Mercenaries of Gor

by Norman, John;

  “Now,” said Genserix, “let us resume the contest.”

  There were grunts of approval by the men.

  Once again Sorath and I squared off against one another. This time, not mocked and taunted by the female, he fought extremely well. As Hurtha had warned me earlier, Sorath well knew the ways of the ax. Now that his temper had cooled he fought with agility and precision. The reckless and sometimes irrational temper of folks like Sorath, and it was a temper not unusual among the proud Alar herders, was something that they would be well advised to guard against. Too often it proves the undoing of such folks. Hundreds of times calculated defenses and responsible tactics have proved their worth in the face of brawn and wrath. The braveries of barbarism are seldom of little avail against a rational, determined, prepared foe. But let those of the cities tremble that among the hordes there might one day arise one who can unify storms and harness lightning.

  I slipped to the side and, swinging the ax handle inward, caught Sorath in the solar plexus, that network of nerves and ganglia high in the abdominal cavity, lying behind the stomach and in front of the upper part of the abdominal aorta. I did not strike deeply enough to injure him, to rupture or tear open his body, slashing the stomach or crushing the aortal tube, only enough to stop him, definitely. For good measure I then, with the left side of the handle, swinging it upward, and then down, brought it down on the back of his neck as he, helpfully, expectantly, grunting, doubled over. I did not strike him hard enough to break the vertebrae. He slipped to his knees, vomiting, and then, stunned, half paralyzed, fell forward. I then stood behind him, the handle grasped at the ready, near its end. From such a position one can, rather with impunity, with an unarmed handle, break the neck to the side or crush the head. Had the handle been armed, of course, one might, from such a position, sever the backbone or remove the head. Sorath was fast. I was faster.

  “Do not kill him!” said Genserix.

  “Of course not,” I said. “He is one of my hosts.” I stepped back from Sorath.

  “You fought very well,” said Genserix.

  “Sorath is very good, don’t you think?” asked Hurtha.

  “Yes,” I said. “He is quite good.”

  “Your prowess proves you well worthy to be a guest of the Alars,” said Genserix. “Welcome to our camp. Welcome to the light and heat of our fire.”

  “Thank you,” I said, tossing aside the handle.

  “Are you still alive?” Parthanx inquired solicitously of Sorath, his friend.

  “Yes,” reported Sorath.

  “Do not be so lazy, then,” said Parthanx encouragingly. “Get up.” Parthanx, like the others, seemed to have enjoyed the fight.

  “Let me help you,” I said. I gave Sorath a hand, and half pulled him to his place by the fire. He looked up at me, shaking his head. “Well done,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said. “You did splendidly yourself.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  I looked about myself. “I gather that I am now welcome here,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Genserix.

  “Yes,” said Sorath.

  “Yes,” said the others.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I am grateful for your welcome. I thank you, too, for the food and drink I have received here, for the heat and light of your fire, and for your fellowship. I thank you for your hospitality. It is worthy of the best things I have heard of Alars. I would now like, if I may, in my own way, and of my own free will, as it will now be clearly understood, to do something for you, something that will help, in a small way, to express my appreciation.”

  Genserix and his warriors looked at one another, puzzled.

  I turned to Feiqa. “Strip,” I said.

  “Master?” she asked.

  “Must a command be repeated?” I inquired.

  “No, Master!” she cried. In an instant she was bared.

  “Stand,” I said. “Lift your arms over your head.” Instantly she complied. She was then very beautiful, standing thusly in the light of the fire, before the barbaric warriors of Genserix, in the Alar camp.

  “Such women,” I said, “may be purchased in the cities.”

  There were appreciative murmurs as the men drank in the fire-illuminated beauty of the naked slave.

  “Dance,” I told Feiqa.

  “I do not know how to dance, Master,” she moaned.

  “In every female there is a dancer,” I said.

  “Master,” she protested.

  “I know you are not trained,” I said.

  “Master,” she said.

  “There are many forms of dance,” I said. “Music is not even necessary. It need not even be more than beautiful movement. Move before the men, and about them. Move as seductively and beautifully as you can, and as a slave, swaying, crawling, kneeling, rolling, supine, prone, begging, pleading, piteous, caressing, kissing, licking, rubbing against them.”

  “Do I have a choice, Master?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, “absolutely not.”

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “Would you prefer for your pretty flesh to be lashed from your bones?” I asked.

  “No, Master!” she said.

  “And as the evening progresses, and as men might desire you,” I said, “you will please them, and fully.”

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “You are a slave, an absolute and total slave,” I reminded her.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  One of the fellows, then, began to sing, “Hei, Hei,” and clap his hands.

  Feiqa danced.

  The men cried out with pleasure, many of them joining in the song, and keeping time with their hands. I was incredibly proud of her. How joyful it is to own females and have absolute power over them! Seldom, indeed, I imagined, did the rude herders of the Alars have such a vision of embonded loveliness in their camp, and in their arms. Such delicious females were not allowed in their camps, I gathered. The free women did not permit them. They probably had them hidden in wagons, until they could be sold off, or killed. How beautiful Feiqa was! What incredible power she exercised, though only a helpless slave, over men! How she pleased them and made them scream with pleasure! How incredibly basic, how fundamental, how real she was! I then felt a sudden, poignant sorrow for the women of Earth. How different Feiqa was from them. How far removed delicious, exquisite Feiqa was from the motivated artifices, the lies and fabrications, the propaganda, the demeaning, sterile, unsatisfying, reductive, negative superficialities of antibiological roles, the prescriptions of an unnatural and pathological politics, the manipulative instrumentations of monsters and freaks. I wondered how many of the women of Earth wished they might find themselves in a collar, dancing naked in the firelight before warriors in an Alar camp.

  “Disgusting! Disgusting!” cried the free woman, Boabissia, in her leather and furs, having returned to the fire, and she rushed forward, a stout, thick, short, supple, single-bladed quirtlike whip in her hand. She began to lash Feiqa, who fell to her knees, howling with misery, a whipped slave. “We do not allow such as you in an Alar camp!” cried the free woman. Feiqa put her head down. Again the lash fell on her.

  I leaped to the free woman and tore the whip from her hand, hurling it angrily to the side. She looked at me, wildly, in fury, not believing I had dared to interfere. “What right have you to interfere?” she demanded. “The right of a man who is not pleased with your behavior, female,” I said. “Female!” she cried, in fury. “Yes,” I said. Her hand darted to the hilt of the dagger she wore at her belt. I regarded her evenly. She, frightened, quickly removed her hand from the hilt of the dagger, crying out in frustration, in rage. Then she lifted her fists and, with the sides of them, together, struck towards me. “Oh!” she cried, in misery, in frustration. I had caught both her small wrists. She could not begin to free them. “Oh!” she cried in misery, in protest, as, inexorably, slowly, I forced her down. Then she was kneeling before me, her wrists in my grip. I tu
rned her about and flung her to her belly, and then knelt across her thighs. I removed her dagger from its sheath. “No!” she cried. I then, with her own dagger, cut her clothing from her body.

  “Binding fiber,” I said, not even looking, just putting out my hand. Some was fetched, a length of some five feet, or so, and, in a moment, with one end of the fiber, with a few loops and a knot, her wrists crossed, her hands were secured behind her back. I had tied her tightly, utterly helplessly, as I might have a slave. “Help!” she cried out to the warriors. “Help!” But none stirred to render her assistance. I then reversed my position on her body, kneeling now facing her feet, across the small of her back. I pulled her ankles up, behind her body, at an angle of about fifty degrees, and crossed them. I then, with the free end of the binding fiber, extending back from her wrists, tied them together, tightly, fastening them to her wrists. “Please!” she cried to the warriors but none leapt to accord her succor. I then lifted her up, in effect kneeling her, and then bent her back, her head back to the dirt, that the warriors might assess the bow of her beauty.

  “She is pretty,” said a fellow. “Yes,” said another. It was true. She had a lovely figure. It had been hitherto muchly concealed from detection by the leather and furs she had worn, though even beneath them its subtle and tantalizing lineaments had been clearly suggested. “Come, see Boabissia,” called a fellow, “trussed like a tarsk!” Some more fellows, and even some free women, came over to look. Boabissia, now permitted to kneel upright, squirmed, fighting the fiber. She was helpless. “Feiqa will now again dance,” I said. “If you wish, you may be hooded or blindfolded.” She looked down, sullenly, angrily, and shook her head. “If you cry out,” I said, “you will be gagged. Do you understand?” “Yes,” she said.

  I looked at Boabissia’s throat. About it, tied on a leather thong, was a small, punched, copper disk. “What is that?” I asked, pointing to it. She did not respond. I then put her to her back, her knees drawn up, her wrists behind her, under the small of her back. I then bent over her and lifted up the disk, examining it in the firelight. She did not resist. Bound as she was, there was little she could do. Too, resistance might have earned her perfunctory, disciplinary cuffs. The punched copper disk, threaded on its thong, was not large. It was about an inch or so in diameter. On it was the letter “Tau” and a number. “What is this?” I asked Genserix, indicating the disk. “We do not know,” he said. “It was tied about her throat when we found her, years ago, a tiny infant, wrapped in a blanket, in the wreckage of the caravan.”

  “Surely you must have wondered about this,” I said to Boabissia.

  She looked away, not responding.

  “It must be a key to your identity,” I said.

  She did not respond.

  I let the disk fall back, just below her neck. It, on its thong, was now all she wore, except her bonds.

  I looked to Feiqa, still kneeling, her back bright with the memory of the free woman’s attentions.

  “You may now continue to dance, Feiqa,” I said.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  The men then cried out with approval, and smote their left shoulders with pleasure. In a moment Feiqa, vital and sensuous, liberated now from the fear of the free woman, and having felt the whip, in that perhaps being reminded of what might be the consequences of failing to please free persons, addressed herself once more, eagerly and joyously, marvelously and subserviently, to the pleasures of masters. I was so aroused I was in pain. I could hardly wait to get her back to the camp of the wagoners. From time to time I glanced at Boabissia. She was on her side, trussed, watching Feiqa. In her eyes there was awe, understanding what a woman could be.

  After some Ahn, in the neighborhood of dawn, I returned to the camp of the wagoners. Feiqa walked behind me, slowly, weary, heeling me, her body sore, her tiny tunic held over her left shoulder. Near the wagoners’ camp I turned to face her. “Before you retire,” I said, “I have business for you in my blankets. After that I will tether you for the night.”

  “Yes, Master,” she smiled.

  In a few moments we had come to the wagon of the fellow who had given us a ride earlier. Near the wagon, naked, chained by the neck to the back, right wheel, was the peasant girl, Tula. In the moonlight I examined her. Under her neck chain was a slave collar.

  5

  Hurtha;

  Boabissia;

  We Are Now on the Genesian Road

  “What are you doing here?” I asked Hurtha.

  “I am coming with you,” he said. “I am interested in seeing the world, and will seek my fortune.”

  “You have no mount,” I observed.

  “Nor do you,” he observed.

  “That is true,” I smiled.

  “I sold it, in the camp,” he said, “for some coins. It did not seem practical to bring it. There seem to be few such mounts with the wagons. Too, I do not know where we are going, nor what we will do.”

  “The road I project is a difficult one,” I said, “and it may be dangerous.”

  “Splendid,” he said.

  I looked at him.

  “I am easily bored,” he explained.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “You do not mind if I accompany you, do you?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “The matter is then fully settled,” he announced.

  “But you must feel free to part company from me at any time,” I said. I had no wish to bring him into danger.

  “If you insist,” he said.

  “I fear I must,” I said.

  “I accept your condition,” he said.

  “Good,” I said.

  “You drive a fierce bargain,” he observed.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Half of my coins are yours,” he said. “You are welcome to them.”

  “That is very generous,” I said.

  “Just as half of yours are mine,” he said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “As we will be traveling together,” he said.

  “How many coins do you have?” I asked.

  “About seventeen copper tarsks,” he said, “and two tarsk bits.”

  “That is all?” I inquired.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “But you sold your tharlarion,” I said, “and last night Genserix gave you, as he did me, a silver tarsk.”

  “True,” he said, “but I used most of that to pay off a few old debts. You would not wish for me to have left the wagons owing debts, would you?”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “Too,” he said, “I purchased this splendid sword.” He unsheathed it and swung it about. He handled it lightly. It nearly decapitated a passing wagoner. It was a long, cutting sword, of the sort called a spatha among the wagons. It is more useful than the gladius, from the back of a tharlarion, because of its reach. He also carried among his things the short, stabbing sword, similar to the gladius, and doubtless related to it, called by his people the sacramasax. It is much more useful on foot, particularly in close combat. “Accordingly,” he said, sheathing the sword, “I have with me only some seventeen, two. How much do you have?”

  “Somewhat more than that,” I said.

  “Splendid,” he said. “We may need every tarsk bit.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “I have expensive tastes,” he explained. “Further, I am an Alar, and we Alars are a generous, noble folk.”

  “That is a known fact,” I granted him.

  “We have a reputation to uphold,” he said.

  “Doubtless,” I said.

  “If we run short,” he said, “I may always strike some good fellow on the head and take his purse.”

  “Surely you do not behave so in your own camp,” I said.

  “No, of course not,” he said, rather surprised. “But they are Alars.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “Not outsiders, not city folks,” he said.

  “I must warn you,” I said, �
�that even outside the wagons striking fellows on the head and taking their purses is often frowned upon.”

  “Oh?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Many folks have strong opinions about such matters.”

  “Interesting,” he said.

  “You would not like to be struck on the head, would you?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” he said.

  “There you are,” I said.

  “But I am an Alar,” he said.

  “What difference does that make?” I asked.

  “It makes all the difference in the world,” he said. “Can you prove it does not?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “There you are,” he said.

  “I assure you,” I said, “folks would not like it, and you might find yourself impaled, or cut to pieces.”

  “I am not impervious to such considerations,” he said, “but I thought we were discussing purely moral issues.”

  “You should not behave in such a manner,” I said.

  “But it is not unseemly for me to do so, I assure you,” he said. “Besides, such behavior lies well within my entitlements.”

  “How is that?” I asked.

  “I am an Alar,” he said.

  “While we are traveling together,” I said, “mainly because I do not wish to be impaled, or fed in bits to sleen, I would appreciate it if, as a favor to me, if nothing else, you would consider refraining from the exercise of certain of your Alar rights.”

  “Surely you would have no objection if fellows wished to make me loans, or bestow gifts upon me?” he asked.

  “Of course not,” I said. “No one could possibly object to that.”

  “Splendid,” he said.

  I relaxed.

  “I was afraid you might be prone to eccentric reservations,” he said.