Barbarian of Gor Chapter Thirty Seven

“Well, you can’t fight him, that’s for sure. You’ll be dead within the first ten ihn,” said Adam.

 

“I don’t intend fighting him. And thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt that I’d last even that long.” We were walking through the streets of Torcadino, having picked up some hot pastries from a nearby food stall. 

 

The ground under my sandals was uneven and dusty with large, worn flagstones that had been polished smooth by centuries of footsteps. It was midday and the streets were a cacophony of sounds: the clatter of cart wheels turning on stones, the shouts of merchants hawking their wares, and the murmur of a hundred passing conversations blending into one vast hum. Adam and I wove through the crowd, navigating a living river of togas and tunics, dodging slaves, soldiers, and citizens alike. The air was rich with a pungent mix of woodsmoke, sweat, and the thick aroma of roasting meat from the nearby thermopolium. I glanced up at the buildings lining the street—tall, imposing structures of brick and concrete, their upper floors occasionally adorned with vibrant frescoes. Torcadino was a thriving series of arteries that pulsed life throughout its maze-like rat run of cylinders and buildings. 

 

“Just give him the slave. That’s all he wants,” said Adam. 

 

“It’s got a little more complicated than that. It seems our beloved Sellius Gavia has heard of the challenge and he sees it as the opportunity for Corcyrus to prove it can stand up to Argentum, and is therefore worthy of having Torcadino as an ally. The long and short of it is, Sellius Gavia insists on having the Kajira Canjellne challenge fought out as a sideshow during Kayra’s Free Companionship ceremony. It’s not me against Stannis. It’s Corcyrus standing up to Argentum. If I back out, Sellius will decide that Corcyrian men are cowards.”

“There’s nothing cowardly about refusing to take part in a one on one challenge against Stannis Assante. That’s just common sense.”

 

“I know that, you know that, but Sellius wants gladiatorial combat before the vows are spoken. It’s not a question of whether I can win – it’s just demonstrating that I’m not afraid.”

 

“But you are afraid,” remarked Adam.

 

“Yeah, I’m practically shitting myself already, and the duel is still a couple of days away.” 

 

“And you’ll be dead,” said Adam.

 

“Yeah, probably.”

 

“There’s no probably about it.” 

 

We turned left, suddenly away from the main street where the crisp scent of baking bread and expensive perfume from the forum gave way abruptly to a suffocating miasma of sewage, stale sweat, and cheap cooking oil. I pulled the edge of my finely tailored tunic higher over my nose, though I knew it was a futile gesture.

 

The broad, stone-paved streets where the rich rode in litters vanished, replaced by narrow, twisting alleys – the angiportus of the city - barely wide enough for two men to pass, rubbing shoulders in the process. The elegant marble facades of the noble houses were gone, replaced by towering, teetering insulae—apartment blocks built of shoddy brick and timber, leaning inwards as if conspiring to block out what scant sliver of sunlight shone high above.

 

A persistent dampness clung to the walls, and streams of foul-smelling grey water trickled in the central gutter, flowing sluggishly past discarded amphorae shards and rotting vegetable scraps. The silence of the upper city was replaced by a cacophony: the shrill cries of street vendors hawking watered-down wine, the endless, rhythmic clack-clack-clack of looms from a busy fullonica below street level where slaves toiled night and day, backs bent over their pedal driven machines, and the loud, angry shouting of a landlord demanding overdue rent from a man in a doorway.

 

I stepped carefully over a sleeping child, nearly stumbling on the uneven, slippery cobbles. From a second-story window, a Free Woman dressed in cheap cloth emptied a chamber pot directly into the street, the splash just missing my sandals. I flinched, my eyes darting upward to the precarious upper stories, where laundry lines hung like tangled spiderwebs between buildings, thick with patched, drab clothing. The air was close, humid, and alive with the buzz of flies circling the fresh filth. This wasn't the grand Torcadino of marble statues and white stone temples; this was the Torcadino that smelled of desperation and close quarters, where every shadow held a secret and every doorway a potential threat.

 

“Nice part of the city,” I said as we threaded our way through the narrow alley. “I hope you’re not bringing me down here to have me killed? Stannis Assante will not be happy.”

 

“I found him,” said Adam. He seemed unusually tense and nervous, as if his quest was partly over.

 

“Found who?”

 

“Mark. The man who served with me on Earth. My sword brother. The man who will know what happened to Caitlin. I have directions to his insula.”

 

“He’s obviously not doing very well for himself if he lives down here.”

 

“We shall see.”

 

“I’m flattered you’re bringing me along to witness your reunion, Adam.”

“Don’t be. We’re days away from the end of our mission, and I’m not letting you out of my sight until then, so you won’t have a chance to do anything stupid.” 

 

We came to one of many doorways set into the side of another dingy alley. The lock seemed broken so Adam simply pushed the door open and we entered a narrow hallway with a set of stairs that led up into a short landing that lacked proper light. “Watch your step,” said Adam. “The wood looks rotten.” The walls, where the rough plaster hadn't long since flaked away, showed patches of mould blooming in sinister green and black patterns. The floor was just packed earth and scattered straw over rotting wooden planks that groaned ominously every time I shifted my weight, making me wonder if today would be the day we all tumbled into the alley below. The light was almost non-existent, choked out by the narrow, high windows covered with oiled cloth instead of glass, offering only a perpetual, grimy twilight.

 

Adam seemed to take a sharp intake of breath as he paused beside one of the interior doors. And then, finally seizing the moment, he knocked.

 

There was some passionate hugging. I mean it was pretty high on the bromance scale. Mark’s insula was a single room, not much more than a partitioned space on the third floor of the building. The air in here was thick enough to chew - damp, smelling of old sweat, boiled cabbage, and whatever the landlord hadn’t cleaned out of the shared latrine pipe downstairs. It would be generous to say the apartment space was not much larger than a storage closet, carved out of the third floor of this teetering insula. The walls, where the cheap plaster hadn't completely peeled away to expose the crumbling brick and muddy mortar beneath, were slick with moisture and perhaps a little grease. Sunlight struggled to pierce the single, tiny window covered not with expensive glass, but a scrap of oiled parchment that kept out light and air in equal measure.

 

The only serious piece of furniture was a single straw-stuffed lectus pushed against the far wall. The floorboards, uneven and splintered, groaned under our combined weight, likely a few generations past their intended use, while a persistent drip-drip-drip echoed from the leaky ceiling, forming a small, dark puddle near the door that would be a breeding ground for mildew by morning.

 

“Paga?” offered Mark.

 

“Of course.” Adam seemed to accept the offer more out of common courtesy than a desire to actually drink whatever Mark had to hand. “This is Roland Martell. Like me he was born on Earth.”

 

I had expected Mark to be strong and physically imposing, and I wasn’t disappointed on that count. His back was wide and straight; the sort of width that speaks of a life spent working out with weapons and a heavy shield, not lounging in a peristyle. His tunic was coarse, patched linen, clinging to a frame corded with strength. He didn't have the pale, pampered flesh of a city dweller. No, his skin was the colour of seasoned leather, scored with a few battle won lines and deep bronze from decades under the Gorean sun. His arms were powerfully built with layered corded muscle, like tree roots—thick, gnarled, and strong enough to snap a spear in half. When he looked at us, his eyes were sharp and direct, and you knew that this was a man unlikely to show deference to anyone who hadn’t earned his respect. He wouldn't bow or scrape by design. There was a sort of quiet, solid power about him. 

 

“Roland.” Mark took my right forearm and gripped it in a greeting in the Gorean way. There was an automatic acceptance of me based on the simple fact that I stood beside Adam. 

 

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Mark.”

 

Mark nodded.

 

And then Adam said the obvious: “Where is Caitlin?”

 

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“She fought. She fought very hard. You would have been proud of her, Adam.” We sat cross-legged on the floor of the insula, nursing our rather bitter cups of cheap paga. Adam and I drank simply out of politeness. I could see that Mark had fallen on hard times and that it pained Adam to see this. “Before she was sedated and thrust into a slave capsule, Caitlin somehow managed to disable some of their systems. The interior door locks were released.”

 

I felt like I was listening to a story where I had no real idea of what had occurred leading up to it. I was vaguely aware that Caitlin had been kidnapped by Gorean slavers and taken to a landing field in the New Forest in England, and that Mark had attacked the landing strip with automatic weapons as the ship had been preparing for take-off. There had been a firefight and Mark had managed to board the ship just as the bulkhead doors were sealing shut. 

 

“Bad news for the Kurii agents, I guess?” suggested Adam.

 

“I hunted and killed them all,” confirmed Mark. “But the ship was locked on an automated flight path to a Kur space station called Helios. There was nothing I could do to override the flight plan. Caitlin was in suspended animation within one of the capsules, as were Kassa and Rebecca. There were dead bodies in the cargo hold.” Mark smiled. “She really did put up a good fight.”

 

“That’s my Caitlin,” said Adam with a grin. 

 

“How did you get to Gor?” asked Mark.

 

“Long story. This ring helped.” Adam held up his right hand on which a ring was visible. “It’s one of the Earth rings that buys transport to this planet. Wasn’t easy getting hold of it.”

“Do the Priest Kings know you are here?” asked Mark.

 

“Not really. Perhaps. I don’t know. I didn’t have the opportunity to log a flight plan with the Nest.”

 

“And what do you think?” asked Mark. “Isn’t it everything I said it would be?”

 

“It’s impressive,” said Adam with another grin. “Your world is very beautiful, Mark.”

“OUR world is very beautiful, Adam. Welcome home. You… will be staying?”

 

“Perhaps.” Adam’s grin expanded into a broad smile. “Once I have my slave in my collar.”

 

“You have nothing on Earth that you need to return for. Make Gor your home.”

 

“So, the space station Helios. What did you do?”

 

“I pretended I was the sole survivor from the House of Three Moons. it wasn’t too difficult. I worked out how to open Caitlin’s capsule and revived her long enough to explain what was going to happen, and how I would have to pose as her captor. I confess she grew a little hysterical when I insisted on returning her to the capsule. I told her she had to trust me.”

 

“Helios is a transport and supply hub, yes?”

 

“I believe so. We only docked there because of the emergency protocols when the ship was boarded. Armed men were waiting for us and I only escaped being killed by the skin of my teeth. Luckily I knew enough about the Earth side of the operations to pass without suspicion. I made sure I was on the transport ship down to the surface of Gor. But… my luck ran out.”

 

“How so?”

 

“Priest King defences targeted the drop ship on its way to the surface of Gor. We crashed on the edges of the Tahari. Just bad luck.”

 

“Caitlin?”

 

“The cargo capsules do a very good job of cushioning livestock from an emergency crash landing. The crew and I weren’t quite so lucky. I was badly injured in the crash. I was taken in and nursed by tribesmen out in the desert. It was weeks before I was even able to stand unaided. By then Caitlin and the other slaves were long gone, swallowed up by the desert.”

 

“Is she alive?”

 

“There is hope, Adam. Any man who came across her would have kept her alive. She will have been enslaved and sold.”

 

Adam thought about this for a moment. “You didn’t try to find her?”

 

“I made some enquiries in the various slave markets I came across, but I am not a detective, Adam. What did I have by way of identification? Only the most basic of descriptions. So many slaves pass through the Tahari markets. I was looking for a needle in a haystack. I tried for a while, but…”

 

“You just gave up.”

 

I could see the anger in Adam’s face and the pain in Mark’s expression. “I failed you, sword brother. I am so sorry.”

 

“You just fucking gave up and left her to her fate?!”

 

Mark rose to his feet and nodded. There was suddenly such sadness in his face. I watched as he went and collected one of his few remaining possessions – a long bladed knife. I watched as he drew it from its leather scabbard. And then he knelt down and set the pommel of the long knife against the floor, with the point leaning towards his stomach. 

 

“Hey, wait!” I shot up onto my feet and swiftly kicked the blade away. 

 

“Mark – no.” Adam was on his feet, too. “There’s no need for that.” There were tears in Mark’s eyes. 

 

“I failed you. I should have… I should have continued to search for her, no matter what. I should still be searching for her. But I never thought I’d ever be able to return her to you, even if I found her. I shouldn’t have given up.”

 

“You did more than most would,” said Adam, but I could see that he was disappointed in Mark. “And you will have a chance to make up for your failure. In two days’ time the Lady Laetitia of Corcyrus will finally be companioned with Sellius Gavia. My duty to that city will be over, and I will be flying to the Tahari by tarn while the bedding takes place. Will you come with me?”

 

“To the very ends of the world, my brother,” said Mark as he grasped Adam’s outstretched forearm. “And I swear I will…” he suddenly stopped. “Tarn? You can’t fly a tarn?”

 

“I can fly a tarn,” said Adam.

 

“But that is impossible. You have no training. A tarnsman trains with the great birds from his youth.”

 

“I can fly a tarn,” said Adam. “Two days. Be ready when I call for you.”

 

“I’m going to miss your constant insults,” I said to Adam as we retraced our steps back through the narrow alleys to the market squares of Torcadino. “That and your consistently poor assessment of my capabilities.”

“You’ll find someone else who is perceptive enough to list your many flaws,” said Adam, but I could see he was amused by me for a change. He sensed that in just a couple of days he would be free to find his beloved Caitlin, and that had improved his demeanour. 

 

“Where are we going now? The palace lies in the opposite direction?”

 

“I have an ulterior motive for bringing you with me today.”

“So you are going to kill me?”

Adam grinned. “Why would I want to spare you the opportunity to fight Stannis Assante? No, I just thought you might like a few words with the woman who murdered you.”

 

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“Roland?!” Sally Reeve stood in a small prison room situated on the third floor of the Tower of Correction. She wore the same gowns that she had worn the day she had stabbed me with a poisoned hair pin, only by now the garments were dirty and frayed at the edges. Her long hair was worn loose, for her gaolers would obviously not permit her any pins with which to secure and bind her locks. She had been forced to wash her hair in a steel bucket of cold water that was provided each day and lather it with a simple cake of soap. For a woman used to expensive hair care products and being tended to by handmaiden slaves it was something of a come down. “You’re alive?! But I’ve been charged with your murder!”

 

“Consider this me coming back from the grave to haunt you, Sally,” I said as I gazed about her room of confinement. Clearly, Sally was using her remaining funds to provide herself with this rather spartan room, which despite its basic conditions was many steps up from sharing a barred slave cell with other women. Here at least she had some degree of privacy, and a simple cot bed in which to sleep in. 

 

A heavy, cast-iron door had been slammed shut behind us as were permitted twenty ehn for visiting Sally. I heard the sound of heavy locks sliding home as the gaoler turned his keys, leaving us to speak in private. The air inside the cell was stagnant, musty, heavy with the scent of damp stone, sweat, and cheap, acrid disinfectant. The room was stark, bleak, and overwhelmingly cold, consisting of a narrow rectangle of grey, whitewashed brick. There was a single, small, barred window set high in the wall, too high to reach, offering only a sliver of the perpetually overcast sky. It provided little light, leaving the cell in perpetual gloom.

 

To one side sat Sally’s cot—a simple iron frame fitted with a thin, lumpy straw mattress and a single coarse, scratchy wool blanket. The 'furniture' – if you can call it that - was sparse and utilitarian: a small, fixed wooden shelf bolted to the wall served as a table, and beneath it, a tiny stool was similarly secured to the floor.

In the corner, a chamber pot sat, uncovered and offending the senses. 

 

There were no personal touches, and no warmth. The floor was cold flagstone, polished smooth by countless shuffling feet. The silence here was not a true silence, but a collection of muffled sounds—distant coughing, the clinking of keys, the low murmur of voices from another wing - each sound amplified by the hard, unforgiving surfaces of a bare stone cell. I saw a wooden bowl and a wooden spoon on the wall shelf. Inside the bowl were the remains of her last meal – a lumpy mash that was probably slave gruel.

 

“The penalty for murder is death,” said Sally as she moved towards me. “You have to tell my gaolers that you’re alive.”

“You seem to have fallen on hard times,” I remarked. 

 

“They are going to impale me!” she cried. 

 

“You expect our sympathy?” asked Adam. “You are our enemy.”

 

“I am a woman.” She hugged herself and I could see she was cold, despite her several layers of gowns. It was bleak in this cell, and she had been here for many days. The gaoler had confirmed that we were her first visitors. If she had been expecting to see other agents of Argentum hurrying to her aid, she was to be disappointed. “Have pity on me, Adam, Roland.”

 

“I’m guessing that Argentum hasn’t managed to set you free?” said Adam.

 

“I have seen no one. You are my first visitors. I was expecting…”

 

“Someone other than us, yes?” Adam moved close to the lovely Argentum agent. “There will be no one else, Sally. No one else is coming. I have a friend in this city – Gaius Antony. He has arranged that you are to receive no other visitors. In fact, he is rather interested to see who exactly does come to see you. He has already arrested three such men. You’re acting as a rather convenient lure.”

 

“I will cooperate,” said Sally. “I know things. My testimony will be useful to you. I can strike a deal.”

 

“Gaius really isn’t all that interested,” said Adam. “He feels – perhaps rightly – that your knowledge of the Torcadino network of Argentum spies is really very limited. You haven’t been operating here, and the men you did make contact with are either dead or cooperating themselves with the encouragement of the city’s torturers. Your testimony is practically worthless.”

 

“They will impale me,” she sobbed. “And I didn’t even murder anyone! Roland is alive!”

 

“Roland won’t be testifying that he’s alive at your trial. The trial will be short and sweet. You will be lowered onto a spear of impalement, Sally, unless you want to opt for the alternative?”

 

“There’s an alternative?”

 

“You can beg to be enslaved. You are an attractive woman. The magistrate will certainly commute your sentence to slavery.”

 

“I can’t do that!”

 

“Then I suppose you will be impaled. It’s a pretty ugly way to die. And slow, too”

“Argentum will save me!”

 

“Argentum isn’t coming, Sally. No one is coming.” 

 

“So, you’ve come to gloat? That isn’t an appealing trait in a man. I expected better of you both.” Sally paced her narrow confines of her cell. It occurred to me that despite her status as a Free Woman, Sally had not been permitted a veil. “You have won. Please, be magnanimous in your victory. Show mercy to me?” She was appealing to me in particular. I suppose she thought I was most likely to be moved by an appeal from a beautiful woman. “Roland… I have always respected you. And… we shared a tender moment together, remember?”

 

“I recall you mounting me – your skirts thrust up about your hips - when I was tied and helpless,’ I said. “Is that the tender moment you are referring to?”

 

“We both took pleasure from our coupling,” she said, moving now to touch me tenderly with the palm of one hand resting on my chest. “Think, we can do that again. I will reward you if you spare my life.”

“Your life will be spared when you beg the collar, Sally.”

“NO!” She pushed hard at me with her hands until I seized both of her wrists and shook the startled girl.

 

“Protest your so-called dignity all you like, Sally. We both know you will beg the collar on your knees when the magistrate pronounces sentence on you.”

 

“What happens to me then?” there were tears in her eyes.

 

“You will be branded. All slaves are branded in Torcadino. And then, a few days later, you will be put up for auction. Untrained as you are, knowing nothing of the arts of pleasing men, you might sell for ten copper tarsks.”

 

“I am worth more than ten coper tarsks!” she said, in her fury.

 

“Many slaves come to Torcadino’s markets these days. There is a war on. Prices are depressed. You may not even make ten copper tarsks.”

 

“I suppose you will bid for me,” she said, bitterly.

 

“No.”

“What? Why not?”

 

“I intend to buy another slave. A paga slave who works in a tavern in this city.”

 

“Then who will buy me?”

 

“That depends on how well you perform on the auction block, Sally. If you try hard to interest men, you may be bought by a man who thinks you can give him pleasure in the furs. If you perform poorly when exhibited, you may end up in a mill working on a loom for twelve hours a day in conditions much like this room.”

Sally suddenly looked terrified. “Someone would buy me for a mill girl?”

 

“Perhaps. If you displayed no potential for anything else.”

 

“I do not want to be a mill girl,” she sobbed. 

 

“Few women do. You will have a few days in the pens to prepare yourself for your sale. Your masters will help you if you truly wish to fetch a better price. It will be in their interests after all. Beg to be taught some things. Beg to be taught how to move on an auction block. Beg to be found pleasing.” 

 

“Please buy me,” she sobbed. “I’m so scared. Let me wear your collar!”

 

“Goodbye, Sally,” I said as I turned to knock on the cell door. I heard the gaoler’s keys rattling as he slid one into the lock. “We’re unlikely to see one another ever again, but I wish you well in your future bondage.”