Outlaw of Gor (9 page)

“What is your business?” asked the proprietor of the place, a small, thin, bald-headed man wearing a short-sleeved grey tunic and slick black apron. He did not approach, but remained behind the wooden counter, slowly, deliberately wiping the puddles of spilt Kal-da from the stained surface.

“I am passing through Tharna,” I said. “And I would like to purchase a tarn to continue my journey. Tonight I want food and lodging.”

“This is not a place,” said the man, “for one of High Caste.”

I looked about, at the men in the room, into the dejected, haggard faces. In the light it was difficult to determine their caste for they all wore the grey robes of Tharna and only a band of colour on the shoulder indicated their station in the social fabric. What struck me most about them had nothing to do with caste, but rather their lack of spirit. I did not know if they were weak, of if they merely thought poorly of themselves. They seemed to me to be without energy, without pride, to be flat, dry, crushed men, men without self-respect.

“You are of high caste, of the Caste of Warriors,” said the proprietor. “It is not proper that you should remain here.”

I did not much care for the prospect of emerging again into the cold, rainy night, of tramping once more through the streets, miserable, chilled to the bone, looking for a place to eat and sleep. I took a coin from the leather sack and threw it to the proprietor. He snatched it expertly from the air like a skeptical cormorant. He examined the coin. It was a silver tarn disk. He bit against the metal, the muscles on his jaw bulging in the lamplight. A trace of avaricious pleasure appeared in his eyes. I knew he would not care to return it.

“What caste is it?” I demanded.

The proprietor smiled. “Money has no caste,” he said.

“Bring me food and drink,” I said.

I went to an obscure, deserted table near the back of the room, where I could face the door. I leaned my shield and spear against the wall, set the helmet beside the table, unslung the sword belt, laying the weapon across the table before me, and prepared to wait.

I had hardly settled myself behind the table when the proprietor had placed a large, fat pot of steaming Kal-da before me. It almost burned my hands to lift the pot. I took a long, burning swig of the brew and though, on another occasion, I might have thought it foul, tonight it sang through my body like the bubbling fire it was, a sizzling, brutal irritant that tasted so bad and yet charmed me so much I had to laugh.

And laugh I did.

The men of Tharna who were crowded in that place looked upon me as though I might be mad. Disbelief, lack of comprehension, was written on their features. This man had laughed. I woundered if men laughed often in Tharna.

It was a dreary place, but the Kal-da had already made it appear somewhat more promising.

“Talk, laugh!” I said to the men of Tharna, who had said not a word since my entrance. I glared at them. I took another long swig of Kal-da and shook my head to throw the swirling fire from eyes and brain. I seized my spear from the wall and pounded it on the table.

“If you cannot talk,” I said, “if you cannot laugh, then sing!” They were convinced they were in the presence of one demented. It was, I suppose, the Kal-da, but I like to think, too, it was just impatience with the males of Tharna, the intemperate expression of my exasperation with this grey, dismal place, its glum, solemn, listless inhabitants. The men of Tharna resfused to budge from their silence.

“Do we not speak the Language?” I asked, referring to the beautiful mother tongue spoken in common by most of the Gorean cities. “Is the Language not yours?” I demanded.

“It is,” mumbled one of the men.

“Then why do you not speak it?” I challenged.

The man was silent.

The proprietor arrived with hot bread, honey, salt and, to my delight, a huge, hot roasted chunk of tarsk. I crammed my mouth with food and washed it down with another thundering draught of Kal-da.

“Proprietor!” I cried, pounding on the table with my spear.

“Yes, Warrior,” cried he.

“Where are the Pleasure Slaves?” I demanded.

The proprietor seemed stunned.

“I would see a woman dance,” I said.

The men of Tharna seemed horrified. One whispered, “There are no Pleasure Slaves in Tharna.”

“Alas!” I cried, “not a bangle in all Tharna!”

Two or three of the men laughed. At last I had touched them.

“Those creatures that float in the street behind masks of silver,” I asked, “are they truly women?”

“Truly,” said one of the men, restraining a laugh.

“I doubt it,” I cried. “Shall I fetch one, to see if she will dance for us?”

The men laughed.

I had pretended to rise to my feet, and the proprietor, with horror, had shoved me back down, and rushed for more Kal-da. His strategy was to pour so much Kal-da down my throat that I would be unable to do anything but roll under the table and sleep. Some of the men crowded around the table now.

“Where are you from?” asked one eagerly.

“I have lived all my life in Tharna,” I told them.

There was a great roar of laughter.

Soon, pounding the time on the table with the butt of my spear, I was leading a raucous round of songs, mostly wild drinking songs, warrior songs, songs of the encampment and march, but too I taught them songs I had learned in the caravan of Mintar the Merchant, so long ago, when I had first loved Talena, songs of love, of loneliness, of the beauties of one's cities, and of the fields of Gor.

The Kal-da flowed free that night and thrice the oil in the hanging tharlarion lamps needed to be renewed by the sweating, joyful proprietor of the Kal-da shop. Men from the streets, dumbfounded by the sounds which came from within, pressed through the squat door and soon had joined in. Some warriors entered, too, and instead of attempting to restore order had incredibly taken off their helmets, filled them with Kal-da and sat cross-legged with us, to sing and drink their fill.

The lights in the tharlarion lamps had finally flickered and gone out, and the chill light of dawn at last bleakly illuminated the room. Many of the men had left, more had perhaps fallen on the tables, or lay along the sides of the room. Even the proprietor slept, his head across his folded arms on the counter, behind which stood the great Kal-da brewing pots, at last empty and cold. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. There was a hand on my shoulder.

“Wake up,” demanded a voice.

“He's the one,” said another voice, I seemed to remember.

I struggled to my feet, and confronted the small, lemon-faced conspirator.

“We've been looking for you,” said the other voice, which I now saw belonged to a burly guardsman of Tharna. Behind him in their blue helmets stood three others.

“He's the thief,” said the lemon-faced man, pointing to me. His hand darted to the table where the bag of coins lay, half spilled out in the dried puddles of Kal-da.

“These are my coins,” said the conspirator. “My name is stitched into the leather of the sack.” He shoved the sack under the nose of the guardsman.

“Ost,” read the guardsman. It was also the name of a species of tiny, brightly orange reptile, the most venemous on Gor.

“I am not a thief,” I said. “He gave me the coins.”

“He is lying,” said Ost.

“I am not,” I said.

“You are under arrest,” said the guardsman.

“In whose name?” I demanded.

“In the name of Lara,” said the man, “Tatrix of Tharna.”

Resistance would have been useless.

My weapons had been removed while I slept, foolish and trusting in the hospitality of Tharna. I faced the guards unarmed. Yet the officer must have read defiance in my eyes because he signaled his men, and three spears dropped to threaten my breast.

“I stole nothing,” I said.

“You may plead your case before the Tatrix,” said the guard.

“Shackle him,” insisted Ost.

“Are you a warrior?” asked the guardsman.

“I am,” I said.

“Have I your word that you will accompany me peaceably to the palace of the Tatrix?” asked the guardsman.

“Yes,” I said.

The guardsman spoke to his men. “Shackles will not be necessary.”

“I am innocent,” I told the guardsman.

He looked at me, his grey eyes frank in the Y-slot in his sombre blue helmet of Tharna. “It is for the Tatrix to decide,” he said.

“You must shackle him!” wheezed Ost.

“Quiet, worm,” said the guardsman, and the conspirator subsided into squirming silence.

I followed the guardsman, yet ringed with his men, to the palace of the Tatrix. Ost scurried along behind us, puffing and gasping, his short, bandy legs struggling to keep pace with the stride of warriors.

I felt that even had I chosen to forswear my pledge, which as a warrior of Gor I would not, my chances of escape would have been small indeed. In all likelihood three spears would have transfixed my body within my first few steps toward freedom. I respected the quiet, efficient guardsmen of Tharna, and I had already encountered her skilled warriors in a field far from the city. I wondered if Thorn were in the city, and if Vera now wore her pleasure silk in his villa.

I knew that if justice were done in Tharna I would be acquitted, yet I was uneasy–for how was I to know if my case would be fairly heard and decided? That I had been in possession of Ost's sack of coins would surely seem good prima-facie evidence of guilt, and this might well sway the decision of the Tatrix. How would my word, the word of a stranger, weigh against the words of Ost, a citizen of Tharna and perhaps one of significance?

Yet, incredibly perhaps, I looked forward to seeing the palace and the Tatrix, to meeting face to face the unusual woman who could rule, and rule well, a city of Gor. Had I not been arrested I guessed I might, of my own free will, have called upon the Tatrix of Tharna, and, as one citizen had expressed it, spent my night in her palace.

After we had walked for perhaps some twenty minutes through the drab, graveled, twisted streets of Tharna, its grey citizens parting to make way for us and to stare expressionlessly at the scarlet-clad prisoner, we came to a broad winding avenue, steep and paved with black cobblestones, still shiny from the rains of the night. On each side of the avenue was a gradually ascending brick wall, and as we trudged upward the walls on each side became higher and the avenue more narrow.

At last, a hundred yards ahead, cold in the morning light, I saw the palace, actually a rounded fortress of brick, black, heavy, unadorned, formidable. At the entrance to the palace the sombre, wet avenue shrunk to a passage large enough only for a single man, and the walls at the same time rose to a height of perhaps thirty feet.

The entrance itself was nothing more than a small, simple iron door, perhaps eighteen inches in width, perhaps five feet in height. Only one man could come or go at a time from the palace of Tharna. It was a far cry from the broad-portaled central cylinders of many of the Gorean cities, through which a brace of golden-harnessed tharlarions might be driven with ease. I wondered if within this stern, brutal fortress, this palace of the Tatrix of Tharna, justice could be done.

The guardsman motioned to the door, and stepped behind me. I was facing the door, first in the narrow passage.

“We do not enter,” said the guardsman. “Only you and Ost.”

I turned to regard them, and three spears dropped level with my chest.

There was a sound of sliding bolts and the iron door swung open, revealing nothing but darkness within.

“Enter,” commanded the guardsman.

I glanced once more at the spears, smiled grimly at the guardsman, turned and, lowering my head, entered the small door.

Suddenly I cried out in alarm, pawing at nothing, hurtling downward. I heard Ost scream with surprise and terror as he was shoved through the door behind me.

Some twenty feet below the level of the door, in the absolute darkness, with brutal impact, I struck bottom, a stone floor covered with wet straw. Ost's body struck mine almost at the same time. I fought for breath. My vision seemed ringed with gold and purple specks. I was dimly conscious of being seized by the mouth of some large animal and being tugged through a round tunnel-like opening. I tried to struggle, but it was useless. My breath had been driven from me, the tunnel allowed me no room to move. I smelled the wet fur of the animal, a rodent of some kind, the smells of its den, the soiled straw. I was aware, far off, of Ost's hysterical screams.

For some time the animal, moving backwards, its prey seized in its jaws, scrambled through the tunnel. It dragged me in a series of quick, vicious jerks through the tunnel, scraping me on its stone walls, lacerating me, ripping my tunic.

At last it dragged me into a round, globelike space, lit by two torches in iron racks, which were set into the fitted stone walls. I heard a voice of command, loud, harsh. The animal squealed in displeasure. I heard the crack of a whip and the same command, more forcibly uttered. Reluctantly the animal released its grip and backed away, crouching down, watching me with its long, oblique blazing eyes, like slits of molten gold in the torchlight.

It was a giant urt, fat, sleek and white; it bared its three rows of needlelike white teeth at me and squealed in anger; two horns, tusks like flat crescents curved from its jaw; another two horns, similar to the first, modifications of the bony tissue forming the uper ridge of the eye socket, protruded over those gleaming eyes that seemed to feast themselves upon me, as if waiting the permission of the keeper to hurl itself on its feeding trough. Its fat body trembled with anticipation.

The whip cracked again, and another command was uttered, and the animal, its long hairless tail lashing in frustration, slunk into another tunnel. An iron gate, consisting of bars, fell behind it.

Several pairs of strong hands seized me, and I caught a glimpse of a heavy, curved, silverish object. I tried to rise but was pressed down, my face to the stone. A heavy object, thick as a hinged beam, was thrust beneath and over my throat. My wrists were held in position, and the device closed on my throat and wrists. With a sinking sensation I heard the snap of a heavy lock.