women in Tharna. One of the most harsh and cruel slaveries on Gor, it is said, is that of the slave girls of Tharna.

  "Where are odds made on the Kaissa matches," I asked the fellow from Tharna.

  "I do not know," he said.

  "My thanks," I said, and turned away. The woman remained kneeling as she had been placed.

  I hoped the fellow from Torvaldsland would be able to buy a good piece of meat at the market.

  "Where are odds made on the Kaissa matches?" I asked a small fellow, in the garb of the leather workers. He wore the colors of Tabor on his cap.

  "I would ask you that," he said.

  "Do you favor Scormus of Ar?" I inquired.

  "Assuredly," he said.

  I nodded. I decided it would be best to search for a merchant who was on the fair's staff, or find one of their booths or praetor stations, where such information might be found.

  I stepped again to one side. Down the corridor between tents, now those of the carvers of semiprecious stones, came four men, in the swirling garb of the Tahari. They were veiled. The first led a stately sand kaiila on which a closed, fringed, silken kurdah was mounted. Their hands were at their scimitar hilts. I did not know if the kurdah contained a free woman of high state or perhaps a prized female slave, naked and bejeweled, to be exhibited in a secret tent and privately sold.

  I saw two men of the Wagon Peoples pass by, and, not a yard from them, evincing no concern, a fellow in the flowing robes of Turia. The fairs were truce ground.

  Some six young people, in white garments, passed me. They would stand before the palisade, paying the homage of their presence to the mysterious denizens of the Sardar, the mysterious Priest-Kings, rulers of Gor. Each young person of Gor is expected, before their twenty-fifth birthday, to make the pilgrimage to the Sardar, to honor the Priest-Kings. These caravans come from all over known Gor. Most arrive safely. Some are preyed upon by bandits and slavers. More than one beauty who thought to have stood upon the platforms by the palisade, lifting laurel wreaths and in white robes singing the glories of the Priest-Kings, has found herself instead looking upon the snow-capped peaks of the Sardar from the slave platforms, stripped and heavily chained.

  Colorful birds screamed to one side, on their perches. They were being sold by merchants of Schendi, who had them from the rain forests of the interior. They were black-visaged and wore colorful garments.

  There were many slave girls in the crowd, barefoot, heeling their masters.

  Schendi, incidentally, is the home port of the league of black slavers. Certain positions and platforms at the fairs are usually reserved for the black slavers, where they may market their catches, beauties of all races.

  I stopped to watch a puppet show. In it a fellow and his free companion bickered and struck one another with clubs.

  Two peasants walked by, in their rough tunics, knee-length, of the white wool of the Hurt. They carried staves and grain sacks. Behind them came another of their caste, leading two milk verr which he had purchased.

  I returned my attention to the puppet show. Now upon its tiny stage was being enacted the story of the Ubar and the Peasant. Each, wearied by his labors, decides to change his place with the other. Naturally this does not prove fruitful for either individual. The Ubar discovers he cannot tax the bosk and the Peasant discovers his grain cannot grow on the stones of the city streets. Each cannot stop being himself, each cannot be the other. In the end, of course, the Ubar returns gratefully to his throne and the peasant, to his relief, manages to return to the fields in time for the spring planting. The fields sing, rejoicing, upon his return. Goreans are fond of such stories. Their castes are precious to them.

  A slave girl in the crowd edged toward me, and looked up at me. She was alone.

  I saw a short fellow in they street crowd. He was passing by. He was squat and broad, powerful, apparently very strong. Though the weather was cool in the early spring he was stripped to the waist. He wore trousers of fur, and fur boots, which came to the knee. His skin was dark, reddish like copper; his hair was bluish black, roughly cropped; his eyes bore the epicanthic fold. About his shoulder he had slung some coils of braided rope, fashioned from twisted sleen hide, and, in his hand, he carried a sack and a bundle of tied furs; at his back was a quiver containing arrows, and a short bow of sinew-bound, layered horn.

  Such men are seldom seen on Gor. They are the natives of the polar basin.

  The herd of Tancred had not appe
ared in the north. I wondered if he knew this.

  I had arranged with Samos to have a ship of supplies sped northward.

  Then he was gone, lost in the crowd.

  The slave girl put her head down. I felt her timidly biting at my sleeve.

  She lifted her eyes to mine. Her eyes were dark, moist, pleading.

  Slave girls often need the caress of men.

  "I followed you," she said, "in the crowds."

  "I know," I said. I had known this, for I was of the warriors.

  "I find you very attractive, Master," she whispered.

  She held my arm, closely, looking up at me. Her breasts, sweet, pendant, white, were lovely in the loose rep-cloth of her tunic.

  "Please, Master," she whispered.

  "Are you on an errand for your master?" I asked.

  "No, Master," she said. "I am not needed until supper."

  I looked away from her.

  Her hands, small and piteous, grasped my arm. "Please, Master," she said.

  I looked down into her eyes.

  There were tears in them.

  "Please, Master," she said, "take pity on me. Take pity on the miserable needs of a girl."

  "You are not mine," I told her. "You are a pretty little thing, but I do not own you."

  "Please," she said.

  "Your master," I said, "if he chooses, will satisfy your needs. If he does not, he will not." For all I knew she might be under the discipline of deprivation. If that were so, I had no wish to impair the effectiveness of her master's control over her. Besides I did not know him. I did not wish to do him dishonor, whoever he might be.

  "Does your master know you are begging in the streets?" I asked.

  "No," she said, frightened.

  "Then," said I, "perhaps I should have your hands tied and write that upon your body."

  "Oh, no!" she cried.

  "Is this girl bothering you?" asked a merchant, one whose head bore the talmit of the fair's staff. Behind him were two guardsmen, with whips.

  "No," I said. Then I said, "Where are the tables for the gambling on Kaissa?"

  `They have been arranged but this morning," he said. `They may be found in the vicinity of the public tents near the amphitheater."

  "My thanks, Officer," said I `The lines are long," he said. "I wish you well," I said.

  "I wish you well," he said. They left.

  "Thank you, Master," said the girl. At a word from me, she would have been lashed.

  "Kneel and kiss my feet," I said.

  She did so.

  She then looked up.

  "Run now to your master," I said. "Crawl to him on your belly, and beg his touch."

  "Yes, Master," she said. She leaped to her feet, frightened, and sped away.

  I watched her disappear in the crowds.

  I laughed. What a meaningless, lovely, delicious little slave she was. How helpless she was in her needs.

  Another slave girl in the crowd smiled at me. I grinned at her, and turned away.

  It is pleasant to live on a world where there are female slaves. I would choose to live on no other sort of world.

  Before I left, the fair I would inspect the major market, that beyond the smithies and chain shops, where the most numerous exhibition platforms were erected, near the great sales pavillion of blue and yellow silk, the colors of the slavers.

  If I found girls who pleased me I could arrange for their transportation to Port Kar. The shipment and delivery of slaves is cheap.

  I turned down the street of the dealers in artifacts and curios. I was making my way toward the public tents in the vicinity of the amphitheater. It was there that the tables for the odds on the Kaissa matches might be found.

  In traversing the street I saw the fellow from the polar basin, he stripped to the waist, with fur trousers and boots. He was dealing with a large fellow, corpulent and gross, who managed one of the booths. There was a thin scribe present as well behind the counter. The fellow in the furs, the rope coiled over his shoulder, apparently spoke little Gorean. He was taking objects from the fur sack he had carried with him. The large fellow behind the booth's counter was examining them. The objects would not stand on the counter, for `they were rounded, as are shapes in nature. They were intended to be kept in a pouch and, from time to time, taken forth and examined. All details must be perfect, from every perspective, as in nature. Some collectors file such objects that they may be more easily displayed on a shelf or in a case. The native of the polar basin, on the other hand, holds them when he looks at them, and they have his attention as he does so. He is fond of them. He has made them. There were carvings of sea sleen, and fish, and whales, and birds, and other creatures, large and small, of the north.

  Other objects, too, other carvings, were in the bag. The carvings were of soft bluish stone and ivory, and bone.

  I continued on my way.

  In a few minutes I had come to the area of the public tents, and there was there no difficulty in determining where the Kaissa lines were to be found. There were dozens of tables, and the lines were long at each.

  I would stay in one of the public tents tonight. For five copper tarsks one may rent furs and a place in the tent. It is expensive, but it is, after all, En'Kara and the time of the fair. In such tents it is not unusual for peasants to lie crowded, side by side, with captains and merchants. During En'Kara, at the Fair, many of the distinctions among men and castes are forgotten.

  Unfortunately meals are not served in the tents. For the price it seems one should banquet. This lack, however, is supplied by numerous public kitchens and tables. These are scattered throughout the district of the fair. Also there are vendors.

  I took my place at the end of one of the long lines, that which I conjectured to be the shortest.

  There are some compensations in the public tents, however. One may have paga and wines there. These are served by slave girls, whose comforts and uses are also included within the price of the lodging.

  "Soup!' Soup!" called a man.

  "Soup!" I called, raising my hand. I purchased from him, for a copper tarsk, a bowl of soup, thick with shreds of hot bosk and porous chunks of boiled sul.

  "Whom do you favor in the great match?" I asked.

  "Scormus of Ar," said he.

  I nodded. I handed him back the soup bowl. I feared the odds would be too high on Scormus. Yet I would wager him the winner. I was not pleased, however, that I might have to bet a golden tarn to win a silver tarsk.

  I could see on hills, on either side of the amphitheater, a golden tent pitched. One of these was for Scormus of Ar, the other, on the other side of the great amphitheater, was for Centius of Cos.

  "Have they drawn yet for yellow?" I asked.

  "No," he said.

  Normally much betting would wait until it was known which player had yellow, which determines the first move, and the first move, of course, determining the opening.

  But already the betting was heavy.

  I speculated on the effect which the draw for yellow might have on the odds in the match. If Centius drew yellow, I reasoned, the odds favoring Scormus might be reduced a bit, but probably not much; if Scormus, on the other hand, drew yellow, the odds might rise so in his favor as to preclude a rational wager. Few people would accept a bet of even twenty to one under such circumstances. Already I suspected I would have to wager at least ten to one to bet on Scormus, who would be champion. I noted a fellow from Cos a few men ahead of me in the line. "On whom do you wager?' I asked him. "On Centius of Cos," he said, belligerently. I smiled to myself. We would see. We would see. I wondered if his patriotism would last all the way to the betting table. Often, incidentally, the first move in a match is decided by one player's guessing in which hand the other holds a Spearman, one of the pieces of the game. In this match, however, a yellow Spearman and a red Spearman were to be placed in a helmet, covered with a scarlet cloth. Scormus of Ar and Centius of Cos would reach into the helmet and each draw forth one Spearman. He
who held the yellow Spearman had the first move.