Norman, John - Gor 23 - Renegades of Gor.txt

Norman, John - Gor 23 - Renegades of Gor.txt Page 4

by Renegades of Gor [lit]

  intensifies her orgasm. This sort of thing, I suppose, is largely unknown to

  free women, though many seem to suspect it, dimly or otherwise. Its reality, of

  course, can become clear to them, for example, as they might find themselves on

  their knees, bound, kissing (pg.29) a man’s whip. The most significant

  restraint, of course, it the condition of bondage itself, in which the woman

  knows that the male is dominant over her and that she must submit to him, that

  she is owned, and must, in fear of very life, be obedient and pleasing. Slavery

  institutionalizes, in an organized, social, civilized context, the natural

  biological relationship between men and women. It also, of course, as one would

  expect, by means of various devices, legal and otherwise, clarifies it and

  renders it more efficient.

  “Oh, buy me, Master! Buy me!” she begged.

  “Only a slave,” said I, “begs to be bought.”

  “I am a slave,” she said. “That was taught to me weeks ago by the slaver who

  captured me!”

  “You are probably not for sale,” I said.

  “My master does not care for me,” she said. “He bought me only to anger his

  companion, who is terribly cruel to me. During the day, when my legs are open,

  he even rents me out to strangers for a tarsk bit!”

  “Does his companion grow more attentive and concerned?” I asked.

  “I think not,” she said.

  “Perhaps it should be she who is chained beneath the wagon,” I said.

  “She is a free woman!” protested the girl, in horror.

  “Your master charges a tarsk bit for your use?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Open your mouth,” I said.

  She did so, and I drew forth a tarsk bit from my pouch, this one not a separate

  coin in the sense of round or square coin, but a piece of such a coin, a narrow,

  triangular, chopped eighth of a copper tarn disk, and placed it in her mouth.

  “That is for your master,” I said. Many Goreans, particularly those of low

  caste, on errands and such, carry a coin or coins in their mouths. Most Gorean

  garments, a notable exception being those of artisans, lack pockets.

  She looked at me.

  I pulled the tarpaulin up about her, as it had been before, to protect her from

  the storm.

  In placing the coin in her mouth, I had not only, having discovered he was

  interested in such things, and the price was (pg.30) not too much, compensated

  her master for her use but had precluded further importunities on her part.

  I kissed a little at her face. I had thought the streaks there might have been

  rain, but they had a salty taste.

  I moved from beneath the wagon and picked up my pack.

  She looked up at me. She understood, the coin in her mouth, that she was now to

  be silent.

  I looked up to the height of the stony plateau, and the palisade. In a flash of

  lightning, illuminated clearly for a moment, I could see, over the palisade,

  hanging from its chains, the crosspiece on the high pole, swinging in the storm,

  the huge sign with its emblematic representation of a bird, that with the

  vulturelike neck and the distorted, grasping right leg and talons, the sigh of

  the Crooked Tarn.

  I looked back to the girl.

  She was still looking at me.

  I pointed to the gravel before her, under the wagon.

  Immediately, kneeling, she lowered her head to the gravel, in obeisance.

  I then turned away, and began to ascend the bridge, leading up to the gate. I

  put the girl from my mind. She was, after all, a slave, and her use had been

  paid for.

  2 The Court; Chained Women

  (pg.31) “You are not a female,” said the voice from behind the door, a small,

  narrow door cut in the left panel of the gate, the eyes peering out from a small

  sliding hatch in the door. “Show that you have money!”

  I lifted up a copper tarsk. The fellow inside lifted up a small tharlarion-oil

  lamp to the opening. I held the coin where he could see it but I did not put it

  through the aperture.

  “Not enough!” he said.

  I then held up a silver tarsk. The door opened.

  I entered.

  He locked the door behind me.

  I then followed him through a high, shedlike tunnel, walled with wood, about

  forty feet long, to the interior gate. There he turned about. “Something for the

  porter,” I said.

  “You are paid by the keeper of the house,” I said.

  “Times are hard,” he said. “And it is late. I have opened the door late.”

  “That is true,” I said. I put a tarsk bit into his hand.

  “Times are hard,” he said.

  I put down my pack. I took out a knife and pushed it a bit into his gut, pushing

  him back against the inner gate. He turned white. I lifted up his purse, on its

  strings, and, with the point of the knife, opened it. There were several coins

  within it. I could see in light of the small lamp he carried. (pg.32)”Times are

  not as hard as you thought,” I said. “How much would you like?”

  “A tarsk bit is quite sufficient,” he said.

  “You have it,” I said.

  “Yes, Sir,” he said. “Thank you, Sir.” He put the tarsk bit from his hand into

  his purse, as I held it, and then took the purse gingerly from me, and, sensing

  he was permitted, dropped it, on its strings, so that again it hung from his

  belt, on his left. If one is right-handed, one normally lifts the purse with the

  left hand and reaches into it with the right. The weight of the purse, on its

  drawstrings, closed it.

  “It is a violent night out,” I said.

  “It is, Sir,” said he. “What have you heard from the north?”

  “I have come from the south,” I said.

  “Few go north now,” he said.

  “Most here, I gather,” I said, “are from the north.”

  “Yes,” said he, “and we are crowded beyond belief.”

  “With folks from Ar’s Station?” I asked.

  “Not many now,” he said. “Some managed to flee.”

  “Most are trapped in the city?” I said.

  “Apparently,” he said.

  “What is your latest intelligence?” I asked.

  “Little that is new,” he said.

  “And what is old?” I asked.

  “From whence have you come?” he asked.

  “From the south,” I said. That I had come from Ar herself was no business to

  this fellow.

  “Only what I hear,” he said, “—that the Cosians have invested Ar’s Station, on

  three sides by land, and have closed the harbor, that with a wall of chained

  rafts.”

  “Have the walls been breached?” I asked.

  “Several times,” said he, “but each time the defenders have managed to hold the

  breach, and repair the wall.”

  I nodded. Some terribly bitter fighting takes place at such times. So, too, it

  can, in
the streets themselves. “Cosians, as far as you know,” I said, “hold no

  part of the city itself.”

  “Not as far as I know,” he said.

  “What are the numbers involved, and your speculations as to the outcome?”

  (pg.33)”It is you who wear the scarlet,” he said. “I am only a poor porter.”

  “Surely you have heard things,” I said. I sheathed my knife. I sensed it might

  be making the fellow nervous.

  “I have heard there are thousands of Cosians, their auxiliaries, and their

  mercenaries, at Ar’s Station,” he said. “Of that is true, they must outnumber

  the regulars in Ar’s Station by as many as ten to one.”

  “Equipment, supplies?” I asked.

  “They brought with them the devices for siege work from Brundisium,” he said. “I

  suppose that, too, must be the source of their supplies.”

  That seemed to me to make sense. If it were true, however, why had Ar’s tarnsmen

  not attempted to interdict these supply routes? If they had, I had heard nothing

  of it.

  “The fighting at Ar’s Station, by report, has been lengthy and fierce,” said the

  man. “Her walls are defended by common citizens as well as soldiers. The

  Cosians, I think, did not expect such resistance.

  I supposed not.

  “You are of the red caste,” said the fellow. “Why is Cos interested in Ar’s

  Station?”

  “I am not fully sure,” I said, “but there could be various reasons, and some of

  them would seem obvious. As you know much of the friction between Cos and Ar has

  to do with their economic competitions in the Vosk Basin. Taking Ar’s Station

  would, in a stroke, diminish the major citadel of Ar’s Salerian Confederation

  and the Vosk League.

  To be sure, in virtue of their mutual distrust of Cos and the Salerian

  Confederation normally maintained close relations, and the Vosk League, a

  confederation of towns along the Vosk, originally formed, like the Salerian

  Confederation on the Olni, to control river piracy, was, at least in theory,

  independent of both Ar and Cos. I say, ‘in theory’ because one of the charter

  cities in the Vosk League is Port Cos, which, although it is a sovereign polis,

  was originally founded by, and settled by, Cosians. If Ar were out of the way in

  the area of the Vosk, of course, I did not doubt but what friction would develop

  quickly enough between Cos and the Salerian Confederation, and perhaps between

  Cos and the Vosk League, (pg.34) and for much the same reasons as formerly

  between Cos and Ar.

  Some well-known towns in the Vosk League are Victoria, Tafa and Fina. The

  farthest west town in the league is Turmus, at the delta. The farthest east is

  White Water. Some of the towns of the league are actually east of Ar’s Station,

  such as Forest Port, Iskander, Tancred’s Landing, and, of course, White Water.

  Ar’s Station, although it was apparently active in the altercations with pirates

  on the Vosk, never joined the league. This is probably because of the influence

  of Ar herself, which might regard her extensive territorial claims in the area

  as being implicitly undermined or compromised by membership in any such

  alliance.

  The headquarters of the Vosk League is located in the city of Victoria. I

  suppose there are special historical reasons for this, for Victoria is not

  centrally located on the river, say, between the delta to the west and the entry

  of the Olni into the Vosk on the east, which point, incidentally, is controlled

  by the city of Lara, a member of the Salerian’s Confederation. Victoria lies

  rather toward the west, in the reaches traditionally more subject to Cosian

  influence. Geographical position, accordingly, at least with respect to

  approximating the midpoint between the delta and the Olni, was apparently not

  the paramount consideration in locating the headquarters of the Vosk League. Had

  it been one might have expected to find its headquarters in, say, Jasmine or

  Siba, towns much more centrally located.

  “I have heard,” said the man, “a large relieving force bound for Ar’s Station

  departed from Ar weeks ago.”

  “I heard that, too,” I said. I knew that it was true. I also knew that Ar,

  inexplicably, to my mind, had literally invested the bulk of its land power in

  that very expedition, and had done so with the main forces of Cos not in the

  north but in the vicinity of Torcadino. This seemed to me a military mistake of

  almost unbelievable dimension. I had been in Torcadino several weeks ago,

  indeed, at the very moment when the city, housing Cosian siege engines and

  supplies, serving as a depot and staging area for the eastward advance of Cos,

  had, in a daring stratagem, been seized by Dietrich of Tarnburg with no more

  than a few thousand mercenaries. These had entered the city through aquaducts,

  literally over (pg.35) the heads of unsuspecting Cosian armies camped about the

  city. This act had stalled the invasion. I expected Dietrich to be able to hold

  Torcadino through the winter, but little longer. I had borne letters from

  Dietrich to Ar germane to these matters.

  In the intrigues of the time, and to divert suspicion, Gnieus Lelius, high

  councilor, and first minister of Ar, he who was acting as regent in the absence

  of Marlenus, Ubar of the city, had even had me brought to the Central Cylinder

  under guard, as though I might have been arrested, and was to be examined on

  some charge. There, personally and at length, I had spoken to him. I had urged

  him to march to Torcadino and confront the main body of Cosian forces. But the

  troops of Ar had not been recalled, nor diverted to Torcadino. They had

  continued to march northward, as though the major danger lay at Ar’s Station.

  This, in effect, seemed to negate the bold stroke of Dietrich, to slow the

  Cosian advance, and give Ar time to organize, to arm and march. Ar had not moved

  against the Cosians at Torcadino. She had marched north, presumably to relieve

  Ar’s Station. Gnieus Lelius had listened to me thoughtfully and patiently. But

  he would, it seemed, trust to the judgment of his officers.

  I had then been kept in Ar for weeks, a guest in the Central Cylinder, waiting

  and waiting. Then at last I had been given a sealed letter for the commander of

  Ar’s Station, whose name was Aemilianus. That was all. That very night, on

  tarnback, I had streaked northward from Ar. I had sold the tarn only two days

  ago, to proceed on foot. The skies had seemed heavily patrolled. I had little

  doubt they would become more so as I proceeded farther northward. It seemed to

  me that my chances of successfully delivering the message to Aemilianus,

  whatever might be its contents, might be improved if it were borne not by

  tarnsman but by one afoot, one who might, say, among mercenaries, or civilians,

  mix inconspicuously. This speculation was further encouraged by the fact that

  Ar’s station would surely have its tarn wire strung and the skies about it, as

  nearly as I had determined, were currently cont
rolled by Cos.

  (pg.36) “But,” said the man, “such a force has not passed this point.”

  “I do not know its location,” I said. I had stayed at certain inns in the south,

  past which it had taken its march, taking five days to pass given points. Then,

  moving northward, I had stayed at inns, also on, or near, the Vitkel Aria

  somewhere north of Venna.

  “It cannot have just disappeared,” he said.

  “It is a mystery to us,” I said, “but doubtless to those with access to the

  proper intelligence network, its movements and position are well known.” I had

  encountered refugees from Ar’s Station and its environs even south of Venna.

  Some told me they had seen the army pass. Some had even told me that men and

  women they knew had followed the army northward, as though confident of its

  victory and returning to their homes. What puzzled me most was that the Viktel

  Aria was the most direct route, for hundreds of pasangs, to Ar’s Station.

  Indeed, Ar’s Station, in effect, secured the northern terminus of the Viktel

  Aria, or Vosk Road, at the Vosk.

  The Viktel Aria was a military toad, one laid out by military engineers as a

  military route. It sped almost directly from Ar to the Vosk. It made few

  concessions to towns or communities. Its primary purpose was to provide a

  reliable, nearly indestructable surface for the rapid movement of armed men.

  this being the case, however, why had the army of Ar not kept to it, on its

  presumed journey to raise the siege of Ar’s Station? The most likely hypothesis

  seemed to me to be that it was making its way not to Ar’s Station but to

  Brundisium, where, months ago, the Cosians had landed. This suggested that

  either Ar’s Station was to be sacrificed in these harsh games, or that it was

  the thinking of Ar’s commanders that a move to Brundisium would lift the siege

  of Ar’s Station, the Cosians there perhaps then being withdrawn to protect

  Brundisium. Such a move, of course, might isolate the Cosian main forces, both

  depriving them from their fellows at Ar’s Station. I did not doubt,

  incidentally, that the military might which Ar now had in the north, if it were

  what it was said to be, would be sufficient to take Brundisium. The (pg.37)

 

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