I was up, as usual, before first Tor tu Gor, a residual habit from the long distant days of my youth. Revived from the haze of sleep by having washed my hands, face, and neck in cold water I would soon be dressed and out to greet the first faint Light on the Home Stone as it blurred the mountainous skyline with an infinitely possible palette of colors. Those first colors were important, they foretold much of what was soon to be expected from the awakening day.
Solely insofar as the weather was concerned, of course.
Any human events which would arise to unfold either flower-like or briar-like to bless or to curse a given moment with their presence, were entirely unpredictable. People, it seemed to me, could easily be sorted into three distinct classifications; those with both a good education and good sense, those who possessed an abundance of one while clearly lacking the other, and those who simply had neither. All of humanities interactions, interests, and intentions could, in my opinions, be summed up and neatly divided into one of those three categories.
Colors were easily mixed, people not so much, and yet both in their cosmic variety of combinations made for interesting days.
Crossing the lawn of my home I swung wide the iron barred gate of a subterranean kennel, then taking half of a Temwood nut from a pouch within the lining of my cloak, fitting it between my thumbs and lifting it to my lips, I sounded the long sharp notes of summoning upon the age-old whistle. Listening as I waited in the darkness, I heard the soft, stealthy sounds of nimble, leathery pad paws approaching over the ice stiffened blades of frosted grass. With all the caution and confidence of primal huntresses following a game trail my girls returned dourly yet without hesitation. Into their lair they slank, maws luridly tinted with the glistening crimson opalescence of saliva and fresh blood.
They had recently eaten, and well.
A faint, grim smile twisted across my lips as I closed and secured their gated burrow. Something, or perhaps someone, somewhere would go unaccounted for today. Perhaps, in two or three passings of La Torvis, an answer would be found when their bowels moved again. The sleen digestive tract was notoriously slow and efficient, rendering out every possible calorie for their maintenance before depositing twisted clumps of unusable bits such as knots of fur, fragments of bone, or teeth, or even the occasional identifiable buckle, or broach, or ring somewhere among the bracken along the route of their passing.
Well trained sleen enriched a mans life in many ways, and it was with this thought in mind that I opened the iron-bar gated burrow of Jacksons kennel, allowing my compact and stout traveling companion to emerge. Smaller by half, yet vicious by twice as much than any of the females, he bore the continual wont of a sharp eye and firm hand. Well trained, greatly loved, and amply rewarded as he was, still his age and irascibility was evidenced by his temperament. A mild spirit did not abide in him. Nay, hesitation held him not.
No tamed and pampered pet was this. He had the inclination to use an abundance of sudden violence in situations which displeased him, and owing to his unswerving loyalty, there was simply no better companion for walking about with. I could close my eyes for a moment, or even nap if I wished, in the darkest of forests, or paga dens, with no qualms whatsoever for my safety with Jack at my heels.
Together we moved across field and stream, out from the confines of the neatly outlined farmland, and up into the still shadowy darkness of the woodland hills to greet the subtle light of the awakening day.
Jackson and I had crossed field and stream then ascended hill and descended dale in our meandering morning walk about. Not that we didn't have a place to go, rather that we simply were in no particular hurry to get there. There was still time yet and the distance to be crossed was actually a small one. We were going to the farmer's market in Boswell Pass which was not far, as the corn bird flies, from our home, but we weren't corn birds.
The intentions which initiated the outing were simple ones, first and foremost was a joyous greeting of Tor tu Gor, followed by a moment of silent meditation in that sacred light, and then a trip to see, or rather to hear, the News-Porter fulfilling his caste-work. Harron Farquharsen was something of an oddity who had fashioned himself, either by sheer luck or by guile, into somewhat of a local celebrity.
Harron Farquharsen had obtained both wide recognition and gainful employment in a field of endeavor which I was certain had made him the absolute envy of every living woman on Gor, be they free or slave regardless.
Harron Farquharsen was a professional gossip.
Being the child of Peasants on both sides of his family, Harron had never been afforded any sort of formal education, and to this day, as far as anyone knew, he could still neither read, nor write, nor count. To his credit, he possessed long, swift legs and a powerful memory both long-lived and accurate in detail. He had first put this endowment to his own profit at a young age by carrying messages and orders from household to market, from dockside to Mercantile, and later from Fort Haskins to its outposts, from rear echelon commanders to the forward lines, and back again.
This swift and unerring delivery of communications had earned him recognition and the privilege to advance in caste. Harron was the official news-carrier for the uneducated masses who, like he, could not read it for themselves.
Each day he collected the announcements of the official Criers from the town square of Fort Haskins and brought them, by memory, to us at the farmer's market of Boswell Pass and vice versa. For his service to the community he was modestly compensated by Fort Haskins, and well fed by Boswell Pass. It was commonly said in Boswell that our "news of the world came from the bowl of a spoon", meaning both that Harron expected to be fed for his work, and also the we of the Pass knew only as much as those of Haskins wished us to know.
They in turn knew only as much as we wished them to know, and thus information, and likewise disinformation, were considered by many to be a precious, yet suspicious commodity to be traded in cautiously, and at one's own peril.
Jackson and I had taken up comfortable seating, well I had taken up seating, he had taken up sprawling in a loose coil beneath the table whereupon I sat. My dangling legs were long enough that I could easily scratch the scruffy hide of his broad shoulders and thick neck with the casual swing of a booted foot if I wished. I had chosen our location primarily for the view of the crowd and the ease of hearing the News-Porter speaking, and secondarily for the comfortable distance from others that it afforded us.
I was currently overburdened with an excess of foul wind, which I concluded had resulted from the morning walk having vigorously shaken a bellyful of beans, onions, and cabbage which had been steeping in the yeast of bread, and strong ale from the previous nights supper. It was no different I surmised than shaking a fermenting bottle of warm ale.
Add to this that Jackson himself was still yet reeking of the previous rut with a pair of females in season, and that now being torn, and tired he was nonetheless irascible despite having been sated. He also, had never been a genteel one if carelessly crowded by humans to begin with, and I was certain that many a shinbone would be saved today by distancing ourselves from others.
It was the best decision for all of us despite the loss of the opportunity for caste-work among Carpenters, and Physicians who would gladly have charged for wooden legs. It's safe to say that I had chosen to grant clemency upon the olfactory senses, and locomotive abilities of the gathering of my fellow citizens.
Harron Farquharsen was drawing the customary morning crowd with his unique style of carnival barker advertising, I was watching the crowd and listening to any talk which was taking place within earshot, Jackson was grumbling quietly beneath my feet, hissing and grunting first at this, then at that, which was nothing unusual for him. The news began with a call for volunteers to dedicate a bit of time and energy for the cause of maintaining the trade route road which passed through Boswell Pass.
Potholes needed filling and compacting, drainage ditches needed cleaning, cutting, and shoveling, signs needed touch up painting, rest areas needed new latrines excavated, and well used ones filled in. As I listened, I decided that I could spare twenty or so head of verr to be herded and grazed along the roadside ditches within a dozen or so pasang in either direction of my Home Stone. I'd volunteer their services along those of a goat keeper and a slave.
I was not one to shirk what I saw as my civic duty.
The news turned then to business interests, what new business was opening, what old business was closing, which businesses were hiring, and which were for sale. Though I listened carefully for the sake of knowing, I must admit I had little interest in such things, I had enough to do to mind my own business, and rarely did I make anyone else's business my own.
Seldom did I have the time to lift my nose from the grindstone, and when I did such moments were jealously guarded, being reserved for important occasions such as hunting, or fishing, or love-making with amari. Indeed, the day and night which marked the monthly commemorations of her acquisition were unquestionably ours alone, not to be shared with others, or sullied by work, or squandered in the pursuit of profits.
The subject of the news shifted again, this time returning to a previous article of discussion, the unknown whereabouts of a Fort Haskins tax collector named Arnau Symms who had disappeared with a sack of collected taxes, some six months ago now. There was no new information, there had yet been no confirmed sightings of the man, and the only trace of his passing this way was a discarded Fort Haskins tax ledger found along the bank of the Olni river near the town of Vonda, which showed he had collected taxes in the area of the Pass a hand previous to its recovery.
Further information concerning the matter was being sought, and a substantial reward for such information was being offered. With the toe of my left boot, I scratched Jacksons ear. The authorities were wasting their time and ours, that reward would never be paid out, and Arnau Symms was not going to be located.
I knew Arnau Symms, he was a clever, greedy, and unethical man. He had for several years been taking advantage of numerous local families with a second set of ledgers, a detailed forgery of the official document, in which he recorded the actual taxes paid, and the marks of the uneducated masses who had paid them with their trust placed in his integrity as an official of Fort Haskins. The legitimate ledger with which he had been entrusted told a woefully different tale by comparison, one of deceit, of forgery, and of corruption. he had routinely short changed the coffers of Fort Haskins by lowering the amount of the taxes paid in, and forging the marks of those who had paid them.
It was not that our property taxes went up each passing year, it was simply that a balance with interest was always carried over to the next through no fault of our own, without our knowledge, and most certainly without our consent
Arnau Symms had vanished without a trace, many believed he had taken his ill-gotten gains and fled the area. Some theorized that he had relocated, changed his name, and altered his appearance. Some believed he was now inhabiting an opulent home in a tropical paradise, a far flung island haven of luxury and leisure. Others speculated that he had reached the Sardar Mountains, and there had presented lavish gifts to the Blessed Ones, shaven his head, taken their vows, and joined their order. I thought nothing of it, and readily perpetuated both scenarios whenever the subject arose.
The plain truth was that no one knew anything more than Arnau Symms was a corrupt bureaucrat who had stolen a fortune and vanished. I knew he had stolen a portion of our taxes for many consecutive years. I knew where the stolen money was hidden. He had confessed everything before his death.
As Harron Farquharsen finished delivering the news from Haskins, and began collecting the news of Boswell Pass to carry back to the Fort, I rose to my feet, stretched myself, and whistled for Jack. It was time to be off for home, there was work to do in the culling of some twenty verr for grazing along the ditches of the trade route road.
I had not killed Arnau Symms, I merely released the sleen that had.
I remember how easily local families had been enslaved by debt, and lived to see their Home Stones being bartered with cheaply, rudely used in planned gambits by men such as he, as casually as might have been the movements Players of Kiassa practiced with great skill upon one another using representatives crafted of wood and stone. "My business isn't personal, I didn't force bankruptcy on anyone, I didn't foreclose on anyone, I'm just the agent."
"I'm just the agent." What a useful excuse that phrase is. What absolute bravery one must need to attempt to use such a disgraceful deception. What soothing moral comforts such unapologetic absolutions of internal guilt must be.
My, my, my. He said "my" rather often, "my agency," "my interest in this," "my concern for you in this." He said "my" too often, or at least, once too often. He had said it to me in a discussion once when referring to a land grant, made to the Trustees of the Homes by a locally well known, greatly respected, and rightfully feared, age old free couple who had thrashed many of us younger ones in our early years. Some of us, more than once. A few of us once daily, or at least so it seemed in my recollection
Neither Ira, nor Ima quailed from the task of putting the hand, the switch, the foot, or the strap to a wild young ass, be they those of the free, or the slaves. You got, I got, we all got from them exactly what we had earned, no more and no less, be it a reward or a punishment, praise or discipline, a cookie or a beating. As we all were cautiously well aware, such things came without warning, and passed not without notice, as often as warranted, and even that decision was totally in the control of their own discretion.
He had said "my interest in this isn't personal, I'm just doing what has to be done" when discussing the amount of taxes owed on their gift of land, and opportunity, and permanence to some few other families in our community. Parcels of land with good water, good light, good soil, and modestly austere housing, regardless of its construction or composition. Land where people of all types, young and old alike, could live, and thrive as best they could among their own kind. Land that many generations of us, past, present, and future could call Home,
That sentence, "my interest in this isn't personal, I'm just doing what has to be done," had to the satisfaction of my internal ethics, reached the threshold which concluded what I considered to be the final negotiation for his life.
"Aye, nor is my own, and as am I" had been my response, as I released Jacksons harness from its tether. "I'm just the agent."
