Hunters of Gor (41 page)

was not displeased that they had not done so. I had no wish to beat them. It

would have cost me time.

The piles of branches and driftwood was some twenty pasangs south of the camp of

the men of Tyros.

The girls smiled at me, they were weary.

“To the edge of the forest, Slaves,” I told them.

At the fringe of the forest, overlooking the sloping beach, covered with its

stones, and, lower, with its sand. I found a strong, slender tree, with an

outjutting branch some five feet from the ground, the branch facing away from

the water.

“You will have the first watch,” I told Tina. “You are to alert me to the

presence of a sail or sails on the horizon.”

“Yes, Master,” said Tina.

I shoved her back against the tree.

“Put your arms over your head,” I told her. “Now bend your elbows.”

I tied each wrist separately, tightly, again the tree, lopping the binding fiber

about the tree twice, and twice over the outjutting branch. She stood, thus,

facing the sea, her wrists tied back, against each side of the tree.

With another length of binding fiber I jerked her belly back against the tree,

tying it there, tightly.

“If you fall asleep,” I told her, “I will cut your throat.”

She looked at me. “Yes, Master,” she whispered.

I thrust some strips of tabuk meat from my walled into her mouth.

“Eat,” I told her.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

I also gave her some water from the guard’s canteen.

“Thank you, Master,” she said.

I looked at Cara.

“It will not be necessary to bind me,” said Cara.

“Lie on your stomach,” I told her, “and cross your wrists, behind your back, and

your ankles.”

“Yes, Master,” she said.

I also secured her by the neck, by means of a thong, to a nearby tree.

I turned her over. “Open your mouth,” I told her.

She did so.

I thrust some strips of tabuk meat into her mouth.

“Eat,” I told her.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

When she was finished, I lifted her in my left arm, giving her to drink from the

canteen.

“Thank you, Master,” she whispered.

I recalled how she had looked in the compartments of Samos, so long ago, when he

and I had addressed our attentions to the board of the game, and while Rim, then

a slave, chained, had watched.

I looked at Tina, tied, back against the tree, my slave. How long ago it seemed

she had cut my purse in a street along the wharves of Lydius.

Both had been swept up, helpless slaves, both beautiful, in the harsh games of

men.

But it was unimportant. They were only slaves.

I fed from the tabuk strips in my wallet, looking out to sea, and then drank

from the canteen of the guard.

I was weary.

I returned to where Cara lay bound. She was helpless, and beautiful. She was

slave. Already she was asleep.

I lay down on the leaves to rest.

I looked up at the branches, and the leaves and then I, too, almost immediately

fell asleep.

I awakened only once before nightfall, to change the position of Tina and Cara.

I wished Tina to be fresh. She was asleep even before I had thonged her neck to

the tree.

At nightfall I arose. I freed both Cara and Tina. I looked up at the moons. They

rubbed their wrists, where my binding fiber had bitten into them.

I looked out to sea, across the vast, placid waters of Thassa, now bright with

oblique moonlight. We three stood together on the beach, on the sands, among the

stones, and observed Thassa, the murmuring, gleaming, elemental vastness, Thassa

the Sea, said in the myths to be without a farther shore.

It seemed to me not unlikely that this would be the night.

“How beautiful it is,” said Cara.

I saw no sails on the horizon, against the fast-graying sky.

I took water from the canteen, and ate strips of tabuk meat from my wallet.

The girls regarded me. They, too, were hungry and thirsty.

“Kneel,” I told them.

When I had satisfied my thirst, there was little left in the canteen. I threw it

to Cara. She and Tina then finished the bit of water remaining. When I had

satisfied my hunger on the tabuk strips, there was but one left. I tore it in

two and threw half to each of the girls.

They were Gorean girls, and slaves. They did not complain. They knew that they

had been fed earlier in the day. They knew that, if it were not my will, they

would not be fed at all.

Access to food and water is a means of controlling and training slaves, as it is

of any animal.

I looked upward. The moonlight would not last for more than an Ahn. I was

pleased.

Clouds, like tarns from the north, swept in some stratospheric wind, were moving

southward. Their flight was black and silent, concealing the stars, darkening

the sky.

On the beach it was quiet, a calm night, in early summer.

What turbulence there was, was remote, seemingly far removed from us, a matter

only of clouds, silently whipped in distant, unfelt winds, like rivers,

invisible in the sky, breaking their banks, hurling and flooding in the night,

carrying the intangible debris of darkness before them, soon to extinguish the

fires of the stars, the swift lamps of the three Gorean moons.

The night was calm, a still evening in early summer, rather warm. Somewhere,

abroad the Thassa, concealed by the bending of a world, moved the Rhoda and

Tesephone.

But they must be near. They had a rendezvous to keep.

I looked out to sea.

Thassa seemed now an unbroken vastness, where a black sky met a blacker sea.

We could hear her, restless.

“It is time,” I told the slaves.

Together we picked our way down the beach, across the stones, across the soft

sands, until we came to the side of the great accumulation of branches and

driftwood which we had earlier prepared.

From my wallet I took a small, smooth stone and a tiny, flat metal disk.

I lighted a brand.

This brand I then thrust into the great pile of branches and driftwood.

Gorean galleys do not commonly sail at night, and, often put into shore during

darkness.

I expected, however, because of the dangers of the shores of Thassa, and the

importance of their mission, the Rhoda and Tesephone, though they might like at

anchor, would not make a beach camp. Had I been the commander of the two ships I

would have laid to offshore, coming in only when necessary for water or game. I

would also, however, following common Gorean naval custom, have remained within

sight of, or in clear relation to, the shore. The Gorean galley, carvel built,

long and of shallow draft, built for war and speed, is not built to withstand

the frenzies of Thassa. The much smaller craft of the men of Torvaldsland,

clinker built, with overlapping, bending planking, are more seaworthy. They must

be, to survive in the bleak, fierce northern waters, wind-whipped and

skerry-studded. They ship a great deal more water than the southern carvel-built

ships, but they are stronger, in the sense that they are more elastic. They must

be baled, frequently, and are, accordingly, not well suited for cargo. The men

of Torsvaldland, however, do not find this limitation with respect to cargo a

significant one, as they do not, generally, regard themselves as merchants or

traders. They have other pursuits, in particular the seizure of riches and the

enslavement of beautiful women.

Their sails, incidentally, are square, rather than triangular, like the

lateen-rigged ships of the south. They cannot said as close to the wind as the

southern ships with lateen rigging, but, on the other hand, the square sails

makes it possible to do with a single sail, taking in and letting out canvas, as

opposed to several sails, which are attached to and removed from the yard, which

is raised and lowered, depending on weather conditions.

It might be mentioned too, that their ships hare, in effect a prow on each end.

This makes it easier to beach them than would otherwise be the case. This is a

valuable property in rough water close to shore, particularly where there is

danger of rocks. Also, by changing their position on the thwarts, the rowers,

facing the other direction, can, with full power, immediately reverse the

direction of the ship. They need not wait for it to turn. There is a limitation

her, of course, for the steering oar, on the starboard side of the ship, is most

effective when the ship is moving in its standard “forward” direction.

Nonetheless, this property to travel in either direction with some facility, is

occasionally useful. It is, for example, extremely difficult to ram a ship of

Torvaldsland. This is not simply because of their general size, with consequent

maneuverability, and speed, a function of oarsmen, weight and lines, but also

because of this aforementioned capacity to rapidly reverse direction. It is very

difficult to take a ship in the side which, in effect, does not have to lose

time in turning.

Their ships are seen as far to the south as Shendi and Bazi, as far to the north

as the great frozen sea, and are known as far to the west as the cliffs of Tyros

and the terraces of Cos. The men of Torvaldsland are rovers and fighters, and

sometimes they turn their prows to the open sea with no thought in mind other

than seeing what might lie beyond the gleaming horizon. In their own legends

they think of themselves as poets, and lovers and warriors. They appear

otherwise in the legends of others. In the legends of others they appear as

blond giants, breathing fire, shattering doors, giants taller than trees, with

pointed ears and eyes like fire and hands like great claws and hooks; they are

seen as savages, as barbarians, as beasts blood-thirsty and mad with killing,

with braided hair, clad in furs and leather, with bare chests, with great axes

which, at a single stroke, can fell a tree or cut a man in two. It is said they

appear as though from nowhere to pillage, and to burn and rape, and then, among

the flames, as quickly, vanish to their swift ships, carrying their booty with

them, whether it be bars of silver, or goblets of gold, or silken sheets,

knotted and bulging with plate, and coins and gems, or merely women, bound,

their clothing torn away, whose bodies they find pleasing.

In Gorean legends the Priest-Kings are said to have formed man from the mud of

the earth and the blood of tarns. In the legends of Torvaldsland, man has a

different origin. Gods, meeting in council, decided to form a slave for

themselves, for they were all gods, and had no slaves. They took a hoe, an

instrument for working the soil, and put it among them. They then sprinkled

water upon this implement and rubbed upon it sweat from their bodies. From this

hoe was formed most men. On the other hand, that night, one of the gods,

curious, or perhaps careless, or perhaps driven from the hall and angry, threw

down upon the ground his own great ax, and upon this ax he poured paga and his

own blood, and the ax laughed and leaped up, and ran away. The god, and all the

gods, could not catch it, and it became, it is said, the father of the men of

Torvaldsland.

There was, of course, another reason why the commander of the Rhoda and

Tesephone would keep within sight of the shore.

He had a signal to observe. He must not miss the beacon, which, somewhere along

this lonely, sandy shore, in its hundred of pasangs, would mark the position of

Sarus and his men, Hura, and her women, and their captive slaves.

Even if he lay to, if he held his ships within ten or more pasangs, he would see

our marker, that great blaze in the darkness of the night. And, seeing it, he

would doubtless take it fore the beacon of Sarus.

I looked at Tina. One side of her body was red in the reflected light of the

great fire.

“Can you be attractive to men?” I asked.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“Keep the fire high,” I told her.

“Yes, Master,” said the exciting little wench.

“Come with me,” I told Cara.

I took Cara into the woods, some hundred yards from the forest’s edge.

“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.

I tied her wrists together behind her back, about a small tree. Then I tore off

the tatters of her white woolen slave garment, ripping it into strips. I gagged

her, tightly.

She looked at me, her eyes wild over the gag.

Then I left her.

I returned to the edge of the forest. Dimly, far off, across the water, I could

see two lanterns.

I was satisfied.

I called to Tina, softly, from the shadows of the forest. She turned about and,

unsuspecting, walked back to me.

In the darkness I took her, suddenly, by the arms and thrust her rudely up

against a tree. She gasped.

“What is the duty of a slave girl?” I inquired.

“Absolute obedience,” she said, frightened.

“What are you?” I inquired.

“A slave girl,” she said.

“What is your duty?” I asked.

“Absolute obedience,” she cried out.

I looked out to sea. The two lanterns were now closer.

“Kneel,” I told Tina.

She did so immediately, frightened, her head to the ground.

Some four hundred yards away from shore, by my conjecture, the two lanterns