Beasts of Gor (31 page)

“Har-ta!” said Imnak to the girls. “Har-ta!” The expression ‘har-ta’ is Gorean. “Faster! Faster!” He spoke sometimes to them in his own tongue, and sometimes in Gorean. Imnak himself spoke fair Gorean. He had traded furs and skins south more than once. Many of the red hunters cannot speak Gorean.

Imnak and I, too, applied our strength to the haul, thrusting at the wooden uprights at the back of the sled.

Imnak wished Thimble and Thistle to know Gorean. Would a white trader not pay more to rent one if she could understand his commands?

The nose of the sled tipped upward and then fell to the level on the glacial pebbles, and Ax Glacier, like the broad blade of a Torvaldsland ax, lay behind us.

“Har-ta!” called Imnak. Again we trekked.

There are tiers of mountains, interlaced chains of them, both east of Torvaldaland and north of her. Ax Glacier lies in one valley between two of these chains. These chains, together, are sometimes called the Hrimgar Mountains, which, in Gorean, means the Barrier Mountains. They are surely not a barrier, however, in the sense that the Voltai Mountains, or even the Thentis Mountains or Ta-Thassa Mountains, are barriers. The Hrimgar Mountains are not as rugged or formidable as any of these chains, and they are penetrated by numerous passes. One such pass, through which we trekked, is called the pass of Tancred, because it is the pass used annually by the migration of the herd of Tancred.

Four days after leaving the northern edge of Ax Glacier, we climbed to the height of the pass of Tancred, the mountains of the Hrimgar flanking us on either side. Below the height, the pass sloping downward, we could see the tundra of the polar plain. It is thousands of pasangs in width, and hundreds in depth; it extends, beyond horizons we could see, to the southern edge of the northern, or polar, sea.

I think this was a moving moment for Imnak. He stopped on the height of the pass, and stood there, for a long time, regarding the vastness of the cool tundra.

“I am home,” he said.

Then we eased the sled downward.

I suppose I was not watching well where I was going. I was watching the fellow being tossed in the fur blanket. The leather ball struck my back.

That was not all that struck my back. In a moment a small woman, a girl of the red hunters, fiery and very angry, was striking it. She stopped striking my back primarily because I turned to face her. She was then, however, striking my chest. After a time she stopped and, looking up at me, began to scold me vociferously.

I am pleased in some respects that words are less dangerous than arrows and daggers, else there surely would have been little left of me.

She finally grew weary of berating me. I gather she had done a good job of this from the interest and occasional commendations of the onlookers.

She looked at me, angrily. She wore the high fur boots and panties of the woman of the north. As it was, from their point of view, a hot day, one which was above the freezing point, she, like most of the women of the red hunters, was stripped to the waist. About her neck she wore some necklaces. She seemed pretty, but her temper might have shamed that of a she-sleen. The fur she wore, interestingly, was rather shabby. Her carriage and the sharpness of her tongue, however, suggested she must be someone of importance. I would later learn that the unmated daughters of even important men, namely, good hunters, were often kept in the poorest of furs. It is up to the mate, or husband, if you wish, to bring them good furs. This perhaps is intended as an encouragement to the girls to be a bit fetching, that they may attract a man and, subsequently, have something nice to wear. If this were the plan, however, clearly it had not yet worked in the case of my pretty critic. I was not surprised. It would be a bold fellow indeed who would dare to make her a present of fine feasting clothes.

She tossed her head and turned away. Her hair was worn knotted in a bun on the top of her head, like that generally of the women of the red hunters. Their hair is worn loose, interestingly, out of doors, only during their menstrual period. In a culture where the gracious exchange of mates is commonly practiced this device, a civilized courtesy, provides the husband’s friends with information that may be pertinent to the timing of their visits. This culture signal, incidentally, is not applicable to a man’s slaves in the north. Animals do not dress their hair and slaves, generally, do not either. Imnak sometimes did give Thimble and Thistle a red string to tie back their hair, but often he did not; he did with them what he pleased, and they did for him what they were told. He usually gave them the red string when he took them out with him, as a way of showing them off. Imnak had his vanities. I had not bothered to place Arlene under any strictures in these regards. Sometimes she wore her hair up, and sometimes let it fall loosely about her shoulders.

“You spoiled her kick,” said a man to me, in Goreali.

“I am sorry,” I said.

The girl, with other youths, had been playing a soccerlike game with the leather ball, with goals drawn in the turf. I had not realized, until too late, that I had been traversing the field of play.

“I am sorry,” I said.

“She has a very loud mouth,” said the man.

“Yes,” I granted. “Who is she?”

“Poalu,” he said, “the daughter of Kadluk.” Red hunters, though they are reticent to speak their own names, have little reservation about speaking the names of others. This makes sense, as it is not their name, and it is not as if, in their speaking it, the name might somehow escape them. This is also fortunate. It is sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to get one of these fellows to tell you his own name. Often one man will tell you the name of his friend, and his friend will tell you his name. This way you learn the name of both, but from neither himself. The names of the red hunters, incidentally, have meaning, but, generally, I content myself with reporting the name in their own language. ‘Imnak,’ for example, means “Steep Mountain”; ‘Poalu’ means “Mitten”; ‘Kadluk’ means “Thunder”. I have spoken of ‘Thimble” and ‘Thistle.” More strictly, their names were ‘Pudjortok’ and ‘Kakidlamerk’. However, since these names, respectively, would be ‘Thimble’ and ‘Thistle’, and Imnak often referred to them in Gorean as ‘Thimble” and ‘Thistle” I have felt it would be acceptable to use those latter expressions, they being simpler from the point of view of one who does not natively speak the tongue of the People, or Innuit.

“She is a beauty, is she not?” asked the man.

“Yes,” I said. “Is it your intention to offer her bright feasting clothes?”

“I am not insane,” he said. “Kadluk will never unload her.”

I thought his assessment of the situation was perhaps true.

“Have you a friend who might know your name?” I asked.

He called to a fellow who was nearby. “Someone would like to know the name of someone,” he said.

“He is Akko,” said the man. He then left.

“I can speak my own name,” I said to him. “I am from the south. Our names do not go away when we speak them.”

“How do you know?” asked Akko.

“I will show you,” I said. “My name is Tarl. Now listen.” I waited a moment. “Tarl,” I said. “See?”

“Interesting,” granted Akko.

“My name did not go away,” I said.

“Perhaps it came back quickly,” he suggested.

“Perhaps,” I said.

“In the north,” he said, “we do not think one should take unnecessary risks.”

“That is doubtless wise,” I granted.

“Good hunting,” he said.

“Good hunting,” I said. He left. Akko, or Shirt Tail, was a good fellow.

I smelled roast tabuk.

The great hunt had been successful. I did not know if it were morning, or afternoon, or night. In these days the sun, low on the horizon, circles, it seems endlessly, in the sky.

Six days ago Imnak and I, and our girls, had descended from the height of the pass of Tancred. The great hunt had been already in progress. Hundreds of the women and children of the red hunters, fanned out for pasangs, shouting, beating on pans had turned the herd toward the great alley of stone cairns. These cairns, of piled stone, each some four or five feet high, each topped with black dirt, form a long funnel. more than two pasangs in depth. The herd, which in the grazing on the tundra, has scattered is reformed to some extent by the drivers. It, or thousands of its animals, fleeing the drivers, pour toward the large, open end of the funnel. The stone cairns, which are perhaps supposed to resemble men, serve, perhaps psychologically, to fence in and guide the herd. The animals seem generally unwilling to break the imaginary boundary which might be projected between cairns. For example, the human seeing three dots spaced one way “sees” a line; seeing three dots spaced another way, he “sees” a triangle, and so on. One may fear to transgress a boundary which, in fact, exists only in one’s mind. It is not an unusual human being who finds himself a prisoner in a cell which, if he but knew it, lacks walls. Whatever the explanation the tabuk, generally, will postpone breaking the “wall” as long as possible. They flee along the alley of cairns. At the end of the cairns, of course, they turn about, milling, and many are slain, until some, wiser or more panic-stricken than others, break loose and, nostrils wide, snorting, trot to freedom and the moss of the open tundra.

I watched two men wrestling.

I had not yet spoken to Imnak about the carving of bluish stone among my belongings, the carving of a Kur, with an ear half torn away.

I could see the blue line of the Hrimgar Mountains in the distance to the south. To the north the tundra stretched forth to the horizoll.

Many people do not understand the nature of the polar north. For one thing, it is very dry. Less snow falls there generally than falls in most lower latitudes. Snow that does fall, of course, is less likely to melt. Most of the land is tundra, a cool, generally level or slightly wavy, treeless plain. In the summer this tundra, covered with mosses, shrubs and lichens, because of the melted surface ice and the permafrost beneath, preventing complete drainage, is soft and spongy. In the winter, of course, and in the early spring and late fall, desolate, bleak and frozen, wind-swept, it presents the aspect of a barren, alien landscape. At such times the red hunters will dwell by the sea, in the spring and fall by its shores, and, in the winter, going out on the ice itself.

I stepped aside to let a young girl pass, who carried two baskets of eggs, those of the migratory arctic gant. They nest in the mountaim of the Hrimgar and in steep, rocky outcroppings, called bird cliffs, found here and there jutting out of the tundra. The bird cliffs doubtless bear some geological relation to the Hrimgar chains. When such eggs are frozen they are eaten like apples.

I saw a woman putting out a pan for a domestic snow sleen to lick clean.

In another place several women sat on a fur blanket playing a cat’s cradle game. They were quite skilled. This game is generally popular in the Gorean north. It is played not only by the red hunters, but in Hunjer and Skjern, and in Torvaldsland, and as far south as the villages in the valley of the Laurius.

The tundra at this time of year belies its reputation for bleakness. In many places it bursts into bloom with small flowers. Almost all of the plants of this nature are perennials, as the growing season is too short to permit most annuals to complete their growing cycle. In the winter buds of many of these plants lie dormant in a fluffy sheath which protects them from cold. Some two hundred and forty different types of plants grow in the Gorean arctic within five hundred pasangs of the pole. None of these, interestingly, is poisonous, and none possesses thorns. During the summer plants and flowers will grow almost anywhere in the arctic except on or near the glacial ice.

At certain times in the summer even insects will appear, black, long-winged flies, in great swarms, coating the sides of tents and the faces of men.

Two children raced past me, playing tag.

I looked to the north. It was there that Zarendargar waited.

“Greetings, Master,” said Thimble.

“Greetings,” I said to her. She was dressed, save for her bondage strings, in much the same way as most of the women of the red hunters, bare-breasted, with high boots and panties. Thistle, however, behind her, was naked, in a northern yoke and on a leather leash. The northern yoke is either of wood or bone, and is drilled in three places. The one Thistle wore was of wood. It was not heavy. It passed behind her neck at which point one of the drilled holes occurred. The other two holes occurred at the terminations of the yoke. A leather strap is knotted about the girl’s wrist, passed through the drilled hole at one end of the yoke, usually that on her left, taken up through the hole behind the neck, looped twice about her neck, threaded back down through the center hole, taken up through the other hole at the end, usually the one at her right, and tied about her right wrist. She is thus fastened in the yoke. From each end of the yoke hung a large sack.

“We are going to pick moss and grass,” she said. Moss is used as wicks for the lamps. Grass, dried, is used for insulation between the inner soles of the boots and the bottom of the fur stockings in the winter.

“That is good,” I said. “Why is Thistle yoked?”

“It pleased me, Master,” said Thimble, first girl. There was little love lost between the girls.

“Was she insubordinate?” I asked.

“She said a sharp word to me,” said Thimble.

“Did you switch her, too?” I asked.

“Of course, Master,” said Thimble.

“Excellent,” I said. Discipline must be kept in the tent.

I looked at Thistle. She met my eyes, briefly, and then looked down. She was quite attractive. I had not as yet had either Thimble or Thistle.

“Is Imnak finished yet with the new slave girl?” I asked, referring to Arlene.

“I think so, Master,” said Thimble, smiling. “At least he has tied her to a pole behind the tent.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“I do not think she is much good, Master,” said Thimble, one slave girl appraising another.

“Do not let me detain you from your labors,” I said.