John Norman - Raiders of Gor

"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.

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.