John Norman - Rogue of Gor

“I am going to the paga tavern,” I told her.

“Why?” she asked.

“There are more interesting women there,” I said.

“Slaves!” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“I am a free woman,” she said. “Do you find slaves more interesting than I?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Why?” she asked.

“For one thing,” I said, “they are owned.”

“That makes them fascinating, doesn’t it?” she said, bitterly.

“Yes,” I said.

“And doubtless,” she said, angrily, “they do not have the inhibitions and frigidities of their free sisters!”

“They are not permitted them,” I admitted.

“I hate female slaves,” she said.

I shrugged.

“Why are they preferred over free women?” she asked.

“Because they are slaves,” I said.

“What are the differences?” she asked.

“There are thousands,” I said. “Perhaps, most simply, the female slave is submitted to men. This makes her the most total of women.”

“Disgusting,” she said.

“Perhaps,” I said.

“No man could ever break my will,” she said.

“That is the sort of thing which is usually said by a woman who is yearning for her will to be broken, by a strong man,” I said.

“I hate female slaves,” she said.

I did not speak.

“Do you think I would make a good female slave?” she asked.

“I think you would make an excellent little slave,” I said.

“Stay with me tonight,” she said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Break my will,” she said. “Make me a slave.”

“You are a woman of Earth,” I told her.

“I see,” she said. “I am too fine, and different.”

“Of course,” I told her. “Do you need to be told that?”

“No!” she said. “I know it!”

“Very well,” I said, angrily.

“Stay with me tonight,” she begged. “Make me your slave!”

I looked at her.

“My will, broken, will lie before you as yielding, as supine and vanquished as my body,” she said. “I beg of you, Jason, make me your slave!”

“I am going to the paga tavern,” I said.

“I hate you!” she cried.

I turned away from her then and began to make my way toward the house. She, after a moment, running in her sandals, followed me.

“Jason,” she said, “wait! Wait for me!”

But I did not wait.

I opened the door and looked within. Then I stepped back, and indicated that she should precede me into the house.

“I expected to heel you into the house,” she said.

“You are a free woman,” I said. “You will enter first.”

She looked at me, warily. “What is to be done with me inside?” she asked.

“You are a woman of Earth,” I reminded her. “Nothing.”

“Where is the topaz?” she asked.

“What topaz?” I asked.

She cried out in anger, and then entered the house. She would enter first, for she was a free woman.

“Stop, Thief!” cried the portly fellow, his robes swirling.

Darting away from him was a small, quick fellow, clutching in his hand a bulging purse, its strap slashed. In the small fellow’s right hand there was clutched a dagger.

Men stood aside to let the thief run by them.

“Stop him!” cried the portly fellow, stumbling, puffing, trying to pursue the running man.

I watched, a bale of rep fiber on my shoulder, near the rep wharf.

As the running man approached me I lowered the bale of rep fiber and, as he came within feet of me, suddenly slid it before him. He struck the bale and stumbled over it, rolling on the boards. Instantly I was upon him. He slashed at me, on his back, with the knife and I seized his wrist with both hands and yanked him to his feet. He dropped the purse.

I spun him about twice by the wrist and then, with this momentum, hurled him into a tower of nail barrels on the side. They cascaded down. I jerked him back, groggy. He was bloody. There were splinters in his tunic and face. I then, with two hands, broke his wrist and kicked the fallen knife to the side. I then turned him about to face me. He looked at me wildly, clutching his wrist. A bone fragment was jutting through it. I then kicked him squarely and he threw back his head, screaming with pain. I then turned him about again and, holding him by the back of the neck, ran him to the edge of the wharf where, seizing his ankle, and holding his neck, I upended him into the water below.

He struck out toward the shore, then clambered toward it, getting his feet under him. He screamed twice more. When he stood in about a foot of water, among pilings, near the next wharf, he struck down madly at his legs with his left hand, striking two dock eels from his calf. Then, painfully, he moved himself up the sand, staggering, holding his legs widely apart.

“Where are the guardsmen, to apprehend him?” puffed the portly fellow, who wore the caste colors of the merchants, white and gold.

“There are no guardsmen in Victoria,” I said.

“Two copper tarsks, one to each of you,” said the merchant to two dock workers who stood nearby, “to apprehend and bind that fellow!”

Swiftly the two dock workers set out after the thief.

Though men stood about none had attempted to steal the purse of the merchant, which lay nearby. Most of those of Victoria are honest fellows.

One of them handed the purse back to the merchant, who thanked him.

“What is your name, Fellow?” asked the merchant of me.

“Jason,” I said.

“Of Victoria?” asked the merchant.

“It is here that I am now,” I said.

He smiled. Drifters among the river towns are not uncommon. They come from all over Gor. “You have had difficulties with guardsmen?” he asked.

“I had some difficulties with guardsmen in Tancred’s Landing and Fina,” I admitted.

“I am Glyco,” said he, “of the Merchants, of Port Cos. You are a bold fellow. I am grateful for your aid.”

“It is nothing,” I said.

Whining, the thief was dragged before us by the two dock workers. He was still in great pain. He could scarcely stand. The dock workers had torn off his clothes and, ripping his tunic, had made a rope of twisted cloth, with which they had bound his hands behind his back. They also had him on a short neck leash, also fashioned of twisted cloth, from his tunic. His right hand was bleeding, and his left leg, in two places. The leg seemed gouged. The dock eels, black, about four feet long, are tenacious creatures. They had not relinquished their hold on the flesh in their jaws when they had been forcibly struck away from the leg, back into the water. The thief shrank back from me. The dock workers threw him to his knees before the merchant.

The merchant turned to me. He handed me a silver tarsk from the purse.

“You need give me nothing,” I said. “It was not important.”

“Take, if you will,” said he, “as a token of my gratitude, this silver tarsk.”

I took it. “Thank you,” I said.

Several of the men about, striking their shoulders in the Gorean fashion, applauded the merchant. He had been very generous. A silver tarsk is, to most Goreans, a coin of considerable value. In most exchanges it is valued at a hundred copper tarsks, each of which valued, commonly, at some ten to twenty tarsk bits. Ten silver tarsks, usually, is regarded as the equivalent of one gold piece, of one of the high cities.

To be sure, there is little standardization in these matters, for much depends on the actual weights of the coins and the quantities of precious metals, certified by the municipal stamps, contained in the coins. Sometimes, too, coins are split or shaved. Further, the debasing of coinage is not unknown. Scales, and rumors, it seems, are often used by coin merchants. One of the central coins on Gor is the golden tarn disk of Ar, against which many cities standardize their own gold piece. Other generally respected coins tend to be the silver tarsk of Tharna, the golden tarn disk of Ko-ro-ba, and the golden tarn of Port Kar, the latter particularly on the western Vosk, in the Tamber Gulf region, and a few hundred pasangs north and south of the Vosk’s delta.