Marauders of Gor (10 page)

           
"I, too, am skilled at the game," said Ivar Forkbeard.

           
"Are you truly good?"

           
"I am good,:" I said.
 
"Whether I am as good as you, of course, I shall not know until we play."

           
"True," said Forkbeard.

           
"I sahll join you at your ship," I said.

           
"Do so," said he.

           
The he turned to one of his me.
 
"Keep close to me the coins brought as offerings by the poor to the temple of Kassau," he said.
 
These coins had now been placed in the large, single bow.

           
"Yes, Captain," said the man.

           
The rear wall, too, of the temple now caught fire, I heard another beam in the ceiling crack. There were sparks in the air.
 
They stung my face.
 
The bond-maids, their bodies exposed to them, cried out in pain.
 

           
"Open the other gate!" cried Ivar Forkbeard.
 
Hysterically, crowding, those citizens of Kassau who had, weeping, terified, been lying on their stomachs in the dirt, beneath the burning roof, leapt to their feet and fled through the door.

           
Ivar permitted them to leave the temple.

           
"They are coming out!"
 
cried a voice from the outside.
 
We heard angry men running to the door, people turning the movements of chains, flails and rakes.

           
"Now let us leave" said Ivar Forkbear.

           
"You will never get us to the ship," said the slender girl.

           
"You will hurry, pretty little bond-maids, and you, too, my large-breasted lovely," said Ivar, indicating black-vel-veted Aelgifu, "or you will be cut out of the coffle by your heads."

           
"Open the door,:" he said.

           
The door was swung open.
 
"To the ships," he cried.
 
 

           
"Hurry, my pretties," he laughed, striking the slender blond girl, and others of them, sharply with the palm of his hand.
 
His men, too, the girls between them, pushed through the door.

           
"They are coming out here!" cried a voice, a man in the crowd of the poor, a peasant, turning about, seeing us.
 
But many of those in the crowd were clasping loved ones, and friends, as they escaped from the other door.
 
Swiftly, down the dirt street to the wharves from the temple, stirding, but not running, moved Ivar Forkbeard with his men, and his loot, both that of female flesh and gold.
 
Many of the peasants, and fishermen, and other poor people, who had not found places in the temple, turned about.
 
Several of them began to follow us, lifting flails and great scythes.
 
Some carried chains, others hoes.

           
They had no leadership.

           
Like wolves, crying out, shouting , lifting their fists, they ran behind us as we made our way toward the wharves. Then a rock fell among us, and another.

           
Noen of them cared to rush upon the axes of the men of Torvaldsland.

           
"Save us!" cried the slender blond girl.
 
"You are men!
 
Save us!"

           
At her cries many of the men seemed emboldened and rushed more closely about us, but swings of the great axes kept them back.

           
"Gather together!"
 
we heard.
 
"Charge!"
 
We saw Gurt, in his black satin, rallying them.

           
They had lacked a leader.
 
They had one now.
 
Ivar Forkbeard then took Aelgifu by the hair and turned her, so that those following might see.

           
"Stop!" cried Gurt to them.

           
The single-baled edge of the great ax lay at Aelgifu's throat; her head was bent back.
 
For Forkbeard, his left hand in her hair, his right hand just below the head of the ax, grinned at Gurt.

           
"Stop," said Gurt, moaning, crushed.
 
"do not fight them!
 
Let them go!"

           
Ivar Forkbeard released Aelgifu and thrust her ruderly, stumbling, ahead of him.

           
"Hurry!" called Ivar Forkbeard to his men.
 
"Hurry bright-fleshed ones," called he to the fettered, burdened coffled bon-mids.

           
Behind us, we heard the roof of the temple, collapese, I looked back.
 
Smoke stained the sky.

           
A hundred yards from the wharves we saw a crowd of angry men, perhaps two hundred, blocking the way.
 
They held gaff, harpoons, even pointed stick. Some carried crash hooks and others chisels, and iron levers.

           
"You see," cried the blond, girl, delightedly, "my bondage is short!"

           
"Citizens of Kassau!"
 
called out Ivar Forkbeard cheerily.

           
"Greetings from Ivar Forkbeard!"

           
The men looked at him, tense, hunched over, weapons ready, angry.

           
Forkbeard then, grinning, slung his ax over his left shoulder, dropping it into the broad leather loop by which it may be carried, its head behind his head and to the left.
 
This loop is fixed in a broad leather belt worn from the left shoulder to the right hip, fastened there by a hook , that the weight of the ax will not turn the belt, which fits into a ring in the otherwise unarmed, carry a knife at their master belt. All men of Torvaldsland, incidentally, even if otherwise unarmed, carry a knife at their master belt.
 
The sword, when carried, and it often is, is commonly supported might be mentioned, the common Gorean practice.
 
It can also, of course, be hung, by its sheath and sheath straps, form the master belt, which is quite adequate, being a stout heavy belt, to hold it.
 
It is called the master belt, doubtless, to distinguish it from the ax belt and the sword belt, and because it is, almost always worn.
 
A pouch, of course, and other accoutrements my hang, too, from it.
 
Gorean garments, generally, do not contain pockets.
 
Some say the master belt gets its name be cause it is used sometimes in the disciplining of bond-maids. This seems to be a doubtful origin for the name.
 
It is true, however, questions of the origin of the name aside, that bond-maids, stripped, are often taught obedience under its lash.

           
Ivar Forkbeard reached out his hands and took from one of his men the bowl of coins which the poor had brought as their pitiful offerings to the temple of Kassau.

           
Then, smiling, by hadfuls he hurled the coins to the right and to the left.

           
Tense, the men watched him.
 
One of those coins, of small denomination though they might be, was day's wages on the docks of Kassau.

           
More coins, in handfuls, showered to the street, to the sides of the men.

           
"Fight!" screamed the blond girl.
 
"Fight!"

           
One of the men, suddenly, reached down and snatched one.

           
Then, with a great, sweeping gesture, Ivar Forkbeard emptied the bowl of coins, scattering them in a shower of coper and iron over the men. Two more men reached down to snatch a coin.

           
"Fight!" screamed the blond girl.
 
"Fight!"

           
The first man, scrabbling in the dirt, picked up another coin, and the another.

           
Then the second and third man found, each, another coin.
 
Then the others, agonized, unable longer to resist, scurried to the left and right, their weapons discarded, and fell to their knees snatching coins.

           
"Cowards!" Slenn!"
 
wept the blond girl.
 
Then she cried out in misery, half choked by the coffle loop on her throat, as she found herself hurried, fettered and burdened with the others, through the workers of Kassau.

           
We brushed through the scrabbling workers and saw before us the wharf, and the serpent, sleek and swift, of Ivar Forkbeard, at its moorings.
 
Ten men had remained at the ship.
 
Eight held bows, with arrows at the string; none had dared to approach the ship; the short bow of the Gorean north, wit its short, heavy arrows, heavily headed, lacks the range and power of the peasant bow of the south, that now, too, the property of the rencers of the delta, but at short range, within a hundred and fifty yards, it can administer a considerable strike.
 
It has, too, the advantage that it is more manageable in close quarters than the peasant box resembling somewhat the Tuchuck bow of layered horn in this respect.
 
It is more useful in close combat on a ship, for example, than would be the peasant bow. Too, it is easier to fire it through a thole port, the oar withdrawn.
 
The two other men stood ready with knives to cut the ooring ropes.
 
 

           
The men of Ivar Forkbeard threw their bulging cloaks, filled with gold and plate, into the ship.

           
Ivar Forkbeard looked back.

           
We heard, in the distance, a muffle d crash.
 
A wall of the temple had fallen. Then, amoment later, we heard the falling of another wall.
 
Smoke, in angry billows, black and fiery, climbed the sky above Kassau.

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

           
"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 borebearers 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 bondmaids, and Aelgifu, in her torn, black velvet.
 
They were still in throat coffle.
 
Their ankles had been crossed, and lashed tightly with binding fiber.
 
Aelgifus 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 bon-maid, by the will of Ivar Forbeard, 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.