"We took her without your permission," said Bran Loort.
"In this," said Thurnus, "you have committed a breach of code."
"It does not matter to me," said Bran Loort.
"Neither a plow, nor a bosk, nor a girl may one man take from another, saving with the owner's saying of it," quoted Thurnus.
"I do not care," said Bran Loort.
"What is it, Bran Loort, that seperates men from sleen and larls?" asked Thurnus.
"I do not know," said Bran Loort.
"It is the codes," said Thurnus.
"The codes are meaningless noises, taught to boys," said Bran Loort.
"The codes are the wall," said Thurnus.
"I do not understand," said Bran Loort.
"It is the codes which seperate men from sleen and larls," said Thurnus. "They are the difference. They are the wall."
{Slave Girl of Gor, page 226}
I sensed that the codes were to be invoked. What Bran Loort and his fellows had done exceeded the normal rights of custom, the leniencies and tacit permissions of a peasant community; commonly the codes are invisible; they exist not to control human life, but to make it possible. The rapes of Verr Tail and Radish, interestingly, had not counted as code breaches, though in neither case had explicit permission for their conquest had been granted by Thurnus; such permission, in such cases, was implicit in the customs of the community; it did not constitute a "taking from" but a brief use of, an "enjoyment of", without the intent to do injury to the honor of the master; "taking from", in the sense of the code is not, strictly, theft, though theft would be "taking from". "Taking from", in the sense of the codes, implies the feature of being done against the presumed will of the master, of infringing his rights, more significantly, of offending his honor. In what Bran Loort had done, insult had been intended. The Gorean peasant, like Goreans in general, has a fierce sense of honor. Bran Loort had known exactly what he had been doing.
{Slave Girl of Gor, page 228}