Tribesmen of Gor (coc-1) by John Norman

Author:John Norman [Norman, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf_fantasy
Published: 1976-03-19T05:00:00+00:00

12 What Occurred in Tarna’s Kasbah; Hassan and I Decide to Take Our Leave from that Place

I rolled about, on my back, splashing in the water.

It was quite pleasant. The temperature of the water, perhaps, was a bit warm.

Also, it was perfumed. Yet I did not mind. It had been weeks since I had had a bath. I was appreciative of this hospitality in the male seraglio of the kasbah of Tarna, bandit chieftain of the Tahari.

“Hurry, Slave,” said the tall, dark-haired girl, bare-armed, in an ankle-length, flowing white garment. “The mistress will be ready for you soon.” She held four large, heavy snowy towels, each of a different absorbency. To one side another girl, clad similarly, was replacing bath oils in a rack, with which I had been rubbed prior to entering the second sunken bath. I had now rinsed them from my body, but I was not eager to leave the water. I reveled in it.

Hassan, in a brief, white-silk garment, sat cross-legged nearby.

“You do not appear too dismal,” said he to me.

“Is your mistress, Tarna, pretty?” I asked the tall dark-haired girl.

“Emerge and towel yourself,” said the girl.

“I can well use the bath,” I said to her, grinning.

“That is true,” she conceded. “Hurry!”

Four days ago, at dawn, Tarna, at the head of her men, left the Oasis of the Battle of Red Rock in flames. Only its citadel, its kasbah, had been impregnable. Its palm groves had been cut down, its gardens destroyed, four of its five public wells caved in and filled. The other well, by two many men, had been defended with too much vigor. There had been some four or five hundred raiders. When they left Red Rock their kaiila had been heavy with loot. Some forty female slaves, coffled, braceleted, had been taken. Two males, too, had been taken, myself and Hassan. As Tarna had left Red Rock, not looking back, straight in the saddle, burnoose swelling in the morning wind over the sand, I had marched beside her, stripped, wrists manacled behind my back, chained by the neck to her stirrup. Hassan, similarly secured, trudged at the stirrup of one of her lieutenants. Before the sun was high and the sands burning we reached her loot wagons, kept in the desert. There, Hassan and I, locked in slave hoods, and chained, were thrown into one of the wagons, with other loot. Even the female slaves, when fastened in their wagons, were hooded. The location of the kasbah of Tarna, bandit chieftain of the Tahari, her lair, was secret. We had reached its vicinity this morning, shortly after dawn. We, and the other prisoners, had been unhooded. Then, again, Hassan and I had been chained at stirrups. I at Tarna’s own, by her boot. “Where are we?” I had asked Hassan. The kaiila crop of a guard had struck me across the mouth. “I do not know,” had said Hassan. He, too, was struck. The female prisoners were ranged, in coffle, between two

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