Raiders of Gor (33 page)

eluded me. I expect to pick up some of them, however. And, of tarn ships, I have

one captured, your flagship, and from the reports of my captains, some eighteen

or twenty have been seriously damaged or sunk. That would leave you with some

ten, or perhaps twelve, ships yet abroad on Thassa.”

At that point, from the foremast of a nearby round ship, where I had placed a

lookout, came the cry, “Twelve sail! Twelve said abeam!”

“Ah,” said I, “twelve ships, it seems.”

“They will fight!” cried the admiral. “You have not yet won!”

“Doubtless they will strike their masts,” I said, “but I do not think they will

fight.”

He looked at me, his fists clenched in his irons.

“Thurnock,” said I, “signal seventeen of my twenty ships to present themselves

to our apparoaching friends. Let two remain on the far side of the treasure

fleet. The Dorna, for the time will remain here. The seventeen ships are not to

enter battle unless accompained by the Dorna, and under no conditions, if battle

ensues, are any of my ships to move more than four pasangs from the fleet.”

“Yes, Captain,” roared Thurock, turning and crossing on the plank to the deck of

the Dorna, then taking his way to the shielded flag racks at the foot of her

stem castle.

Soon the flags were whipping from the halyards.

Battled preparations were underway on my ships. Seventeen soon began to move

around the fleet, or come about, to face the approaching twelve vessels. Men sat

ready at the oars of the Dorna, should I come aboard her. Others, with axes,

stood ready to chop away the lines that now bound the Dorna to the flagship.

“They are striking their masts!” came the cry from the lookout.

In a quarter Ahn my vessels were aligned for battle. The enemy fleet, the twelve

ships, was now, by estimate from the lookout, with his glass, some four pasangs

distant.

If they came within two pasangs, I would board the Dorna.

I had the admiral freed of his leg irons and he and I, from the stem castle of

his own ship, regarded the approaching ships.

“Do you wager,” I asked him, “that they come within two pasangs?”

“They will fight!” he said.

The Lady Vivina, prepared for the prow, stood nearby, a sailor’s hand on her

arm, she, too, watching the approaching ships.

Then the admiral cried out with rage and the Lady Vivina, her hand at her

breasts, eyes horrified, cried out, “No, No!”

The twelve ships had put about, taking their course now for Cos.

“Take the admiral away,” I said to Turnock.

The admiral was dragged away.

I looked on the Lady Vivina. Our eyes met. “Put her at the prow,” I said.

15
   
How Bosk Returned in Triumph to Port Kar

The return to Port Kar was triumphal indeed.

I wore the purple of a fleet admiral, with a golden cap with tassel, and gold

trim on the sleeves and borders of my robes, with cloak to match.

I wore at my side a jeweled sword, no longer the sword I had worn for the long

years when I had served Priest-Kings. That sword, shortly after coming to Port

Kar, I had put aside, and purchased others. I did not feel, somehow, that I

should carry that old sword any longer. It stood for too many things, and its

steel was deep with too many memories. It spoke to me of an old life, that of a

fool, which I, now grown wise, had put from me. Besides, more importantly, it

was insufficiently grand, with its plain pommel and unfigured blade, for one of

my position, one of the most significant me in one of Gor’s greatest prots. I

was Bosk, a simple, but shrewd man, who had come from the marshes to startle

Port Kar and dazzle and shake the cities of Gor with my cunning and my blade,

and now my power and wealth.

My ten search vessels had managed to bring in five of the seven missing round

ships, four of which had been, foolishly, striking out directly for Telnus in

Cos. The world, I thought, is filled with fools. There are the fools, and there

are the wise, and I could now surely, perhaps for the first time, count myself

securely among the latter.

I stood at the prow of the long, purple ship, which had been the flagship of the

treasure fleet. The rooftops and the windows of the buildings were crowded with

cheering throngs, and I lifted my arm to them and accepted their acclaim. The

ships, in a splendid, long line, filing behind me, the Dorna first, then the

tarn ships, then the round ships, under oars, move slowly through the city,

following the triumphal circuit of the great canal, passing even before the

chamber of the Council of Captains.

Flowers had been scattered in the canal, and others were thrown on our ships as

we passed.

The cheers and cries were deafening.

I had decreed that from my shares of the treasure, each worker in the arsenal

would receive one gold piece, and each citizen of the city of a silver tarsk.

I lifted my hand to the crowd, smiling and waving.

Near me, chief among my prizes, exposed to the crowds, their hootings and

jeerings, bound on the prow, ankles and wrists, neck and belly, like a common

slave girl, was the Lady Vivina, who was to have been the Ubara of Cos.

Few men, thought I, have enjoyed such a triumph as thish.

And, petty though it might seem, I was eager to present myself before Midice, my

favored slave, with my new robes and treasures. I could now give her garments

and jewels that would be the envy of Ubaras. I could well imagine the wonder in

her eyes as she understood the greatness of her master, her joy, the eagerness

with which she would now serve me.

I was well satisfied.

How simple it is, I thought, to become a true man, powerful and predatory,

self-regarding, and self-seeking. It requires only to put apart from oneself the

hesitations and trammels which the weak and the fools would impose upon

themselves, making themselves and their fortunes their prisoners. In coming to

Port Kar I had, for the first time, become free.

I lifted my hand to the corwds. Flowers fell about me. I looked at the girl

bound on the prow, my prize. I accepted the acclaim of the wild thongs.

I was Bosk, who could do as he pleased, who could take what he wanted.

I laughed.

Had there ever been triumph such as this is Port Kar?

I brought with me fifty-eight ships: the flagship of the treasure fleet, Vivina

bound at its prow, the Dorna, the other twenty-nine ships which had composed my

original fleet, and, as prizes, laden with wealth which might have been the

ransom of cities, a full twenty-seven of the thirty round ships of the fabulous

treasure fleet of Cos and Tyros. And bound at the prow of the first forty ships,

following the flagship, beginning with the Dorna, and then the tarn ships and

the first ten and largets of the captured round ships, was a high-born beauty,

once intended to be the maiden of Cos’s Ubara, now, like herseld, destined only

for the brand and collar of a slave girl.

I raised my hand to the cheering crowds.

“This is Port Kar,” I told Vivina.

She said nothing.

The wild crowds screamed and shouted, and threw flowers, and the flagship, oars

dipping in stately fashion, took her regal path, ram’s crest dividing flowers in

the water, between the buildings lining the great canal.

I stood among the falling flowers, my hand lifted to the crowds.

“Should I put you in a public paga tavern,” I said, “doubtless hundreds of these

would crowd its doors, that they might be served by one once destined to be a

Ubara in Cos.”

“Slay me,” she said.

I waved to the crowds.

“My maidens?” she asked.

“Slaves,” I said.

“Myself?” she asked.

“Slave,” said I.

She closed her eyes.

In the five days it had taken to reach Port Kar from the scene of the engagement

with the treasure fleet, due to the slowness of the round ships, I had not kept

Vivina, and her maidens, of course, at the prows of the ships. I had only placed

them there in victory, and now again, for the entry of Port Kar.

I recalled, late the first night, under ship’s torches, I had had Vivina brought

down from the prow and brought before me.

I received her in the admiral’s cabin, which was, of course, on the treasure

fleet’s flagship.

“If I remember correctly,” I had said, behind the admiral’s table, busied with

papers, “in the hall of the Ubar of Cos you told me that you did not frequent

the rowing holds of round ships.”

She looked at me. There had been laughter from my men present. High-born ladies

commonly sail in cabins, located in the stern castles of either ram-ships or

round ships. She had had, of course, a luxurious cabin in the flagship of the

treasure fleet, this very ship.

“I asked you, as I recall,” I had reminded her, “if you had ever been in the

hold of a round ship?”

She said nothing.

“You responded that you had not, as I recall,” I had said, “and then, I

mentioned that perhapss someday you would have the opportunity.”

“No,” she said, “please no!”

I had then turned to some of my men. “Take this lady, “ said I to them, “in a

long boat to the largest of the round ships, one rowed by captured officers of

the treasure fleet, and chain her there, with other treasures, in the rowing

hold.”

“Please,” she begged. “Please!”

“I trust you will find the accommodations satisfactory,” I said.

She drew herself up to her full height. “I am sure I shall,” said she.

“You may conduct the Lady Vivina to her quarters,” I told the seaman responsible

for her.

“Come along, Girl,” said he to her.

Like a Ubara she turned and followed him.

But before she had left my cabin, she turned again at the door. “Only slave

girls, I understand,” said she, “are kept chained below decks in round ships.”

“Yes,” I said.

Angrily she turned, and left, following the seaman.

Now, in my triumphal entry and course through Port Kar, I looked again upon her.

I saw that she had again opened her eyes.

On the prow, she passed slowly beneath the men, and the women and children, on

the rooftops, many of whom called out to her, hooting and jeering her.

I took two talenders which had fallen on my shoulder and fastened them in the

ropes at her neck.

This delighted the crowds, who cried out their pleasure.

“No,” she begged. “Not talenders.”

“Yes,” said I, “talenders.”

The talender is a flower which, in the Gorean mind, is associated with beauty

and passion. Free Companions, on the Feast of their Free Companionship, commonly

wear a garland of talenders. Sometimes slave girls, having been subdued, but

fearing to speak, will fix talenders in their hair, that their master may know

that they have at last surrendered themselves to him as helpless love slaves. to

put talenders in the neck ropes of the girl at the prow, of course, was only

mockery, indicative of her probable disposition as pleasure slave.

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

“Whe the treasures have been checked, tallied, and appraised, which should take

some four or five weeks,” I told her, “you, with your maidens, in the chains of

slave girls, will be displayed, together with samples of, and full accountings

of, the other treasures, before the Council of Captains.”

“We are booty?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Apparently then, Captain,” said she, icily, “you have perhaps a full month of

triumph before you.”

“Yes,” I said, waving again to the crowds, “that is true.”

“What will you do with us after we have been displayed before the council of

captains?” she asked.

“That,” I told her, “you may wait until then to find out.”

“I see,” she said, and turned her head away.

More flowers fell, and there was more cheering, and hooting and jeers for the

bound girl.

Had there ever been triumph such as this in Port Kar, I asked myself, and

answered, doubtless never, and smiled, for I knew that this was but the

beginning. The climax would occur in some four or five weeks in the formal

presentations before the Council, and in the receipt of its highest accolade as

worthy captain of Port Kar.

“Hail Port Kar!” I cried to the crowds.

“Hail Port Kar!” they cried. “And hail Bos, Admiral of Port Kar!”

“Hail Bosk!” cried my retainers. “Hail Bosk, Admiral of Port Kar!”

It was now five weeks after my triumphal entry into Port Kar.

In this very afternoon the formal presentations and accountings of the victory

and its plunder had taken place in the chamber of the Council of Captains.

I rose to my feet and lifted my goblet of paga, acknowledging the cries of my

retainer.

The goblets clashed and we drank.

It had been five weeks of entertainments, of fetes, of banquets and honors piled

one upon another. The treasures taken were rich beyond our wildest expectations,

beyond the most remote calculations of our most avaricious scribes. And now, in

this very afternoon, my glories had been climaxed in the chamber of the Council

of Captains, in which had taken place the formal presentations and accountings

of the victory and its pluder, in which had taken place the commendation of the