Running a Girl

I pointed into the distance. "It is Turia," I said, "your city."

She looked up at me. "Is it your wish," she asked, "that I run for the city?"

She referred to a cruel sport of the young men of the wagons who sometimes take Turian slave girls to the sight of Turia's walls and then, loosening bola and thong, bid them run for the city.
Nomads of Gor       Book 4       Page 107

"The tarnsman spoke of 'running a girl'," I said. "What does that mean?"

"We were not run," she said. "It does not matter."

"I am frightened," I said, again.

"We are all frightened," she said.

Janina, to my right, stirred.

"It could mean different things," she said. "It is a capture game. There are many such. You are the quarry. You might be pursued on foot, on kaiilaback, by a tarnsman in the saddle. Ropes might be used, or nets, or a tarn's talons. In the far south, a bola is used to entangle the legs of a running girl, and then she is bound, and returned to a starting point."

"It is cruel," I said.

"Men enjoy it," she said. "In it they also hone their capture skills."

"We might as well be animals," I said.

"We are," she said.

I felt foolish. How naive had been my remark. Did I not yet realize what I now was?

"It is a sport," she said. "Sometimes they wager on such things. A good runner can be of great value to her master."

"Doubtless it could improve her price," I said, bitterly.

"Considerably," she said.

"You spoke," I said, "of honing their capture skills."

"The ideal prize," she said, "is the free woman, of an enemy city."

"They are loot," I said.
Smugglers of Gor       Book 32       Page 156