John Norman - Marauders of Gor

"There is Nest Trust between us," Misk had told him. I recalled that I, in the palms of my hands, had felt the delicate touch of the antennae of that golden creature. "Yes. There is Nest Trust between us," Tarl Cabot told him.

And he had gone to the Land of the Wagon Peoples, to the Plains of Turia, and had obtained there the last egg of the Priest-Kings, and had returned it, safe, to the Sardar. He had well served Priest-Kings, had Tarl Cabot, that young brave distant man, so fine, so proud, so much of the warriors.

And he had gone, too, to Ar. And there defeated the schemes of Cernus and the hideous aliens, the Others, intent on the conquest of Gor, and then the Earth He had well served Priest-Kings, that young man. And then he had ventured to The Delta of the Vosk, to make his way through it, to make contact with Samos of Port Kar, agent of Priest-Kings, to continue in their service.

But in the Delta of the Vosk, he had lost his honour. He had betrayed his codes. There, merely to save his miserable life, he had chosen ignominious slavery to the freedom of honourable death. He had sullied the sword, the honour, which he had pledged to Ko-ro-ba's Home Stone. By that act he had cut himself away from his codes, his vows. For such an act, there was no atonement, even to the throwing of one's body upon one's sword. It was in that moment of his surrender to his cowardice that Tarl Cabot was gone and, in his place, knelt a slave contemptuously named Bosk, for a great shambling ox-like creature of the plains of Gor.

But this Bosk, forcing his mistress, the beautiful Telima, to grant him his freedom, had come to Port Kar, bringing her with him as his slave, and had there, after many adventures, earned riches and fame, and the title even of Admiral of Port Kar. He stood high in the Council of Captains. And was it not he who had been victor on the 25th of Se'kara, in the great engagement of the fleets of Port Kar and Cos and Tyros. He had come to love Telima, and had freed her, but when he had learned the location of his former Free Companion, Talena, once daughter of Marlenus of Ar, and vowed to free her from slavery, Telima had left him, in the fury of a Gorean female, and returned to the rence marshes, her home in the Vosk's vast delta.

A true Gorean, he knew, would have gone after her, and brought her back in slave bracelets and a collar. But he, in his weakness, had wept, and let her go.

Doubtless she despised him now in the marshes.

And so, Tarl Cabot gone, Bosk, Merchant of Port Kar, had gone to the northern forests, to free Talena, once his Free Companion.

There he had encountered Marlenus of Ar, Ubar of Ar, Ubar of Ubars. He, though only of the Merchants, had saved Marlenus of Ar from the degradation of slavery. That one such as he, had been of service to the great Marlenus of Ar, doubtless was tantamount to insult. But Marlenus had been freed. Earlier he had disowned his daughter, Talena, for she had sued for her freedom, a slave's act. His honour had been kept. That of Tarl Cabot could not be recovered.

But I recalled that I had, in the stockade of Tyros, recollected the matter of honour. I had entered the stockade alone, not expecting to survive. It was not that I was the friend of Marlenus of Ar, or his ally. It was rather that I had, as a warrior, or one once of such as caste, set myself the task of his liberation.

I had accomplished this task. And, in the night, under the stars, I had recollected a never-forgotten honour.

But wounds had I to show for this act, and a body heavy with pain, whose left side I could not move.

I had recollected my honour, but it had won for me only the chair of a cripple. To be sure, carved in wood, high on the chair, was the helmet with crest of sleen-fur, the mark of the captain, but I could not rise from the chair.

My own body, and its weakness, held me, as chains could not.

Proud and mighty as the chair might be, it was the throne only of the maimed remains of a man.

I was rich!

I gazed into the darkness of the hall.

Samos of Port Kar had purchased Talena, as a mere slave, from two panther girls, obtaining her with ease in this manner while I had risked my life in the forest.

I laughed.

But I had recollected my honour. But little good had it done me. Was honour not a sham, a fraud, an invention of clever men to manipulate their less wily brethren? Why had I not returned to Port Kar and left Marlenus to his fate, to slavery and doubtless, eventually, to a slave's death, broken and helpless, under the lashes of overseers in the quarries of Tyros?

I sat in the darkness and wondered on honour, and courage. If they were shams, I thought them most precious shams. How else could we tell ourselves from urts and sleens? What distinguishes us from such beasts? The ability to multiply and subtract, to tell lies, to make knives? No, I think particularly it is the sense of honour, and the will to hold one's ground.

But I had no right to such thoughts, for I had surrendered my honour, my courage, in the delta of the Vosk, I had behaved as might have any animal, not a man.

I could not recover my honour, but I could, and did upon one occasion, recollect it, in a stockade at the shore of Thassa, at the edge of the northern forests.

I grew cold in the blankets. I had become petulant, bitter, petty, as an invalid, frustrated and furious at his own weakness, does.

But when I, half paralyzed and crippled, had left the shores of Thassa I had left behind me a beacon, a mighty beacon formed from the logs of the stockade of Sarus, and it blazed behind me, visible for more than fifty pasangs at sea.

I did not know why I had set the beacon, but I had done so.

It had burned long and fiery in the Gorean night, on the stones of the beach, and then, in the morning it would have been ashes, and the winds and rains would have scattered them, and there would have been little left, save the stones, the sand and the prints of the feet of sea birds, tiny, like the thief's brand, in the sand. But it would once have burned, and that was fixed, undeniable, a part of what had been, that it had burned; nothing could change that, not the eternities of time, not the will of Priest-Kings, the machinations of others, the willfulness and hatred of men; nothing could change that it had been, that once on the beach, there, a beacon had burned.

I wondered how men should live. In my chair, I had thought long on such matters.

I knew only that I did not know the answer to this question. Yet it is an important question, is it not? Many wise men give wise answers to this question, and yet they do not agree among themselves.

Only the simple, the fools, the unreflective, the ignorant, know the answer to this question.

Perhaps to a question this profound, the answer cannot be known. Perhaps it is a question too deep to be answered. Yet we do know there are false answers to such a question. This suggests that there may be a true answer, for how can there be falsity without truth?

One thing seems clear to me, that a morality which produces guilt and self-torture, which results in anxiety and agony, which shortens life spans, cannot be the answer.

But what is not mistaken?

The Goreans have very different notions of morality from those of Earth.

Yet who is to say who is the more correct?

I envy sometimes the simplicities of those of Earth, and those of Gor, who, creatures of their conditioning, are untroubled by such matters, but I would not be either of them. If either should be correct, it is for them no more than a lucky coincidence. They would have fallen into truth, but to take truth for granted, is not to know it. Truth not won is not possessed. We are not entitled to truths for which we have not fought.

Do we not know learn by living, as we learn to speak by speaking, to paint by painting, to build by building?