Mercenaries of Gor

by Norman, John;

  “We will be coming to the camp soon,” said the driver.

  I heard Feiqa suddenly gasp in horror, shrinking back. Beside the road, on the right, a human figure, head and legs dangling downward, on each side, was fixed on an impaling stake. The stake was some ten feet in height, and some four inches in diameter. It had been wedged between rocks and braced with stones. Its point was roughly sharpened, probably with an adz. This point had been entered in the victim’s back and thrust through with great force. It emerged from the belly, and protruded some two feet above the body.

  “Perhaps that is a spy,” I said.

  “More likely it is a straggler or a deserter,” said the driver.

  “Perhaps,” I said. This was the first sign I had had today, that there were truly soldiers ahead of us on the road.

  A girl looked up from the small fire in one of the roadside camps, and then, suddenly, rose to her feet and, in the shadows, darted out to the road. “Sir!” she called. “Sir!” The driver did not stop the wagon. She began to run beside the wagon. “Sir!” she called. “Please! I am hungry!” Her face was lifted up to us. “Please, Sir!” she begged. “Look upon me! I am fair!” She hurried along beside us. “See!” she wept. She tore down her robes to her hips. “My breasts are well formed,” she said. “My belly is wet and hot! I will serve you even as a slave. I will do whatever you want. I do not ask for food for nothing. I will pay! I will pay!”

  “Away,” said the driver, “before I use the whip on you!”

  “Stop!” she wept. “Stop!” Then she ran to the head of the tharlarion and seized its halter. The beast grunting, slowed, dragging the girl’s weight; she clung fiercely to the halter; it moved its head about, pulling her about, from side to side, shaking her; it tossed its head impatiently upward, lifting her literally from the ground. But she held firmly to the halter and was then, in a moment, still clinging to it, again on the ground. The beast stopped.

  The driver angrily rose in his place and the long whip lashed out. “Ai!” she cried, in misery, struck for perhaps the first time with a whip. She released the halter and then stood there in misery, in the shadows, in the road, facing us, a foot or so from the jowls of the animal. “Let me please you!” she begged. Then the whip flashed forth again, like a striking snake, and she, struck once more, sobbing, stumbled back on the road. “Do you not know me?” she cried.

  He lowered the whip, looking out into the shadows.

  “I am Tula from your village,” she wept, “she who was too good for you, she who refused your suit!”

  “You shame the village!” he cried.

  “Whip me!” she wept.

  He leaped down from the wagon box. Another wagon, to one side of us, rolled by. He dragged her, two stripes on her body, gray in the shadows, by the arm, back, and to the rear of the wagon. He stood her by the back, right wheel of the wagon. “Face the wheel,” he said. “Hold the wheel rim!” She seized it, putting her head down. He lifted the whip, in fury. “Whip me,” she said. Three blows fell upon her. “But feed me!” she begged. Two more blows struck her. Then she clung to the wheel, gasping, sobbing. As a male of her village it was his duty to discipline her for what shame she had brought on the village.

  “Do not strike me again!” she begged. She sank to her knees beside the wheel. Another wagon rolled by.

  “So Tula, the proud, the beauty of our village, now bares her beauty before strangers,” he said, “and begs to sell her body for a crust of bread!”

  She leaned against the wheel, sobbing.

  “Disgraceful!” he said.

  She held the spokes of the wheel, her head down.

  “Shameful!” he cried.

  “The strong women take what food there is,” she said. “I am hungry.”

  “Tula, the proud,” he said, angrily, “has now become only another slut by the road.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “What have you to say for yourself!” he demanded.

  “Feed me,” she said.

  “Turn about,” he said, angrily.

  She turned about, facing him, on her knees.

  “Pull down your robes,” he said, “until they are about your knees, lying fallen, back upon your calves.”

  She did this and then lifted her head to him.

  “On what conditions?” he asked.

  “On yours, totally yours,” she said.

  “Pull up your robes, about your hips,” he said. “You may follow the wagon.”

  Sobbing with gratitude, she clutched at her robes and drew them up about her hips. He angrily returned to his place on the wagon box and with an angry cry and a fierce snap of the whip put his ponderous draft beast once more into motion, taking his place between two other wagons. It was now rather dark but the road shone clearly in the moonlight. It glistened, too, from tiny chips and plates of mica ingredient in its surface. The girl followed the wagon.

  “Is the camp far ahead?” I asked.

  “No,” he said.

  4

  Feiqa Serves in the Alar Camp;

  Tula Has Now Been Collared

  I heard the sudden, hesitant, choking cry of the newborn infant.

  Genserix, broad-shouldered and powerful, in his furs and leather, with his heavy eyebrows, his long, braided blond hair and long, yellow, drooping mustache, looked up from the fire, about which we sat. The sound came from one of the wagons.

  The bawling was now lusty.

  “It will live,” said one of the men, a sitting warrior near us.

  Genserix shrugged. That would remain to be seen. Feiqa knelt behind me. We were now within the laager of Genserix, a chieftain of the Alars, a nomadic, wandering herding people, and one well-known, like the folks of Torvaldsland, for their skills with the ax. The laager of the Alars, like that of similar folks, is a fortress of wagons. They are ranged in a closed circle, or concentric, closed circles, draft animals, and women and children within. Also, not unoften, depending on the numbers involved, and particularly when traversing, or sojourning in, dangerous countries, verr, tarsk and bosk may also be found within the wagon enclosure. Sewage and sanitation, which might be expected to present serious problems, do not do so, because of the frequent moving of the camps.

  “It is a son,” said one of the women coming from the wagon, nearing the fire.

  “Not yet,” said Genserix.

  The wagons often move. There must be new grazing for the bosk. There must be fresh rooting and browse for the tarsk and verr. The needs of these animals, on which the Alars depend for their existence, are taken to justify movements, and sometimes even migrations, of the Alars and kindred peoples. Needless to say, these movements, particularly when they intrude into more settled areas, often bring the folk of the laagers into conflict with others, peasants and, of course, shortly thereafter, townsfolk and city dwellers who depend on the peasants for their foodstuffs. Also, of course, their movements often, from a legal point of view, constitute actual invasions or indisputable territorial infringements, as when, uninvited, they enter areas technically within the jurisdiction or hegemony of given cities or towns. Sometimes they pay for passage through a country, or pasturage within it, but this is the exception rather than the rule. They are a fierce folk and it would take a courageous town indeed to suggest the suitability or propriety of such an arrangement. From the point of view of the Alars, of course, they feel it is as absurd to pay for pasturage as it would be to pay for air, both of which are required for life. “Without grass the bosk will die,” they say. “The bosk will live,” they add. They often find themselves temporarily within the borders of a town’s or city’s lands, usually about their fringes, but sometimes, depending on the weather and grazing conditions, much deeper within them. Most often little official notice is taken of them, no war challenges being issued, and they are regarded merely as peripheral, unwelcome itinerants, uninvited guests, dangerous, temporary visitors with whom the local folks must for a time live uneasily. It is a rare council or citizenry that do
es not breathe more easily once the wagons have taken their way out of their lands.

  The woman who had come to bear tidings to Genserix now turned about and returned to the wagon.

  When there is weakness or chaos in an area, and when the ordinary structures of social order are disrupted, with the concurrent disorganization, failures of responsibility, and discipline, it is natural for folks like the Alars to appear. They have a tendency to pour into such areas. Indeed, sometimes they can make them their own, settling within them, sometimes turning to the soil themselves, sometimes assuming the roles and prerogatives of a conquering aristocracy, and becoming, in their turn, the foundation of a new civilization. I had little doubt that it was the current weakness and disorder in this area, attendant on the Cosian invasion, which had drawn the Alars this far south. On the other hand, officially, as I had gathered from the driver with whom I had ridden on the Genesian Road, these Alars had been approached to serve as suppliers and wagoners to the troops. It was in this capacity that they were this close to the road. In accepting this arrangement, the Alars, of course, were in an excellent position to observe the course of events, and, if it seemed practical to them, take possible action. Here they could watch closely for opportunities, either monetary or territorial. Perhaps the men of Cos, no fools, had invited them inward that they might remain in this area, thus rendering more difficult its reoccupation by the forces of Ar. Perhaps, in virtue of gifts of lands, they hoped to make them grateful, pledged allies.

  I could hear movement in the nearby wagon. A woman climbed into it carrying cloths and water. I heard the child crying again.

  Besides the ax Alars are fond of the Alar sword, a long, heavy, double-edged weapon. Their shields tend to be oval, like those of Turians. Their most common mount is the medium-weight saddle tharlarion, a beast smaller and less powerful, but swifter and more agile, than the common high tharlarion. Their saddles, however, have stirrups, and thus make possible the use of the couched shock lance. Some cities use Alars in their tharlarion cavalries. Others, perhaps wisely, do not enlist them in their own forces, either as regulars or auxiliaries. When the Alars ride forth to do battle they normally have their laager behind them, to which, in the case of defeat, they swiftly retire. They are fierce and redoubtable warriors in the open field. They know little, however, of politics, or of siege work and the taking of cities. In the cities, normally one needs only to close the gates and wait for them to go away, compelled eventually to do so by the needs of their animals.

  A woman now descended from the wagon, carrying a small object. She came near to the fire and Genserix motioned for her to put the object down, to lay it on the dirt before him, between himself and the fire. She did so. He then crouched down near it, and, gently, with his large hands, put back the edges of the blanket in which it was wrapped. The tiny baby, not minutes old, with tiny gasps and coughs, still startled and distressed with the sharp, frightful novelty of breathing air, never again to return to the shelter of its mother’s body, lost in a chaos of sensation, its eyes not focused, unable scarcely to turn its head from side to side, lay before him. The cord had been cut and tied at its belly. Its tiny legs and arms moved. The blood, the membranes and fluids, had been wiped from its small, hot, red, firm body. Then it had been rubbed with animal fat. How tiny were its head and fingers. How startling and wonderful it seemed that such a thing should be alive. Genserix looked at it for a time, and then he turned it over, and examined it further. Then he put it again on its back. He then stood up, and looked down upon it.

  The warriors about the fire, and the woman, and two other women, too, who had now come from the wagon, looked at him.

  Then Genserix reached down and lifted up the child. The women cried out with pleasure and the men grunted with approval. Genserix held the child up now, happily, it almost lost in his large hands, and then he lifted it up high over his head.

  “Ho!” called the warriors, standing up, rejoicing. The women beamed.

  “It is a son!” cried one of the women.

  “Yes,” said Genserix. “It is a son!”

  “Ho!” called the warriors. “Ho!”

  “What is going on?” asked Feiqa.

  “The child has been examined,” I said. “It has been found sound. It will be permitted to live. It is now an Alar. Too, he has lifted the child up. In this he acknowledges it as his own.”

  Genserix then handed the child to one of the warriors. He then drew his knife.

  “What is he going to do?” gasped Feiqa.

  “Be quiet,” I said.

  Genserix then, carefully, made two incisions in the face of the infant, obliquely, one on each cheek. The infant began to cry. Blood ran down the sides of its face, about the sides of its neck and onto its tiny shoulders. “Let it be taken now,” said Genserix, “to its mother.”

  The woman who had brought the child to the side of the fire now took up the blanket in which it had been wrapped, and, wrapping it again in its folds, took it then from the warrior, and made her way back to the wagon.

  “These are a warrior people,” I said to Feiqa, “and the child is an Alar. It must learn to endure wounds before it receives the nourishment of milk.”

  Feiqa shrank back, frightened to be among such men.

  On the face of Genserix, and on the faces of those about us, the males, were the thin, white, knife-edge lines, the narrow scars, by which it might be known that each had, in his time, undergone the same ceremony. By such scars one may identify Alars.

  “I rejoice in your happiness,” I said to Genserix, who had now resumed his place by the fire.

  Genserix declined his head briefly, smiling, and spread his hands, expansively.

  “At a time of such happiness,” said a fellow, his long dark hair bound back with a beaded leather talmit, “you need not even be killed for having come to our camp uninvited.”

  “Hold,” I said, uneasily. “I was told in the camp of the wagoners, some of those in the supply trains of Cos, that there might be work here for me.”

  One or two of the men struck each other about the shoulders in amusement.

  “I gather that it is not true,” I said.

  “Shall we kill him anyway?” asked a fellow.

  “Surely folks come often to the wagons,” I said.

  “Do not mind Parthanx and Sorath,” said a tall, broad-shouldered fellow sitting cross-legged beside me. He, too, like Genserix, had long, braided hair and a yellow mustache. Too, like Genserix, he was blue-eyed. Many of the Alars are fair in complexion, blond-haired and blue-eyed. “They jest. They are the camp wits,” he explained. “Many folks come to the wagons, as you know, informers, slavers, tradesmen, metal workers, craftsmen, peasants who will barter produce for skins and trinkets, and so on. If this were not so we could not as easily have the goods we have, nor could we keep up as well with the news. If it were not so, we would be too cut off from the world. We would consequently be unable to conduct our affairs as judiciously as we do.”

  I nodded. Folk like the Alars tended to move in, and about, settled territories. They were not isolated in vast plains areas, for example, as were certain subequatorial Wagon Peoples, such as Tuchuks and Kassars.

  The fellows identified as Parthanx and Sorath shoved at one another good-naturedly, pleased with their joke.

  “Let rings be brought!” called out Genserix.

  “I am Hurtha,” said the blond fellow beside me. “You must not think of us as barbarians. Tell us about the cities.”

  “What would you like to know?” I asked. He would be interested, I assumed, in such matters as the nature of their walls, the number of gates, their defenses, the strength of garrisons, and such.

  “Is Ar as beautiful as they say?” he asked. “And what is it like to live there?”

  “It is very beautiful,” I said. “And although I am not a citizen of Ar, nor of Telnus, the capital of Cos, it is doubtless easier to live in such places than among the wagons. Why do you ask?”

 
“Hurtha is a weakling, and a poet!” laughed Sorath.

  “I am a warrior, and an Alar,” said Hurtha, “but it is true that I am fond of songs.”

  “There is no incompatibility between letters and arms,” I said. “The greatest soldiers are often gifted men.”

  “I have considered going abroad, to seek my fortune,” he said.

  “What would you do?” I asked.

  “My arm is strong,” he said, “and I can ride.”

  “You would seek service then with some captain?” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, “and, if possible, with the finest.”

  “Many are the causes on Gor,” I said, “and so, too, many are the captains.”

  “My first appointments,” he said, “might be with anyone.”

  “Many captains,” I said, “choose their causes on the scales of merchants, weighing their iron against gold. They fight, I fear, only for the Ubar with the deepest purse.”

  “I am an Alar,” said Hurtha. “The cities are always at war with us. It is always the fields against the walls. No matter then which way I face, nor whom I strike, it would be a blow against enemies.”

  “I am a mercenary, of sorts,” I said, “but I have usually selected my causes with care.”