Outlaw of Gor Page 16

  * * * *

  It was now the month of the vernal equinox on Gor, called En'Kara, or The First Kara. The full expression is En'Kara-Lar-Torvis, which means, rather literally, The First Turning of the Central Fire. Lar-Torvis is a Gorean expression for the sun. More commonly, though never in the context of time, the sun is referred to as Tor-tu-Gor, or Light Upon the Home Stone. The month of the autumnal equinox is called fully Se'Kara-Lar-Torvis, but usually simply Se'Kara, The Second Kara, or The Second Turning.

  As might be expected there are related expressions for the months of the solstices, En'Var-Lar-Torvis and Se'Var-Lar-Torvis, or, again rather literally, The First Resting and the Second Resting of the Central Fire. These, however, like the other expressions, usually occur in speech only as En'Var and Se'Var, or The First Resting and The Second Resting.

  Chronology, incidentally, is the despair of scholars on Gor, for each city keeps track of time by virtue of its own Administrator Lists; for example, a year is referred to as the Second Year when so-and-so was Administrator of the city. One might think that some stability would be provided by the Initiates, who must keep a calendar of their feasts and observances, but the Initiates of one city do not always celebrate the same feast on the same date as do those of another city. If the High Initiate of Ar should ever succeed in extending his hegemony over the High Initiates of rival cities, a hegemony which he claims he possesses already incidentally, a unified calendar might be introduced. But so far there has been no military victory of Ar over other cities and, accordingly, free of the sword, the Initiates of each city regard themselves as supreme within their own walls.

  There are, however, some factors which tend to reduce the hopelessness of the situation. One is the fairs at the Sardar Mountains, which occur four times a year and are numbered chronologically. The other is that sometimes cities are willing to add, in their records, beside their own dating, the dating of Ar, which is Gor's greatest city.

  Chronology in Ar is figured, happily enough, not from its Administrator Lists, but from its mythical founding by the first man on Gor, a hero whom the Priest-Kings are said to have formed from the mud of the earth and the blood of tarns. Time is reckoned "Contasta Ar," or "from the founding of Ar." The current year, according to the calendar of Ar, if it is of interest, is 10,117. Actually I would suppose that Ar may not be a third of that age. Its Home Stone, however, which I have seen, attests to a considerable antiquity.

  * * * *

  Some four days after I had recovered the tarn, we sighted in the distance the Sardar Mountains. Had I possessed a Gorean compass, its needle would have pointed invariably to those mountains, as though to indicate the home of the Priest-Kings. Before the mountains, in a panorama of silk and flags, I saw the pavilions of the Fair of En'Kara, or the Fair of the First Turning.

  I wheeled the tarn in the sky, not wanting to approach more closely yet. I looked upon those mountains which I now saw for the first time. A chill not of the high winds which buffeted me on tarnback now crept into my body.

  The mountains of the Sardar were not such a vast, magnificent range as the rugged scarlet crags of the Voltai, that almost impenetrable mountain vastness in which I had once been the prisoner of the outlaw Ubar, Marlenus of Ar, ambitious and warlike father of the fierce and beautiful Talena, she whom I loved, whom I had carried on tarnback to Ko-ro-ba years before to be my Free Companion. No, the Sardar Range was not the superb natural wilderness that was the Voltai. Its peaks did not scorn the plains below. Its heights did not taunt the sky nor, in the cold of the night, defy the stars. In it would not be heard the cry of tarns and the roar of larls. It was inferior to the Voltai in both dimension and grandeur. Yet when I looked upon it, more than the gloriously savage, larl-haunted Voltai, I feared it.

  I took the tarn closer.

  The mountains before me were black, except for the high peaks and passes, which showed white patches and threads of cold, gleaming snow. I looked for the green of vegetation on the lower slopes and saw none. In the Sardar Range nothing grew.

  There seemed to be a menace, an intangible fearful effect about those angular shapes in the distance. I took the tarn as high as I could, until his wings beat frantically against the thin air, but could see nothing in the Sardar Mountains that might be the habitation of Priest-Kings.

  I wondered—an eerie suspicion that suddenly swept through me—if the Sardar Mountains might actually be empty—if there might be nothing, simply nothing but the wind and the snow in those gloomy mountains, and if men worshipped, unknowingly, nothing. What of the interminable prayers of the Initiates, the sacrifices, the observances, the rituals, the innumerable shrines, altars and temples to the Priest-Kings? Could it be that the smoke of the burning sacrifices, the fragrance of the incense, the mumblings of the Initiates, their prostrations and grovelings were all addressed to nothing but the empty peaks of the Sardar, to the snow, and the cold and the wind that howled among those black crags?

  Suddenly the tarn screamed and shuddered in the air! The thought of the emptiness of the Sardar Range was banished from my mind, for here was evidence of the Priest-Kings!

  It was almost as if the bird had been seized by an invisible fist.

  I could sense nothing.

  The bird's eyes, perhaps for the first time in his life, were filled with terror, blind uncomprehending terror.

  I could see nothing.

  Protesting, screaming, the great bird began to reel helplessly downward. Its vast wings futilely, wildly, struck out, uncoordinated and frenetic, like the limbs of a drowning swimmer. It seemed the very air itself refused any longer to bear his weight. In drunken, dizzy circles, screaming, bewildered, helpless, the bird fell, while I, for my life, desperately clung to the thick quills of his neck.

  When we had reached an altitude of perhaps a hundred yards from the ground, as suddenly as it had come, the strange effect passed. The bird regained his strength and senses, except for the fact that it remained agitated, almost unmanageable.

  Then to my wonder, the valiant creature began once more to climb, determined to regain the altitude he had lost.

  Again and again he tried to rise and again and again he was forced down.

  Through the beast's back I could feel the straining of his muscles, sense the mad pounding of that unconquerable heart. But each time we attained a certain altitude, the eyes of the tarn would seem to lose their focus, and the unerring balance and coordination of the sable monster would be disrupted. It was no longer frightened, only angry. Once again it would attempt to climb, ever faster, ever more fiercely.

  Then mercifully I called "Four-strap!"

  I feared the courageous beast would kill himself before surrendering to the unseen force that blocked his path.

  Unwillingly the bird alighted on the grassy plains about a league from the Fair of En'Kara. I slipped from his back. I thought those great eyes looked at me reproachfully. Why did I not leap again to his back and once more cry "One-strap!" Why did we not try once more?

  I slapped his beak affectionately and, digging among his neck feathers with my fingers, scratched out some of the lice, about the size of marbles, that infest wild tarns. I slapped them on his long tongue. After a moment of impatient, feather-ruffling protest, the tarn succumbed, if reluctantly, to this delicacy, and the parasites disappeared into that curved scimitar of a beak.

  What had happened would have been regarded by the untrained Gorean mind, particularly that of a low-caste individual, as evidence of some supernatural force, as some magical effect of the will of the Priest-Kings. I myself did not willingly entertain such hypotheses.

  The tarn had struck a field of some sort, which perhaps acted on the mechanism of his inner ear, resulting in the loss of balance and coordination. A similar device, I supposed, might prevent the entry of high tharlarions, the saddle lizards of Gor, into the mountains. In spite of myself I admired the Priest-Kings. I knew now that it was true, what I had been told, that those who entered the mountains would do s
o on foot.

  I regretted having to leave the tarn, but he could not accompany me.

  I talked to him for perhaps an hour, a foolish thing to do perhaps, and then gave his beak a hardy slap and shoved it from me. I pointed out over the fields, away from the mountains. "Tabuk!" I said.

  The beast did not stir.

  "Tabuk!' I repeated.

  I think, though it may be absurd, that the beast felt that he might have failed me, that he had not carried me into the mountains. I think, too, though it is perhaps still more absurd, that he knew that I would not be waiting for him when he returned from his hunt.

  The great head moved quizzically and dipped to the ground, rubbing against my leg.

  Had it failed me? Was I now rejecting it?

  "Go, Ubar of the Skies," I said. "Go."

  When I had said Ubar of the Skies, the bird had lifted its head, now more than a yard above my own. I had called him that when I had recognized him in the arena of Tharna, when we had been aloft as one creature in the sky.

  The great bird stalked away from me, about fifteen yards, and then turned, looking at me again.

  I gestured to the fields away from the mountains.

  It shook its wings and screamed, and hurled itself against the wind. I watched it until, a tiny speck against the blue sky, it disappeared in the distance.

  I felt unaccountably sad, and turned to face the mountains of the Sardar.

  Before them, resting on the grassy plains beneath, was the Fair of En'Kara.

  I had not walked more than a pasang when, from a cluster of trees to my right, on the other side of a thin, swift stream that flowed from the Sardar, I heard the terrified scream of a girl.

  21

  I Buy a Girl

  Out from my scabbard leaped the sword and I splashed across the cold stream, making for the grove of trees across the way.

  Once more the terrified scream rang out.

  Now I was among the trees, moving rapidly, but cautiously.

  Then the smell of a cooking fire came to my nostrils. I heard the hum of unhurried conversation. Through the trees I could see tent canvas, a tharlarion wagon, the strap-masters unharnessing a brace of low tharlarions, the huge, herbivorous draft lizards of Gor. For all I could tell neither of them had heard the scream, or paid it any attention.

  I slowed to a walk and entered the clearing among the tents. One or two guardsmen eyed me curiously. One arose and went to check the woods behind me, to see if I were alone. I glanced about myself. It was a peaceful scene, the cooking fires, the domed tents, the unharnessing of the animals, one I remembered from the caravan of Mintar, of the Merchant Caste. But this was a small camp, not like the pasangs of wagons that constituted the entourage of the wealthy Mintar.

  I heard the scream once again.

  I saw that the cover of the tharlarion wagon, which had been rolled back, was of blue and yellow silk.

  It was the camp of a slaver.

  I thrust my sword back in the scabbard and took off my helmet.

  "Tal," I said to two guardsmen who crouched at the side of a fire, playing Stones, a guessing game in which one person must guess whether the number of stones held in the fist of another is odd or even.

  "Tal," said one guardsman. The other, attempting to guess the stones, did not even look up.

  I walked between the tents and saw the girl.

  She was a blond girl with golden hair that fell behind her to the small of her back. Her eyes were blue. She was of dazzling beauty. She trembled like a frantic animal. She knelt, her back against a slender, white birchlike tree to which she was chained naked. Her hands were joined over her head and behind the tree by slave bracelets. Her ankles were similarly fastened by a short slave chain which encircled the tree.

  Her eyes had turned to me, begging, pleading, as though I might deliver her from her predicament, but when she looked upon me, those fear-glazed eyes, if possible, seemed even more terrified. She uttered a hopeless cry. She began to shake uncontrollably and her head fell forward in despair.

  I gathered she had taken me for another slaver.

  There was an iron brazier near the tree, which was filled with glowing coals. I could feel its heat ten yards away. From the brazier protruded the handles of three irons.

  There was a man beside the irons, stripped to the waist, wearing thick leather gloves, one of the minions of the slaver. He was a grizzled man, rather heavy, sweating, blind in one eye. He regarded me without too much interest, as he waited for the irons to heat.

  I noted the thigh of the girl.

  It had not yet been branded.

  When an individual captures a girl for his own uses, he does not always mark her, though it is commonly done. On the other hand, the professional slaver, as a business practice, almost always brands his chattels, and it is seldom that an unbranded girl ascends the block.

  The brand is to be distinguished from the collar, though both are a designation of slavery. The primary significance of the collar is that it identifies the master and his city. The collar of a given girl may be changed countless times, but the brand continues throughout to bespeak her status. The brand is normally concealed by the briefly skirted slave livery of Gor but, of course, when the camisk is worn, it is always clearly visible, reminding the girl and others of her station.

  The brand itself, in the case of girls, is a rather graceful mark, being the initial letter of the Gorean expression for slave in cursive script. If a male is branded, the same initial is used, but rendered in a block letter.

  Noting my interest in the girl, the man beside the irons went to her side and, taking her by the hair, threw back her face for my inspection. "She's a beauty, isn't she?" he said.

  I nodded agreement.

  I wondered why those piteous eyes looked upon me with such fear.

  "Perhaps you want to buy her?" asked the man.

  "No," I said.

  The heavy-set man winked his sightless eye in my direction. His voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. "She's not trained," he said. "And she is as hard to manage as a sleen."

  I smiled.

  "But," said the man, "the iron will take that out of her."

  I wondered if it would.

  He withdrew one of the irons from the fire. It glowed a fiery red.

  At the sight of the glowing metal the girl uncontrollably screamed, pulling at the slave bracelets, at the shackles that held her to the tree.

  The heavy-set man thrust the iron back into the brazier.

  "She's a loud one," he said, shamefacedly. Then, with a shrug in my direction, as if to ask my pardon, he went to the girl and took a handful of her long hair. He wadded it into a small, tight ball and suddenly shoved it in her mouth. It immediately expanded, and before she could spit the hair out, he had looped more of her hair about her head and tied it, in such a way as to keep the expanded ball of hair in her mouth. The girl choked silently, trying to spit the ball of hair from her mouth, but of course she could not. It was an old slaver's trick. I knew tarnsmen sometimes silenced their captives in the same way.

  "Sorry, Sweet Wench," said the grizzled man, giving the girl's head a friendly shake, "but we don't want Targo coming over here with his whip and beating the tharlarion oil out of us both, do we?"

  Sobbing silently the girl's head fell down again on her breast.

  The grizzled man absent-mindedly hummed a caravan tune while waiting for the irons to heat.

  My emotions were mixed. I had rushed to the scene to free the girl, to protect her. Yet when I arrived I found that she was merely a slave, and that her owner, quite properly from Gor's point of view, was attending to the routine business of marking his property. Had I attempted to free her, it would have been as much an act of theft as if I had driven off the tharlarion wagon.

  Moreover, these men bore the girl no animosity. To them she was just another wench on their chain, perhaps more poorly trained and less docile than most. If anything, they were merely impatient with her, and
thought she made too much of a fuss about things. They would not comprehend her feelings, her humiliation, her shame, her terror.

  I supposed even the other girls, the other freight of the caravan, might think she made a bit too much of things. After all, did a slave not expect the iron? And the whip?

  I saw the other girls some thirty yards away, in camisks, the cheapest of slave garments, laughing and talking to one another, disporting themselves as pleasurably as free maidens might have. I almost did not notice the chain that lay hidden in the grass. It passed through the ankle ring of each and, at each end, encircled a tree to which it was padlocked.

  The irons would soon be hot.

  The girl before me, so helpless in her chains, would soon be marked.

  I have wondered upon occasion why brands are used on Gorean slaves. Surely Goreans have at their disposal means for indelibly but painlessly marking the human body. My conjecture, confirmed to some extent by the speculations of the Older Tarl, who had taught me the craft of arms in Ko-ro-ba years ago, is that the brand is used primarily, oddly enough, because of its reputed psychological effect.

  In theory, if not in practice, when the girl finds herself branded like an animal, finds her fair skin marked by the iron of a master, she cannot fail, somehow, in the deepest levels of her thought, to regard herself as something which is owned, as mere property, as something belonging to the brute who has put the burning iron to her thigh.

  Most simply the brand is supposed to convince the girl that she is truly owned; it is supposed to make her feel owned. When the iron is pulled away and she knows the pain and degradation and smells the odor of her burned flesh, she is supposed to tell herself, understanding its full and terrible import, I AM HIS.

  Actually I suppose the effect of the brand depends greatly on the girl. In many girls I would suppose the brand has little effect besides contributing to their shame, their misery and humiliation. With other girls it might well increase their intractability, their hostility. On the other hand, I have known of several cases in which a proud, insolent woman, even one of great intelligence, who resisted a master to the very touch of the iron, once branded became instantly a passionate and obedient Pleasure Slave.