I was aflight!
For a time I muchly gave the bird its head, and then, some pasangs out, drew it about, to sweep the sky in a vast circle, this centering about the inn, far below.
"You will caress me again, will you not?" asked my servant.
"Perhaps," I said, "if you beg it."
"I beg it!" she said.
"Hold to the pommel, tightly," I said.
She did so.
I would have time for her later. This was not the moment.
When one first ascends a new mount, or, indeed, masters a new woman, it is well to put them through their paces, to see what they can do, to see what they are like. In this case of the tarn one's very life can depend on such things as understanding its speed, its rate of climb, the sharpness of its turns, and so on.
My lovely, half-naked, blindfolded servant cried out, flung back, her arms almost straight, her small hands, the wrists braceleted closely together, gripping the pommel.
The bird hovered well, arrested in flight.
The girl gasped and cried out again, in fear, her back almost horizontal as the tarn climbed. The ascent was steep and swift. The air grew cold. Such a maneuver is often useful. More than once it had carried me above adversaries, their attack speed prohibiting so swift an adjustment in their trajectory. The girl clung desperately to the pommel. She seemed very frightened, for some reason. Too, now, clad as she was, in what was, in effect, no more than a curla and chatka, fit garments for a slave, not a free woman, she must be very cold. Doubtless she was in extreme discomfort. In a few Ehn I had established the approximate ceiling of the bird. The earth seemed far below. I could see the surface of a lake, like a shimmering puddle, to my right. I had not even hitherto known it was there. On the left, far below, I could see the Vosk Road, like a bright thread in the sun. "Please, let us go down. Let us stop!" she wept.
"You are braceleted," I told her. "Such matters are no longer within your control."
"Let us go down!" she wept.
"Are you cold?" I asked.
"Yes!" she wept. "But I am frightened, too! We are high, are we not? "Yes," I said.
"Please, let us go down!" she begged.
"It was my mistake to let you ride in such honor," I told her. "It is more appropriate for a woman on tarnback to ride differently, to be tied across the saddle on her back or belly, or, say, if she is one of a brace, perhaps wrist-tied to one end of a shared rope thrown over the saddle, or, say, tied to a ring at the side, this, too, providing a balance with the other captive. "I am a free woman," she said. "Surely you would not dare to tie me so." "I would think little of it," I informed her.
She shuddered, though whether with the thought of this restraint which I might, if I wished, impose upon her, or of cold, I do not know.
"Please, let us go down," she said.
"What does your will mean?" I asked.
"Apparently it means nothing," she said.
"Hold tightly, woman," I said.
"'Woman'?" she said. Then she screamed, a long, wild, wailing scream, as the tarn, responding to the four-strap, began a sudden, precipitous descent. With one hand I kept her on the saddle. Her hair flew above us, trailing like a flag. The tarn dove well. The swiftness of that descent is incredible. Its force, even arrested at the last moment, can break the back of a full-grown tabuk. I let the bird come within fifty yards of the earth before I reined back, and it swooped, low, leveling, over the grass.
"Stop! Stop! Stop!" she begged. "What are we doing! Where are we?" "We are within a man's height of the ground," I said. In such flight one can use the screening of a forest or of low hills, even buildings, to make an approach to an objective. Too, of course, lower flight, in general, reduces the possibilities of sightings.
"We are going too swiftly!" she said. "Please, stop!"
"It is better that you are blindfolded," I said.
"What are you going to do?" she cried.
"One must try out a tarn," I said.
"Monster!" she wept.
"Hold tightly," I said.
She moaned. She hunched over the pommel, clinging to it, sobbing.
She screamed, suddenly, flung to the left, as I drew the two-strap and three-strap at the same time, the tarn veering to the right. It was responsive. I then tested it in a dozen ways, to speeds, to flights, to turns. The girl was beside herself with fear. She sobbed, moaned, gasped, cried out, whimpered, and screamed, in turn, in the darkness of the blindfold, clutching the pommel, as the bird, obedient to the obligations of the harness, bent itself to his maneuvers. I was well satisfied. It was a warrior's mount, indeed.
"Please, please," wept the girl.
I had now returned the tarn to the vicinity of the Crooked Tarn.
I then made three passes near the Crooked Tarn, two over the palisade, over the tarn wire, and a third near its bridge and gate.
In the first pass I hovered the bird for a time, some fifty yards over a portion of the court on the top of the palisaded plateau, one rather behind and to the left of the main inn buildings, as one would face them, entering. There, sitting, heavily chained to a sleen ring, its plate bolted into the stone, wrists and ankles, fastened quite closely to it, was a large, naked, bearded man, the burly fellow. I gathered he had not had the means wherewith to pay his bill. Seeing me, he seemed somehow agitated, even extremely so. He could do little more, however, than crouch, struggling, and pulling, at the ring, his head back, his face upward. He was howling something, but I could not well hear what he said. It is perhaps just as well. I did wave the pouch on its strap to him, cheerily, before proceeding onward, to make the second pass. He did not seem pleased with matters. I supposed I could not, in fairness, blame him. In my second pass I hovered near the front of the inn building on the left, as one would enter. It was there that several sets of chains had enjoyed the possession of fair occupants, whose names, as I had learned in the paga room, all from the Lady Temione, were Rimice, Klio and Liomache, all from Cos, Elene, from Tyros, and Amina, a citizeness of Venna. These chains were now empty. I had taken the liberty early this morning, acting through my agent, a sutler, a splendid, if somewhat put-upon and long-suffering chap, whose name was Ephialtes, to redeem them all, my expenses in the matter, 182 C.T. for the five of them, being considerably defrayed by means of the loot I had acquired from the gang of Andron the evening before.
Doubtless they were initially delighted to find that they had been redeemed. Perhaps they had laughed and clapped their hands with joy. Their delight, however, had doubtless been tempered somewhat by finding their necks were being put in iron collars, collars on a chain. As I briefly hovered there, over the court, I could see, too, partly to my irritation, and partly to my amusement, to one side, some additional evidence of the business acumen of the keeper. He had not simply permitted the women to be redeemed. He had gotten something of value from them, perhaps as a penalty fee, or as something in the way of compensation for the inconvenience they had caused him, over and above the amount of their unpaid bills. There, to one side, on a rack, long and lovely, hung pelts of female hair. Such, as I have mentioned, particularly in time of siege, though there is always a market for it on Gor, is highly prized for the making of catapult ropes. I had little doubt that the fellow, given my suppositions as to his probably thoroughness in such matters, would not even have had the graciousness to shear the heads of the ladies. In shearing, you see, one might lose a fifth of a hort or so of hair. doubtless he had had their heads shaved. Many girls will strive hard to please, for example, to be permitted to keep their hair, or to be permitted to let it grow out again. There were six pelts on the rack. The sixth was a lengthy and lovely auburn. I had also, by means of Ephialtes, redeemed Lady Temione. Her redemption had cost me a silver tarsk, five. This was expensive, but she would look well on her knees, collared. All told then, at the exchange rate of 10 °C.T. per silver tarsk, the women had cost me two silver tarsk, 87 C.T. These women were now, if all had gone well, on their way to Ar's Station, probably chained behind, and attached to, the wagon of Ephialtes. The shaving of their heads would doubtless lower their value, but I did not object, because I was not particularly concerned with whether I made a profit on them or not. That was not their essential role in my plans. Indeed, if their heads were shaved, that might be just as well. That might suggest that they had come into the keeping of an exploitable fellow, one in desperate need of funds.