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

by Renegades of Gor [lit]

  objections to this strategy, of course, were obvious. Ar’s bastion on the Vosk,

  Ar’s Station, was being treated as expendable, which it was not, if Ar wished to

  maintain its power in the Vosk Basin. Even if Brundisium should fall, this would

  not be likely to keep open her lines of communication and supply. Similarly, Ar,

  lacking a sizable navy, had no way to follow up the capture of Brundisium,

  either by interdicting the coast or attempting an invasion of Cos.

  The major objection, of course, was that this move exposed Ar herself to the

  main force of Cosians, which was in the vicinity of Torcadino. It was almost as

  though the officers of Ar were content to exchange Ar for a port, and one which,

  strictly, was not even a Cosian port. If this were the case, however, that Ar

  was advancing on Brundisium, I had, interestingly enough, heard nothing of it.

  By now, in the normal course of events, given Ar’s start, and the typical

  marches of armies, she would have had time to reach not only Ar’s Station but

  even Brundisium, much farther away.

  I did not know where the main force of Ar was. In this sense I was confronted

  with a mystery, at least as far as my own limited information went. Perhaps, for

  some reason, the forces of Ar were intending to relieve Ar’s Station from the

  west, thus interposing themselves between the siege forces of Cos and their

  likely routes of escape, either substantially west by southwest to Brundisium or

  more to the southwest, toward Torcadino. If this were the case, however, it

  seemed that we should, by nor, have heard something to this effect. Indeed, if

  this were true, it seems that Ar, by now, should have appeared on the western

  flank of the Cosians.

  “I fear for Ar’s Station,” said the porter.

  “How is that?” I asked.

  “I do not think she can long hold out,” he said. “The attackers are numerous.

  The defenders are thinned. The walls are weakened. New breaches are made daily.

  In places they are being mined. Fires have occurred in the city, from saboteurs,

  from fire javelins, from flame baskets catapulted over the walls. There is

  starvation in the city. If the forces of Ar do not soon raise the siege, I think

  she must succumb.”

  “I see,” I said.

  (pg.38) “Too,” said he, “the fighting, in which civilians have participated, has

  been lengthy and bitter. The men of Cos expected an easier time of it. Their

  losses have been heavy. They will not be pleased.”

  I nodded.

  “I would not care to be there when the gate gives way,” he said.

  “It is late,” I said.

  He then opened the door in the interior gate. “The keeper’s desk, and the paga

  room,” said he, “are in the building to the right.”

  I looked out through the door, into the court of the inn. I was soaked to the

  skin. It was still raining heavily. It was dry, at least, in the covered,

  shedlike entrance way, between the gates. The inn itself, aside from certain

  ancillary buildings, was built of heavy logs, and in two parts, or structures,

  with a common, peaked roof, and an open space, covered from above by the roof,

  between the two parts. Each part, or structure, contained perhaps three or four

  floors, possibly joined by ladders. It was about a hundred feet between the door

  in the interior gateway, where I stood, and, to the right, the covered way

  between the separate parts of the inn. The flooring of the court was formed

  largely, leveled and carved, from the natural stone of the plateau. Narrow

  drainage channels had been cut in it. Through these water now flowed under the

  palisade, down the moat. It also flowed, doubtless by design, midway here and

  there, between the palisade’s anchor post wells and bracing recesses, cut in the

  stone, sealed about with tar. Water was running from the long roof of the

  two-part structure, perhaps two hundred feet in length, falling some thirty or

  forty feet down to the court.

  I pressed another tarsk bit into the fellow’s hand. “Thank you, Sir,” said he.

  He had tried to be helpful, though to be sure, I had learned little that I had

  not known before. I had gathered, however, that the siege at Ar’s Station might

  be approaching a critical point. I then picked up the pack and went out again,

  pulling my cloak over my head, to cross the court, in the cold rain. I heard the

  door shut behind me, and the interior bolt thrown. I hurried across the court to

  the side of the nearest part of the two-part structure. I had seen (pg.39)

  something there that interested me. I looked at them, exposed as they were, and

  in the downpour, and then circled about the building. I would consider them in

  greater detail later. I thought it well to reconnoiter a little I suppose it is

  the training of the warrior.

  I examined various of the smaller buildings and sheds, their location and what

  vantages or cover they might provide. There were stables for tharlarion and

  covered shedlike structures beneath which wagons were drawn up. There was a

  place for a tarn beacon, on a platform under a high shed, but it was now not

  lit. There was a tarn gate, too, but it was now closed, wire strung between its

  posts. Tarn wire, too, I was sure, would be strung about, most of it presumably

  from the roof of the inn to the height of the palisade. There was a tarncot,

  too, but now, within it, there was only one tarn. From the condition of the

  bird, and its nature, its apparent ferocity and alertness, I speculated that it

  might be a warrior’s mount. Aside from the bird itself, however, there was no

  indication of this, no emblazoned saddlecloths, no insignia, no particular style

  of harness. As nearly as I could determine there was no barrack here nor

  garrison. This place, for most practical purposes, lacked guardsmen, though

  doubtless it kept a burly fellow or two on hand to deal with possible

  emergencies. I then made my way back to the main building. It had narrow

  openings in it here and there through which it might be defended. The number of

  available defenders, I supposed, might dictate the decision in such a case. Both

  sections, I speculated, would be joined by a narrow, easily blocked underground

  passage cut in stone, one presumably taking its way beneath the covered way

  between them. Contrary to what one might think, incidentally, it is not easy to

  set fire to such structures. This has to do primarily with the verticality of

  the surfaces. The situation is very similar with a palisade. The common fire

  arrow, for example, usually burns itself out in place.

  I was now on the left side of the front of the two-part main building, as one

  would face the building. It was there I had seen something which had seemed

  worthy of some interest.

  “Redeem me!” cried one of the women. “I beg you!”

  (pg.40) “No, me!” cried another.

  “Me! Me!” wept another.

  There were five of them, naked, and lashed by the rain. Their hands were

  shackled high over their heads, this lifting their bodies nicely. The shackles

  we
re attached to short chains, the latter depending from stout rings. The chains

  were hitched to different heights, depending on the height of the woman.

  “Perhaps you are uncomfortable?” I asked the first woman.

  “Yes,” she said, “yes!”

  “That is not surprising, considering how you are secured,” I said.

  “Please!” she said.

  She jerked at the shackles and squirmed against the wall. She was covered with

  rain, which had blown back under the roof’s overhang. Her hair was sopped, and

  dark and much about her, adhering to her shoulders and body.

  “Avert your eyes!” she demanded.

  I took her hair and put it back, behind her shoulders. In that way it was out of

  the way. Shackled as she was she would find it difficult to get it back again

  before her body. If necessary, of course, it could be bundled and knotted at the

  back of her neck.

  “Please!” she wept.

  In a flash of lightning the entire wall and court was illuminated. There were

  only five positions there for securing women, and they were all occupied.

  “Redeem me!” she begged.

  “Buy me?” I inquired.

  “Never!” wept the woman. “I am a free woman!”

  “We are free women!” cried the woman next to her.

  “We are all free women!” cried she beyond that one.

  I had supposed this, of course, for I had seen that none were collared.

  “Oh,” said the first woman, as I checked her flanks.

  “Do not carry on,” I said. “You had probably been out here at least since this

  afternoon, and have probably been touched by several men.”

  I detected no brands on her, at least in the two most favored Gorean brand

  sites. They were probably, as they claimed, free women.

  “Redeem me,” she begged.

  (pg.41) I saw that above and behind the head of each, thrust over nails driven

  into the logs, were small rectangles of oilcloth.

  I turned one over and, in the next flash of lightning, read the numbers on its

  back.

  “What is your name?” I asked the first woman.

  “I am the Lady Amina of Venna,” she said. “I was visiting in the north, and

  forced to flee at the approach of Cosians.”

  “You redemption fee,” I said, “is forty copper tarsks, a considerable amount.” I

  had read this amount on the back of the oilcloth rectangle.

  “Pay it!” she begged. “Rescue a noble free woman from jeopardy. I will be

  forever grateful.”

  “Few men,” I said, “would be content with gratitude.”

  She shrank back, frightened, against the rough surface.

  “My bill is only thirty tarsks,” said the second woman, a blonde. “Redeem me!”

  “Mine is thirty-five!” said the third woman.

  “Mine is only twenty-seven!” cried the fourth woman.

  “Mine is fifty,” wept the last of the five women, “but I will make it well worth

  your while!”

  “In what way?” I asked.

  “In the way of the woman!” she said, brazenly.

  There were cries of protest, and anger, from the others.

  “Do not sound too righteous,” I said to the first four prisoners at the wall.

  “We are free women!” said the first woman.

  “You are all debtor sluts,” I said.

  The first woman gasped, startled, so referred to, and the second and third woman

  cried out in anger. The fourth whimpered, knowing what I had said was true. The

  fifth was silent.

  I recalled that the porter, when I had come to the outer gate, at the height of

  the bridge over the moat, seeing that I was not a female, had made me show

  money, and a considerable amount of it, before he had admitted me. This was

  probably because of the crowding at the inn, and perhaps inflated prices, in

  these unusual, perilous times. Women, I had gathered, on the other hand, would

  not be required to show such money. This, of course, was presumably not so much

  because such a challenge might be thought to be demeaning (pg.42) to a free

  woman, as, perhaps, that women on Gor, in a sense, are themselves money. They

  are, or can be, a medium of exchange, like currency. This is particularly true

  of the slave, of course, who, like other goods, or domestic animals, has an

  ascertainable, finite value, whatever free persons are willing to pay for her.

  Women such as these, those at the wall, would be surrendered by the management

  of the inn for the equivalent of their unpaid bills. T hey would then be in the

  power of their “redeemers,” any who might make good their debts. Lacking such a

  “redemption” they might then themselves, sooner or later, sold as slaves. In

  this way the inn usually recovers its money and, not unoften, turns a profit.

  Particularly beautiful specimens of impecunious guests are sometimes kept by the

  inn itself, as inn slaves.

  “Please do not refer to us in such a fashion,” said the first woman.

  “In what fashion?” I asked.

  “As you did,” she said.

  “Surely the prices at the inn are posted. Or are available upon inquiry,” I

  said.

  She was silent.

  “Did you not know that you had not enough money?” I asked.

  They were silent.

  I tightened my grip on the first woman, thrusting her back more tightly against

  the logs.

  “Yes! Yes!” she gasped. “I knew!”

  “We all knew!” said the second woman.

  “We are free women!” said the third woman. “We expected men to be gentlemen, to

  be understanding, to take care of us!”

  “We counted on the kindness of men!” said the fourth woman.

  “They will do anything for free women!” said the second woman.

  I laughed, and they shuddered in their chains, against the wall. It was still

  raining, but the force of the storm had muchly subsided. I released my grip

  under the chin of the first woman.

  “Do not laugh!” begged the first woman.

  (pg.43) “In short,” I said, “you entered the inn, and remained here, in spite of

  the fact you had not the wherewithal to meet your obligations, expecting perhaps

  you might somehow do so with impunity, that your bills would perhaps be simply

  overlooked, or dismissed by the inn in futile anger, or that eager men could be

  found to pay them, doubtless vying for the privilege of being of service to

  lofty free women.”

  “Would you have had us spend the night on the road, like peasants?” demanded the

  third woman.

  “But these are hard times,” I said, “and not all men are fools.”

  The third woman cried out with anger, shaking her shackles. She was well curved,

  and diet and exercise could much improve her. I thought she might bring as much

  as sixty copper tarsks in a market. If that were so, and the inn sold her for

  that much, they would have made then, as I recalled, some twenty-five copper

  tarsks on her.
/>   “When you discovered you had not the price of the inn’s services,” I said, “you

  might have asked if you might earn your keep for the night.”

  “We are not inn girls!” cried the second woman.

  “It is interesting that you should think immediately in such terms,” I said. “I

  had in mind other sorts of things, such as laundering and cleaning.”

  “Such tasks are for slaves!” said the fifth woman.

  “Many free women do them,” I said.

  “Those tasks are for low free women,” she said, “not for high free women such as

  we!”

  “Yet you are now at the wall, in shackles,” I said, “and have upon you not so

  much as a veil.”

  “Nonetheless,” said the second woman, “we are high free women, and women such as

  we do not earn our keep.”

  “Perhaps women such as you,” I speculated, “will soon, at last, find yourself

  doing so.”

  “What do you mean?” she cried.

  “Are there others like you inside?” I asked the first woman, the Lady Amina of

  Venna.

  “Only one,” she said, “she who owed the most. She was kept inside. There was not

  a shackle ring for her here.”

  “Why should she who owed he most be kept inside, and (pg. 44) we, who owe less,

  be shamefully chained here, in plain view, and exposed to the elements?” asked

  the fifth woman.

  “Perhaps she who is inside has already begun to earn her keep,” I said.

  The fifth woman shrank back against the logs.

  “My arms ache,” said the second woman.

  “Have other free women entered the court, since you have been fastened here?” I

  asked the first woman, the Lady Amina of Venna.

  “Yes,” she said, “and have seen us here. Some of them then, after visiting the

  keeper’s desk, doubtless those with insufficient funds, left the inn.”

  “There seems a point then in having you chained here,” I said, “aside, of

  course, from such things as having you brought to the attention of fellows who

  might redeem you and making clear the inn’s disapproval of attempted fraud,

  namely, that you might serve as a warning to other free women, women who might

  otherwise have been tempted try similar tricks.”