I watched the girl from Port Kar dance.
We could, tomorrow, brand the three girls, and purchase collars.
There was something of an uproar as a large, fierce-looking fellow, narrow-eyed, ugly, missing an ear, followed by some twenty or thirty sailors, burst into the tavern.
"Paga! Paga!" they cried, throwing over some tables they wished, driving men from them, who had sat there, then righting the tables and sitting about them, pounding on them and shouting.
Girls ran to serve them paga.
"It is Surbus," said a man near me, to another.
The fierce fellow, bearded, narrow-eyed, missing an ear, who seemed to be the leader of these men, seized one of the paga girls, twisting her arm, dragging her toward one of the alcoves. I thought it was the girl who had served me, but I was not certain.
Another girl ran to him, bearing a cup of paga. He took the cup in one hand, threw it down his throat, and carried the girl he had seized, screaming, into one of the alcoves. The girl had stopped dancing the Whip Dance, and cowered on the sand. Other men, of those with Surbus, seized what paga girls they could, and what vessels of the beverage, and dragged their prizes toward the alcoves, sometimes driving out those who occupied them. Most, however, remained at the tables, pounding on them, demanding drink.
I had heard the name of Surbus. It was well known among the pirate captains of Port Kar, scourge of gleaming Thassa.
I threw down another burning swallow of the paga.
He was pirate indeed, and slaver, and murderer and thief, a cruel and worthless man, abominable, truly of Port Kar. I felt little but disgust.
And then I reminded myself of my own ignobility, my own cruelties and my own cowardice.
I, too, was of Port Kar.
I had learned that beneath the hide of men burned the hearts of sleen and tharlarion, and that their moralities and ideals were so many cloaks to conceal the claw and the tooth. Greed and selfishness I now, for the first time, understood. There is more honesty in Port Kar, I thought, than in all the cities of Gor. Here men scorn to sheath the claws of their heart in the pretenses of their mouth. Here, in this city, alone of all the cities of Gor, men did not stoop to cant and prattle. Here they knew, and would acknowledge, the dark truths of human life, that, in the end, there was only gold, and power, and the bodies of women, and the steel of weapons. Here they concerned themselves only with themselves. Here they behaved as what they were, cruelly and with ruthlessness, as men, despising, and taking what they might, should it please them to do so. And it was in this city, now mine, that I belonged, I who had lost myself, who had chosen ignominious slavery to the freedom of honorable death.
I took yet another swallow of paga.
There was a girl's scream and, from the alcove into which Surbus had dragged her, the girl, bleeding, fled among the tables, he plunging drunken after her.
"Protect me!" she cried, to anyone who would listen. But there was only laughter, and men reaching out to seize her.
She ran to my table and fell to her knees before me. I saw now she was the one who had served me earlier.
"Please," she wept, her mouth bloody, "protect me." She extended her chained wrists to me.
"No," I said.
Then Surbus was on her, his hand in her hair, and he bent her backwards.
He scowled at me.
I took another sip of paga. It was no business of mine.
I saw the tears in the eyes of the girl, her outstretched hands, and then, with a cry of pain, she was dragged back to the alcove by the hair.
Several men laughed.
I turned again to my paga.
"You did well," said a man next to me, half-shaven. "That was Surbus."
"One of the finest swords in Port Kar," said another.
"Oh," I said.
Port Kar, squalid, malignant Port Kar, scourge of gleaming Thassa, Tarn of the Sea, is a vast, disjointed mass of holdings, each almost a fortress, piled almost upon one another, divided and crossed by hundreds of canals. It is, in effect, walled, though it has few walls as one normally thinks of them. Those buildings which face outwards, say, either at the delta or along the shallow Tamber Gulf, have no windows on the outward side, and the outward walls of them are several feet thick, and they are surmounted, on the roofs, with crenelated parapets. The canals which open into the delta or the Tamber were, in the last few years, fitted with heavy, half-submerged gates of bars. We had entered the city through one such pair of gates. In Port Kar, incidentally, there are none of the towers often encountered in the northern cities of Gor. The men of Port Kar had not chosen to build towers. It is the only city on Gor I know of which was built not by free men, but by slaves, under the lash of masters. Commonly, on Gor, slaves are not permitted to build, that being regarded as a privilege to be reserved for free men.
Politically, Port Kar is chaos, ruled by several conflicting Ubars, each with his own following, each attempting to terrorize, to govern and tax to the extent of his power. Nominally beneath these Ubars, but in fact much independent of them, is an oligarchy of merchant princes, Captains, as they call themselves, who, in council, maintain and manage the great arsenal, building and renting ships and fittings, themselves controlling the grain fleet, the oil fleet, the slave fleet, and others.
Samos, First Slaver of Port Kar, said to be an agent of Priest-Kings, was, I knew, a member of this council. I had been supposed to contact him. Now, of course, I would not do so.
There is even, in Port Kar, a recognized caste of Thieves, the only such I know of on Gor, which, in the lower canals and perimeters of the city, has much power, that of the threat and the knife. They are recognized by the Thief's Scar, which they wear as caste mark, a tiny, three-pronged brand burned into the face in back of and below the eye, over the right cheekbone.
One might think that Port Kar, divided as she is, a city in which are raised the thrones of anarchy, would fall easy prey to either the imperialisms or the calculated retaliations of other cities, but it is not true. When threatened from the outside, the men of Port Kar have, desperately and with the viciousness of cornered urts, well defended themselves. Further, of course, it is next to impossible to bring large bodies of armed men through the delta of the Vosk, or, under the conditions of the marsh, to supply them or maintain them in a protracted siege.
The delta itself is Port Kar's strongest wall.
The nearest solid land, other than occasional bars in the marshes, to Port Kar lies to her north, some one hundred pasangs distant. This area, I supposed, might theoretically be used as a staging area, for the storing of supplies and the embarkation of an attacking force on barges, but the military prospects of such a venture were decidedly not promising. It lay hundreds of pasangs from the nearest Gorean city other, of course, than Port Kar. It was open territory. It was subject to attack by forces beached to the west from the tarn fleets of Port Kar, through the marsh itself by the barges of Port Kar, or from the east or north, depending on the marches following the disembarkation of Port Kar forces. Further, it was open to attack from the air by means of the cavalries of mercenary tarnsmen of Port Kar, of which she has several. I knew one of these mercenary captains, Ha-Keel, murderer, once of Ar, whom I had met in Turia, in the house of Saphrar, a merchant. Ha-Keel alone commanded a thousand men, tarnsmen all. And even if an attacking force could be brought into the marsh, it was not clear that it would, days later, make its way to the walls of Port Kar. It might be destroyed in the marshes. And if it should come to the walls, there was little likelihood of its being effective. The supply lines of such a force, given the barges of Port Kar and her tarn cavalries, might be easily cut.
I took another drink of paga.
The men who had come to the tavern were roistering but order, to some extent, had been restored. Two of the ship's lanterns had been broken. There was glass, and spilled paga about, and two broken tables. But the musicians were again playing and again, in the square of sand, the girl performed, though not now the Whi
p Dance. Nude slave girls, wrists chained, hurried about. The proprietor, sweating, aproned, was tipping yet another great bottle of paga in its sling, filling cups, that they might be borne to the drinkers. There was an occasional scream from the alcoves, bringing laughter from the tables. I heard the flash of a whip somewhere, and the cries of a girl.
I wondered if, now that the canals were barred, slaves escaped from Port Kar.
The nearest solid land was about one hundred pasangs to the north, but it was open land, and, there, on the edges of the delta, there were log outposts of Port Kar, where slave hunters and trained sleen, together, patrolled the marshes' edges.
The vicious, six-legged sleen, large-eyed, sinuous, mammalian but resembling a furred, serpentine lizard, was a reliable, indefatigable hunter. He could follow a scent days old with ease, and then, perhaps hundreds of pasangs, and days, later, be unleashed for the sport of the hunters, to tear his victim to pieces.
I expected there was not likely to be escape for slaves to the north.
That left the delta, with its interminable marshes, and the thirst, and the tharlarion.
Hunting sleen are trained to scent out and destroy escaped slaves.
Their senses are unusually keen.
Tuchuks, in the south, as I recalled, had also used sleen to hunt slaves, and, of course, to protect their herds.
I was becoming drunk, my thoughts less connected.
The sea, I thought, the sea.
Could not Port Kar be attacked from the sea?
The music of the musicians began to beat in my blood, reeling there.
I looked at the girls serving paga.
"More paga!" I cried, and another wench ran lightly to serve me.
But only Cos and Tyros had fleets to match those of Port Kar.
There were the northern islands, of course, and they were numerous, but small, extending in an archipelago like a scimitar northeastward from Cos, which lay some four hundred pasangs west of Port Kar. But these islands were not united, and, indeed, the government of them was usually no more than a village council. They usually possessed no vessels more noteworthy than clinker-built skiffs and coasters.
The girl in the sand, the dancing girl, was now performing the Belt Dance. I had seen it done once before, in Ar, in the house of Cernus, a slaver.
Only Cos and Tyros had fleets to match those of Port Kar. And they, almost of tradition, did not care to engage their fleets with hers. Doubtless all sides, including Port Kar, regarded the risks as too great; doubtless all sides, including Port Kar, were content with the stable, often profitable, situation of constant but small-scale warfare, interspersed with some trading and smuggling, which had for so long characterized their relations. Raids of one upon the other, involving a few dozen ships, were not infrequent, whether on the shipping of Port Kar, or beaching on Cos or Tyros, but major actions, those which might involve the hundreds of galleys possessed by these redoubtable maritime powers, the two island Ubarates and Port Kar, had not taken place in more than a century.
No, I said to myself, Port Kar is safe from the sea.
And then I laughed, for I was considering how Port Kar might fall, and yet she was my own, my own city.
"More paga!" I cried.
Tarnsmen, aflight, might annoy her with arrows or fire, but it did not seem they could seriously harm her, not unless they come in thousands upon thousands, and not even Ar, Glorious Ar, possessed tarn cavalries so great. And how, even then, could Port Kar fall, for she was a mass of holdings, each individually defensible, room to room, each separated from the others by the canals which, in their hundreds, crossed and divided the city?
No, I said to myself, Port Kar could be held a hundred years.
And even should she, somehow, fall, her men need only take ship, and then, when it pleased them, return, ordering slaves again to build in the delta a city called Port Kar.
On Gor, I told myself, and perhaps on all worlds, there will always be a Port Kar.
I found the girl on the sand seductive, and beautiful. The girls of Port Kar, I told myself, are the best on Gor.
Tarnsmen, I thought, tarnsmen.
Off to my right a table was overturned and two men of the crew of Surbus were rolling about, brawling. Others were calling for Whip Knives to be brought.
I remembered, with fondness, my own tarn, the sable monster, Ubar of the Skies.
I extended my hand and the goblet was again refilled.
And I remembered, too, with bitterness, the girl, Elizabeth Cardwell, Vella of Gor, who had so helped me in my work in Ar on behalf of Priest-Kings. While returning her to the Sardar I had thought long on the matter of her safety. I surely could not permit her, though I then loved her, as I could not now, being unworthy to love, to remain longer in the dangers of Gor. Already she would doubtless be known to the Others, not Priest-Kings, who would challenge Priest-Kings for this world, and Earth. Her life would surely be in jeopardy. She had undertaken great risks with me, which I, foolishly, had permitted. When at last I had brought her safely back to the Sardar I had thus told her I would arrange with Misk, the Priest-King, that she be returned to Earth.
"No!" she had cried.
"I have made my decision," I told her. "You will be, for your own good, for your own safety and well-being, returned to the planet Earth, where you will no longer have to fear the perils of this world."
"But this is my world!" she had cried. "It is mine as much as yours! I love it and you cannot send me from it!"
"You will be returned to the planet Earth," I had informed her.
"But I love you," she said.
"I am sorry," I said. "It is not easy for me to do what I must do." There had been tears in my eyes. "You must forget me," I said. "And you must forget this world."
"You do not want me!" she cried.
"That is not true," I said. "I love you."
"You have no right," said she, "to take me from this world. It is mine as much as yours!"
It would be hard, certainly, for her to leave this world, beautiful, bright and green, but perilous, for the cities of Earth, to breathe again its air, to live in its cubicles, to move jostled among her uncaring crowds, to lose herself again in its mercantile grayness, its insensibilities and tediums, but it was better for her to do so. There she could be anonymous, and safe, perhaps contract a desirable marriage, and live well in a large house, perhaps with servants, and conveniences, and devices.
"You will not take this world from me!" she cried.
"I have made my decision," I told her.
"You have no right," said she, "to make such a decision for me."
"I have made it," I told her. "I am sorry."
She looked up at me.
"It is done," I said. "Tomorrow you will be returned to Earth. Your work here is done."
I attempted to kiss her, but she had turned and, not crying, left me.
My thoughts turned again to the great saddlebird, the war tarn, Ubar of the Skies.
He had slain men who had attempted to climb to his saddle.
Yet, that night, he had permitted Elizabeth Cardwell, only a girl, to saddle him, to fly him from the Sardar.
He, alone, had returned four days later.
In fury I had driven the bird away.
I who had sought to protect her, had lost her.
And Talena, too, who had once been my Free Companion, years ago, I had lost.
I had loved two women, and I had lost them both.
I wept at the table, foolishly.
I drank more paga, and my senses reeled.
Port Kar seemed sovereign on Thassa.
Her seamen were surely the match for any who might sail against them.
They were perhaps the finest on all Gor.
It angered me, suddenly, drunkenly, that those of Port Kar, wicked as they were, should possess so superbly the skills of seamanship.
But then I laughed, for I should be proud. For was I not myself of Port Kar?
Could we
not do what we wished, taking what we wanted, as we had rence girls that pleased us, simply binding them and making them our slaves?
I laughed, for I had been considering, aforetime, how Port Kar might fall, and yet she was my own, my own city!
The two drunken seamen were now cutting away, wildly, at one another, with whip knives. They fought in the square of sand among the tables. The girl, who had danced there, she who had worn the delicate vest and belt of chains and jewels, with shimmering metal droplets attached, with the musicians, had withdrawn to one side. Men were calling odds in betting.
The whip knife is a delicate weapon, and can be used with elegance, with finesse; it is, as far as I know, unique to Port Kar.
In the shouts, under the ship's lanterns, I saw the flesh leap from the cheek of one of the seamen. The girl, the dancer, eyes blazing with delight, fists clenched, was screaming encouragement to one of the contestants.
But these men were drunk and stumbling, and their brutal striking about, it seemed, was offensive to many at the tables, who disdained so crude an employment of a weapon of such subtlety.
Then one of the men was down, vomiting in his blood, on his hands and knees.
"Kill him!" screamed the girl. "Kill him!"
But the other fellow, drunk and bleeding, to great laughter among the tables, stumbled backwards, turned, and fell unconscious.
"Kill him!" screamed the girl, in her vest and belt of chains and jewels, to the unconscious man. "Kill him!"
But the other man, bleeding, shaking his head, had now crawled from the patch of sand and now, some yards off, had collapsed among the tables, quite as unconscious as the first.
"Kill him!" shrieked the girl to the first man. "Kill him!"
Then she screamed with pain, throwing back her head, as the lash of the five-strap Gorean slave whip cut into her back.
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