John Norman - Marauders of Gor

"I shall fetch a belonging or two," I said, "and be with you presently."

"Do not delay overlong," suggested Ivar Forkbeard.

"Very well," I said.

I ran to the yard of a tavern near the docks. There I unsaddled, unbridled and freed the tarn I had ridden north. "Fly!" I commanded it. It smote the air with its wings, and beat its way into the smoky skies of Kassau. I saw it turn toward the southeast. I smiled. In such a direction, I knew, lay the mountains of Thentis. In those mountains had the forbearers of the bird been bred. I thought of the webs of spiders and turtles running to the sea. How fantastic, how strange, I thought, is the blood of beasts, and I realized, too, that I was a beast, and wondered on what might be the nature of those instincts which must be my own.

I hurled a golden tarn disk to the ground, to pay for lodging in Kassau, and the care of the bird. I would leave the saddle.

But from it, I took the saddlebags, containing some belongings, and some gold, and, too, the bedroll of fur and boskhide. From it, too, I took, in its waterproof sheath, the great bow, and its arrows, forty arrows flight and sheaf.

I looked after the tarn. Already it had gone, disappearing in the smoking sky above Kassau.

I had booked better passage to Torvaldsland.

I turned and ran back to the wharf.

Eight bows were trained on me; eight arrows lay ready at the taut string.

"Do not fire," called Ivar Forkbeard to his bowmen. He grinned. "He plays Kaissa."

I threw my gear into the ship, and, bow in hand, leaped into the serpent.

"Cast off," said Ivar Forkbeard.

The two mooring ropes were flung free of the mooring cleats. They were not cut. The bowmen took their places, with their fellows, on the benches. The serpent backed from the pier and, in the harbor, turned. The red-and-white striped sail, snapping, unfolding, was dropped from the spar.

Between the benches, amidships, among piles of loot, their wrists fettered behind them, sat the naked bond-maids, and Aelgifu, in her torn, black velvet. They were still in throat coffle. Their ankles had been crossed, and lashed tightly with binding fiber. Aelgifu's shoes, I noted, had been removed, and her woolen hose; this was done that her ankles and feet, bared now like those of the bond-maids, might be as securely tied. No Gorean puts binding fiber over shoes or hose. It seemed Aelgifu, proud and rich, would go barefoot, like a peasant wench or a stripped bond-maid, by the will of Ivar Forkbeard, until her ransom was paid on the skerry of Einar five nights from this night, by the rune-stone of the Torvaldsmark. She alone of the women, though fettered and bound, and in coffle, did not seem unduly upset.

Ivar Forkbeard went to the bond-maids. He looked down on the blond, slender girl. The coffle loop was on her throat. She sat, with her legs drawn up, her ankles crossed. #She moved her wrists in the fetters; there was a small sound as the three-inch joining link moved in the welded rings of the fetters.

"It seems your bondage," said he, "pretty maid, will not be as short as you had hoped."

She looked down.

"There is no escape," he told her.

She sobbed.

The men of Torvaldsland began to sing at the oars.

Ivar Forkbeard reached down to the planking on the deck and picked up Aelgifu's shoes and hose, where they had been discarded when they had been removed and her ankles bound. He threw them over the side.

Then he joined me at the stern. We could see men at the docks. Some were even attempting to rig a coasting vessel to pursue the serpent. But they would not rig it.

It was pointless.

The men of Torvaldsland sang with great voices. The oars, two men to an oar, lifted and dipped. The helmsman leaned on the tiller of the great steering oar.

Behind us we could see the smoke of the burning temple. Too, it seemed, the fires had spread elsewhere in Kassau, doubtless carried by the wind.

We could now see those at the dock, and even those who had been bestirring themselves with the coasting vessel, returning to the town. We heard the ringing of the great bar which hung on its timber frame outside the temple. The town was afire. The men of Kassau left the docks, hurrying up the dirt streets, to take up their new labors.

Behind us, amidships, we heard the weeping of women, fettered bond-maids being carried north to serve harsh masters.

The smoke billowed high in the sky above Kassau. We could hear, clearly, carrying over the water, the ringing of the great bar outside the temple.

The men of Torvaldsland singing, the oars lifting and dipping, the serpent of Ivar Forkbeard took its way from the harbor of Kassau.

Ivar Forkbeard, leaning over the side of his serpent, studied the coloring of the water. Then he reached down and scooped up some in the palm of his hand, testing its temperature.

"We are one day's rowing," said he, "from the skerry of Einar and the rune-stone of the Torvaldsmark."

"How do you know this?" I asked.

We had been out of sight of land for two days, and, the night preceding, had been, with shortened sail, swept eastward by high winds.

"There is plankton here," said Ivar, "that of the banks south of the skerry of Einar, and the temperature of the water tells me that we are now in the stream of Torvald, which moves eastward to the coast and then north."

The stream of Torvald is a current, as a broad river in the sea, pasangs wide, whose temperature is greater than that of the surrounding water. Without it, much of Torvaldsland, bleak as it is, would be only a frozen waste of cliffs, inlets and mountains. Its arable soil is thin and found in patches. The size of the average farm is very small. #Good farms is often by sea, in small boats. Without the stream of Torvald it would probably not be possible to raise cereal crops in sufficient quantity to feed even its relatively sparse population.

There is often not enough food under any conditions, particularly in northern Torvaldsland, and famine is not unknown. In such cases men feed on bark, and lichens and seaweed. It is not strange that the young men of Torvaldsland often look to the sea, and beyond it, for their fortunes. The stream of Torvald is regarded by the men of Torvaldsland as a gift of Thor, bestowed upon Torvald, legendary founder and hero of the land, in exchange of a ring of gold.

Ivar Forkbeard went to the mast. Before it sat Aelgifu. She was chained to it by the neck. Her wrists, in the black, iron fetters of the north, were now fastened before her body that she could feed herself. There was salt in her hair. She still wore her black velvet but now it was stained with sea water, and salt, and was discolored, and stiff, and creased. She was barefoot.

"Tomorrow night," said Ivar Forkbeard to her, "I shall have your ransom money."

She did not deign to speak to him, but looked away. Like the bond-maids, she had been fed only on cold Sa-Tarna porridge and scraps of dried parsit fish.

The men of Torvaldsland sometimes guide their vessels by noting the direction of the waves, breaking against the prow, these correlated with prevailing winds. Sometimes they use the shadows of the gunwales, failing across the thwarts, judging their angles. The sun, too, of course, is used, and, at night, the stars give them suitable compass, even in the open sea.

It is a matter of their tradition not to rely on the needle compass, as is done in the south. The Gorean compass points always to the Sardar, the home of Priest-Kings. The men of Torvaldsland do not use it. They do not need it. The sextant, however, correlated with sun and stars is not unknown to them. It is commonly relied on, however, only in unfamiliar waters. Even fog banks, and the feeding grounds of whales, and ice floes, in given season, in their own waters, give the men of Torvaldsland information as to their whereabouts, they utilizing such things as easily, as unconsciously, as a peasant might a mountain, or a hunter a river.