“It is your move,” said Forkbeard.
“I have moved,” I told him. “I have thrown the Ax toJarl six.”
“Ah! Laughedthe Forkbeard. He then sat down and looked again at the board. He could not now, with impunity, place his Jarl at Ax four.
The sun, for Torvaldsland, was hot. In the chronology of Port Kar, it was early in Year 3 of the Sovereignty of the Council of Captains. In the chronology of Ar, which serves, generally, to standardize chronology on Gor, it was 10,122 C.A., or Contasta Ar, from the founding of Ar. The battle of the 25th of Se’Kara had taken place in 10,12 °C.A. In that same year, in its spring, in Port Kar, the Council of Captains had assumed its sovereignty, thus initiating Year 1 of its reign. Most Gorean cities use the Spring Equinox as the date of the New Year. Turia, however, uses the Summer Solstice. The Spring Equinox, incidentally, is also used for the New Year by the Rune-Priests of the North, who keep the calendars of Torvaldsland. They number years from the time ofThor’s gift of the stream of Torvald to Torvald,legendary hero and founder of the northern fatherlands. In the calendars of the Rune-Priests the year was 1,006.
Forkbeard and I sat in the shade, under a tented awning of sewn boskhides, some thirty-five feet in length. It begins aft of the mast, which is set forward. It rests on four poles, with two long, narrow poles, fixed in sockets, mounted in tandem fashion, serving as a single ridge pole. These poles can also be used in pushing off, and thwarting collisions on rocks. The bottom edges of the tented awning are stretched taut and tied to cleats in the gunwales. There is about a foot of space between the gunwales and the bottoms of the tented awnings, permitting a view to sea on either side.
Somewhat behind us, between the benches, in the shade of the awning, among other riches taken in the sack of the temple of Kassau, were the bond-maids. They, loot, too, knelt, or sat or laid among golden plate, and candlesticks and golden hangings. Their ankles were no longer bound; their wrists, now, those of most of them, were fettered before their bodies; about their necks, now, however, they wore not simple binding fiber; it had been replaced the first evening out of Kassau; they wore now, knotted about their throats, a coffle rope of the north, about a half inch in thickness, of braided leather, cored with wire. At night they slept with their hands fettered behind them. Some of the girls slept, some curled on the golden hangings of the temple; some sat or knelt, heads down; of the girls, four of them, though still held in the coffle, were no longer fettered. They knelt, with soft cloths and polishes, cleaning and rubbing to a high shine, which must please the Forkbeard, the golden trove of the looted temple of Kassau.
The men of Forkbeard, their oars inboard, the ship under sail, amused themselves as they would. Some slept on the benches or between them, some under the awning and some not, or on the exposed, elevated stem deck. Here and there some sat in twos or threes, talking. Two, like Forkbeard and myself, gave themselves to Kaissa. Two others, elsewhere, played Stones, a guessing game. The giant, he who might have been nearly eight feet in height, and had in the temple wrought such furious slaughter, sat now, almost somnolently, on a rowing bench, sharpening, with slow, deliberate movements, with a circular, flat whetstone, the blade of his great ax. Three other men of the Forkbeard attended to fishing, two with a net, sweeping it along the side of the serpent, for parsit fish, and the third, near the stem, with a hook and line, baited with vulo liver, for the white-bellied grunt, a large game fish which haunts the plankton banks to feed on parsit fish. Only two of the Forkbeard’s men did not rest, he at the helm, bare-headed, looking to sea, and the fellow at the height of the mast, on lookout. The helmsman studies the sky and the waters ahead of the serpent; beneath clouds there is commonly wind; and he avoids, moving a point or more to port or starboard, areas where there is little wave activity, for they betoken spots in which the serpent might, for a time, find itself becalmed. The lookout stood upon a broad, flat wooden ring, bound in leather, covered with the fur of sea sleen, which fits over the mast. It has a diameter of about thirty inches. It sets near the top of the mast, enabling the man to see over the sail, as well as to other points. He, standing on this ring, fastens himself by the waist to the mast by looping and buckling a heavy belt about it, and through his master belt. Usually, too, he keeps one hand on or about the mast. The wooden ring is reached by climbing a knotted rope. The mast is not high, only about thirty-five feet Gorean, but it permits a scanning of the horizon to some ten pasangs.
Forkbeard put his First Singer to his own Ax four, threatening my Ax. I covered my piece with my own First Singer, moving it to my own Ax five. He exchanged, taking my Ax at Jarl six, and I his First Singer with my First Singer. I now had a Singer on a central square, but he had freed his Ax four, on which he might now situate the Jarl for an attack on the Jarl’s Woman’s Ax’s file.
The tempo, at this point, was mine. He had played to open position; I had played to direct position.
The Ax is a valuable piece, of course, but particularly in the early and middle game, when the board is more crowded; in the end game when the board is freer, it seerns to me the Singer is often of greater power, because of the greater number of squares it can control. Scholars weight the pieces equally, at three points in adjudications, but I would weight the Ax four points in the early and middle game, and the Singer two, and reverse these weights in the end game. Both pieces are, however, quite valuable. And I am fond of the Ax.
“You should not have surrendered your Ax,” said Forkbeard.
“In not doing so,” I said, “I would have lost the tempo, and position. Too, the Ax is regarded as less valuable in the end game.”
“You play the Ax well,” said Forkbeard. “What is true for many men may not be true for you. The weapons you use best perhaps you should retain.”
I thought on what he had said. Kaissa is not played by mechanical puppets, but, deeply and subtly, by men, idiosyncratic men, with individual strengths and weaknesses. I recalled I had, many times, late in the game, regretted the surrender of the Ax, or its equivalent in the south, the Tarnsman, when I had simply, as I thought rationally, moved in accordance with what were reputed to be the principles of sound strategy. I knew, of course, that game context was a decisive matter in such considerations but only now, playing Forkbeard, did I suspect that there was another context involved, that of the inclinations, capacities and dispositions of the individual player. Too, it seemed to me that the Ax, or Tarnsman, might be a valuable piece in the end game, where it is seldom found. People would be less used to defending against it in the end game; its capacity to surprise, and to be used unexpectedly, might be genuinely profitable at such a time in the game. I felt a surge of power.
Then I noted, uneasily, the Forkbeard moving his Jarl to the now freed Ax four.
The men with the net drew it up. In it, twisting and flopping, silverish, striped with brown, squirmed more than a stone of parsit fish. They threw the net to the planking and, with knives, began to slice the heads and tails from the fish.
“Gorm,” said the Forkbeard. “Free the first bond-maid on the coffle. The lazy girl has rested too long, and send her to me with a bailing scoop.”
Gorm was bare-chested and barefoot. He wore trousers of the fur of sea sleen. About his neck was a golden chain and pendant, doubtless taken once from a free woman of the south.
As he approached the bond-maids they shrank back from him, fearing him, as would any bond-maid one of the men of Torvaldsland. I looked upon the eyes of the first girl on the coffle, who was the slender, blondish girl, who had worn the red vest and jacket. I recalled how disappointed she had been in the men of Torvaldsland, when, heads hanging, they had accompanied the Forkbeard to the temple at Kassau. She had then, with amusement, regarded them with contempt. But it was neither amusement nor contempt which shone in her eyes now as she, shrinking back from him, looked upon Gorm. She now saw the men of Torvaldsland in their mightiness, in their freedom, and strength and power, and she, a stripped, fettered bond-maid, coffled, fearedthem. She knew that she belonged to them, such fierce and mighty beasts, and that she, and her beauty, lay at their mercy, that she, and her beauty, were theirs to do with as they pleased. Roughly Gorm unknotted the coffle rope from her neck. He then gestured that she, kneeling, should lift her fettered wrists to him; she did so; he, with a key from his belt, opened the fetters which held her; he thrust them in his belt; he then pulled her by the arm roughly to her feet and thrust her toward the Forkbeard. She stumbled across the loose deck planking and stood, hair before her face, before us. She thrust her hair back with her right hand, and stood well. A bailing scoop was thrust into her hands. It has four sides. It is umade of wood. It is about six inches in width. There is a diagonally set board in its bottom, and the back and two sides are straight. It has a straight, but rounded handle, carved smaller at the two ends, one where it adjoins the scoop, the other in back of the grip.