Hunters of Gor by John Norman Page A

thousand
    pasangs. He might as well have used Tor, which is an oasis city in the deserts
    far below Ar, and to its east.
    He laughed.
    I lifted my hand to him, and turned about my business.
    Rim, Thurnock and I continued to make our ways through the crowds at the
    waterfront.
    We passed great piles of rough goods, which, later, would be loaded on barges,
    for transport upriver to Laura, tools, metals, woolens. We passed, too, through
    goods which had been brought downriver from Laura, and would pass through
    Lydius, bales of sleen fur, and bundles of panther hides and tabuk pelts. There
    would be better prices on sleen fur, of course, in Laura itself. Too, from
    Laura, much in evidence, were great barrels of salt, stacks of lumber, and sleds
    of stones, on wooden runners, from the quarries to her east. We also saw cages
    filled with the blond village girls, taken on raids to the north, they too, in
    their cages brought on the barges downriver from Laura. They would not be sold
    in Lydius, but, the cages emptied, would be taken by sea, chained in the holds
    of slave ships, to southern markets. We also passed a chain of male slaves,
    brought downriver from Laura, shaven-headed wretches, taken somewhere in the
    forests by fierce panther girls. They had probably been sold near Laura, or
    along the river.
    The two male slaves I had purchased from Sheera and her band, I had freed. I
    gave them clothing, and two silver tarsks apiece. They had wished to remain with
    me, in my service. I had permitted it.
    “What price did you obtain for the panther girls you sold?” I asked Thurnock.
    I had not been much interested in them. It only now occurred to me to inquire
    what they had gained me.
    “Four pieces of gold,” said Thurnock.
    “Excellent,” I said. That was a high price for a raw girl in the north. They, of
    course, had been beauties. They had been panther women. In the hold of the
    Tesephone, they had learned that they were female. Tana and Ela, I expected,
    would make exquisite slaves.
    We continued along the docks of Lydius, satisfying our curiosity as to the port.
    We passed some fortified warehouse, in which space is available to merchants. In
    such places, there would be gems, and gold, silks, and wines and perfumes,
    jewelries and spices, richer goods not to be left exposed on the docks. In such
    houses, too, sometimes among the other merchandise, there are pleasure slaves,
    trained girls, imported perhaps from Ar. Their sales will either be public or
    private. They are kept in lamplit, low-ceillinged, ornately barred cells. Such
    girls are commonly rare in the north. They bring high prices.
    We passed another paga tavern. I licked my lips.
    Lydius is one of the few cities of the north which has public baths, as in Ar
    and Turia, though smaller and less opulent.
    It is a port of paradoxes, where one finds, strangely mingled, luxuries and
    gentilities of the south with the simplicities and rudenesses of the less
    civilized north. It is not unusual to encounter a fellow with a jacket of sleen
    fur, falling to his knees, sewn in the circle stitch of Scagnar, who wears upon
    his forehead a silken headband of Ar. He might carry a double-headed ax, but at
    his belt may hang a Turian dagger. He might speak in the accents of Tyros, but
    startle you with his knowledge of the habits of wild tarns, knowledge one would
    expect to only find in one of Thentis. Those of Lydius pretend to much
    civilization, and are fond of decorating their houses, commonly of wood, with
    high pointed roofs, in manners they think typical of Ar, of Ko-ro-ba, of Tharna
    and Turia, but to settle points of honor they commonly repair to a skerry in
    Thassa, little more than forty feet wide, there to meet opponents with axes, in
    the manner of those of Torvaldsland.
    I recalled the girl who jostled me earlier. She had been a sensuous little
    thing. Again, through my memory, flashed the vague image of the side of her
    head, as she slipped past, and her hair,