The Sons Of Thassa

(based on the Gorean Fiction of John Norman)

It was an unusual night in Schendi.

It was raining, but that was not the unusual thing. As a pure matter of fact, it rained most days in the sub-equatorial city than it did not. The same was true of the nights. Even the seasons were marked by the rains. In the cooler season it rained a great deal. In the hotter season it rained just slightly less.

The rain was so common in Schendi that Captain Black Ox barely paid it any mind as he strutted down the board which led from his ship deck to the wharf. He was a big man and he’d been big as a boy. He reached the stone of the wharf and cast a look back over his broad shoulder. The glance presented him with two beautiful things. The first was his ship, theRage Of Thassa. Even riding easy there in her anchor, the Rage was a rakish tarnship. The second thing of beauty was the kajira who followed him down the wharf. He’d only purchased her that morning, a Northern girl with silky, voluminous red hair which fell over her slender shoulders and down her graceful back in a fire fall. Her green eyes were large and expressive, a sensual and inviting mouth. Her pale skin glowed in the light of the torch which she carried in her right hand. The warm rain was quickly wetting her hair and drenching her skin, which only made her seem all the more alluring.

“Pick up your feet, girl,” the captain said, his deep voice like the rumble of distant thunder.

“Yes, Master,” the girl replied. The rain made the torch-flame hiss and dance.

Black Ox grunted and turned his head forward. He was a tall man and his legs made the measure of his stride a long one. The slave girl had to skip to remain close behind. He crossed the distance between his pier and the doors of his fortified warehouse. The structure, as were all the League’s warehouses, was made of stone and mortar, the exterior fireproof. A crewman from his ship standing guard before the turwood doors nodded and stepped aside as the captain slipped his key into the lock of one of the warehouse’s set of windowless double-doors and turned. The door unlocked, Black Ox opened it, then he and the kajira moved inside.

There were two more guards on the interior side of the warehouse doors. They too nodded in acknowledgement and respect as their captain entered. Black Ox nodded in return, and relocked the door before he walked down the long main aisle of his warehouse, the slavegirl nearly running to keep up. At the far end, he unlocked another door, the entry to his private apartments in the cavernous storehouse. Black Ox walked in and waited for the girl to enter before he secured the door.

“Put the torch in a wall-bracket and light a lamp,” he instructed.

“Yes, Master.”

The girl obeyed. When she was done Black Ox pointed out the shelves over the wash basin which held cosmetics, brushes and combs. A long mirror was on a stand stood beside the basin table and shelves. “Refresh and dry yourself from the rain.”

“Yes, Master.”

Black Ox stepped into an adjoining room and lit a lamp. After divesting himself of scimitar sword and curved knife, he also shed himself of the effects of the rain, pulling off his wet tharlarion-rider boots, drenched sleeveless tunic and supplely tanned black bosk-leather breeches. He dried himself with a large absorbent towel.

Dry, he wrapped and knotted on a clean undergarment before strapping on a pair of black leather sandals. Turning to the room’s small wardrobe, Black Ox withdrew a long-sleeved robe which reached to his ankles. The ceremonial garment was of the finest silk, blue with rich gold brocade. The captain moved across the room until he could see himself in a mirror affixed to the stone wall.

The man in the mirror looked back at him with a dark and enigmatic stare. It was a look that most took for coldness of personality. But that assessment was incorrect. Black Ox was a highly passionate man but he was also a remarkably self-possessed one as well. He saw black-pupil, intelligent eyes set under a strong brow, well-defined cheekbones, broad and mobile lips, framed by a neatly clipped moustache and goatee beard. His black hair was a short cut tightly-curled cap covering his skull. His skin was an intense dark brown. In short, he saw a handsome equatorian, well-muscled man leaving behind his youth and entering his middle years. A man at the height of his powers.

Black Ox smiled at his image, thinking of what was to come on this most significant night of nights. He didn’t retrieve his sword or knife. He wasn’t allowed to bring them to where he was going. Besides, he thought, soon he’d be in the safest place on Gor and would have no need of weapons. But before the night was done, Black Ox would come to see that he was very wrong in that assessment.

#

Among the captains of the League of Black Slavers it was known as the Cylindrus Obscurus, the Hidden Cylinder.

It was not listed in any official record of Civitalis Schendi. Beyond the Assembly of League Captains, a handful of select League seamen, the kajirae who served there, and the single Physician who was retained there, none even knew the subterranean complex existed as a whole.

After dressing, Black Ox had fetched his new kajira and blindfolded her. He’d led her through an opening in one of the warehouse apartment’s false walls. By the light of a lamp to guide Black Ox, they’d descended down a sloping corridor, which switched back on itself several times, it was a long walk before reaching a heavy iron-hinged stone door somewhere deep under the warehouse district. Compressing hidden switches in the iron frame of the doorway caused the monolithic door to swing open and he’d escorted the girl through.

In a high-ceiling antechamber made bright with many lamps, Black Ox took the folded cloth from across the kajira’s face. But it was the girl herself who deftly caught the two eye-piece pads in her upturned palms. Black Ox handed her the cloth as well.

The girl blinked, fluttering long curly lashes against her snowy cheeks. She looked about herself, seeing many other ko-lar’d girls of all descriptions surrounding her. A short, reddish-brown skin girl with glossy black hair and a small golden nose-ring stood next to her. Her large, dark nippled breasts were bare but she wore a slit skirt of supple tanned boskskin over her well-rounded hips. There were girls of the rainforests with belt ko-lars around their dark throats, some with skin tones so ebon they seemed iridescent. They wore paper-bark skirts over their aggressively jutting asses. There were white girls from the north, like herself, in varied-colored and transparent silks with band ko-lars around their throats. She saw a lightly tanned girl in white with the distinctive looped ko-lar of Turia. The League’s plethora of kajirae had obviously been enslaved from all over Gor.

They all knelt when Black Ox, a Free man, entered the room. He ignored them. “This is your new home, girl,” he said. “The Cylindrus Obscurus. You are to attend me whenever I’m in the hall. When I’m not you will dwell in the cylinder’s pleasure garden.”

“Yes, Master.”

“The first-girl, en kajira, will tell you all you need to know as well as assign you chores.”

“Yes, Master.”

Black Ox gave the slave a curt nod, pivoted on his heel, and with his customary swagger strode across the chamber, the slave girls scurrying out of his way. Reaching an arched doorway, he took a moment to straighten to his full height and square his big shoulders before pushing open the heavy-timbered door.

#

The Hidden Cylinder was ancient, even the oldest records of the League did not contain the date of its excavation from the bedrock. The same of course was true of the Meeting Hall. The vast chamber with its floor of black tile marbled with veins of gray, its domed ceiling so high that at night it was perpetually shrouded in a gloom untouched by the scores of torches burning in their iron sconces on the rough stone round walls.

Directly opposite the hall’s single door, across the room’s expanse, was the League’s most sacred relic, the Scimitar of Discipline and Shackles. The great curved sword set in a turwood frame, above a pair of heavy iron fetters. Both were supported by a fluted pillar as high as a tall man. The sword, like the manacles, was ancient and of iron, forged before steel had been invented. It was the home stone, so to speak, of the League. Every captain in the fleet had pledged his life to it.

The twelve men already in the great meeting hall turned to look at Black Ox as he entered.

One of the men was an ex-captain who served as secretary for the League. The Chamberlain, who stood by the door, was also an ex-captain. The ten other men were the current ship-masters of the League of Black Slavers.

The outside world called them pirates, plunderers, and freebooters. It was true, the League of Black Slavers were depredators and very successful at their chosen brutal profession. Their fleet, feared across the gleaming Thassa from Anango in the south to Ar of the north, numbered only eleven ships. Eleven ships that had made the maritime world and west coastal towns cringe at the mere thought of them, from generation to uncounted generation.

Black Ox strode across the floor to the circle of ten men who stood over red cushions on two-tier ovoid dais which surrounded a large dance pit sunk down two steps beneath the plane of the floor. He stood on his own dais and made eye-contact with each man, nodding in acknowledgement. They all nodded back.

With Black Ox’s arrival the circle was complete. These men, these fellow captains, were his brothers in arms. They were the men who tended the fleet and they called themselves the Sons of Thassa. And, in this, their sanctum sanctorum, they had gathered together to form a Captain’s Assembly that they might elect a new leader.

“The circle is now closed,” intoned a white-haired man to Black Ox’s immediate left. His name was Odes, the retiring leader of the League, the Fleet master. Unlike the blue and gold robes of his brothers, the Fleet master wore one of black, red brocaded, with the League emblem, the scimitar and shackles, elaborately stitched in gray on the left breast. Black denoting the color of the League, red denoting the color of their enemies’ blood, gray denoting the color of sword-steel. “Let none now interfere with the business of the League.”

Odes swept the circle with his hard gaze. “I have overseen the welfare of our fleet since before half of you here were born. I joined the fleet before many of your fathers were born. In the fleet, in our League, I have found fulfillment unimagined. I can only pity others who know not our glory, who must perforce live ordinary and mundane lives.”

The captains nodded and smiled. To a man, they felt that those not of the League had no idea of the extraordinary life its members enjoyed. They were conceited on that point.

“But, Brothers, for me those golden days have come to an end. It’s time to pass the sword to another, a younger and stronger of our kin. It is time you elect from among you one to replace me.”

There were murmurs of resistance from the assembly, although all present had known beforehand the reason for the formal gathering was Odes’ retirement.

“Won’t you reconsider, Fleet master?”

The distressed question had come from Batu, the youngest of the group. And Odes’ grandson.

“No, Captain Batu. I will not. I have riches beyond the dreams of ubars and I intend to spend it all in the coming years, on dry land. Or as dry as it ever gets in Schendi.”

He laughed and the others, excepting Batu, laughed with him.

“To the business at hand. Scribe, ready your stylus and take note. I nominate Black Ox, captain of the good ship Rage of Thassa, to step into my place.” The nomination was no more of a surprise to the captains than had been Odes’ retirement announcement. Everyone knew of the elder’s high respect for Black Ox.

“Are there any here who would challenge?” It was tradition that the Fleet master chose his successor but it was also tradition that the captains should vote on the matter. Again Odes’ falcon gaze swept the group. ”No? Then so let it be written. So let it be done.”

The older man unfastened his robe, while Black Ox pulled his own over his head. The two men exchanged garments, Black Ox fastening the robe of high office while Odes pulled his down over his head. They turned to each other and embraced, patting one another on the back. Disengaging, Odes’ lips curved into a smile as he patted his protégé on the shoulder.

“She’s yours now, Ox. See her safe to harbor.”

“I will spare a thought for nothing else. Thank you, Odes.”

The older man nodded, then turned to look at the others. “Come, boys, congratulate your new Fleet master.”

One by one the Sons of Thassa stepped up and embraced Black Ox. They made no pledge of allegiance to him, for their first, last, and only duty was to the League itself. Although Black Ox was now their legal Fleet master, he was not their ubar. He was merely a captain among captains, but entrusted with the continuation with the League. His main powers were control of the obscenely rich treasury, assigning missions to the fleet ships, and his tie-breaking vote. Still, it was a high honor to be the Fleet master and all knew Black Ox had earned the office.

After the last of the ten had walked back to his place in the circle Black Ox spoke.

“We find ourselves one captain short, brothers. I nominate my First Officer, Warh, to join our circle. Are there any here who would challenge?”

There was none. All knew Warh for the capable man he was.

“Excellent. Then so let it be written. So let it be done.” Black Ox smiled, feeling a surge of pleasure sweep through him at performing his first act as Fleet master. “The induction shall take place in the morning, with the tide. There is but one piece of business left, before we may start our feast.”

The smiles fled the faces of the captains. As celebratory as had been Black Ox’s promotion, so now was the coming affair made that much more miserable, however much necessary.

Black Ox looked beyond the circle, back toward the door. “Chamberlain, have the accused brought in.”

#

The First Officer of the fleet ship Ubar Shark, was escorted into the meeting hall by two armed seamen, the Chamberlain’s men-at-arms. His name was K’ago and he stood accused as traitor, an almost unheard of crime among the League. And to make matters worse, K’ago served on Odes’ now former ship. The discovery of his first officer’s treachery was not the reason for Odes’ decision to retirement but the discovery had hastened the event by a year.

K’ago was marched into the center of the sunken dance pit before the seamen withdrew and the meeting hall door was closed once more, with a booming thud that echoed around the walls. He stood with his back to the pit’s high pole of timwood, the wood’s suface smoothed to a satin-finish by the caress of thousands of dancer kajirae, and in antiquity had been craved with the likenesses of eleven people. Ten men and a woman, League tradition held that the faces were those of the original captains of the first League. However, none could say with authority. And why was one face female, when women were not sailors on Gor? Whatever the actual history, it was before this eleven image totem that the accused would be judged.

The blue-robed scribe got up from his place just outside the circle and handed a sheaf of papers to the Fleet master. With a fierce frown, Black Ox looked down at the man. “First Officer K’ago, of the good ship Ubar Shark, you stand accused of treason to the League of Black Slavers. What say you?”

K’ago, his chin up thrust and lip a sneer, glared back at Black Ox. The two of them had been rivals all their lives, owing to the competition between the respective slaver markets in which they’d been born. And in their youth they’d both, in a highly adversarial fashion, served under the mighty Odes. “I deny the charge,” he said in a steady voice. If he’d been a man to show his fear he wouldn’t have lasted long in the League.

“Then the charge shall be proved.” Black Ox separated a creased letter from the small bundle in his left hand and held it up with his right. “This is a coded message to parties unknown in the city of Ar, from K’ago. The broken code reads ‘Rage of Thassa Spring station off north Bazi coast’. My ship’s assignment for the coming season. The letter’s seal is the signet of K’ago as is the handwriting.”

He handed the letter to his right and it was passed around the circle. When it reached Black Ox again he handed it to the scribe, who took it down into the pit to K’ago.”

“Is that your writing, First Officer?”

“Handwriting can be forged, who among us does not know that?”

“Is that your signet seal?”

“A seal can be stolen.”

“True,” Black Ox conceded. “Yet, I note you’ve not answered either of my questions. Is that your handwriting, K’ago?”

“No.”

“Is that your signet seal?”

“Perhaps, I don’t know. I lost my signet ring some time ago.”

“When?”

“Sometime during this past southern mission.”

“How careless. Why didn’t you report the loss. A lost League signet can lead to much mischief.”

K’ago shrugged. “It slipped my mind, Fleet master.”

“An unfortunate thing to forget.”

“I see that now.”

Black Ox held up the rest of the papers in his hands. “This is the confession of a man, a peasant, named Philo. He affirmed that he took the letter from K’ago along with his ring, as proof to the message’s authenticity. He was to deliver letter and ring to a certain house in Ar. And he was given five gold tarn coins for his trouble.”

Black Ox passed on the confession. “And here is the ring.” The signet made its way around the circle.

“Had Philo performed his mission, rather than first stopping by a paga shop, we might’ve never known of this betrayal. But the man couldn’t hold his paga and began to brag of his newfound wealth. It stirred curiosity. And, well, Philo eventually wound up in our hands. He would be here this night to verify his written confession but the man could bear up under torture no better than he could handle his hot paga.”

There was brief, grim laughter in the hall at the Fleet master’s observation.

“On the matter of K’ago’s accused treason, how say you?”

“Guilty,” said the captain to his right, Benin.

And guilty said the next man, and the next, until it came around to Black Ox.

“Guilty. K’ago you have been adjudged and found guilty of the worse possible offense against the League. Your head shall be cut off, then it and your miserable body will be flung in the harbor as rank food for the poison fish.”

There would be no contrition from K’ago. “If you would have my head, Black Ox, then come and try to take it.”

Black Ox growled in response and had taken a step forward before he felt the strong hand of Odes on his shoulder.

“No, Ox. This filth doesn’t deserve an honorable death in combat. Let him be executed like the criminal he is.” K’ago’s betrayal had deeply wounded the former Fleet master.

“Yes,” K’ago called up from the pit. His tone taunting. “Now that you wear the Fleet master robes, best you learn some caution. Best not accept the Rite of Knives.”

Again Black Ox growled and shrugged away Odes’ hand. “This is not about honor,” he snarled. “Chamberlain, dueling knives. Now!”

“Yes, Fleet master,” the elderly man answered.

Black Ox began unfastening his robe, not expecting that he would’ve so quickly rid himself of it when he put it on scant minutes before. In the pit, K’ago had also stripped down to sandals and underwrap of rep cloth. Neither wanted his opponent to gain advantage by grabbing at loose clothing.

Black Ox walked down into the pit, spraying the sands with his sandaled feet, until he stood arm’s length from the traitor. K’ago licked sweat from his upper lip. The Rite of Knives was his only possible escape from the death sentence. If he could defeat Black Ox he could walk out of the meeting hall a pardoned man.