Mercenaries of Gor coc-21

by John Norman

  "There was little left when we arrived," commented another.

  "Do not be misled," said Hurtha, smiling. "We do not really do much raiding. It does not make for good relations with the city dwellers."

  His remark made sense to me. The Alars, and such folk, can be aggressive and warlike in seeking their grazing grounds, but, if left alone, they are seldom practitioners of unrestricted or wholesale raiding.

  "We took the child in, and raised it," said Genserix. "We named it Boabissia, a good Alar name."

  "You are not then really of the wagons," I said to the girl. "Indeed, you are quite possibly a female of the cities." "No!" said the girl. "I am truly of the wagons! I have lived among them all my life."

  "She is not of the wagons, by blood," said a man.

  She looked at him angrily.

  "Slash my face! she cried.

  "We do not slash the faces of our females," said a man.

  "Slash mine!" she said.

  "No," said Genserix.

  "Then I shall do it myself!" she said.

  "Do not," said Genserix, sternly.

  "Very well," she said. "I shall not. I shall do as my chieftain asks." I saw that she did not wish, truly, to disfigure herself in the mode of the Alar warriors. I found that of interest. From the point of view of the men, too, of course, they did not desire this. For one thing she was not of the warriors and was thus not entitled to this badge of station; indeed, her wearing it, as she was a mere female, would be a joke to outsiders and an embarrassment to the men; it would belittle its significance for them, making it shameful and meaningless. The insignia of men, like male garments, become empty mockeries when permitted to women. This type of thing leads eventually both to the demasculinization of men and the defeminization of females, a perversion of nature disapproved of generally correctly or incorrectly, by Goreans. For another thing she was a beautiful woman and they had no desire to see her disfigured in this fashion. "Your chieftain is grateful," said Genserix, ironically.

  "Thank you, my chieftain," she said. Reddening, inclining her head. She had little alternative, it seemed, in her anger other than to pretend to accept his remark at face value. I wondered why Genserix did not strip her and have her tied under a wagon for a few days. She looked at me in fury. "I am an Alar," she said.

  Some of the warriors laughed.

  "It seems more probable to me that you are a woman of the cities," I said. "No!" she said. "No!"

  "Consider your coloring," I said, "and your shortness, and the darkness of your hair and eyes. Consider, too, the suggestion of interesting female curvatures beneath your leather and fur." Most of the Alar women are rather large, plain, cold, blond, blue-eyed women. "You remind me of many women I have seen chained naked in slave markets."

  There was much laughter from the men.

  "No!" she cried to them. "No!" she cried to me.

  "It is true," I said.

  "No!" she cried.

  There was more laughter.

  "I am an Alar!" she cried.

  "No," said more than one man.

  "Are you a man?" asked a fellow.

  "No," she said. "I am a woman!"

  "It is true," laughed a man.

  "But I am a free woman!" she cried, with a look of hatred cast at Feiqa, who shrank back, trembling, beneath her fierce gaze.

  "Lift up the ax you carry," said Genserix, "high, over your head, as though to strike one with it. Hold it near the end of the handle."

  She, standing across from us, on the other side of the fire, tried to do this. But in a moment, struggling, unable to manage the weight, she twisted her body and the ax fell. Its head struck the dirt. The warriors were not pleased with this.

  Some murmured in anger. "I cannot," she said. I myself would have had her kneel down and clean the blade with her hair. It can be a capital offense on Gor, incidentally, for a slave to so much as touch a weapon.

  "Brandish it, wield it," said Genserix to her, sternly.

  She tried again to lift the ax, and then again, lowered it, until she held it before her, as she had done before, with difficulty, with both hands, her hands separated well on the handle. "I cannot," she said.

  "Then put it down, and leave," said Genserix.

  "Yes, my chieftain," she said. She put down the ax, and then hurried away, angrily, into the darkness. I supposed that she, in her upbringing, had felt a little affinity with the Alar women. Certainly it seemed she had not cared to identify with them. Perhaps, too, as she was not an Alar by blood, they never truly accepted her. Yet it seemed she had bee, as is often the case with Alar children, raised with much permissiveness. Not identifying with the women, or being accepted by them, and perhaps coming to bitterly envy the men, their position and status, their nature and power, it seemed she may have turned toward trying to prove herself the same as them, turning then to mannish customs and garb, attempting thusly, desperately, angrily, to find some sort of place for herself among the wagons. As a result, it seemed she would be accepted by neither sex. She seemed to me confused and terribly unhappy. I did not think she knew her own identity. I do not think she knew who she was. Some of the men, perhaps, knew better than she herself did.

  "Now," said Genserix, "let us continue the contest."

  There were grunts of approval by the men.

  Once again Sorath and I squared off against one another. This time, not mocked and taunted by the female, he fought extremely well. As Hurtha had warned me earlier, Sorath well knew the ways of the ax. Now that his temper had cooled he fought with agility and precision. The reckless and sometimes irrational temper of folks like Sorath, and it was a temper not unusual among the proud Alar herders, was something that they would be well advised to guard against. Too often it proves the undoing of such folks. Hundreds of times calculated defenses and responsible tactics have proved their worth in the face of brawn and wrath. The braveries of barbarism are seldom of little avail against a rational, determined, prepared foe. But let those of the cities tremble that among the hordes there might one day arise one who can unify storms and harness lightning. I slipped to the side and, swinging the ax handle inward caught Sorath in the solar plexus, that network of nerves and ganglia high in the abdominal cavity, lying behind the stomach and in front of the upper part of the abdominal aorta. I did not strike deeply enough to injure him, to rupture or tear open his body, slashing the stomach or crushing the aortal tube, only enough to stop him, definitely. For good measure I then, with the left side of the handle, swinging it upward, and then down, brought it down on the back of his neck as he, helpfully, expectantly, grunting, doubled over. I did not strike him hard enough to break the vertebrae. He slipped to his knees, vomiting, and then, stunned, half paralyzed, fell forward. I then stood behind him, the handle grasped at the ready, near its end. From such a position one can, rather with impunity, with an unarmed handle, break the neck to the side or crush the head. Had the handle been armed, of course, one might, from such a position, sever the backbone or remove the head. Sorath was fast. I was faster.

  "Do not kill him!" said Genserix.

  "Of course not," I said. "He is one of my hosts," I stepped back from Sorath. "You fought very well," said Genserix.

  "Sorath is very good, don't you think?" asked Hurtha.

  "Yes," I said. "He is quite good."

  "Your prowess proves you well worthy to be a guest of the Alars," said Genserix. "Welcome to our camp. Welcome to the light and heat of our fire."

  "Thank you," I said, tossing aside the handle.

  "Are you still alive?" Parthanx inquired solicitously of Sorath, his friend. "Yes," reported Sorath.

  "Do not be so lazy, then" said Parthanx encouragingly. "Get up." Parthanx, like the others, seemed to have enjoyed the fight.

  "Let me help you," I said. I gave Sorath a hand, and half pulled him to his place by the fire. He looked up at me, shaking his head. "Well done," he said. "Thank you," I said. "You did splendidly yourself."

  "Thank you," he said.<
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  "Yes," said Genserix.

  "Yes," said Sorath.

  "Yes," said the others.

  "Thank you," I said. "I am grateful for your welcome. I thank you, too, for the food and drink I have received here, for the heat and light of your fire, and for your fellowship. I thank you for your hospitality. It is worthy of the best things I have heard of Alars. I would now like, if I may, in my own way, and of my own free will, as it will now be clearly understood, to do something for you, something that will help, in a small way, to express my appreciation."

  Genserix and his warriors looked at one another, puzzled.

  I turned to Feiqa. "Strip," I said.

  "Master?" she asked.

  "Must a command be repeated?" I inquired.

  "No, Master!" she cried. In an instant she was bared.

  "Stand," I said. "Lift your arms over your head." Instantly she complied. She was then very beautiful, standing thusly in the light of the fire, before the barbaric warriors of Genserix, in the Alar camp.

  "Such women," I said, "may be purchased in the cities." There were appreciative murmurs as the men drank in the fire-illuminated beauty of the naked slave. "Dance," I told Feiqa.

  "I do not know how to dance, Master," she moaned.

  "In every female there is a dancer," I said.

  "Master," she protested.

  "I know you are not trained," I said.

  "Master," she said.

  "There are many forms of dance," I said. "Music is not even necessary. It need not even be more than beautiful movement. Move before the men, and about them, Move as seductively and beautifully as you can, and as a slave, saying, crawling, kneeling, rolling, supine, prone, begging, pleading, piteous, caressing, kissing, licking, rubbing against them."

  "Do I have a choice, Master?" she asked.

  "No," I said, "absolutely not."

  "Yes, Master," she said.

  "Would you prefer your pretty flesh to be lashed from your bones?" I asked. "No, Master!" she said.

  "And as the evening progresses, and as men might desire you," I said, "you will please them, and fully." "Yes, Master," she said.

  "You are a slave, an absolute and total slave," I reminded her.

  "Yes, Master," she said.

  One of the fellows, then, began to sing, "Hei, Hei," and clap his hands. Feiqa danced.

  The men cried out with pleasure, many of them joining in the song, and keeping time with their hands. I was incredibly proud of her. How joyful it is to own females and have absolute power over them! Seldom, indeed, I imagined, did the rude herders of the Alars have such a vision of imbonded loveliness in their camp, and in their arms. Such delicious females were not allowed in their camps, I gathered. The free women did not permit them. They probably had them hidden in wagons, until they could be sold off, or killed. How beautiful Feiqa was! What incredible power she exercised, though only a helpless slave, over men! How she pleased them and made them scream with pleasure! How incredibly basic, how fundamental, how real she was! I then felt a sudden, poignant sorrow for the women of Earth. How different Feiqa was from them. How far removed delicious, exquisite Feiqa was from the motivated artifices, the lies and fabrications, the propaganda, the demeaning, sterile, unsatisfying, reductive, negative superficialities of antibiological roles, the prescriptions of an unnatural and pathological politics, the manipulative instrumentations of monsters and freaks. I wondered how many of the women of Earth wished they might find themselves in a collar, dancing naked in the firelight before warriors in an Alar camp.

  "Disgusting! Disgusting!" cried the free woman, Boabissia, in her leather and furs, having returned to the fire, and she rushed forward, a stout, thick, short, supple, single-bladed quirtlike whip in her hand. She began to lash Feiqa, who fell to her knees, howling with misery, a whipped slave. "We do not allow such as you in an Alar camp!" cried the free woman. Feiqa put her head down. Again the lash fell on her. I leaped to the free woman and tore the whip from her hand, hurling it angrily to the side. She looked at me, wildly, in fury, not believing I had dared to interfere. "What right have you to interfere?" she demanded. "The right of a man who is not pleased with your behavior, female," I said. "Female!" she cried, in fury. "Yes," I said. Her hand darted to the hilt of the dagger she wore at her belt. I regarded her evenly. She, frightened, quickly removed her hand from the hilt of the dagger, crying out in frustration, in rage. Then she lifted her fists and, with the sides of them, together, struck towards me. "Oh!" she cried, in misery, in frustration. I had caught both her small wrists. She could not begin to free them. "Oh!" she cried in misery, in protest, as, inexorably, slowly, I forced her down. Then she was kneeling before me, her wrists in my grip. I turned her about and flung her to her belly, and then knelt across her thighs. I removed her dagger from its sheath. "No!" she cried. I then, with her own dagger, cut her clothing from her body.

  "Binding fiber," I said, not even looking, just putting out my hand. Some was fetched, a length of some five feet, or so, and, in a moment, with one end of the fiber, with a few loops and a knot, her wrists crossed, her hands were secured behind her back. I had tied her tightly, utterly helplessly, as I might have a slave. "Help!" she cried out to the warriors. "Help!" But none stirred to render her assistance. I then reversed my position on her body, kneeling now facing her feet, across the small of her back. I pulled her ankles up, behind her body, at an angle of about fifty degrees, and crossed them. I then, with the free end of the binding fiber, extending back from her wrists, tied them together, tightly, fastening them to her wrists. "Please!" she cried to the warriors but none leapt to her succor. I then lifted her up, in effect kneeling her, and then bent her back, her head back to the dirt, that the warriors might assess the bow of her beauty.

  "She is pretty," said a fellow. "Yes," said another. It was true. She had a lovely figure. It had been hitherto muchly concealed from detection by the leather and furs she had worn, though even beneath them its subtle and tantalizing lineaments had been clearly suggested. "Come, see Boabissia," called a fellow, "trussed like a tarsk!" Some more fellows, and even some free women, came over to look. Boabissia now permitted to kneel upright, squirmed, fighting the fiber. She was helpless. "Feiqa will now again dance," I said. "If you wish, you may be hooded or blindfolded. She looked down, sullenly, angrily, and shook her head. "If you cry out," I said, "you will be gagged. Do you understand?" "Yes," she said.

  I looked at Boabissia's throat. About it, tied on a leather thong, was a small, punched copper disk. "What is that?" I asked, pointing to it. She did not respond. I then put her to her back, her knees drawn up, her wrists behind her, under the small of her back. I then bent over her and lifted up the disk, examining it in the firelight. She did not resist. Bound as she was, there was little she could do. Too, resistance might have earned her perfunctory, disciplinary cuffs. The punched copper disk, threaded on its thong, was not large. It was about an inch or so in diameter. On it was the letter Tau and a number. "What is this?" I asked Genserix, indicating the disk. "We do not know," he said. "It was tied about her throat when we found her, years ago, a tiny infant, wrapped in a blanket, in the wreckage of the caravan."

  "Surely you must have wondered about this?" I said to Boabissia.

  She looked away, not responding.

  "It must be a key to your identity," I said.

  She did not respond.

  I let the disk fall back, just below her neck. It, on its thong, was now all she wore, except for her bonds.

  I looked to Feiqa, still kneeling, her back bright with the memory of the free woman's attentions.

  "You may now continue to dance, Feiqa," I said.

  "Yes, Master," she said.

  The men cried out with approval, and smote their left shoulders with pleasure. In a moment Feiqa, vital and sensuous, liberated now from the fear of the free woman, and having felt the whip, in that perhaps being reminded of what might be the consequences of failing to please free persons, addressed herself once more
, eagerly and joyously, marvelously and subserviently, to the pleasures of masters. I was so aroused I was in pain. I could hardly wait to get her back to the camp of the wagoners. From time to time I glanced at Boabissia. She was on her side, trussed, watching Feiqa. In her eyes there was awe, understanding what a woman could be.

  After some Ahn, in the neighborhood of dawn, I returned to the camp of the wagoners. Feiqa walked behind me, slowly, weary, healing me, her body sore, her tiny tunic held over her left shoulder. Near the wagoners' camp I turned to face her. "Before you retire," I said, "I have business for you in my blankets. After that I will tether you for the night."

  "Yes, Master," she smiled.

  In a few moments we had come to the wagon of the fellow who had given us a ride earlier. Near the wagon, naked, chained by the neck to the back, right wheel, was the peasant girl, Tula. In the moonlight I examined her. Under her neck chain was a slave collar.

  5 We Are on the Genesian Road

  "What are you doing here?" I asked Hurtha.

  "I am coming with you," he said. "I am interested in seeing the world, and will seek my fortune."

  "You have no mount," I observed.

  "Nor do you," he observed.

  "That is true," I smiled.

  "I sold it in the camp," he said, "for some coins. It did not seem practical to bring it. There seem to be few such mounts with the wagons. Too, I do now know where we are going, nor what we will do."

  "The road I project is a difficult one," I said, "and it may be dangerous." "Splendid," he said.

  I looked at him.

  "I am easily bored," he explained.

  "Oh," I said.

  "You do not mind if I accompany you, do you?" he asked.

  "No," I said.

  "The matter is then fully settled," he announced.

  "But you must feel free to part company from me at any time," I said. I had no wish to bring him into danger.

  "If you insist," he said.

  "I fear I must," I said.

  "I accept your condition," he said.

  "Good," I said.