Witness of Gor coc-26

by John Norman

  “Probably not,” he said.

  “The prisoner died in the mountains, did he not?” I asked.

  “Undoubtedly,” he said.

  “Am I to be afraid?” I asked.

  “Curiosity is not becoming in a kajira,” he said.

  “Please, Master!” I begged.

  But he took me then by the shoulders and threw me, with a rattle of chain, to the tiles beside the divan. He rose, angrily, from the divan. I lay there then at his feet, trembling, reminded that I was a woman, a slave. “Forgive me, Master!” I begged. He drew back his foot to kick me, and I tensed, but he did not kick me. Rather he turned to one side, and, in a moment, cast me a sheet. “Thank you, Master,” I had said.

  I could hear the pounding at the door, the cries. I was sitting up, on the tiles, the sheet clutched about me. I was afraid, afraid to awaken the captain, afraid not to awaken him, afraid of what was occurrent in Treve, unknown to me, afraid of what might be the purport of that insistent pounding, those urgent cries.

  I quickly knelt beside the divan and put my hand on his leg. “Master! Master!” I said. “Master! Awaken! Please, awaken!” I shook him then by the shoulders. “Master!” I said. “The door! Someone is without!”

  He awakened suddenly, sitting upright.

  “The door, Master,” I said. I had been frightened by the quickness of his response, once awake. It was the way one might awaken in a camp, perhaps, if an alarm had been sounded.

  In a moment he had left the bed and thrown a robe about his broad shoulders.

  I could not hear the rushed conversation at the door. I knelt beside the divan, holding the sheet about me.

  In a moment he had returned to the room and hastily donned a tunic. He slung a sheathed sword about his left shoulder. When the blade is in use the sheath and belt are discarded.

  He looked down at me.

  “Master?” I asked.

  “You had best come,” he said. He unlocked the chain from my neck. I had only time to seize up a bit of silk and follow him. I ran after him, catching up with him only in the corridor. Two pit guards, I knew them both, I had served them both, were with him.

  “We came as soon as he left,” said one of the men.

  “You did well,” said the officer. Then he addressed himself, striding down the hall, to the other guard. “What of the girl?” he said.

  “He left her chained in the chamber, as you anticipated,” said the guard.

  “Fetch her,” said the officer. “The keys are in the chamber. Hurry. You know where he will be.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the man, turning about, hurrying away.

  “Master!” I cried, gasping trying to keep up.

  “Be silent,” he said.

  In a few moments we were outside the tower hurrying through the streets. It was gray, and cold, and there was a fog about. We began to ascend winding stairs, and were soon traversing high bridges. I did not look down, save at the narrow passages I trod. I am frightened on the higher bridges. We heard the first bar sound.

  40

  I knew the place. I had been here once before, on the height of this windy, lofty tower.

  It was here that I had received the state collar of Treve. It was here that the great chair had been set on the dais. It was here I had first stood before the officer of Treve. It was here I had been suitably humbled, and whipped. It was here I had learned that it was not the practice of this city to compromise with its slaves.

  Too, it was here that I had trod, hooded, a plank, one extending out, unbeknownst to me, over a terrible drop, hundreds of feet down, to jagged rocks below. I had removed the hood, and seen, to my horror, my situation. The jailer, the warden of the cliff cells, Tenrik, in whose care I had first been in this city, had come out upon the plank and brought me back to safety, before I might fall. Later, bound hand and foot, I had been carried to the wall again, that I might realize what could be done with me, that I might be cast down from that terrible height. I had been informed, too, that sleen came to the rocks below, at night, to look for bodies.

  “Hold,” said Terence, softly. He put out his hand, arresting the advance of the guard, who was to his right. I, behind them, stopped, too.

  It was dark at so early an hour, but not absolutely so. We could see a figure, a large figure, a grotesque, monstrous figure, seemingly part human, seemingly part animal, bent over, near the wall, before us and to our left. It was at the place where the plank had been run out, near the place where I, bound hand and foot, had been once held in the arms of the jailer, Tenrik, he standing on the wall itself, the winds blowing against us. Something dark lay at its feet. I supposed it to be a cloak and hood, discarded.

  The figure, as it could, was standing, just within the retaining wall. I did not know if it were praying, perhaps to the Priest-Kings, perhaps to other, stranger gods, or not. Goreans pray standing.

  Fog swirled about it, like smoke, or clouds, wind-twisted, about a dark rock.

  Perhaps it was not praying.

  Perhaps it was only offering its homage to the world, to the environing mystery, that immensity from which we derive, one which spawns us and then abandons us, the unfathomable, uncaring immensity, leaving us conscious in the loneliness, in the knowledge that our laughter and our tears are of no importance, that our sorrow and pain is, in the end, when all is said and done, meaningless, that we are a joke told by accident, a cruel but touching, infinitely precious joke, told by no one to no one.

  The officer of Treve, Terence, quietly removed the sword belt, the sheath and sword, from about his left shoulder, handing it to the guard, to his right.

  He would, I gathered, attempt to approach the figure.

  I saw nothing near the figure, but I did not think it was totally alone. I supposed that many thoughts, or memories, were with it. At such times perhaps one stands in crowds, the crowds of oneself together with one’s infancy, one’s childhood, one’s youth, one’s past, one’s present, one’s weakness, one’s strength, in the lonely, crowded, empty silence. At such times who knows what whispers to one. Too, perhaps honor, or duty, stood at its side, invisible to others.

  Suddenly the figure spun about. “do not approach,” it warned us.

  The officer of Treve stepped back.

  “Tal,” said the officer of Treve.

  “Tal,” said the figure. “Do not approach.” It seemed a strange time and place for such greetings.

  “Reports are to be made, on the depths,” said the officer of Treve.

  “They have been prepared,” said the figure. “Other dispositions, too, have been made. You will find all is in order.”

  “Come back with us,” said the officer.

  “You have had me watched,” said the figure, angrily, accusingly.

  “Come back with us,” said the officers.

  “Sir?” asked the guard, to the officer’s right.

  “No,” said the officer to him.

  “Do not approach,” warned the figure. From its tunic it drew forth its stiletto.

  “Back,” said the officer to the guard, who stepped back.

  “You, too!” said the figure.

  The officer, reluctantly, for I suspect he had planned to rush forward, stood back.

  “Leave,” said the figure.

  “No,” said the officer.

  “I would be alone,” said the figure.

  “You are not alone,” said the officer.

  “Go!” said the figure.

  “I have authorization to this surface,” said the officer.

  “Stay back!”

  The officer stopped.

  “Who is with you?” asked the figure.

  “Demetrion,” said the officer.

  “It is Janice, too, is it not?” asked the figure.

  “Yes,” said the officer.

  “Was your service satisfactory, Janice?” asked the figure.

  “It is my hope it was, Master,” I said, frightened.

  “If it was not, you must exp
ect to be severely punished, or slain,” he said.

  “Yes, Master,” I said.

  “You are standing,” he observed.

  “Forgive me, Master!” I said, falling to my knees. Had I been trained for nothing?

  “You will stand back,” said the figure to the men.

  “We are back,” the officer assured him.

  The figure then returned the stiletto to his tunic. He then stepped up, to the wall about the surface of the tower. It was there that Tenrik had once held me. I had been ordered to look down. I had seen the rocks hundreds of feet below.

  This was a place not only for the discomfiture of slaves.

  It was also a place of execution.

  From this place criminals and traitors were sometimes cast down, to the rocks below.

  It was for that reason, doubtless, that he had come here.

  “Hold!” cried the officer, Terence.

  The figure paused on the height of the wall, and turned to face us. There was no way, now, in which we could reach him before he would have time to act.

  I wondered if the officer should have come to the surface of the tower.

  Perhaps he should not have come.

  Our presence here, I feared, was cruel, and intrusive.

  “We have not yet concluded our Kaissa match,” said the officer.

  Most Gorean matches, as I understand it, consist of an odd number of games, for example eleven or twenty-one. Needless to say, the matches sometimes take days to finish. Their current match had been set at eleven games. Each had, if I had not lost count, won five games.

  “I wish you well,” said the figure.

  “Hold!” cried Terence. For the figure had turned to the outside, standing on the wall, that unlikely brick-and-mortar margin, that brink of forever.

  “I have lost a prisoner,” said the figure.

  “It is nothing,” said the officer. “So, too, have others, thousands of others!”

  “I have betrayed my trust, my post. I have betrayed my oath. That is not nothing.”

  “Come down,” said the officer.

  “I am a traitor to my word, and to the city. I have shamed the Home Stone.”

  “No,” said the officer.

  “It has been defiled.”

  “No!” protested the officer.

  “Such a stain can be cleansed only with blood.”

  The figure turned again toward the mountains.

  “Hold!” cried the officer.

  “Master!” cried a voice, that of Fina, running across the surface of the tower. Yards behind her came the guard who had been sent to fetch her.

  The pit master came down from the wall, in fury. He grasped Fina in his arms, who was weeping, who clung to him.

  The pit master turned a baleful glance upon the officer. “I left her chained!” he said, in anger.

  “That she could not follow you, of course,” said the officer of Treve. “But she has been freed.”

  “I will die with you, Master!” she wept. “We shall die together, in one another’s arms!”

  “No,” cried the pit master, in fury, thrusting her from him. She fell to the stones, and grasped him about the leg.

  He shook himself free and glared down at her. “Return to the depths, now!” he said.

  “No,” said the officer. “Do not do so!”

  “You have no right to do this!” cried the pit master.

  “I have every right,” said the officer. “You do not own her. She is the property of the state of Treve. We are not in the depths now. And my rank, I remind you, considerably exceeds yours. Who do you obey, Fina?”

  “You, Master!” she cried, defiantly.

  “Very well,” said the pit master, regarding the officer. “For the moment, you win.”

  He could of course, come again to this place sometime, unbeknownst to us, or to another. Indeed, he might thrust himself upon that slim blade concealed within his tunic.

  “Come, Master!” cried Fina, leaping up, and springing to the wall itself, where he had stood.

  “Come down!” cried the pit master, in horror. He put out his hand, but he was afraid to approach her, for fear she might leap down, or he might, inadvertently, cause her to lose her balance. “Come down, I beg you!” he wept.

  “You beg a slave?” she laughed.

  “She could certainly be beaten,” said the officer.

  “Come down!” cried the pit master!

  “Let her jump,” said the officer. “She is only a slave.”

  “She is Fina!” he wept.

  “Come up, Master,” she laughed. “Let us die together. Let us leap to the rocks below, caught one last time in one another’s arms!”

  “No!” he cried.

  “I love you!” she cried. “I will not live without you.”

  “You cannot love me,” he wept. “I am a beast, a monster, hated and shunned, so born, and so condemned to live.”

  “You will never know the beauty, the shining beauty, the truth, I see within you!” she cried.

  “I give you my word,” said the officer, “within the rights of my code, and sworn in the name of the Home Stone itself, that if you shall accomplish upon yourself this injustice, I shall see that she will be free to follow you, whether it be from this ledge, or by the cord or knife.”

  “No!” cried the pit master.

  “It is so sworn.”

  “Come, let us die together, Master,” said Fina.

  “I, not you!” he said.

  “We,” she said.

  “No!” he said.

  “Then I alone!” she said. “Do you think that I can live, having caused you to compromise your honor?”

  The pit master turned about, crying out with misery, his fists clenched.

  “Keep her in chains,” the pit master begged the officer. “Guarantee to me her life.”

  “That of a mere slave, do not be foolish.”

  “So you would set me this dilemma,” said the pit master, “that either she must die or I must lose my honor?”

  “And if she is to be the reason you cannot retain your honor, it seems that she, herself, is resolved to die.”

  “Come down,” said the pit master to Fina.

  “Master?” she asked the officer.

  “Remain where you are,” said the officer.

  “Sleen!” cried the pit master.

  “It seems we have reached an impasse,” said the officer, lightly.

  “And how is it to be resolved?” asked the pit master, in fury. I feared he might extract that stiletto from his tunic and drive it into the heart of Terence.

  “Easily,” said Terence, “by Kaissa.”

  “Kaissa?”

  “Of course.”

  “I see.”

  “Slave,” said Terence to Fina. He snapped his fingers. “Come down!”

  Fina came down from the wall.

  The pit master hurried forward, to clasp her to him, but the officer interposed himself. “No,” he said, sternly. “You do not own her. She is the property of Treve. Do not touch her” the pit master, bewildered, stepped back. Fina, too, was startled. The officer took her firmly by an arm and thrust her, as a slave, to Demetrion. He was the guard who had come first with us to the surface of the tower. He who had fetched Fina was Andar. “Bind her, hand and foot, and kneel her to the side,” said Terence to Demetrion. Then to Andar he said, “Fetch a lantern, and a board, and pieces.”

  Fina, in a moment, was kneeling to one side, her wrists tied behind her back, and fastened to her crossed, bound, ankles. She could not rise to her feet. It was a quite common tie. It is often used in training, to accustom women to kneeling before men. She had first been put on her stomach. The hands are tied behind the back first, and then the ankles tied, and brought up, behind, and fastened to the bound wrists. The woman is then put to her knees.

  Andar, a little later, brought a lantern, and the board and pieces.

  “The match is apparently of importance to you,” said t
he pit master, bitterly, sitting down, cross-legged, before the board.

  We heard the second bar sound. Tarn wire swayed overhead.

  “You understand what is involved here,” said the officer.

  “Yes,” said the pit master.

  “And you,” asked the officer of Fina.

  “I think so,” she said.

  “If you win,” said the officer to the pit master, “you may gleefully splash yourself upon the rocks at the foot of the wall, there-by bringing joy to the hearts of local wild sleen, and the slave, bound by her fear of compromising your honor, which compromise would then be in violation of our arrangements, will not seek to follow you in the path you have chosen. If I win, you will accept my concept of what is honorable in this matter, and so, too, will the slave.”

  “Agreed, for myself and for the slave,” said the pit master.

  “And no action pertinent to these matters is to be taken until the game is done?”

  “Agreed, for myself and for the slave,” said the pit master.

  “And this is sworn?”

  “It is sworn.”

  “By the Home Stone?”

  “By the Home Stone itself!” said the pit master, angrily.

  “Excellent,” said the officer.

  He then picked up the board, with the pieces on it, went to the wall, and threw the entire board and pieces out into space, over the wall.

  “What have you done!” cried the pit master, in horror, rising up.

  Fina was laughing and crying.

  “I do not feel like playing now,” said the officer. “Perhaps some other time.”

  “No, no!” cried the pit master.

  “As you may recall,” said the officer, “no action pertinent to these matters is to be taken until the game is done.”

  “Play!” demanded the pit master.

  “I think not,” said the officer.

  “You have tricked me!” cried the pit master, in fury.

  I began to cry, too. The game, I realized, would never be played.

  “Sometimes,” said the officer, “the best Kaissa is no Kaissa.”

  “It seems you have won,” said the pit master.

  “It is all of us who have won,” said the officer. “Untie her,” he said to Andar.

  Andar undid the knots which restrained Fina, and she, unbidden, leapt up and threw herself into the arms of the pit master, sobbing and laughing.