JК
Tarnsman of Gor :: Норман Джон
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"The ride to Thentis will be long," I said.
She replied proudly, "My bride price would be a hundred tarns."
I whistled softly to myself — my ex-slave would have come high. On a Warrior's allowance I would not have been able to afford her.
"If you wish to land," said Sana, apparently determined to see me compensated in some fashion, "I will serve your pleasure."
It occurred to me that there was at least one reply which she, bred in the honor codes of Gor, should under stand, one reply that should silence her. "Would you diminish the worth of my gift to you?" I asked, feigning anger.
She thought for a moment and then gently kissed me on the lips. "No, Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba," she said, "but you well know that I could do nothing that would diminish the worth of your gift to me. Tarl Cabot, I care for you."
I realized that she had spoken to me as a free woman, using my name. I put my arms around her, sheltering her as well as I could from the swift, chilling blast of the wind. Then I thought to myself, a hundred tarns indeed! Forty perhaps, because she was a beauty. For a hundred tarns one might have the daughter of an Administrator, for a thousand perhaps even the daughter of the Ubar of Ar! A thousand tarns would make a formidable addition to the cavalry force of a Gorean warlord. Sana, collar or no, had the infuriating, endearing vanity of the young and beautiful of her sea.
On a tower of Thentis I left her, kissing her, removing from my neck her clinging hands. She was crying, with all the incomprehensible absurdity of the female kind. I hauled the tarn aloft, waving back at the small figure still wearing the diagonally striped livery of the slave. Her white arm was lifted, and her blond hair was swept behind her on the windy roof of the cylinder. I turned the tare toward Ar.
As I crossed the Vosk, that mighty river, some forty pasangs in width, which hurtles past the frontiers of Ar to pour into the Tamber Gulf, I realized that I was at last within the borders of the Empire of Ar. Sana had insisted that I keep the pellet of poison which the Council had given her to spare her from the otherwise inevitable tortures that would follow the disclosure of her identity in the cylinders of Ar. However, I took the pellet from my tunic and dropped it into the wide waters of the Vosk. It constituted a temptation to which I had no inclination to succumb. If death was easy, I might seek life less strenuously. There would come times when, in my weakness, I would regret my decision.
It took three days to reach the environs of the city of Ar.
"The ride to Thentis will be long," I said.
She replied proudly, "My bride price would be a hundred tarns."
I whistled softly to myself — my ex-slave would have come high. On a Warrior's allowance I would not have been able to afford her.
"If you wish to land," said Sana, apparently determined to see me compensated in some fashion, "I will serve your pleasure."
It occurred to me that there was at least one reply which she, bred in the honor codes of Gor, should under stand, one reply that should silence her. "Would you diminish the worth of my gift to you?" I asked, feigning anger.
She thought for a moment and then gently kissed me on the lips. "No, Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba," she said, "but you well know that I could do nothing that would diminish the worth of your gift to me. Tarl Cabot, I care for you."
I realized that she had spoken to me as a free woman, using my name. I put my arms around her, sheltering her as well as I could from the swift, chilling blast of the wind. Then I thought to myself, a hundred tarns indeed! Forty perhaps, because she was a beauty. For a hundred tarns one might have the daughter of an Administrator, for a thousand perhaps even the daughter of the Ubar of Ar! A thousand tarns would make a formidable addition to the cavalry force of a Gorean warlord. Sana, collar or no, had the infuriating, endearing vanity of the young and beautiful of her sea.
On a tower of Thentis I left her, kissing her, removing from my neck her clinging hands. She was crying, with all the incomprehensible absurdity of the female kind. I hauled the tarn aloft, waving back at the small figure still wearing the diagonally striped livery of the slave. Her white arm was lifted, and her blond hair was swept behind her on the windy roof of the cylinder. I turned the tare toward Ar.
As I crossed the Vosk, that mighty river, some forty pasangs in width, which hurtles past the frontiers of Ar to pour into the Tamber Gulf, I realized that I was at last within the borders of the Empire of Ar. Sana had insisted that I keep the pellet of poison which the Council had given her to spare her from the otherwise inevitable tortures that would follow the disclosure of her identity in the cylinders of Ar. However, I took the pellet from my tunic and dropped it into the wide waters of the Vosk. It constituted a temptation to which I had no inclination to succumb. If death was easy, I might seek life less strenuously. There would come times when, in my weakness, I would regret my decision.
It took three days to reach the environs of the city of Ar.