by John Norman
"It is true," said Telima.
I lowered her to her knees again.
I turned to the woman and the child. "I am also going to free the slaves at the benches," I said.
"Such slaves are dangerous men," said the woman, looking at them with fear. "All men are dangerous," I said.
I took the key to the shackles of the barge slaves. I tossed it to one of the men. "When we have left, and not before," I told him, "free yourself, and your fellows, on all the barges."
Numbly he held the key, not believing that it was in his hand, staring down at it. "Yes," he said.
The slaves, as one man, stared at me.
"The Rencers," I said, "will doubtless help you live in the marsh, should you wish it. If not, they will guide you to freedom, away from Port Kar." None of the slaves spoke.
I turned to leave.
"My Ubar," I heard.
I turned to look at Telima.
"Am I your slave?" she asked.
"I told you on the island," I said, "that you are not."
"Why then will you not unbind me?" she asked.
Angrily I went to her and slipped the Gorean blade between her throat and the halter, cutting it, freeing her from its tether. I then slashed away the fiber that had confined her wrists and ankles. She stood up in the brief rence tunic, and stretched.
She maddened me in the doing of it.
Then she yawned and shook her head, and rubbed her wrists.
"I am not a man," she said, "but I expect that a man would find Midice a not unpleasing wench."
Midice, bound, leading the coffle, lifted her head.
"But," said Telima, "is not Telima much better than Midice?"
Midice, to my surprise, shook with anger and, bound, tethered, turned to face Telima. I gathered that she had regarded herself as the beauty of the rence islands.
"I was first prow," said Midice to Telima.
"Had I been taken," said Telima, "doubtless I would have been first prow." "No!" shouted Midice.
"But I did not permit myself to be netted like a little fool," said Telima. Midice was speachless with fury.
"When I found you," I reminded Telima, "you were lying on your stomach, bound hand and foot."
Midice threw back her head and laughed.
"Nonetheless," said Telima, "I am surely, in all respects, superior to Midice." Midice lifted her bound wrists to Telima. "Look!" she cried. "It is Midice whom he had made his slave! Not you! That shows you who is most beautiful!" Telima looked at Midice in irritation.
"You are too fat," I said to Telima.
Midice laughed.
"When I was your Mistress," she reminded me, "you did not find me too fat." "I do now," I said.
"I learned long ago," said Telima, loftily, "never to believe anything a man says."
Telima was now walking about the three girls. "Yes," she was saying, "not a bad catch." She stopped in front of Midice, who led the coffle. Midice stood very straight, disdainfully, under her inspection. The Telima, to Midice's horror, felt her arm, and slapped her side and leg. "This one is a little skinny," said Telima.
"Master!" cried Midice, to me.
"Open your mouth, Slave," ordered Telima.
In tears, Midice did so, and Telima examined her, casually, turning her head this way and that.
"Master!" protested Midice, to me.
"A slave," I informed her, "will take whatever abuse a free person chooses to inflict upon them."
Telima stepped back, regarding Midice.
"Yes, Midice," she said, "all things considered, I think you will make an excellent slave."
Midice wept, pulling at the binding fiber on her wrists.
"Let us be off," I said.
I turned to go. Already, Thurnock and Clitus, in loading the raft, had placed on it my helmet, and shield, and the great bow, with its arrows.
"Wait," said Telima.
To my amazement she slipped out of her rence cloth tunic and took a place behind the third girl in the coffle, the shorter rence girl, Ula.
She shook her hair back over her shoulders.
"I am fourth girl," she said.
"No," I said, "you are not."
She looked at me with irritation. "You are going to Port Kar, are you not?" she asked.
"Yes, ' I said.
"That is interesting," she said, "I, too, am going to Port Kar."
"No, you are not," I said.
"Add me to the coffle," she said, "I am fourth girl."
"No," I said, "you are not."
Again she regarded me with irritation. "Very well," she said. And then, angrily, loftily, she walked to the deck before me and then, movment by movement, to my fury, knelt before me, back on her heels, head down, arms extended, wrists crossed, as though for binding.
"You are a fool!" I told her.
She lifted her head, and smiled. "You may simply leave me here if you wish," she said.
"It is not in the codes," I said.
"I thought," said she, "you no longer kept the codes."
"Perhaps I should slay you!" I hissed.
"One of Port Kar might do such." she said.
"Or," I said, "take you and show you well the meaning of a collar!" "Yes," she smiled, "or that."
"I do not want you!" I said.
"Then slay me," she said.
I seized her by the arms, lifting her up. "I should take you, ' I said, " and break your spirit!"
"Yes," she said, "I expect you could do that, if you wished."
I threw her down, away from me.
She looked up at me, angrily, tears in her eyes. "I am fourth girl," she hissed. "Go to the coffle," said I, "Slave."
"Yes," said she, "-Master."
She stood there proudly, straightly, behind the short rence girl, Ula, and, wrists bound, and tethered by the neck, was added to the salve coffle, as fourth girl.
I looked upon my former Mistress, nude, bound in my coffle.
I found myself not displeased to own her. There were sweet vengeances which were mine to exact, and hers to pay. I had not asked for her as slave. But she had, for some unaccountable reason, submitted herself. All my former hatreds of her began to rear within me, the wrongs which she had done me, and the degradation and humiliation to which she had submitted me. I would see that she abided well by her decison of submission. I was angry only that I myself had not stripped her and beaten her, and made her a miserable slave as soon as we had come to the barges.
She did seem particularly disturbed at the plight in which she found herself. "Why do you not leave her here?" demanded Midice.
"Be silent, Slave," said Telima, to her.
"You, too, are a Slave!" cried Midice. Then, Midice looked at me. She drew a deep breath, there were tears in her eyes. "Leave her here," she begged. "I–I will serve you better."
Thurnock gave a great laugh. The large, blond girl, Thura, gray-eyed, and the shorter rence girl, Ula, gasped.
"We shall see," remarked Telima.
"What do you want her for?" asked Midice, of me.
"You are stupid, aren't you?" asked Telima, of the girl.
Midice cried out with rage. "I," she cried, "-I will serve him better!" Telima shrugged. "We shall see," she said.
"We will need one," said Clitus, "to cook, and clean, and run errands." Telima cast him a dark look.
"Yes," I said, "that is true."
"Telima," said Telima, "is not a serving slave."
"Kettle Girl," I said.
She sniffed.
"I would say," laughed Thurnock, grinning, "kettle and mat!" He had one tooth missing on the upper right.
I held Telima by the chin, regarding her. "Yes," I said, "doubtless both kettle and mat."
"As Master wishes," said the girl, smiling.
"I think I will call you — " I said, "- Pretty Slave."
She did not seem, to my amazement, much distressed nor displeased.
"Beautiful Slave would be mor appropriate," she said.
"You are a strange woman," said I, "Telima."
She shrugged.
"Do you think your life with me will be easy?" I asked.
She looked at me, frankly. "No," she said, " I do not."
"I thought you would never wish to go again to Port Kar," I said.
"I would follow you," she said, "-even to Port Kar."
I did not understand this.
"Fear me," I said.
She looked up at me but did not seem afraid.
"I am of Port Kar," I told her.
She looked at me. "Are we not both," she asked, "of Port Kar?"
I remembered her cruelties, her treatment of me. "yes," I said, "I suppose we are."
"Then, Master," said she, "let us go to our city."
9 Port Kar
I watched the dancing girl of Port Kar writhing on the square of sand between the tables, under the whips of masters, in a Paga tavern of Port Kar. "Your paga," said the nude slave girl, who served me, her wrists chained. "It is warmed as you wished."
I took it from her, not even glancing upon her, and drained the goblet. She knelt beside the low table, at which I sat cross-legged.
"More," I said, handing her back the goblet, again not deigning to even glance upon her.
"Yes, Master," she said, rising, taking the goblet.
I liked paga warm. One felt it so much the sooner.
It is called the Whip Dance, the dance the girl upon the sand danced. She wore a delicate vest and belt of chains and jewels, with shimmering metal droplets attached. And she wore ankle rings, and linked slave bracelets, again with shimmering droplets pendant upon them; and a locked collar, matching. She danced under ships' lanterns, hanging from the ceiling of the paga tavern, it located near the wharves bounding the great arsenal.
I heard the snapping of the whip, her cries.
The dancing girls of Port Kar are said to be the best of all Gor. They are sought eagerly in the many cities of the planet. They are slave to the core, vicious, treacherous, cunning, seductive, sensuous, dangerous, desirable, excruciatingly desireable.
"Your paga," said the girl, who served me.
I took it from her, again not seeing her. "Go, Slave," said I.
"Yes, Master," she said and, with a rustle of the chain, left my side. I drank more paga.
So I had come to Port Kar.
Four days ago, in the afternoon, after two days in the marshes, my party had reached the canals of the city.
We had come to one of the canals bordering on the delta.
We had seen that the canal was guarded by heavy metal gates, of strong bars, half submerged in the water.
Telima had looked at the gates, frightened. "When I escapted from Port Kar," she said, "there were no such gates."
"Could you have escaped then," asked I, "as you did, had there been such gates?" "No," she whispered, frightened, "I could not have."
The gates had closed behind us.
Our girls, our slaves, wept at the poles, guiding the raft into the canal. As we passed beneath windows lining the canals men had, upon occasion, leaned out, calling us prices for them.
I did not blame them. They were beautiful. And each poled well, as could only one from the marshes themselves. We might well have congratulated ourselves on our catch of rence girls.
Midice, Thura, Ula, Telima.
We no longer kept them in a throat coffle. But we had, about the throat of each, wrapped, five times, a length of binding fiber, and knotted it, that this, serving as collar, might mark them as slave. Aside from this they were not, at the time we had entered the city, secured, save that a long length of binding fiber, knotted about the right ankle of each, tied them together. Telima had been branded long ago, but the thighs of Midice, Thura and Ula had never yet felt the iron.
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, followd by some twenty of 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 draged their prizes toward teh 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 tooth. Greed and selfishness I now, for the first time, understood. There is more honesty in Port Kar, I thought, than in all the cites of Gor. Here men scorn to sheath the claws of their heart in the pretenses of their mouth. Here, it 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 not 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 draged 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 of 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 ourward side, and the outward walls of them are several feet thick, and they a
re surmounted, on the roofs, with crenelated parapets. The canals which open into the delta of 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, tehre are none of the towers often encountered in the norther cities of Gor. The men of Port Kar had not chosen to build towers. It is the only city on Gor I know of whihc 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 a 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 shitps 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 suppose 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 Thiefs Scar, which they wear as a 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 the 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 passangs 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 hte marches following the disembarkation of Port Kar forces. Further, it was open to attach from the air by means of the cavalries of merceneary tarnsmen of Port Kar, of which she has several. I knew one of these mercenary captains, Ha-Kee, 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.