Walls of stone, five feet thick - a fortress against attack
Large tiles on floor
Long heavy tables
NO WINDOWS - only narrow slits in the thick stone, like you might fire arrows through
Huge hall with high roof, holds many men, musicians, entertainment
Torches in iron rings in walls
I sat alone in the great hall, in the darkness, in the Captain’s Chair.
The walls of stone, some five feet in thickness, formed of large blocks,
loomed about me. Before me, over the long, heavy table behind which I sat,
I could see the large tiles of the hall floor. The table was now dark, and bare.
No longer was it set with festive yellow and scarlet cloths, woven in distant
Tor: no longer did it bear the freight of plates of silver from the mines of
Tharna, nor of cunningly wrought goblets of gold from the smithies of luxurious
Turia, Ar of the south. It was long since I had tasted the fiery paga of the
Sa-Tarna fields north of the Vosk. Now, even the wines from the vineyards of
Ar seemed bitter to me.
I looked up, at the narrow apertures in the wall to my right. Through them I
could see certain of the stars of Gor, in the tarn-black sky.
The hall was dark. No longer did the several torches, bristling and tarred,
burn in the iron rings at the wall. The hall was silent. No musicians played;
no cup companions laughed and drank, lifting their goblets; on the broad,
flat tiles before me, under the torches, barefoot, collared, in scarlet silks,
bells at their wrists and ankles, there danced no slave girls.
The hall was large, and empty and silent. I sat alone.
I looked about the hall, at the great walls of stone, the long table,
the tiles, the narrow apertures through which I could glimpse the far stars,
burning in the scape of the night.
Marauders
The only light in the huge high-roofed hall was furnished by a single brazier,
whose coals, through the iron basket, now glowed redly.
Our footsteps sounded hollow on the tiles of the hall.
We had left the tarn outside on the promenade fronting on the lakelike courtyard.
Raiders