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
