John Norman Gor 06 Ra

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She, terrified, fled to the sand, with a jangling of her chains, and jewels
and metal droplets, and stood tehre, tears in her eyes, knees flexed, arms
lifted over her head.
Play! cried the proprietor to the musicians. He cracked the whip once again.
They began to play, and the girl, once more, danced.
I looked upon her, and looked, as well, from face to face in that crowded,
noisy, poorly lit room, filled with men laughing and drinking. There was not a
face there that I saw taht did not seem to me the face of an animal.
And I, whoever or whatever I might be, sat with them, at the same tables.
I joined in their laughter. More paga! I cried.
And then I wept, for I had loved two women, and had lost them both.
And, as I watched, on that square of sand between the tables in a paga tavern
in Port Kar, under the ship s lanterns, the movements of the body of a slave
girl, the lights reflected in her chains, the rubies, the shimmering golden
droplets, I grew slowly furious.
I vowed that I would never again lose a woman.
Woman, I told myself, as many said, was natural slave.
Then she was before my very table. Master, she whispered.
Our eyes met.
She wore a collar. I was free. HEr gramet was an ornament. At my side I
wore a sword of steel.
In the instant that our glances had met I had seen that she, whom I took as
woman, would, if she had had the power, make men slaves, but in that same
instant she had seen, in my seyes, that it was men who were the stronger, who
held the power, and that it would be she, if any, who would be the slave.
Begone, I said, releasing her from my will.
She whirled away, angrily, frightened, moving to another table.
I watched her. That, I said to myself, is woman.
I watched her moving, noted the glistening of the ornament she wore, remarked
its sound.
I observed her, vicious, seductive, sinuous, desirable, excruciatingly
desirable, owned.
She was tormenting, the collared she of her and beautiful, but I laughed, for
these things were not truly hers, but his, her master s, who had but shortly
before put the whip to her back, for she was but a wench in bondage, one owned
by a man, in all things his.
I laughed.
The men of Port Kar, I said, know well how to treat women.
The men of Port Kar, I said to myself, know well how to keep women.
As slaves, and slaves alone!
Worthless are they for aught else!
I had loved two women, and I had lost them both.
I vowed I would never lose another.
I rose drunkenly to my feet and kicked the table away.
I do not recall as clearly as I might what occured during the night, but
certain things have remained with me.
I do recall that I was incredibly drunk, and furiour, and miserable, and
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filled with hate.
I am of Port Kar! I cried.
I threw a sliver tarsk, taken from what we had obtained from the slavers in
the marsh, to the proprietor of the paga tavern, and took in return one of the
huge bottles of paga, and took in return one of the huge bottles out of the
tavern, making my way along the narrow walkway lining the canal, toward the
quarters taken by my men, Thurnock and Clitus, with our slaves.
I had pounded on the beamed door of our quarters. Paga! I had cried.
I bring paga!
Thurnock took down the beams from the door, and swung it open. Paga! he
shouted, pleased, seeing the great bottle.
Midice, startled, looked up from where she knelt, polishing the hoops of brass
upon my shield. About her throat were the five coils of binding fiber, knotted
there in token of her slaver. I had given her a brief tunic of silk, briefer
even than had been the rence tunic she had worn when she had taunted me at the
pole, and when she had danced before me, which had been taken from her by the
slaver after she had been netted on the island.
Good, my Captain, said Clitus, from one side, where he sat working on a net,
reinforcing its knots one by one. He grinned at the sight of the bottle.
I
could use some paga, said he. He had purchased the net in the morning, with a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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