by John Norman
"It is perhaps a warning, of some sort," I said.
"It would seem so," said the officer. "They did not, for example, attack atdawn. They came openly, did their work unhurriedly, and withdrew."
"It is very mysterious," I said.
"They are a peaceful folk," said the officer, "but I would be on my way, andwith dispatch. Sleen or Kaiila may be behind them."
One of the girls in the back whimpered in terror.
The officer, slowly, rode around the wagon, looking through the wooden bars atour bound cargo. The girls shrank back under his gaze, bound, inspected slaves.
"I would be on my way as soon as possible," said the officer. "I would notexpect even Dust Legs to resist this cargo."
"Yes, Captain!" said the young man. The officer took his mount to the side andthe soldiers, too, drew their kaiila to one side or the other. The young manthen stood up, shaking the reins with one hand and cracking the whip with theother. "Move, move, you beasts!" he cried. The tharlarion lumbered into motionand the slack was taken up in the traces, and the wagon, creaking, lurchedahead. The girls were as quiet as tiny, silken field urts in the presence offorest panthers, being conducted in their cage between the ranks of thesoldiers. In a few Ehn we were more than a pasang down the road. It was lonely,and dark. There was whimpering, and sobbing, behind us.
"The slaves are terrified," I said.
"We shall not camp," said the young man. "We shall press on through the night. Ishall, stop only, from time to time, to rest the tharlarion."
"That is wise," I said.
"It is not like the Dust Legs," he said.
"That, too, would be my understanding of the matter," I said.
5 I Throw Stones on the Road to Kailiauk
I stepped aside, to the side of the road. It had rained early this morning. Theroad was still muddy. The men, some afoot, some on kaiila, with the clank ofweapons and the rattle of accouterments, filed past me. I looked into the eyesof some of them. They were mercenaries. Yet they belonged to no mercenarycompany I recognized. Doubtless they had been hired here and there.
They wore various uniforms, and parts of uniforms, and carried an assortment ofweapons. Some of them, I suspected, might even be men without a Home Stone. Theywere moving northward, as I was. They, I speculated, were bound for kailiauk. Itook it there were about a thousand of them. This was unusually large for amercenary force. It would require a considerable amount of money to hire andsustain such a force.
In the center of the road, approaching, between, and with, the lines, drawn bytwo tharlarion, was an ornately carved, two-wheeled cart. An officer, a beardedfellow with plumed cap, perhaps the captain of the mercenary company, besidethis cart. On a curule chair, fixed on the high cart, under a silken canopy,proud and graceful, bedecked with finery, garbed in the ornate Robes ofConcealment, sat a woman. Chained by the neck to the side of the cart, clad inrags, was a red youth.
"Hold!" said the woman, lifting her small, white-gloved hand as the cart drewnear to me.
"Hold!" called the officer, turning his kaiila and lifting his hand.
"Hold! Hold!" called other officers. The lines stopped. The woman lowered herhand.
She regarded me. "Tal," she said.
"Tal, Lady," said I to her.
With one hand, nonchalantly, she freed her outer veil. Her features, then, wereconcealed but poorly by the second veil, little more thin a wisp of diaphanoussilk. She did this, apparently, that she might speak to me more easily. Shesmiled. I, too, smiled, but inwardly. A master might have given such a veil to aslave as a joke. She was a vain woman. She wished me to see that she wasstunningly beautiful. I saw that she might make an acceptable slave.
"I see that you carry a sword," she said.
"Yes, Lady," said I.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"A traveler, a swordsman," I said.
"This is the Lady Mira, of Venna," said the bearded officer. "I am Alfred,captain of this company, mercenary of Port Olni." Venna is a resort town west ofthe Voltai, north of Ar. Port Olni is located on the north bank of the OlniRiver. It is a member of the Salerian Confederation.
"Apparently you do not wish to reveal your name," said the woman.
"The name of a lowly fellow, such as myself," I said, "could surely be of nointerest to so fine a lady."
"Are you a bandit?" she asked.
"No, Lady," said I.
"Can you use the blade hung at your hip?" she asked.
"After a fashion, Lady," I said.
"We are hiring swords," she, said.
"My thanks, Lady," I said. "I do not wish to take fee."
"Draw your weapon," said the officer.
I drew the blade quickly, smoothly, and stepped back. When a Gorean tells you todraw your blade, it is generally not wise to spend a great deal of timediscussing the matter. He may have something in mind.
"Attack him," said the officer to one of the men nearby.
Our blades had not crossed twice before the point of sword was at the fellow'sthroat.
"Do not kill him," said the officer hastily.
I resheathed my blade and the fellow white-faced, backed away.
"A silver tarsk a month," said the officer. This was a handsome sum. I was sureit was more than most of the men about me were receiving.
"Whither are you bound, Captain," I asked, "and on what business!"
"We are going to Kailiauk, and are then going to enter the Barrens," he said.
"There are tribes to be subdued."
"I do not understand," I said.
"Surely you have heard of the depredations which took place yesterday?" heasked.
"Your forces were surely assembled before yesterday," I said.
He laughed. I supposed such forces might indeed enter the Barrens and wreak somehavoc, perhaps falling upon some Dust-Leg villages. Too often it seems it is thepeaceful and innocent who are slaughtered. In this a lesson may be found that itmay not be prudential to be either too peaceful or too innocent. One does notsurvive with wolves by becoming a sheep. That is only a short cut todestruction.
"There are thousands of savages in the Barrens," I said.
"These men are professionals," he said. "One such mercenary is worth a thousandhalf-naked savages."
I heard laughter about me.
"They will flee," he said, "at the very sound of our drums."
I said nothing.
"Too long has the perimeter held," he said. "We shall advance it, to the east.
The banners of civilization are in our grasp."
I smiled. I wondered if barbarisms were civilizations which were not one's own.
"Are you going to take a woman into the Barrens?" I asked. "Surely you cansurmise what the red savages would do with such a woman?"
"I am perfectly safe, I assure you," laughed the Lady Mira. I wondered what shewould feel like if she found herself naked and bound with rawhide, lying at thefeet of lustful warriors.
"The Lady Mira is of the Merchants," said the officer. "She has been empoweredto negotiate hide contracts with the conquered tribes."
"Who is this?" I asked, indicating the red youth, in chained by the neck to theside of the cart.
"Urt, a Dust Leg, a slave," said the officer. "We purchased him in the south. Hecan speak with Dust Legs, and knows sign."
The boy looked at me, with hatred.
"How long was he a slave?" I asked.
"Two years," said the officer.
"From whom was he originally purchased?" I asked.
"Dust Legs," said the officer.
"It seems unlikely they would sell one of their own tribe," I said.
"They are savages," said the officer.
"You are not a Dust Leg," I said to the boy.
He did not respond to me.
"You will trust your translations to such a fellow?" I asked.
"Our clearest speech," said the officer, "will be with steel."
"You have many men," I said. "Your expedition must be
very expensive. Had itbeen mounted by several cities I think I would have heard of it. Whence comesthe gold for these numerous and manifold fees?"
The officer looked at me, angrily.
"We are sustained by the merchant council," said the woman. "Our papers are inorder."
"I see," I said.
"Seldom," said the officer, "have I seen steel move as swiftly, as deceptively,as yours. My offer stands. Rations and a silver tarsk, one for each month ofservice."
"Rations, and a golden tarsk," said the woman, looking down at me. Over her veilof light silk her eyes shone. She had made the offer without consulting theofficer. She had obviously much authority and power. I wondered what she wouldlook like, if reduced to helpless bondage,"My thanks, Lady," I said. "But I am in my own service."
"A position might be found for you, even in my intimate retinue," she said.
"I am in my own service," I said.
"Move on!" she called, lifting her gloved hand, and sitting angrily back in thecurule chair.
I stepped to the side of the road.
"Forward!" called the officer, lifting his arm. The lady looked at me, angrily,her gloved hands now clutching the arms of the curule chair. Then she lifted herhead and looked directly ahead. "Ho!" called the officer. His arm fell. Thelines of mercenaries then moved forward, with the wagon in their midst,northward, toward Kailiauk. I withdrew to the side and sat in some shadows,among rocks, to observe the lines. I estimated the number of men, and,carefully, counted the supply wagons. My conjectures were warranted. Consideringthe game presumably available in the Barrens there were several more wagons inthe lines than would have seemed called for.
When the lines and wagons had passed I emerged from the rocks and, at adistance, followed them toward Kailiauk.
The merchants of Port Olni, of course, would not be sustaining the enormousexpense of such an expedition. They were not intimately involved in the hidetraffic and, if they had been, as merchants, their procedures, initially, at anyrate, would have been mercantile and not military. They would surely have tried,at least in the beginning, to work through local traders or, say, Dust Legsthemselves. I had, in my mind, no doubt as to what source on Gor had both themotivation and resources to mount such an expedition. Similarly I had littledoubt as to who were the occupants of certain of closed wagons in the lines.
On the road to Kailiauk I threw back my head and laughed heartily. I, TarlCabot, had been approached by agents of Kurii, and asked to take fee! I hadlittle doubt that Kog and Sardak, and others like them, scratched impatiently,twisted, uncomfortably, anxious to get on with their work, in wagons ahead ofme. Such close confinements, voluntary and self-imposed, would surely be almostintolerable for them. I admired their discipline. I hoped that it would holdout. It was nice to know where they were.
I bent down and picked up a rock, and tossed it ahead of me, down the road. ThenI continued on again, toward Kailiauk.
One additional thing I had noted about the forces ahead of me. There had been noslave wagons in the lines, nor, chained in throat coffle, trudging in the dustbehind the supply wagons, any slave girls. That I took to be the doing, and atribute to the power, of the Lady Mira of Venna. As a free woman she doubtlesshated slave girls, the lascivious, shameless sluts who drove men wild with suchdesire for them. Too, doubtless it pleased her vanity to be the only woman amongso many men. I had seen her features, concealed by only a wisp silk. I wonderedwhat she might look like in dancing silk and a steel collar, perhaps kneelingbefore me, the shadow of my whip falling across her body. I thought then shemight not seem so proud, not as a humbled, owned slave. The Kurii, I grantedthem, almost always chose female agents of incredible beauty. This is so, Igather, that when they have served their serious purposes, there is alwayssomething else that may be done with them.
I spun another rock down the road, after the lines and wagons.
I should not have demonstrated the skill with the sword that I had, I supposed.
Indeed, I had resolved, as a part of a disguise, to pretend to only modest skillwith the weapon, unless it proved necessary to do otherwise. As soon as the twoblades had touched, however, I had seen what could be done, and had done it. Thematter was reflexive as much, or more, than rational. The steel, as is often thecase, had seemed to think for itself. But I did not regret what I had done. Ichuckled. Let them see, said I to myself, the skill of one who had once trainedin the martial courts of Ko-ro-ba. I laughed. I wondered what these agents ofKurii would if they had known that Tarl Cabot had been in their midst. But theywould have no reason to suppose him in the vicinity of the Barrens. They wouldknow only that they had encountered one who, obviously, was not unaccustomed tosteel.
Once again I thought of the Lady Mira of Venna. Yes, I thought, she would lookwell, like any other beautiful woman, stripped and collared, crawling to thefeet of a man.
6 Kailiauk
I looked down into the broad, rounded, shallow pit, leaning over the waist-highwooden railing. In the pit, about five feet below the surface of the ground,there were nineteen girls. They wore wrist and ankle shackles, their wristshaving some six inches of play and their ankles some twelve inches of play. Theywere also chained together by the neck. None of them stood, for such a girl, insuch a pit, is not permitted to stand, unless given an express order to do so.
The pit was muddy, for it had rained in the morning. They looked up, some ofthem who dared to do so, at the men looking down at them, from about thecircular railing, assessing their qualities as females. Did they look into theeyes of their future masters? They had not yet even been branded.
"Barbarians," said the fellow next to me.
"Clearly," I said.
"There are two other pits," said the fellow. "Did you see them?"
"Yes," I said. "I have already perused their contents." It is pleasant to seenaked, chained women, either slaves or those soon to be slaves.
I had spent a night on the road and had arrived in Kailiauk, hungry and muddy,yesterday, shortly after the tenth Ahn, the Gorean noon. Indeed, I had heard thestriking of the time bar, mounted on the roof of the Administrator's store, as Ihad approached the town's outskirts. In Kailiauk, as is not unusual in the townsof the perimeter, the Administrator is of the Merchants. The major business inKailiauk is the traffic in hides and kaiila. It serves a function as well,however, as do many such towns, as a social and commercial center for manyoutlying farms and ranches. It is a bustling town, but much of its population isitinerant. Among its permanent citizens I doubt that it numbers more than fouror five hundred individuals. As would be expected it has several inns andtaverns aligned along its central street.
Its most notable feature, probably, is its hide sheds. Under the roofs of theseopen sheds, on platforms, tied in bundles, are thousands of hides. Elsewhere,here and there, about town, are great heaps of bone and horn, often thirty ormore feet in height. These deposits represent the results of the thinnings ofkailiauk herds by the red savages. A most common sight in Kailiauk is the comingand going of hide wagons, and wagons for the transport of horn and bones. Thenumber of kailiauk in the Barrens is prodigious, for it affords them a splendidenvironment with almost no natural enemies. Most kailiauk, I am sure, have neverseen a man or a sleen.
The Barrens are traversed by a large number of herds. The four or fivebest-known herds, such as the Boswell herd, he for whom the Boswell Pass isnamed, and the Bento herd and the Hogarthe herd, named after the first white menwho saw them, number, it is estimated, between two and three million beasts. Thetremors in the earth from such a herd can be felt fifty pasangs away. It takessuch a herd two to three days to ford a river. It has occasionally happened thatenemy tribes have preyed on such a herd at different points and only afterwards,to their chagrin and amusement, realized their proximity to one another. Besidesthese major herds there are several smaller, identifiable herds numbering in thehundreds of thousands of animals. Beyond these, as would be expected, are manysmaller herds, the very numbers of which are not even calculate
d by the redsavages themselves, herds often range from a few hundred to several thousandanimals.
It is speculated that some of these smaller herds may be subherds of largerherds, separating from the major herd at certain points during the season,depending on such conditions as forage and water. If that is the case then thenumber of kailiauk may not be quite as large as it is sometimes estimated. Onthe other hand, that their numbers are incredibly abundant is indubitable. Theseherds, too, interestingly enough, appear to have their annual grazing patterns,usually describing a gigantic oval, seasonally influenced, which covers manythousands of pasangs. These peregrinations, as would be expected, tend to take aherd in and out of the territory of given tribes at given times. The same herd,thus, may be hunted by various tribes without necessitating dangerous departuresfrom their own countries.
The kailiauk is a migratory beast, thusly, but only in a rather special sense.
It does not, for example, like, certain flocks of birds, venture annually inroughly linear paths from the north to the south, and from the south to thenorth, covering thousands of pasangs in a series of orthogonal alternations. Thekailiauk must feed as it moves, and it is simply too slow for this type ofmigration. It could not cover the distances involved in the times that would benecessary. Accordingly the herds tend not so much to migrate with the seasons asto drift with them, the ovoid grazing patterns tending to bend northward in thesummer and southward in the winter. The smell of the hide sheds, incidentally,gives a very special aroma to the atmosphere of Kailiauk. After one has beenthere for a few hours, however, the odor of the hides, now familiar andpervasive, tends to be dismissed from consciousness.
"Some of them are quite pretty," said the fellow next to me, looking down intothe pit, his elbows on the railing.
"Yes," I said. We stood within the compound of Ram Seibar, a dealer in slaves.
It is a reasonably large compound, for he also handles kaiila. It is, I wouldestimate, something over three hundred feet square, or, say, a bit less than atenth of a pasang square. It contains several slave pits but only three were nowoccupied. It also contains several larger and smaller wooden structures,primarily holding areas, barracks for men and various ancillary buildings. Theentire compound is enclosed by a wooden palisade. On the largest building, themain sales barn, about seventy feet wide and a hundred and twenty feet inlength, there flies the pennon of Seibar, a yellow pennon on which, in black,are portrayed shackles and a whip.