by John Norman
Harold was now fishing about, still chewing on the fruit, in a wooden chest at one end of the table. He drew out of the chest some four silken scarves, after rejecting some others which did not sufficiently please him.
Then he stood up and went to where one of the girls lay curled on the thick red carpet.
"I rather like this one," he said, taking a bite out of the fruit, spitting some seeds to the rug.
She wore yellow Pleasure Silk, and, beneath her long black hair, on her throat, I glimpsed a silverish Turian collar. She lay with her knees drawn up and her head resting on her left elbow. Her skin color was tannish, not too unlike the girl I had seen from Port Kar. I bent more closely. She was a beauty, and the diaphanous Pleasure Silk that was the only garment permitted her did not, by design, conceal her charms. Then, startled, as she moved her head a bit, restlessly on the rug, I saw that in her nose was the tiny golden ring of a Tuchuk girl.
"This is the one," Harold said.
It was, of course, Hereena, she of the First Wagon.
Harold tossed the emptied, collapsed shell of the larma fruit into a corner of the room and whipped one of the scarves from his belt.
He then gave the girl a short, swift kick, not to hurt her, but simply, rather rudely, to startle her awake.
"On your feet, Slave Girl," he said.
Hereena struggled to her feet, her head down, and Harold had stepped behind her, pulling her wrists behind her back and tying them with the scarf in his hand.
"What is it?" she asked.
"You are being abducted," Harold informed her.
The girl's head flew up and she spun to face him, pulling to free herself. When she saw him her eyes were as wide as larma fruit and her mouth flew open.
"It is I," said Harold, "Harold the Tuchuk."
"No!" she said. "Not you!"
"Yes," he said, "I," turning her about once again, routinely checking the knots that bound her wrists, taking her wrists in his hands, trying to separate them, examining the knots for slippage; there was none. He permitted her to turn and face him again.
"How did you get in here?" she demanded.
"I chanced by," said Harold.
She was trying to free herself. After an instant she realized that she could not, that she had been bound by a warrior. Then she acted as though she had not noticed that she had been perfectly secured, that she was his prisoner, the prisoner of Harold of the Tuchuks. She squared her small shoulders and glared up at him.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded.
"Stealing a slave girl," he said.
"Who?" she asked.
"Oh, come now," said Harold.
"Not I!" she said.
"Of course," said he.
"But I am Hereena," she cried, "of the First Wagon!"
I feared the girl's voice might awaken the others, but they seemed still to sleep.
"You are only a little Turian slave girl," said Harold, "who has taken my fancy."
"No!" she said.
Then Harold had his hands in her mouth, holding it open. "See," he said to me.
I looked. To be sure, there was a slight gap between two of the teeth on the upper right.
Hereena was trying to say something. It is perhaps just as well she could not.
"It is easy to see," said Harold, "why she was not chosen First Stake."
Hereena struggled furiously, unable to speak, the young Tuchuk's hands separating her jaws.
"I have seen kaiila with better teeth," he said.
Hereena made an angry noise. I hoped that the girl would not burst a blood vessel. Then Harold removed his hands deftly, narrowly missing what would have been a most savage bite.
"Sleen!" she hissed.
"On the other hand," said Harold, "all things considered—she is a not unattractive little wench."
"Sleen! Sleen!" cursed the girl.
"I shall enjoy owning you," said Harold, patting her head.
"Sleen! Sleen! Sleen!" cursed the girl.
Harold turned to me. "She is—is she not—all things considered—a pretty little wench?"
I could not help but regard the angry, collared Hereena, furious in the swirling Pleasure Silk.
"Yes," I said, "very."
"Do not fret, little Slave Girl," said Harold to Hereena. "You will soon be able to serve me—and I shall see that you shall do so superbly."
Irrationally, like a terrified, vicious little animal, Hereena struggled again to free herself.
Harold stood by, patiently, making no attempt to interfere.
At last, trembling with rage, she approached him, her back to him, holding her wrists to him. "Your jest has gone far enough," she said. "Free me."
"No," said Harold.
"Free me!" commanded the girl.
"No," said Harold.
She spun to face him again, tears of rage in her eyes.
"No," said Harold.
She straightened herself. "I will never go with you," she hissed. "Never! Never! Never!"
"That is interesting," said Harold. "How do you propose to prevent it?"
"I have a plan," she said.
"Of course," he said, "you are Tuchuk." He looked at her narrowly. "What is your plan?"
"It is a simple one," she responded.
"Of course," said Harold, "though you are Tuchuk, you are also female."
One of Hereena's eyebrows rose skeptically. "The simplest plans," she remarked, "are often the best."
"Upon occasion," granted Harold. "What is your plan?"
"I shall simply scream," she said.
Harold thought for a moment. "That is an excellent plan," he admitted.
"So," said Hereena, "free me—and I will give you ten Ihn to flee for your lives."
That did not seem to me like much time. The Gorean Ihn, or second, is only a little longer than the Earth second. Regardless of the standard employed, it was clear that Hereena was not being particularly generous.
"I do not choose to do so," remarked Harold.
She shrugged. "Very well," she said.
"I gather you intend to put your plan into effect," said Harold.
"Yes," she said.
"Do so," said Harold.
She looked at him for a moment and then put back her head and sucked in air and then, her mouth open, prepared to utter a wild scream.
My heart nearly stopped but Harold, at the moment just before the girl could scream, popped one of the scarves into her mouth, wadding it up and shoving it between her teeth. Her scream was only a muffled noise, hardly more than escaping air.
"I, too," Harold informed her, "had a plan—a counter-plan."
He took one of the two remaining scarves and bound it across her mouth holding the first scarf well inside her mouth.
"My plan," said Harold, "which I have now put into effect, was clearly superior to yours."
Hereena made some muffled noises. Her eyes regarded him wildly over the colored scarf and her entire body began to squirm savagely.
"Yes," said Harold, "clearly superior."
I was forced to concede his point. Standing but five feet away I could barely hear the tiny, angry noises she made.
Harold then lifted her from her feet and, as I winced, simply dropped her on the floor. She was, after all, a slave. She said something that sounded like "Ooof," when she hit the floor. He then crossed her ankles, and bound them tightly with the remaining scarf.
She glared at him in pained fury over the colored scarf.
He scooped her up and put her over his shoulder. I was forced to admit that he had handled the whole affair rather neatly.
In a short while Harold, carrying the struggling Hereena, and I had retraced our steps to the central hall and descended the steps of the porch and returned by means of the curving walks between the shrubs and pools to the flower tree by means of which we had originally entered the Pleasure Gardens of Saphrar of Turia.
20
The Keep
"By now," said Harold
, "guardsmen will have searched the roofs, so it should be safe to proceed across them to our destination."
"And where is that?" I asked.
"Wherever the tarns happen to be," he responded.
"Probably," I said, "on the highest roof of the highest building in the House of Saphrar."
"That would be," suggested Harold, "the keep."
I agreed with him. The keep, in the private houses of Goreans, is most often a round, stone tower, built for defense, containing water and food. It is difficult to fire from the outside, and the roundness—like the roundness of Gorean towers in general—tends to increase the amount of oblique hits from catapult stones.
Making our way up the flower tree with Hereena, who fought like a young she-larl, was not easy. I went part way up the tree and was handed the girl, and then Harold would go up above me and I would hoist her up a way to him, and then I would pass him, and so on. Occasionally, to my irritation, we became entangled in the trailing, looped stems of the tree, each with its richness of clustered flowers, whose beauty I was no longer in a mood to appreciate. At last we got Hereena to the top of the tree.
"Perhaps," puffed Harold, "you would like to go back and get another wench—one for yourself?"
"No," I said.
"Very well," he said.
Although the wall was several feet from the top of the tree I managed, by springing on one of the curved branches, to build up enough spring pressure to leap to where I could get my fingers over the edge of the wall. I slipped with one hand and hung there, feet scraping the wall, some fifty feet from the ground, for a nasty moment, but then managed to get both hands on the edge of the wall and hoist myself up.
"Be careful," advised Harold.
I was about to respond when I heard a stifled scream of horror and saw that Harold had hurled Hereena in my direction, across the space between the tree and the wall. I managed to catch her. She was now covered with a cold sweat and was trembling with terror. Perched on the wall, holding the girl with one hand to prevent her tumbling off, I watched Harold springing up and down and then he was leaping towards me. He, too, slipped, as I was not displeased to note, but our hands met and he was drawn to safety.
"Be careful," I advised him, attempting not to let a note of triumph permeate my admonition.
"Quite right," wheezed Harold, "as I myself earlier pointed out."
I considered pushing him off the wall, but, thinking of the height, the likelihood of breaking his neck and back and such, and consequently thereby complicating our measures for escape, I dismissed the notion as impractical, however tempting.
"Come along," he said, flinging Hereena across his shoulders like a thigh of bosk meat, and starting along the wall. We soon came, to my satisfaction, to an easily accessible, flat roof and climbed onto it. Harold laid Hereena down on the roof to one side and sat cross-legged for a minute, breathing heavily. I myself was almost winded as well.
Then overhead in the darkness we heard the beat of a tarn's wings and saw one of the monstrous birds pass above us. In a short moment we heard it flutter to alight somewhere beyond. Harold and I then got up and, with Hereena under one of his arms, we circumspectly made our way from roof to roof until we saw the keep, rising like a dark cylinder against one of Gor's three moons. It stood some seventy feet from any of the other buildings in the compound that was the House of Saphrar, but now, swaying, formed of rope and sticks, a removable footbridge extended from an open door in its side to a porch some several feet below us. The bridge permitted access to the tower from the building on the roof of which we stood. Indeed, it provided the only access, save on tarnback, for there are no doors at ground level in a Gorean keep. The first sixty feet or so of the tower would presumably be solid stone, to protect the tower from forced entrance or the immediate, efficient use of battering rams. The tower itself was some one hundred and forty feet in height and had a diameter of about fifty feet. It was furnished with numerous ports for the use of bowmen. The roof of the tower, which might have been fortified with impaling spears and tarn wire, was now clear, to permit the descent of tarns and their riders.
On the roof, as we lay there, we could hear, now and then, someone run along the footbridge. Then there was someone shouting. From time to time a tarn would descend or take flight from the roof of the keep.
When we were sure there were at least two tarns on the roof of the keep I leaped down from the roof and landed on the light bridge, struggling to retain my footing as it began to swing under my feet. Almost immediately I heard a shout from the building. "There's one of them!"
"Hurry!" I cried to Harold.
He threw Hereena down to me and I caught her on the bridge. I saw briefly the wild, frightened look in her eyes, heard what might have been a muffled plea. Then Harold had sprung down beside me on the bridge, seizing the hand rope to keep from tumbling off.
A guardsman had emerged, carrying a crossbow, framed in the light of the threshold at the entrance to the bridge from the building. There was a quarrel on the guide and he threw the weapon to his shoulder. Harold's arm flashed past me and the fellow stood suddenly still, then his knees gave slowly way beneath him and he fell to the flooring of the porch, a quiva hilt protruding from his chest, the crossbow clattering beside him.
"Go ahead," I commanded Harold.
I could now hear more men coming, running.
Then to my dismay I saw two more crossbowmen, this time on a nearby roof.
"I see them!" one of them cried.
Harold sped along the bridge, Hereena in his arms, and disappeared into the keep.
Two swordsmen now rushed from the building, leaping over the fallen crossbowman, and raced along the bridge toward me. I engaged them, dropping one and wounding the other. A quarrel from one of the crossbowmen on the roof suddenly shattered through the sticks of the bridge at my feet, splintering them not six inches from where I stood.
I backed rapidly along the bridge and another quarrel sped past me, striking sparks from the stone tower behind me. Now I could see several more guardsmen rushing toward the bridge. It would be eleven or twelve seconds before the crossbowmen would be ready to fire again. I turned and began to hack at the ropes that bound the swaying bridge to the tower. Inside I could hear a startled guard demanding to know who Harold was.
"Is it not obvious!" Harold was yelling at him. "You see I have the girl!"
"What girl?" the guard was asking.
"A wench from the Pleasure Gardens of Saphrar, you fool!" Harold was crying at him.
"But why should you be bringing such a wench here?" the guard was asking.
"You are dull, are you not!" demanded Harold. "Here—take her!"
"Very well," said the guard.
I then heard a sudden, sharp crack, as of a fist meeting bone.
The bridge began to rock and sag on its ropes and several men from the building began to thunder across towards me. Then there was a horrified cry as one rope was cut and the flooring of the bridge suddenly pitched, throwing several of the guardsmen to the ground below. A quarrel now struck the flooring of the tower at my feet and skidded into the building. I struck again and the other rope burst from my stroke and the bridge swung rapidly back against the wall of the building opposite with a clatter of sticks and cries, knocking the remaining, clinging guardsmen from it, dropping them like wood senseless to the foot of the wall. I leaped inside the door of the keep and swung it shut. Just as I did so the bolt of a crossbow struck the door and splintered through it, its head projecting some six inches on my side. I then flung the two bars in position, which locked the door, lest men on ladders from the ground attempt to force it.
The room in which I found myself contained an unconscious guard, but no further sign of Harold or Hereena. I then climbed up a wooden ladder to the next level, which was empty, and then another level and another, and another. Then I emerged in the chamber below the roof of the keep and there found Harold, sitting on the bottom rung of the last ladder, breathing heavi
ly, Hereena lying squirming at his feet. "I have been waiting for you," said Harold, gasping.
"Let us proceed," I said, "lest the tarns be flown from the roof and we be isolated in the tower."
"My plan exactly," said Harold, "but first should you not teach me to master the tarn?"
I heard Hereena moan with horror and she began to struggle madly to free herself of the scarves that bound her.
"Normally," I said, "it takes years to become a skilled tarnsman."
"That is all well and good," responded Harold, "but can you not impart certain important information relating to the matter in a briefer span?"
"Come to the roof!" I cried.
I preceded Harold up the ladder and thrust up the trap admitting us to the roof. On the roof there were five tarns. One guard was even then approaching the trap. The other was releasing the tarns one by one.
I was ready to engage the first guard, half on the ladder, but Harold's head emerged from the opening behind me. "Don't fight," he called to the guard. "It is Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba, you fool!"
"Who is Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba?" asked the guard, startled.
"I am," I responded, not knowing much what else to say.
"This is the girl," Harold was saying. "Hurry, take her!"
The guard sheathed his sword. "What is the trouble below?" he asked. "Who are you?"
"Do not ask questions," snapped Harold, "here is the girl—take her!"
The guard shrugged and as he took Hereena from Harold I winced as the young man felled him with a blow that might have broken the skull of a bosk. Deftly, before she had fallen, Harold nipped Hereena from the guard's arms. He then tumbled the guard down the trap to the level below.
The other guard, across the dark roof, was bending to work with the tarn hobbles. He had already released two of the great birds, driving them from the roof with a tarn goad.
"You there!" cried Harold. "Release one more tarn!"