Mercenaries of Gor

3 Tula

"Throw back your hoods, pull down your veils, females!" laughed the wagoner. The women crowding about the back of the wagon, many with their hands outstretched, the sleeves of their robes falling back, cried out in consternation.

"a€”if you would be fed!" he added.

These women must be new, I thought. Probably they had come only recently to the wagons, probably trekking overland from some contacted village, perhaps one from as far away as fifty pasangs, a common range for the excursions, the searches and collections of mounted foragers. Most of the women I had seen following the wagons, at any rate, knew enough by now to approach them only bareheaded, as female supplicants, too, to be more pleasing to the men who might possibly be persuaded to feed them, with their hair visible and loose as that of slaves. Similarly, most had already discarded or hidden their veils, even when not begging. They did not even wear them in their own small, foul, often-fireless makeshift camps near the wagons, camps, to be sure, to which men might sometimes come. It had been discovered that a woman who is seen with a veil, even if she has lowered the veil, abjectly and piteously face-stripping herself, is less likely to be fed than one with no veil in evidence. Too, of course, it had been quickly noted that such women, too, tended to be less frequently selected for the pleasure of the drivers. The men with the wagons had not seen fit to permit the women the dignity of veiling. In this, of course, they treated them like slaves. "Please!" cried a woman, thrusting back her hood and tearing away her veil. "Feed me! Please, feed me! The others, too, then almost instantly, hastily, each seeming to hurry to be before the others, some moaning and crying out in misery, unhooded and unveiled themselves.

"That is better, females," laughed the driver.

Many of the women moaned and wept.

They were now, to be sure, I mused, in their predicament and helplessness, even though free women, as the driver had implied, little more then mere females. One could probably not be more a female unless one was a slave.

"Feed us!" they cried piteously to the driver, many of them with their arms outstretched, their hands lifted, their palms opened, crowding and pressing about the back of the wagon. "We beg food!" "We are hungry!" "Please!" "Feed us, please!" "Please!"

I looked at their faces. On the whole they seemed to be simple, plain women, peasant women, and peasant lasses. One or two of them, I thought, might be suitable for the collar.

"Here!" cried the driver, laughing, throwing pieces of bread from a sack to one and then another of the women. The first piece of bread he threw to the woman who had been the first to unhood and face-strip herself, perhaps thereby rewarding her for her intelligence and alacrity. He then threw pieces to certain others of the women, generally to those who were the prettiest and begged the hardest. Sometimes, not unoften, these pieces of bread were torn away from the prettier, more feminine women by their brawnier, huskier, more masculine fellows. Where there are no men, or no true men, to protect them, feminine women will, in a grotesque perversion of nature, be controlled, exploited and dominated by more masculine women, sometimes monsters and mere caricatures of men. Yet even such grosser women, sometimes little more than surrogates for males, can upon occasion, in the hands of a strong uncompromising master, be forced to manifest and fulfil, realizing then for the first time, the depths of their long-denied, long-suppressed womanness. There are two sexes. They are not the same.

"More, more, please!" begged the females.

Then, amusing himself, the driver tossed some bits of bread into the air and watched the desperate, anxious women crowd and bunch under it, pushing and shoving for position, and trying to leap upward, thrusting at one another, to snatch at it.

"More, please!" they screamed.

I saw again a large straight-hipped woman seize a piece of bread fiercely from a smaller woman, one with a delicious love cradle. Then with both hands she thrust it in her mouth and, bending over, shouldering and thrusting, fought her way back to where, crouching down, watching for others, she could eat it alone. None could take it away from her, save a man, of course, who might have done it easily.

"That is all!" laughed the driver.

"No!" wept women.

"Bread!" wept others.

It was clear that something, in spite of what the driver had said, remained in the sack. He grinned and wiped his face with his arm. It had been a joke.

"Another crust, please!" begged a woman.

"Feed us!" cried another.

"You are the masters!" wept one of the women, suddenly.

"Feed us! Please feed us!"

The driver laughed and drew forth a handful of crusts from the sack, which crusts apparently constituted the remainder of its contents. Then he flung those over the heads of the women, well behind them. They turned about and, running flinging themselves to their hands and knees in the dirt, scrambling about, snatching and screaming, fought for them.

The driver watched them for a time, amused. Then he turned away, and, stepping among the bundles in the wagon bed, went to the wagon box. This type of box serves both as the driver's seat, or bench, and as a literal box, in which various items may be stored, usually spare parts, tools and personal belongings. It usually locks. He lifted the lid of the wagon box, which lid served also as the surface of his seat or bench, and dropped the empty sack within, and then shut the box. Also, from near the box, in front of it, near where his feet would rest in driving, he picked up a tharlarion whip. He had had experience with such women before, it seemed. "No more!" he said, angrily. "No more!"

Women now again, pathetic and desperate, robes now wrinkled and dirty from where they had knelt, and crawled and fought for the crusts and crumbs in the dirt, began to approach the wagon. The whip lashed out, cracking over their heads. They fell back.

"More!" they begged. "Please!"

"It is all gone," said the driver. "It is all gone now! Get away, sluts!" "You have bread!" wept one. This was true of course. The wagon's lading was Sa-Tarna bread, and also, incidentally, Sa-Tarna meal and flour. It creaked under perhaps a hundred and fifty Gorean stone of such stores. These supplies, of course, were not intended for vagabonds or itinerants who might be encountered on the road but for the kitchens set up at the various nights' encampments.

"Back, sluts!" he cried. "I carry stores for soldiers!"

"Please!" wept more than one woman.

"I see that it was a mistake to have fed you anything!" he cried angrily. "No, no!" cried a woman. "We are sorry!" We beg your forgiveness, generous sir!" "Please, more bread!" wept others.

He lifted the whip, menacingly. It was a tharlarion whip. I would not care to have been struck with it.

"Get back!" he cried.

Some crowded yet more closely about the wagon. "Bread!" they begged. "Please!" Then the whip fell amongst them and they, though free women, fell back, away from it, crying and in pain, and scattering.

"Tomorrow then," he cried, angrily, "if you wish, there will be nothing for any of you!"

"No, please!" wept the women.

"Kneel down," he said. Swiftly they fell on their knees, behind the wagon. "Heads down to the dirt," he commanded. They complied. I was not certain that it was proper to command free women in this fashion. It was rather as one might command slaves. Still, women, even free women, look well, obeying. The slave, of course, must obey. She has no choice. "You may lift your heads," he said. "Are you contrite?" he inquired. "Yes," moaned several of the women.

"Perhaps you are moved to beg my forgiveness?" he asked.

"We beg your forgiveness, generous and noble sir!" called a woman.

"Yes, yes!" said others.

"Well," he said, seemingly perhaps a bit mollified, "we shall see." He then put down the whip and took his place on the wagon box. He released the brake, pulling its wooden handle back on its pivot with his left hand, freeing its leather-lined shoe from the front wheel. "Ho!" he cried to the tharlarion and, with a crack whip, a creak of wood, a rattle of chain traces, and a grunt from the beast, was on his way. I watched the wagon for a moment or two, trundling down the road on its wooden-spoked, iron-rimmed wheels. I tied a rope on Feiqa's neck. "Come along," I told her.

In a few moments I had caught up with the wagon. I looked back. The women in the road were only now getting to their feet. Doubtless they were still terribly hungry. Many, too, seemed weary and dazed. They had apparently come only this morning from some village to the road. They had now begun to learn what it was for a woman to follow the wagons.

I took my pack from Feiqa's back and threw it, and my spear and shield, into the wagon. I then climbed up to the wagon box beside the driver. "Tal," said he, looking over at me.

"Tal," said I to him. I tied Feiqa's neck rope to the side of the wagon. She stayed close to the side of the wagon, almost so close that I could reach out and touch her. She was frightened, I think, at the looks she received from some of the free women at the side of the road. "No," said the driver, sternly, more then once, lifting his whip, as such women rose to their feet, as though to approach him. Not all of these women, of course, followed the wagons. Some, doubtless, merely came from their village, or the remains of their villages, down to the side of the road to beg as the wagons passed. In such villages, I supposed, there might be some food. When that was exhausted perhaps these women, too, would put their belongings in a bundle and trek after the wagons. One of the women did come up beside the wagon with a switch and struck Feiqa in fury three times. Feiqa, on her rope, moving, shrank small before her, trying to cover her face and body. There is little love lost between free women and slaves, particularly during these times.

"Oh!" cried Feiqa, suddenly stung by a stone, hurled by another woman. She then walked weeping, almost pressed against the side of the wagon. She could not even think of daring to object to such treatment, of course. In the hut of the free woman, last night, she had learned, unconditionally, that she was a slave. I wondered if the former rich young woman of Samnium had herself, in bygone days, accorded slaves similar treatment. I supposed so. It is not uncommon on the part of free women. Now of course, as a slave herself, she would understand clearly what it was to be the one who is subjectable to such treatment Perhaps free women would treat slaves somewhat differently if they understood that one day it might be themselves whom they might find in the collar. In these attacks, of course, Feiqa was in no danger of being seriously injured, or disfigured or maimed. Accordingly, I did not take any official notice of them.

The wagons, for the most part, were well scattered apart on the road. Their intervals were irregular and sometimes one or another of them stopped. We had come to the vicinity of the road, the Genesian Road, early this morning.

Surmounting a rise, we had seen it below us, and the wagons, in their long line, stretched out in the distance. We had then descended the gentle declivity slowly, through the wet grass, to its side. I had some idea of the forces of Cos which had made their landing at Brundisium earlier in Se'Kara. I had seen the invasion fleet entering upon its peaceful harborage at Brundisium. Never before on Gor, I suspected, had such forces been marshaled. It was an invasion, it seemed, not of an army, but of armies. To be sure, many of its contingents were composed of mercenaries sworn to the temporary service of diverse fee captains, and not Cosian regulars. It is difficult to manage such men. They do not fight for Home Stones. They are often little more than armed rabbles. Many are little better than thieves and cutthroats. They must be well paid and assured of ample booty. Accordingly the tactics and movements of such groups, functions of captains who know their men well, and must be wary of them, are often less indicative of sound military considerations, strategic or otherwise, than of organized brigandage. I did not think that such men would stand well, even in their numbers, against the well-trained soldiers of Ar.

"I trust you are not a brigand," said the driver, not looking at me.

"No," I said.

"You would not get much here," he said, "except Sa-Tarna meal and such." "I am not a brigand," I said.

"Have you fled from some captain?" he asked.

"No," I said.

"You are a big fellow," he said. "Are you in service?"

"No," I said.

"Do you, seek service?" he asked.

"No," I said.

"You own your own weapons?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Raymond, he of Rive-de-Bois, is recruiting," he said. "So, too, is Conrad of Hochburg, and Pietro Vacchi." These men were mercenary captains. There were dozens of such companies. If one owns one's own weapons, of course, one need not be armed at the expense of the company. Too, if one owns one's own weapons, it may usually be fairly assumed that one knows how to use them. Such men, then, may receive a certain preference in being added to the rolls. They are likely to be experienced soldiers, not eager lads just in from the farms. In many mercenary companies, incidentally, there are no uniforms and no issuance of standard equipment. Too, many such companies are, for most practical purposes, disbanded during the winter, the captain retaining then only a cadre of officers and professionals. Then, in the spring, after obtaining a war contract, sometimes obtained by competitive bidding, they begin anew, almost from the beginning, with recruiting and training.

It is quite unusual, incidentally, for such men as Raymond and Conrad to be recruiting now, in Se'Kara. It was really a time in which most soldiers on Gor would be thinking about the pleasures of winter quarters or a return to their own villages and towns. There are usually diverse explanations, depending on the situation, for the type of forced recruiting to which men in some of the villages had been subjected. Sometimes a passing army desires merely to amplify its forces, or replace losses, particularly among the lighter arms, such as bowmen, slingers and javelin men. Sometimes the recruiting is done more for the purposes of obtaining a labor force, for siegeworks and entrenching camps, than for actual combat. Sometimes the mercenary captains, whose negotiated, signed contracts call for the furnishing of certain numbers of armed men for their various employers, have little choice but to impress some reluctant fellows, that their obligatory quotas may be met. More than one fellow has sworn an oath of allegiance with a sword at his throat. Most mercenaries, of course, join their captains voluntarily. Indeed, skilled and famous captains, ones noted for their military skill and profitable campaigns, must often close down their enlisting tables early in En'Kara.

"So is Dietrich of Tarnburg, of the high city of Tarnburg, some two hundred pasangs to the north and west of Hochburg, both substantially mountain fortresses, both in the more southern and civilized ranges of the Voltai, was well-known to the warriors of Gor. His name was almost a legend. It was he who had won the day on the fields of both Piedmont and Cardonicus, who had led the Forty Days' March, relieving the siege of Talmont, who had effected the crossing of the Issus in 10,122 C.A., in the night evacuation of Keibel Hill, when I had been in Torvaldsland, and who had been the victor in the battles of Rovere, Kargash, Edgington, Teveh Pass, Gordon Heights, and the Plains of Sanchez. His campaigns were studied in all the war schools of the high cities. I knew him from scrolls I had studied years ago in Ko-ro-ba, and from volumes in my library in Port Kar, such as the commentaries of Minicius and the anonymous analyses of "The Diaries," sometimes attributed to the military historian, Carl Commenius, of Argentum, rumored to have once been a mercenary himself.

It was Dietrich of Tarnburg who had first introduced the «harrow to positional warfare on Gor, that formation named for the large, rake-like agricultural instrument, used for such tasks as the further leveling of ground after plowing and, sometimes, on the great farms, for the covering of seed, In this formation spikes of archers, protected by iron-shod stakes and sleen pits, project beyond the forward lines of the heavily armed warriors and their reserves. This formation, if approached head-on by tharlarion ground cavalry, is extremely effective. It constitutes, in effect, a set of corridors of death through which the cavalry must ride, in which it is commonly decimated before it can reach the main lines of the defenders. When the cavalry is disorganized, shattered and torn by missile fire, and turns about to retreat, the defenders, fresh and eager, initiate their own attack.

He was also the initiator of the oblique advance in Gorean field warfare, whereby large numbers of men may be concentrated at crucial points while the balance of the enemy remains unengaged. This formation makes it possible for a given army, choosing to attack only limited portions of the enemy, portions smaller than itself, to engage an army which, all told, may be three times its size, and, not unoften, to turn the flank of this much larger body, producing its confusion and rout, Too, if the attack fails, the advanced force may fall back, knowing that the balance of their army, indeed, its bulk, rested and fresh, not yet engaged, is fully prepared to cover their retreat.

Most impressive to me, perhaps, was Dietrich of Tarnburg's coordination of air and ground forces, and his transposition of certain techniques and weapons of siege warfare to the field. The common military response to aerial attack from tarnsmen is the "shield roof" or "shield shed," a formation the same as, or quite similar to, a formation once known on Earth as the testudo, or "tortoise." In this formation shields are held in such a way that they constitute a wall for the outer ranks and a roof for the inner ranks. This is primarily a defensive formation but it may also be used for advancing under fire. The common Gorean defense against tharlarion attack, if it must be met on the open ground, is the stationary, defensive square, defended by braced spears. At Rovere and Kargash Dietrich coordinated his air and ground cavalry in such a way as to force his opponents into sturdy but relatively inflexible defensive squares. He then advanced his archers in long, enveloping lines, in this way they could muster a much broader front for low-level, point-blank firepower than could the narrower concentrated squares.

He then utilized, for the first time in Gorean field warfare, first at Rovere, and later at Kargash, mobile siege equipment, catapults mounted on wheeled platforms, which could fire over the heads of the draft animals. From these engines, hitherto employed only in siege warfare, now became a startling and devastating new weapon, in effect, a field artillery, tubs of burning pitch and flaming naphtha, and siege javelins, and giant boulders, fell in shattering torrents upon the immobilized squares. The shield shed was broken. The missiles of archers rained upon the confused, hapless defenders. Even mobile siege towers, pushed from within by straining tharlarion, pressing their weight against prepared harnesses, trundled toward them, their bulwarks swarming with archers and javelin men. The squares were broken. Then again the ponderous, earthshaking, bellowing, grunting, trampling, tharlarion ground cavalry charged, this time breaking through the walls like dried straw, followed by waves of screaming, heavily armed spearmen. The ranks of the enemy then irremediably broke. The air howled with panic. Rout was upon them. Spears and shields were cast away that men might flee the more rapidly. There was little left to be done. It would be the cavalries which would attend to the fugitives.

"I had thought rather," I said, "of perhaps joining the wagons for a time." "They need drivers," said the fellow. "Can you handle tharlarion?" "I can handle high tharlarion," I said. Long ago I had ridden guard in a caravan of Mintar, a merchant of Ar.

"I mean the draft fellows," said the driver.

"I suppose so," I said. It seemed likely to me that I could handle these more docile, sluggish beasts, if I had been able to handle their more agile brothers, the saddle tharlarion.

"They take a great deal of beating about the head and neck," he said.

I nodded. That was not so much different from the high tharlarion, either. They are usually controlled by voice commands and the blows of a spear. The tharlarion, incidentally, at least compared to mammals, seems to have a very sluggish nervous system. It seems almost impervious to pain. Most of the larger varieties have two brains, or, perhaps, better a brain and a smaller brain-like organ. The brain, or one brain, is located in the head, and the other brain, or the brain-like organ, is located near the base of the spine.

I looked down at Feiqa, walking beside the wagon, the rope on her neck.

"Tharlarion," I told her, expanding on the driver's remark, "show little susceptibility to pain."

"Yes, Master," she said.

"In this," I said, "they closely resemble female slaves."

"Oh, no Master!" she cried. "No!"

"No?" I said.

"No," she said, looking up earnestly, frightened, "we are terribly susceptible to pain, truly!"

"Doubtless you were as a free woman," I said. "but now you are a slave." "I am even more susceptible to pain now," she said, "for now I have felt pain, and know what it is like, and now I have a slave girl's total vulnerability and helplessness, and know that anything can be done to me! Too, my entire body has become a thousand times more responsive and sensitive a thousand times more meaningful and alive, since I have been locked in the collar. I assure you Master, I am a thousand times more susceptible to pain now than ever I was before!"

I smiled. Such transformations were common in the female slave. Just as their sensitivities to pleasure and feeling, sexual and otherwise, physical and psychological, conscious and subconscious, were greatly increased and intensified by being imbonded, so too, concomitantly, naturally, were their sensitivities to pain. The same changes that so considerably increased their capacities in certain directions increased them also in others, and put them ever so more helplessly, and hopelessly, at the mercy of their masters.

"Ah," she said, chagrined, putting down her lovely head, "Master teases his girl."

"Perhaps," I said.

She kept her head down. She blushed. She looked lovely, the light, locked, steel collar on her throat.

I reached down and lifted her up, by the arms, swinging her up, and back, into the wagon. She would be weary from her walking. "Thank you, Master," she said, much pleased. She then knelt behind us, rather close to us, on some folded sacks in the wagon bed, the rope attaching her to the wagon still tied on her neck. I began to consider in what ways I should have her this evening.

"Bread! Bread!" cried a woman to one side. There another Sa-Tarna wagon had stopped. The driver, who had apparently been adjusting the harness of his beast, was now again on the wagon box, his reins and whip in hand.

"Away!" cried the driver.

She threw herself before the wagon. "Bread!" she screamed. He cracked the whip and the beast lurched forward, the woman screamed, barely scrambling from its path. I had little doubt that had she not moved as she had she would have been run over.

"They will try almost anything," said my driver, as our wagon rolled past the woman. She was shuddering. She had just escaped death or crippling. "Sometimes they will send their children out beside the road to do the begging. They themselves hide in the brush. Sometimes I throw them some bread. Sometimes I don't. It seems the women themselves should beg, if they want the bread." "Perhaps they do not want to pay for it, in the way of women," I said. "They will pay for it, and in the way of women, when they are hungry enough," said the driver. I nodded. That was true, I supposed. This driver, incidentally, seemed to me a decent, good-hearted fellow. Certainly he had stopped and fed some of the women along the road. That I had seen. Too, he had doubtless done that in spite of the fact that he would now come in with a short load. Many of the drivers, I speculated, would not have behaved so. Also, he had not objected to my riding with him, nor to carrying Feiqa. Yes, he seemed a good fellow.

"How far ahead are the troops?" I asked.

"Their lines of march extend for pasangs, with intervals, too, of pasangs," he said.

I nodded. It would take days for them to pass through the country. They were apparently far from the vicinity of any enemy. Accordingly, they exhibited little concern with possible imperatives of assembly and concentration.

Interestingly, not even raiding parties, as far as I knew, had delayed or harried their advance. They might as well have been marching through their own countries in a time of peace.

"The rearward contingents of the units before us will be some ten pasangs up the road," he said.

"How many troops are there, altogether?" I asked.

"A great many," he said. "Are you a spy?"

"No," I said.

"Look," he said, gesturing.

I glanced to the right, and upward. On the summit of a small hill I saw some seven or eight riders, riders of the high tharlarion, the tharlarion shifting and clawing about under them, with tharlarion lances. They were clad in dusty, soiled leather, riding leather, to protect their legs from the scaly hides of the beasts, and helmeted. Two had shields slung at their back. Shields of the others hung at the left sides of their saddles. They were an unkempt, dirty, grim lot. About the beasts' necks, and behind the saddles, hung panniers of grain and sacks of woven netting containing dried larmas and brown suls. Across the saddle of one were tied the hind feet, crossed, of two verr, their throats cut, the blood now brown on the sides of the tharlarion. Another fellow had a basket of vulos, tied shut. Another had stings of sausage hung about his neck and shoulders. There was no herded tarsk or bosk with the group. Such animals were probably extremely rare now, at least within one or two day's ride of the march. Still the fellows seemed to have done very well. Doubtless they had fared far better than most engaged in their business. Too, I noted that their interests had not been confined merely to foodstuffs. From the saddle of more than one there dangled armlets, two handled bowls and cups. Too, from the saddle of one a long tether looped back to the crossed bound wrists of a female. Doubtless she had been found pleasing. Thus she had been brought along. Doubtless she was destined for the collar. Near the pawing feet of the leader's tharlarion, in their tunics of white wool, there stood two stout peasant lads, bound, heavy sticks thrust before their elbows and behind their backs, their arms bound to these at the back, their wrists, a rope across their bellies, held back, tied at the sides. They would be recruits for some captain, requiring to fill gaps in his ranks. They would probably bring their captors in the neighborhood of a copper tarsk apiece.

The fellows on the tharlarion looked down at the wagons and then moved down the hill and forward. Two or three women, I now saw, coming over the hill, had apparently been following them, probably on foot from some village. One of the fellows, shouting angrily, turned his tharlarion about and, waving his lance, urging it up the slope toward them, charged them. They scattered before him, and he, not pursuing them, turned about and, in a moment, had rejoined his fellows. The women how hung back, daring to follow no further. I looked after the riders, now two or three wagons ahead of us, the two peasant lads, and the female, stumbling behind them on her tether.

"Foragers," said the driver.

I looked back at Feiqa, and she lowered her eyes, not meeting mine.

"The units ahead of us," I said, turning about, "are the rear guard of the army, I take it."

"No," he said.

"Oh?" I said.

"There are units," he said, "and wagons, and units. I do not know how far it goes on. I was then silent, for a time. There must be an incredible amount of men, I surmised. I knew, of course, that considerable forces had been landed at Brundisium. What I was not sure of, however, was the current distribution, or deployment of these forces.

"You are sure you are not a spy?" he said.

"Yes," I smiled. "I am sure." I supposed, of course, that Ar must be attempting to keep itself apprised of the movements of the enemy. Presumably there would be spies, or informers of some sort, with the troops or the wagons. It is not difficult to infiltrate spies into mercenary troops, incidentally, where the men come from different backgrounds, castes and cities, and little is asked of them other than their ability to handle weapons and obey orders. Yet, if men of Ar, or men in the pay of Ar, were attending to these matters, and submitting current and accurate reports, Ar herself, for whatever reason, unpreparedness, or whatever, had not acted.

I looked at the string of wagons ahead.

How different things seemed from the marches of the forces of Ar, and others of the high cities. When the men of Ar moved, for example, and whenever possible they would do so on the great military roads, such as the Viktel Aria, they used a measured pace, often kept by a drum, and including rests, would each day cover a calculable distance, usually forty pasangs. At forty-pasang intervals there would generally, on the military roads, be a fortified camp, supplied in advance with ample provisions. Some of these camps became towns. Later some became cities. These roads and camps, and measures, made it possible to move troops not only efficiently and rapidly, but assisted in military planning. One could tell, for example, how long it would take to bring a certain number of men to bear on a certain point. The permanent garrisons of the fortified camps, too, of course, exercise a significant peace-keeping and holding role in the outer districts of a city's power. Too, training and recruiting often take place in such camps. To be sure, these forces of Cos could not be expected to have come over and taken a few months to attend to the leisurely construction of permanent camps along the route of their projected march. Still, judging from the nature of the supply column, or columns, their progress seemed very slow, almost leisurely. It was as though they feared nothing. Their numbers, I speculated, might have emboldened them. Why had Ar not acted, I wondered.

"Have you tarnsmen in the sky?" I asked.

"No," he said. Cos, of course, would have tarnsmen at her disposal. But even those, it seemed, were not patrolling the line of march.

"Why are there no guards with the supply train?" I asked.

"Surely that is unusual."

"I do not know," he said. "I have wondered about it. Perhaps it is not thought that they are necessary."

"Have there been no attacks?" I asked. Surely it seemed that Ar might be expected to apply her tarnsmen to the effort to disrupt the enemy's lines of supply and communication. Perhaps her tarnsmen had not been able to reach the wagons. If command in Ar had been in the hands of Marlenus, her Ubar, I had little doubt that Ar would have acted by now. Marlenus, however, as the report went, was not in Ar. He was supposedly on an expedition into the Voltai, conducting a punitive expedition against raiders of Treve. Why he had not been recalled, if it were possible, I did not understand.

"What would you do if tarnsmen of Ar arrived?" I asked.

"That is not my job," he said. "That is the job of soldiers. I am paid to drive. That is what I do."

"What of the other drivers?" I asked.

"They would do the same, I would suppose," he said. "We are wagoners, not soldiers."

"The entire train then," I said, "or at least these wagons, is open to attack. Yet Ar has not attacked. That is interesting."

"Perhaps," he said.

"Why not?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I do not know. Perhaps they can't get here."

"Even with small strike forces, disguised as peasants?" "Perhaps not," he said. "I do not know."

It was now growing dark along the road. Here and there, back from the road, on one side or the other, there were small camps of free women. In some of them there were tiny fires lit. Some small shelters had been pitched, too, in some of these camps, little more than tarpaulins or blankets stretched over sticks. Sometimes some of the women about these tiny fires stood up and watched us, as we rolled past. I recalled the free woman I had met last night in her hut. She had not come down to the wagons as far as I knew. We had left her before she had awakened. I had left some more food with her, and had tied a golden tarn disk of Port Kar, from my wallet, in the corner of the child's blanket. With that she might buy much. Too, with it, or its residue, she might be able to make her way to a distant village, far from the trekking of armies, where she could use it as a bride price, using it, in effect, to purchase herself a companion, a good fellow who could care for herself and her child. Peasants, unlike women of the cities, tend to be very practical about such matters. She had shown me hospitality.

"We will be coming to the camp soon," said the driver.

I heard Feiqa suddenly gasp in horror, shrinking back. Beside the road, on the right, a human figure, head and legs dangling downward, on each side, was fixed on an impaling stake. The stake was some ten feet in height, and some four inches in diameter. It had been wedged between rocks and braced with stones. Its point was roughly sharpened, probably with an adz. This point had been entered in the victim's back and thrust through with great force. It emerged from the belly, and protruded some two feet above the body.

"Perhaps that is a spy," I said.

"More likely it is a straggler or a deserter," said the driver.

"Perhaps," I said. This was the first sign I had had today, that there were truly soldiers ahead of us on the road.

A girl looked up from the small fire in one of the roadside camps, and then, suddenly, rose to her feet and, in the shadows, darted out to the road. "Sir," she called. "Sir!" The driver did not stop the wagon. She began to run beside the wagon. "Sir!" she called. "Please! I am hungry!" Her face was lifted up to us. "Please, Sir!" she begged. "Look upon me! I am fair!" She hurried along beside us. "See!" she wept. She tore down her robes to her hips. "My breasts are well formed!" she said. "My belly is wet and hot! I will serve you even as a slave. I will do whatever you want. I do not ask for food for nothing. I will pay! I will pay!"

"Away," said the driver, "before I use the whip on you!"

"Stop," she wept. "Stop!" Then she ran to the head of the tharlarion and seized its halter. The beast grunting, slowed, dragging the girl's weight; she clung fiercely to the halter; it moved its head about, pulling her about, from side to side, shaking her; it tossed its head impatiently upward, lifting her literally from the ground. But she held firmly to the halter and was then, in a moment, still clinging to it, again on the ground. The beast stopped.

The driver angrily rose in his place and the long whip lashed out. "Ai!" she cried, in misery, struck for perhaps the first time with a whip. She released the halter and then stood there in misery, in the shadows, in the road, facing us, a foot or so from the jowls of the animal. "Let me please you!" she begged. Then the whip flashed forth again, like a striking snake, and she, struck once more, sobbing, stumbled back on the road. "Do you not know me?" she cried. He lowered the whip, looking out into the shadows.

"I am Tula from your village," she wept, "she who was too good for you, she who refused your suit!"

"You shame the village!" he cried.

"Whip me!" she wept.

He leaped down from the wagon box. Another wagon, to one side of us, rolled by. He dragged her, two stripes on her body, gray in the shadows, by the arm, back, and to the rear of the wagon. He stood her by the back, right wheel of the wagon. "Face the wheel," he said. "Hold the wheel rim!" She seized it, putting her head down. He lifted the whip, in fury. "Whip me," she said. Three blows fell upon her. "But feed me!" she begged. Two more blows struck her. Then she clung to the wheel, gasping, sobbing. As a male of her village it was his duty to discipline her for what shame she had brought on the village. "Do not strike me again!" she begged. She sank to her knees beside the wheel. Another wagon rolled by.

"So Tula, the proud, the beauty of our village, now bares her beauty before strangers," he said, "and begs to sell her body for a crust of bread!" She leaned against the wheel, sobbing.

"Disgraceful!" he said.

She held the spokes of the wheel, her head down.

"Shameful!" he cried.

"The strong women take what food there is," she said. "I am hungry." "Tula, the proud," he said, angrily, "has now become only another slut by the road."

"Yes," she said.

"What have you to say for yourself!" he demanded.

"Feed me," she said.

"Turn about," he said, angrily.

She turned about, facing him, on her knees.

"Pull down your robes," he said, "until they are about your knees, lying fallen, back upon your calves."

She did this and then lifted her head to him.

"On what conditions?" he asked.

"On yours, totally yours," she said.

"Pull up your robes, about your hips," he said. "You may follow the wagon." Sobbing with gratitude, she clutched at her robes and drew them up about her hips. He angrily returned to his place on the wagon box and with an angry cry and a fierce snap of the whip put his ponderous draft beast once more into motion, taking his place between two other wagons. It was now rather dark but the road shone clearly in the moonlight. It glistened, too, from tiny chips and plates of mica ingredient in its surface. The girl followed the wagon.

"Is the camp far ahead? I asked.

"No," he said.