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Musicians of Gor-4; Caste-Instruments
Topic Started: Oct 31 2010, 10:57 PM (259 Views)
Julalina

Hunters of Gor

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The music of the musicians was quite good. I reached to my pouch, to take from it a golden tarn and throw it to them.

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We heard the beating of a drum and the playing of flutes.
"What is going on?" I asked a fellow, of the metal workers.

"It is a judicial enslavement," he said.

With Rim and Thurnock, moving in the crowd, I craned for a look.

I saw first the girl, stumbling. She was already stripped. Her hands were tied behind her back. Something, pushing her from behind, had been fastened on her neck. Behind her came a flat-topped wagon, of some four feet in height. It was moved by eight tunicked, collared slave girls, two to each wheel, pushing at the wheels. It was guided by a man walking behind it, by means of a lever extending back, under the wagon, from the front axle. Flanking the wagon, on both sides, were musicians, with their drums and flutes. Behind the wagon, in the white robes, trimmed with gold and purple, of merchant magistrates, came five men. I recognized them as judges.

A pole extended from the front of the wagon, some eight or nine feet. There was, at its termination, a semicircular leather cushion, with a short chain. The girl’s neck had been forced back against the cushion, and then the chain had been fastened, securing her, standing, in place. As the wagon moved forward, she was, thus, forced to walk before it. The pole, projecting out from the wagon, isolated her, keeping her from other human beings.

The music became louder.

I suddenly recognized the girl. It was she who had cut my purse earlier in the day, the sensuous little wench, whose ear had been notched. I gather that she had not had such good fortune later in the day. I well knew what the punishment was for a Gorean female, following her second conviction for theft.

On the flat-topped wagon, fastened to one side on a metal plate, already white with heat, was a brazier, from which protruded the handles of two irons. Also mounted on the wagon was a branding rack, of the sort popular in Tyros. It was, I conjectured, another instance of the cultural minglings which characterized the port of Lydius.

The wagon stopped on the broad street, before the wharves, where the crowd could gather about.

A judge climbed, on wooden stairs at the back of the wagon, to its surface. The other judges stood below him, on the street.
...
The judges, I noted, had left. The musicians, those who had played the drums and flutes, escorting the judges and the prisoner, had also left.

The slave girls who had drawn the wagon, stood about, watching the crowd.

"Twenty-two copper pieces," called a metal worker.



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Players, incidentally, are free to travel where they wish on the surface of Gor, no matter what might be their city. By custom, they, like musicians, and like singers, there are few courts at which they are not welcome.

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He would be branded, and taken to the coast as slave, for transportation to Tyros, island of his enemies. He would march in their triumph, branded, naked, chained to the back of a tharlarion wagon, amid blossoms cast by white-silk maidens dancing beside him. There would be jeering throngs. Then, with music and ceremony, he would be presented before them as he had marched, naked and in the chains of a slave, Sarus, leader of the men of Tyros in the forest, his captor, would them give him to the council. He would then be pronounced, by the council, slave of Tyros.. he might then be given a name more fitting a slave then Marlenus. He would then be disposed of as they saw fit. It would be a fit end for Marlenus, Ubar of Ar.

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Marauders of Gor

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The litany and responses of the congregation were now completed and the initiates, some twenty within the rail, began to sing in archaic Gorean. I could make out little of the wording. There was an accompaniment by sistrums. Portions of the hymn were taken up by four delicate boys standing outside the white rail on a raised platform. Their heads were shaved and they wore robes resembling those of the initiates. Choirs of such boys often sang in the great temples. They were young male slaves, purchased by initiates, castrated by civil authorities and, in the monasteries, trained in song. I supposed, to one versed in music, their soprano voices were very beautiful, Here in the far north, of course, in Kassau, to have any such boys, properly trained in the archaic hymns, indicated some wealth. I did not think such singers existed even in Lydius. The High Initiate of Kassau obviously was a man of expensive tastes.

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We had fed well in the hall of Svein Blue Tooth. During the meal, for Svein was a rich man, there had been acrobats, and jugglers and minstrels. There had been much laughter when one of the acrobats had fallen into the long fire, to leap scrambling from it, rolling in the dirt. Two other men, to settle a grievance, had had a tug of war, a bosk hide stretched between them, across the long fire. When one had been pulled into the fire the other had thrown the hide over him and stomped upon him. Before the fellow in the fire could free himself he had been much burned. This elicited much laughter from the tables. The jugglers had a difficult time, too, for their eyes on the cups and plates they were juggling, they were not infrequently tripped, to the hilarity of the crowd. More than one minstrel, too, was driven from the hall, the target of barrages of bones and plates.
The Forkbeard was, at one point, so furious at the ineptness of the musicians, that he informed me of his own intention to regale the tables with song. He was extremely proud of his singing voice. I prevailed upon him to desist. "You are a guest," I told him, "it would not be seemly for you, by your talents, to shame the entertainers, and thereby perhaps reflect upon the honor of your host, who doubtless has provided the best he can." "True," admitted the Forkbeard. I breathed more easily. Had Ivar Forkbeard broken into song I would have given little for our chances.

Male thralls turned the spits over the long fire; female thralls, bond-maids, served the tables. The girls, though collared in the manner of Torvaldsland, and serving men, were fully clothed. Their kirtles of white wool, smudged and stained with grease, fell to their ankles; they hurried about; they were barefoot; their arms, too, were bare; their hair was tied with strings behind their heads, to keep it free from sparks; their faces were, on the whole, dirty, smudged with dirt and grease; they were worked hard; Bera, I noted, kept much of an eye upon them; one girl, seized by a warrior, her waist held, his other hand sliding upward from her ankle beneath the single garment permitted her, the long, stained woolen kirtle, making her cry out with pleasure, dared to thrust her lips eagerly, furtively, to his; but she was seen by Bera; orders were given; by male thralls she was bound and, weeping, thrust to the kitchen, there to be stripped and beat­en; I presumed that if Bera were not present the feast might have taken a different turn; her frigid, cold presence was, doubtless, not much welcomed by the men. But she was the woman of Svein Blue Tooth. I supposed, in time, normally, she would retire, doubtless taking Svein Blue Tooth with her. It would be then that the men might thrust back the tables and hand the bond-maids about. No Jarl I knew can hold men in his hall unless there are ample women for them. I felt sorry for Svein Blue Tooth. This night, how­ever, it seemed Bera had no intention of retiring early. I suspected this might have accounted somewhat for the ugliness of the men with the entertainers, not that the men of Torvaldsland, under any circumstances, constitute an easily pleased audience. Generally only Kaissa and the songs of skalds can hold their attention for long hours, that and stories told at the tables.

After the entertainers had been driven from the hall and much food had been eaten, Svein Blue Tooth, who had showed much patience, said to Ivar Forkbeard, "It is my understanding that you believe yourself to have that where­with your deed’s wergild might be met.



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