“Kill us! Kill us!” screamed the man.
“There are too many,” I heard one of the guards say.
“Alternate collars,” said a voice.
“No!” a voice screamed. “No!”
The guards knew the water. We did not.
It seemed a long time we knelt in the crusts. After some Ehn I heard men afoot
near me. They were moving down the chain. I tensed in the hood. Suddenly the
chain before me, jerked. I heard no sound. Then the chain pulled down. I
struggled to my feet, pulling against the chain with my neck, wild, not able to
see. “Kneel,” said a voice. I knelt. I tensed. I could not see in the hood. I
knelt, a chained captive in the crusts. I could not lift my hands before my
body. I was helpless, absolutely. “No,” I heard a voice cry, “No!” The chain at
my throat, from behind, shook, and sprang taut. I heard feet, scraping in the
crusts, slipping. There was a cry, and I felt, through the chain, a drag, and
shudder. Then the men continued on their way.
“I misjudged the water,” I heard Hamid say.
“It does not matter,” said someone.
We knelt in the crusts. Somewhere, a few feet from me, I heard a man singing to
himself.
Another man came down the chain. I heard him open the collars on either side of
me.
I heard, a short time later, wings, the alighting of one or more large birds.
Such birds, broad-winged, black and white, from afar, follow the marches to
Klima; their beaks, yellowish, narrow, are long and slightly hooked at the end,
useful for probing and tearing.
The birds scattered, squawking, as a Kaiila sped past. The birds are called
zads.
“On your feet, Slaves!” I heard. The lash struck me twice. I did not object to
it. I could feel it. The blood coursed through my body. The Pain was sharp,
rich, and deep, and keen. I did not object to the pain, for I could feel it.
Elation coursed through me, fierce, uncontrollable, for I was alive. The lash
struck again. I laughed, struggling to my feet. I stood straight. “March,
Slaves!” I heard, and I began again the march, moving first with the left foot,
then the right, that the march be uniform, that the chain be carried evenly. It
was heavier than before, but I carried it lightly, for I was alive. No longer
did I object to the salt in my flesh, the heat. It was enough that I lived. How
foolish it seemed then, suddenly, that one should want more. How should one want
more, save perhaps health and honor, and a woman, slave at one’s feet? I marched
onward again, brushing through feeding zads, once more toward Klima. I hummed to
myself a simple tune, a tune I had never forgotten, a warrior tune from the
northern city of Ko-ro-ba.
Four days later, on a crest, the voice again called “Hold!” and the chain held.
“Do not kill us! Do not kill us!” screamed a voice. I recognized it. It was the
voice of the man who, through much of the march, had cried for us to be killed.
He had been silent since the noon halt of four days ago. I had not known whether
he had survived or not.
Kaiila moved past us.
I heard collars being opened. For the hood I could not see. The silk, which was
tied in my collar, was removed. It was tied, by order of Hamid, who rode near,
about my left wrist, under the manacle. I felt the silk in the circular wrist
sore. A heavy key was then thrust in the lock of my collar. The lock contained
sand and salt. In the heat the metal was expanded. The lock resisted. Then the
key, forced, with a heavy snap, turned, freeing the lock bolt. The collar was
opened. The collar was jerked from my throat, and dropped, with the chain, in
the crusts. The man then moved to the next prisoner.
No man fled from the chain.
“We may not take kaiila in,” said a man.
We stood for some minutes. I felt the blood and salt in the split shreds of the
leather wrappings on my legs. I took care not to move the manacles and chain.
I felt a key inserted in the lock of the slave hood. To my surprise it was
thrust up, and jerked from my head. I cried out in sudden pain, the unbelievable
white light, hot, fierce, universal, merciless, shuddering in the scalding air
of the encircling, blazing crusts, from horizon to horizon, exploding, stabbing,
searing like irons at my face and eyes. “I’m blind,” cried a man. “I’m blind!”
Kaiila moved along the line. It would be long minutes before we could see.
We heard chains being looped and gathered. More kaiila passed me.
My limbs felt weak, and ached. I was dizzy. I could scarcely move. I could
scarcely stand.
“Take salt,” said a voice. It was Hassan!
“You live!” I cried.
“Take salt,” he said.
He fell to his knees, and thrust his face into the salt. He bit at the crusts.
He licked crystals from them.
I followed his example. We had not had salt in four days.
“Look,” cried one of the guards. We lifted our heads. We struggled to our feet.
We gritted our eyelids, to shut out the heat, the blinding light.
“Water!” cried a voice. “Water!”
It was a man, come from the desert about. He had not been in the chain. He wore
no manacles.
“Water!” he cried. He staggered toward us. He wore a bit of cloth. His body
moved awkwardly. His fingernails were gone. His mouth and face seemed split,
like dried crust.
“It is an escaped slave from the desert,” said Hamid. He unsheathed his
scimitar, and loped toward the man. He bent down easily from the saddle, the
blade loose, but he did not strike, but returned to the other guards, The man
stood in the crusts, looking after the rider, stupidly. “Water..” he said.
“Please, water.”
“Shall we have sport?” asked Hamid of two of his fellows.
“The trek has been long,” grinned one, “and there has been little diversion.”
“The head?” asked one. “The left car?”
“Agreed,” said the other. They loosened their lances.
“Water,” said the man. “Water.”
The first man, kicking the kaiila forward, missed his thrust. The gait of the
kaii1a in the crusts was not even. The mark, too, was not an easy one. To strike
it would require considerable skill.
The haggard man stood in the crusts, stupidly.
“The right ear,” said the next man, grasping the long, slim lance, eight feet
Gorean in length, marked with red and yellow swirling stripes, terminating in an
extremely narrow point, razored, steel, some eleven inches in length, and
lanceolate, as the leaf of the flahdah tree.
All the time he had not taken his eyes from the target.
“Water!” cried the man. Then he screamed as the lance struck him, turning him
about.
The second rider had been skillful. The blade had penetrated below the helix and
opened the ear, lifting and parting, in its upward movement, the helix.
The man staggered back in the crusts, he lifted his hand. The first rider
cursed. He had charged again. This time, the man, stumbling, trying to turn
away, had been struck on the left arm, high, just below the shoulder. I was
startled that there was so little blood, for
the wound was deep. It was as
though the man had no blood to bleed. There was a, ridge of reddish fluid at the
cut. I watched through narrowed eyelids, grimacing against the light. To my
horror I saw the man press his mouth to the wound, sucking at the bit of blood.
He did not move, but stood in the crusts, sucking at the blood.
Hamid, easily, on the kaiila, his scimitar still light in his hand, rode behind
the man. I did not watch, but turned away.
“The point is to Baram,” said Hamid. Clearly the second rider had been the
finest.
“We may not take the kaiila in,” said one of the guards.
“We have water sufficient for the return trip,” said another, “moving at an
unimpeded pace.”
To my amazement I saw one of the guards unlocking the stomach-chain and manacles
of one of the prisoners. Already the man’s slave hood had been removed. And we
had, already, been freed of the neck chain.
I looked about, through half-shut eyes. I stood unsteadily. I counted. There
were twenty prisoners standing in the crusts. I shuddered.
Hamid rode to my side. He had wiped his blade in the mane of his kaiila. He
resheathed the blade. I felt the heat. We stood on a crest, overlooking a broad,
shallow valley.
Hamid leaned down. “There,” he said, pointing into the broad valley. “Can you
see?”
“Yes,” I said.
In the distance, below, perhaps five pasangs away, in the hot, concave, white
salt bleakness, like a vast, white, shallow bowl, pasangs wide, there were
compounds, low, white buildings of mud brick, plastered. There were many of
them. They were hard to see in the distance, in the light, but I could make them
out.
“Klima,” said Hamid.
“I have made the march to Klima,” said one of the prisoners. He cried out,
elatedly, “I have made the march to Klima!” It was the man who had, for many of
the days, cried out for us to be slain. It was he who had, since the noon halt
of four days ago, been silent.
I looked at the prisoners. We looked at one another. Our bodies were burned
black by the sun. The flesh, in many places, had cracked. Lighter colored flesh
could be seen beneath. There was salt on us, to our thighs. The leather
wrappings about our legs were in tatters. Our necks and bodies were abraded, raw
from collar and chain. In the last days we had been denied salt. Our bodies were
cruel with cramps and weakness. But we stood, all of us, and straight, for we
had come to Klima.
Twenty had come to Klima.
The first prisoner, whose bonds had been removed, was thrust in the direction of
the compounds. He began to stagger down the slope toward the valley, slipping in
the crusts, sometimes sinking in to his knees.
One by one the prisoners were freed. None attempted to flee into the desert.
Each, as he was freed, began to trudge toward Klima. There was nowhere else to
go.
The man, who had cried out, “I have made the match to Klima!” was freed. He
staggered toward the compounds, running, half falling, down the long slope.
Hassan and I were freed. Together we trudged toward Klima, following the
straggling line of men before us.
We came upon a figure, fallen in the salt. It was be who had run ahead, who had
cried out, disbelievingly, joyously, “I have made the march to Klima!”
We turned the body over in the salt. “He is dead,” said Hassan.
Together, Hassan and I rose to our feet.
Nineteen had come to Klima.
I looked back once, to see Hamid, he who was in the fee of the Guard of the
Dunes, the Salt Ubar, who was supposedly the faithful lieutenant to Shakar,
captain of the Aretai. He turned his kaiila, and, with a scattering of salt,
following the others, disappeared over the crest.
I looked up toward the merciless sun. Its relentless presence seemed to fill the
sky.
I looked down.
About my left wrist, knotted, bleached in the sun, was a bit of slave silk. On
it, still, lingered the perfume of a slave girl, one who, purchased, had been
useful to Kurii, who had testified falsely against me at Nine Wells, who had,
contemptuously, insolently, cast me a token of her consideration, a bit of silk
and scent, to remember her by, when I served at Klima. I would not soon forget
pretty Vella. I would remember her well.
I looked up at the sun again, and then, bitter, looked away. I put the wench
from my head. She was only a slave girl, only collar meat.
The important work was that of Priest-Kings. Hassan and I had not found the
steel tower. We had failed.
I was bitter.
Then I followed Hassan, who had trudged on ahead, wading in the salt, following
him toward Klima.
15 T’Zshal
At Klima, and other such areas, salt is an industry. Thousands serve there, held
captive by the desert. Klima has its own water, but it is dependent on caravans
for its foods. These food stores are delivered to scouted areas some pasangs
from the compounds, whence they are retrieved later by salt slaves. Similarly,
the heavy cylinders of salt, mined and molded at Klima, are carried on the backs
of salt slaves from storage areas at Klima to storage areas in the desert,
whence they are tallied, sold and distributed to caravans. The cylinders are
standardized at ten stone, or a Gorean “Weight,” which is some forty pounds. A
normal kaiila carries ten such cylinders, five to a side. A stronger animal
carries sixteen, eight to a side. The load is balanced, always. It is difficult
for an animal, or man, of course, to carry an unbalanced load. Most salt at
Klima is white, but certain of the mines deliver red salt, red from ferrous
oxide in its composition, which is called the Red Salt of Kasra, after its port
of embarkation, at the juncture of the Upper and Lower Fayeen.
In Gor’s geologic past it seems that the salt districts, like scattered puddles
of crystalline residue, are what remains of what was once an inland salt sea or
several such. It may be that, in remote times, an arm of Thassa extended here,
or did extend here and then, later, in seismic dislocations or continental rift
became isolated from the parent body of water, leaving behind one or more
smaller salt seas. Or it may be that the seas were independent, being fed by
rivers, washing down accumulated salt from rocks over millions of square
passangs. It is not known. In the salt districts salt is found either in solid
form or in solution. Klima, among the salt districts, is most famous for its
brine pits. Salt can be found in solid form either above or below ground. With
the subsidence of, the sea and the shifting of strata, certain cubic pasangs of
salt, in certain areas, became pressed into granite-like formations, through
which one may actually tunnel. Some of these deposits are far below the surface
of the Tahari. Men live in some of them, for weeks at a time. In other areas,
certain of these solid deposits are exposed and are worked rather in the manner
of open mining or quarries. In places these salt mountains are more than six
hundred feet high. At Klima, however, most of the salt is in solution.
It is the
subterranean residue of portions of the vanished seas themselves, which have
slipped through fissures and, protected from the heat, and fed still by the
ancient seeping rivers, now moving sluggishly beneath the surface, maintain
themselves, the hidden remnants of oceans, once mighty, which long ago swelled
upon the surface of Gor itself. The salt in solution is obtained in two ways, by
drilling and flush mining and, in the deeper pits, by sending men below to fetch
the brine. In the drilling and flush mining, two systems are used, the
doublepipe system and the separate-pipe system. In the double-pipe system fresh
water is forced into the cavity through an outer pipe and the heavier solution
of salt and water rises bubbling through the second pipe, or inner pipe,
inserted within the larger. In the separate-pipe system, two pipes, separated by
several yards, are used, fresh water being forced through one, the salt water
solution, the salt being dissolved in the fresh water, rising through the other.
The separate-pipe system is, by most salt masters, regarded as the most
efficient. An advantage of the double-pipe system is that only a single tap well
need be drilled. Both systems require pumping, of course. But much of the salt
at Klima comes from its famous brine pits’ These pits are of two kinds, “open”
and “closed.” Men, in the closed pits, actually descend and, wading, or on
rafts, negotiate the sludge itself, filling their vessels and later, eventually,
pouring their contents into the lift sacks, on hooks, worked by windlasses from
the surface. The “harvesting” vessel, not the retaining vessel, used is rather
like a perforated cone with a handle, to which is attached a rope. It is dragged
through the sludge and lifted, the free water running from the vessel, leaving
within the sludge of salt, thence to be poured into the retaining vessels, huge,
wooden tubs. The retaining vessels are then emptied later into the lift sacks, a
ring on which fits over the rope hooks. In places, the “open pits,” the brine
pits are exposed on the surface, where they are fed by springs from the
underground rivers, which prevents their dessication by evaporation, which would
otherwise occur almost immediately in the Tahari temperatures. Men do not last
long in the open pits. The same underground seepage which, in places, fills the
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