Raiders of Gor (8 page)

could be reflected only from moment to moment, in her breathing, in the beating

of the heart.

“Perhaps it is I,” she said, “who am your mistress.”

She, like the other, spit then in my face and turned away, now moving fully,

enveloped in the music’s flame.

One after another of the girls so danced before me, and about me, taunting me,

laughing at their power, then spitting upon me and turning away.

The rencers laughed and shouted, clapping, chering the girls on in the dance.

But most of the time I was ignored, as much as the pole to which I was bound.

Mostly these girls, saving for a moment or two to humiliate me, danced their

beauty for the young men of the cicles, that they might be desired, that they

might be much sought.

After a time I saw one girl leave the circles, her head back, hair flowing down

her back, breathing deeply, and scarcely was she through the circles of rencers,

but a young man followed her, joining her some yards beyond the circle. They

stood facing one another in the darkness for an Ehn or two, and then I saw him,

gently, she not protesting, drop his net over her, and then, by this net, she

not protesting, he led her away/ Together they disappeared in the darkness,

going over one of the raft bridges to another island, one far from the

firelight, the crowd, the noise, the dance.

Then, after some Ehn I saw another girl leave the circile of the dance, and she,

too, was joined beyond the firelight by a young man and she, too, felt a net

dropped over her, and she, too, was led away, his willing prize, to secrecy of

his hut.

The dance grew more frenzied.

The girls whirled and writhed, and the crowd clapped and shouted, and the music

grew ever more wild, barbaric and fantastic.

And suddenly Telima danced before me.

I cried out, so startled was I by her beauty.

It seemed to me that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and

before me, only slave, she danced her insolence and scorn. Her hands were over

her hand and, as she danced, she smiled, regarding me. She cut me with her

beauty more painfully, more cruelly, than might have the knives of a torturer.

It was her scorn, her contempt for me she danced. In me she aroused aginies of

desire but in her eyes I read that I was but the object of her amusement and

contempt.

And then she unbound me.

“Go to the hut,” she said.

I stood there at the pole.

Torrents of barbaric music swept about us, and there was the clapping and the

shouting, and the turning, and the twisting and swirling of the rence girls, the

passion of the dance burning in their bodies.

“Yes,” she said. “I own you.”

She spat up in my face.

“Go to the hut,” she said.

I stumbled from the pole, making my way through the buffeting circle of dancers,

through the laughing circles of rencers, shouting and clapping their hands, and

made my way to Telima’s hut.

I stood outside in the darkness.

I wiped her spittle from my face.

Then, falling to my hands and knees, lowering my head, I crawed into the hut.

I sat there in the darkness, my head in my hands.

Outside I could hear the music, the cries and clapping, the shouts of the rence

girls dancing under the moons of Gor.

I sat for a long time in the darkness.

Then Telima entered, as one who owns the hut, as though I was not there.

“Light the lamp,” she said to me.

I did so, fumbling in the darkness, striking together the flint and steel,

sparks falling into the small bowl of dried petals of the rences. In this tiny

flame I thrust a bit of rence stem, from a bundle of such, and, with it, lit the

tiny tharlarion-oil lamp set in its copper bowl. I put the bit of rence stem

back, as I had seen Telima do, in the small bowl of petals, where, with the

flaming petals, it was soon extinguished. The tharlarion-oil lamp, now lit,

flickering, illuminated the interiour of the hut with a yellowish light.

She was eating a rence cake. Her mouth was half full. She looked at me. “I shall

not bind you tonight,” she said.

Holding half the rence cake in her mouth she unrolled her sleeping mat and then,

as she had the night before, she unlaced her tunic and slipped it off over her

head. She threw it to a corner of the hut, on her left, near her feet. She sat

on the sleeping mat and finished the rence cake. Then she wiped her mouth with

her arm, and slapped her hands together, freeing them of crumbs.

Then she unbound her hair, shaking it free.

Then she reclined on the mat, facing me, resting on her right elbow. Her left

knee was raised. She looked at me.

“Serve my pleasure,” she said.

“No,” I said.

Startled, she looked at me.

Just then, from outside, there was the wild, high, terrifed scream of a girl,

and suddenly the music stopped. Then I heard shouts, cries of fear, confusion,

the clash of arms.

“Slavers!” I heard cry. “Slavers!”

6
     
Slavers

I was out of the hut.

My response had been instantaneous, that of the trained warrior, startling me.

The girl was but a moment behind me.

I saw torches in the night, moving at the periphery of the island.

A child ran past me. The circle of the dance was empty. The barkless pole stood

alone. A woman was screaming among the refus of the feast. The marsh torches

burned as quietly as they had. There were shouts. I heard the clank of arms,

overlapping shields. Two men, rencers, ran past us. I heard what might have been

a marsh spear splinger against metal. One man, a rencer, staggered backward

drunkenly toward us. Then he wheeled and I saw, protruding from his chest, the

fins of a crossbow bolt. He fell almost at our feet, his fingers clutching the

fins, his knees drawn to his chin. Somewhere an infant was crying

In the light of the moving torches, beyond them, toward the marsh, I saw, dark,

the high, curved prows of narrow marsh barges, of the sort rowed by slaves.

Telima threw her hands before her face, her eyes wild, and uttered a terrifying

scream of fear.

My had caught her right wrist and locked on it, like the manacle of a slave. I

dragged her stumbling, screaming, toward the opposite side of the island, the

darkness.

But we found rencers running toward us, men, and women, and children, their

hands outstretched, stumbling, falling. We heard the shouts of men behind them,

saw the movement of spears.

We ran with them toward yet another part of the island.

Then, from the darkness before us, we heard a trumpet, and we stopped, confused.

Suddenly there fell among us a rain of crossbow bolts. There were screams. A man

to the left of us cried out and fell.

We turned and ran again, stumbling in the torchlit darkness, across the woven

mat of rence that was the surface of the island.

Behind us we heard trumpets, and the beating of spears on shields, the shouts of

men.

The before us a woman screamed, stopping, pointing.

“They have nets!” she cried.

We were being driven toward the nets.

I stopped, holding Telima to me. We were buffeted by the bodies of running

rencers, plunging toward the nets.

“Stop!” I cried. “Stop! There are nets! Nets!” But most of those with us,

heedless, fleeing the trumpets and beating of spears on shields, ran wildly

toward the nets, which suddenly emerged before them, held by slaves. These were

not the small capture nets but wall nets, to block a path of escape. Between

their interstices, here and there, spears thrust, forcing back those who would

tear at them. Then the long, wide net, held by slaves, began to advance.

I heard then from another side of the island as well the terrifying cry, “Nets,

nets!”

Then, as we milled and ran, here and there among us were men of Port Kar,

warriors, some with helmet and shield, sword and spear, others with club and

knife, others with whips, some with capture loops, some with capture nets, all

with binding fiber. Among them ran slaves, carrying torches, that they might see

to their work.

I saw the rencer who had worn the headband of the pearls of the Vosk sorp, who

had been uable to bend the bow. He now had the large, white, silken scarft tied

over his left shoulder and across his body, fastened at his right hip. With him

there stood a tall, bearded helmeted warrior of Port Kar, the golden slash of

the officer across the temples of his helmet. The rencer was pointing here and

there, and shouting to the men of Port Kar, crying out orders to them. The tall,

bearded officer, sword drawn, stood silently near him.

“It is Henrak!” cried Telima. “It is Henrak.”

It was the first I had heard the name of the man of the headband.

In Henrak’s hand there was clutched a wallet, perhaps of gold.

A man fell near us, his neck cut half through by the thrust of a spear.

My arm about Telima’s shoulder I moved her away, losing oursleves among the

shouting rencers, the running men and women.

Some of the men of the rencers, with their small shields or rence wicker,

fought, but their marsh spears were not match for the stell swords and war

spears of Gor. When they offered resistance they were cut down. Most,

panic-stricken, knowing themselves no mathc for trained warriors, fled like

animals, crying out in fear before the hunters of Port Kar.

I saw a girl stumbling, being dragged by the hair toward one of the narrow

barges. Her wrists hwere bound behind her back. She had been the girl who, this

morning, had carried a net over her left shoulder, one of those who had taunted

me at the pole, one of those who had, at festival, danced her contempt of me.

She had already been stripped.

I moved back further in the running, buffeting bodies, now again dragging Telima

by the wrist. She was screaming, running and stumbling beside me.

I saw the nets on the two sides of the island had now advanced, the spears

between their meshes herding terrified rencers before them.

Again we ran back toward the center of the island.

I heard a girl screaming. It was the tall, gray-eyed blond girl, whom I

remembered from the morning, who had carried a coil of marsh vine, holding it

against my arm, she who had danced, with excruciating slowness, before me at

festival, who had, like the others, shown her contempt of me with her spittle.

She struggled, snared in two leather capture loops, held by warriors, tight

about her waist. Another warrior approached her from behind, with a whip, and

with four fierce strokes had cut the rence tunic from her body and she knelt on

the rence matting that was the surface of the island, crying out in pain,

begging to be bound. I saw her thrown forward on her stomach, one warrior

binding her wrists behind her back, another crossing and binding her ankles.

A girl bumped into us, screaming. It was the lithe, dark-haired girl, the

slender girl, who had been so marvelously legged in the brief rence tunic. I

remembered her well from the pole, and the dance. It was she who had danced

before me with her ankles so close together that they might have been chained,

who had put her wrists together back to back over her head, palms out, as though

she might have worn slave bracelets, and who had then said, “Slave,” and spat in

my face, then whirling away. After Telima I had found her the most insolent, and

desirable, of my tormentors. She turned about wildly, screaming, and fled into

the darkness. The rence tunic had been half torn from her right shoulder.

My arm about Telima I cast about for some means of escape.

Everywhere about us there were shouting men, screaming women, running, crying

children, and everywhere, it seemed, the men of Port Kar, and their slaves,

holding torches aloft, burning like the eyes of predators in the marsh night. A

boy ran past. It was he who had given me a piece of rence cake in the morning,

when I had been bound at the pole, who had been punished by his mohter for so

doing.

I heard cries and shouts and, dragging Telima by the hand, ran toward them.

There, under the light of the marsh torches, I saw Ho-Hak, crying with rage,

shouting, with as oar pole laying about himself wildly. More than one warrior of

Port Kar lay sprawled on the matting about him, his head broken or his chest

crushed. Now, just outside the circle of his swinging pole, tehre must have been

ten or fifteen warriors of Port Kar, there swords drawn, the light of the marsh

torches reflecting from them, surrounding him, fencing him in with their

weapons. He could not have been more inclosed had he found himself in the jaws

of the long-bodied, nine-gilled marsh shark.

“A fighter!” cried one of the men of Port Kar.

Ho-Hak, sweating, breathing deeply, wildly, his great ears flat against the

sides of his head, the iron, riveted collar of the galley slave, with its

broken, dangling chain, about his neck, clutching his oar pole, stood with his

legs planted widely apart on the rence, at bay.

“Tharlarion!” he shouted at the men of Port Kar.

They laughed at him.

Then two capture nets, circular, strongly woven, weighted, dropped over him.