by John Norman
Abrogastes watched, with satisfaction.
He witnessed men, and others, accepting his gifts, even eagerly.
Too, he was the lord of the Drisriaks, the foremost tribe, the largest and fiercest, of the Alemanni nation. To accept gifts from him was not the same as from some minor lord.
Abrogastes called to himself, while the gifts were being distributed, the chief of the lads in the bright livery, with the switches, and spoke with him.
He then, the lad, went to the prone women, crowded together, radiated in their semicircle about and before the spear, and, with deft, significatory touches of the supple wand in his hand, brought three to their hands and knees and herded them, with a touch here and there, unobtrusively, on an arm, or flank, to a position before the dais, to the left, before the bench of Abrogastes. These were the three blondes who had, often, even on the Alaria, served as display slaves, the sort with which a barbaric court might be bedecked, as an indication of the wealth and power of a rude sovereign, one of a powerful, ruthless people among whom the complete mastery of slaves was a commonplace. At a nod from Abrogastes, a keeper chained them, the three of them, hand and foot, to a ring, it set in the side of the dais.
This business was not muchly noticed by the men at the tables, boisterous, vying, arguing, reaching out, gathering in their gifts.
“There is more than enough for all!” cried out one of the distributors of this largesse.
The leader of the display slaves, shackled with the others, looked at Abrogastes fearfully, hopefully. She pressed her lips to her manacles, looking above them, timidly, to Abrogastes.
A wave of hatred and jealousy swept through the small, exquisitely curved body of Huta, but then she put down her head in fear, in misery, and moaned.
On her own throat there was not so much as a collar.
The eyes of the hound, green, and alight with fire, that crouched to the right of Abrogastes, were upon her.
At the merest word from Abrogastes, she knew the hound would be upon her, and tear her to pieces, its muzzle and fangs awash with blood, it feeding eagerly before the dais.
Huta looked to the scales, and to the pointer, indicative of the weightier burden borne within the pan of death.
She shuddered, and pressed the right side of her cheek into the dirt, against one of the broken reeds, or rushes.
Muchly did she envy the display slaves their shackles.
It seemed, at least, they had been found worth chaining, that they would be kept.
“Behold!” called Abrogastes, rising from the bench, and gesturing expansively to the side, where, from an entrance, men filed in, bearing oblong boxes.
“What is this, milord?” called a man, a Buron, from his home world of Safa Minor.
“See!” laughed Abrogastes.
The boxes were torn open, the boards splintered by swift, prying bars.
“Aii!” cried feasters, for within there were Telnarian rifles.
Such weapons were superior to those of most border troops, many of which, given the losses of resources over more than a billion years, were reduced to primitive weaponry, suitable for little more than the ordering, and pacification, of peoples scarcely less advanced than themselves. A quarrel, an arrow, may be reused, and, indeed, many charges, and the forcings of ground, had as their main intent the recovery of just such missiles from the field, some gathering them up, others maintaining the hurdles or shield walls behind which this harvesting might take place. A cartridge, on the other hand, once expended, is gone. A gallon of fuel burned is lost. A bomb, once exploded, has done its work, its reality then vanished in the debris of its birth and death. In these times, you see, a rifle might be worth a kingdom, and an unexploited world, newly discovered, rich in minerals and arable soil, worth a star. Resources, once carelessly conceived as if they might be infinite in nature and quantity, used upon occasion even to shatter and destroy worlds, had proved, over billions of years, finite, potentially exhaustible, and many were scattered, remote, and to most intents and purposes inaccessible. Small wonder then that simple metal, which might be fashioned into blades, and wood, that gloriously renewable resource, which might be fashioned into arrows and bows, began again to appear in the mixed arsenals of a million worlds.
“Beware,” laughed Abrogastes, as men eagerly seized these precious devices, “one must learn to use them!”
“Do not unlatch that catch,” said one of the more civilized of the feasters, to a second Buron, one to his left, fumbling with the contrivance.
“They are loaded,” cautioned one of the fellows who had distributed the weapons.
“Each contains but a single charge,” said a man, inspecting a spring-actuated loading panel.
“Outside, to be distributed,” said Abrogastes, “there are a thousand charges for each weapon.” Men regarded one another, marveling. Such a weapon, with only five charges, might suffice for the governance of a city. A single charge might crash the wall of a building.
“And there are ships, and heavier armaments than these,” said Abrogastes.
“With such weaponry,” said a man, “one might challenge even the empire.”
“With such weaponry,” said Abrogastes, “we are more than a match for the empire!”
“We can attack her upon a thousand fronts!” said a man.
“Those who rule the empire,” said Abrogastes, “are soft and weak. We are hard, and strong. They are satisfied. We are lean and hungry. The empire, and everything within it, by the decree of nature, belongs to those who are strong enough to take it!”
“Yes, yes!” cried men.
The tables resounded with acclamatory pounding.
Then Abrogastes pointed to the prone women, the former ladies of the empire, by the spear.
“Huddle,” cried he, harshly, “sluts!”
Swiftly the women, terrified, rose to their knees, and, guided by the switches of the boys, crowded closely together.
“More closely, in a circle!” said Abrogastes.
And then the women, the more than fifty of them who had served at the long tables in the great hall, who were all the women in the hall other than Huta and the three display slaves, already huddled, already crowded and pressed closely together, weeping, to the jangle of ankle bells, were forced into an even smaller space, a tinier round space, one they could scarcely occupy.
“Behold the beauty of their bosoms, the narrowness of their waists, the width of their hips,” said Abrogastes. “Are they not pretty?”
“Yes,” cried out more than one man.
“And they have slave collars on their necks, and slave bells on their ankles,” said Abrogastes.
“Yes!” said men.
There was much laughter.
“What are they?” asked Abrogastes.
“Slaves!” cried men.
Abrogastes made a sign to one of the men who had brought in the rifles and he, adjusting the device, suddenly, walking swiftly about the crowded women, holding the weapon down, tore, at their very knees, in a swift, but extended torrent of fire, a close ditch about them, which, better than a yard deep, smoked, and was bright with fused stones. The women screamed, the bodies of many reddened from the heat, the knees of some scorched, and clutched one another, and drew back, the tiny bit that they could. There was a piteous jangling of bells.
Abrogastes turned to the horrified leader of the display slaves, in her chains, to his right, at the foot of the dais.
“To whom do you belong, all of you?” he asked, gesturing to her, to the other two display slaves, and, broadly, to the weeping, crowded, huddled slaves within the circle, smoking, cut by fire in the floor of the hall.
“To you, Master!” she cried.
“To whom do you belong, all of you?” he inquired again, fiercely.
“We belong to our barbarian lords, Master!” she cried.
“Is it fitting?” he asked.
“Yes, Master!” she cried.
“For what do you exist?” he asked.
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br /> “To serve our masters with instant, unquestioning obedience and total perfection!” she cried.
“Yes!” cried men.
There was pounding on the tables.
“Those of the empire,” said Abrogastes, addressing the tables, “hold us in contempt. They call us ‘dogs’!”
Men, and others, cried out in fury.
“But these,” said Abrogastes, gesturing to the women, those huddled before the spear, and the three, the display slaves, chained to his right, neglecting only the prostrate Huta, “are all high ladies of the empire!”
There was laughter.
“They call us ‘dogs,’ “said Abrogastes, “but their high ladies, as you can see, are no more than the lowest of our bitches!”
“Yes!” cried men.
“Do you think we can find uses to which to put them?” inquired Abrogastes.
“Yes!” said a man.
“Yes, Abrogastes!” cried another.
“Yes, milord!” said another.
Abrogastes then, in the purple robe, of imperial purple, trimmed with the fur of the ice bear, viewed the tables, as a huntsman, a warrior, a statesman.
“My brothers,” he said, “many of you were apprehensive, seeing the spear of oathing brought to the hall. That is understandable. It is brought here tonight only that you may remember it, and think upon it.”
“No, father!” cried Hrothgar.
“Many, too, are reluctant to accept rings, though they are accorded here, this night, only as tokens of fellowship and esteem, of hospitality and good will. Your reluctance in this matter, too, is understandable. Surely we have fought amongst ourselves so long, and quarreled so frequently, that jealousy and suspicion are only to be expected. Indeed, is not our division, and our differences, one of the mightiest weapons of the empire, and mightier even, perhaps, than her ships and cannons? What a fearsome fate it must be for her the moment we should band together as the brothers we are. Together we outnumber her by thousands. She is mighty only as we are weak, only as we are many, and not one, and one not as abandoning our chieftains or kings, not as forgoing ourselves, not one as coming to be of one tribe or people, but one as being a thousand tribes and peoples with but a single purpose, the conquest of Telnaria.”
The tables were quiet.
“It is true,” said Abrogastes, “that I have invited you here tonight that we may think upon our enemies, upon the empire, and consider whether or not we are cowards, or warriors. I, myself, have long enough prowled the perimeters of rich countries. I, and my people, and yours, have long enough been shut away from well-watered pastures and black fertile fields. I have seen new worlds before me. The future has called to me. It calls to us. I will answer. I do not know if you will answer or not. Tomorrow I will learn.”
Men looked at one another.
“Tonight,” said Abrogastes, “we have feasted. Tomorrow, at noon, when you have slept, and thought, and your minds are clear of bror, so none can accuse me of imposing upon you, of cozening you to unwise pledging while in the pleasant delirium of drink and gifting, tomorrow, outside this hall, on the summit of the mountain of Kragon, on its lightning-smitten, seared stones, I, and those who follow me, will swear upon a ring, and upon the spear, our vengeance on an empire, and our undying determination to make her ours. We will swear brotherhood, and vengeance, and war.”
“In twenty days,” said a man, “the stones will leave the sky.”
“Then let the lionships be unleashed,” said a man.
“Much planning is in order,” said Ingeld.
“Who would be the leader of this thing?” inquired Farrix, a chieftain of the Teragar, or Long-River, Borkons. The Borkons were the third largest of the tribes of the Alemanni nation. The second largest was the Dangars. There were several branches of the Borkons, the largest being the Lidanian, or Coastal, Borkons.
“Whoever is lifted upon the shields,” said Abrogastes.
“But only as lord of war,” said Farrix.
“And for a time appointed,” said another man, a high fellow of the Aratars, a people from Aratus, in the constellation of Megagon.
“We shall see!” said Hrothgar.
Two men sprang to their feet, but, in a moment, cautioned by their fellows, returned to their bench.
“I shall retire now,” said Abrogastes, “and leave you, if you wish, to your deliberations.”
“What of the sluts?” called a man.
“Ah,” said Abrogastes, “it seems I had forgotten them.”
There was a jangling of bells as the former ladies of the empire, crowded together in the small space, like an island within the encircling ditch, now naught but stripped, collared, belled slaves, trembled.
“Gamble for them,” said Abrogastes, laughing.
No sooner had he spoken than several of the men who had brought in the rings began to distribute dice among the tables. Another, with the heel of his boot, scraped a small circle, some three feet in diameter, outside of, and before, the larger, ditched circle. In another instant another of the men had reached over the ditch and seized one of the women by the hand and dragged her from her knees into the ditch and out of it, unceremoniously, and put her on her feet, in the smaller, just-scraped circle, in front of the ditched circle. He held her small wrists together, pinioned over her head, in one hand, and turned her about. Dice rattled on the boards.
“What of that one?” called a man, indicating Huta, who shuddered.
“Let the hound have her!” called another.
Those who scored the highest in the first roll of the dice rolled again, and so on, until a winner was established.
“Twenty!” called a fellow.
“Twenty-two!” cried another.
Abrogastes, standing upon the dais, seemed bemused by the gambling.
“What of the slut, Huta!” cried a man.
The first of the former ladies of the empire was soon won and was put down upon her hands and knees and hurried, by a boy’s switch, to her new master. She screamed, for it was an insectoidal creature, alien to mammals.
‘’You, quickly, to the circle!’’ cried one of the men to another of the former ladies of the empire and she, weeping, scrambled down into the ditch, and then up, out of it, and put herself in the smaller circle, and, once again, the dice danced, scattering about, on those broad, rough planks.
“Stand straight!” said a man. “Turn!”
“Do not leave the circle without permission or you die,” said another.
“Let me cut the throat of the abettor of treason, Huta,” said a man.
“No!” cried another.
The second of the former ladies of the empire, indeed, former high ladies of the empire, though perhaps we should now speak of them indiscriminately as slaves, for none, in her new condition was more than any other slave, any rural maid caught in the horseman’s noose, any fleeing, netted debtress, to be sentenced to a slave brothel, any scullery thrall, any dirty-faced guttersnipe who, rounded up by the police in the alleys of some teeming metropolis, her days of vagrant parasitism abruptly concluded, was then sold. She was won by Granicus, whose snout now was moist, and beaded with sweat, and, in an instant, she was thrust beneath his table, to be tethered there by an aide, by the neck, the leash tied to one of the supports of the table, to crouch there, fearfully, amongst gold and other possessions, at her master’s massive, leather-beribboned, clawed feet. And already Granicus scattered the dice from his mighty paw, for another woman, a brunette, on all fours, cowered within the tiny circle. And another woman was summoned forth, into the ditch, bells jangling, and then up, slipping at its side, to take a designated position, on all fours, near the circle, to be the next won.
“Huta!” cried a man.
“Huta!” cried another, howling it out.
Abrogastes seemed not to hear.
A fellow came from behind a table, bearing a double-headed war ax. “See the scale, mighty Abrogastes!” he cried. “It points to death!” He brandished his a
x over Huta, who trembled beneath its heavy, tapered edge. A blow from such an implement can cut a shield in two. “I am your cousin, noble Abrogastes,” said he. “Do not give her to the dogs! Let me have her first, piece by piece! I shall begin at the left ankle!”
“No!” cried a fellow, his sword half-drawn.
“She danced well,” said another man.
“She abetted treason!” said the fellow who had earlier asserted this charge, one which surely none in conscience would care to dispute.
“Kill her!” said another.
“Her body is not without interest,” observed one of the more civilized of the guests.
“I know markets in which she would bring a good price,” said a merchant, Cang-lau, of Obont, he who had, incidentally, in a series of masked transactions, and at considerable risks to his shipping interests, from imperial inspectors and patrols, arranged for the delivery, from the client world of Dakir, via putatively neutral Obont, of the Telnarian rifles.
“Kill her!” repeated he who had cried out before.
“I will give you a ruby for her, a Glorion ruby!” called out a man. Such rubies are the size of a man’s fist.
Huta’s heart leapt.
She had value!
“Kill her! Cut her throat!” screamed a fellow.
Another woman, in the background, the brunette, was gambled for, and won. She went to a man, to whom she hastened eagerly, on all fours. Another was then put in the small circle, and another, bells jangling, brought to the place of readiness.
“Death is too good for her!” called a fellow. “Let her be the slave she is!”
“Slavery! Slavery!” cried a man.
“Keep her as a slave!” called another.
“Put the collar on her, Abrogastes!”