by John Norman
“As many other highly intelligent and well-educated women of your world, now locked nicely, helplessly, in their Gorean collars,” I said.
“You approve?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, “it adds a delightful fillip to your ownership.”
“On this world,” she said, “I am no more than an ignorant, unlettered beast, a vendible domestic animal, a branded, collared animal.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said, pressing against me, curvaceous, warm, and owned.
“Enough,” I said. “Do not squirm so.”
“Please free my wrists, Master,” she begged.
They were locked behind her, in slave bracelets.
In this braceleting a woman is helpless, unable to resist, unable to protect or defend herself, unable to fend off the hands which may now delightfully trace, grasp, and caress her vulnerable, undefended beauty. Too, aesthetically, her wrists pinioned behind her, the wondrous, appealing, exciting curves of her hips, belly, waist, bosom, and shoulders are framed and accentuated.
“Please,” she said, thrashing, throwing her head from side to side.
I pressed her soft shoulders to the furs.
“I will speak to you,” I said.
A small whimper of dismay escaped her lips.
She looked up at me, and pulled a little, futilely, at the metal that held her hands behind her back. “Of course,” she said, “you may do as you wish. You are my Master. I am your slave, and helpless.”
“It is true,” I said, “that I and my men, in our limited numbers, pose no immediate threat to the raiders.”
“The fearful corsairs of Bosk of Port Kar,” she said.
“But one hopes and plans,” I said.
“Do not seek him,” she said. “You might find him.”
“Have you heard of the Fair of the Farther Islands?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “it is being held now, at Mytilene on Chios.”
“It is part of my plans,” I said.
“This has to do then,” she said, “with the corsairs, the raiders.”
“Yes,” I said. “They may now be without ships, but that is a temporary inconvenience. They will still be active, recruiting cohorts, gathering intelligence, and plotting new enterprises.”
“Men attend the fair from all the islands,” she said. “And even headmen and high peasants may attend, from dozens of villages, mostly the larger, richer villages.”
“This constituting a possible trove of information for the raiders,” I said.
“Which harvests were rich, and which not,” she said.
“Amongst other things,” I said.
“So raiders will be in attendance,” she said.
“I expect so,” I said. “Some, agents.”
“And spies may be spied upon,” she said.
“That seems only fair,” I said.
“Where are the raiders now?” she asked. “Where do they hide?”
“They are now,” I said, “in and about Sybaris.”
“Surely not,” she said, frightened.
“Sybaris,” I said, “is large and crowded. It is in no danger. The raiders strike only when assured of success, on shipping and isolated villages. Too, Sybaris is important to them. It is, in effect, their headquarters and port, their base of operations.”
“Should spying then not be better done in Sybaris?” she asked.
“I invite myself to the fair with more in mind than espionage,” I said.
“What more?” she asked.
“Curiosity is not becoming in a kajira,” I said.
“Forgive me, Master,” she said.
I then pulled her closer.
“Master?” she asked. She tried to rear up, to see me better, but I thrust her back. “Master?” she asked. Then she said, “Oh, your tongue!”
Moments later she began to gasp and squirm, but my hands were strong upon her. Her small wrists tore against the light, colorful bracelets holding her hands behind her back. Then her hips lifted and she moaned. “Shall I stop?” I inquired. “No,” she said, “no! Do not stop, I beg you. Please do not stop. Again! More, yes! Do not stop, Master! Continue! Please, continue! I beg it! Be kind, please be kind to a poor, helpless slave!”
Chapter Eighteen
We Approach Mytilene
He stood beside me, at the bow of the Tesephone, summoned from the helm deck.
“These are the waters of which you spoke?” I asked.
“Do not enter them,” he said. “There are practical, familiar courses to Mytilene.”
“I prefer routes less familiar,” I said.
“To avoid being sighted?” he said.
“Perhaps,” I said.
“There are things worse to encounter than Bosk of Port Kar,” he said.
“Many in the taverns,” I said, “do not credit your story.”
“I have not had a drink in days,” he said, “even when others drank.”
“And you have not rethought your tale?” I asked.
“I was not always a drunken urt sleeping in alleys,” he said, “slinking about the waterfront of Sybaris, pushing into taverns, in rags, unwelcome and mocked, begging, soliciting a goblet of paga. I was a captain, master of a fine round ship of a hundred oars.”
“Lost at sea,” I said.
“That is the part of the story I did not tell,” he said, “the terrible part, the part I would dare not tell, the part I was ashamed to tell.”
“If your story is true,” I said, “what occurred was no fault of yours.”
“I entered the waters,” he said, “these waters.”
“How could you know?” I asked.
“I did not believe,” he said.
“I am sure many ships come and go safely in these waters,” I said.
“These were the waters where it occurred,” he said.
“Many do not believe such a thing exists,” I said.
“I have seen it,” he said.
It had seemed like discarded rubbish, a gray bundle, damp, against the warehouse’s back wall.
I shook it. “Awake,” I said. “You have slept long enough.”
The fresh, salt smell of Thassa was in the air. Already one could hear voices from the wharves, loading captains, stevedores, berthless mariners at the hiring tables.
“Wake,” I said.
It opened its eyes, blinked, twisted to get its back against the wall. “Who are you?” he asked.
“One who seeks you,” I had said.
“I want paga,” he said.
“You have not earned it,” I said. “And once you have earned it, I do not think you will want it.”
I recalled a tavern faraway, on a steel world concealed amidst the debris of the asteroid belt, the debris of what might once have been a green, fertile world, now a wilderness of orbiting cinders.
“Paga,” he said, the sounds slurred.
“I am prepared to turn my back,” I said. “I am prepared to leave you here to die, this month or the next, this year or the next. What does it matter?”
“What does anything matter?” he asked.
“That is for you to decide,” I said.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked.
“Sakim, the mariner,” I said.
“Sakim,” he said, “the worthless, the failed, the beggar of paga, the braggart, the liar.”
“Are you a liar?” I asked.
“I am thought so,” he said.
“These things are not always the same,” I said.
“What is this?” he asked, incredulously.
“A gold stater, of Brundisium,” I said, pressing it into his hand. “It is enough to buy you paga for months, or more than enough to have yourself fed,
housed, groomed, clothed, and armed.”
“Why are you doing this?” he asked.
“Let us say,” I said, “I once knew one such as you, in a far-off place.”
“You would save me?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I would offer you the opportunity to save yourself.”
“I am a mariner,” he said.
“Assuredly,” I said.
“I have no berth,” he said.
“If you choose, you have one now,” I said.
“I would so choose,” he said.
“Be warned,” I said. “I chart my course in dangerous waters. If you sign with me, you may die.”
“Better to die at sea, in the open air,” he said, “on treacherous, beautiful, mighty Thassa than in an alley in Sybaris.”
“I would think so,” I said.
“What is your ship?” he asked.
“The Tesephone,” I had said.
Many regard the monstrous hith, even on the continent, as a myth. Surely I had never, personally, seen one, nor had conversed with anyone claiming to have seen one. I did know, however, that such things, or things much like them, once existed. That was not controversial. That was not a matter of myth, at least to those possessed of the Second Knowledge, but of distant, remote fact, fact dating back to what must have been fearful times. I myself had seen, once, dug out of sand in the Vosk basin, the petrifaction of a titanic, fanged, serpentine skull, and once, washed free of collapsed strata in the Voltai, petrifications of the knobs of a spine far longer than those of any known form of tharlarion. Putting together what we think we know of the hith, from stories, legend, and evidence, it was an immense, constricting serpent, over a hundred feet in length with a girth the diameter of which would have been something like eight to ten feet. It seems to have ranged widely on the continent, from the latitudes of the Voltai to the jungles of the Ua. As it was not herbivorous, one supposes it preyed on animals as small as the tabuk and as large as tharlarion, even carnivorous tharlarion, the encounters with which must have produced epic battles. It is possible that the land hith still exists on Gor, doubtless in remote areas, but it seems more likely that that form of hith is extinct. The tiny, elusive, venomous ost survives while, it seems, the enormous hith perishes. The pebble is unnoticed; the mountain announces itself to the sky. Interestingly, it seems likely, as such things have often occurred, that large animals, megafauna, are commonly brought to extinction by a smaller, seemingly unlikely foe. It seems probable that, long ago, thousands of years ago, the nemesis of the hith was less the carnivorous tharlarion with which it thought to dispute its world, but an unexpected adversary, smaller and weaker, more vulnerable and fragile, but less forgiving and tolerant, more determined and tenacious, a miniscule foe, one scarcely noticed, but a foe that could plan and would not forget, an unanticipated usurper determined to set itself on nature’s throne, the human. But nature is not without its resources; amongst thousands of changes in form and behavior, small and otherwise, some favor the replication of genes and others do not. A paw becomes a hand; a cell sensitive to light becomes an eye; the enlargement of a knot on a spinal cord becomes a brain. And, one supposes, it might be, that some members of a species subject to extermination on land might, in diverse behaviors, in withdrawing from strong stimuli, in fleeing, in avoiding discovery, discover that the same muscles which allow it to move on land permit it to move in water.
“I am sure many ships come and go safely in these waters,” I had said.
“These were the waters where it occurred,” had said the mariner, Sakim.
“Many do not believe such a thing exists,” I said.
“I have seen it,” Sakim had said.
“I recall your story,” I said.
“My account,” he said.
“It came up, like a great rock rising from the sea,” I said.
“Its skin was black and slippery,” he said. “Several men could not get their arms around it.”
“It had teeth like shearing blades?” I said.
“I saw it,” he said.
“You saw something,” I said, “perhaps in the fumes of paga, in a dream, in an aberration of the mind.”
“I lost my ship,” he said.
“Ships are sometimes lost,” I said. “There are collisions, rocks that tear the hull, corsairs that strike, loot, and burn.”
“No,” he said. “No, Captain.”
“There are storms in which waves rise up black and swirling, and might be seen as anything,” I said.
“The sea was calm,” he said, “almost.”
“‘Almost’?” I said.
“There was a stirring,” he said.
“Currents, tides,” I said.
“You do not believe me,” he said.
“Thurnock, second to me on the Tesephone,” I said, “heard speak of a sighting of a hith, that from men on the Isle of Seleukos.”
“There must then be another,” he said, “and, if so, then others.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “But these things are the things of legend. The men of the Isle of Seleukos may be mistaken, as well. Men sometimes see what they want to see, or what they fear to see.”
Sakim looked out over the bow rail, smiled, and shrugged.
“Surely you admit sightings are few, if any,” I said.
“Surely few,” he said.
“How did the hith attack your ship?” I asked.
“In coils,” he said, “encircling it, and crushing it, like straw.”
“You survived,” I said.
“I clung to a plank,” he said. “I was picked up the next day by a ten-oared fishing boat.”
“A small boat, a light boat,” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Why would the hith attack your ship?” I asked.
“I do not know,” he said.
I wondered if the hith, if it existed, was territorial. Territoriality is biologically valuable to large animals. It distributes members of a species, thus expanding access to food. Too, in many species, the female will seek a male with a desirable territory. In this way, too, then, having a territory is favorable to gene replication. Perhaps a hith, then, I thought, if territorial, might react aggressively to any large object it might deem an intruder.
“Mytilene,” he said, “has a fine harbor.”
“I do not intend to berth at Mytilene,” I said, “not in the harbor.”
“You are afraid the Tesephone might be recognized?” he said.
“It is possible,” I said.
“I shall not inquire into your business,” he said.
“That is wise,” I said.
“Thus I could not reveal secrets,” he said, “even under torture.”
“I have no intention,” I said, “of jeopardizing you more than is inevitable. Often the less you know the safer you are.”
“I would be one of your men,” he said.
“I think you will be,” I said.
We continued to stand at the rail, regarding Thassa.
“Have you been to a Fair of the Farther Islands?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“One is held each year,” he said, “and they alternate amongst the major islands, and amongst the larger towns on the islands. Last year it was on Thera, at Sybaris, the year before on Daphna, at Pylos. You will enjoy the fair. There are many festivities and exhibitions, dozens of markets and sales. You can see prize verr and tarsks. There are always acrobats, fire eaters, jugglers, and rope dancers. Merchants, with their goods, come from as faraway as Cos and Tyros, even from Brundisium on the continent.”
“Surely all this cannot take place within the walls of a town,” I said.
“No,” said Sakim, “mostly in the fields, outside the walls, and, if the town has no walls, like Pylos, and Naxos, outside
the pomerium. It is like a city of tents, with its own streets, water tanks and dumps, a city often larger than its host city.”
“And then,” I said, “in a few days, it has vanished.”
“Leaving tracks of mud, refuse, and debris,” said Sakim.
“These fairs are well-attended,” I said.
“Thousands come, in hundreds of crowded ships and small boats, from throughout the islands,” said Sakim, “and then they are gone.”
At the great Sardar Fairs on the continent, associated with the solstices and equinoxes, there are many permanent structures and no lack of amenities, such as fountains, inns, and paved streets. Indeed, a tiny population remains in place all year.
“I expect that you will enjoy the fair,” said Sakim, “and that your men will enjoy it, as well, even if they are not interested in prize verr and tarsks. One can always peruse slaves in the markets, and there is no dearth of brothel and tavern tents.”
“Are there official delegations?” I asked.
“Not really,” said Sakim. “But there are informal delegations, and there are always visitors from Cos.”
“Spies?” I asked.
“Secret guardsmen,” said Sakim. “It is said that Cos is the loving mother of the islands.”
“Interesting,” I said.
“This year,” said Sakim, “Nicomachos, Admiral of the Fleet of the Farther Islands, is expected to be in attendance.”
I must have somehow reacted to this observation.
“What is wrong?” asked Sakim.
“Nothing,” I said. “Perhaps he is representing Archelaos, governor of Thera?”
“I do not think so,” said Sakim. “I think it is in connection with his office as Admiral, assigned by Cos to guard the seas of the Farther Islands. Presumably he seeks clues as to the whereabouts of the feared corsair, Bosk of Port Kar, who has so plundered the coast and ravaged the local waters.”
“He will have ships with him?” I asked.
“Some,” said Sakim. “Enough to be deployed in the hunt for Bosk of Port Kar, enough, should his whereabouts be determined, to engage him at sea.”
“But not the whole fleet?” I said.
“I do not think so,” said Sakim.
