It is pleasant to have women so, at one’s feet.
To be sure, a woman whose slave fires have not been ignited may have little understanding of this sort of thing, little understanding of the needs, sensations, miseries, and torments to which their embonded sisters are subject.
It is little wonder then that free women commonly hold female slaves in contempt, despising them for their needs.
How weak they are, they think.
But how alive they actually are!
And how the free woman, fearing to explore the edges of her consciousness, uneasily, perhaps angrily, perhaps inconsolably, senses how much she is missing, herself, to be found only in the arms of a dominant male, a master!
I glanced about the hut. I saw no slave whip on its convenient peg. This seemed an odd omission in a Gorean dwelling, at least one in which there was a slave, or slaves. It is not that the whip is often used. Indeed, normally, it is seldom, if ever, used, for there is no call for it. The girl knows it will be used if she is in the least bit displeasing, and so there is seldom a call for it. That it is there, and it will be used, if the master sees fit, is usually all that is necessary to keep it securely on its peg.
I had the sense that his slave, Constantina, was surly. It was almost as though she were distempered, to be expected to attend to her duties. I wondered if she attended to the hut, the firewood, and such, at all. Did Pertinax himself, our supposed forester, attend to such things? Were there other slaves about?
“I suppose,” I said to Pertinax, “you obtain little news here, so far from Port Kar.”
“One hears things occasionally,” he said. “Transients, like yourself, a coastal peddler, the arrival twice yearly of an inspector and scribe, to review the trees, to inventory the reserves.”
“You suggested earlier,” I said, “that things might have changed in Ar?”
“Did I?” he asked.
“I think so,” I said.
“A surmise,” he said, “based on the appearance of many intruders.”
“Surely harvesters, loggers, and such, come occasionally to cull the forests.”
“Of course,” he said, uneasily I thought.
“When will they be due?” I asked.
“One does not know,” he said. “It is intermittent, depending on the needs of the arsenal, of the fleet.”
“The fellows who disembarked from the ship,” I said, “did not seem harvesters, loggers, or such.”
“No,” he said. “Not they.”
“Who are they?” I asked. “What is their business?”
“I do not know,” he said.
“The logs must be taken to the coast, for shipment,” I said.
“Of course,” he said.
“I saw no track amidst the trees, no road,” I said.
“It is elsewhere,” he said.
“I saw no stables for draft tharlarion,” I said.
“They are elsewhere,” he said.
“I am surprised there are no crews here, sawyers and carpenters, to dress and shape the wood, to cut planks and joints, such things.”
“It is not the season,” he said.
“I see,” I said.
I had then more evidence that our friend, Pertinax, and perhaps his slave, Constantina, were not what they pretended to be. For one who did not know the ways of Port Kar, it would be a natural assumption, one I pretended to make, that dressing crews would shape and plank a great deal of the wood before shipping it to the south. Indeed, I had often thought that that would be a sensible practice. On the other hand, the artisans of the arsenal, under the command of the master shipwrights, attended to these matters in the arsenal itself. The rationale for this, as it had been explained to me, was that each mast, each strake, each plank, each article of the ship, was to be shaped and customized under the supervision of the arsenal’s naval architects. Accordingly, it would be rare, if it was allowed at all, given the practices of Port Kar, and perhaps the vanity and arrogance of her craftsmen, intending to control to the greatest extent possible every detail of their work, to allow this carpentry to take place in a remote venue in which they had no direct supervision.
I would learn later, however, something earlier suspected, that something along these lines was taking place within the forest itself, outside the reserves, some pasangs to the south.
It had to do with the intruders, and the river, the Alexandra.
And it had little to do, I conjectured, even then, with the reserves of Port Kar and the needs of her arsenal.
“Foresters,” I said, “normally cluster their huts, in small palisaded enclaves, but I saw no other huts here, nor a palisade.”
Constantina cast a swift glance at me, and Pertinax looked down.
“The village is elsewhere,” he said. “This is an outpost hut, near the coast, where we may watch for round ships.”
“I see,” I said.
The “round ships” are cargo ships.
The Gorean “round ship” is not round, of course, though the Gorean would translate as I have it. It is merely that the ratio of keel to beam is greater in the long ship, or ship of war, more length of keel to width of beam, than in the “round ship.”
The round ship is designed for the carrying of cargo. The long ship is designed for speed and maneuverability. It is like a knife in the water.
“You are of the warriors, I take it,” said Pertinax.
“Why should you think so?” I asked.
“You carry yourself as a warrior,” said Pertinax. “Also, your weapon seems such as theirs.”
It was the Gorean short sword, or gladius, light, easily unsheathed, convenient, designed for wickedly close work, to move behind the guard of longer, heavier weapons, to slip about buffeted shields or bucklers. It was pointed for thrusting, double-edged for slashing. Lifted and shaken it could part silk.
“I have fought,” I said.
“You could be a mercenary,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“But I think you are of the warriors,” he said.
“Perhaps of the assassins,” I said.
“You do not have the eyes of an assassin,” he said.
“What sort of eyes are those?” I asked.
“Those of a fee killer, an assassin,” he said.
“I see,” I said.
“You are a tarnsman, are you not?” asked Pertinax.
“I have not said so,” I said.
“But you are, are you not?”
“I have ridden,” I said.
“Those who know the tarn are not as other men,” he said.
“They are as other men,” I said. “It is merely that they have learned the tarn.”
“Then they are different afterwards,” he said.
“Perhaps,” I said.
“If they have survived,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
Many have died learning the tarn. The tarn is a dangerous bird, aggressive, carnivorous, often treacherous. The wingspan of many tarns is in the neighborhood of forty feet. Humans are small beside them. Many human beings will not approach them. It, like many wild beasts, can sense fear, and that stimulates its aggression. In facing a tarn a human being has little but will to place between himself and the beak and talons. To be sure many tarns are domesticated, so to speak, raised from the egg in the vicinity of humans, taught to expect their food from them, accustomed to harnessing from the age of the chick, and so on. In the past domestic tarns were sometimes freed, to hunt in the wild, and later to return to their cots, sometimes to the blasts of the tarn whistle. That is seldom done now. A hungry tarn is quite dangerous, you see, and the reed of its domesticity is fragile. There is no assurance that its strike will be directed on a tabuk or wild tarsk, or verr. Too, it is not unknown for such tarns to revert, so to speak. I think no tarn is that far from the wild. In their blood, it is said, are the wind and the sky.