Players of Gor

by Norman, John;

  Then, it seemed in a moment, while she cried out in misery, high tharlarion, some twenty of them, thundered suddenly about me, the earth shaking, dust rising in billows about me. I was encircled. “Hold!” cried a man. “Do not move!” Crossbows, in the hands of surrounding, shifting riders, aligned themselves upon me. A great billowing cape, like a flag, swirled behind their leader. I had seen the cape before. I had seen the man before.

  “Manacle him,” said Flaminius, he in the service of Belnar, Ubar of Brundisium.

  Men leaped to the ground. The sack of Sa-Tarna grain was dragged from my shoulders. My hands were pulled behind me. I felt them clasped in steel manacles. One end of a long chain leash was tossed to one of the men near me. I felt it locked about my neck. Flaminius looped the other end of the leash twice about the horn of his saddle. “We meet again, Brinlar,” he said, “or is it Bosk, of Port Kar?”

  “I am Bosk, of Port Kar,” I said.

  I saw several of the men look uneasily at one another.

  “He is manacled and leashed,” said Flaminius to his men. Then, again, he looked at me. “We took you as easily as a slave,” he said.

  I pulled at the manacles. I could not elude them. They were made to hold men, even warriors.

  “We saw the fat fellow of the acting troupe speak to the slave,” he said. “Later we saw her slip from the camp. It was easy to suppose that it was her intention to warn you. Then we needed only follow her, and, indeed, the naked, pretty little slut led us immediately, unerringly, to you.”

  “Forgive me, Master,” moaned Lady Telitsia.

  “It was our original intention to wait for you in the camp, surprising you there,” said Flaminius. “Obviously this worked out much better. For example, it has saved us the problem of trying to conceal the tharlarion, the presence of which might have aroused your suspicions.”

  “Doubtless it would have,” I said.

  “Please, forgive me, Master,” wept Lady Telitsia.

  “It is nothing,” I said. “Dismiss it from your mind, female slave.”

  “Master!” she wept.

  “Were you given permission to speak?” I asked.

  “No, Master,” she wept.

  “Then be silent,” I said.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  She put down her head, sobbing. She was still kneeling, of course, being in the presence of free men. I saw tears fall from her eyes, moistening the dust between her knees. I also saw some of the riders looking at her. If Flaminius did not object I was sure, before we returned to the camp, some of them would make use of her. She was, after all, only a slave.

  “How did you find me?” I asked.

  “You are now in the territory of Brundisium,” he said.

  “So?” I said.

  “We make it our business to concern ourselves with strangers within our borders,” he said. I recalled that I had heard from Boots that security, for some reason, was very tight in Brundisium. Apparently it was tighter than even he had understood. It apparently extended well beyond the walls of the city itself.

  “I would have thought,” I said, “that a troupe of actors would have aroused little suspicion.”

  “It didn’t,” he smiled, “but one of your performances was witnessed by one of our agents.”

  “I was recognized?” I asked.

  “No,” said Flaminius. “The Lady Yanina was recognized.”

  “I see,” I said. I should, of course, have followed Boots’s advice about keeping her hooded this near to Brundisium, or perhaps I should have sold her off altogether. Still, I had thought that we were still far enough from Brundisium to be safe on that score. I had not realized, and I suspected that Boots had not realized it either, the intensity or extent of the security now being maintained by Brundisium. It was probably greater now, for some reason, I suspected, than earlier, else Boots would presumably have known more of it. I wondered why its extent or degree might have been recently increased.

  “How is it that she was recognized?” I asked, irritably. “Are most free women in Brundisium so easily recognized?”

  “Hardly,” said Flaminius, “but our agent in this case, happily, was one of the men who had originally served the Lady Yanina, one who had occasionally, unbeknownst to her, a lusty fellow, spied upon her in her tent when she had unpinned her face veil.”

  I smiled. It amused me that the Lady Yanina had apparently, upon occasion, been spied upon in this fashion. How furious and indignant, how outraged and shamed, she would have been to have learned that she had been looked upon without her knowledge, looked upon surreptitiously when her face was as bared as that of a slave. To be sure, after her fall in favor, probably to the amusement of those who had been her former men, face veiling had been denied to her, at least, I assumed, until her return to Brundisium. In this way, of course, there might actually have been several fellows here and there who, theoretically, if they had had the chance, might have recognized her. It was for such a reason, if none other, that I would have kept her hooded nearer to Brundisium.

  “And it was from the Lady Yanina, of course,” said Flaminius, “that we learned of your presence with the troupe.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Our agent, now my man, reported that she looked well half naked, buckled to a target board.”

  “She does,” I agreed.

  “I know,” said Flaminius. “After she eagerly informed us of your presence with the troupe, I, curious as to the matter, had her so costumed and displayed.”

  “It must have given you pleasure to see her exhibited, limbs extended and helpless, in that fashion,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, “almost as much pleasure as it would be to see her in the collar of a slave.”

  “I think she would look well in such a collar,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Where is she now?” I asked.

  “Waiting in the camp,” he said. “It was a brilliant stroke of yours, incidentally, giving the proud Lady Yanina for a gown only a flour sack.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “She is now back in it,” he said. “She also has her wrists bound behind her back with slave thongs, and has a rope upon her neck.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I think it will amuse Belnar to see her thusly,” he said.

  “Why?” I asked. “Did she not, eagerly, inform you of my presence with the troupe?”

  “Of course,” he said. “But she is not now in high favor with Belnar.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “For many reasons,” he said. “For example, she had Bosk of Port Kar in her very grasp and let him escape. She lost important diplomatic communications, permitting herself to be tricked out of them. I even found her chained like a slave under a table near the Sardar fairgrounds. Now I find her the helpless captive of this same Bosk of Port Kar and clad only in a sack!”

  “I see,” I said.

  “She has fallen far from the favor of Belnar,” he said. “In Brundisium I am confident she will be permitted only a brevity of skirting, one suitable for slaves. Similarly I am confident she will be denied footwear and face veiling.”

  “Excellent,” I said.

  “Many times Belnar has even considered making short work of her, having done with it, simply branding her and putting her on the open market.”

  “Excellent, excellent,” I said. It seemed the climb to favor in Brundisium would be, at best, a long and difficult one for the proud Lady Yanina.

  “We shall now return to the camp,” said Flaminius, well pleased. “Thence we shall make our way to Brundisium. On the way, in order to make all haste, you will be tied, still manacled, on the back of a tharlarion. When we reach the gates, of course, both you and the Lady Yanina will be led in afoot, helpless and on tethers.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “By the way,” asked Flaminius, “what did you do with the papers you took from the Lady Yanina?”

  “They wer
e worthless,” I said. “They contained nothing but some puzzling scraps of Kaissa notation. I threw them out, with the packet itself.”

  “I am not surprised,” said Flaminius. “That is what I expected. Indeed, it is as I assured Belnar.”

  “I had hoped they would contain negotiable notes,” I said.

  “Had they done so,” laughed Flaminius, “you would doubtless not have had to throw your lot in with an itinerant troupe of impoverished players.”

  “True,” I said.

  “You were bringing grain back to your camp,” said Flaminius, looking down at the sack of grain lying in the dust.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Put it on his back,” he said to one of his men.

  The fellow lifted the sack up and, as I bent down, he put it on my back.

  “Tie it there,” said Flaminius.

  The sack was tied on my back. Flaminius then turned his tharlarion about. The chain on my neck swung in front of me, then looped up to his saddle horn.

  “Captain,” said one of Flaminius’s men to him.

  “Yes?” he said.

  The man indicated the kneeling Lady Telitsia with his head. She knelt in the dust, small among the great, clawed hind legs of the shifting tharlarion.

  “Very well,” agreed Flaminius.

  Several of the men dismounted. Two of them pulled her to her feet by the upper arms.

  “After your uses,” Flaminius informed her, “you will follow us back to the camp.”

  “Yes, Master,” she said. She was then dragged to the side of the road.

  Flaminius then urged his tharlarion slowly forward and I, his captive, afoot, on his chain, carrying the burden, followed him. Most of his men followed, too, strung out behind us. After a time the other fellows, too, caught up with us. At the crest of a hill I paused and looked back. Several hundred yards behind us, following slowly, moving in pain, awkwardly, her head down, came the slave, Lady Telitsia.

  * * * *

  I clutched the bars of the narrow cell window, looking out onto the courtyard. I stood on a table which I had dragged to the side of the wall, in order to be able to look out. Behind me, on his straw, crouched the small, narrow-shouldered, spindle-legged representative of the urt people.

  I looked from the window down into the courtyard. There, some thirty feet in width, was a shallow, iron-railed pit. This pit was encircled with several tiers of bleacherlike wooden benches. These benches were filled with colorfully garbed, screaming spectators. I squinted against the sun. The noise was loud, resounding and reverberating as it did within the walls of the courtyard. I myself did not much care for such spectacles. Some men enjoy them. Too, they provide an occasion for betting.

  “Look, look?” squeaked the creature on the straw below me. It scratched about on the straw, backwards with its feet, while looking up at me.

  I turned about and reached down, extending my hand to it. Agilely it scurried across the stone floor of the cell and leapt to the table on which I stood. Then, clinging to my arm, and boosted by my hand, it seized the bars beside me, thrusting its forearms through and about them, clinging to them, using them to support its weight.

  I then returned my attention to the courtyard below.

  The three sleen in the pit, snarling, tails lashing, their hunched shoulders scarcely a foot from the ground moved in a menacing, savage, twisting, eager circle about the center of their interest. This object, alert, every nerve seemingly tensely alive, was chained in the center of the pit.

  An attempt on my life had been made in Port Kar. That attempt had seemed tied in, somehow, with Brundisium. This speculation had been amply confirmed in my dealings with the Lady Yanina and Flaminius. It had seemed likely, further, to me, that there must then be some connection between Brundisium and either the Priest-Kings, or Kurii. Over the past weeks, for several reasons, it had come to seem more and more likely to me that it was not the Priest-Kings who had any special dealings with, or interest in, Brundisium. I was then forced to the conclusion that it must be the Kurii who were active in Brundisium, that their subversions must be in effect in that city as once in Corcyrus. Now, however, I found myself forced to abandon what had hitherto seemed a coercive hypothesis.

  There was the wild scream of a charging sleen below and its sudden, frightened squeal, and I saw it flung, half bitten apart, to the side. The two other sleen charged, too, fastening themselves like eels on the chained creature. The crowd roared. I saw blood in torrents run down the legs and arms of the attacked creature. It rolled in the scattered, bloody sand, twisting and fighting, the sleen hanging to it. I heard the chain, the screams of the crowd, the howls of the beasts.

  “Pretty! Pretty! Bet! Bet!” cried the creature next to me, clinging to the bars.

  Kurii, it now seemed clear to me, no more than Priest-Kings, held any special privileges of influence or power in Brundisium.

  The attacked creature seized the sleen clinging to its leg and, from behind, with one paw, broke its neck. It then tore the other sleen from its arm and thrust its jaws open and thrust its great clawed paw deep into the creature’s throat, down through its throat, forcing its way into its body, clawing and grasping and tore forth, up through the creature’s own mouth, part of its lungs. It then flung the creature down at its feet, threw back its head, its fangs and tongue bright with fresh blood, and howled its defiance to the hot noonday sun, to the towers of Brundisium, and the crowd.

  “Three times!” cried the creature clinging to the bars, beside me, “three times! It lives again!”

  This was the third time, apparently, the creature had survived the pit.

  “Bet! Bet! Pay me! Pay me!” cried the creature near me, clinging to the bars.

  I saw soldiers now, warily, with leveled crossbows, and with spears, approaching the creature. They threw ropes upon it. It now seemed scarcely to notice them. Its head was down. It was feeding on the bodies of one of the sleen before it.

  No, it did not seem likely to me that Kurii were in power in Brundisium.

  The creature beside me released the bars, slipping down to the table, from the surface of which it leaped to the floor. It then went back to its straw in the corner, poking about in it for scraps of food.

  I stayed at the window for a time, until, half led, half dragged, prodded, the creature below was conducted from the pit. It left, snarling, but apparently docile. It still dragged part of one of the sleen behind it.

  No, it seemed clear now that Kurii were not in power in Brundisium.

  The creature now leaving the pit, bloodied, furrowing the sand behind it, dragging part of a sleen, was a Kur.

  I found this, in its way, of course, quite disconcerting. An entire architecture of explanatory hypotheses, of judicious speculations, had collapsed. It seemed now that neither Priest-Kings nor Kurii had any special connection with Brundisium. What then could be the explanation for the attempt on my life in Port Kar, and for the obvious interest of certain parties in Brundisium in me? What, if anything, could be my importance to them? What, too, was the meaning of the messages I had intercepted? They had apparently been intended for certain parties in Ar. I understood nothing. I did not know what to think. One thing, of course, was quite clear. I was in a cell in Brundisium, at the disposition of my captors.

  I withdrew from the window, and leaped down to the floor. I looked back again at the high window; then I put the table back in the center of the cell. I put it between two benches. In such a cell, a humane one as Gorean cells went, the table and benches served a practical purpose. They helped to keep food out of the reach of urts, and, at night, could be used for sleeping.

  “Back against the wall, on your knees!” said a voice.

  The representative of the urt people and I complied. It was time to be fed.

  The first day in this captivity I had lurked near the bars, hoping to be able to get my hands on the jailer. I had, in consequence of this, not been fed that day. I obeyed promptly enough the next day. I wanted the food
. The evening of my second day in this captivity, which was the fourth following my capture, the representative of the urt people had been thrust in with me. I did not much welcome his company. He was, however, familiar with the routines of the prison.

  The jailer looked into the cell. “The table has been moved,” he said. He could tell this, I assumed, from the markings in the dust on the floor. It had not occurred to me that there might be any objection to this. If I had thought there would have been, I would have posted the representative of the urt people near the bars and, presumably warned by him in time of any approach on the part of a jailer, replaced the table carefully in its original position. I hoped this new offense, if offense it was, would not result in the withholding of food. I wanted it, what there was of it.

  The jailer put the two trays on the floor outside the bars, and, with his foot, thrust them through the low, flat opening, like a flat rectangle, at the base of the latticework of bars. He had not yet left. We could not yet approach the food. “Bosk of Port Kar,” he laughed, “kneeling and waiting for food!”

  I did not respond to him. I wanted the food. I was pleased that he had not objected to the movement of the table. Then it occurred to me that it was interesting, too, that the table was in the cell. Gorean keepers are not always that considerate of their charges. Why had we not been chained close to the wall, and forced to fight with insects and rodents for our food? Gorean prisoners are seldom pampered, either of the male or female variety. I wondered if the table was in the room for a purpose, perhaps to have permitted me to see what had occurred outside in the courtyard.

  The jailer then left.

  The representative of the urt people regarded me, narrowly, furtively, fearfully.

  I rose to my feet and fetched my food. I put it on the table, and sat down at the table, on one of the benches.

  The representative of the urt people then scurried to his food and, by one edge of the tray, with a scraping noise of metal on stone, dragged it quickly over to his straw. He ate hurriedly, watching me carefully. He feared, I suppose, that I might take his food from him. To be sure, it would not have been difficult to do, had I wished to do so.