Raiders of Gor

I heard a bird some forth or fifty yards to my right; it sounded like a marsh gant, a small, horned, web-footed aquatic fowl, brad-billed and broad-winged. Marsh girls, the daughters of rence growers, sometimes hunt them with throwing sticks.

In some cities, Port Kar, for example, the long bow is almost unknown. Similarly it is not widely known even in Glorious Ar, the largest city of known Gor. It is reasonably well know in Thentis, in the Mountains of Thentis, famed for her tarn flocks, and in Ko-ro-ba, my city, the Towers of Morning. Cities vary. But generally the bow is little known. Small straight bows, of course, not the powerful long bow, are, on the other hand, reasonably common on Gor, and these are often used for hunting light game, such as the brush-maned, three-toed Qualae, the yellow-pelted, sing-horned Tabuk, and runaway slaves.

I heard another bird, another marsh gant it seemed, some fifty yards away, but this time to my left.

I was late in the afternoon, the fourteenth Gorean Ahn I would have guessed. Some swarms of insects hung in the sedge here and there but I had not been much bothered: it was late in the year, and most of the Gorean insects likely to make life miserable for men bred in, and frequented, areas in which bodies of unmoving, fresh wather were plentiful. I did see a large, harmless zarlit fly, purple, about two feet long with four translucent wings, spa

On river barges, for hundreds of pasangs, I had made my way down the Vosk, but where the mighty Vosk began to break apart and spread into its hundreds of shallow, constantly shifting cha

I noticed that one of these rence plants had, tied about it, below the tuft of stamens and narrow petals, a white cloth, re-cloth.

I paddled over to look at the cloth. I looed about myself, and was for some time quiet, not moving. Then I moved past the plant, parting the rence and passing throug.

I heard again the cry of the marsh gant, from somewhere behind me.

No one had been found who would guide me into the delta of the Vosk. The bargemen of the Vosk will not take their wide, broad-bottomed craft into the delta. The cha

Port Kar, crowded, squalid, malignant, is sometimes referred to as the Tarn of the Sea. Her name is a synonym in Gorean for cruelty and piracy. The fleets of tarn ships of Port Kar are the scourge of Thassa, beautiful, lateen-rigged galleys that ply the trade of plunder and enslavement from the Ta-Thassa Mountains of the southern hemisphere of Gor to the ice lakes of the North; and westward even beyond the terraced island of Cos and the rocky Tyros, with its labyrinths of vart caves.

I knew one in Port Kar, by name Samos, a slaver, said to be an agent of Priest-Kings.

I was in the delta of the Vosk, and making my way to the city of Port Kar, which alone of Gorean cities commonly welcomes strangers, though few but exiles, murderers, outlaws, thieves and cutthroats would care ot find their way to her canaled darknesses.

I recalled Samos, slumped in his marble chair at the Curulean in Ar, seemingly indolent, but indolent as might be the satisfied beast of prey. About his left shoulder, in the ma

I was not particularly surprised at finding a bit of rep-cloth tied on the rence plant, for the delta is inhabited. Man has not surrendered it entirely to the tharlarion, the UI and the salt leach. There are scattered, almost invisible, furtive communites of rence growers who eke out their livelihood in the delta, nominally under the surzerainty of Port Kar. The cloth I found had probably been a trail mark for some rence growers.

A kind of paper is made from rence. The plant itself has a long, thick root, about four inches thick, which lies horizontally under the surface of the water; small roots sink downward into the mud from this main root, and several "stems," as many as a dozen, rise from it, often of the length of fifteen to sixteen feet from the root; it has an excrescent, usually single floral spike.

The plant has many uses besides serving as a raw product in the manufacture of rence paper. The root, which is woody and heavy, is used for certain wooden tools and utensils, which can be carved from it; also, when dried, it makes a good fuel; from the stem the rence growers can make reed boats, sails, mats, cords and the kind of fibrous cloth; further, its pith is edible, and for the rence growers is, with fish, a staple in their diet; the pith is edible both raw and cooked; some men, lost in the delta, not knowing the pith edible, have died of starvation the the midst of what was, had they known it, an almost endless abundance of food. The pith is also used, upon occasion, as a caulking for boat seams, but tow and pitch, covered with tar or grease, are generally used. Rence paper is made by slicing the stem into thin, narrow strips; those near the center of the plant are particularyly favored; one layer of strips is placed longitudinally, and then a shorter layer is placed latitudinally across the first layer; these two surfaces are then soaked under water, which releases a gluelike substance from the fibers, melding the two surfaces into a single, rectangular sheet; these formed sheets are then hammered and dried in the sun; roughness in removed by polishing, usually with a smooth shell or a bit of kailiauk horn; the side of a tharlarion tooth may also be used in this work/ The paper is then attacked, sheet to sheet, to form rolls, usually about twenty sheets to a roll. The best paper is on the outside of the roll, always, not to practice deceit in the quality of the roll but rather to have the most durable paper on the outside, which will take the most weathering, handling and genteral wear/ Rence paper comes in various grades, about eight in all. The rence growers market their product either at the eastern or western end of the delta. Sometimes rence merchants, on narrow marsh craft rowed by slaves, enter some pasangs into the delta to negotiate the transactions, usually from the western edge, that bordering the Tamber Gulf. Rence paper is, incidentally, not the only type of writing material used on Gor. A milled linen paper is much used, large quantities of which are produced in Ar, and vellum and parchment, prepared in many cities, are also popular.