Outlaw of Gor

Chapter Seventeen: THE MINES OF THARNA

The room was long, low, narrow, perhaps four feet by four feet, and a hundred feet long. A small, foul tharlarion lamp burned at each end. How many such rooms lay beneath the earth of Tharna, in her many mines, I did not know. The long line of slaves, shackled together, stooped and crawled the length of the room. When it was filled with its wretched occupants, an iron door, containing a sliding iron observation panel, closed. I heard four bolts being shoved into place.

It was a dank room. There were pools of water here and there on the floor; the walls were damp; water in certain places dripped from the ceiling. It was ventilated inadequately by a set of tiny circular apertures, about an inch in diameter, placed every twenty feet. One larger aperture, a circular hole perhaps two feet in diameter, was visible in the centre of the long room.

Andreas of Tor, who was shackled at my side, pointed to it. "That hole," he said, "floods the room."

I nodded, and leaned back against the damp, solid stone that formed the sides of the chamber. I wondered how many times, under the soil of Tharna, such a chamber had been flooded, how many chained wretches had been drowned in such dismal, sewerlike traps. I was no longer puzzled that the discipline in the mines of Tharna was as good as it was. I had learned that only a month before, in a mine not five hundred yards from this one, there had been a disturbance created by a single prisoner. "Drown them all," had been the decision of the Administrator of the Mines. I was not surprised then that the prisoners themselves looked with horror upon the very thought of resistance. They would strangle one of their fellows who though of rebellion, rather than risk the flooding of the chamber. Indeed, the entire mine itself could, in an emergency, be flooded. Once, I was told, it had happened, to quell an uprising. To pump out the water and clear the shafts of bodies had taken weeks.

Andreas said to me, "For those who are not fond of life, this place has many conveniences."

"To be sure," I agreed.

He thrust an onion and a crust of bread into my hands. "Take this," he said.

"Thanks," I said. I took them and began to chew on them.

"You will learn," he said, "to scramble with the rest of us."

Before we had been ushered into the cell, outside, in a broad, rectangular chamber, two of the mine attendants had poured a tub of bread and vegetables into the feed trough fixed in the wall, and the slaves had rushed upon it, like animals, screaming, cursing, pushing, jostling, trying to thrust their hands into the trough and carry as much as they could before it was gone. Revolted, I had not joined in this wretched contest, though by my chains I had been dragged to the very edge of the trough. Yet I knew, as Andreas had said, I would learn to go to the trough, for I had no wish to die, and I would not continue to live on his charity. I smiled, wondering why it was that I, and my fellow prisoners, seemed so determined to live. Why was it that we chose to live? Perhaps the question is foolish, but it did not seem so in the mines of Tharna.

"We must think of escape," I said to Andreas.

"Be quiet, you fool!" hissed a thin, terrified voice from perhaps a dozen feet away.

It was Ost of Tharna, who, like Andreas and myself, had been condemned to the mines.

He hated me, blaming me somehow for the fact that he found himself in this dire predicament. Today, more than once, he had scattered the ore which, on my hands and knees, I had chipped from the narrow shafts of the mine. And twice he had stolen the pile of ore I had accumulated, poking it into the canvas sack we slaves wore about our necks in the mines. I had been beaten by the Whip Slave for not contributing my share to the day" s quota of ore required of the chain of which I was a member.

If the quota was not met, the slaves were not fed that night. If the quota was not met three days in a row, the slaves would be whipped into the long cell, the door bolted, and the cell flooded. Many of the slaves looked upon me with disfavour. Perhaps it was because the quota had been increased the day that I was added to their chain. I myself guessed this was more than coincidence.

"I shall inform against you," hissed Ost, "for plotting an escape." In the half light, from the small tharlarion lamps set in each end of the room, I saw the heavy, squat figure beside Ost loop his wrist chain silently about the creature" s thin throat. The circle of chain tightened, and Ost scratched helplessly at it with his fingers, his eyes bulging. "You will inform against no one," said a voice, which I recognised as that of the bull-like Kron of Tharna, of the Caste of Metal Workers, he whose life I had spared in the arena during the Battles of Oxen. The chain tightened. Ost shuddered like a convulsing monkey.

"Do not kill him," I said to Kron.

"As you wish, Warrior," said Kron, and dropped the frightened Ost, roughly disengaging his chain from the creature" s throat. Ost lay on the damp floor, his hands on his throat, gasping for breath.

"It seems you have a friend," said Andreas of Tor.

With a rattle of chain and a roll of his great shoulders, Kron stretched himself out as well as he could in the cramped quarters. Within a minute his heavy breathing told me he was asleep.

"Where is Linna?" I asked Andreas.

For once his voice was sad. "On one of the Great Farms," he said. "I failed her."

"We have all failed," I said.

There was not much conversation in the cell, for the men perhaps had little to say, and their bodies were worn with the cruel labours of the day. I sat with my back against the damp wall, listening to the sounds of their sleep. I was far from the Sardar Mountains, far from the Priest- Kings of Gor. I had failed my city, my beloved Talena, my father, my friends. There would not be a stone set upon another stone. The riddle of the Priest-Kings, of their cruel, incomprehensible will, would not be solved. Their secret would be kept, and I would die, sooner or later, whipped and starved, in the kennels that were the mines of Tharna.

Tharna has perhaps a hundred or more mines, each maintained by its own chain of slaves. These mines are tortuous networks of tunnels worming themselves inch by inch irregularly through the rich ores that are the foundation of the wealth of the city. Most of the shaft tunnels do not allow a man tostand upright in them. Many are inadequately braced. As the slave works the tunnel, he crawls on his hands and knees, which bleed at first but gradually develop calluses of thick, scabrous tissue. About his neck hangs a canvas bag in which pieces of ore are carried back to the scales. The ore itself is freed from the sides of the mine by a small pick. Light is supplied by tiny lamps, no more than small cups of tharlarion oil with fibre wicks.

The working day is fifteen Gorean hours (Ahns), which, allowing for the slight difference in the period of the planet" s rotation, would be approximately eighteen Earth hours. The slaves are never brought to the surface, and once plunged into the cold darkness of the mines never again see the sun. The only relief in their existence comes once a year, on the birthday of the Tatrix, when they are served a small cake, made with honey and sesame seeds, and a small pot of poor Kal-da. One fellow on my chain, little more than a toothless skeleton, boasted that he had drunk Kal-da three times in the mines. Most are not so fortunate. The life expectancy of the mine slave, given the labour and food, if he does not die under the whips of the overseers, is usually from six months to one year. I found myself gazing at the large circular hole in the ceiling of the narrow cell.

In the morning, though I knew it was morning only by the curses of the Whip Slaves, the cracking of the whips, the cries of slaves and the rattle of chains, I and my fellow prisoners crawled from our cell, emerging again into the broad, rectangular room which lay directly beyond.

Already the feed trough had been filled.

The slaves edged toward the trough, but were whipped back. The word had not been given which would allow them to fall upon it.

The Whip Slave, another of the slaves of Tharna, but one in charge of the chain, was pleased with his task. Though he might never see the light of the sun, yet it was he who held the whip, he who was Ubar in this macabre dungeon.

The slaves tensed, their eyes fixed on the trough. The whip lifted. When it fell, that would be the signal that they might rush to the trough. There was pleasure in the eyes of the Whip Slave as he enjoyed the tormenting moment of suspense which his uplifted whip inflicted on the ragged, hungry slaves.

The whip cracked. "Feed!" he shouted.

The slaves lunged forward.

"No!" I cried, my voice checking them.

Some of them stumbled and fell, sprawling with a rattle of chains on the floor, dragging others down. But most managed to stand upright, catching their balance, and, almost as one man, that wretched degraded huddle of slaves turned its frightened, empty eyes upon me.

"Feed!" cried the Whip Slave, cracking the whip again.

"No," I said.

The huddle of men wavered.

Ost tried to pull toward the trough, but he was chained to Kron, who refused to move. Ost might as well have been chained to a tree. The Whip Slave approached me. Seven times the whip struck me, and I did not flinch.

Then I said, "Do not strike me again."

He backed away, the whip arm falling. He had understood me, and he knew that his life was in danger. What consolation would it be to him if the entire mine were flooded, if he had first perished with my chain about his throat?

I turned to the men. "You are not animals," I said. "You are men." Then, gesturing them forward, I led them to the trough.

"Ost," I said, "will distribute the food."

Ost thrust his hands into the trough, and crammed a fistful of bread into his mouth.

Kron" s wrist chains struck him across the cheek and ear, and the bread flew from his mouth.

"Distribute the food," said Kron.

"We choose you," said Andreas of Tor, "because you are known for your honesty."

And amazing to say, those chained wretches laughed.

Sullenly, while the Whip Slave stood by and watched, angry fearful, Ost distributed the poor fare that lay in the trough.

The last piece of bread I broke in two, taking half and giving the other half to Ost. "Eat," I said.

In fury, his eyes darting back and forth like those of an urt, he bit into the bread and gulped it down. "The chamber will be flooded for this," he said.

Andreas of Tor said, "I, for one, would be honoured to die in the company of Ost."

And again the men laughed, and I thought that even Ost smiled. The Whip Slave watched while we filed up the long incline to the shafts, his whip arm limp. Wondering, he watched us, for one of the men, of the Caste of Peasants, had begun to hum a plowing song, and, one by one, the others joined him.

The quota was well met that day, and the day following.