about to face me. He looked at me wildly, clutching his wrist. A bone fragment was jutting through it. I then kicked him squarely and he threw back his head screaming with pain.
I then turned him about again and holding him by the back of the neck, ran him to the edge of the wharf where seising his ankle and holidng his neck, I upended him into the water below. He struck out toward the shore, then clambered toward it, getting his feet under him. He screamed twice more. When he stood in about a foot of water, among pilings, near the next wharf, he struck down madly at his legs with his left hand, striking two dock eels from his calf. Then, painfully, he mved himself up the sand, staggering, holding his legs widely apart.
'Where are the guardsmen to apprehend him?' puffed the portly fellow, who wore the caste colors of the merchants, white and gold.'There are no guardsmen in Victoria,' I said.'Two copper tarsks, one to each of you,' said the merchant to two dock workers who stood nearby, 'to apprehend the thief.'
Swiftly the two dock workers set out after the thief. Though men stood about, none had attempted to steal the purse of the merchant which lay nearby. Most of those of Victoria are honest fellows. One of them handed the purse back to the merchant, who thanked him.
'What is your name, Fellow?' asked the merchant of me. 'Jason,' I said. 'Of Victoria?' asked the merchant. 'It is here that I am now,' I said. He smled. Drifters among the river towns are not uncommon. They come from all over Gor. 'You have had difficulties with guardsmen? he asked. 'I had some difficulties with guardsmen in Tancred's Lansing and Fina,' I admitted.
'I am Glyco,' said he, 'of the Merchants of Port Cos. You are a bold fellow. I am grateful for your aid.' 'It is nothing,' I said.
Whining, the thief was dragged beforeus by the two dock workers. He was still in great pain. He could scarcely stand. The dock workers had torn off his clothes and riping his tunic, had mad a rope of twisted cloth with which they had bound his hands behind his back. They also had him on a short neck leash, also tashioned of twisted cloth, from his tunic. His right hand was bleeding, andhis left leg, in two places.
The leg seemed gouged. The dock eels, black, about four feet long, are tenacious creatures. They had not relinquished their hold on the flesh in their jaws when they had been forcibly struck away from the leg, back into the water. The thief shrank back from me. The dock workers threw him to his knees before the merchant.
The merchant turned to me. He handed me a silver tarsk from the purse. 'You need give me nothing,' I said. 'It was not important.'
'Take if you will,' said he, ' as a token of my gratitude, this silver tarsk.'I took it. 'Thank you,' I said… Several of the men about, striking their shoulders in the Gorean fashion. He had been very generous. A silver tarsk is, to most Goreans, a coin of considerable value.In most exchanged, it is valued at a hundred copper tarsks, each of which valued, commonly, at some ten to twenty tarsk bits. Ten silver tarsks, usually, is regarded as the equivalent of one gold piece, of one of the high cities. To be sure, there is little standardization in these matter, for much depends on the actual weights of the coins and quantties of precious metals, certified by the municipal stamps, contained in the coins. Sometimes, too, coins are split or shaved. Further the debasing of coinage is not unknown. Scales and rumors, it seems are often sued by coin merchants. One of the central coins on Gor is the golden tarn disk of Ar, against which many cities standardize their own gold piece. Other generally respected coins tend to be the silver tarsk ofTharna, the golden tarn disk of Ko-ro-ba, and the golden tarn of Port Kar, the latter particularily on the western Vosk, in the Tamber Gulf region, and a few hundred pasangs north and south of the Bosk's delta.
The merchant then looked at the thief, 'I will have him taken to Port Cos,' he said, 'where there are praetors.'Please Master,' said the thief, 'do not deliver me to praetors!' Are you so fond of your hands?' asked the merchant.I noted that the thief's left ear had already been notched.That had doubtless been done elsewhere then in Victoria. 'Please Master, have mercy on me,' begged the thief.
'He has had a rather hard day already,' I said, putting in a word on the thief's behalf.'Let us then just slit his throat now,' said a fellow standing nearby.The thief squirmed, 'NO,' he begged, 'No!'
'Give him to me,' I said. 'No, please Master,' whined the thief to the merchant. 'He is yours,' said the merchant. I yanked the fellow by the neck leash of twisted cloth to his feet. I thrust the silver tarsk into his mouth, so that he could not speak. 'Seek a physician,' I told him. 'Have your wrist attended to. It appears to be broken. Do not be in Victoria by morning.'
I then turned him about and hurring him with a well-placed kick, sent him running, awkwardly, painfully, whimpering and stumbling, from the dock.
'Surely you are a guardsman,' said the merchant. 'No,' I said.
The men gathered about watched the thief hurrying, bound away. There was laughter. 'You are maganimous,' said the merchant. 'He was not a woman,' I said. 'Too, it ws not my purse he stole.' The merchant laughed.
I looked after the fleeing fellow, now disappearing between warehouses. I did not think honest folk in Victoria would again find him troublesome.
'On thing more, Fellow,' said the merchant. 'I am in Victoria on business. I seek one once of Port Cos, a warrior, one whose name is Callimachus.'I was startled to heard this name, for it was the name of he who had saved me, some weeks ago, from the steel of Kliomenes, the pirate.
'At night,' said I, 'he often drinks at the tavern of Tasdron. 'You might find him there, I think.'My thanks, Fellow,' said the merchant, and smiling turned about and made his way back among the boxes and bales on the crowded wharf.
'Have you no work to do this day,' asked the man in whose fee I was that afternoon. 'That I have, Sir,' I grinned and turned again to my labors.
20. The Tavern of Hibron; I Return Home Alone
'Stand back,' said the pirate. Two blades, his, and that of a companion were leveled at my breast. 'Beverly!' I said. My hand, palm sweating, was poised over the hilt of my sword.'Make no unfortunate move,' said the pirate, he who had spoken to me before.'Who is that fellow?' asked Beverly airly. She knelt in the position of the free womam behind the small table.
'Come home with me now,' I said. ' I have sought for you long.' Returning from the wharves to the house I had not found her on the premises. There had been no sign of forced entray or strugle. Anxious, I had begun to search the public places of Victoria. Then after two Ahn or searching, I had found her here, near the wharves, unattended, in the tavern of Hibron, a miserable tavern, a low place, called the Pirate's Chain.
'I do not wish to come home with you now, ' she said, lightly, a bit of ka-la-na spilling from the silver goblet she held. At a gesture from Kliomenes, who sat, cross-legged, beside her, a half-naked paga slave, whose left ankle was belled, refilled Miss Henderson's cup.
'Come home with me,' I said, 'you little fool.' I elt the points of the two swords through my tunic against my flesh.
If you may pleasure yourself in taverns' she said, 'surely so too may I.'Free woman,' I said, 'do not come here. It is too close to the wharves. It is dangerous. This is Gor.' 'I am not afraid,' she laughter. 'You do not know the danger in which you stand, I said to her.
'May I introduce my new friend,' she said, 'Kliomenes, a river captain.' 'Surely you remember him well,' I said, ' 'It was he and his men who captured you from Oneander when you were a slave and sold you.
'Perhaps that was a mistake,' said Kliomenes. He grinned at her. She had thrust back the hood of her robes and unpinned her veil.Her face was bared; her hair, darkly brown and silken cascaded down about her shoulders. These things were not unnoted by the men in the tavern. There was proabaly not a man there but was wondering how she would look stripped and in a collar.
'That you captured me?' she asked puzzled.'No,' said he. 'that I sold you.' She laughed merrily and shoved at him playfully. 'Do not insult a free woman, sleen,' she laughed.
There was much laughter, but there was an undercrrent of menace in the laughter which, I think, the girl did not recognize.
'But that sort of thing is behind me now,' she said to me, throwing back her head and quaffing deeply of the ruby-red Ka-la-na in her cup. She again looked at me. 'Kloimenes is a merchant,' she told me. 'I am now a free
