Raiders of Gor (9 page)

I saw warriors of Port Kar rushing forward, clubbing him senseless with the

pommels of their swords, the butts of their spears.

Telima screamed and I pulled her away.

We ran again through the torches and the men.

We came to an edge of the island. In the marsh, some yards away, rence craft

were burning on the water. There were none on the shore of the island. We saw

one rencer screaming in the water, caught in the jaws of a marsh tharlarion.

“There are two!” I heard cry.

We turned and saw some four warriors, armed with nets and spears, running toward

us.

We fled back toward the light, the torches, the center of the island, the

scraming women and men.

Near the oar pole to which I had been bound, some yards from what had been the

circle of the dance, a number of rencers, stripped, men and women, lay bound

hand and foot. They would later be carried, or forced to walk, to the barges.

From time to time a warrior would add further booty to this catch, dragging or

throwing his capture rudely among the others. These rencers were guarded by two

warriors with drawn swords. A scribe stood by with a tally sheet, marking the

number of captures by each warrior. Among these I saw the tall, gray-eyed girl,

weeping and pulling at her bonds. She looked at me. “Help,” she cried. “Help

me!”

I turned away with Telima.

“I don’t want to be a slave. I don’t want to be a slave!” she cried.

I moved my head aside as a torch, in the hands of a slave of the warriors of

Port Kar, flashed by.

We were jostled by a bleeding rencer stumbling past.

We heard a girl scream.

Then I saw, under the light of the torches, fleet as the Tabuk, running, the

dark-haired, lithe girl, she who was so marvelously legged in the brief rence

tunic. A warrior of Port Kar leapt after her. I saw the swirl of the circular,

closely woven, weighted capture net and saw her fall, snared. She screamed,

rolling and fighting the mesh. Then the warrior threw her to her stomach,

swiftly binding her wrists together behind her back, then binding her ankles.

With a slave knife he cut the rence tunic from her and threw her, still partly

tangled in the net, over his shoulder, and carried her toward one of the dark,

high-prowed barges in hte shadows at the edge of the island. He would take no

chances of the loss of such a prize.

I expected that the girl might soon again dance, and perhaps again with ankles

in delicious proximity and wrists lifted again together back to back above her

head, palms out. But this time I expected that her ankles would not be as though

chained, her wrists as though braceleted; rather would they be truely chained

and braceleted; she would wear the linked ankle rings, the three-linked slave

bracelets of a Gorean master; and I did not think she would then conclude her

dance by spitting upon him and whirling away. Rather might she almost die with

terror hoping that he would find her pleasing.

“There!” cried Henrak, with the white scarf tied about his body, pointing toward

us. “Get the girl! I want her!”

Telima looked at him with horror, shaking her head.

A warrior leapt toward us.

We were buffeted apart by some five or six rencers. Telima, buffeted, turned and

began to run toward the darkness. I stumbled and fell, and regained my feet. I

looked wildly about. I had lost her. Then something, probably a club or the butt

of a spear, struck the side of my head and I fell to the matting of rence that

was the island surface. I rose to my hands and knees, and shook my head. There

was blood on its side. A warrior of Port Kar, in the light of a torch held by a

slave, was binding a girl near me. It was not Telima. More men rean past. Then a

child. Then another warrior of Port Kar, followed by his slave with the torch. A

man to my right was suddenly caught in a capture net, crying out, and two

warriors were on him, pounding him, beginning to bind him.

I ran in the direction Telima had taken.

I heard a scream.

Suddenly in the darkness before me there reared up a warrior of Port Kar. He

struck down at me with the double-edged sword. Had he known I was a warrior he

might not have used his blade improperly. I caught his wrist, breaking it. He

howled in pain. I seized up his sword. Another man thrust at me with a spear. I

took it in my left hand and jerked him forward, at the same time moving my blade

in a swift, easy arc, transversely and slightly upward, towards him. It passed

through his throat, returning me to the on-guard position. He fell to the

matting, his helmet rolling, lost in his own blood. It is an elementary stroke,

one if the first taught a warrior.

The slave who held his torch looked at me, and stepped back away.

Suddenly I was aware of a net in the air. I crouched slashing upward in a wide

circle and caught it before it could fall about me. I heard a man curse. Then he

was running on me, knife high. My blade had partially cut the net but was

tangled in it. I caught his wrist with my left hand and, with the right, thrust

my blade, tangled in the net, through his body. A spear flashed towards me but

tangled in the net in which my sword had been enmeshed. I immediately abandoned

the weapon. Before the man who had thrust with the spear had his sword half from

its sheath I was on him. I broke his neck.

I turned and again ran toward the darkness, toward which I had seen Telima run,

from whence I had heard a girl’s scream.

“Free me!” I heard.

In the darkness I found a girl, stripped, bound hand and foot.

“Free me!” she cried. “Free me!”

I lifted her to a sitting position. It was not Telima. I threw her weeping back

to the rence.

Then, some twenty yards to my left, and ahead of me, I saw a single torch.

I ran toward it.

It was Telima!

She had been thrown to her stomach. Already, with a binding fiber, her wrists

had been tied tightly behind her. A warrior now crouched at her ankles. With a

few swift motions he fastened them together.

I seized him and spun him about, breaking in his face with a blow. Spitting

teeth, his face a mask of blood, he tried to draw his sword. I lifted him over

my head and threw him screaming into the jaws of the tharlarion churning the

marsh at the edge of the island. They had feasted much that night, and would

more.

The slave who had carried his torch ran back toward the light, crying out.

Telima had turned on her side and was watching me. “I don’t want to be a slave,”

she wept.

In a moment warriors would be upon us.

I picked her up in my arms.

“I don’t want to be a slave,” she said. “I don’t want to be a slave!”

“Be silent,” I told her.

I looked about. For the instant we were alone. Then the night began to burn to

my left. One of the rence islands, tied in the group, had begun to burn.

I cast madly about, looking for some possibility of escape.

On one side there was the marsh, with its marsh sharks and its tharlarion.

Here and there, on the water, apart from the flaming rence island, I could see

the flat, black keels of rence craft, which had earlier been cast off and burned

to the water, to prevent them from being used for escape.

On the other side there were the lights and torches, the cries of men, the

slavers of Port Kar.

In the distance I could see, across one of the bridges formed of rafts for

transporting rence, one of those I had helped to place earlier that very

morning, stripped rencers, men and women, being herded by spears toward our

island. Their wrists had been bound behind their backs and ropes had been tied

about their necks.

Then I saw another island take fire, one far to the right.

I heard shouts from the area of torches and confusion. Warriors were coming.

The rafts, the bridges, I thought, the rafts!

Carrying Telima in my arms I sped about the periphery of the rence island,

meeting no one. The area had been cleared earlier by the sweep of the great

nets, carried by slaves. There were no rencers there and, doubtless because of

that, none of Port Kar, though I did see many torches going to the place on the

island where we had shortly stood; then the torches there divided, half going

left, half coming to the right, our direction.

Somewhere I heard the voice of Henrak crying out. “Get the girl! I want the

girl!”

I came to one of the raft bridges I had helped to fasten in place that morning,

shortly after dawn. I placed Telima in the center of the raft. Then I began to

tear loose the rence-rope fastenings, fixed to stakes thrust through the rence.

The torches were moving towards us, coming from the right, around the periphery

of the island.

There were eight fastenings, four on a side. I had torn loose six when I heard

the shout, “Stop!”

The nearby island was now burning ever more rapidly and wildly in the night and

soon the entire area would be illuminated.

It was only one man who had called out, a guard perhaps, one patrolling this

supposedly cleared area.

His spear fell near me, dropping through the rence of the raft. The he was

running forward, sword at the ready. It was his own spear that met him. It

passed well through his body.

I turned madly about. No one else, it seemed, had yet seen us.

My leg slipped from the island into the water and suddenly a tiny tharlarion

struck it, seizing his bit of flesh and backing, tail whipping, away. My leg was

out of the water, but now the water seemed yelow with hte flashing bodies of

tiny tharlarion, and beyond them, I heard the hoarse grunting of the great marsh

tharlarion, some of which grow to be more than thirty fieet in length, weighin

gmore than half a hundred men. Beyond them would be the almost eel-like,

long-bodied, nine-gilled Gorean marsh sharks.

I jerked loose the last two fastenings, and tore rence from the edge of the

island, heaping it on the raft, covering Telima.

The torches were nearer now.

I heaped more rence on the craft and then, with one foot, thrust off from the

islands between which the raft had been fastened. I slipped beneath the rence on

the raft, next to the girl. I put my hand over her mouth, tightly, that she

might be unable to cry out. She struggled slightly, pulling against the bonds

that constrained her. I saw her eyes looking at me, frightened, over my hand.

The torches passed.

Unnoticed, the raft, with it’s heaped rence, drifted away from between the

islands.

7
     
I Will Hunt

Lost among the rushes and sedge, out in the darkness of the marsh, some hundred

yards from the rence islands, two of which were burning, Telima, bound, and I, a

garland of rence flowers bloodied in my hair, watched the movement of torches,

listened to the shouts of men, the screams of women, the cries of children.

The men of Port Kar had set fire to the two islands, beginning at the farther

edges, to drive any who might be concealed on them, perhaps having cut burrowns

ino the rence or hiding in the cneter oar wells, across the bridges toward the

central island, on which had been the pole of the dance, Telima’s hut. Those who

had so concealed themselves must then choose between the fire, the marsh, and

the nets of slavers. We saw several running across the bridges, crying out,

being whipped toward the torches by those of Port Kar. Then the tetherings on

the two burning islands were cut away with swords and they floated away, free,

afire into the marsh.

Later, about an Ahn before dawn, the two other rence islands, tethered to the

central island, were similarly set afire, their fugitives, too, being driven to

the nets and binding fiber of the men of Port Kar. Then these two islands, too

were cut free and floated burning into the marsh.

By the time that dawn’s gray knife had touched the waters of the marsh the work

of the men of Port Kar was mostly done.

Their slaves, their torches extinguished, were loading the narrow, high-prowed

barges, treading long, narrow planks extending from the barges to the matting of

the island. Some of them carried rolls of rence paper, tied together by marsh

vine, others the human booty of the raid. I gathered that much rence paper had

been taken from the four islands, before they had been set afire. Surely there

was more being loaded than could have been on the central island alone. The

rence paper was loaded forward, carefully, in stacks, like corded wood, that it

not be damaged. The slaves, like fish, were thrown between the rowers benches,

and aft, forward of the tiller deck, three or four deep. There were six ships.

One beautiful girl was tied to the prow of each ship that, in returning to Port

Kar, others might see that the raid had been successful. I was not surprised to

see that it was the dark-haired, lithe girl, who had been so marvelously legged

in the brief rence tunic, that was bound to the prow of the flagship of that

small barge fleet. I supposed that had Telima been taken, that place might have

been hers. At the prows of the second and third ships I saw two others of my

tormentors, the blond, gray-eyed girl, who had carried marsh vine, and the