Free Explorers of Gor by John Norman Page B

the pouch,” said a guardsman.
    “On the golden tarn taken from me,” said the man, “I had scratched my initials, Ba-Ta Shu, Bem Shandar, and, on the reverse of the coin, the drum of Tabor.”
    The guardsman lifted the coin to the praetor. “It is so,” said the praetor.
    The bound man, suddenly, irrationally, struggled. He tried to throw off his bonds. The girl cried out in misery, jerked choking from her feet. Then two guardsmen held the fellow by the arms. “He is strong,” said one of the guardsmen. The girl, gasping, regained her feet. Then she stood again neck-linked to him, beside him, his fellow prisoner.
    “The coin was planted in my pouch,” he said. “It is a plot!”
    “You are an urt, Turgus,” she said to him, “an urt!”
    “It is you who are the she-urt!” he snarled.
    “You have both been caught,” said the praetor, beginning to fill out some papers. “We have been looking for you both for a long time.”
    “I am innocent,” said the bound man.
    “How do you refer to yourself?” asked the praetor.
    “Turgus,” he said.
    The praetor entered that name in the papers. He then signed the papers.
    He looked down at Turgus. “How did you come to be tied?” he asked.
    “Several men set upon me,” he said. “I was struck from behind. I was subdued.”
    “It does not appear that you were struck from behind,” smiled the praetor.
    The face of Turgus was not a pretty sight, as I had dashed it into the stones, and had then struck the side of his head against the nearby wall.
    “Is the binding fiber on their wrists from their original bonds, as you found them?” asked the praetor of one of the guardsmen.
    “It is,” he said.
    “Examine the knots,” said the praetor.
    “They are capture knots,” said the guardsman, smiling.
    “You made a poor choice of one to detain, my friends,” said the praetor.
    They looked at one another, miserably. Their paths had crossed that of a warrior.
    They now stood bound before the praetor.
    “Turgus, of Port Kar,” said the praetor, “in virtue of what we have here today established, and in virtue of the general warrant outstanding upon you, you are sentenced to banishment. If you are found within the limits of the city after sunset this day you will be impaled.”
    The face of Turgus was impassive.
    “Free him,” he said.
    Turgus was cut free, and turned about, moving through the crowd. He thrust men aside.
    Suddenly he saw me. His face turned white, and he spun about, and fled.
    I saw one of the black seamen, the one who had passed me on the north walkway of the Rim canal, when I had been descending toward the pier, looking at me, curiously.
    The girl looked up at the praetor. The neck strap, now that Turgus was freed of it, looped gracefully up to her throat, held in the hand of a guardsman. Her small wrists were still bound behind her back.
    She seemed very small and helpless before the high desk.
    “Please let me go,” she said. “I will be good.”
    “The Lady Sasi, of Port Kar,” said the praetor, “in virtue of what we have here today established, and in virtue of the general warrant outstanding upon her, must come under sentence.”
    “Please, my officer,” she begged.
    “I am now going to sentence you,” he said.
    “Please,” she cried, “Sentence me only to a penal brothel!”
    “The penal brothel is too good for you,” said the praetor.
    “Show me mercy,” she begged.
    “You will be shown no mercy,” he said.
    She looked up at him, with horror.
    “You are sentenced to slavery,” he said.
    “No, no!” she screamed.
    One of the guards cuffed her across the mouth, snapping her head back.
    There were tears in her eyes and blood at her lip.
    “Were you given permission to speak?” asked the praetor.
    “No, no,” she wept, stammering. “Forgive me—Master.”
    “Let her be taken to the nearest metal shop and branded,” said the praetor. “Then let her be placed on sale outside the shop for five Ehn, to be