by John Norman
We could see a large, flat wagon, drawn by four huge, beautifully groomed black bosk.
On the wagon, under a fringed, silken canopy, on a curule chair, there sat a woman.
The wagon was flanked by perhaps forty warriors, with spears, twenty to a side. We could hear the bosk bells, on the harness of the bosk, quite clearly now. The retinue would pass close by. Targo had gone out, his blue and yellow robe swirling, part way to meet it.
"Kneel," said one of the guards.
We did so, as in the display chain.
A Gorean slave girl in the presence of a free man or woman always kneels, unless excused from doing so. I had even learned to kneel when addressed by the guards and, of course, always, when approached by Targo, my master. A Gorean slave, incidentally, always addresses free men as "Master," and all free women as "Mistress."
I watched the flat wagon rolling closer.
The woman sat regally on the curule chair, wrapped in resplendent, many-colored silks. Her raiment might have cost more than any three or four of us together were worth. She was, moreover, veiled.
"Do you dare look upon a free woman? asked a guard.
I not only dared, but I was eager to do so. But, nudged by his foot, as the wagon approached, I lowered my head to the grass, as did the other girls. The wagon, and the retinue, stopped only a few feet opposite us.
I did not dare to raise my head.
I suddenly then understood that I was not as she. For the first time in my life I suddenly understood, kneeling in the grass in a Gorean field, the thundering, devastating realities of social institutions. I suddenly understood, as I had not before, how on Earth my position and my wealth had created an aura about me, that made lesser people respect me and move aside when I wished to pass, that made them deferential to me, eager to please me, fearful should they fail to do so. How naturally I had carried myself differently then they, better, more arrogantly. I was better! I was their superior! But now I was taken from my world.
"Lift you head, Child," said a woman's voice.
I did so.
She was no older than I, I am sure, but she addressed me as a child. The guard's foot nudged me again. "Buy me, Mistress," I stammered.
"A barbarian," smiled the woman. "How amusing."
"I picked her up in the fields," said Targo. He was anxious that my presence on his chain not be taken as evidence of his poor judgment. He wished to assure the woman that he had had me for nothing, that he would not have purchased such an inferior girl for his chain.
I looked into her eyes. How steadily she regarded me, over her veil, her eyes amused. How beautiful she seemed. How splendid and fine! I could no longer meet her eyes.
"You may lower your head, Girl," she said, not unkindly.
Gratefully I put my head again, swiftly, to the grass.
I was furious with how I acted, how I felt, but I could not help myself. She was so magnificent. I was nothing. The other girls, too, had their heads to the grass, kneeling before the free woman. They, like I, were only slaves, stripped, their ankles chained, their throats in leather coffle, branded girls, nothing before one who was free.
I wept. I was a slave girl.
There was a rustle of bosk bells and a creak of wheels. Targo moved back, bowing deeply, and the wagon slowly moved past us. The feet of the flanking guards passed within a yard or two of us.
When the wagon, and the retinue, had passed us, Targo straightened up. He had a strange expression on his face.
He was pleased about something.
"Into the wagons," said Targo.
"Into the wagons!" called the guards.
"Who was she?" asked the grizzled, one-eyed guard.
"The Lady Rena of Lydius," said Targo, "of the Builders."
Once again I found myself, with the other girls, chained in our wagon, moving slowly across the Gorean fields toward Laura.
That night, at a stream, we stopped early to camp. In the evening, the girls, under guard, attend to various tasks. They tend the bosk, clean the wagons, draw water and gather firewood. Sometimes they are permitted to cook. Ute and I, tied together by the throat, but otherwise unimpeded, wearing our camisks, like the other girls, under a guard, went off with two buckets to gather berries. There were not many berries, and it was not easy to fill our buckets. I stole berries from Ute's bucket, and had mine filled first. We were not supposed to eat the berries, and I do not think Ute did, but I would slip them inside my mouth when the guard was not looking. If one was careful to keep the juices inside there was no telltale sign on the lips and chin. Ute was such a sweet, precious little fool.
When we returned to the camp it was near dark. I was surprised to see, glowing near our wagon, a small, hot fire banked with stones. From the fire there protruded the handles of two irons.
When we had been fed, we were allowed to sit near the wagons. We wore our camisks. Our only fetter was a length of binding fiber, fastening us together, at intervals of about a yard. It was tied about the left ankle of each girl. For some reason the girls did not talk much.
Suddenly the guards leaped to their feet, seizing their spears.
Out of the darkness came two men, warriors. Between them, face-stripped, was a woman, stumbling. Her arms, over her resplendent robes, were bound to her sides with a broad leather strap. She was thrown to the feet of Targo. I, and the other girls, crowded about, but the guards pushed us back with their spears. The woman struggled to her knees, but was not permitted to rise. Her eyes were wild. She shook her head, no. Targo then, piece by piece, from the leather pouch at his belt, handed forty-five pieces of gold to the chief of the two men. The girls cried out in amazement. It was a fantastic price. And he had not even assessed her! We realized then that she had been contracted for in advance. The two men took Targo's gold and withdrew into the darkness.
"You were foolish to hire mercenaries to guard you," said Targo.
"Please!" she cried.
I recognized her then. She was the woman with the retinue. I felt pleasure.
"Please!" wept the woman. I admitted to myself that she was beautiful. "You have an admirer," Targo told her, "a Captain of Tyros, who glimpsed you in Lydius last fall. He has contracted to buy you privately in Ar, to be taken to his pleasure gardens on Tyros. He will pay one hundred pieces of gold." Several of the girls gasped.
"Who? asked the captive, plaintively.
"You will learn when you are sold to him," said Targo. "Curiosity is not becoming in a Kajira," said Targo. "You might be beaten for it."
I remembered that the large man, on the planet Earth, had said to me this thing. I gathered that it was a Gorean saying.
The woman, distraught, shook her head.
"Think!" urged Targo. "Were you cruel to someone? Did you slight someone? Did you not grant someone the courtesy that was his due?"
The woman looked terrified.
"Strip her," said Targo.
"No! No!" she wept.
The strap was removed from her body, and her clothing cut from her. She was bound tightly over the large rear wheel of our wagon. Her right thigh, particularly, was lashed tightly to it, with several straps of binding fiber. I myself wore my brand on the left thigh.
I watched her being branded.
She screamed terribly, her head back. Then she was sobbing, her cheek pressed against the rim.
We girls crowded about her.
Her head was down on the rim.
"Lift your head, Child," I told her.
She lifted her head and gazed at me, her eyes glazed. She was naked. I wore a camisk! In fury, I struck her face. "Slave!" I screamed. "Slave!" I struck her again. A guard pulled me away. Ute went to the girl and put her arms about her shoulders. Comforting her. I was furious.
"Into the wagons," called Targo.
"Into the wagons!" repeated the guards.
The binding fiber was removed from our ankles and soon we were chained again in the wagons.
The new girl was placed in our wagon, nea
r the front. She was bound hand and foot and tied on her side, that she might not tear at her brand. A slave hood, with gag, was placed on her, that her weeping and cried might not disturb our rest.
Soon, to my interest, the guards had hitched up the bosk, and, by the light of the three moons, we were moving slowly again over the fields.
Targo did not wish to remain too long in this place.
"Tomorrow," I heard him say, "we reach Laura."
8 What Occurred North of Laura
We reached the banks of the Laurius shortly after dawn the following morning.
It was foggy, and cold. I, and the other girls, with the exception of the new girl, freshly branded, hooded and gagged, bound on her side, had crawled between the layers of canvas on which we rode in the wagon. I, and some of the other girls, lifted up the side canvas of the square-canvassed wagon and peeped out, into the early morning fog.
We could smell fish and the river.
Through the fog we could see men moving about, here and there, some low wooden huts. Several of the men must be fishermen, already returning with a first catch, who had hunted the river's surface with torches and tridents at night. Others, with nets, were moving down toward the water. We could see poles of fish hanging to the sides. There were some wagons, too, moving in the direction that ours was. I saw some men, too, carrying burdens, sacks and roped bundles of fagots. In the doorway of one of the small wooden huts I saw a slave girl, in a brief brown tunic, regarding us. Where the tunic parted, at her throat, I caught a glint of a steel collar.
Suddenly the but of a spear struck at the canvas where we were looking and we quickly put down the side wall.
I looked about at the other girls, in the early light. They were awake now. They seemed excited. Laura would be my first Gorean city. Would there be someone here who would send me home? How frustrated I was, chained in the wagon. Even the back flap of the wagon had been tied down. The canvas was damp, and stained from the dew and fog, and an early morning rain. I wanted to cry out and scream my name, and cry for help. I clenched my fists and did not do so. The wagon began to tilt forward then and I knew we were moving down the slope toward the river bank. I could also tell that the wheels were slipping in the mud, and I heard the creak of the heavy brake being thrown forward, backing the shoe against the front left wheel rim. Then, bit by bit, releasing the brake and applying it, the wagon, jolting, slipped and slid forward and downward. Then I heard pebbles beneath the wheels and the wagon was level again.
We sat there for several minutes, and then, eventually, we heard Targo haggling with a barge master for passage across the river.
The wagon then rolled forward onto a wooden pier. The bosk bellowed. The smell of the river and the fish was strong. The air was cold and damp, and fresh. "Slaves out," we heard.
The back flap of the wagon was tied up and the back gate of the wagon swung downward.
The grizzled, one-eyed guard unlocked the ankle bar, lifting it.
"Slaves out," he said.
As we slid to the back of the wagon our ankle rings were removed. Then, naked, unchained, we were herded to the river edge of the wooden pier. I was cold. I saw a sudden movement in the water. Something, with a twist of its great spine, had suddenly darted from the waters under the pier and entered the current of the Laurius. I saw the flash of a triangular, black dorsal fin.
I screamed.
Lana looked out, pointing after it. "A river shark," she cried, excitedly. Several of the girls looked after it, the fin cutting the waters and disappearing in the fog on the surface.
I huddled back from the edge of the pier, between Inge and Ute. Ute put her arms about me.
A broad, low-sided barge began to back toward the pier. It had two large steering oars, manned by bargemen. It was drawn by two gigantic, web-footed river tharlarion. There were the first tharlarion that I had ever seen. They frightened me. They were scaled, vast and long-necked. Yet in the water it seemed, for all their bulk, they moved delicately. One dipped its head under the surface and, moments later, the head emerged, dripping, the eyes blinking, a silverish fish struggling in the small, triangular-toothed jaws. It engorged the fish, and turned its small head, eyes now unblinking, to regard us. They were harnessed to the broad barge. They were controlled by bargemen, with a long whipping stick, who was ensconced in a leather basket, part of the harness, slung between the two animals. He would also shout at them, commands, interspersed with florid Gorean profanity, and, slowly, not undelicately, they responded to his cries. The barge grated against the pier.
The cost of transporting a free person across the Laurius was a silver tarsk. The cost of transporting an animal, however, was only a copper tarn disk. I realized, with a start, that that was what I would cost. Targo was charged twenty one copper tarn disks for myself, the other girls, the new girl, and his four bosk. He had sold four girls before reaching the banks of the Laurius. The bosk were disengaged from the wagons and tied forward on the barge. Also forward on the barge was a slave cage, and two guards, with the sides of their spears, herded us onto the barge, across its planking and into the cage. Behind us I heard one of the bargemen slam the heavy iron door and slide the heavy iron bolt into place. I looked back. He snapped shut a heavy padlock. We were caged. I held the bars, and looked across the river to Laura. Behind me I could hear the two wagons being rolled onto the barge and then, with chains, being fastened in place. They were mounted on large circles of wood, which would rotate. Thus the wagon may be brought forward onto the barge and, when the circle is rotated, be removed the same way. The fog had begun to lift and the surface of the river, broad, slow-moving, glistened here and there in patches. A few dozen yards to my right a fish leaped out of the water and disappeared again, leaving behind him bright, glistening, spreading circles. I heard the cry of two gulls overhead.
The bargemen in the leather basket shouted out and slapped the two tharlarion on the neck with the whipping stick.
There must be someone in Laura who could return me to the United States, or who could put me in touch with those who could!
There were other barges on the river, some moving across the river, others coming toward Laura, others departing. Those departing used only the current. Those approaching were drawn by land tharlarion, plodding on log roads along the edges of the river. The land tharlarion can swim barges across the river, but he is not as efficient as the vast river tharlarion. Both sides of the river are used to approach Laura, though the northern shore is favored. Unharnessed tharlarion, returning to Lydius at the mouth of the Laurius, generally follow the southern shore road, which is not as much used by towing tharlarion as the northern.
On these barges, moving upriver, I could see many crates and boxes, which would contain such goods, rough goods, as metal, and tools and cloth. Moving downstream I could see other barges, moving the goods of the interior downriver, such objects as planking, barrels of fish, barrels of salt, loads of stone, and bales of fur. On some of the barges moving upstream I saw empty slave cages, not unlike the one in which I was secured. I saw only one slave cage on a barge moving downstream. It contained four or five nude male slaves. They seemed dejected, huddled in their cage. Strangely, a broad swath had been shaven lengthwise on their head. Lana saw this and shrieked out, hooting at them across the river. The men did not even look at us, moving slowly across the current toward Laura.
I looked at Ute.
"That means they are men who were taken by women," said Ute. "See," she said, pointing up to the hills and forests north of Laura. "Those are the great forests. No one knows how far they extend to the east, and they go north as far as Torvaldsland. In them there are the forest people, but also many bands of outlaws, some of women and some of men."
"Women?" I asked.
"Some call them forest girls," said Ute. "Other call them the panther girls, for they dress themselves in the teeth and skins of forest panthers, which they slay with their spears and bows."
I looked at her.
"They live in the forest without men," she said, "saving those they enslave, and then sell, when tiring of them. They shave the heads of their male slaves in that fashion to humiliate them. And that, too, is the way they sell them, that all the world may know that they fell slave to females, who then sold them." "Who are these women?" I asked. "Where do they come from?"
"Some were doubtless once slaves," said Ute. "Others were once free women. Perhaps they did not care for matches arranged by their parents. Perhaps they did not care for the ways of their cities with respect to women. Who knows? In many cities a free woman may not even leave her dwelling, without the permission of a male guardian or member of her family." Ute smiled up at me. "In many cities a slave girl is more free to come and go, and be happy, then a free woman."
I looked out through the bars. I could now see, fairly clearly, the wooden buildings of Laura. The water was wet and glistening on the backs of the two tharlarions drawing the barge.
"Do not be sad and miserable, El-in-or," said Ute. "When you wear a collar and have a master, you will be more happy."
I glared at her. "I will never wear a collar and have a master," I hissed at her.
Ute smiled.
"You want a collar and a master," she said.
Poor stupid Ute! I would be free! I would return to Earth! I would be rich again, and powerful! I would hire servants! I would have another Maserati! I restrained myself. "Were you ever happy with a master?" I asked, acidly. "Oh, yes!" said Ute, happily. Her eyes shone.
I looked at her, disgustedly. "What happened?" I asked.
She looked down. "I tried to bend him to my will," she said. "He sold me." I looked away, out through the bars. The fog had now dispelled. The morning sun was bright on the surface of the river.
"In every woman," said Ute, "there is a Free Companion and a slave girl. The Free Companion seeks for her companion and the slave girl seeks her master." "That is absurd," I said.
"Are you not a female?" asked Ute.
"Of course," I said.