Captive of Gor (36 page)

closing in on me.

I could do nothing but fly toward the silence.

Then, in the sunlight of the bright morning, late, almost at noon, I fled from

the thicket, across the grass of the open field.

I ran irrationally, driven, terrified.

I kept running.

Then, exhausted, I looked back. The peasants had stopped at the edge of the

Ka-la-na thicket, in their great numbers. They no longer shouted, they no longer

beat on their pans.

I looked ahead of me. There was nothing. No strong peasant lads waited there, to

run me down, to strip and bind me, and lead me, my neck roped, back to the

village. There were no nets. There was nothing.

(pg. 250) I cried out with joy and fled across the grasses.

They had wanted only to drive me from the thicket!

I was still free.

I stopped.

I stood in the bright, knee-high grasses of that windblown, flowing field. I

felt the sun on my body, the grass touching my calves. My feet felt beneath them

the black, warm, root-filled, living earth of Gor. The Ka-la-na thicket was

yellow in the distance, the peasants standing at its edge, not moving. The sky

was deep, and blue, and bright with sunlight. I inhaled the fresh, glorious air

of the planet Gor. How beautiful it was!

The peasants did not pursue me.

I was free!

I put my head back and standing feet spread, leaned backwards, with my hands

spreading my hair in the wind. I felt the wind lift it. I was pleased.

I was free!

Suddenly my hand flew before my mouth. High, lofty, small in the vertical depths

of that glorious sky, there was a speck. I shook my head, no! No!

I looked back toward the peasants. They had not moved.

I knelt down on one knee in the grasses, my eyes fixed on the speck.

It was circling.

I saw it far overhead, first to my right, and then behind me, and then to my

left, and then before me.

I cried out with misery.

I knew myself, small on the grasses, far below, to be the center of that circle.

I began to run, madly, frantically across the grasses.

I stopped, and turned, and looked back and upward. I cried out with misery. I

saw the bird turn, swirling in the sky. I saw the sun, for a brief instant,

flash from the helmet of its rider. The bird had wheeled in my direction. It was

now screaming, descending, wings beating, streaking towards me.

I screamed and began to run, madly, irrationally, across the grasses.

(pg. 251) I heard the scream of the bird behind me, and the beating of its great

wings, closer and closer!

I stumbled, screaming, then running again. I might have been a golden-pelted

tabuk, but I was a girl!

The scream of the bird deafened me and its wings broke like thunder about my

ears.

The shadow streaked past me.

The leather loop dropped about my body. In an instant it had jerked tight,

pinning my arms helplessly to my sides, and I felt my body, my back almost

broken, jerked from the grass. The grass rushed swiftly past below me, and I

could not touch it with my feet, and then it fled from me, dropping way, and

then suddenly, in the rushing air, as I twisted and turned, buffeted in the

blasts of wind, a prisoner of the forces, the physics, of the braided leather

rope and the accelerations and attitudes, it seemed the sky was below me and the

grass overhead, and then I lost my breath, as the tarn began to climb, and I

gasped, the grass and the sky, and the horizon, now spinning, and I screamed,

crying out, my arms pinned, my hands helpless, unable to hold the rope, and I

felt it slip an inch on my body, and I saw the earth now below, so far below,

and the Ka-la-na thicket in the distance, like a patch of foliage on a lawn, and

I swung, wildly, helplessly, the captive of that taut, slender leather strand by

which I was bound, forty feet below the tarn, now hundreds of feet above the

earth below me.

The rope slipped another quarter of an inch on my body, and I screamed!

Then, the rope, pressing itself cruelly into my arms and body, lodged itself

firmly.

It slipped no more.

I was effectively imprisoned by the weight of my own body. I feared only that

the rope might break.

The tarn then began to wheel, and soar, and I swung below it, dangling and

bound, hundreds of feet above the grasses below.

(pg. 252) It was turning back toward the Ka-la-na thicket, now remote in the

distance, far below.

I felt myself being pulled, foot by foot, upward. I felt the rope press even

more cruelly into my body, and I felt myself, foot by foot, lifted. My hands

felt so helpless. I wanted to clutch the rope, to hold it! But I could not.

Then, looking up, I saw the great talons of the tarn, held in against its body,

above me. They were huge, curved and sharp.

I felt my body dragged against the side of the bird, and then I felt my shoulder

rub against the metal and leather of the saddle, and a man’s leg.

Then he held me in his arms. I could not move, so terrified was I.

I saw his eyes, through the apertures in his helmet. They seemed amused. I

looked away.

He laughed.

It was a great, raw laugh, that of a tarnsman. I shuddered.

He removed the tarn rope from my body. On the saddle before him, facing him, I

clung about his neck, terrified that I might fall. He coiled the tarn rope, and

fastened it at the side of the saddle.

He then removed his tarn knife from his belt.

I felt the knife between the camisk and the binding fiber that belted it on my

body. There was a movement of the knife and the binding fiber whipped from my

body and, in the rushing wind, the camisk began to tug, snapping away from me,

and then it was high, about my throat, pulling at my neck, flapping and

snapping. He lifted it over my head and it flew behind the tarn. I felt against

my body his leather, the buckle of his tarn belt. My cheek lay against the metal

of his helmet. My hair streaked with the wind.

With his two hands he disengaged my arms from his neck.

“Lie before me, on your back,” he said, “and cross your wrists and ankles.”

Terribly afraid of falling, I did so.

(pg. 253) He bent across my body and I felt my crossed wrists lashed to a saddle

ring. He then bent to the other side and, in moments, I felt my crossed ankles

lashed to another ring.

I lay there on my back before him, my body a bow, bound helplessly across his

saddle.

He slapped my belly twice.

He then laughed another great laugh, that great raw laugh, that of a tarnsman,

who has his prize bound helpless before him.

I cursed my misfortune, that I had been driven from the thicket when a tarnsman

had been in the sky!

I pulled at my bound wrists, and ankles, fastened to the rings.

I turned my head to one side and wept.

I had again fallen captive.

What an incredible misfortune that I had been driven from the thicket just at

the moment when a tarnsman had been in the sky!

I then became aware that the tarn was circling, and descending.

It was hard to breathe. I could see little but the sky, and the clouds.

Then, with a jolt to my back, and with a scattering of dust and a snapping of

wings, the tarn alit.

I became aware, as well as I could see, that we stood in the midst of a clearing

in a peasant village. I could see, my head hanging down, in the distance a great

thicket of Ka-la-na. Peasants were crowding about. Turning my head to one side,

I could see men with spears and flails, in peasant tunics. Women and children,

too, in the dusty square crowded about. I heard some clanging of pans. I saw

sticks in the hands of some of the children.

“I see you have her, Warrior,” said a large peasant, bearded, in a rough tunic

of rep cloth.

I trembled.

“You flushed her well into the field,” said the warrior. “My thanks.”

(pg. 254) I groaned in misery.

“It is little enough for the many services you have rendered us,” said the man.

“She stole meat from us last night,” said a man.

“Yes,” said another, “and before that, the night before, from the village of

Rorus.”

“Give her to us, Warrior,” said a man, “for a quarter of an Ahn, for a

switching.”

The warrior laughed. I trembled.

“There are men of Rorus here, too,” said the man. “They, too, would like to

punish her. Give her to us for a quarter of an Ahn, that we may switch her.”

Bound, I trembled.

“Let us switch her,” cried the women and the children. “Let us switch her!”

Upside down, fastened in the straps, I shook with fear.

“What is the cost of the meat?” inquired the warrior.

The people were silent.

From a pouch he threw a coin to a man of the village, and another to another

man, doubtless one of the other village, called Rorus.

“Thank you, Warrior,” they cried. “Our thanks!”

“Her first beating,” said the warrior, in his strong voice, “is mine to bestow!”

There was much laughter. I pulled helplessly at the straps.

“I wish you well!” they cried.

I felt the one-strap of the tarn harness jerk tight across my body, and

suddenly, taking my breath away, the great bird screamed and began to beat its

wings, and the saddle pressed up against my back, and I, upside down, saw the

conical huts of the peasants drop away below us, and the bird, stroke by

violent, majestic stroke, its head forward, was climbing toward the clouds.

* * *

The tarn streaked through the skies. I could fell the wind on my body. I lay

bound over the saddle. My hair (pg. 255) fled back in the wind, across his left

thigh. I could scarcely move my wrists and ankles. He had lashed them securely.

He was incredibly strong. Never before, even in the hut, had I been tied more

tightly, more helplessly. I did not know where we were going, or even in what

direction we were flying. I knew only that I, Elinor Brinton, a captured girl,

was being carried helplessly, cruelly bound, tightly and uncompromisingly

secured, into slavery.

It is now clear to me that we were flying southeastward.

Shortly after we had attained the skies, and he had set his direction, he turned

me on my flank, facing him, and, with the fingers of his right hand, fingered my

brand. “Only a Kajira,” he said. Then, with the palm of his hand he thrust me

back on my back.

In a moment or two, he reached down and took my hair, lifting my head,

painfully, and turning it from side to side. “Your ears are pierced,” he said.

Then he dropped my head back against the side of the saddle.

I groaned, helplessly.

The tarn streaked on.

Once, he said to me, “We are crossing the Vosk.”

I knew then we were within the territory of Ar, and must be high over the Margin

of Desolation, a barren area, now recovering itself, which, years ago, had been

cleared and devastated, that the northern fields of Ar by such a natural

barrier, by such a wall of hunger and thirst, might be protected, presumably

from invasion from the north or, more likely, from the incursions of Vosk

pirates. In the reign of Marlenus, prior to his exile, and later, after his

restoration, the Margin of Desolation had been deliberately left untended, that

it might recover. Marlenus had set a swift fleet of light, Vosk galleys to clear

the river waters adjoining his Ubarate of pirates. They had been successful, or

muchly so. Seldom did Vosk pirates ply their trade where the Vosk bordered the

regions of Ar. Other cities, to the north, of course, looked with apprehension

on Marlenus’ permitting the Margin of Desolation to recover its fertility and

shade. He may have been only intending to extend the arable lands of Ar. On the

other hand, under Marlenus, it became clear (pg. 256) that Ar no longer feared

for her borders. Also, the ambition of Marlenus, the Ubar of Ar, said to be the

Ubar of Ubars, was well known. If it was now possible, or soon would be

possible, to bring a land army easily southward to Ar, once the Vosk was

traversed , by the same token, it would be similarly possible for Ar to bring,

swiftly a considerable force of men northward, to the very shore of the Vosk. Of

tradition, the northern shore of the Vosk was disputed by various cities. Ar,

among others, had mde her claims.

Ahn after Ahn, the tarn flew.

He did not unbind me to feed me.

“Open your mouth,” he said.

He thrust yellow Sa-Tarna bread into my mouth. I chewed the bread and, with

difficulty, swallowed it. He then, with his tarn knife, from a piece of raw bosk

meat, cut four small pieces of meat, which he placed in my mouth. “Feed,” he

said. I chewed the meat, eyes closed, swallowing it. “Drink,” he said. He thrust

the horn nozzle of a leather bota of water between my teeth. I almost choked. He

withdrew the nozzle and capped the bota, replacing it in his saddle pack. I

closed my eyes, miserable. I had been fed and watered.

The tarn flew on.

After a time I looked up at the warrior who had captured me.

He seemed broad chested, and broad shouldered. He had a large head, muchly

concealed within the war helmet. He carried his head proudly. His arms were

strong, muscular and bronzed. His hands were large, and rough, fit for weapons.