Free Raiders of Gor by John Norman

the long, wide net, held by slaves, began to advance.
    I heard then from another side of the island as well the terrifying cry, “Nets,
    nets!”
    Then, as we milled and ran, here and there among us were men of Port Kar,
    warriors, some with helmet and shield, sword and spear, others with club and
    knife, others with whips, some with capture loops, some with capture nets, all
    with binding fiber. Among them ran slaves, carrying torches, that they might see
    to their work.
    I saw the rencer who had worn the headband of the pearls of the Vosk sorp, who
    had been uable to bend the bow. He now had the large, white, silken scarft tied
    over his left shoulder and across his body, fastened at his right hip. With him
    there stood a tall, bearded helmeted warrior of Port Kar, the golden slash of
    the officer across the temples of his helmet. The rencer was pointing here and
    there, and shouting to the men of Port Kar, crying out orders to them. The tall,
    bearded officer, sword drawn, stood silently near him.
    “It is Henrak!” cried Telima. “It is Henrak.”
    It was the first I had heard the name of the man of the headband.
    In Henrak’s hand there was clutched a wallet, perhaps of gold.
    A man fell near us, his neck cut half through by the thrust of a spear.
    My arm about Telima’s shoulder I moved her away, losing oursleves among the
    shouting rencers, the running men and women.
    Some of the men of the rencers, with their small shields or rence wicker,
    fought, but their marsh spears were not match for the stell swords and war
    spears of Gor. When they offered resistance they were cut down. Most,
    panic-stricken, knowing themselves no mathc for trained warriors, fled like
    animals, crying out in fear before the hunters of Port Kar.
    I saw a girl stumbling, being dragged by the hair toward one of the narrow
    barges. Her wrists hwere bound behind her back. She had been the girl who, this
    morning, had carried a net over her left shoulder, one of those who had taunted
    me at the pole, one of those who had, at festival, danced her contempt of me.
    She had already been stripped.
    I moved back further in the running, buffeting bodies, now again dragging Telima
    by the wrist. She was screaming, running and stumbling beside me.
    I saw the nets on the two sides of the island had now advanced, the spears
    between their meshes herding terrified rencers before them.
    Again we ran back toward the center of the island.
    I heard a girl screaming. It was the tall, gray-eyed blond girl, whom I
    remembered from the morning, who had carried a coil of marsh vine, holding it
    against my arm, she who had danced, with excruciating slowness, before me at
    festival, who had, like the others, shown her contempt of me with her spittle.
    She struggled, snared in two leather capture loops, held by warriors, tight
    about her waist. Another warrior approached her from behind, with a whip, and
    with four fierce strokes had cut the rence tunic from her body and she knelt on
    the rence matting that was the surface of the island, crying out in pain,
    begging to be bound. I saw her thrown forward on her stomach, one warrior
    binding her wrists behind her back, another crossing and binding her ankles.
    A girl bumped into us, screaming. It was the lithe, dark-haired girl, the
    slender girl, who had been so marvelously legged in the brief rence tunic. I
    remembered her well from the pole, and the dance. It was she who had danced
    before me with her ankles so close together that they might have been chained,
    who had put her wrists together back to back over her head, palms out, as though
    she might have worn slave bracelets, and who had then said, “Slave,” and spat in
    my face, then whirling away. After Telima I had found her the most insolent, and
    desirable, of my tormentors. She turned about wildly, screaming, and fled into
    the darkness. The rence tunic had been half torn from her right shoulder.
    My arm about Telima I cast about for some means of