Magicians of Gor by John Norman Page A

She was
    probably bearing water for draft tharlarion. There were some in the camp. I had
    smelled them.
    A fellow stumbled by, drunk.
    I looked after the girl. She was small, and comely. She would probably have to
    make several trips to water the tharlarion.
    I wondered if the drunken fellow knew where his camp was. Fortunately there were
    no carnaria in this vicinity. It would not do to stumble into one.
    (pg. 41) Around one of the campfires there was much singing.
    I heard the sound of a lash, and sobs. A girl was being disciplined. She was
    tied on her knees, her wrists over her head, tied to a horizontal bar between
    two poles. I gathered that she had been displeasing.
    In a tent I heard a heated political discussion.
    “Marlenus of Ar will return,” said a fellow. “He will save us.”
    “Marlenus is dead,” said another.
    “Let his daughter then, Talena, take the throne,” said another.
    “She is no longer his daughter,” said a fellow. “She has been disavowed by
    Marlenus. She was disowned.”
    “How is it then her candidacy for the throne is taken seriously in the city?”
    asked a man.
    “I do not know,” admitted the other.
    “Some speak of her as a possible Ubara,” said a man.
    “Absurd,” said another.
    “Many do not think so,” said a man.
    “She is an arrogant and unworthy slut,” said another. “She should be in a
    collar.”
    “Beware, lest you speak treason,” said one of the men.
    “Can it be treason to speak the truth?” inquired a fellow.
    “Yes,” said the other fellow.
    “Indeed,” said a man, heatedly, “she may even know the whereabouts of Marlenus.
    Indeed, she, and others, may be responsible for his disappearance, or continued
    absence.”
    “I have not heard what you said,” said a man.
    “And I have not said it,” was the rejoinder.
    “I think it will be Talena,” said a man, “who will sit upon the throne of Ar.”
    “How marvelous for Cos!” said a fellow. “That is surely what they would wish,
    that a female should sit upon the throne of Ar.”
    “Perhaps they will see to it that she does,” said a man.
    “Ar is in great peril,” said a man.
    “She had might between Cos and her gates,” said a fellow. “There is nothing to
    fear.”
    “Yes!” said another, fervently.
    “We must trust in the Priest-Kings,” said another.
    “Yes,” said another.
    “I can remember,” said a fellow, “when we trusted in our steel.”
    I then left the vicinity of this tent.
    I wondered if I could balance on the greased wineskin. I knew a fellow who, I
    had little doubt, could have done so, Lecchio, of the troupe of Boots Tarsk-Bit.
    (pg. 42) I recalled the free female whose capture I had noted in Ar, that which
    had taken place in a street-level room in the Metallan district. Surely she must
    have know the law. The consorting of a free female with another man’s slave
    renders her susceptible to the collar of the slave’s master. The net had been
    cunningly arranged, that it might, when released, activated perhaps by springs
    or the pulling of a lever, fall and drape itself over the couch. It was clearly
    a device designed for such a purpose. The net and the room doubtless constituted
    a capture cubicle, simpler perhaps, but not unlike those in certain inns, in
    which a woman, lulled by the bolting on the doors, and feeling herself secure,
    may complete her toilet at leisure, bathing, combing her hair, perfuming herself
    and such, before the trap doors, dropped from beneath her, plunge her into the
    waiting arms of slavers. Guardsmen and magistrates, I had noted, had been in
    immediate attendance. She had had light brown hair and had been excellently
    curved. Yet I did not doubt but what her figure, even then of great interest,
    would be soon improved by diet and exercise, certainly before she would be put
    up on the block. To one side, in the half darkness, I heard the grunting of a
    man, and a female’s gasping, and sobbing. There, to one side, in the