Free Raiders of Gor by John Norman Page A

escape.
    Everywhere about us there were shouting men, screaming women, running, crying
    children, and everywhere, it seemed, the men of Port Kar, and their slaves,
    holding torches aloft, burning like the eyes of predators in the marsh night. A
    boy ran past. It was he who had given me a piece of rence cake in the morning,
    when I had been bound at the pole, who had been punished by his mohter for so
    doing.
    I heard cries and shouts and, dragging Telima by the hand, ran toward them.
    There, under the light of the marsh torches, I saw Ho-Hak, crying with rage,
    shouting, with as oar pole laying about himself wildly. More than one warrior of
    Port Kar lay sprawled on the matting about him, his head broken or his chest
    crushed. Now, just outside the circle of his swinging pole, tehre must have been
    ten or fifteen warriors of Port Kar, there swords drawn, the light of the marsh
    torches reflecting from them, surrounding him, fencing him in with their
    weapons. He could not have been more inclosed had he found himself in the jaws
    of the long-bodied, nine-gilled marsh shark.
    “A fighter!” cried one of the men of Port Kar.
    Ho-Hak, sweating, breathing deeply, wildly, his great ears flat against the
    sides of his head, the iron, riveted collar of the galley slave, with its
    broken, dangling chain, about his neck, clutching his oar pole, stood with his
    legs planted widely apart on the rence, at bay.
    “Tharlarion!” he shouted at the men of Port Kar.
    They laughed at him.
    Then two capture nets, circular, strongly woven, weighted, dropped over him.
    I saw warriors of Port Kar rushing forward, clubbing him senseless with the
    pommels of their swords, the butts of their spears.
    Telima screamed and I pulled her away.
    We ran again through the torches and the men.
    We came to an edge of the island. In the marsh, some yards away, rence craft
    were burning on the water. There were none on the shore of the island. We saw
    one rencer screaming in the water, caught in the jaws of a marsh tharlarion.
    “There are two!” I heard cry.
    We turned and saw some four warriors, armed with nets and spears, running toward
    us.
    We fled back toward the light, the torches, the center of the island, the
    scraming women and men.
    Near the oar pole to which I had been bound, some yards from what had been the
    circle of the dance, a number of rencers, stripped, men and women, lay bound
    hand and foot. They would later be carried, or forced to walk, to the barges.
    From time to time a warrior would add further booty to this catch, dragging or
    throwing his capture rudely among the others. These rencers were guarded by two
    warriors with drawn swords. A scribe stood by with a tally sheet, marking the
    number of captures by each warrior. Among these I saw the tall, gray-eyed girl,
    weeping and pulling at her bonds. She looked at me. “Help,” she cried. “Help
    me!”
    I turned away with Telima.
    “I don’t want to be a slave. I don’t want to be a slave!” she cried.
    I moved my head aside as a torch, in the hands of a slave of the warriors of
    Port Kar, flashed by.
    We were jostled by a bleeding rencer stumbling past.
    We heard a girl scream.
    Then I saw, under the light of the torches, fleet as the Tabuk, running, the
    dark-haired, lithe girl, she who was so marvelously legged in the brief rence
    tunic. A warrior of Port Kar leapt after her. I saw the swirl of the circular,
    closely woven, weighted capture net and saw her fall, snared. She screamed,
    rolling and fighting the mesh. Then the warrior threw her to her stomach,
    swiftly binding her wrists together behind her back, then binding her ankles.
    With a slave knife he cut the rence tunic from her and threw her, still partly
    tangled in the net, over his shoulder, and carried her toward one of the dark,
    high-prowed barges in hte shadows at the edge of the island. He would take no
    chances of the loss of such a prize.
    I expected that the girl might soon again dance, and perhaps again