Norman, John - Gor 23 - Renegades of Gor.txt

Norman, John - Gor 23 - Renegades of Gor.txt Page 1

by Renegades of Gor [lit]

  23 Renegades of GorRenegades of Gor

  John Norman

  Chronicles of Counter-Earth Volume 23

  1 The Road; The Slave

  (pg.7) In a sudden flash of lightning, showing the driving rain, the wagons, the

  crowd on the road, I saw ahead, above me, and to my left, about a half of a

  pasang forward, on its stony plateau, the inn of the Crooked Tarn.

  “There is less than a pasang to go,” said a man near me.

  “They will have no places left,” said another.

  “You could not afford them, if they did,” said the first man.

  “We will camp on the lee side,” said another, “and water the beasts in the

  moat.”

  “Wagons will already be circled there,” said another.

  When groups are traveling together the wagons are often arranged in a circle,

  end to end, tongues inward, narrowing gaps between the “sections” of the

  improvised rampart, and chained together, the front axle of the next, the camp,

  and the draft animals, and any accompanying livestock, within the circle. This

  forms a wagon fort or laager. The circle contains more interior space than any

  other geometrical figure, so the camp is thus as large as possible, given the

  number of wagons. Too, as every point on the circumference is normally visible

  from, and equidistant from, the center, this facilitates defense, for example,

  the prompt and pertinent deployment of reserves. This arrangement, incidentally,

  is not common with the southern wagon peoples, such as Tuchuks, if only because

  of the vast numbers (pg. 8) of wagons. There the wagons congregate almost to

  form wagon cities. It is fairly typical, however, with some of the less numerous

  wagon peoples of the north, such as the tribes of the Alars, particularly when

  separated from one another on the march, though there one might note the circle

  is often very large and as many as four or five wagons deep.

  There was another flash of lightning, and an earsplitting crash of thunder.

  Ahead, and on the plateau of the inn, I saw the large wooden sign, on its

  chains, jerked in the wind, striking about, pelted with rain. It was in the form

  of a malformed tarn, its neck crooked, almost vulturelike, the right leg, with

  its talons, much larger than the left, and outstretched, grasping. Such signs

  are not untypical of Gorean hostelries, as many Goreans, particularly those of

  the lower castes, cannot read.

  Then again it seemed the world was plunged into darkness and there was little

  except driving rain and the creaking of wagons.

  I had put my cloak over my head. The wagon I was walking beside was to my left.

  It kept to the left side of the road, as it was moving north on what, in this

  latitude, was usually called the Vosk Road, but farther south was generally

  knows as the Vitkel Aria. My cloak hung down from my head about my shoulders,

  and thence fell to my waist. I had shortened the straps of the sword sheath,

  hitching it high, the hilt now before my left shoulder, under the cloak. I kept

  one hand, from beneath my cloak, on the side of the wagon. In this way I was

  less likely to stumble in the darkness, and the cold, driving rain. The other

  hand, my right, held my cloak about my neck. My pack was in the wagon.

  To my right, in the line of traffic moving south, I suddenly heard cursing and

  the startled, protesting bellowing of a tharlarion. There were shouts. There was

  a creaking of wood, and the slick squeak of an engaged, leather-lined brake shoe

  pressing against the iron rim of a wheel. “Jump!” cried someone. There was then

  a sound of sliding, and then, after a moment, that of a wagon tipping heavily

  into mud. The tharlarion, probably thrown from its feet, was squealing in its

  harness.

  I pulled my pack from the wagon I was trekking beside (pg.9) and, feeling about,

  locating the side of the next wagon moving south, felt around it, and went to

  the side of the road. Another tharlarion moved past me. I reached out and felt

  its wet scales. In another flash of lightning I saw the wagon in the ditch,

  tipped on its side, its canvas-covered, roped-down load bulging against the

  restraining cover, the tharlarion also in its side, lying tangled in its

  harness, its feet flailing, its long neck craning about.

  A man thrust past me, holding an unshuttered dark lantern beneath his cloak.

  Rain was pouring over the brim of his felt hat. Two others were behind him. They

  slipped down the side of the ditch. “The axle is broken,” said one of the men to

  the driver. The driver had another fellow with him, too. I stood on the road, at

  its edge. I felt about with my foot. There were missing stones there. That was

  probably where the wheel had missed the road. There, I supposed, had loosened,

  given the heavy traffic and the storm. The wagon, it seemed, had slipped down

  the embankment, dragging the beast after it. I stayed where I was for a moment.

  It seemed to me odd that three men, one with a dark lantern, should be so

  quickly upon the scene.

  “Beware,” cried the driver through the rain to the men below me, beside the

  wagon. “I carry a Home Stone in this wagon.”

  The three men looked at one another, and then backed away. They would not choose

  to do business with one who carried a Home Stone, even though they were three to

  two. It was as I had speculated. There were road pirates. Possibly the stones

  had been deliberately loosened.

  “Gentlemen,” I called down to them. “Lift your lantern.”

  They looked upward. I let my cloak fall to the sides so that they could see the

  scarlet of my tunic.

  “Hold your places!” I called.

  They stood where they were. I might pursue one. None of them cared to risk being

  that one.

  I slipped down the embankment to join them.

  I tossed my pack to the side of the slope.

  I took the lantern from the fellow in the broad-brimmed felt hat, and handed it

  to the fellow of the driver. I did not draw my sword. It was not necessary.

  (pg.10) “Unharness the tharlarion,” I said to the driver. “Get it on its feet.”

  He went around to the front of the wagon.

  I took the leader of the three men in hand. “You have a wagon nearby,” I said to

  him. “You two fetch it.”

  “It is not on the road,” said one of the fellows.

  I flung the leader to his belly in the mud and put my foot on his back.

  “Get the wagon!” he said.

  They hurried away.

  “Do you think they will return?” I asked.

  He was silent.

  I moved my foot to the back of his neck and pressed his face down into the muddy

  water. He pulled up, sputtering. “Yes!” he said. “Yes!”

  He was correct. In a few Ehn the two fellows returned, leading a tharlarion

&
nbsp; drawing another wagon. As I had anticipated, it had not been far away.

  “Empty your wagon out,” I told the two. “And place the cargo of this wagon in

  what was once yours.”

  They did so. As I had anticipated the contents of their wagon was a miscellany

  of cheap loot, taken from other wagons, and from refugees moving south on the

  Viktel Aria, from the vicinity of Ar’s Station, on the Vosk.

  The driver, his tharlarion freed, and on its feet, hitched it before the other

  beast, in tandem. It knew his voice, and would respond more readily as the lead

  beast.

  “Give your purses to the driver,” I said.

  They did so.

  I myself took the contents of a metal coin box removed from their wagon and

  emptied it into my wallet. It contained several coins, the loot, probably, of

  better than several days’ work. To be sure, most of the coins there were small,

  such as would be likely to weight only a threadbare purse. The number, however,

  more than compensated for the generally unimpressive denominations. There must

  have been the equivalent there of seventeen or eighteen silver tarsks.

  I located the stones which were missing from the edge of the road. They were in

  the ditch below their place, half sunk in the mud. Apparently they had been

  removed deliberately from the road, and might be replaced, thence to be removed

  again, at will, to (pg.11) again jeopardize the integrity of the road, their

  absence in the darkness in effect, constituting a trap. The three fellows, with

  my encouragement, in the rain, replaced them.

  I again took them to the bottom of the ditch, by the overturned wagon.

  “Kneel there,” I told the three of them, “between the wheels, with your backs to

  the bottom of the wagon.”

  They complied, kneeling with the bottom of the overturned wagon behind them.

  From this position it would be difficult for them to bolt.

  “Take everything, but let us go!” begged the leader.

  “I am thinking,” I told him, “of tying you naked on your back, over the tongue

  of the wagon, and fastening your two fellows, on their backs, stripped, over the

  wheels. It might be amusing to spin them about.”

  They regarded one another, frightened.

  “But you are not female slaves,” I mused.

  “Men would find us with the loot about, and impale us!” said the leader.

  That was not improbable. Thieves are often dealt with harshly on Gor.

  “Do not condemn us to death!” begged the leader.

  “Strip,” I ordered them.

  I then tied their hands behind their backs. Ropes were found in the wagon and we

  tied them by the necks to the back of the wagon. Verr, too, and female slaves,

  and such, are often tethered to the back of wagons.

  “In the south,” said the driver, from the wagon box, “there are work gangs. We

  can probably get something for them there.”

  “Stay the traffic on the road, as you can, for an Ehn,” I said to the fellow of

  the driver. “We will get the wagon back on the road.

  “I doubt two tharlarion can pull this grade from the ditch, with this weight,

  with the footing,” said the driver.

  “Hurry to it,” I said to the fellow of the driver. “We shall try it.”

  He scrambled up the embankment, the lantern in one hand, clutching at knots of

  wet grass with the other, slipping, sliding back, then regaining his feet, then

  reaching the surface. (pg.12) In the ditch we were ankle deep in water. The rain

  continued to pour down in torrents. It ran from the pitched surface of the road

  downward, in tiny rivers; it struck into the swirling ditch water, lashing it

  into foam, dashing it upwards, its impact registered in thousands of overlapping

  circles and leaping crowns of water. We saw the lantern, in the fellow’s hand,

  at the surface, swinging. “Hold! Hold!” he cried in the storm. I think he then

  literally seized the harness of the next tharlarion. “Hold!” he cried.

  “We will never make it,” said the driver.

  “Try,” I said. “Besides we have three stout fellows here who can turn about and

  put their backs into it.”

  “If the wagon slips,” said the leader of the brigands, “we could be crushed,

  mangled beneath the wheels!”

  “See it does not slip,” I said.

  There were angry shouts now from the delayed line, moving south.

  “Hurry!” I said to the driver.

  He moved about the wagon and climbed to the wagon box. I heard, in a moment, his

  shouting to the lead beast, and the crack of the tharlarion whip. The whip,

  incidentally, seldom falls on the beast. Its proximity, and noise, are usually

  more than sufficient. Too, it often functions as an attention-garnering device,

  a signal, so to speak, preparing the beast for the sequent issuance of verbal

  commands, to which it is trained to respond. Too, of course, like a staff of

  office, a rod, a baton, or scepter, it is an authority device. To be sure, the

  device has its authority largely in virtue of what it genuinely stands for, and

  what it can do. Much the same, incidentally, can be said for the whip in the

  master/slave relationship. There, too, normally, it seldom falls on the woman.

  it is not necessary that it do so. She sees it, and knows what it can do. That

  is usually more than sufficient. She will have felt it at some time, of course,

  so that her understanding in the matter will be more than theatrical. She knows,

  of course, that if she is in the least bit displeasing or recalcitrant, it will

  be used upon her. Indeed, she knows that she might be, from time to time, placed

  beneath it, if only that she may be reminded that she is a slave. It is my

  belief that women have an instinctual understanding of the whip.

  The wagon lurched ahead.

  (pg.13) it would attempt its rendezvous with the road by an ascendant diagonal.

  The brigands were jerked forward, by the neck, behind it. One lost his footing

  and was dragged for a few feet, through the ditch water, part way up the slope.

  “Put your backs to it,” I told the captives.

  “Look out!” cried someone from the road, above, perhaps a fellow come forward,

  inquiring concerning the delay, dismounted from one of the other wagons.

  “Look out!” cried another.

  “It is tipping!” cried the leader of the brigands in terror.

  I tried to set myself on the slope, but slipped back, and the wagon slid

  sideways toward me, the wheels tearing lines in the grass, tilting. Then I got

  solid footing and, my hands pressing against the side of the wagon, righted it.

  “Who is down there?” called a fellow from the surface of the road.

  I saw lanterns lifted, up on the road.

  “There is a gang of five men on the other side of the wagon,” said a fellow. “It

  is all right now. They have righted it.”

  The first tharlarion now had its heavy, clawed feet on the stones of the road. I

  heard its claws on the stone. Some other men, too, came to the second

  tharlarion, hauling on its harness, and oth
ers, too, seized the wagon sides and

  the forward wheels, lending their efforts to getting the wagon on the road. This

  was done in part in the camaraderie of the road, but, too, men were anxious to

  be on their way. It was not now safe in the north, in this area, particularly

  for refugees from the vicinity of Ar’s Station.

  “I see only one fellow down there,” said a man from the road. I went to retrieve

  my pack from where I had cast it on the embankment. It was soaked through, I was

  sweating, in spite of the cold and the rain. Too, I had been very afraid, for a

  moment. I had feared the wagon would tip. I saw it now above me, mostly on the

  road, though, tilting, the left wheels were still over the edge of the stones.

  The darkness and the traffic on the other side made it hazardous to pull fully

  across the road. Harnesses might be fouled. Men can be trampled by tharlarion,

  wagons can be torn apart.

  (pg.14) I ascended to the surface of the road. I put my pack at the back of the

  wagon.

  “It is one of the scarlet caste,” said a fellow to another.

  “Hold the lantern here,” I said to the fellow of the driver, who had now, having

  arrested the progress of the following tharlarion, released his hold on the

  beast’s harness.

  “That is Andron, the brigand!” suddenly said a man, pointing to the leader of

  the brigands.

  There were angry shouts.

  “Put their necks under the wheels!” said a man.

  “Impale them,” cried another.

  “Tie their feet together and drag them behind the wagons,” said another.

  “Kneel,” I suggested to the brigands. There was a large number of people here

  and I was not sure I could protect them. I had not counted on them being well

  known. “Put your heads down,” I encouraged them. “Look as harmless as possible.”

  “Chain them and hang them in iron collars at the inn!” said a fellow. Sometimes

  a man lasts two or three days in this fashion.

  “Chain them on the boards,” cried another. That is a similar form of punishment.

  In it the victim is fastened, by collars and shackles, on structures of

  parallel, upright boards, vertical platforms, in effect, mounted on posts. These

  structures are most common in harbor cities, near the wharves. The fellow who

 

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