Swordsmen of Gor Read Online Free PDF Page B

said.
    “I am not unfamiliar with such women,” he said. “Some have been brought here, to content us.”
    “There are others then,” I said.
    “A few,” he said.
    Gorean men need women, and by “women” they commonly understand the most luscious and desirable of women, the female slave. To be sure, the forests are dangerous, and what free woman would care to frequent them? Girls brought on chains, of course, have little to say about such things.
    “She is pretty,” he said.
    “She is not muchly trained,” I said, “and there are doubtless thousands who would bring higher prices.”
    “Still, she is very pretty,” he said.
    “Do you wish to challenge for her?” I asked.
    “No,” he said. “I have a better.”
    Unless there should be some misunderstanding here, one might observe that such challenges are not frequent, and normally require almost a ritual of circumstances. For example, aside from the usual impropriety of challenging one with whom one might share a Home Stone, Gorean honor militates against, if it does not wholly preclude, casual or unprovoked challenges. Obviously a skilled swordsman would have an advantage in such matters, which it would be inappropriate, and perhaps dishonorable, to press. Normally challenges would take place to recover a stolen slave, to protect a mortally endangered slave, perhaps to obtain a slave once foolishly disposed of, without which one cannot then bear to live, such things. Too, there may be economic constraints, as well, for if the challenge is not accepted, one is sometimes expected, depending on the city, the castes, and circumstances, to pay for the slave, with a purse several times her value. Few potential challengers then care to risk a refused challenge, as it is likely they cannot afford the slave, and must then retire in embarrassment. Many other possibilities enter into these things, but these remarks, hopefully, will give any who might chance to peruse these several sheets a sense of some of the prevailing customs in these matters. To be sure, brigands, pirates, enemies, and such, are not likely to concern themselves with challenges, but are rather the more likely, as they see fit, to attack, and kill. Similarly, in raids, and wars, it is understood that the property of the enemy, or quarry, or target, including not only his livestock and slaves, but even his free women, is legitimate booty. A proper challenge, on the other hand, is more akin to a duel, sometimes even to the setting of a time and place.
    “You are a forester?” I said.
    “Yes,” he said. “You are in the precincts of the reserves of Port Kar,” he said.
    “I did not know that,” I said.
    The great arsenal at Port Kar has its shipyards, as well as its warehouses and wharves. To guarantee a supply of valuable, suitable timber, for example Tur trees for strakes, keels, and planking, needle trees for masts, and tem wood, the rare yellow tem wood, for oars, the arsenal claims and badges selected trees within given ditched areas in the northern forests, which supplies, largely in a raw state, together with others, more processed, such as tars, resins and turpentines, items primarily suitable for naval stores, are transported southward on Thassa to the Tamber gulf. Occasionally, it is rumored, the precincts set aside by Port Kar are raided, or exploited, or poached upon, by other naval powers, particularly those of Tyros and Cos. On the other hand, I frankly doubt that this is true. Both of those formidable maritime ubarates have their own reserves, and extensively so, as does Port Kar. Indeed, predictably, there are similar rumors abroad, I understand, that Port Kar predates on the precincts of Tyros and Cos, and other maritime ubarates. I take these rumors to be false, as well. The last thing Port Kar, or these other powers, needs is a land war, which would have to be primarily conducted by mercenaries. Cos is already overextended in this manner in the south, at Ar. Indeed, there now