by John Norman
There was little interest in this report. Cos and Tyros, when not at one another's throats, are always threatening to join their forces for an onslaught on Port Kar. The rumor was a persistent one, a common one. But not in over a hundred years had the untied fleets of Cos and Tyros challenged Port kar, and at that time, because of storms, they had been scattered and beaten off. As I have mentioned, the warfare between Cos and Tyros and Port Kar had been, for years, small-scale, seldom involving more than a few dozen galleys on a side. All parties had apparently slipped into an arrangement which was now almost sanctioned by tradition, an arrangement characterized by almost constant conflict but few, or no, extensive commitments. The risks of engaging fleets was doubtless, by all, thought to be great. Further, raids, interpersed with smuggling and trading, had become a fairly profitable way of life, apparently for all. Doubtless, in Cos and Tyros as well there were rumors of fleets being prepared to be sent against them. The seaman, to his chargrin, was dismissed by a vote of the council.
We then turned our attention to matters of greater importance, the need for more covered docks in the arsenal, beneaht which additional galleys could be caulked for the grain fleet, else how could a hundred vessels be red for the voyage norht to the grain fields before the sixth passage hand?
It is perhaps worth remarking, briefly, on the power of Port Kar, with it being understood that the forces of both Cos and Tyros, the other two significant maritime Ubarates in know Thassa, are quite comparable.
The following figured pertain to medium class or larger vessels:
The five Ubars of Port Kar, Chung, Eteocles, Nigel, Sullius Maximus and Henrius Sevarius, control among themselves some four hundred ships. The approximately one hundred and twenty captains of the council of Captains of Port Kar havem pledged to their personal service, some thousand ships. They further control another thousand ships, as executor, through the council, which ships comprise the memebers of the grain fleet, the oil fleet, the slave fleet, and others, as well as numerous patrol and escort ships. Beyound these ships there re some twenty-five hundred ships which are owned by some fifteen or sixteen hundred minor captains of the city, not wealthy enough to sit on the Council of Captains. The figures I have listed would give us some forty-nine hundred ships. To get a better figure, particularly since the above figures are themselves approximations, let us say that Port kar houses in the neighborhood of five thousand ships. As mentioned above, the naval strengths of Cos and Tyros are, individually, comparable. It is, of course, true that not all of these some five thousand ships are war ships. My estimation would be that approximately fifteen hundred only are the long ships, the ram-ships, those of war. On the other hand, whereas the round ships do not carry rams and are much slower and less maneuverable than the long ships, they are not inconsequential in a naval battle, for their deck areas and deck castles can accommodate springals, small catapults, and chain-slings onagers, not to mention numerous bowmen, all of which can provide a most discouraging and vicious barrage, consisting normally of javelins, burning pitch, fiery rocks and crossbow quarrels. A war ship going into battle, incidentally, always takes its mast down and stores its sail below decks. The bulwarks and deck of the ship are often covered with wet hides. It was voted that another dozen covered docks be raised within the confines of the arsenal, that the caulking schedule of the gran fleet might be met. The vote was unanimous.
The next matter for consideration was the negotiation of a dispute between the sail-makers and the rope-makers in the arsenal with respect to priority in the annual Procession to the Sea, which takes place on the first of En'Kara, the Gorean New Year. There had been a riot this year. It was resolved that henceforth both groups would walk abreast. I smiled to myself. I expected there would be a riot net year as well.
The rumor of the seaman, that Cos and Tyros were preparing fleets against Port Kar, again entered my mind, but again I dismissed it.
The next item on the agenda dealt with the demand of the pulley-makers to receive the same wage per Ahn as the oar-makers. I voted for this measure, but it did not pass.
A Captain next to me snorted, "Give the pulley-makers the wage of oar-makers, and sawyers will want the wages of carpenters, and carpenters of shipwrights!" All who do skilled work in the arsenal, incidentally, are free men. The men of Port Kar may permit slaves to build their house and their walls, but they do not permit them to build their ships. The wages of a sail-maker, incidentally, are four copper tarn disks per day, those of a fine shipwright, hired by the Council of Captains, as much as a golden tarn disk her day. The average working day is ten Ahn, or about twelve Earth hours. The amount of time spent in actual work, however, is far less. The work day of a free man in the arsenal is likely to be, on the whole, a rather leisurely one. Free Goreans do not like to be pressed in their tasks. Two Ahn for lunch and stopping an Ahn early for paga and a talk in the late afternoon are not uncommon. Layoffs occur, but, because of the amount of work, not frequently. The organizations, such as the sail-makers, almost guildlike, not castes, have due, and these dues tend to be applied to a number of purposes, such as support of those injured or their families, loans, payments when men are out of work, and pensions. The organizations have also, upon occasion, functioned as collective bargaining agencies. I suspected that the sail-makers would, threatening desertion of the arsenal, this year or the next obtain their desired increase in wages. Brutal repressions of organization have never characterized the arsenal. The Council of Captains respects those who build and outfit ships. On the other hand, the wages tend to be so slight that an organization seldom has the means to mount a long strike; the arsenal can normally be patient, and can usually choose to build a ship a month from now rather than now, but one cannot well arrange to eat a month from now, and not today, or tomorrow, or until a month from now. But most importantly the men of the arsenal regard themselves as just that, the men of the arsenal, and would be unhappy apart from their work. For all their threats of desertion of the arsenal there are few of them who would want to leave it. Building fine and beautiful ships gves them great pleasure.
Beyond this, lastly, it might be mentioned that Gorean society, on the whole, tends to be tradition bound, and that there is little questioning of the wisdom of one's fathers; in such a society individuals usually have an identity satisfactory to themselves, and a place in which they feel comfortable; accordingly they are less susceptible ot the social confusions attendant upon a society in which greater mobility is encouraged and traditonal prestige considerations replaed with materialistic ones. A society in which each is expected to succeed, and it placed under conditions where most must fail, would be incomprehensible, irrational, to most Goreans. This will sound strange, I suppose, but the workers of the arsenal, as long as they make enough to live reasonably well, are more concerned with their work, as craftsmen, than they are with considerabley and indefinitely improving their economic status. This is not to say taht they would have any objection to being rich; it is only to remark, in effect, that it has never occurred to them, no more than to most Goreans, to take very seriously the pursuit of wealth as their universal and compelling motivation; being ignorant, it seems, they, like most other Goreans, are more concerned with other things, such as, as I have earlier noted, the building of fine and beautiful ships. I make no pronouncements on these matters, but report them as I find them. I would note, of course, that these weaknesses, or virtues, of the men of the arsenal are, of tradition, welcomed by the Council of Captains; without them the arsenal could not be as efficiently and ceonomically managed as it is. Again I make no pronouncements on these matters, but report them as I find them. My thinking on these matters is mixed.
Why, I asked myself, should Cos and Tyros consider bringing their fleets against Port Kar? What had changed? But then I recalled that nothing had changed. It was only a rumor, one which, it seemed, recurred at least every year in Port Kar. Doubtless there were similares rumors raising their small stirs, in the councils of Cos and Tyros. I recal
led that the words of the seaman had been dismissed. Now, crying to come before the council, was the mad, half-blind shipwright Tersites, a scroll of drawings in his hand, and calculations.
At a word from the scribe at the long table before the thrones of the Ubars, two men put Tersites from the chamber, dragging him away.
Once before he had been permitted to present plans to the council, but they had been too fantastic to be taken seriously. He had dared to suggest a redesign of the standard tarn ship. He had wanted to deepen teh keel, to add a foremast, to change the rowing to great oars, each handled by several men, rather than one man to an oar; he had wanted ven to raises the ram above the waterline. I would have been curious to hear the arguments of Tersites pertinent to these recommendations, but before, when it had become clear how radical and, I gather, absurd were his proposals, he had been hooted from the chamber.
I recall men shouting, "Many men could not all sit through the stroke of an oar! Would you have them stand?" "So great an oar could not even be held by the hands of a man!" "Two masts with their sails could not be quickly removed before battle!" "You will slow the ship if you deepen the keel!" "If many men sit a single oar, some will slack their work!" "What good is a ram that does not make its stroke below waterline?"
Tersites had been permitted that once to address the council because he, though thought mad, had once been a skilled shipwright. Indeed, the galleys of Port Kar, medium and heavy class, carried shearing blades, which had been an invention of Tersites. These are huge quarter-moons of steel, fixed forward of the oars, anchored into the frame of the ship itself. One of the most common of naval strategies, other than ramming, is oar shearing, in which one vessel, her oars suddenly shortened inboard, slides along the hull of another, whose oars are still outboard, splintering and breaking them off. The injured gally then is like a broken-winged bird, and at the mercy of the other ship's ram as she comes about, flutes playing and drums beating, and makes her strike amidships. Recent galleys of Cos and Tyros, and other maritime powers, it had been noted, were now also, most ofte, equipped with shearing blades.
Tersites had also, it might be mentioned, though he had not presented these ideas in his appearance before the council, argued for a rudder hung on the sternpost of the tarn ship, rather that the two side-hung rudders, and had championed a square rigging, as opposed to the beautiful lateen rigging common on the ships of Thassa. Perhaps this last proposal of Tersites' had been the most offensive of all to the men of Port kar. The triangular lateen sail on its single sloping yar is incredibly beautiful.
Tersites had, some five years before, been removed from the arsenal. He had taken his ideas to Cos and Tyros, but there, too, he had met with only scorn. He had then returned to Port Kar, his fortunes exhausted, no place left to him in the arsenal. He now lived, it was said, on the garbage in the canals. A small pittance granted him by the shipwrights, of whm he had been one, was spent in the paga taverns of the city. I dismissed Tersites from my mind.
I had made, since coming to Port Kar, five voyages. Four of these had been commerical in nature. I had no quarrel with the shipping of others. Like the Bosk itself I would not seek for trouble, but, too, like the Bosk, I would not refuse to meet it. My four commercial voyages had been among the exchange islands, or free islands, in Thassa, administered as free prots by members of teh Merchants. There were several such islands. Three, which I encountereed frequently in my voyages, were Teletus, and, south of it, Tabor, named for the drum, which it resembles, and to the north, among the northern islands, Scagnar. Others were Farnacium, Hulneth and Asperiche. I did not go as far south as Anago or Ianda, or as far north as Hunjer or Skjern, west of Torvaldsland. There islands, with occasional free ports on the coast, north and south of the Gorean equator, such as Lydius and Helmutsport, and Schendi and Bazi, make possible the commerce between Cos and Tyros, and the mainland, and its cities, such as Ko-ro-ba, Thentis, Tor, Ar, Turia, and many others.
On these voyages my cargos were varied. I did not, however, in this early period, because of the cost, purchase cargos of great value. Accordingly I did not carry, in these first voyages, any abundance of precious metals or jewels; not did I carry rugs or tapestries, or medicines, or silks or ointments, or perfumes or prize slaves, or spices or cannisters of colored table salts. In these first voyages I was content, quite, to carry tools and stone, dried fruit, dried fish, bolts of rep-cloth, tem-wood, Tur-wood and Ka-la-na stock, and horn and hides. I did once carry, however, a hold of chained slaves, and, another time, a hold filled with the furs of the northern sea sleen. The latter cargo was the most valuable carrried in these first four voyages. Each of these cargos I managed to sell at considerable profit. Twice we had been scouted by pirates from Tyros, in their green ships, painted to resemble the sea, but neither of them had chosen ot engage us. We gathered that, seeing how low we sat in the water, they assumed our cargo to be one of bulk goods and departed, doubtless having higher hopes for gain upon the sea. It is scarely worth the risk of crew and ship, unless desperate, to win a hold filled with lumber or stone. My men were mostly pirates and cutthroats. Doubtless many of them did not much care to ply an honest trade. Better, they would think, to lie in wait on the open sea for the slave galleys of Tyros or the treasure ships of Cos. But two who challenged me for the captaincy I slew within a dozen strokes, and the others, thus given pause, chose to confine their disgruntlement, if any, to their cups and conclaves. Any who did not wish to continue in my service were free to go. I instructed Luma to discharge any such with a gift of gold, of half a stone's weight. Surprisingly, few left my ships. I do not think they cared to foresake their piracies, but, too, I think they felt pride in serving one who was said, now, after the incident of the paga tavern, to possess one of the finest blades in Port Kar.
"When do we sail against the ships of Cos and Tyros?" asked Tab of me. "Cos and Tyros," I said, "have not injured me."
"They will," said he.
"Then," said I, "we will sail against them."
Ashore my crews were roisterous and brawling but on the ships, strange as it is to relate, they were serious and disciplined men.
I attempted to treat them fairly.
On land I did not see much of them, preferring it this way, remaining aloof. But I did, of course, pay them well and, in my holding, knowing men, saw that they could have their pick of some of Port Kar's most beautiful slave girls. I had purchased the girl whom I had seen dance in the Paga Tavern, for forty pieces of gold. I had called her Sandra, after a girl once known on Earth. I had put my collar on her and, after using her, had consigned her to my men, that she might please their senses.
My fifth voyage was one ot satisfy my interest, and made in a light swift galley.
I had wanted to see both Tyros and Cos.
Both lie some four hundred pasangs west of Port Kar, Tyros to the south of Cos, separated by some hundred pasangs from her. Tyros is a rugged island, with mountains. She is famed for her vart caves, and indeed, on the island, trained varts, batlike creatures, some the size of small dogs, are used as weapons. Cos is also a lofty island, even loftier than Tyros, but she has level fields to her west. Cos had many terraces, on which the Ta grapes are grown. Near her, on night, lying off her shore, silently, I heard the mating whistles of the tiny, lovely Cosian wingfish. This is a small, delicate fish; it has three or four slender spines in its dorsal fin, which are poisonous. It is called the wingfish because it can, on its stiff pectoral fins, for short distances, glide through the air, usually in an attempt to flee small sea tharlarion, who are immune to the poison of the spines. It is also called a songfish, because, in their courtship rituals, males and females thrust their heads from the water, uttering a kind of whistle. Their livers are regarded as a delicacy. I recalled I had once tried one, but had not cared for it, at a banquet in Turia, in the house of a man named Saphrar, who had been a merchant… Saphrar, I recalled, had once been a perfumer from Tyros but, being exiled as a thief, had made his way to Port Kar, and then
ce had gone to Turia.
I had learned on the rail of the light galley, and, in the moonlight, had listened to the mating whistles of the small fish.
The seemed so small, and innocent.
"The moons are now full," had said Tab to me.
"Yes," I said, "weigh the anchors."
Silently, oars scarcely touching the water, we had moved from Cos, leaving her behind in the moonlight.
While I made my five voyages my other six ships were engaged in commercila ventures similar to those which had occupied my first four voyages. I seldom returned to Port Kar without learning from Luma that my fortunes had been augmented even further in my absence. I had made, to date, only the five voyages mentioned. In the last two months, in my holding, I had been largely occupied with matters of business and management, mostly organizing and planning the voyages of others. I expected I would again, however, return to Thassa. She, as it is said, cannot be forgotten.
I had made one innovation in practices common to Port Kar. I used free men on the rowing benches on my round ships, of which I had four, not slaves, as is traditional. The fighting ship, incidentall, the long ship, the ram-ship, has never been, to my knowledge, in Port Kar, or Cos, or Tyros, or elsewhere on Gor, rowed by slaves; the Gorean fighting ship always has free men at the oars. The galley slaves I thought worth freeing, I freed, and found that many would stay with me, taking me for their captain. Those I did no wish, for one reason or another, to free, I sold to other captains, or exchanged them for slaves whom I might free, several of whom, when freed, also agreed to serve with me. Gaps on my benches were easily filled. I would purchase a strong man from the market chain on the slave wharf, and then, saying nothing, set him free. I think not once did such a man not follow me to my holding, asking to be my man. Not only did fre men render more efficient service at the oars, but, when they were given the opportunity, I found them eager to train with arms, and so hired masters to teach them weapons. It was thus that the round ships of Bosk, the captain from the marshes, with their free crews, became in their own right dangerous, formidable ships. Merchants of Port Kar began to apply to me that they might transport their goods in my ships. I preferred, however, to buy and sell my own cargos. Certain other captain, I noted, were now also experimenting, on certain of their shiips, with free crews.