It’s that time of year again!
I just wanted to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. My best laid plans were to complete Outcast of Gor in time for the Christmas break (just two chapters remaining) but alas I have been so busy these last few days that I’ve only got two thirds of the way through chapter thirty nine, despite my best intentions.
The run up to Christmas this year has been more frantic than usual and I’m now resigned to finishing of that book in the Christmas to New Year period.
Penny was waiting for me, having arrived at our meeting spot early, before the sixth ahn. I was very happy to see her. I woke up this morning, intent on coming here, in hopes that she would show up, despite the lack of a prior arrangement. She looked good this morning, with a clean camisk, and her usual smile and bright blue eyes. She knelt in nadu on the side of the street as I approached and her neck bell rang. She said, “Tal Master. You have been cured even more! There is no sign of withering on you.”
“Yes Penny, thank you. We find breakfast,” I said.
“Yes Master!”
We didn’t have to walk far before we found a street vendor that was making fresh pastries. I bought one with meat and melting cheese and Penny chose a sweet one with berries. We ate them steamy hot, before starting our walk.
“You did not come, when we arranged,” I said.
“No Master, I am sorry. I could not come then.”
“Army camps?” I asked.
“Yes Master,” she said, her smile fading.
Tidying the Camp
Patrick Master’s Narrative
Woodrow Frick said, “Almost done now. Our reports were that there were eight in this group, the last group of them there was. We got six, once we get the last two, we will be done with this.”
“But there are all eight of them here. The other two are buried under the tent. The tent has an internal frame that supports it. The pegs just hold it down. I killed the first two, then wrapped them in tarps, unpegged the tent, buried them in shallow graves, and moved the tent back over the bodies. No one could tell they were there. Meanwhile the girls rode the ATVs to the river and sank them in a deep spot. Then we made the camp look normal and waited for you.”
Juli, I could tell, was wondering why I was putting myself in Woodrow Frick’s power by admitting to two killings. I knew that Woodrow Frick was the sort who would never want anyone to have something to hold over him. He carried himself and had the aura of a dangerous man. Even more than when he had visited the camp earlier, he was now grim. The events of the range war had not mellowed him.
This could easily be the Tatrix of Corcyrus standing before me, stripped and ankle braceleted, her hair unbound, and her voluptuous curves garbed only in a gauze like wrap of fabric that hung loosely from her shoulders.
But such a thought was clearly ridiculous. The Tatrix of Corcyrus would not present herself in my chambers late at night, alone, vulnerable, in the guise of a captive woman of Isurium.
I walked towards this woman, wishing the light was better.
“You are the Lady Tulia Fava?”
“I am.” She folded her arms about her upper body and refused to look at me. She struck a haughty pose that was perhaps intentionally provocative and challenging to a man.
“Lower your arms. You are not to cross them again in my presence.”
I woke up on the couch in the guest bedroom, very early in the morning, many ahn before sunrise. The room was dark, with very faint twilight coming through the window. I had an unbearable urge to urinate and my body was sore. I swung my feet over the side of the couch to the floor as I sat up. My left foot landed on a small cold metal chain. I shifted my foot to the side. I felt lightheaded and unsteady. My stomach growled in hunger. I heard rain outside.
As I sat there hoping the dizziness would fade, my eyes adjusted to the twilight. I looked at the chain on the floor and followed it from a ring at the bottom corner of the couch, to only a few feet before it went under a blanket covering someone laying on the floor. The shape was hard to make out but it was resting on the ground lying parallel to the couch. I heard a very faint snore coming from the blanket, so faint that it could only be a woman’s snore.
Slave Inge’s Narrative
Each day, as our processing continues, I am less and less able to think about life before I was collared. All in our group are what the cowboys call red silk, opened to the use of men. We have all husbands, or partners, or boyfriends and have known the pleasures of sex. Even the young wyld wyman, Luta, who grew up in the men despising camps has known a man or two. She whispered to me that when she made her first capture of a man she was allowed to tie and then mount and ride him until she orgasmed.
In my present condition this seems strange now. It seems like it is backward to what is normal. A cowboy came yesterday and used her right over the water trough. She cried out and the unprocessed women in the other corral mocked and jeered at her. The cowboy was still putting her to use, with her hands tied together and the rope holding her bend over when the rest of us gathered by the fence between the unprocessed and we the processed and we threatened them. We are in greater numbers than they and they shrank back. It is well for them that there is a fence between their part of the corral and ours. The harshest condemnation came from the stripped rancher’s women who had been condemned for being captured and raped.
Luta’s mother, Velma, was strongest in her defence of her daughter crying out in passion as Aaron the Cowboy rode her daughter to ecstasy.
“You have never made a man happy as he used you. To mount you was just a chore as you lay there, frigid and cold, not daring to move!”
I was permitted, within certain limits, to explore the inner palace at my leisure. Occasionally I might roam too far and find myself confronted by guardsmen who, having been appraised of the circumstances of my residency, would politely direct me away from the doors that presumably led to the outer palace and the streets beyond the plazas and surrounding stone walls that were forbidden to me.
The architecture both inside and outside the palace walls resembled certain features of the classical Renaissance. Crow-stepped gables, porticoes and architectural decorations were carved in stone. Oak and dark woods, coffered ceilings and wooden panelling with divisions, facets and panels were found in abundance. These sometimes had painted or inlaid motifs of elaborate painterly detail and exquisite brushwork rendering. What furniture there was (Gorean interiors can be very minimalist in that regard) appeared in freestanding form, with chests often featuring rich pictorial carvings, heavier tables with baluster legs, and easily movable furniture of a simpler nature such as trestle tables and benches. The furnishing, on the whole tended towards a rectangular profile.
My feet brought me to a grand library with recessed alcoves and wooden frames designed to hold tens of thousands of scrolls. Being largely illiterate, I could only gaze at this vast literary marvel and shake my head with regret. Scribes busied themselves between the heavy racks, filing, cataloguing and archiving various papers. They spared me little attention, except if I found myself standing in their way, which might prompt some sounds of indignation and a degree of ill-mannered tutting.
“I’m surprised you’re telling me this, your Grace. And… just why are you telling me this?”
People in power aren’t normally this frank, especially not to people they don’t know from Adam. The last thing I wanted was to be entrusted with confidences that might later get me killed, simply because I knew too much.
“I’m confirming what you already know, Roland of Newark.” It was the first time she had used my name, and I suppose she used it precisely so that I understood she had enquired about me.
“I am no longer of Newark,” I said. “I am an outlaw.” I held my left hand up with the brand clear as day.
“Argentum made you an outlaw, yes?”
I nodded as I lowered my hand.
“You have reason to hate Argentum, then.”
“I have reason to hate a good many people, your Grace. It would be a long list.”
I woke up early in Trem’s apartment. He had encouraged me to stay the night at his place after a long evening of eating and drinking at the Feasting Tavern. It was dark when we left and he reiterated that my neighbourhood was not safe at night. My place was also a good walk from here.
I heard Trem getting ready for work and he was making something for breakfast. It didn’t smell or look good. It was some sort of porridge, or oatmeal, or, well, I didn’t really know. But I was hungry too and got up, thinking I would get something on the way to meet Penny. I bid Trem farewell as he left for work and the long walk up the stairs to the tarncot.
On the street I sniffed out a bakery. I walked out with two little vulo egg and cheese pies. Very delicious, they reminded me of quiche, and was just what I needed. As I walked, noticing many Goreans walking briskly to work or other morning errands, I thought about yesterday. My solo tarn flight was amazing and I was eager to fly again and again. I had asked Trem if I could volunteer to work for him in the tarncot, so that I could learn everything about tarns. He said yes, and I would have gone with him this morning, except I had made an appointment to see Penny.
Slave Tiffani’s Narrative.
Juli screamed as Patrick fell to the ground. The man beside us got off his ATV and grabbed her arm, spun her around, and threw her to the ground. I did not kneel; I stood and watched closely. The man by us took out a pistol, and moved towards Master Patrick.
The other man, the one who had knocked down Master Patrick, had swung his ATV around, and drove in front of the first man.
“Not with a firearm, you fool. Not on this side of the river where it could draw the attention of hikers or vehicles passing by. They might report it to the Sheriff’s office; we know that Deputy Morrison is on the Lazy F payroll.”
Juli was crying; it made her face ugly. I understood, to find your Master and then immediately see him struck down must have been terrible.
The two men argued a little in low voices. They stood nose to nose for a bit, near us and the picnic table. I watched Master Patrick. He still had not moved. He was likely unconscious, or even dead.
The Tatrix was about a foot shorter than me. Her robes were bright, rich, and very expensive. She looked regal as she regarded me, with her rat like First Minister, Laskar Tagaris, standing close by her side. He seemed to frown each time I spoke, as if no matter what I said, he didn’t think it was appropriate speech to be directed at his regal Tatrix.
“There is still time to have him killed, your Grace. With all due respect, I have a couple of men on standby. They are professional stranglers from Schendi. It will be quick and relatively painless.”
The Tatrix brushed aside the suggestion with a languid sweep of her left hand.
“My rule is built on the principles of honour,” she said. “Without honour, my rule means nothing to my people. Already they talk in the markets and the paga taverns of what occurred in the gardens of Caphius. Word has spread. Men ask who this man was, and where he is now. They know he was taken by guardsmen. They enquire after his well-being. They ask whether he is to be honoured.”
“Idle chatter,” suggested Laskar Tagaris. “The babbling of inconsequential fools. They will soon grow distracted by other news. With your permission, your Grace, I have already arranged a number of topical issues that my agents are poised to spread like wildfire through the paga taverns. Paid tongues will quickly wag with alacrity! Within a couple of days the simple rabble will be obsessed by these new matters, forgetting what transpired in the market and gardens of Caphius a week ago.”
