08 Hunters of GorHunters of Gor
John Norman
Chronicles of Counter-Earth Volume 8
1 Rim
“It is not my wish”, said Samos, looking up from the board, “that you journey to
the northern forests.”
I regarded the board. Carefully, I set the Ubar’s Tarnsman at Ubar’s Scribe Six.
“It is dangerous,” said Samos.
“It is your move,” said I, intent upon the game.
He threatened the Ubar’s Tarnsman with a spearman, thrust to his Ubar Four.
“We do not care to risk you,” said Samos. There was a slight smile about his
lips.
“We?” I asked.
“Priest-Kings and I “ said Samos.
“I no longer serve Priest-Kings,” said I.
“Ah, yes,” said Samos. Then he added, “Guard your tarnsman.”
We played in the hall of Samos, a lofty room, with high, narrow windows. It was
late at night. A torch burned in a rack above and behind me, to my left. The
shadows flickered about the board of one hundred red and yellow squares. The
pieces, weighted, seem tall on the board, casting their shadows away from the
flame, across the flat arena of the game.
We sat cross-legged on the floor, on the tiles, over the large board.
There was a rustle of slave bells to my right, loved on the left ankle of a
girl.
Samos wore the blue and yellow robes of the Slaver. Indeed, he was first slaver
of Port Kar, and first Captain in its Council of Captains, which council, since
the downfall of the four Ubars is sovereign in Port Kar. I, too, was a member of
the Council of Captains, Bosk, of the House of Bosk, if Port Kar. I wore a white
robe, woven of the wool of the Hurt, imported from distant Ar, trimmed with
golden cloth, from Tor, the colors of the Merchant. But beneath my robe I wore a
tunic of red, that color of the warriors.
To one side of the room, unclothed, his wrists manacled behind his body, his
ankles confined in short chains, knelt a large man, a heavy band of iron
hammered about his throat. He was flanked by two guards, standing slightly
behind him, helmeted, Gorean steel at their sides. The man’s head had, some
weeks ago, been shaven, a two-and-one-half-inch stripe, running from the
forehead to the back of his neck. Now, for the strip that had been shaved, his
hair was black, and shaggy. He was powerful. He had not yet been branded. But he
was slave. The collar proclaimed him such.
The girl knelt at the side of the board. She was clad in a brief bit of
diaphanous scarlet silk, slave silk. Her beauty was well betrayed. Her collar, a
lock collar, was yellow, enameled. She was dark eyed, dark haired.
“May I serve, Masters?” she asked,
“Paga,” said Samos, absently, looking at the board.
“Yes,” I said.
With a flash of slave bells, she withdrew. As she left, I noted that she passed
by the kneeling male slave, flanked by his guards. She passed him as a slave
girl, her head in the air, insolently, taunting him with her body.
I saw rage flash in his eyes. I heard his chains move. The guards took no not of
him. He was well secured. The girl laughed, and continued on, to fetch paga for
free men.
“Guard your tarnsman,” said Samos.
Instead I swept my Ubar to Ubar’s Tarnsman One.
I looked into Samos’ eyes.
He turned his attention again to the board.
He had a large, squarish head, short-cropped white hair. His face was dark from
the sun, and wind-burned, and seaburned. There were small, golden rings in his
ears. He was a pirate, a slaver, a master swordsman, a captain of Port Kar. He
studied the board.
He did not take the Ubar’s Tarnsman with his spearman. He looked up at me, and
defended his Home Stone by bringing his Scribe to Ubar One, whence it could
control his Ubar’s Tarnsman Three, controlling as well the killing diagonal.
“Talena, daughter of Marlenus of Ar, I learn, had been taken as slave to the
northern forests,” I said.
“Where did you obtain this information?” he asked. Samos was always suspicious.
“From a female slave, who was in my house,” I said, “a rather lovely wench,
whose name was Elinor.”
“That El-in-or,” he asked, “Who is nor the property of Rask of Treve?”
“Yes,” I said. I smiled. “I got one hundred pieces of gold for her.” I said.
Samos smiled. “Doubtless, for such a price,” he said, “Rask of Treve will see
that she repays him a thousand times that price in pleasure.”
I smiled. “I do not doubt it.” I returned my attention to the board. “Yet,” said
I, “it is my suspicion that between them there is truly love.”
Samos smiled. “Love,” he asked, “__for a female slave?”
“Paga, Masters?” asked the dark-haired girl, kneeling beside the table.
Samos, not looking at her, held forth his goblet. The girl filled the goblet.
I held forth my goblet, and she, too, filled mine.
“Withdraw,” said Samos.
She withdrew.
I shrugged.
“Love or not,” said Samos, studying the board, “he will keep her in a collar –
for he is of Treve.”
“Doubtless,” I admitted. And, indeed, I had little doubt that what Samos had
said was true. Rask of Treve, though in love with her, and she with him, would
keep her rightless, in the absolute bondage of a Gorean slave girl – for he was
of Treve.
“It is said that those of Treve are worthy enemies,” said Samos.
I said nothing.
“Those of Ko-ro-ba,” he said, “have often found them so.”
“I am Bosk, of Port Kar,” I said.
“Of course,” said Samos.
I moved my Ubar’s Rider f the High Tharlarion to command the file on which the
Home Stone of Samos lay richly protected.
“It is long since you have been the Free Companion of Talena, daughter of
Marlenus,” said Samos. “The Companionship, not renewed annually, is at an end.
And you were once enslaved.”
I looked at the board, angrily. It was true that the Companionship, not renewed,
had been dissolved in the eyes of Gorean law. It was further true that, had it
not been so, the Companionship would have been terminated abruptly when one or
the other of the pledged companions fell slave. I recalled, angrily, with a
burning shame, the delta of the Vosk, when I, though of the warriors, once, on
my knees, begged the ignominy of slavery to the freedom of honorable death. Yes,
I, Bosk of Port Kar, had once been slave.
“It is your move,” I said.
“You have no obligation,” said Samos, “to seek the girl Talena.”
I knew that. “I am unworthy of her,” I said.
I had never forgotten her, the beautiful, olive-skinned, green-eyed Talena, so
stunningly figured, such fantastic lips, the proud blood of Marlenus of Ar, Ubar
of Ar, Ubar of Ubars, in her veins.
She had been my first love. It had been
years since we had touched.
“Priest-Kings tore me from her,” I told Samos, hard-eyed.
Samos did not look up from the board. “In the game of worlds, he said, “we are
not important.”
“She was taken to the northern forests, I have learned,” I said, “by the outlaw
girl, Verna, to serve as bait for her capture of Marlenus of Ar, who is presumed
to be concerned for her rescue.” I looked up. “Marlenus on a hunting expedition,
with other animals, captured Verna, and her girls. He caged them and exhibited
them as trophies. They have escaped, and they wish their vengeance.”
“You would do well to stay in Port Kar,” said Samos.
“Talena is held slave in the northern forests,” I told him.
“Do you still love her?” asked Samos, looking at me, directly.
I was startled.
For years Talena, the magnificent Talena, had been in my heart’s deepest dreams,
my first love, my never forgotten love. She had burned in my memory,
unforgettably. I recalled her from the fields near the Swamp Forest south of Ar,
in the caravan of Mintar, at the great camp of Pa-Kur'’ horde, as she had been
upon Ar'’ lofty cylinder of justice, as she had been in lamp-lit Ko-ro-ba, when,
with interlocking arms, we had drunk the wines of Free Companionship.
How could I not love Talena, the deep, and first love, the first beautiful love
of my life?”
“Do you love her?” asked Samos.
“Of course!” I shouted, angrily.
“It has been many years,” said Samos.
“It matters not,” I muttered.
“You are both, perhaps, other than you were.”
“Do you care to dispute these matters with the sword?” I asked.
“I might,” said Samos, “if you could establish the pertinence of the procedure
to the issues involved.”
I looked down, furious.
“It is possible,” said Samos, “that it is an image you love, and not a woman,
that it is not a person, but a memory.”
“Those who have never loved,” I told him bitterly, “must not speak of what they
cannot know,”
Samos did not seem angry. “Perhaps,” he said.
“It is your move,” I told him.”
I glanced across the room. A few yards away, on the tiles, in her brief silk,
the two-handled, bronze paga vessel beside her, knelt the slave girl, waiting to
be summoned. She was dark-haired, and beautiful. She glanced at the chained male
slave, and threw back her head, and smoother her long, dark hair over her back.
In his manacles, kneeling, between his guards, he regarded her. She observed
him, and smiled contemptuously, and then loftily looked away, bored. Behind his
back, in the irons he wore, I sensed his fists were clenched.
“What of Talena?” asked Samos.
“She will understand,” I told Samos.
“I have information,” said he, “that this evening, following your departure from
your hours, she returned to the marshes.”
I leaped to my feet.
I was staggered. The room reeled.
“What did you expect her to do?” asked Samos.
“Why did you not tell me this?” I cried.
“What would you do, if I did?” he asked. “Would you chain her to the slave ring
at your couch?”
I looked at him, enraged.
“She is a proud, and noble woman,” said Samos.
“I love her – “ I said.
“Then go to the marshes and search her out,” said Samos.
“I – I must go to the northern forests,” I stammered.
“Builder of Ubara’s Scribe Six,” said Samos, moving a tall wooden piece toward
me on the board.
I looked down. I must defend my Home Stone.
“You must choose,” said Samos, “between them.”
How furious I was! I strode in the torchlit hall, my robes swirling. I pounded
on the stones of the wall. Could Talena not understand? Could she not understand
what I must do? I had labored in Port Kar to build the house of Bosk. I stood
high in this city. The curule chair at my high table was among the most honored
and envied of Gor! What honor it was to be the woman of Bosk, merchant, admiral!
And yet she had turned her back on this! She had displeased me! She had dared to
displease me! Bosk! The marshes had nothing to offer her. Would she refuse the
gold, the gems, the silks and silvers, and spilling coins, the choice of wines,
the servants and slaves, the security of the house of Bosk for the lonely
freedoms and silences of the salt marshes of the Vosk’s vast delta?
Did she expect me to hasten after her, piteously begging her return, while
Talena, once my companion, lay chained slave in the cruel green forests of the
north! Her trick would not work!
Let her stay in the marshes until she had had her pretty fill, and then let her
crawl whimpering back to the portals of the house of Bosk, whining and
scratching like a tiny domestic sleen for admittance, to be taken back!
But I knew Telima would not come back.
I wept.
“What are you going to do?” asked Samos. He did not lift his eyes from the
board.
“In the morning,” I said, “I leave for the northern forests.”
“Tersites,” said Samos, not looking up, “builds a ship, fit to sail beyond the
world’s end.”
“I no longer serve Priest-Kings,” I said.
I wiped my eyes on the sleeve of the woolen robe. I returned to stand above the
board.
My Home Stone was threatened.
Yet I felt hard and strong. I wore steel at my side. I was Bosk. I was once of
the warriors.
“Home Stone of Ubar’s Tarnsman One,” I said.
Samos made the move for me.
I nodded my head to the chained, nude male slave, flanked by his guards, to one
side.
“Is this the slave?” I asked Samos.
“Bring him forward,” said Samos.
The two guards, helmeted, threw him to his feet, and half dragging him, half
carrying him, their hands on his arms, brought him before us. Then they forced
him again to his knees, and thrust his dark, shaggy head down to the tiles
before our sandals.
The slave girl laughed.
When the guard removed his hand from the slave’s hair, he straightened his back,
and regarded us.
He seemed proud. I liked this.
“You have an unusual barber,” said Samos.
The slave girl laughed again, delightedly.
The strip which had been shaven on his head, from the forehead tot he back of
the neck, signified that he had been captured, and sold, by the panther girls of
the northern forests. It is among the greatest shames that a man can know, that
he had been enslaved by women, who had then, when weary of him, sold him, taking
their profit on him.
“It is said, “ said Samos, “that only weaklings, and fools, and men who deserve
to be slave girls, fall slave to women.”
The man glared at Samos. I could sense, again, that, in his manacles, behind his
back, his fists were clenched.
“I was once the slave of a woman,” I told the man.
He looked at me, startled.
“What is to be done with you?”
asked Samos.
I could see the heavy metal collar hammered about the man’s neck, not uncommon
in a male slave. His head would have been placed across the anvil, and the metal
curved about his neck with great blows.
“Whatever you wish,” said the man, kneeling before us.
“How came you to be slave?” I asked.
“As you can see,” he said, “I fell to women.”
“How came it about?” I asked.
“They fell upon me in my sleep,” he said. “I wakened to a knife at my throat. I
was chained. They much sported with me. When they wearied of me, I was taken,
leashed and manacles, to a lonely beach, at the edge of Thassa, bordering on the
western edge of the forests.”
“It is a well-known rendezvous point,” said Samos. “It was there one of my ships
picked him up, and others.” He looked at the man. “Do you recall your price?”
“Two steel knives,” said the man, “and fifty steel arrow points.”
“And a stone of hard candies, from the kitchens of Ar,” said Samos.
“Yes,” said the man, through gritted teeth.
The slave girl laughed, and clapped her hands. Samos did not admonish her.
“What is to be your fate?” said Samos.
“Doubtless to be a galley slave,” he said.
The great merchant galleys of Port Kar, and Cos, and Tyros, and other maritime
powers, utilized thousands of such miserable wretches, fed on brews of peas and
black bread, chained in the rowing holds, under the whips of slave masters,
their lives measured by feedings and beatings, and the labor of the oar.
“What were you doing in the northern forests?” I asked him.
“I am an outlaw”, he said proudly.
“You are a slave,” said Samos.
“Yes,” said the man, “I am a slave.”
The slave girl, in her brief silk, stood, holding the two-handled bronze paga
vessel, that she might look down upon him.
“Few travelers journey through the northern forests,” I said.
“Commonly,” said he, “I plundered beyond the forests.” He looked at the slave
girl. “Sometimes,” said he, “I plundered within them.”
She reddened.
“At the time I was captured,” said he, looking again at Samos, “I was trying
chain luck.”
Samos smiled.
“I thought that it was I who was hunting women,” said he. “But it was they who
were hunting me.”
The girl laughed.
He looked down, angrily.
Norman, John - Gor 08 - Hunters of Gor.txt Page 1
