"John Norman - Gor 09 - Marauders of Gor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norman John)

of Ar, or his ally. It was rather that I had, as a warrior, or one once of such as caste, set
myself the task of his liberation.
I had accomplished this task. And, in the night, under the stars, I had recollected a never-
forgotten honour.
But wounds had I to show for this act, and a body heavy with pain, whose left side I could not
move.
I had recollected my honour, but it had won for me only the chair of a cripple. To be sure, carved
in wood, high on the chair, was the helmet with crest of sleen-fur, the mark of the captain, but I
could not rise from the chair.
My own body, and its weakness, held me, as chains could not.
Proud and mighty as the chair might be, it was the throne only of the maimed remains of a man
I was rich!
I gazed into the darkness of the hall.
Samos of Port Kar had purchased Talena, as a mere slave, from two panther girls, obtaining her
with ease in this manner while I had risked my life in the forest.
I laughed.
But I had recollected my honour. But little good had it done me. Was honour not a sham, a fraud,
an invention of clever men to manipulate their less wily brethren? Why had I not returned to Port
Kar and left Marlenus to his fate, to slavery and doubtless, eventually, to a slave's death,
broken and helpless, under the lashes of overseers in the quarries of Tyros?
I sat in the darkness and wondered on honour, and courage. If they were shams, I thought them
most precious shams. How else could we tell ourselves from urts and sleens? What distinguishes us
from such beasts? The ability to multiply and subtract, to tell lies, to make knives? No, I think
particularly it is the sense of honour, and the will to hold one's ground.
But I had no right to such thoughts, for I had surrendered my honour, my courage, in the delta of
the Vosk, I had behaved as might have any animal, not a man.
I could not recover my honour, but I could, and did upon one occasion, recollect it, in a stockade
at the shore of Thassa, at the edge of the northern forests.
I grew cold in the blankets. I had become petulant, bitter, petty, as an invalid, frustrated and
furious at his own weakness, does.
But when I, half paralysed and crippled, had left the shores of Thassa I had left behind me a
beacon, a mighty beacon formed from the logs of the stockade of Sarus, and it blazed behind me,
visible for more than fifty pasangs at sea.
I did not know why I had set the beacon, but I had done so.
It had burned long and fiery in the Gorean night, on the stones of the beach, and then, in the
morning it would have been ashes, and the winds and rains would have scattered them, and there
would have been little left, save the stones, the sand and the prints of the feet of sea birds,
tiny, like the thief's brand, in the sand. But it would once have burned, and that was fixed,
undeniable, a part of what had been, that it had burned; nothing could change that, not the
eternities of time, not the will of Priest-Kings, the machinations of others, the wilfulness and
hatred of men; nothing could change that it had been, that once on the beach, there, a beacon had
burned.
I wondered how men should live. In my chair, I had thought long on such matters.
I knew only that I did not know the answer to this question. Yet it is an important question, is
it not? Many wise men give wise answers to this question, and yet they do not agree among


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