John Norman - Raiders of Gor

We now stood on the foredeck of the first barge.

"They are all dead," said Telima, her voice almost breaking. "They are all dead!"

"Go to the tiller deck," I told her.

She went, carrying the great bow, with its arrows.

I stood on the foredeck, looking out over the marsh.

Above me, her back to the front of the curved prow of the barge, was bound the lithe, dark-haired girl, who I well remembered, she who had been so marvelously legged in the brief rence tunic. She was curved over the prow nude, her wrists cruelly bound behind it, and was further held tightly in place by binding fiber at her ankles, her stomach and throat. I recalled I had been bound rather similarly at the pole, when she had danced her contempt of me.

"Please," she begged, trying to turn her head, "who is it?"

I did not answer her, but turned, and left the foredeck, walking back along the gangway between the rowers' benches. She heard my footsteps retreating. The slaves at the benches did not stir as I passed between them.

I acended the steps of the tiller deck.

There I looked down into Telima's eyes.

She looked up at me, joy on her face. "Thank you, Warrior," she whispered. "Bring me binding fiber," I said.

She looked at me.

I indicated a coil of binding fiber that lay near the foot of the rail, below the tiller deck, on my left.

She put down the great bow, with its arrows, on the tiller deck. She brought me the coil of binding fiber.

I cut three lengths.

"Turn and cross your wrists," I told her.

With the first length of binding fiber I tied her wrists behind her; I then carried her and placed her, on her knees, on the second of the broad steps leading up to the tiller deck, two steps below that in which I fixed the chair of the oar-master; she now knelt below that chair, and it its left; there, with the second length of fiber, I tied together her ankles; with the third length I ran a leash from her throat to the mooring cleat on the aft larboard side of the barge, that some five yards forward of the sternpost.

I then sat down cross-legged on the tiller deck. I counted the arrows. I now had twenty-five. Several of the warriors struck by the arrows had plunged into the water; others had been thrown overboard by their fellows. Of the twenty-five, eighteen were sheaf arrows and the remaining seven were flight arrows. I put the bow beside me, and laid the arrows out on hte planking of the tiller deck. I then rose to my feet and began to make my way, barge by barge, to the sixth barge.

Again the slaves, chained at their benches, facing the stern of each barge, did not so much as move as I passed among them.

"Give me water," whispered a bound rencer.

I continued on my way.

As, I walked from barge to barge I passed, at each prow, tied above my head, a bound, nude girl. On the second prow of the six barges, only a few feet from the tiller dec of the first barge, it had been the tall, gray-eyed girl, who had held marsh vine against my arm, she who had danced with such secruciating slowness before me at the pole. On the third prow it had been the shorter, dark-haired girl, she who had carried the net over her left shoulder. I remembered that she, too, had dnaced before me, and, as had the others, spit upon me.

Bound as they were to the curved prows of the barges these captives could see only the sky over the marsh. They could hear only my footsteps passing beneath them, and perhaps the small movement of the Gorean blad in its sheath. As I walked back, from barge to barge, I walked as well among bound rencers, heaped and tied like fish among the benches of slaves.

I wore the heavy Gorean helmet, concealing my features. None recognized the warrior who walked among them. The helmet bore no insignia. Its crest plate was empty.

No one spoke. I heard not even the ratle of a chain. I heard only my footsteps, and the occasional sounds of the morning in the marsh, and the movement of the Gorean blade in my sheath.

When I reached the tiller deck of the sixth barge I looked back, surveying the barges.

They were mine now.

Somewhere I heard a child crying.

I went forward to the foredeck of the sixth barge and there freed the rence craft of its tether to the mooring cleat and climbed over the side, dropping into the small craft. I pulled the oar-pole from the mud at its side, and then, standing on the wide, sturdy little craft which Telima had fashioned from the rence I had gathered, I poled my way back to the first barge.

The slaves, those at the benches, and those who lay bound between them, as I passed the barges, were silent.

I refastened the rence craft at the first barge, to the starboard mooring cleat just abaft of the prow.

I then climbed aboard and walked back to the tiller deck, where I took my seat on the chair of the oar-master.

Telima, haltered, bound hand and foot, kneeling on the second broad step on the stairs leading up to the tiller deck, looked up at me.

"I hate rencers," I told her.

"Is that why you have saved them," she asked, "from the men of Port Kar?" I looked at her in fury.

"There was a child," I said, "one who was once kind to me."

"You have done all this," she asked, "because a child was once kind to you?" "Yes," I said.

"And yet now," she said, "you are being cruel to a child, one who is bound and hungry, or thirsty."

It was true. I could hear a child crying. I now could place that the sound came from the second barge.

I rose from the chair of the oar-master, angrily. "I have you all," I told her, "and the slaves at the benches as well! If I wish, I will take you all to Port Kar, as you are, and sell you. I am on man armed and strong among many chained and bound. I am master here!"

"The child," she said, "is bound. It is in pain. It is doubtless thirsty and hungry."

I turned and made my way to the second barge. I found the child, a boy, perhaps of five years of age, blond like many of the rencers, and blue-eyed. I cut him free, and took him in my arms.

I found his mother and cut her free, telling her to feed the child and give water to it.

She did, and then I ordered them both back to the tiller deck of the first barge, making them stand on hte rowing deck, below the steps of the tiller deck, to my left near the rail, where I might see them, where they might not, unnoticed, attempt to free others.

I sat again on the chair of the oar-master.

"Thank you," said Telima.

I did not deign ot respond to her.

In my heart there was hatred for the rencers, for they had made me slave. More than this they had been my teachers, who had brougth me to cruelly learn myself as I had no wish to know myself. They had cost me the concept that I had taken for my reality; they had torn from me a bright image, an illusion, precious and treasured, and unwarranted reflection of suppositions and wishes, not examined, which I had taken to be the truth of my identity. They had torn me from myself. I had begged to be a slave. I had chosen ignominious slavery over the freedom of honorable death. In the marshes of the delta of the Vosk I had lost Tarl Cabot. I had learned that I was, in my heart, of Port Kar.

I drew forth the Gorean blade from its scabbaord and, sitting on the chair of the oar-master, laid it across my knees.

"I am Ubar here," I said.

"Yes," said Telima, "here you are Ubar."

I looked down to the slave at the starboard side, he at the first thwart, who would be first oar.

As I, in the chair of oar-master, faced the bow of the vessel, he, as slave at the benches, faced its stern, and the chair of the oar-master, that which now served me as Ubar's throne, in this small wooden country lost in the marshes of the Vosk's delta.

We looked upon one another.

Both of his ankles were shackled to the beam running lengthwise of the ship and bolted to the deck; the chain on the shackles ran through the beam itself, through a circular hole cut in the beam and lined with an iron tube; the slaves behind him, as the beam, or beams, passed beneath their thwarts, were similarly secured. The arrangements for the slaves on the larboard side of the barge were, of course, identical.