Hunters of Gor by John Norman Page A

“Take her.”
    Rim seized her by the arm, and pushed her ahead of us, stumbling, out of the
    compound.
    When we reached the Tesephone, less than a hundred yards from the slave market,
    the tide was at a knife’s edge of its crest.
    On the deck Sheera stood, her feet widely apart, to face me.
    I had no time for her. I must attend to the ship. “Take her below,” I said, “and
    chain her in the first hold.”
    Rim pulled her rudely below.
    Thurnock brought to me the wind and oil, and the salt. I stood at the rail. My
    men stood.
    In a moment, Rim was again on deck, and he, too, stood watching.
    To one side, two girls, Cara and Tina stood, both in their brief woolen slave
    garments. Tina’s hands at her belly, where they were still confined by the slave
    strap and bracelets.
    “Ta-Sardar-Gor. Ta-Thassa,” said I, in Gorean. “To the Priest-Kings of Gor, and
    to the Sea.”
    Then, slowly, I poured the wine, and the oil into the sea, and the salt.
    “Cast off!” cried Thurnock. Men on the dock threw off the lines which had been
    looped on the mooring cleats. Two men at the bow thrust against the wharf with
    their poles.
    The wharf, as though it, and not we, were moving, dropped back from us.
    “Out oars!” called Thurnock. “Ready oars!”
    seamen began to pull on the yard ropes to raise the yard.
    The helmsman leaned on the great helm.
    I saw Cara and Tina watching. The docks were filled with men. Several had paused
    in their work, to watch the Tesephone moving away from the wharf.
    “Port oars! Stroke!” called Thurnock.
    The bow of the Tesephone swung upriver. The carved, painted wooden eyes on the
    tarnshead turned towards Laura.
    Men were aloft on the long, sloping yard. Then the sail fell, snapping and
    tugging, and took its shape, billowing before the gentle wind from Thassa.
    “Full oars!” called Thurnock. “Quarter beat! Stroke!”
    The Tesephone began to move upriver.
    I saw Cara and Tina standing by the rail. Cara was lifting her hands, and waving
    toward Lydius. Some men on the dock, small now, too, lifted their hands.
    Tina could not lift her hands to bid city farewell, for her wrists were locked
    in slave bracelets, fastened at her belly, strung through the ring of a slave
    strap.
    I stepped behind her and unbuckled the slave strap.
    She looked up at me.
    She turned away from me and toward Lydius. Piteously she lifted her two hands,
    still braceleted, in salute to Lydius.
    When she had done so, I again, from behind, pulled her hands to her belly, and
    buckled the slave strap behind her back. She fell to her knees on the deck,
    heard down, hair falling forward, revealing the collar at her neck, and wept.
    “Stroke!” called Thurnock, in his rhythm. “Stroke!”
    I strode to the stern castle and, with a builder’s glass, looked back toward
    Lydius. I noted, to my interest, the large, yellow medium galley from Tyros,
    too, was casting off. I thought little of this at the time.
    6       I Hold Converse with Panther Girls and am Entertained by Sheera
    On the evening of the second day out of Lydius I took a tiny lamp and went to
    the first hold, where many supplies are kept.
    I lifted the lamp.
    Sheera knelt there. She did not sit cross-legged. She knelt as a Gorean woman.
    A heavy chain, about a yard long, padlocked about her throat, dangled to a ring,
    where it was secured with a second padlock.
    With her hands she covered herself, as best she could.
    “Do not cover yourself,” I said. She was captive.
    She lowered her hands.
    I saw that there was a pan of water within her reach and, on the planking of the
    hold deck, some pieces of bread and a vegetable.
    She looked at me.
    I did not speak further to her but turned and, bent over under the low ceiling,
    left her, taking with me the tiny lamp.
    She did not speak.
    On the next morning I had her branded in the hold.
    The Tesephone continued to move slowly upriver, between the banks of the
    Laurius, the fields to the south, the forests to the