Yet this situation, socially viable though it might be for generations, is not one truly productive of human happiness. Indeed, it is not altogether clear that it is preferable to the male dominated ethos of most Gorean cities, which, too, surely has its unfortunate side. In a city such as Tharna the men, taught to regard themselves as beasts, as inferior beings, seldom develop the full respect for themselves essential to true manhood. But even more strangely the women of Tharna do not seem content under the gynocracy. Although they despise men and congratulate themselves on their more lofty status it seems to me that they, too, fail to respect themselves. Hating their men they hate themselves.
I have wondered sometimes if a man to be a man must not master a woman and if a woman to be a woman must not know herself mastered. I have wondered how long nature's laws, if laws they are, can be subverted in Tharna. I have sensed how a man in Tharna longs to take the mask from a woman, and I have suspected how much a woman longs for her mask to be taken. Should there ever be a revoultion in the ways of Tharna I would pity her women - at least at first - for they would be the object of the pent-up frustrations of generations. If the pendulum should swing in Tharna, it would swing far. Perhaps even to the scarlet rug and yellow cords.
Outside the tent we heard Targo's voice.
To my surprise Lara dropped to her knees, placing them in the position of a Pleasure Slave, and dropped her head submissively.
Targo burst into the tent carrying a small bundle and approvingly noted the girl's posture.
'Well, Master,' he said, 'it seems with you she learns quickly.' He beamed up at me. 'I have cleared my records. She is yours.' He thrust the bundle into my hands. It was a folded camisk, and in its folds was a collar. 'A token of my appreciation of your business,' said Targo. 'There will be no extra charge.'
I smiled to myself. Most professional slavers would have furnished far more. I noted that Targo did not even furnish the customary slave livery of Gor but merely a camisk, which had clearly been worn before.
Targo then dug into the pouch which he wore at his side and held out two yellow cords, about eighteen inches apiece. 'I noted by the blue helmet,' he said, 'that you were of Tharna.'
'No,' I said, 'I am not of Tharna.'
'Ah well,' said Targo, 'how is one to know?' He tossed the cords to the rug before the girl.
'I have no more slave whips,' said Targo, shrugging his shoulders sadly, 'but your sword belt will do as well.'
'I'm sure it will,' I said, handing back the collar and camisk.
Targo looked puzzled.
'Bring her the clothing of a free woman,' I said.
Targo's mouth dropped open.
'- of a free woman,' I repeated.
Targo squinted at the Pleasure Rack at the side of the tent, perhaps looking for perspiration stains on the straps.
'Are you sure?' he asked.
I laughed and spun the fat little fellow about and, with one hand on the collar of his robes and the other hand firmly affixed south of the collar, flung him stumbling toward the exit of the tent.
He caught his balance there and, earrings swinging, turned to regard me as though I might have lost my senses. 'Perhaps Master is making a mistake?' he suggested.
'Perhaps,' I admitted.
'Where,' asked Targo, 'in the camp of a legitimate slaver do you expect me to find clothing suitable to a free woman?'
I laughed, and Targo smiled and left.
I wondered on how many nights free women, bound captives, had been thrown to his feet to be assessed and purchased, how many free women had in his camp exchanged their rich garments for a camisk and an ankle ring on his chain.
In a few moments Targo stumbled back into the tent, his arms bulging with cloth. He threw it down on the rug, puffing. 'Take your pick, Master,' he said, and backed out of the tent, shaking his head.
I smiled and looked on Lara.
The girl had risen to her feet.
To my surprise she went to the tent flaps and closed them, tying them shut on the inside.
She turned to face me, breathless.
She was very beautiful under the lamp, against the rich hangings of the tent.
She picked up the two yellow cords and, holding them in her hands, knelt before me in the position of the Pleasure Slave.
'I am going to free you,' I said.
Humbly she held the cords up for me to accept, her eyes bright, entreating, raised to mine.
'I am not of Tharna,' I said.
'But I am,' she said.
I saw that she knelt upon a scarlet rug.
'I am going to free you,' I said.
'I am not yet free,' she said.
I was silent.
'Please,' she begged, '- Master.'
And so it was that I took the cords from her hand, and in the same night Lara who had once been the proud Tatrix of Tharna became according to the ancient rites of her city my slave girl - and a free woman.
Chapter Twenty-Three: RETURN TO THARNA
Outside the camp of Targo, Lara and I climbed a small hill and stood on its crest. I could see before me, some pasangs away, the pavilions of tha Fair of En'Kara, and beyond those the looming ridges of the Sardar, ominous, black, sheer. Beyond the Fair and before the mountains, which rose suddenly from the plains, I could see the timber wall of black logs, sharpened at the top, which separated the Fair from the mountains.
Men seeking the mountains, men tired of life, young idealists, opportunists eager to learn the secret of immortality in its recesses, would use the gate at the end of the central avenue of the Fair, a double gate of black logs mounted on giant wooden hinges, a gate that would swing open from the centre, revealing the Sardar beyond.
Even as we stood on the hill I could hear the slow ringing of a heavy, hollow tube of metal, which betokened that the black gate had opened. The sad, slow sound reached the hillock on which we stood.
Lara stood beside me, clad as a free woman but not in the Robes of Concealment. She had shortened and trimmed one of the gracious Gorean garments, cutting it to the length of her knees and cutting away the sleeves so that they fell only to her elbows. It was a bright yellow and she had belted it with a scarlet sash. Her feet wore plain sandals of red leather. About her shoulders, at my suggestion, she had wrapped a cloak of heavy wool. It was scarlet. I had thought she might require this for warmth. I think she thought she might require it to match her sash. I smiled to myself. She was free.
I was pleased that she seemed happy.
She had refused the customary Robes of Concealment. She maintained that she would be more of a hindrance to me so clad. I had not argued, for she was right. As I watched her yellow hair swept behind her in the wind and regarded the joyful lineaments of her beauty, I was glad that she had not chosen, whatever might be her reason, to clothe herself in the traditional manner.
Yet though I could not repress my admiration of this girl and the transformation which had been wrought in her from the cold Tatrix of Tharna to the humiliated slave to the glorious creature who now stood beside me my thoughts were mostly in tha Sardar, for I knew that I had not yet kept my appointment with the Priest-Kings.
I listened to the slow, gloomy tolling of the hollow bar.
'Someone has entered the mountains,' said Lara.
'Yes,' I said.
'He will die,' she said.
I nodded.
I had spoken to her of my work in the mountains, of my destiny which lay therein. She had said, simply, 'I will go with you.'
She knew as well as I that those who entered the mountains did not return. She knew as well as I, perhaps better, the fearful power of the Priest-Kings.
Yet she had said she would come with me.
'You are free,' I had said.
'When I was your slave,' she had said, 'you could have ordered me to follow you. Now that I am free I will accompany you of my own accord.'
I looked at the girl. How proudly and yet how marvelously she stood beside me. I saw that she ha
d picked a talender on the hill, and that she had placed it in her hair.
I shook my head.
Though the full force of my will drove me to the mountains, though in the mountains the Priest-Kings waited for me, I could not yet go. It was unthinkable that I should take this girl into the Sardar to be destroyed as I would be destroyed, that I should devastate this young life so recently initiated into the glories of the senses, which had just awakened into the victories of life and feeling.
What could I balance against her - my honour, my thirst for vengeance, my curiosity, my frustration, my fury?
I put my arm about her shoulder and led her down from the hillock.
She looked at me questioningly.
'The Priest-Kings must wait,' I said.
'What are you going to do?' she asked.
'Return you to the throne of Tharna,' I said.
She pulled away from me, her eyes clouding with tears. I gathered her to my arms and kissed her gently.
She looked up at me, her eyes wet with tears.
'Yes,' I said, 'I wish it.'
She put her head against my shoulder.
'Beautiful Lara,' I said, 'forgive me.' I held her more closely. 'I cannot take you to the Sardar. I cannot leave you here. You would be destroyed by beasts or returned to slavery.'
'Must you return me to Tharna?' she asked. 'I hate Tharna.'
'I have no city to which I might take you,' I said. 'And I believe you can make Tharna such that you will hate it no longer.'
'What must I do?' she asked.
'That you must decide yourself,' I said.
I kissed her.
Holding her head in my hands I looked into her eyes.
'Yes,' I said proudly, 'you are fit to rule.'
I wiped the tears from her eyes.
'No tears,' I said, 'for you are Tatrix of Tharna.'
She looked up at me and smiled, a sad smile. 'Of course, Warrior,' she said, 'there must be no tears - for I am Tatrix of Tharna and a Tatrix does not cry.'
She pulled the talender from her hair.
I reached to her feet and repleced it.
'I love you,' she said.
'It is hard to be first in Tharna,' I said, and led her down the hillock, away from the Sardar Mountains.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The fires which had begun to burn in the Mines of Tharna had not been quenched. The revolt of the slaves had spread from the mines to the Great Farms. Shackles had been struck off and weapons seized. Angry men, armed with whatever tools of destruction they might find, prowled the land, evading the sorties of Tharna's soldiers, hunting for granaries to rob, for buildings to burn, for slaves to free. From farm to farm spread the rebellion and the shipments to the city from the farms became sporadic and then ceased. What the slaves could not use or hide, they cut down or burned.
Not more than two hours from the hillock where I had made the decision to return Lara to her native city the tarn had found us, as I had thought he would. As at the Pillar of Exchanges the bird had haunted the vicinity and now, for the second time, its patience was rewarded. It lit some fifty yards from us and we ran to its side, I first and Lara after me, she still apprehensive of the beast.
My pleasure was such that I hugged the neck of that sable monster.
Those round blazing eyes regarded me, those great wings lifted and shook, his beak was lifted to the sky and he screamed the shrill cry of the tarn.
Lara cried out in terror as the monster reached for me with his beak.
I did not move and that great terrible beak closed gently on my arm. Had the tarn wished, with a wrench of its glorious head, it might have torn the limb from my body. Yet its touch was almost tender. I slapped its beak and tossed Lara to its broad back and leaped up beside her.
Again the indescribable thrill possessed me and I think this time that even Lara shared my feelings. 'One-strap!' I cried, and the tarn's monstrous frame addressed itself once more to the skies.
As we flew, many were the fields of charred Sa-Tarna we saw below us. The tarn's shadow glided over the blackened frames of buildings, over broken pens from which livestock had been driven, over orchards that were now no more than felled trees, their leaves and fruit brown and withered.
On the back of the tarn Lara wept to see the desolation that had come to her country.
'It is cruel what they have done,' she said.
'It is also cruel what had been done to them,' I said.
She was silent.
The army of Tharna had struck here and there, at reported hiding places of slaves, but almost invariably they had found nothing. Perhaps some broken untensils, the ashes of campfires. The slaves, forewarned of their approach by other slaves or by impoverished peasants, supplanted by the Great Farms, would have made good their departure, only to strike when ready, when unexpected and in strength.
The sorties of tarnsmen were more successful, but on the whole the slave bands, now almost regiments, moved only at night and concealed themselves during the day. In time it became dangerous for the small cavalries of Tharna to assault them, to brave the storm of missile weapons which would seem to rise almost from the very ground itself.
Often indeed ambushes were laid wherein a small band of slaves would allow itself to be trailed into the rocky passes of the ridge country about Tharna, where their pursuers would be assailed by hidden cohorts; sometimes tarnsmen would descend to capture a slave only to meet the arrows of a hundred men concealed in covered pits.
Perhaps in time, however, the undisciplined but courageous bands of slaves would have been scattered and destroyed by the units of Tharna, save that the very revolution which had begun in the mines and spread to the Great Farms now flamed in the city itself. Not only slaves of the city raised the banner of defiance but men of low caste, whose brothers or friends had been sent to the mines or used in the Amusements, now dared at last to seize the instruments of their trade and turn on guardsmen and soliders. It was said the rebellion in the city was led by a short, powerful man with blue eyes and short-cropped hair, formerly of the Caste of Metal Workers.
Certain portions of the city had been burned to exterminate the rebellious elements and this cruel act of repression had only rallied confused and undecided men to the side of the rebels. Now it was said that entire portions of the city were in rebel hands. The silver masks of Tharna, when they were able, had escaped to the porions of the city still in the command of the soldiers. Many were reported to cower in the confines of the royal palace itself. The fate of those who had nor escaped rebel hands was not clear.
It was late in the afternoon of the fifth day that we saw in the distance the grey walls of Tharna. We were not threatened nor investigated by patrols. It was true that we could see tarnsmen and their mounts here and there among the cylinders, but none came to challenge us.
At several places in the city long ropes of smoke spiraled upward and then unravelled into vague, dark strands.
Down below a door hung open on its hinges, and small isolated figures scurried in and out. There were no tharlarion wagons or lines of woodsmen or pedlars making their way to or from the city. Outside the walls several small buildings had been burned. On the wall itself over the gate in huge letters there was scrawled the legend 'Sa'ng- Fori', literally 'Without Chains' but perhaps better translated simply as 'Freedom' or 'Liberty'.
We brought the tarn down on the walls near the gate. I freed the bird. There was no tarn cot at hand in which to enclose him, and moreover, even if there had been, I would not have trusted him to the tarn-keepers of Tharna. I did not know who was and who was not in rebellion. Perhaps mostly I wanted the bird to be free in case my hopes met with disaster, in case the Tatrix and I were to perish in some back street of Tharna.
On the summit of the wall we encountered the crumpled form of a fallen guardsman. It moved slightly. There was a small sound of pain. He had apparently been left for dead and was only now recove
ring consciousness. His grey garment with its scarlet strip of cloth on the shoulder was stained with blood. I unbuckled the helmet strap and gently removed the helmet.
One side of the helmet had been cracked open, perhaps by the blow of an axe. The helmet straps, the leather inside, and the blond hair of the soldier were soaked with his blood. He was not much more than a boy.
As he felt the wind on the walls reach his head he opened his greyish blue eyes. One hand attempted to clutch his weapon but the sheath had been emptied.
John Norman - Counter Earth02 - Outlaw Of Gor Page 20
