by John Norman
Startling her, to one side, to her right, on the steel flooring, there lay a woman. She had long, blond hair, which was plaited in two thick braids, which, had she been standing, would have fallen to the soft flesh at the back of her knees. She was naked, and gagged, and bound, hand and foot.
She looked over, in consternation, and rage, at the officer of the court.
The huge figure removed his helmet.
“You!” cried the officer of the court, for it was the gladiator.
“She is poor stuff, Master,” said a voice. “Why do you bother with her?”
The officer of the court, turning, saw the slave girl, Janina.
The officer of the court, in fury, sprang to her feet.
“Kneel!” said the officer of the court to Janina, in fury.
“Be silent, slave girl,” said Janina.
The officer of the court looked immediately to the gladiator, for redress, that he would cruelly punish the errant slave, but he made no motion to do so.
The gladiator grinned.
Would he not adjudicate the matter? Surely he did not think she was merely, too, a slave?
She turned to Janina, angrily.
But Janina stood her ground against her, insolently, it seemed.
The officer of the court turned, then, lightly, to the gladiator.
“Where did you obtain your present garb, and accouterments?” she asked.
“From one who loaned them to me,” he said. “I do not think his neck is broken, but he is likely to remain unconscious for several hours.”
The gladiator crouched beside the blond captive. He loosened her gag, pulling it down about her neck. “You understand what you are to do?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, angrily.
Doubtless her mouth had a foul taste.
The officer of the court looked again at Janina.
Janina was now clad not in the keb, but in garments of barbaric splendor, muchly bedecked with primitive ornaments. This garb, the officer of the court suspected, had once been that of the bound captive, to her right. The captive, for example, did not have locked about her neck, closely encircling it, the chain and disk of a ship slave. That suggested that she was a free woman and, given the raiment on Janina, perhaps one of considerable importance. “Yes, what?” inquired the gladiator.
“Yes, milord,” said the blond woman, bitterly.
“That word costs you much, does it not?” asked the gladiator.
“Yes,” she said, angrily.
He looked at her.
“Yes, milord,” she said.
“Who is she?” asked the officer of the court, looking down on the blond captive.
The gladiator rose to his feet.
“I have been remiss,” he said. “May I introduce Gerune, a princess of the Drisriaks, and one who chose to join the secessionist house of Ortog.”
“A princess!” exclaimed the officer of the court.
“To be sure,” said the gladiator, “she is now indistinguishable from a comely slave.”
The captive squirmed.
“Are you not pleased, milady,” said the gladiator, “that your face and figure might fetch a goodly price in a slave market?”
“Wretch!” hissed the captive.
“May I introduce our new guest?” the gladiator asked the captive, indicating the officer of the court.
“I do not greet commoners,” she said.
“I am of the blood!” said the officer of the court.
“You are only a Telnarian bitch, fit, at best, for the collar,” said the blond woman.
“Barbarian!” said the officer of the court.
“Slave!” said the blond captive.
“‘Slave’!” exclaimed the officer of the court.
“Yes, slave,” said the captive. “Did you not, a moment before, bespeak yourself such?”
The officer of the court felt faint.
“Do you think such words can be unspoken?” asked the captive. “Once uttered, it is done. You are then powerless to alter or qualify them in any way.”
“Surely you jest,” said the officer of the court.
“It is the law,” laughed Janina, “slave.”
“And, too,” said the blond captive, “it was not I who in the darkness, it seems, licked and kissed at a man’s boots!”
“I thought him of the strangers, of the boarders!” said the officer of the court.
“And what does that matter, slave?” asked Janina.
“I am not a slave!” said the officer of the court to the gladiator.
“My plan,” said he, “is as follows. We shall descend to the hold, and seek out Section 19, for there, I think unbeknownst to our friends outside, there are stored several escape capsules. You may recall them, from the evening of the contest. Some of these, by Pulendius and others, were, two days ago, taken on their tracks to the elevators, and conveyed upward to space locks.”
“I saw damaged capsules, useless, outside, by the ships,” said the officer of the court.
“It is my hope that some escaped,” said the gladiator. “I know that many did not.”
“Why did you not try to escape then?” asked the officer of the court.
“Can you not guess?” asked Janina, angrily.
“No,” said the officer of the court. Then she said, frightened, “Surely it has nothing to do with me.”
Janina laughed, bitterly.
Then the officer of the court said, “Oh!” for a rope was being knotted about her neck.
“Kneel,” said the gladiator.
The officer of the court knelt. She looked up at the gladiator.
“I do not understand,” she said.
She saw the end of the rope on her neck tossed to Janina.
“I do not think it is so hard to understand,” he said.
“Please,” she said.
“Surely we have much to discuss,” he said.
“Please!”
“Janina will wear the royal robes of a princess of the Drisriaks,” said the gladiator.
“What are you going to do with me?” asked the officer of the court.
“We think,” said the gladiator, “that with her robes about her face, Janina may pass for the princess. My garb, I trust, will serve as my disguise. The princess, gagged, on a neck rope, her hands bound behind her, will be marched before us, to be taken for a captured passenger. If she should attempt to struggle or flee, or give any sign of her distress or identity, I will gun her down immediately with the fire pistol. You understand, princess?”
“Yes, milord,” she said.
“If she is recognized, she will prove a valuable hostage,” said the gladiator.
“You will accompany us as another captured prisoner, one not yet even stripped, on all fours, on your leash, held by Janina. Perhaps it will be assumed she may have selected you for a serving slave. Perhaps you have the makings of a useful serving slave. One does not know. I have the fire pistol, and a Telnarian rifle, as extra insurance.”
“I am to be marched before you, as I am?” asked the blond captive.
“Yes, milady,” said the gladiator.
“I am the sister of Ortog, king of the Ortungen!” she said.
“Let him then understand you in a new light,” said the gladiator, “a light in which brothers seldom understand their sisters, that other men might find them of great interest as slaves.”
“Wretch!” cried the princess.
“And I am somehow not overly fond of Ortog,” said the gladiator.
“And so you would march his sister thusly?”
“Certainly.”
“You are a barbarian!” said the officer of the court, aghast.
“I do not know who I am,” said the gladiator.
The officer of the court recalled that Ortog had identified the gladiator, obviously mistakenly, as of the blood of the Otungen, whoever they might be. Indeed, the names, to her civilized ear, though clearly distinguishable, sounded too much alike. The
Ortungen was a secessionist house of the Drisriaks, a tribe of the Alemanni. She had no notion of who, or what, the Otungen might be. Nor, it seems, had the gladiator.
“I despise you!” said the princess.
“But it will be you who will be naked, on the rope,” said the gladiator.
“How dare you treat me so?” asked the princess.
“Do not peoples such as yours often march the women of the enemy, even women of the royal houses, through the forests naked, on ropes?”
“How dare you do such a thing!” she exclaimed.
“It is in accord with my plan,” he said.
“You are a man of no name, of no people!” said the blond captive.
“I have heard,” said Janina, “that it is not uncommon for barbarians to march the captured women of defeated royal houses on the ropes of common soldiers, men of no repute, that they may understand their lowliness as compared to the victors, that they, compared to the victors, are no more than slaves.”
The blonde squirmed angrily in her bonds.
“I would beware, milady,” said Janina, solicitously, “lest you excite the master.”
Instantly the blond captive ceased struggling.
Janina laughed.
The blonde looked up at her, in fury.
The officer of the court put her hands on the rope on her neck.
The blond captive, seated, ankles crossed and bound, wrists crossed and bound, behind her, the gag down about her neck, looked up at the gladiator.
“Who are you, truly?” she asked.
“I am Dog, of the festung village of Sim Giadini,” he said. He added, as well, the name of the world but that name we, again, choose to omit at this point.
“You are no peasant,” said the blond captive.
“It does not matter,” said the gladiator.
“I see,” said the princess.
“It only matters,” said the gladiator, “that I am he in whose power you now are, totally. Do you understand?”
“Yes, milord,” she said.
“We shall go publicly through the corridors,” said the gladiator. “That, I think, will be safer than attempting to have recourse to ventilator shafts, crawl spaces, and such, which, as they are obviously surreptitious passages and hiding places, will presumably be guarded. We shall, with luck, reach Section 19, in the hold, and then, while I move one of the escape capsules to the elevator, Janina will supervise you two. Once we enter the capsule into the lock, we can set the timing device for opening the hatch, and can then launch.”
“It is a mad plan,” said Janina.
“One may always hope that our departure will pass unnoticed, that, after all this time, the gunners will not be alert, that the crews of pursuit launches will be tardily dispatched, such things.”
“What of me?” asked the officer of the court, kneeling at the feet of the gladiator, the rope on her neck, its free end grasped by Janina.
“Does the little slave feel neglected?” asked Janina.
“What of me?” asked the officer of the court, ignoring Janina.
“You do not think I have ever forgotten you, do you, my dear?” asked the gladiator.
“What are you going to do with me?” asked the officer of the court.
“I am going to take you with me,” he said.
“I do not understand,” said the officer of the court.
“She is stupid,” said Janina.
“What could you possibly want with me?” asked the officer of the court.
“Can you not guess?” asked Janina.
“No! Oh, please, no!” whispered the officer of the court.
The gladiator regarded her, a tiny smile playing about the corners of his lips.
“No!” whispered the officer of the court.
“Yes,” he said, softly.
The officer of the court slumped to the floor of the small room.
She awakened, lifted to a sitting position, she did not know how much later, to find the spout of a canteen at her lips. She reached for it, and clutching it tightly, drank.
“Enough,” said the gladiator, after too short a moment.
He handed the canteen to Janina.
The officer of the court trembled.
“Eat this,” said the gladiator, kindly, pressing a roll into her small hands.
Madly, like a starving animal, she crammed the bit of food into her mouth.
“See, Janina,” said the gladiator, “how a lady eats, with such daintiness. You might take a lesson from this.”
The officer of the court chewed eagerly, swallowing entire pieces at a time, almost as though afraid what was not yet swallowed might be pulled from her mouth.
“Methinks, Master,” said Janina, “it is rather the way a starving slave feeds.”
“Perhaps,” said the gladiator.
“And surely it is fitting for the starving slave,” said Janina.
The gladiator smiled.
“Food will well control her,” said Janina.
“Doubtless,” said the gladiator.
“And the whip,” said Janina.
“Perhaps,” said the gladiator.
The officer of the court trembled. She had no doubt but what she would obey the whip, and well. But they spoke of her, or at least the slave girl did, as though she herself might be no more than a slave.
She looked to the gladiator.
But she was given no more food.
The officer of the court saw that the feet of the blond captive were now unbound. Too, there was now a rope on her neck, running to a stanchion. To the same stanchion ran another rope, that which was on her own neck. The princess’s gag, the officer of the court noted, had not yet been resecured. It was still loose, down, about her neck.
“We will leave now,” said the gladiator.
The two ropes were freed from the stanchion.
“Up,” said the gladiator to the princess. She rose to her feet. He held her rope.
“To all fours, slave,” said Janina. The officer of the court went to all fours. Her rope was held by Janina.
“Face the door,” said the gladiator to the princess. She did so.
He then looped her rope about his wrist and went behind her, to adjust her gag.
He put his hands on it.
“Wait,” she said.
He paused.
“You are going through with this?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Take me with you,” she said.
The officer of the court gasped.
“How can I face my people after this?” asked the princess. “What good can I be?”
“Do not tempt me, luscious female,” said the gladiator.
“Do not make me do this,” she begged.
“It will be an excellent experience for you,” he said. “It will help you to become more aware of your womanhood.”
Her small hands pulled a little, weakly, at the bonds that held them secured behind her back.
“Do you understand?” he asked.
“Yes, milord,” she said.
Then she said, “Oh!” for her gag was lifted, drawn back and fixed in place.
She would not now speak, nor could she, until relieved of its constraint.
“Should this one, too, not be gagged, Master?” inquired Janina, indicating the officer of the court.
“Will it be necessary to gag you?” asked the gladiator of the officer of the court.
“No,” said the officer of the court.
“I have your word, as one of the honestori, as a citizen of the empire, as one even of the blood, that you will be silent?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Beware,” said Janina to the officer of the court. “Slaves may be slain for a lie!”
“Let us go,” said the gladiator, facing the door.
Then he said, “Stand straight, Gerune. Put your shoulders back. Be sensational. Remember that you are not a free woman now but a slave.”
Gerun
e, princess of the Drisriaks, sister of Ortog, king of the Ortungen, straightened her body and threw her shoulders back. How proudly then she stood.
“How beautiful she is!” exclaimed Janina.
“Ah,” breathed the gladiator.
Even the officer of the court was struck with awe, seeing how beautiful a woman could be.
The gladiator boldly threw open the door.
“March,” he said.
The group then exited the small room.
Janina, who was the last to leave, snapped off the light.
CHAPTER 13
“Some are still here!” said Janina, delightedly.
The officer of the court, still on her hands and knees, was on the sand, it covering her wrists, her knees, too, partly sunk in it. She could feel sand on her knees, which were sore, as were her hands. She could feel it, too, in its hundreds of tiny grains, slipped within the “same garb” where it had opened at the knees, roughened and parted by the slow procession through the corridors. Happily, elevators had been functional to this level. She could see, before her, the princess, her bared feet in the sand, it up almost to the ankles. The rope was still on her neck, and Janina held it. The princess’s rope was in the keeping of the gladiator.
Many were the ironic salutes and lustful, demeaning catcalls which had greeted the princess as she had been paraded through the corridors. She counted, the officer of the court, gathered, as a prize catch, one which would doubtless bring an excellent price in a slave market.
The officer of the court wondered if she, too, might possess such value.
To be sure, it was hard to tell, encumbered as she was with “same garb.”
“There are two left,” said Janina, peering ahead, the way illuminated by an electric torch, which implement had been numbered among the several accouterments appropriated by the gladiator.
Originally there had been several escape capsules in the hold. Several, however, had been used by passengers, and perhaps crew members, trying to escape the vessel.
These were on tracks which led to the lifts, from which, on further tracks, they could be taken to locks.
“They do not know of these, Master,” said Janina.