Read Online Raiders of Gor by John Norman - Free Book Online

took my hands and, with marsh vine, lashed them behind it. Then, as she had
    in the morning, she fastened my ankles to the pole, and then, again as she had
    in the morning, she bound me to it as well by the stomach and neck. Then,
    throwing away the garland of rence flowers I had worn, she replaced it with
    fresh garland.
    While she was doing this the rencers were clapping their hands in time and
    singing.
    She stood back, laughing.
    I saw, in the crowd, Ho-Hak, clapping his hands and singing, and the others, and
    he who had worn the headband formed of the pearls of the Vosk sorp, who had been
    unable to bend the bow.
    Then, suddenly, the crowd stopped clapping and singing.
    There was silence.
    Then there came a drumming sound, growing louder and louder, a man pounding on a
    hollowed drum of rence root with two sticks, and then, as suddenly as the
    singing and clapping, the drum, too, stopped.
    And then to my astonishment the rence girls, squealing and laughing, some
    protesting and being pushed and shoved, rose to their feet and entered the
    clearing in the circle.
    The young men shouted with pleasure.
    One or two of the girls, giggling, tried to slip away, fleeing, but young men,
    laughing, caught them, and hurled them into the clearing of the circle.
    The the rence girls, vital, eyes shining, breathing deeply, barefoot,
    bare-armed, many with beads worn for festival, and hammered copper bracelets and
    armlets, stood all within a circle.
    The young men shouted and clapped their hands.
    I saw that more than one fellow, handsome, strongfaced, could not take his eyes
    from Telima.
    She was, I noted, the only girl in the circle who wore an armlet of gold.
    She paid the young men, if she noticed them, no attention.
    The rence communities tend to be isolated. Young people seldom see one another,
    saving those from the same tiny community. I remember the two lines, one of
    young men, the other of girls, jeering and laughing, and crying out at one
    another in the morning.
    Then the man with the drum of hollow rence root began to drum, and one fellow
    had bits of metal, strung in a circular wire, and another a notched stick,
    played by scraping it with a flat spoon of rence root.
    It was Telima who began first to pound the woven rence mat that was the surface
    of the island with her right heel, lifting her hands, arms bent, over her head,
    her eyes closed.
    Then the other girls, too, began to join her, and at last even the shiest among
    them moved pounding, and stamping and turning about the circle. The dances of
    rence girls are, as far as I know, unique on Gor. There is some savagery in
    them, but, too, they have sometimes, perhaps paradoxically, stately aspects,
    stylized aspects, movements reminiscent of casting nets or poling, of weaving
    rence or hunting gants. But, as I watched, and the young men shouted, the
    dancers became less stylized, and became more universal ot woman, whether she be
    a drunken housewife in a suburb of a city of Earth or a jeweled slave in Port
    Kar, dances that spoke of them as women who want me, and will have them. To my
    astonishment, as the dances continued, even the shiest of the rence girls, those
    who had to have been forced to the circle, even those who had tried to flee,
    began to writhe in ecstasy, their hands lifted to the three moons of Gor.
    It is often lonely on the rence islands, and festival comes but once a year.
    The bantering of the young people in the morning, and the display of the girls
    in the evening, for in effect in the movments of the dance every woman is nude,
    have both, I expect, institutional roles to play in the life of the rence
    growers, significant roles analogous to the roles of dating, display and
    courtship in the more civilized environments of my native world, Earth.
    It marks the end of a childhood when a girl is first sent to the circle.
    Suddenly, before me, hands over her head, swaying to the music, I saw the
    dark-haired, lithe girl, she was such marvelous,