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

by Renegades of Gor [lit]

  Certainly it is hard for a woman to wear thumb cuffs and not understand her

  helplessness. Some masters favor them early in a girl’s training, thinking that

  it hastens their progress. Whereas I have occasionally introduced a woman

  somewhat rudely into the realities of bondage, I generally prefer to ease then

  into it, giving them time to develop and gradually understand their new feelings

  and sensations, giving them time to accommodate themselves to their new life and

  destiny. Accordingly, thought I might put a girl into thumb cuffs for an Ahn or

  so, perhaps early in her training, perhaps in the process of informing her as to

  the nature of various bonds, their textures, and such, I generally do not use

  them. I think of them, like close chains, more as a punishment than a restraint.

  That she knows they exist, and could be put on her, by my will, like close

  chains, in itself has its salutary effect on her. And what seems to me generally

  sufficient.

  The major point of the restraint is to restrain, not hurt. Indeed, pain can

  interfere with many of the diverse subsidiary values of restraints, physical and

  psychological. It can be distractive. Pain is a bit like the whip. The slave is

  subject to the whip, and truly subject to it, but this does now mean that she is

  necessarily whipped; that she could be whipped, and will be whipped, if she is

  not pleasing, is what is important, not that she need be whipped. Why should one

  beat a pleasing slave? To be sure, there are no bargains, contracts or

  arrangements in these matters, and the slave may be beaten whenever the master

  pleases, with or without a reason. She is, after all, a slave. Similarly, along

  these lines, to be perfectly honest, I have upon occasion used thumb cuffs on

  females, when it has seemed to me there was a point of doing so, or when it

  pleased me to do so.

  “She was naked, hooded, and thonged, and on a leash, in the keeping of one or

  another free person,” he said.

  (pg.328) “That sounds like a slave,” I said.

  “Yes, it does,” he said.

  We heard the small boats behind us, drawing up, near the pilings beneath the

  walkway.

  “It is my supposition,” he said, “that no female was impaled.”

  “That is an interesting supposition,” I granted him.

  “If it is true,” he said, “Lady Claudia, whom I suspect is somewhere about,

  probably in the rags of Lady Publia, is still entitled to look forward to her

  impalement.”

  I saw that the woman in thumb cuffs was now on her knees on the landing, and

  that her head was pushed down to the stone. The cord from her nose ring was

  lying beside her head on the stone. She was then put to use. I saw her wrists

  lifting, her fingers, beside her confined thumbs, jerking, opening and closing.

  Then she was pulled to her feet by the cord on the nose ring and hurrying after

  her master.

  “Do you not think so?” he asked.

  “They are marshaling at the end of the walkway,” I said.

  I heard axes behind us, attacking the pilings of the walkway.

  “Do you not think so?” he asked.

  “You are certainly a zealous fellow,” I said. “I have seldom encountered so

  single-minded a devotion to duty.”

  “Obviously, if you did not impale her,” he said, “you did not wish her impaled,

  and you have done service to Ar’s Station, whatever may be your own Home Stone.

  That is one reason I am beside you now, that I may guiltlessly evade, if

  possible, my very unpleasant duty, but clear duty, in that matter.”

  “I do not understand,” I said. “I am sorry.”

  “But if we should survive,” he said, “you understand that we must attempt to

  apprehend the prisoner and see that the sentence is carried out upon her, even

  if it means only weights on her ankles and a sharpened pole on a pier.”

  “The Cosians!” I cried.

  Then, with shield and sword, with the ringing of metal, (pg. 329) with shouts,

  with cries of war, the six of us, I, Marsias, the grizzled fellow, and the three

  who had come originally to the cell, struck by charging Cosians, almost swept

  back, struggled to hold the walkway.

  19 The Walkway

  (pg.330) It was on the long walkway leading out to the piers that we fought.

  Behind us, some fifteen yards back, the walkway was afire.

  Portions of it, hewn and chopped from the small boats, sank into the water. Most

  of these boats were of Ar’s Station, those which had been out at the piers.

  Other boats trying to flank our position, for using their crossbows, were met

  and turned back by those of Ar’s Station. Indeed, the walkway for a dozen yards,

  closer to the landing, was covered by these boars, until the camp commander sent

  his own crossbowmen out on the walkway, to keep them their distance. Fourteen

  times did the Cosians assault us. In the fifth assault Marsias was grievously

  wounded, and one other, one who had come originally to the cell. At that time

  the walkway was still intact, though flaming, behind us, and they could be

  withdrawn through the fire and smoke to the piers. Their places were taken, to

  my amazement, by other stout fellows of Ar’s Station. Behind us it seemed men

  vied to join us. Then, in the seventh assault, two others of our original band,

  the other two who had come originally to the cell, were forced back, bleeding,

  unable to stand. They were lowered by fishermen into waiting small boats. From

  these two others climbed to the walkway, to take their place. Of the original

  band this left only myself and the grizzled fellow.

  (pg.331) Fins slid through the water circling the boats, and back and forth

  beneath the walkway, among the pilings. Sometimes, converging, they suddenly

  knifed toward a splash in the water, as one fellow or another lost his footing,

  or fell, bloodied, from the walkway. There were screams from the water and

  extended hands, and wild eyes. Then there would be churning froths, and blood

  swirling up, and reachings out, graspings with nothing to grasp, and then we

  would see bodies drawn under the water. Sometimes we could see them being drawn

  under the walkway, being taken into its shadows. Sometimes we could see, too,

  less easily, the long dark shapes, a yard or so beneath the water, conducting

  them, and the movements of the powerful, vertical tails. Often the fish fought

  for their prey, sometimes under the walkway itself. We could sometimes feel the

  movements of their bodies against the pilings beneath us. I saw one fellow of

  Ar’s Station, standing in a small boat, scream with hatred and strike down at

  one of the shapes with a pike. I think he cut its back. I saw another fellow, a

  fellow of Cos, spend a quarrel on a fish that was scouting his boat. It

  descended rapidly, as though stung, the metal fins of the quarrel disappearing

  under the water with the dorsal fin.

  In between the assaults we gasped for breath and crouched behind our shields,

  resting their rims on the walkway. To lift such a device for Ehn at a time, and

  receive blow after blow upon it,
bearing up under them, in time makes the arm

  desperately tired and sore. It is little wonder warriors often train with

  weighted shields. In the early Ahn of battle a common cause of causalities,

  particularly with young warriors, is recklessness, and the failure to use the

  shield properly to protect oneself. In the late Ahn of a battle, however, an

  even more common cause of causalities, interestingly enough, is the simple

  inability to lift, control and maneuver the shield. There is a great temptation

  to lower it, to ease the pain of the screaming muscles. This compounds, of

  course, with arm weariness, the result of wielding the sword, and the slowing of

  reflexes and reaction time, resulting from general fatigue.

  The same problems, of course, normally afflict one’s enemy. When one understands

  these factors, and that battles often last several hours, and are sometimes

  renewed for two or three days, it is easier to understand certain things which

  (pg.332) might otherwise seem anomalous in this form of warfare, for example,

  the respites between assaults, the fluctuations of lines, the occasional,

  apparently incredible truces which can occur by mutual consent here and there in

  the pockets of a battle, men standing about, looking at one another, sometimes

  even conversing, and the great importance of the judicious distribution of, and

  application of, reserves.

  For those who are interested in such matters, it might be pointed out that

  factors such as these seem to be playing their part in the gradual replacement

  of the phalanx with the square in Gorean warfare. It is not simply that the

  squares are more tactically flexible, being capable of functioning on broken

  terrain, and such, but also that they facilitate substitutions in the front

  lines, permitting the swift injection of fresh troops at crucial points. The

  success of many generals, in my opinion, is largely a function of their

  intelligent use of reserves.

  Deitrich of Tarnburg, for example, though one often thinks of him in terms of

  innovations such as the oblique advance and the use of siege equipment in the

  field, is also, in my opinion, based on my studies of his campaigns, for

  example, in the commentaries of Minicius and the “Diaries,” which some ascribe

  to Carl Commenius, of Argentum, a military historian, a master of the use of

  reserves. Some claim, incidentally, the Commenius was himself once a mercenary.

  I do not know if this is true or not, but his diaries, if, indeed, they are his,

  suggest that he was not a stranger to the field. I do not think it likely that

  all the incidents in them, in their detail, are merely based on the reports of

  others. His accounts of Rovere and Kargash, for example, suggest to me the

  fidelity, the authenticity, of a perceptive eyewitness. It seems to me, for

  example, that a common soldier would not be likely to supply a detail such as

  the loosing of water by a confused, terrified tharlarion in the field. The

  common soldier would be aware of such things, and, indeed, would even take them

  for granted, but they are not the sorts of details which he would be likely to

  include in his accounts of battles. Too, one wonders how a simple scholar could

  have come by the numerous beautiful slaves and fortresslike villa of a Carl

  Commenius. I suspect that at one time, perhaps long ago, he may not have been a

  stranger to the distributions of loot.

  “They are drawing back,” said a fellow near me.

  (pg.333) “They have nothing more to gain here,” said another.

  We looked behind ourselves, wearily. Much of the walkway was now gone, or

  burning. Great lengths of it, some half submerged, tilting, others at, or almost

  at, the surface, floated in the water. Some of these lengths had turned, and

  hewn pilings, in an inch or two of water irregularly moving about over the

  now-upturned undersides of the lengths, like heavy, coarse wooden points, jutted

  up.

  “We have held the walkway,” said a man.

  “Yes,” said another.

  We stood on the blood-stained boards.

  It was true, we had held the walkway.

  It was the middle of the afternoon. I looked about. It seemed off, where we

  were, at the new end of that walkway, at the end of what now seemed a

  meaningless, eccentric bridge leading out from the landing but stopping abruptly

  in hewn, charred wood. The walkway had been cut behind us. Some of the fellows

  in the small boats had even drenched the boards behind us with water, to keep

  the fire from us, while others had hacked away at the pilings. Even so we had

  felt the heat of the flames at our back. There had been smoke, too, but not

  enough to affect what occurred on the walkway. Twice, when the wind had turned,

  it had drifted past us. There was far more smoke from the citadel, which, given

  the prevailing winds, the force of which had much diminished since the late

  morning and early afternoon, drifted out over the harbor, toward the river.

  “Shall we now swim for the piers?” asked a fellow.

  “Certainly,” said another.

  “I, myself,” said another, “will prefer waiting for the boats.”

  “And why might that be?” inquired another of our number.

  “I do not like getting my feet wet,” responded the first.

  We watched the fins moving about in the water. Here and there there was a

  stirring at the surface, as though there might be violent agitation some feet

  beneath. Too, in places the harbor water suddenly muddied, the mud from the

  bottom rising to the surface. These upswirling discolorations marked places, I

  supposed, where, below, unseen, a few yards beneath the surface, the long fish

  pulling and fighting, snapping and tugging stirred the mud.

  (pg.334) A small boat struck gently against the piling near us, to the left.

  There were now eleven of us on the walkway. Two were wounded. One of these was

  the grizzled fellow, who had been among the first to stand with me on the

  walkway. He had been wounded in the last assault, the fourteenth. So, too, had

  the other fellow. We lowered these two into the boat. Two others, too, joined

  them. The small boat rocked, and was almost swamped.

  “Wait,” said the fellow at the oars, alarmed, holding up his hand.

  The rest of us, seven men, watched the small boat pull away from the walkway.

  It made slow progress back toward the piers.

  “There are fewer fish about now,” said a fellow.

  “Stay where you are,” I advised him. To be sure, he was right. Many of the fish

  had apparently departed. Indeed, I was sure that many of them, with bodies, and

  parts of bodies, in their jaws, had sped away, toward the piers, or had gone out

  farther in the harbor, beyond them, or had even returned to the river, perhaps

  sometimes followed by several of their brethren. It was, however, I was sure,

  still dangerous. Sometimes river sharks, like Vosk eels, hang about piers and

  pilings, in their shade, and are, I am afraid, often rewarded by garbage, or

  other organic debris. One could still see, here and there, streaks of blood in

  the water.

  “Look!” said a fellow. He pointed toward
the landing. There it seemed that a

  number of small boats was being mustered and not a few raftlike structures,

  doubtless improvised from materials within, and about, the citadel.

  “They will be coming out to the piers to finish their work,” said a man.

  “What we have done has been for naught,” said another.

  “The harbor is closed with Cosian ships and the chain of rafts,” said another.

  “There is no escape.”

  “Apparently is it not their intent to starve us out, on the piers,” said

  another.

  “They are impatient fellows,” observed a man.

  “They have waited a long time,” said another. “They would like to finish their

  business this afternoon.”

  “It should not prove difficult,” said another.

  (pg.335) “It will be a slaughter on the piers,” said a fellow. “There is no

  shelter there. They are open, exposed. What can a handful of shields do there?

  Little or nothing. They can do as they wish. They can pick their targets from

  boats, and rafts. They can attack in force.”

  “They will probably signal the other fellows, out where the harbor is closed,”

  said a man, “so that they can attack on two sides at once.”

  “It is all finished,” said another fellow.

  “It will be done in two or three Ahn,” said another.

  “You two in this boar,” I said to two of them, as another of the small craft

  touched against the piling. The oarsmen stood up, a fisherman, and extended his

  hand, to help the two fellows into the boat. We had overloaded the last boat.

  We, the five of us remaining on the walkway, watched this second small boat pull

  away, moving slowly toward the piers.

  “I would like to say goodbye to my companion,” said one of the fellows.

  “Perhaps she is still alive out there,” said another.

  “When do you think it will be over?” asked one of the fellows.

  “By the fifteenth Ahn,” said another, grimly.

  “Good,” said a fellow.

  “Good?” asked the other.

  “Yes,” he said, “then we will not have to miss another supper.”

  “How would you like to get your feet wet?” asked the grim fellow.

  “No I,” replied the other.