collar, however, that she might not grow pretentious, was of simple steel. It read, as I wished, I BELONG TO BOSK.
Some of the free men in the house, particularly of the scribes, resented that the girl should have a position of such authority. Accordingly, when receiving their reports and transmitting her instructions to them, I had informed her that she would do so humbly, as a slave gir, and kneeling at their feet. This mollified the men a good deal, though some remained disgruntled. All, I think, feared taht her quick stylus and keen mind would discover the slightest descrepancies in their columns and tally sheets, and, indeed, they seemed to do so. I think they feared her, because of the excellence of her work and because, behind her, stood the power of the house, its Captain, Bosk of the Marshes. Midice now possessed a hundred pleasure silks, and rings and beads, which she might twine in her now-jeweled collar.
The dark-haired, lithe girl, so marvelously legged, I discovered, made an excellent slave.
Once I had discovered her gazing upon Ta, and I had beaten her. I did not kill him. He was a valuable man to me.
Thurnock and Clitus seemed pleased with Thura and Ula, who now wore expensive silks and jeweled collars. They were wise to have made themselves my men. They had much advanced themselves in doing so Telima I kept mostly in the kitchens, with the other Kettle Slaves, with instructions to the Kitchen Master that the simplest and least pleasant tasks be hers, and that she be worked the hardest of all. I did, however, specify that it would be she who must personally wait my table and serve my food each night, that I might each night renew my pleasure at finding my former Mistress, weary from her day's labors, soiled and uncombed, in her briefm miserable, stained re-cloth garment, serving me as Kettle Slave. Following the meal she would retire to my quarters which, on hands and knees, with brush and bucket, she wouls scrub to the satisfaction of a Whip Slave, with strap, standing over her. Then she would retired again to the kitches for the work there that would have been left for her, after which, when finished, she would be chained for the night.
Generally in the evening I ate with Turnock and Clitus, with their slaves, and Midice. Sometime we were joined by Tab.
Captain, commonly, do not eat with their men.
My attention was returned now to the meeting of the Council of the Captains of Port Kar.
A seaman, reportedly escaped from Cos, was telling of the preparation of a great fleet intending to sail against Port Kar, a fleet that would be enlarged by the forces of Tyros as well.
There was little interest in this report. Cos and Tyros, when not at one another's throats, are always threatening to join their forces for an onslaught on Port Kar. The rumor was a persistent one, a common one. But not in over a hundred years had the untied fleets of Cos and Tyros challenged Port kar, and at that time, because of storms, they had been scattered and beaten off. As I have mentioned, the warfare between Cos and Tyros and Port Kar had been, for years, small-scale, seldom involving more than a few dozen galleys on a side. All parties had apparently slipped into an arrangement which was now almost sanctioned by tradition, an arrangement characterized by almost constant conflict but few, or no, extensive commitments. The risks of engaging fleets was doubtless, by all, thought to be great. Further, raids, interpersed with smuggling and trading, had become a fairly profitable way of life, apparently for all. Doubtless, in Cos and Tyros as well there were rumors of fleets being prepared to be sent against them. The seaman, to his chargrin, was dismissed by a vote of the council.
We then turned our attention to matters of greater importance, the need for more covered docks in the arsenal, beneaht which additional galleys could be caulked for the grain fleet, else how could a hundred vessels be red for the voyage norht to the grain fields before the sixth passage hand?
It is perhaps worth remarking, briefly, on the power of Port Kar, with it being understood that the forces of both Cos and Tyros, the other two significant maritime Ubarates in know Thassa, are quite comparable.
The following figured pertain to medium class or larger vessels:
The five Ubars of Port Kar, Chung, Eteocles, Nigel, Sullius Maximus and Henrius Sevarius, control among themselves some four hundred ships. The approximately one hundred and twenty captains of the council of Captains of Port Kar havem pledged to their personal service, some thousand ships. They further control another thousand ships, as executor, through the council, which ships comprise the memebers of the grain fleet, the oil fleet, the slave fleet, and others, as well as numerous patrol and escort ships. Beyound these ships there re some twenty-five hundred ships which are owned by some fifteen or sixteen hundred minor captains of the city, not wealthy enough to sit on the Council of Captains. The figures I have listed would give us some forty-nine hundred ships. To get a better figure, particularly since the above figures are themselves approximations, let us say that Port kar houses in the neighborhood of five thousand ships. As mentioned above, the naval strengths of Cos and Tyros are, individually, comparable. It is, of course, true that not all of these some five thousand ships are war ships. My estimation would be that approximately fifteen hundred only are the long ships, the ram-ships, those of war. On the other hand, whereas the round ships do not carry rams and are much slower and less maneuverable than the long ships, they are not inconsequential in a naval battle, for their deck areas and deck castles can accommodate springals, small catapults, and chain-slings onagers, not to mention numerous bowmen, all of which can provide a most discouraging and vicious barrage, consisting normally of javelins, burning pitch, fiery rocks and crossbow quarrels. A war ship going into battle, incidentally, always takes its mast down and stores its sail below decks. The bulwarks and deck of the ship are often covered with wet hides. It was voted that another dozen covered docks be raised within the confines of the arsenal, that the caulking schedule of the gran fleet might be met. The vote was unanimous.
The next matter for consideration was the negotiation of a dispute between the sail-makers and the rope-makers in the arsenal with respect to priority in the annual Procession to the Sea, which takes place on the first of En'Kara, the Gorean New Year. There had been a riot this year. It was resolved that henceforth both groups would walk abreast. I smiled to myself. I expected there would be a riot net year as well.
The rumor of the seaman, that Cos and Tyros were preparing fleets against Port Kar, again entered my mind, but again I dismissed it.
The next item on the agenda dealt with the demand of the pulley-makers to receive the same wage per Ahn as the oar-makers. I voted for this measure, but it did not pass.
A Captain next to me snorted, 'Give the pulley-makers the wage of oar-makers, and sawyers will want the wages of carpenters, and carpenters of shipwrights!' All who do skilled work in the arsenal, incidentally, are free men. The men of Port Kar may permit slaves to build their house and their walls, but they do not permit them to build their ships. The wages of a sail-maker, incidentally, are four copper tarn disks per day, those of a fine shipwright, hired by the Council of Captains, as much as a golden tarn disk her day. The average working day is ten Ahn, or about twelve Earth hours. The amount of time spent in actual work, however, is far less. The work day of a free man in the arsenal is likely to be, on the whole, a rather leisurely one. Free Goreans do not like to be pressed in their tasks. Two Ahn for lunch and stopping an Ahn early for paga and a talk in the late afternoon are not uncommon. Layoffs occur, but, because of the amount of work, not frequently. The organizations, such as the sail-makers, almost guildlike, not castes, have due, and these dues tend to be applied to a number of purposes, such as support of those injured or their families, loans, payments when men are out of work, and pensions. The organizations have also, upon occasion, functioned as collective bargaining agencies. I suspected that the sail- makers would, threatening desertion of the arsenal, this year or the next obtain their desired increase in wages. Brutal repressions of organization have never characterized the arsenal. The Council of Captains respects those who build and outfit ships. On the other hand, the wages tend to be so slight that an organization seldom has the means to mount a long strike; the arsenal can normally be patient, and can usually choose to build a ship a month from now rather than now, but one cannot well arrange to eat a month from now, and not today, or tomorrow, or until a month from now. But most importantly the men of the arsenal regard themselves as just that, the men of the arsenal, and would be unhappy apart from their work. For all their threats of desertion of the arsenal there are few of them who would want to leave it. Building fine and beautiful ships gves them great pleasure.
Beyond this, lastly, it might be mentioned that Gorean society, on the whole, tends to be tradition bound, and that there is little questioning of the wisdom of one's fathers; in such a society individuals usually have an identity satisfactory to themselves, and a place in which they feel comfortable; accordingly they are less susceptible ot the social confusions attendant upon a society in which greater mobility is encouraged and traditonal prestige considerations replaed with materialistic ones. A society in which each is expected to succeed, and it placed under conditions where most must fail, would be incomprehensible, irrational, to most Goreans. This will sound strange, I suppose, but the workers of the arsenal, as long as they make enough to live reasonably well, are more concerned with their work, as craftsmen, than they are with considerabley and indefinitely improving their economic status. This is not to say taht they would have any objection to being rich; it is only to remark, in effect, that it has never occurred to them, no more than to most Goreans, to take very seriously the pursuit of wealth as their universal and compelling motivation; being ignorant, it seems, they, like most other Goreans, are more concerned with other things, such as, as I have earlier noted, the building of fine and beautiful ships. I make no pronouncements on these matters, but report them as I find them. I would note, of course, that these weaknesses, or virtues, of the men of the arsenal are, of tradition, welcomed by the Council of Captains; without them the arsenal could not be as efficiently and ceonomically managed as it is. Again I make no pronouncements on these matters, but report them as I find them. My thinking on these matters is mixed.
Why, I asked myself, should Cos and Tyros consider bringing their fleets against Port Kar? What had changed? But then I recalled that nothing had changed. It was only a rumor, one which, it seemed, recurred at least every year in Port Kar. Doubtless there were similares rumors raising their small stirs, in the councils of Cos and Tyros. I recalled that the words of the seaman had been dismissed. Now, crying to come before the council, was the mad, half-blind shipwright Tersites, a scroll of drawings in his hand, and calculations.
At a word from the scribe at the long table before the thrones of the Ubars, two men put Tersites from the chamber, dragging him away.
Once before he had been permitted to present plans to the council, but they had been too fantastic to be taken seriously. He had dared to suggest a redesign of the standard tarn ship. He had wanted to deepen teh keel, to add a foremast, to change the rowing to great oars, each handled by several men, rather than one man to an oar; he had wanted ven to raises the ram above the waterline. I would have been curious to hear the arguments of Tersites pertinent to these recommendations, but before, when it had become clear how radical and, I gather, absurd were his proposals, he had been hooted from the chamber.
I recall men shouting, 'Many men could not all sit through the stroke of an oar! Would you have them stand?' 'So great an oar could not even be held by the hands of a man!' 'Two masts with their sails could not be quickly removed before battle!' 'You will slow the ship if you deepen the keel!' 'If many men sit a single oar, some will slack their work!' 'What good is a ram that does not make its stroke below waterline?'
Tersites had been permitted that once to address the council because he, though thought mad, had once been a skilled shipwright. Indeed, the galleys of Port Kar, medium and heavy class, carried shearing blades, which had been an invention of Tersites. These are huge quarter-moons of steel, fixed forward of the oars, anchored into the frame of the ship itself. One of the most common of naval strategies, other than ramming, is oar shearing, in which one vessel, her oars suddenly shortened inboard, slides along the hull of another, whose oars are still outboard, splintering and breaking them off. The injured gally then is like a broken-winged bird, and at the mercy of the other ship's ram as she comes about, flutes playing and drums beating, and makes her strike amidships. Recent galleys of Cos and Tyros, and other maritime powers, it had been noted, were now also, most ofte, equipped with shearing blades.
Tersites had also, it might be mentioned, though he had not presented these ideas in his appearance before the council, argued for a rudder hung on the sternpost of the tarn ship, rather that the two side-hung rudders, and had championed a square rigging, as opposed to the beautiful lateen rigging common on the ships of Thassa. Perhaps this last proposal of Tersites' had been the most offensive of all to the men of Port kar. The triangular lateen sail on its single sloping yar is incredibly
