Outlaw of Gor Read online

  * * * *

  It was a night like no other in the mines of Tharna.

  Leading the chain of slaves in two lines behind me, we swept through the shafts like an eruption from the molten core of the earth. Armed only with ore and the picks that chip the ore from the walls we stormed into the quarters of Whip Slaves and guardsmen, who had scarcely time to seize their weapons. Those not killed in the savage fighting, much of it in the darkness of the shafts, were locked into leg shackles and herded into storage chambers, and the men of the chain did not treat their former oppressors gently.

  We had soon come on the hammers that would strike our chains from us and, one by one, we filed past the great anvil where Kron of Tharna, of the Caste of Metal Workers, with expert blows, struck them from our wrists and ankles.

  "To the Central Shaft!" I cried, holding a sword that had been taken from a guardsman now chained in the shafts behind.

  A slave who had carried tubs of food to the troughs below was only too pleased to guide us.

  At last we stood by the Central Shaft.

  Our mine opened on it perhaps a thousand feet below the surface. We could see the great chains dangling down the shaft, outlined by the small lamps in the openings of other mines above us, and, very high above, by the white reflection of moonlight. The men crowded out onto the floor of the shaft, which lay only a foot below the opening of our mine, for our mine was the lowest of all.

  They stared upward.

  The man who had boasted that he had drunk Kal-da three times in the mines of Tharna wept as he gazed upward and caught sight of one of the three hurtling moons of Gor.

  I sent several men climbing to the top of the chains so high above.

  "You must protect the chains," I said. "They must not be cut."

  Determined dark shapes, agile with the fury of hope, began to climb the chain toward the moons above.

  To my pride none of the men suggested that we follow them, none begged that we might steal our freedom before the general alarm could be given.

  No! We climbed to the second mine!

  How terrible those moments for the guards and Whip Slaves, to suddenly see, unchained and irresistible, the avalanche of wrath and vengeance that broke in upon them! Dice and cards and game boards and drinking goblets scattered to the rocky floors of the guard chambers as Whip Slaves and guardsmen looked up to find at their throats the blades of desperate and condemned men, now drunk with the taste of freedom and determined to free their fellows.

  Cell after cell was emptied of its wretched chained occupants, only to be refilled with shackled guardsmen and Whip Slaves, men who knew that the least sign of resistance would bring only a swift and bloody death.

  Mine after mine was freed, and as each mine was freed, its slaves, forsaking their own best chance of safety, poured into the mines above to liberate their fellows. This was done as if by plan and yet I knew that it was the spontaneous action of men who had come to respect themselves, the men of the mines of Tharna.

  I was the last of the slaves to leave the mines. I climbed one of the great chains to the huge windlass set above the shaft and found myself among hundreds of cheering men, their chains struck off, their hands boasting weapons even if only a piece of jagged rock or a pair of shackles. The dark cheering shapes, many of them crooked and wasted with their labors, saluted me in the light of the three rushing moons of Gor. They shouted my name, and, without fear, that of my city. I stood upon the brink of the great shaft and felt the wind of the cold night upon me.

  I was happy.

  And I was proud.

  I saw the great valve which I knew would flood the mines of Tharna, and saw that it remained closed.

  I was proud when I saw that my slaves had defended the valve, for about it lay the bodies of soldiers who had tried to reach it; but I was most proud when I realized that the slaves had not now opened the valve, when they knew that below, in the confines of those dismal shafts and cells, chained and helpless, were their oppressors and mortal enemies. I could imagine the terror of those poor creatures cringing in those traps beneath the ground waiting to hear the distant rush of water through the tunnels. Yet it would not come.

  I wondered if they would understand that such an action was beneath the hand of a truly free man, and that the men who fought them—who had conquered on this windy and cold night, who had fought like larls in the darkness of the tunnels below, who had not sought their own safety but the liberation of their fellows—were such men.

  I leaped to the windlass and raised my arms, the darkness of the central shaft looming beneath me.

  There was silence.

  "Men of Tharna," I cried, "and of the Cities of Gor, you are free!"

  There was a great cheer.

  "Word of our deeds even now hurries to the Palace of the Tatrix," I cried.

  "Let her tremble!" cried Kron of Tharna in a terrible voice.

  "Think, Kron of Tharna," I cried, "soon tarnsmen will fly from the walls of Tharna and the infantry will move against us."

  There was a mutter of apprehension from the masses of freed slaves.

  "Speak, Tarl of Ko-ro-ba," said Kron, using the name of my city as easily as he might have said the name of any other.

  "We do not have the weapons or the training or the beasts we would need to stand against the soldiers of Tharna," I said. "We would be destroyed, trampled like urts underfoot." I paused. "Therefore we must scatter to the forests and the mountains, taking cover where we can. We must live off the land. We will be sought by all the soldiers and guardsmen Tharna can set upon our trail. We will be pursued and ridden down by the lancers who ride the high tharlarions! We will be hunted and slain from the air by the bolts of tarnsmen!"

  "But we will die free!" cried Andreas of Tor, and his cry was echoed by hundreds of voices.

  "And so must others!" I cried. "You must hide by day and move by night. You must elude your pursuers. You must carry your freedom to others!"

  "Are you asking us to become warriors?" cried a voice.

  "Yes!" I cried, and such words had never before been spoken on Gor. "In this cause," I said, "whether you are of the Caste of Peasants, or Poets, or Metal Workers, or Saddle-Makers, you must be warriors!"

  "We shall," said Kron of Tharna, his fist holding the great hammer with which he had struck off our shackles.

  "Is this the will of the Priest-Kings?" asked a voice.

  "If it is the will of the Priest-Kings," I said, "let it be done." And then I raised my hands again and standing on the windlass over the shaft, blown by the wind, with the moons of Gor above me, I cried. "And if it be not the will of the Priest-Kings—still let it be done!"

  "Let it be done," said the heavy voice of Kron.

  "Let it be done," said the men, first one and then another, until there was a sober chorus of assent, quiet but powerful, and I knew that never before in this harsh world had men spoken thus. And it seemed strange to me that this rebellion, this willingness to pursue the right as they saw it, independently of the will of the Priest-Kings, had come not first from the proud Warriors of Gor, nor the Scribes, nor the Builders nor Physicians, nor any of the high castes of the many cities of Gor, but had come from the most degraded and despised of men, wretched slaves from the mines of Tharna.

  I stood there and watched the slaves depart, silently now, like shadows, forsaking the precincts of the mines to seek their outlaw fortunes, their destinies beyond the laws and traditions of their cities.

  The Gorean phrase of farewell came silently to my lips. "I wish you well."

  Kron stopped by the shaft.

  I walked across the bar of the windlass and dropped to his side.

  The squat giant of the Caste of Metal Workers stood with his feet planted wide. He held that great hammer in his massive fists like a lance across his body. I saw that the once close-cropped hair was now a shaggy yellow. I saw that those eyes, usually like blue steel, seemed softer than I remembered them.

  "I wish you well, Tarl
of Ko-ro-ba," he said.

  "I wish you well, Kron of Tharna," I said.

  "We are of the same chain," he said.

  "Yes," I said.

  Then he turned away, abruptly I thought, and moved rapidly into the shadows.

  Now only Andreas of Tor remained at my side.

  He mopped back that mane of black hair like a larl's and grinned at me. "Well," said he, "I have tried the Mines of Tharna, and now I think I shall try the Great Farms."

  "Good luck," I said.

  I fervently hoped that he would find the auburn-haired girl in the camisk, gentle Linna of Tharna.

  "And where are you off to?" asked Andreas lightly.

  "I have business with the Priest-Kings," I said.

  "Ah!" said Andreas, and was silent.

  We faced one another under the three moons. He seemed sad, one of the few times I had seen him so.

  "I'm coming with you," he said.

  I smiled. Andreas knew as well as I that men did not return from the Sardar Mountains.

  "No," I said. "I think you would find few songs in the mountains."

  "A poet," said he, "will look for songs anywhere."

  "I am sorry," I said, "but I cannot allow you to accompany me."

  Andreas clapped his hands on my shoulders. "Hear, dull-witted scion of the Caste of Warriors," he said, "my friends are more important to me than even my songs."

  I tried to be light. I feigned skepticism. "Are you truly of the Caste of Poets?"

  "Never more truly than now," said Andreas, "for how could my songs be more important than the things they celebrate?"

  I marveled that he had said this, for I knew that the young Andreas of Tor might have given his arm or years of his life for what might be a true song, one worthy of what he had seen and felt and cared for.

  "Linna needs you," I said. "Seek her out."

  Andreas of the Caste of Poets stood in torment before me, agony in his eyes.

  "I wish you well," I said, "—Poet."

  He nodded. "I wish you well," he said, "—Warrior."

  Perhaps both of us wondered that friendship should exist between members of such different castes, but perhaps both of us knew, though we did not say so, that in the hearts of men arms and song are never far distant.

  Andreas had turned to go, but he hesitated, and faced me once more. "The Priest-Kings," he said, "will be expecting you."

  "Of course," I said.

  Andreas lifted his arm. "Tal," he said, sadly. I wondered why he had said this, for it is a word of greeting.

  "Tal," I said, returning the salute.

  I think perhaps he had wanted to greet me once more, that he did not believe he would ever again have the opportunity.

  Andreas had turned and was gone.

  I must begin my journey to the Sardar Mountains.

  As Andreas had said, I would be expected. I knew that little passed on Gor that was not somehow known in the Sardar Mountains. The power and knowledge of the Priest-Kings is perhaps beyond the comprehension of mortal men, or, as it is said on Gor, of the Men Below the Mountains.

  It is said that as we are to the amoeba and the paramecium so are the Priest-Kings to us, that the highest and most lyric flights of our intellect are, when compared to the thought of the Priest-Kings, but the chemical tropisms of the unicellular organism. I thought of such an organism, blindly extending its pseudopodia to encircle a particle of food, an organism complacent in its world—perhaps only an agar plate on the desk of some higher being.

  I had seen the power of the Priest-Kings at work—in the mountains of New Hampshire years ago when it was so delicately exercised as to affect the needle of a compass, in the Valley of Ko-ro-ba where I had found a city devastated as casually as one might crush a hill of ants.

  Yes, I knew that the power of the Priest-Kings—rumored even to extend to the control of gravity—could lay waste cities, scatter populations, separate friends, tear lovers from one another's arms, bring hideous death to whomsoever it might choose. As all men of Gor I knew that their power inspired terror throughout a world and that it could not be withstood.

  The words of the man of Ar, he who had worn the robes of the Initiates, he who had brought me the message of the Priest-Kings on the road to Ko-ro-ba that violent night months before, rang in my ears, "Throw yourself upon your sword, Tarl of Ko-ro-ba!"

  But I knew then that I would not throw myself upon my sword, and that I would not now. I knew then as I knew now that I would go instead to the Sardar Mountains, that I would enter them and seek the Priest-Kings themselves.

  I would find them.

  Somewhere in the midst of those icy escarpments inaccessible even to the wild tarn, they waited for me, those fit gods of this harsh world.

  20

  The Invisible Barrier

  In my hand I held a sword, taken from one of the guardsmen in the mines. It was the only weapon I carried. Before starting for the mountains, it seemed wise to improve my equipment. Most of the soldiers who had fought the slaves at the top of the shaft had been killed or fled. Those who had been killed had been stripped of clothing and weapons, both of which the ill-clad, unarmed slaves required desperately.

  I knew that I didn't have a great deal of time, for the avenging tarnsmen of Tharna would soon be visible against the three moons.

  I examined the low, wooden buildings which dotted the ugly landscape in the vicinity of the mines. Almost all of them had been broken into by the slaves, and whatever they held had been taken or scattered. Not a piece of steel remained in the arms shed; not a crust of bread remained in the tubs in the commissary huts.

  In the office of the Administrator of the Mines, he who once had given the command, "Drown them all," I found a stripped body, slashed almost beyond recognition. Yet I had seen it once before, when I had been turned over by the soldier to his gentle care. It was the Administrator of the Mines himself. The corpulent, cruel body was now rent in a hundred places.

  On the wall there was an empty scabbard. I hoped that he had had time to seize its blade before the slaves rushed in and fell upon him. Though I found it easy to hate him I did not wish him to have died unarmed.

  In the frenetic melee in the darkness, or in the light of the tharlarion-oil lamp, perhaps the slaves had not noticed the scabbard, or wanted it. The sword itself, of course, was gone. I decided I could use the scabbard, and took it from the wall.

  In the first streak of light, now gleaming through the dusty hut window, I saw that the scabbard was set with six stones. Emeralds. Perhaps not of great value, but worth taking.

  I thrust my weapon into the empty scabbard, buckled the sword belt and, in the Gorean fashion, looped it over my left shoulder.

  I left the hut, scanning the skies. There were no tarnsmen yet in sight. The three moons were faint now, like pale white disks in the brightening sky, and the sun was half risen from the throne of the horizon.

  In the bleak light the ruin of the night stood revealed in stark, brutal lucidity. The ugly grounds of the compound, its lonely wooden huts, its brown soil and bare hard rocks, were deserted save by the dead. Among the litter of pillaging—papers, opened boxes, broken staves, split boards and wire—there lay, sprawled frozen in stiff, grotesque postures, the unsubtle shapes of death, the scattered, contorted, slashed bodies of naked men.

  Some wisps of dust swirled past like animals sniffing about the feet of the bodies. A door on one of the sheds, its lock broken, swung loose on its hinges, banging in the wind.

  I walked across the compound and picked up a helmet which lay half hidden in the litter. Its straps were broken but they could be knotted together. I wondered if it had been noticed by the slaves.

  I had sought equipment, but I had found only a scabbard and a damaged helmet, and soon the tarnsmen of Tharna would arrive. Using the Warrior's Pace, a slow jog that can be prolonged for hours, I left the Compound of the Mines.

  I had only reached the shelter of a line of trees when I saw, some thousand ya
rds behind me, descending on the Compound of the Mines, like clouds of wasps, the tarnsmen of Tharna.

  * * * *

  It was in the vicinity of the Pillar of Exchanges, three days later, that I found the tarn. I had seen its shadow and feared it was wild, and had prepared to sell my life dearly, but the great beast, my own plumed giant, who may have haunted the Pillar of Exchanges for weeks, settled on the plains no more than thirty yards from me, its great wings shaking, and stalked to my side.

  It was for this reason that I had returned to the Pillar, hoping that perhaps the monster might linger in its vicinity. There was good hunting nearby, and the ridges where I had carried the Tatrix afforded shelter for its nest.

  When it approached me and extended its head, I wondered if what I had dared not hope might be true, that the bird might have been waiting for me to return.

  He offered no resistance, he showed no anger, when I leaped to his back and cried, as before, "One-strap!" at which signal, with a shrill cry and a mighty spring, those gigantic wings cracked like whips and beat their way aloft in the glory of flight.

  As we passed over the Pillar of Exchanges, I remembered that it was there I had been betrayed by she who was once Tatrix of Tharna. I wondered what had been her fate. I wondered too at her treachery, her strange hatred of me, for somehow it seemed not to fit well with the lonely girl on the ledge, who had stood quietly gazing at the field of talenders while a warrior had gorged himself on the kill of his tarn. Then, again, my memory blackened with fury at the thought of her imperious gesture, that insolent command, "Seize him!"

  Whatever her fate, I insisted to myself that it would have been richly deserved. Yet I found myself hoping that perhaps she had not been destroyed. I wondered what vengeance would have satisfied the hatred borne to Lara, the Tatrix, by Dorna the Proud. I guessed unhappily that she might have had Lara hurled into a pit of osts or watched her boil alive in the foul oil of tharlarions. Perhaps she would have had her thrown naked into the clutches of the insidious leech plants of Gor or have had her fed to the giant urts in the dungeons beneath her own palace. I knew the hatred of men is but a feeble thing compared to the hatred of women, and I wondered how much it would take to slake the thirst for vengeance of such a woman as Dorna the Proud. What would have been enough to satisfy her?