Marauders of Gor (4 page)

           
Talena drew about her face her veil, refastening it. "I shall have the monies returned to you," she said.

           
"No," I said, "take it rather as a gift, as a token of a former affection, once borne to you by one who was honoured to be your companion."

           
"She is a she-sleen," said samos, "vicious and ignoble."

           
"My father would avenge that insult," she said, coldly, " with the tarn cavalries of Ar."

           
"You have been disowned," said samos, and turned and left. I still held the five coins in my hand.

           
"Give me the coinsd," said talena. I held them in my hand, in the palm. She came to me and snatched them away, as loath to touch me. Then she stood and faced me, the coins in her hand. "How ugly you are," she said. " How hideous in your chair!"

           
I did not speak.

           
She turned and strode toward the door of the hall. At the portal she stopped, and turned. "In my veins," she said, "flows the blood of Marlenus of Ar. How revolting and incredible that one such as you, a coward and betrayer of codes, should have aspired to touch me."
 
She lifted the coins in her hand. It was gloved. "My gratitude," said she, "Sir," and turned away.

           
"Talena!" I cried.

           
She turned to face me once more.

           
"It is nothing," I said.

           
"And you will let me go," she said. She smiled contemptuously. " You were never a man," she said. "Always you were a boy, a weakling."
 
She lifted the coins again in her hand. "Farewell, Weakling," said she, and left the room.

           
I now sat in my own hall, in the darkness, thinking on many things.

           
I wondered how to live.

           
"within the circle od each man's sword," says the codes of the warrior, "therein is each man a Ubar."

           
"Steel is the coinage of the warrior," says the codes. " With it he purchases what pleases him."

           
Once I had been among the finest swordsmen on the planet Gor. Now I was a cripple.

           
Talena would now be in Ar.
 
How startled, how crushed would she have been, to learn at last, incontrovertibly, that her disownment was true. She had beeged to be purchased, a slave's act. Marlenus protecting his honor, on his sword and upon the medallion of Ar, had sworn her from him. No longer had she caste, no longer a
 
HomeStone.
 
The meanest peasant wench, secure in her caste right, would be more than Talena.
 
Even a slave giorl had her collar. I knew that Marlenus would keep her sequestered in the central cylinder, that her shame not reflect upon his glory.
 
She would be in Ar, in effect, a prisoner. She was no longer entitled
 
even to call its HomeStone her own. Such an act, by one such as she, was subject to public discipline. For it, she might be
 
suspended naked, on a forty foot rope from one of the high bridges, to be lashed by tarnsmen, sweeping past her in flight.

           
I had watched her go.

           
I had not attempted to stop her.

           
And when Telima had fled my house, when I had determined to seek talena in the northern forests, I had, too, let her go. I smiled. A true Gorean, I knew, would have followed her, and brought her back in bracelets and collar.

           
I thought then of Vella, once Elizabeth Cardwell, whom I had encountered in the city of Lydius, at the mouth of the Laurius River, below the borders of the forest. I had once loved her, and had wanted to return her safe to earth. But she had not honored my will, but, that night, had saddled my tarn, great Ubar of the Skies , and fled the
 
Sardar. When the bird had returned, I, in fury, had driven it away.
 
Then I encountered the girl in a paga tavern in Lydius; she had fallen slave. Her flight had been a brave act. I admired her, but it was an act not without its consequences. She had gambled; she had lost. In an alcove, after I had used her, she had begged me to buy her, to free her. It was a slave's act, like that of Talena. I left her slave in the paga tavern. Before I had left, I had informed her master, Sarpedon of Lydius, that, as he did not know, she was an exquisitely trained pleasure slave, and a most stimulating performer of slave dances. I had not returned that night to see her dance in the sand to please her customers. I had matters of business to attend to. She had not honored my will. She was only a female. She had cost me a tarn.

           
She had told me that I had become harder, more Gorean. I wondered if it were true or not. A true Gorean, I speculated, would not have left her in the paga tavern. A true Gorean, I speculated, would have purchased her, and brought her back, to put her with his other women, a delicious new slave fopr his house. I smiled to myself. The girl, Elizabeth Cardwell, once a secretary in New York, was one of the most delicious weches I had ever seen in slave silk, Her thigh bore the brand of the four bosk horns.

           
No. I had not treated her as would have a true Gorean. I had not brought her back in my collar, to serve my pleasures.

           
And, too, I knew that I had, in my fevered delirium attendant on my wounds, when I lay in the stern castle of the Tesephone, cried out her name.

           
This had shamed me, and was weakness. Though I was half motionless, though I could not close the fingers of my left hand, I resolved that I must burn from myself the vestiges of weakness. There
 
was still much in me that was of Earth, much shallowness, much compromise, much weakness. I was not yet in my will truly Gorean.

           
I wondered how to live, " Do not ask how to live, but, instead, proceed to do so."

           
I wondered, too, on the nature of
 
my affliction. I had had the finest wound physicians on Gor brought to attend me, to inquire into its nature. They could tell me little. Yet I had learned there was no damage in the brain, nor directly to the spinal column. The men of medicine were puzzled. The wounds were deep, and severe, and would
 
doubtless, from time to time, cause me pain, but the paralysis, given the nature of the injury, seemed to them unaccountable.

           
Then one more physician, unsummoned, came to my door.

           
"Admit him, " I had said.

           
"He is a renegade from Turia, a lost man." had said Thurnock,

           
"Admit him," I had said.

           
"It is Iskander," whispered Thurnock.

           
I knew well the name of Iskander of Turia. I smiled. He remembered well the city that had exiled him, keeping still its name as part of his own. It had been many years since he had seen its lofty walls. He had, in the course of his practice in Turia, once given treatment outside of its walls to a young Tuchuk warrior, whose name was Kamchak. For this aid given to an enemy, he had been exiled. He had come, like many, to Port Kar. He had risen in the city, and had been for years the private physician to Sullius Maximus, who had been one of the five Ubars, presiding in Port Kar prior to the assumption of power by the Council of Captains.

           
Sullius Maximus was an authority on poetry, and gifted in the study of poisons. When Sullius Maximus had fled the city, Iskander had remained behind. He had even beenm with the fleet on the 25th of the Se"kKara. Sullius Maximus, shortly after the decision of the 25th of Se'Kara, had sought refuge in Tyros, and had been granted it.

           
:greetings, Iskander," I had said.

           
"Greetings, Bosk of Port Kar," he had said.

           
The findings of Iskander of Turia matched those of the other physicians, but, to my astonishment, when he had
 
replaced his instruments in the pouch slung at his shoulder, he said," The wounds were given by the blades of Tyros."

           
"Yes," I said," they were."

           
"there is a subtle contaminant in the woinds," he said.

           
"Are you sure?" I asked.

           
"I have not detected it," he said. "But there seems no likely explanation."

           
"A contaminant?" I asked.

           
"Poisoned steel," he said.

           
I said nothing.

           
"Sullius Maximus," he said, "is in Tyros."

           
"I would not have thought Saurus of Tyros would have used poisoned steel," I said. Such a device, like the poisoned arrow, was not only against the codes of the warriors, but, generally, was regarded as unworthy of men. Poison was regarded as a woman's weapon.

           
Iskander shrugged.

           
"Sullius Maximus, " he said," invented such a drug. He tested it, by pin pricks, on the limbs of a captured enemy, paralyzing him from the neck down. He kept him seated at his right side, as a guest in regal robes, for more than a week. When he tired of the sport he had him killed."

           
"Is there no antidote?" I asked.

           
"No," said Iskander.

           
"Then there is no hope," I said.

           
"No," said Iskander, " there is no hope."

           
"Perhaps it is not the poison." I said.

           
"Perhaps," said Iskander.

           
"Thurnock," said I, " give this physician a double tarn, of gold."

           
"No," said Iskander," I wish no payment."

           
"Why not?" I asked.

           
"I was with you," he said," on the 25th of Se'Kara."

           
"I wish you well, Physician," I said.

           
"I wish you well, too, Captain," said he, and left.

           
I wondered if what Iskander of Turia had conjectured was correct or not.

           
I wondered if such a poison, if it existed, could be overcome.

           
There is no antidote, he had informed me.

           
The refrain ran through my mind: "Do not ask how to live, but, instead, proceed to do so"

           
I laughed bitterly.

           
"Captain!" I heard. "Captain!" It was Thurnock. I could hear running feet behind him, the gathering of members of the household.

           
"What is it?" I heard Luma ask.

           
"Captain!" cried Thurnock.

           
I"I must see him m immediately!" said another voice. I was startled. It was the voice of Samos, first slaver of Port Kar.

           
They entered, carrying torches.

           
"Put torches in the rings," said Samos.

           
The hall was lit. Members of the house came forward. Samos appeared before the table. At his side was Thurnock, a torch still uplifted in
 
his hand. Luma was present. I saw, too, Tab, who was captain of the Venna. Clitus, too, was present, and young Henrius

           
"What is wrong?" I Asked.

           
Then one other stepped forward. It was Ho-Hak, from the marshes, the rencer. His face was white. No longer about his throat was clasped the collar of the galley slave, with short dangling chain. He had been a bred slave, an exotic.
 
His ears were large, bred so as a collector's fancy. But he had killed his master, breaking his neck and escaped. Recaptured, he had been sentenced to the galleys, but had escaped, too, killing six men in his flight. He had, finally, succeeded in making his way into the marshes, in the Vosk's vast delta, where he had been taken in by rencers, who live on islands, woven of rence reeds, in the delta. He had become chief of one such group, and was much respected in the delta. He had been instrumental in bringing the great bow to the rencers, which put them on a military par
 
with those of Port Kar, who had hitherto victimized and exploited them. Rencer
 
bowmen were now used by certain captains of Port Kar as auxilaries.

           
Ho-Hak did not speak but cast on the table an armlet of gold.