by John Norman
The man staggered back in the crusts, he lifted his hand. The first rider cursed. He had charged again. This time, the man, stumbling, trying to turn away, had been struck on the left arm, high, just below the shoulder. I was startled that there was so little blood, for the wound was deep. It was as though the man had no blood to bleed. There was a, ridge of reddish fluid at the cut. I watched through narrowed eyelids, grimacing against the light. To my horror I saw the man press his mouth to the wound, sucking at the bit of blood.
He did not move, but stood in the crusts, sucking at the blood.
Hamid, easily, on the kaiila, his scimitar still light in his hand, rode behind the man. I did not watch, but turned away.
“The point is to Baram,” said Hamid. Clearly the second rider had been the finest.
“We may not take the kaiila in,” said one of the guards.
“We have water sufficient for the return trip,” said another, “moving at an unimpeded pace.”
To my amazement I saw one of the guards unlocking the stomach-chain and manacles of one of the prisoners. Already the man’s slave hood had been removed. And we had, already, been freed of the neck chain.
I looked about, through half-shut eyes. I stood unsteadily. I counted. There were twenty prisoners standing in the crusts. I shuddered.
Hamid rode to my side. He had wiped his blade in the mane of his kaiila. He resheathed the blade. I felt the heat. We stood on a crest, overlooking a broad, shallow valley.
Hamid leaned down. “There,” he said, pointing into the broad valley. “Can you see?”
“Yes,” I said.
In the distance, below, perhaps five pasangs away, in the hot, concave, white salt bleakness, like a vast, white, shallow bowl, pasangs wide, there were compounds, low, white buildings of mud brick, plastered. There were many of them. They were hard to see in the distance, in the light, but I could make them out.
“Klima,” said Hamid.
“I have made the march to Klima,” said one of the prisoners. He cried out, elatedly, “I have made the march to Klima!” It was the man who had, for many of the days, cried out for us to be slain. It was he who had, since the noon halt of four days ago, been silent.
I looked at the prisoners. We looked at one another. Our bodies were burned black by the sun. The flesh, in many places, had cracked. Lighter colored flesh could be seen beneath. There was salt on us, to our thighs. The leather wrappings about our legs were in tatters. Our necks and bodies were abraded, raw from collar and chain. In the last days we had been denied salt. Our bodies were cruel with cramps and weakness. But we stood, all of us, and straight, for we had come to Klima.
Twenty had come to Klima.
The first prisoner, whose bonds had been removed, was thrust in the direction of the compounds. He began to stagger down the slope toward the valley, slipping in the crusts, sometimes sinking in to his knees.
One by one the prisoners were freed. None attempted to flee into the desert.
Each, as he was freed, began to trudge toward Klima. There was nowhere else to go.
The man, who had cried out, “I have made the match to Klima!” was freed. He staggered toward the compounds, running, half falling, down the long slope.
Hassan and I were freed. Together we trudged toward Klima, following the straggling line of men before us.
We came upon a figure, fallen in the salt. It was be who had run ahead, who had cried out, disbelievingly, joyously, “I have made the march to Klima!”
We turned the body over in the salt. “He is dead,” said Hassan.
Together, Hassan and I rose to our feet.
Nineteen had come to Klima.
I looked back once, to see Hamid, he who was in the fee of the Guard of the Dunes, the Salt Ubar, who was supposedly the faithful lieutenant to Shakar, captain of the Aretai. He turned his kaiila, and, with a scattering of salt, following the others, disappeared over the crest.
I looked up toward the merciless sun. Its relentless presence seemed to fill the sky.
I looked down.
About my left wrist, knotted, bleached in the sun, was a bit of slave silk. On it, still, lingered the perfume of a slave girl, one who, purchased, had been useful to Kurii, who had testified falsely against me at Nine Wells, who had, contemptuously, insolently, cast me a token of her consideration, a bit of silk and scent, to remember her by, when I served at Klima. I would not soon forget pretty Vella. I would remember her well.
I looked up at the sun again, and then, bitter, looked away. I put the wench from my head. She was only a slave girl, only collar meat.
The important work was that of Priest-Kings. Hassan and I had not found the steel tower. We had failed.
I was bitter.
Then I followed Hassan, who had trudged on ahead, wading in the salt, following him toward Klima.
15 T’Zshal
At Klima, and other such areas, salt is an industry. Thousands serve there, held captive by the desert. Klima has its own water, but it is dependent on caravans for its foods. These food stores are delivered to scouted areas some pasangs from the compounds, whence they are retrieved later by salt slaves. Similarly, the heavy cylinders of salt, mined and molded at Klima, are carried on the backs of salt slaves from storage areas at Klima to storage areas in the desert, whence they are tallied, sold and distributed to caravans. The cylinders are standardized at ten stone, or a Gorean “Weight,” which is some forty pounds. A normal kaiila carries ten such cylinders, five to a side. A stronger animal carries sixteen, eight to a side. The load is balanced, always. It is difficult for an animal, or man, of course, to carry an unbalanced load. Most salt at Klima is white, but certain of the mines deliver red salt, red from ferrous oxide in its composition, which is called the Red Salt of Kasra, after its port of embarkation, at the juncture of the Upper and Lower Fayeen.
In Gor’s geologic past it seems that the salt districts, like scattered puddles of crystalline residue, are what remains of what was once an inland salt sea or several such. It may be that, in remote times, an arm of Thassa extended here, or did extend here and then, later, in seismic dislocations or continental rift became isolated from the parent body of water, leaving behind one or more smaller salt seas. Or it may be that the seas were independent, being fed by rivers, washing down accumulated salt from rocks over millions of square passangs. It is not known. In the salt districts salt is found either in solid form or in solution. Klima, among the salt districts, is most famous for its brine pits. Salt can be found in solid form either above or below ground. With the subsidence of, the sea and the shifting of strata, certain cubic pasangs of salt, in certain areas, became pressed into granite-like formations, through which one may actually tunnel. Some of these deposits are far below the surface of the Tahari. Men live in some of them, for weeks at a time. In other areas, certain of these solid deposits are exposed and are worked rather in the manner of open mining or quarries. In places these salt mountains are more than six hundred feet high. At Klima, however, most of the salt is in solution. It is the subterranean residue of portions of the vanished seas themselves, which have slipped through fissures and, protected from the heat, and fed still by the ancient seeping rivers, now moving sluggishly beneath the surface, maintain themselves, the hidden remnants of oceans, once mighty, which long ago swelled upon the surface of Gor itself. The salt in solution is obtained in two ways, by drilling and flush mining and, in the deeper pits, by sending men below to fetch the brine. In the drilling and flush mining, two systems are used, the doublepipe system and the separate-pipe system. In the double-pipe system fresh water is forced into the cavity through an outer pipe and the heavier solution of salt and water rises bubbling through the second pipe, or inner pipe, inserted within the larger. In the separate-pipe system, two pipes, separated by several yards, are used, fresh water being forced through one, the salt water solution, the salt being dissolved in the fresh water, rising through the other.
The separate-pipe system is, by most
salt masters, regarded as the most efficient. An advantage of the double-pipe system is that only a single tap well need be drilled. Both systems require pumping, of course. But much of the salt at Klima comes from its famous brine pits’ These pits are of two kinds, “open” and “closed.” Men, in the closed pits, actually descend and, wading, or on rafts, negotiate the sludge itself, filling their vessels and later, eventually, pouring their contents into the lift sacks, on hooks, worked by windlasses from the surface. The “harvesting” vessel, not the retaining vessel, used is rather like a perforated cone with a handle, to which is attached a rope. It is dragged through the sludge and lifted, the free water running from the vessel, leaving within the sludge of salt, thence to be poured into the retaining vessels, huge, wooden tubs. The retaining vessels are then emptied later into the lift sacks, a ring on which fits over the rope hooks. In places, the “open pits,” the brine pits are exposed on the surface, where they are fed by springs from the underground rivers, which prevents their dessication by evaporation, which would otherwise occur almost immediately in the Tahari temperatures. Men do not last long in the open pits. The same underground seepage which, in places, fills the brine pits, in other places, passing through salt-free strata, provides Klima with its fresh water. It has a salty taste like much of the water of the Tahari but it is completely drinkable, not having been filtered through the salt accumulations. It contains only the salt normal in Tahari drinking water. The salt in the normal Tahari fresh water, incidentally, is not without its value, for, when drunk, it helps to some extent, though it is not in itself sufficient, to prevent salt loss in animals and men through sweating. Salt, of course, like water, is essential to life. Sweating is dangerous in the Tahari. This has something to do with the normally graceful, almost languid movements of the nomads and animals of the area. The heavy garments of the Tahari, too, have as two of their main objectives the prevention of water loss, and the retention of moisture on the skin, slowing water loss by evaporation. One can permit profuse perspiration only where one has ample water and salt.
Besides the mines and pits of the salt districts, there are warehouses and offices, in which complicated records are kept, and from which shipments to the isolated, desert storage areas are arranged. There are also processing areas where the salt is freed of water and refined to various degrees of quality, through a complicated system of racks and pans, generally exposed to the sun.
Slaves work at these, raking, stirring, and sifting. There are also the molding sheds where the salt is pressed into the large cylinders, such that they may be roped together and eventually he laden on pack kaiila. The salt is divided into nine qualities. Each cylinder is marked with its quality, the name of its district, and the sign of that district’s salt master.
Needless to say, Klima contains as well, incidental to the salt industry entered there, the ancillary supports of these mining and manufacturing endeavors, such as its kitchens and commissaries, its kennels and eating sheds, its discipline pits, its assembly areas, its smithies and shops, its quarters for guards and scribes, an infirmary for them, and so many respects Klima resembles a community, save that it differs in at least two significant respects. It contains neither children, nor women.
When we had approached Klima Hassan had said to me. “Leave the bit of silk about your wrist in the crusts, hiding it.”
“Why?” I had asked.
“It is slave silk,” he said, “and it bears, still, the scent of a woman.”
“Why should I leave it?” I asked.
“Because, at Klima,” he said, “ men will kill you for it.”
I hid the bit of silk in the crusts, at the edge of one of the low, white plastered buildings.
The man who spoke was T’Zshal, Master of Kennel 804. “You are free to leave Klima whenever you wish,” he said. “None is here held against his will.”
He stood before us.
We sat on the floor of the shed, naked, together. We were tied together by the neck, by a light rope. It would have sufficed, truly, to hold only girls. Yet none of us parted it; none tore it from him.
“I do not jest,” said the man.
We had been four days now at Klima. We had been well watered and adequately fed.
We had been kept in the shade. The rope had been placed on us when we had straggled in from the desert, to keep us together. We were told not to remove it; we did not remove it. Four men, however, had been cut from it. They had died of exposure, from the march to Klima. Thus, in the end, all told, only fifteen had survived the march.
“No,” laughed T’Zshal. “I jest not!”
He wore desert boots, canvas trousers, baggy, a red sash; in the sash was thrust a dagger, curved. He was bare-chested, and hairy; he wore kaffiyeh and agal, though of rep-cloth, the cording, too, of rep-cloth, twisted into narrow cord.
He was bearded. He carried a whip, the “snake,” coiled, symbol of his authority over us. Behind him, armed with scimitars, stood two guards, they, too, bare-chested, in flat rep-cloth turbans. Light entered the kennel from an aperture in the ceiling.
He approached us. Several shrank back. He drew the curved dagger and slashed the light rope from our throats.
“You are free to go,” he said.
He strode to the door of the kennel and thrust it open. Outside we could see the sun on the crusts, the desert beyond.
“Go,” he laughed. “Go!”
Not one of the men moved.
“Ah,” said he, “you choose to remain. That is your choice. Very well, I accept it. But if you remain you must do so on my terms.” He suddenly snapped the whip.
The crack was loud, sharp. “Is that understood?” he asked.
“Yes!” said more than one man, swiftly.
“Kneel!” barked T’Zshal.
We knelt.
“But will you be permitted to remain?” he asked.
Several of the men cast apprehensive glances at one another.
“Perhaps, yes. Perhaps, no,” said T’Zshal. “That decision, you see, is mine.” He coiled the whip. “It is not easy to earn one’s keep at Klima. At Klima the cost of lodging is high. You must earn your right to stay at Klima. You must work hard. You must please me much.” He looked from face to face.
He did not ask if we understood. We did.
“We may, however,” asked Hassan, “leave Klima when we wish?”
T’Zshal regarded him. Clearly he was wondering if Hassan were insane. I smiled.
T’Zshal was puzzled. “Yes,” he said.
“Very well,” said Hassan, noting the point.
“There is little leather at Klima,” said T’Zshal. “There are few water bags.
Those that exist are of one talu. They are guarded.”
Water at Klima is generally carried in narrow buckets, on wooden yokes, with dippers attached, for the slaves. A talu is approximately two gallons. A talu bag is a small bag. It is the sort carried by a nomad herding verr afoot in the vicinity of his camp. Bags that small are seldom carried in caravan, except at the saddles of scouts.
“Is it your intention,” inquired T’Zshal of Hassan, “to purloin several bags, fill them, battling guards, and walk your way out of Klima?”
Even, of course, if one could obtain several such bags, and fill them with water, it did not seem likely that one could carry enough water to find one’s way afoot out of the desert.
Hassan shrugged. “It is a thought,” be said.
“You must think you are strong,” said T’Zshal.
“I have made the march to Klima,” said Hassan.
“We have all made the march to Klima,” said T’Zshal.
We were startled, that he had said this.
“There is none at Klima,” said T’Zshal, “who has not made that march.” He looked at us. “All here,” said he, “my pretties, are slaves of the salt, slaves of the desert. We dig salt for the free; we are fed.”
“Even the salt master?” asked Hassan.
“He, too, long
ago, once came naked to Klima said T’Zshal. “We order ourselves by the arrangements of skill and steel. We, slaves, have formed this nation, and administer it, as we see fit. The salt delivered, the outsiders do not disturb us. In our internal affairs we are autonomous.”
“And we?” said Hassan.
“You,” grinned T’Zshal, “are the true slaves, for you are the slaves of slaves.”
He laughed.
“Did you come hooded to Klima?” asked Hassan.
“Yes, as have all, even the salt master himself,” said T’Zshal.
This was disappointing information. Hassan had doubtless had in mind the forcing of a guard, or kennel master, perhaps T’Zshal himself, to guide him from Klima, could he obtain water. As it now turned out, and we had no reason to doubt the kennel master, none at Klima could serve in this capacity.
We knew, generally, Red Rock, the kasbah of the Salt Ubar and such, lay northwest of Klima, but, unless one knows the exact direction, the trails, this information is largely useless. Even in a march of a day one could pass, unknowingly, an oasis in the desert, wandering past it, missing it by as little as two or three pasangs.
Knowledge of the trails is vital.
None at Klima knew the trails. The free, their masters, had seen to this.
Moreover, to protect the secrecy of the salt districts, the trails to them were not openly or publicly marked. This was a precaution to maintain the salt monopolies of the Tahari, as though the desert itself would not have been sufficient in this respect.
T’Zshal smiled, seeming human for the moment, and not kennel master. “None, my pretties,” said he, “knows the way from Klima. There is thus, in the desert, no way from Klima.”
“There is a way,” said Hassan. “It need only be found.”
“Good fortune,” said T’Zshal. With his whip he indicated the opened door of the kennel. “Go,” be said.
“I choose to stay, for the time,” said Hassan.
“My kennel is honored,” said T’Zshal, inclining his head. Hassan, too, bowed his head, in Taharic courtesy acknowledging the compliment.