John Norman - Counter Earth12

by Beasts Of Gor(Lit)

  No one emerged from the hall.

  "I shall wait one Ehn," I said. `Then I shall have the hall fired."

  In a few moments I heard her screaming, from within the hall. "No, no," she cried. "Fight to the death! Fight to the death!"

  I knew then I had won.

  Sorgus emerged from the hall, his hands raised, his sword slung still at his hip.

  I watched Sorgus and his men depart.

  "I am a free prisoner," she said. "I demand all the rights and privileges of such a prisoner."

  "Free these new men of their chains," I said, indicating those fellows who had recently joined us, from the western portions of the wall.

  "Yes, Captain," said a man.

  I turned to the fair captive.

  "I am a free prisoner," she said, "and I-"

  "Be silent, I said to her. Her own dagger was at her throat.

  "You were once in command here," I said. "But that is now finished. You are now only a girl on Gor."

  She looked at me, suddenly frightened.

  "When are the tarnsmen due?" I asked.

  "Soon," she said.

  A man pulled back her head, by the hair. I laid the blade across her throat.

  "Four days," she whispered. "They are due to return on the afternoon of the first day of the passage hand."

  "Put her in the handle tie," I said. "Yes, Captain," said the man, grinning.

  Her fur boots were pulled off and her ankles were linked by leather thongs; she had good ankles; the leather permitted them a separation of some twelve inches; the tether on her wrists then was taken between her legs and lifted up and behind her, where its loose end was tied about her neck. The linking of the ankles prevents the slipping of the handle tie, and controls the length of her stride when she is put in it. A given pressure on the handle tie, exerted through the strap at the back, permits it to function as a choke leash; a different pressure permits her to be hurried along on her toes. The handle tie is usually, of course, reserved for naked slave girls.

  "Oh," she said.

  The man had looped his fist twice in the strap, tightening it.

  She looked at me. She was in the control of the man who held the strap.

  "If the tarnsmen return before the afternoon of the first day of the passage hand," I said, handing the man, who controlled her her dagger, "cut her throat."

  "Yes, Captain," he said.

  "Oh," she cried, being hurried from the presence of men. Did she not know she was now only a girl on Gor?

  "We have much to do," I told my men. "The wall is to be destroyed. After that you may divide what supplies and treasures exist here and take your leave. Any who leave before the work is done, trailed and recaptured, are to be staked out among the fallen tabuk."

  The men looked at one another, uneasily. They did not care to become feasting meat for the scavenging jards.

  "We are hungry," said a man.

  "Imnak," said I, "go to the platform. Keep watch. You shall be relieved in two Ahn."

  He grunted and went to the platform.

  "We are hungry," said men.

  "I, too," said I. "Make a feast, but there is to be no drinking of paga. It is late now for commencing our labors. Morning for such work will be soon enough."

  There was a cheer.

  In the morning they would work with a hearty will. I did not think it would take long to destroy the wall, surely not more than the days to the first passage hand. We had more than three hundred and fifty men for work. In many places, too, the wall had been weakened by the buffeting tabuk over the past weeks.

  I heard the miserable cries of two girls. A man was coming from the cook shack, where Thimble and Thistle had hidden themselves. He now dragged them before us, bent over, a hand in the hair of each.

  "What have we here!" cried a man cheerfully.

  "Slaves!" cried others.

  "Hold," said I. "We are honest men, and are not thieves. Release them."

  The man loosed the hair of the girls. Swiftly they knelt, frightened.

  `These girls," said I, "belong to Imnak."

  "He is a red hunter," said a man.

  "He is one with us," I said.

  There was an angry cry.

  I drew my blade. "None may use them without his permission," I said. "I shall maintain discipline, if need be, my comrades, by the blade."

  I looked down at the kneeling girls. "There are many men here," I said. "Doubtless they are quite hungry. Perhaps you should consider scurrying to the cook shack, to be about your duties."

  "Yes, Master!" they cried.

  "Pull down your camisks," I warned them.

  Weeping they fled to the cook shack, trying with their small hands to adjust their garments so that they would reveal less of their beauty. The men roared with laughter. I smiled. The brief, open-sided camisks they wore had not been designed to permit a girl much success in such a project.

  "We are now alone," I told her.

  It was early afternoon, on the first day of the passage hand.

  "All alone?" she asked.

  "Yes," I said.

  "Completely?" she asked.

  "Yes," I said.

  "Where have the men gone?" she asked.

  "The work is finished," I said. `The wall, burned and uprooted, has been destroyed. Other buildings, too, with the exception of this hall, have been fired. The laborers, in various groups, laden with goods and gold, have filtered away, scattering, returning to the south."

  "They have taken my gold?" she asked. She was sitting at the side of the hall, her back against its wall of horizontally fitted logs. Her ankles were drawn up. The same thongs which, looped about her stomach and threaded through a ring behind her, holding her to the wall, led to her ankles, drawing them back. The original thongs on her ankles, which had served as leather ankle shackles, I had had removed. She still wore, however, the tether on her wrists, the loose end of which had been taken up behind her and tied about her neck, the handle portion of the handle tie.

  "Ten strongboxes were found," I said, "and forced open. Their contents were divided. Few men are discontent to have earned fees so rich for their services."

  "I am now without economic resources," she said.

  "You are pretty," I said, "perhaps men might be persuaded to let you live."

  "You are a beast!" she said.

  "Captured guardsmen and hunters," I said, "released, given supplies, have also taken their way south."

  "You are generous," she said.

  "Sometimes," I said. "-with men."

  She shrank back in her bonds.

  "They labored well with the others to destroy the wall," I said.

  "What of the red hunter?" she asked.

  "He alone, of all who worked at the wall," I said, "treks northward."

  "What of the two girls?' she asked.

  "He drives his pretty beasts before him," I said. Imnak had fashioned a sled, which would be of use in crossing Ax Glacier. Thimble and Thistle drew it now across the tundra toward the snows. Before he had left he had had them sew northern garments for themselves, under his instruction. From the furs and hides among the spoils at the wall they had cut and sewn for themselves stockings of lart skin, and shirts of hide, and a light and heavy parka, each hooded and rimmed with lart fur. Too, they had made the high fur boots of the northern woman and the brief panties of fur, to which the boots, extending to the crotch, reach. On the hide shirts and parkas he had made them sew a looped design of stitching at the left shoulder, which represented binding fiber. This designated the garments as those of beast. A similar design appeared on each of the other garments. About their throats now, too, they wore again the four looped strings, each differently knotted, by means of which a red hunter might, upon inspection, determine that their owner was Imnak. This morning Imnak, walking behind and to one side of the sled, had left the camp's area. Because it was warm he had not permitted the girls to wear their hide shirts or parkas. Northern women often do not do so in warm
weather. When he had cracked his whip they had put their shoulders to the traces. The sled was heavily laden, but with little gold. More significant to Imnak had been sugars and Bazi tea, and furs and tools. Interestingly he had also placed much wood on the sled, both boards and poles, for it is of great value in the north. Wood can be used for sleds, and tent frames and the frames of kayaks and umiaks, the large, broad vessels which can hold several individuals, sometimes used in whaling. Trees do not flourish in the land of Imnak and their needs for wood must largely be satisfied by occasional finds at the shore, driftwood, from hundreds of pasangs south, dragged from the chilled water. Imnak's whip cracked and she who had been Barbara Benson. a middle-class girl, and she who had been the rich, upper-class Audrey Brewster, now Thimble and Thistle, cried out and began to draw their master's sled. I watched them leave. Both were now leveled women. Both would now have to compete in absolute equality, beginning at the same point, neither with an advantage, as pure females, and as slaves, for the favor of men. I did not know which might be more pleasing. In time I thought both might prove superb.

  Sidney Anderson, tied sitting at the wall, looked up at me. "You, too," she said, "had better flee."

  "The laborers," I said, "have not fled. They are simply returning to their homes."

  "You have remained behind," she said.

  "Of course," I said.

  "I do not understand," she said. Then she said, "Do not touch me!"

  I released her from the wall and removed the thongs, too, which had held her ankles. I pulled her to her feet. I slipped my fist into the handle of the tie she wore and, looping it about my fist twice, tightening it, thrust her before me toward the door of the hall.

  "Where are you taking me?" she asked.

  I tightened the tie more. "Oh!" she said. Then she was quiet. She bit her trembling lip. Outside I scanned the skies. They were clear.

  Sidney Anderson looked about. Buildings were burned. No one was in sight. The wall had been destroyed. The platform, too, had been pulled down, and had then been burned. Ashes were about, and debris, and turf cut by the feet of many men.

  I thrust her before me, toward the whipping platform, which I had ordered remain intact.

  "What are you going to do?" she asked.

  "Tarnsmen," I said, "will soon be here, will they not?"

  "Yes," she said, angrily. "What are you going to do?"

  I thrust her up the steps, onto the platform. "You are going to serve Priest-Kings, my pretty little charmer," I told her.

  I removed the tether from her throat and, bringing it between her legs and before her, tossed it through the ring on the crossbeam.

  "Oh," she said.

  I drew her from her feet, and hung her by her bound wrists from the ring.

  I then crossed her ankles and, with a peice of rope, tied them together, and fastened them to the lower ring, that fastened in the floor of the whipping-frame platform.

  I pulled back the hood from the furs she wore. The auburn hair took the sun beautifully.

  I scanned the skies again. There was nothing in sight, save clouds.

  "How am I to serve Priest-Kings?" she asked, wincing.

  "As naked bait," I told her.

  "No!" she said. I cut the furs from her. "You are quite beautiful," I told her.

  "No, no!" she wept.

  I regarded her. "You are even beautiful enough to be a Gorean slave girl," I said.

  "No!" she cried.

  "Those who brought you to Gor," I said, "doubtless had that fate eventually in mind for you."

  "That is a lie!" she said.

  "It would have been easy enough to find ugly women," I said.

  "No," she said. "No!"

  "You are too beautiful to be long left free," I said.

  "No!" she said.

  "It is my conjecture," I said, "that you were eventually to be given to Drusus."

  "Given?" she said.

  "Of course," I said, "as a slave."

  "No!" she cried.

  "You are indeed naive," I said. "Do you think a woman as beautiful as you on Gor could long keep out of the collar?"

  She looked at me with horror. I gagged her, that she might not cry out.

  The tarnsmen were wary. There were five of them. They circled the area several times.

  They would have little difficulty, even from their distance aloft, in identifying the lovely captive suspended from the ring. There were few white girls this far north, above Torvaldsland, at the brink of Ax Glacier. Her auburn hair, too, would leave little doubt as to her identity. Such hair, as I have noted, is rare on Gor.

  They would see the girl. They would see the destruction of the wall, and of the buildings, except for the hall.

  Then one would land, to reconnoiter.

  It was his tarn that would serve me.

  I fitted an arrow, of black tem-wood, with a pile point, to the string of the yellow bow. The string was of hemp, whipped with silk. The arrow was winged with the feathers of the Vosk gull.

  "Beware!" she cried, as soon as the gag was cut from her mouth. "One remains! One remains!" But I do not think he heard her. She screamed, and he spun back, falling from the platform to the turf. At the same time I, casting the bow aside, began the race for the tarn. I leaped into the saddle and dragged back fiercely on the one-strap. The winged monster screamed with rage and reared upward, wings cracking like whips at the air. I leaned to one side as the raking talons of a second tarn tore downward for me. I dragged back again on the one-strap, almost throwing the bird on its back, bringing its talons high. I almost lost the saddle as my bird, struck by the next tarn, reeled buffeted, twisting backward, some forty feet in the air. Then, both birds, screaming, talons interlocked, grappled in the air. The bolt of a crossbow sped past my head. Another tarn closed in from my left. I tore the shield from its saddle straps and blocked the raking talons that furrowed the leather. The fourth tarn was below us. I saw the man thrust up with his spear. It cut my leg. I wheeled the tarn to the left and it spun, still interlocked with its foe. The tarnsman to my left drew back on the one-strap to avoid fouling straps with his ally. The fellow whose tarn was tearing at mine drew back, too, on his six-strap, and the bird swept upward and away, from my right. A bolt from a crossbow skidded ripping through the saddle to my left. Then he who had fired it swept past behind me. My tarn was then loose. The four of them, now grouped, in formation, ascended in an arc some hundred yards from me. I took my tarn higher, swiftly, to be above them. Then the sun was behind me and they were below me. They broke apart and began to circle, separately. They had no wish to meet me falling upon them from the tarn's ambush, the sun. I kept them generally below me. I fastened the safety strap now: I examined the shield. It was torn deeply but still serviceable. There was a spear at the saddle. I loosened it in its straps. A crossbow hung to my right. A sheaf of bolts was behind the saddle. I saw the girl, suspended from the ring, far below. Suddenly I laughed with elation. I pulled back on the one-strap again. I would wait for them in the clouds.

  The moons of Gor were high when I returned to the sturdy platform.

  The hunt had been long. It had carried for several pasangs. Two had been foolish enough to follow me into the clouds. The other two had fled. I had not managed to overtake them until late afternoon. They had fought desperately, and well.

  "You have escaped," she said, in wonder. "There were four of them."

  My tarn, now, was weak and bloodied. I did not know if it would live.

  In the end they had struck at the bird. It was shortly after that that I had finished the hunt.

  "You had best flee," she said, "before they return."

  "Do you think they will rescue you?" I asked.

  "Surely." she said.

  I was weary. I put my hand on her body. It was the first time that I had touched her. She was really quite beautifuL

  "Do not touch me!" she hissed.

  "Do you still hope for succor?" I asked.

  "Of course!" she said
. Then she screamed as I threw the four heads to the turf. I was weary then, and I had lost blood, from the wound in my leg, so I turned away, descended the steps of the whipping platform, and made my way to the hall, where I would sleep.

  "You are a barbarian! A barbarian!" she screamed.

  I did not answer her but entered the hall, to rest, for I was weary.

  In the morning I was much refreshed.