by John Norman
I rubbed tarsk blood on the palings. Behind me I could hear, yards away, a rustling.
"We will wait for you in the jungle," said the leader of the little men.
"Very well," I said.
The rustling was now nearer. Those inside the stockade, given their music and dancing, would not hear it. I stepped back. I saw the column, like a narrow black curtain, dark in the moonlight, ascend the palings.
I waited.
Inside the stockade, given the feast of the village, the column would widen, spreading to cover in its crowded millions every square inch of earth, scouring each stick, each piece of straw, hunting for each drop of grease, for each flake of flesh, even if it be no more than what might adhere to the shed hair of a hut urt.
When I heard the first scream I hurled my rope to the top of the stockade, catching one of the palings in its noose.
I heard a man cry out with pain.
I scrambled over the stockade wall. A woman, not even seeming to see me, crying out with pain, fled past me. She held a child in her arms.
There was now a horrified shouting in the camp. I saw torches being thrust to the ground. Men were irrationally thrusting at the ground with spears. Others tore palm leaves from the roofs of huts, striking about them.
I hoped there were no tethered animals in the camp. Between two huts I saw a man rolling on the ground in frenzied pain.
I felt a sharp painful bite at my foot. More ants poured over the palings. Now, near the rear wall and spreading toward the center of the village, it seemed there was a growing, lengthening, rustling, living carpet of insects. I slapped my arm and ran toward the hut in which, originally, our party had been housed in this village. With my foot I broke through the sticks at its back.
"Tarl!" cried Kisu, bound. I slashed his bonds. I freed, too, Ayari, and Alice and Tende.
Men and women, and children, ran past the doorway of the hut.
There was much screaming.
"Ants!" cried Ayari.
Alice cried out with pain.
We could hear them on the underside of the thatched roof. One fell from the roof and I brushed it from my shoulder.
Tende screamed, suddenly, bitten.
"Come this way," I told them. "Move with swiftness. Do not hesitate!"
We struck aside more sticks from the rear of the hut and emerged into the rustling darkness behind it.
People were fleeing the village. The stockade gate had been flung open. One of the huts was burning.
"Wait, Kisu!" I cried.
Alice cried out with misery.
Kisu, like a demented man, ran toward the great campfire in the center of the village. There, in the midst of people who did not even seem to notice him, he wildly overturned two great kettles of boiling water. Villagers screamed, scalded. The water sank into the earth. Kisu's legs were covered with ants. He buffeted a man and seized a spear from him.
"Kisu!" I cried. "Come back!" I then ran after him. A domestic tarsk ran past, squealing.
Kisu suddenly seized a man and hurled him about, striking him repeatedly with the butt of his spear, beating him as though he might be an animal. He then kicked him and drove him against the fence. It was the chieftain of the Mamba people. He drove the butt of the spear into the man's face, breaking his teeth loose. Then he thrust the blade of his spear into his belly and threw him on his face beside the wall. Again and again Kisu, as though beside himself with rage, drove the spear blade down into the man's legs until the tendons behind the knees were severed. He then, almost black with ants himself, shrieking, bit from the man's arm a mouthful of flesh which he then spat out. The chief, bleeding, cried out with misery. He lifted his hand to Kisu. Kisu turned about then and left him by the wall. "Hurry, Kisu!" I cried. "Hurry!" He then followed me. We looked back once. The chieftain of the Mamba people rolled screaming at the wall, and then, scratching and screaming, tried to drag himself toward the gate. The villagers, however, in their departure, had closed it, hoping thereby to contain the ants.
48
We Acquire Three New Members for Our Party, Two of Whom are Slave Girls
I kicked her. "I will take this one," I said.
The leader of the small people then untied the ankles of the blond girl and unbound the fastening that held her, by her vine collar, to the loop tied about the log.
"Stand up," he told her. She stood up. She still wore her gag. It had been removed only to feed and water her.
The leader of the talunas stood before me, a vine collar on her throat, her hands tied behind her back.
"Put your head down," I told her. She lowered her head.
I then went to the white male, who had been the captive of the talunas, released by the small people from his prison hut before they burned the taluna village.
He knelt in the clearing, in the chains of the talunas, shackles on his ankles and wrists, connected to a common chain depending from a heavy iron collar.
"You were with Shaba," I said.
"Yes," he said, "an oarsman."
"Do I not know you?" I asked.
"Yes," said he. "I am Turgus, who was of Port Kar. It was because of you I was banished from the city."
"The fault," I smiled, "seems rather yours, for it seems it was your design to do robbery upon me."
It had been he, with his confederate, Sasi, who had attempted to attack me in Port Kar, along the side of the canal leading to the pier of the Red Urt.
He shrugged. "I did not know you were of the Warriors," he said.
"How came you upon the river?" I asked.
"When banished from Port Kar," he said, "I must leave the city before sundown. I took passage on a ship to Bazi, as an oarsman. From Bazi I went to Schendi. In Schendi I was contacted by an agent of Shaba, who was secretly recruiting oarsmen for a venture in the interior. The pay promised to be good. I joined his expedition."
"Where now is Shaba?" I asked.
"Doubtless, by now," said he, "he had been destroyed. Our ships were subjected to almost constant attack and ambush. There were accidents, a wreck, and several capsizings. We lost supplies. We were attacked from the jungles. There was sickness."
"Shaba did not turn back?" I asked.
"He is dauntless," said the man. "He is a great leader."
I nodded. It was a judgment in which it was necessary to concur.
"How came you to be separated from him?" I asked.
"Shaba, lying ill in a camp," he said, "gave permission that all who wished to leave might be free to do so."
"You left?" I said.
"Of course," he said. "It was madness to continue further on the river. I, and others, making rafts, set out to return to Ngao and Ushindi."
"Yes?" I said.
"We were attacked the first night," he said. "All in my party were killed save myself, who escaped. I wandered westward, paralleling the river." He cast a glance at the talunas, trussed kneeling by the log, their heads down, fastened to it, their necks helpless to the blow of the panga, should it descend. "I fell to these women," he said. He lifted his chained wrists. "They made me their work slave," he said.
"Surely they forced you to serve their pleasure, as well," I said.
"Sometimes they would beat me and mount me," he said.
"Unchain him. He is a male," I said.
Ayari, with a key taken from a pouch found in the hut of the taluna leader, unlocked the chains of Turgus, who had been from Port Kar.
"You are freeing me?" he asked.
"Yes," I said, "you are free to go."
"I would choose to remain," he said.
"Fight," I told him.
"What?" he asked.
"Strike at me," I said.
"But you have freed me," he said.
"Strike," I told him.
He struck out at me and I blocked the blow and, striking him in the stomach and then across the side of the face, sent him grunting and sprawling to the debris of the jungle floor.
He sprang to his feet, angrily, a
nd I struck him down again. He was strong. Four more times he rose to do combat, but then he could not again climb to his feet. He tried to do so, but fell back.
I then pulled him to his feet. "It is our intention to go upriver," I told him.
"That is madness," he said.
"You are free to go," I told him.
"I choose to remain," he said.
"Kisu and I," I said, indicating the former Mfalme of Ukungu, "are before you. You will take your orders from us. You will do what we tell you, and well."
Kisu lifted a spear, and shook it.
Turgus rubbed his jaw, and grinned. "You are before me, both of you," he said. "Have no fear. I will take my orders, and well."
"Insubordination," I said, "will be punished with death."
"I understand," said Turgus.
"We are not gentlemen like Shaba," I said.
Turgus smiled. "On the river," said he, "Shaba is not a gentleman either." On the river, he knew, and all knew, there must be strict discipline.
"We now well understand one another, do we not?" I asked.
"That we do," said he, "—Captain."
"Examine these women," I said, indicating the line of kneeling, trussed talunas. "Which among them pleases you most?"
"That one," said he, indicating the slender-legged, dark-haired girl who had been, as we had determined, second in command among the talunas. There was a menace in his voice.
"Perhaps you remember her well from your enslavement?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. "I do well remember her."
"She is yours," I said.
The girl began to involuntarily shudder. "No," she begged, "please, do not give me to him—to anyone, but not to him!—not to him!"
I gathered that she had not treated him well.
"You are his," I told her.
"He will kill me," she cried.
"If he wishes," I said.
"Please do not kill me," she cried to Turgus. "I will try to please you fully, totally, and in all ways!"
The leader of the talunas suddenly uttered an abrupt, muffled cry of rage, of astonishment, of indignation. Well might she have cried out in vehement protest and contempt had she been able to do so, had she not been silenced by a man's device, a gag of Gor. She looked with denunciatory, accusative fury upon the dark-haired girl. Her eyes burned with hatred. Her naked body, in its bonds, squirmed with anger. I thought, idly, it might feel well in my arms. Had she been free and armed with a quirt or lash I did not doubt but what she would have fallen fiercely and implacably upon her helpless, frightened, dark-haired, lovely lieutenant.
"Put your head down," I snapped.
Swiftly she lowered her head.
Turgus did not yet speak.
"I will be the most loving and lowly a slave a man could ask," wept the dark-haired girl, "submitted well and wholly, piteously and with perfection, submitted as only a female slave can be submitted. Please, please, let me try to earn my life!"
There were cries of consternation and astonishment, and rage, from the kneeling, tethered talunas at the tree, their heads down. "Slut! Slut!" they cried. But instantly several of the small men leaped forward and threw the hair of more than one of the prisoners forward over the trunk of the tree, and laid the edge of the rusty pangas at their necks. A blow from such a tool would swiftly decapitate a beauty. The talunas then knelt at the fallen log, tied to it by the neck, in absolute silence, moving not a muscle. They knew themselves at the absolute mercy of the small creatures that for so long had elicited naught but their contempt. Too they had little doubt but what their tiny captors, without a second thought, would use the pangas upon them. And in this surmise, I conjecture, they were not at all unjustified.
Turgus untied the ankles of the dark-haired girl and freed her vine collar from the loop on the trunk of the tree. He threw her to her feet and pushed her head down, that it would express a proper attitude of submission. She did not try to raise it. She then stood there, head down, trembling, her hands tied behind her, beside the blond girl, the leader of the talunas.
I took two pairs of slave bracelets from the loot of the taluna camp. Girls such as talunas keep such things about in case slave girls should fall into their hands. They are extremely cruel to slave girls, whom they regard as having betrayed their sex by surrendering as slaves to men. Actually, of course, it seems likely that their hatred of slave girls, which tends to be unreasoning and vicious, is due less to lofty sentiments than to their own intense jealousy of the joy and fulfillment of their embonded sisters. The joyful slave girl, obedient to her master's wishes, is an affront and, more frighteningly, an unanswerable and dreadful threat to their most cherished illusions. Perhaps they wish to be themselves slaves. Why else should they hate them so?
I slipped the straps on the wrists of the blond girl a bit higher on her wrists. I then, below the straps, snapped her wrists into one of the pairs of slave bracelets from the loot of the taluna camp. I then untied the straps which had, hitherto, confined her wrists. Her hands, then, were still fastened behind her, but now in slave bracelets.
I loosened the gag from the mouth of the blond girl and let it fall, its wadding looped about it, before her throat.
It seemed she might want to speak, perhaps in anger, or protest, but then she turned suddenly away, and bent over, in misery. She threw up on the jungle floor. The wadding smelled. She threw back her head, gasping for air.
It is not pleasant to wear a Gorean gag. Women will do much to avoid it. A woman who might be tempted to be recalcitrant can often be brought quickly to heel by so little as a gag, or blindfold, or both.
I cleaned her mouth with a handful of leaves.
She looked at me, almost gratefully.
Tears ran down her cheeks.
Women are so deliciously emotional.
A free woman can use her tears to control a man. A master, on the other hand, can bring the slave to tears, easily, if he wishes, and by them assist in her discipline and control. A slave in tears fears she may have been found displeasing, and she is then fearfully desperate to redouble her efforts to please. Tears in a free woman can be her weapon; tears in the eyes of a slave can be another chain, another bond, linking her the more helplessly to the master. A tearful slave is docile and pliant, and piteously hopeful for the least touch of the master, to which with uncontrollable gratitude she cannot help but respond lengthily, spasmodically.
The major inducement to submission in a woman is nothing so blunt or obvious as chains and whips, or gags, or blindfolds, or stocks, or such. It is the caress of the master, understood by the woman, who knows herself to be a slave, of course, as just that, the caress of her master.
The master's cruelest treatment of a girl is to ignore her. Rather she would feel his whip, for then, at least, she knows that she is in the center of his interest and attention, and he cares enough about her to improve her, or remind her that she is not only a slave, but his slave. The whip is a common way of letting a woman know to whom she belongs. Indeed, a common way a slave girl may inquire of another slave girl the name of her master is to ask, "Who whips you?" To be sure, this is usually no more than a figure of speech. Gorean slave girls are, to the best of my knowledge, seldom whipped. There is no point to it. On the other hand, they are subject to the whip, and, if they are displeasing, they must expect to be punished, in one way or another. The Gorean master is not weak. He will have perfection from his slave, in movement, in position, in speech, in dress, if it is permitted, in obedience, in deference, in docility, in manifold service, and, in the furs, in the vulnerable, zealous application of her skills, those of an amorous slave hoping to please her master, and, ultimately, too, in the furs, in her helpless, spasmodic submission, that of the grateful, mastered slave. The girl who is ignored, of course, is likely to suspect that she has been found wanting as a slave, that she has failed to be pleasing. She may then fear that she has lost the interest of her master, and that she is to be soon sold, that coins will change hands
, and she will be hooded and led away, leashed, to some emporium devoted to the sales of such as she. Has she failed as a slave? Who will want her now? Was this her fault? How could she have done better? At whose feet will she wear her next collar?
"Do you wish to be a slave girl?" I asked her, the erstwhile leader of the once arrogant, now subdued, talunas.
"No," she said. "No!"
"Very well," I said. I threw the other pair of slave bracelets to Turgus. He snapped them on the dark-haired girl and then, as I had, freed her wrists of the earlier binding, which had been, in her case, a length of vine rope from the small people.
She looked at him, puzzled.
"Do you wish to be a slave girl?" he asked.
"Wish?" she asked.
"Yes," he said.
"No," she said, "no, no!"
"Very well," he said.
I grasped the hand of the leader of the small people in friendship. "I wish you well," I said. "I wish you well," he said.
Then I, and Kisu, followed by Turgus, and by Janice, Alice and Tende, turned about to leave the clearing. We would return to our hidden canoe, beached near the river, near which we had concealed many of our supplies.
"What shall we do with these?" called the leader of the small people. We turned about. He indicated the line of miserable, trussed talunas.
"Whatever you wish," I told him. "They are yours."
"What of those?" he asked. He indicated the blond girl who had been the leader of the talunas and the dark-haired girl, who had been her second in command. They stood, their hands braceleted behind them, confused, in the clearing.
"They were ours," I said. "We let them go. Let them go."
"Very well," he said.
Kisu and I, and Turgus, and our girls, Alice, Janice and Tende, then left the clearing.
* * * *
"Unlock our bracelets," begged the blond girl. She and the dark-haired girl had followed us to the edge of the river.
Kisu and I, and Ayari, were sliding our canoe, from which we had removed its camouflage, toward the water. The girls, Janice, Alice and Tende, with the paddles and supplies, accompanied us.