The Usurper

by John Norman

“The women here, in your party,” he said, “seem uniformly young, and rather attractive.”

  “We are a sisterhood, of sorts,” she said.

  “You have much in common?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And perhaps you share a grievance?”

  “Perhaps,” she said.

  “The members of your party seem of an age, and such, where they might be interested in contracting useful alliances, fortunate and profitable relationships, with males of prominence, means, and station.”

  “Perhaps,” she said.

  “And so, in the way of women, you thought to dangle your charm and body before men, to improve your prospects, and win treasure.”

  “Do not be vulgar,” she said.

  “But, in each case,” he said, “your intended conquest brought home something in a collar, to crawl about his feet, to fear his whip, and beg to please him.”

  “Perhaps,” she said.

  “This frustrated your mercenary intentions,” he said.

  “Perhaps,” she said.

  “And what is your name, fine Lady?” asked the man of Lady Delia.

  “‘Delia Cotina’,” she said, “of the Telnar Farnacii.”

  “So you are she?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “You know of me?”

  “By reputation,” he said.

  “Strange that you should know that, unusual intelligence for a river pirate,” she said.

  “I am not a river pirate,” he said.

  “I assume you are in touch with, or can soon be in touch with, certain parties in Telnar, through whom ransoms can be arranged.”

  “Possibly,” he said.

  “I shall give you specifics on the matter,” she said, “as will other members of my party, on their own behalf. I am sure we will all wish this matter to be concluded as expeditiously as possible.”

  “I expect it will be,” he said.

  “I am curious,” she said. “What had you heard of me?”

  “I had heard that you were one of the most beautiful women in Telnar,” he said.

  “I see,” she said, pleased.

  “And, it seems,” he said, “that the other members of your party were also noted beauties in the society of the city.”

  “Perhaps,” she said.

  “Otherwise how could they have hoped to trap such fine game?”

  “I object,” she said, “to the crudeness of your discourse.”

  “It is surprising, is it not,” he asked, “given your beauty, and that of your friends, that the males whom you sought to interest and entice, from whom you hoped to win position and treasure, failed to succumb and languish, failed to surrender to your charms, failed to lift you to the heights you hoped to reach, failed to fall prey to your plots?”

  Lady Delia turned away, angrily.

  “How could it be?” he asked.

  Lady Delia spun about, in fury. “Slaves!” she cried. “Meaningless, worthless, buyable, stinking slaves!”

  She then flung herself on Cornhair, her small fists flying, striking her, again, and again, pounding on her, until two of the men pulled her away.

  “Steady, steady, fine lady,” said the man with the rifle.

  Cornhair, her head down, almost to the floor, her hands held over her head, cringed in fear.

  “Forgive me, Mistress!” she begged.

  “And so,” said the man with a rifle, “you and your friends gathered together, and would have your vengeance on slaves.”

  “They are only slaves,” said Lady Delia. “Now let us discuss terms of ransom.”

  “Gundlicht,” said the man with a rifle, “you may now have the slaves brought up to the tiers. See that they are neck-roped. They will not object. They are slaves. And it would not do, of course, to have one wander off, carelessly. Hendrix, you may have the free women put in the arena.”

  “The arena?” said Lady Delia.

  Two of the rough fellows left the tiers. They departed by means of the same exit which had been used earlier by Cornhair.

  “Yes,” said the man with the rifle. “Now the slaves will sit in the tiers.”

  “I do not understand,” said Lady Delia, apprehensively.

  “You will, shortly,” he said.

  “You are not a boat man,” she said, “not a river pirate!”

  “No,” he said.

  “What are you?” she said. “Who are you?”

  “You are beautiful,” he said, eyeing the Lady Delia.

  “Oh?” she said.

  “For a free woman.”

  “‘For a free woman’?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “Surely you know that the most beautiful women are taken for slaves. Men will have it so.”

  “How could the beauty of a slave compare with that of a free woman?” she said.

  “Quite favorably,” he said. “Where do you think slaves come from?”

  “I do not understand,” she said.

  “To be sure,” he said, “in a collar, given the nature of things, a woman becomes far more beautiful.”

  “Why are members of my party to be conducted to the arena?” she asked. “What has that to do with ransoms?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “I do not understand,” she said.

  He turned to the men about.

  “Strip her,” he said. “And use that scarf to tie her hands behind her back.”

  “No!” cried Lady Delia, as rude hands tore the clothes from her body. A moment later her hands were confined behind her back, wrapped in folds of her scarf, that she had used to give the signal to open the dog gate. One of the men thrust her to her knees, and forced her head down to the floor.

  “Remain as you are, female,” said the man with the rifle.

  Cornhair realized that, as Lady Delia had been positioned, she could not be seen from the sand below, onto which, even now, the members of her party, in consternation, were filing.

  “What of ransoms, noble sir?” said Lady Delia, frightened, kneeling, her head down to the floor.

  “How many are in your party?” asked the man.

  “One hundred and fifty-two,” she said, “including myself.”

  “Free men,” he said, “do not approve of the killing of slaves.”

  “They are only slaves,” said Lady Delia.

  Meanwhile the several slaves who had assisted at the suppers with Cornhair, each on the same long rope, a section of which would be looped and knotted about the neck of one, and then taken forward and looped and knotted about the neck of the next, and so on, had been positioned in the front row of the tiers.

  They had been brought up to the level of the tiers by the man who had been addressed as “Gundlicht.”

  “What of ransoms, noble sir!” beseeched the Lady Delia, more urgently.

  “Not all men are stupid,” said the man. “And very few are stupid who are rich, powerful, and significantly situated, the sort you and your friends chose for your victims, your dupes, and quarries.”

  “I do not understand,” she said.

  “Yet,” he said, “being men, being strong men, they doubtless recognized that you and your party had certain attributes of interest, lovely features, intelligence, possibly stimulatory curves.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “And such men,” he said, “might be willing to pool certain resources to perpetrate a joke, one worth the telling, and retelling.”

  “I do not understand,” she said.

  “I have already been paid,” he said.

  “What of the ransoms!” she cried.

  “One does not ransom slaves,” he said.

  “We are not slaves!” she cried.

  “One sells them,” he said.

 
“We are free women!” she said.

  “Then you have nothing to fear,” he said. He then turned to the fellow he had addressed as “Hendrix.” “Hendrix,” said he, “are the free women now in the arena?”

  “Yes, Lord,” said the man. “All, and the arena exit portal is locked.”

  The man with the rifle then went to the railing before the box of the hostess, and surveyed the women in the arena.

  “Ladies!” he called down to them.

  “Release us!” he heard. “Let us go!” “Filch! Pirate, boor!” Some of the women shook their fists upward. “Beware!” cried others.

  He extended a hand, in a gesture for silence.

  “Thank you, ladies,” he said.

  The women looked uneasily to one another.

  “Slaves, though worthless, though meaningless, though mere commodities,” he said, “are the most female, the most perfect, the most luscious and desirable of women.”

  “No! No!” several cried.

  “That is why men buy them,” he said.

  “Release us!” cried a woman.

  “Yet,” he said, “you would waste such pleasant beasts, such silken, curvaceous objects, of such interest to men, in the arena.”

  “Let us go!” cried a woman.

  “It is not enough that you, in your hatred, would own, terrify, and beat them, but you would destroy them, even cast them to beasts.”

  “They are slaves,” cried a woman.

  “Gundlicht,” said the man with the rifle. “Exhibit Lady Delia to the free women below.”

  “Oh!” cried Lady Delia, as Gundlicht yanked her to her feet by the hair, thrust her rudely to the railing, and then held her there, his right hand in her hair, holding her head up, and steadying her with his left hand, it grasping her bound, upper left arm.

  Cries of dismay escaped the many women on the sand.

  “My dear Lady Delia,” said the man with the rifle, softly, the words not audible beyond the box of the hostess, “it is my intention to throw you now, as you are, naked and bound, to the sand below, and release the dogs. There are four left. Doubtless they will attack you first. This should be instructive to the other women in the arena.”

  “Do not do so, great and noble sir,” wept Lady Delia. “I am helpless.”

  “Cast her to the sand,” said the man with the rifle to Gundlicht, who then swept the Lady Delia up easily into his arms, and readied himself to cast her over the railing.

  “No, no, Master!” wept Lady Delia.

  “‘Master’?” said the man with the rifle.

  “Yes, yes!” wept Lady Delia.

  The man with the rifle indicated that Gundlicht should stand the Lady Delia behind the railing.

  “Publicly, and loudly, slut,” said the man with the rifle, “so that all may hear.”

  “I am a slave!” she cried. “I beg to be made a slave! Make me a slave! I beg the collar! Keep me, Masters!”

  Many were the cries of dismay, and outrage, from the sand below. “No, no!” cried Lady Virginia, and others. “Treason!” cried others. “You betrayed us!” cried a woman. “Contemptible baggage!” cried another.

  Gundlicht, at a sign from the man with the rifle, pulled the former Lady Delia back and flung her to her knees behind the railing. “Untie her hands,” he said to Gundlicht, who did so, promptly.

  “Go to all fours here, beside me,” said the man with the rifle, “and await your collar.”

  “Yes, Master,” said the slave.

  “Bring two,” said the man with the rifle, to another fellow, glancing at Cornhair, who instantly, too, unbidden, went to all fours, which is a common position in which a slave is collared.

  “Now, dear ladies,” called the man to the women on the sand, “I am going to release the dogs.”

  “No!” cried many. “No! No!”

  “No, no, our ransoms! Our ransoms!” cried more than one.

  “I have been well paid,” said the man with the rifle. “But not to hold you for ransoms. And you have not been pleasing. I shall now release the dogs!”

  “No, no!” cried many of the women.

  “Let us be pleasing!” cried a woman.

  “Yes, yes,” cried others. “Let us be pleasing!”

  “Pleasing, as women?” asked the man with the rifle.

  “Yes, yes!” cried several.

  “But you are free women!” said the man with the rifle.

  Several of the women had fallen to their knees in the sand. Did they not realize that that was undignified, and might sully or injure their garments?

  “Yes, yes,” cried several of the women. “We beg to be pleasing, as women, as women!”

  “Remove your garments, every stitch,” called the man with the rifle from the box of the hostess. “Then, go to all fours, and, in line, crawl slowly to the exit portal from the arena. There, one by one, you will be collared, and chained.”

  “Good,” said Gundlicht, after a bit, looking over the railing. “They are block naked,” he said.

  “We have clothing!” cried one of the neck-roped slaves down to the sand.

  “Lash her,” said the man with the rifle. “She did not request permission to speak.”

  “It will be done,” said a man.

  The slave who had called out, loudly, derisively, to the women below, so triumphantly, moaned in dismay. She had not requested permission to speak. She would be lashed.

  “We shall proceed as planned?” asked Gundlicht.

  “Yes,” said the man with a rifle. “We will take them downriver, through the delta, in a covered barge. Then, as we have arranged, they will be distributed, and sold.”

  At this point the fellow whom the man with the rifle had sent for the two collars had returned to the tiers.

  “Collar them,” said the man with the rifle.

  “Hold still,” said the man.

  “Yes, Master,” whispered the former Lady Delia.

  There was a click and the new slave was collared. She put her head down.

  “Hold still,” said the man, again.

  “Yes, Master,” said Cornhair. She closed her eyes, briefly. She felt the metal being placed about her neck, and adjusted. She waited. Then she heard the click, and she, too, was collared. She opened her eyes, on all fours, her neck once again encircled with the badge of bondage.

  “I am now, again, in a collar,” she thought. “I am pleased. How can I be pleased? I am collared. Why do I not mind this?”

  “You are Delia,” said the man with the rifle to the former Lady Delia.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “How fitting it is,” Cornhair thought to herself, “that we are collared. We are so different from free women. Who could mistake a girl in a collar? It is so clear, what she is. I would not want to be mistaken for a free woman, for I am not a free woman. I am so different. I am a slave.”

  “What is your name?” the man with the rifle asked the former Lady Delia.

  “‘Delia’, Master,” she said.

  “Strange,” thought Cornhair to herself, “I welcome the collar. I am happy that I have been put in it. I am choiceless. I want it that way. What has become of me? I am a slave. I know that now.”

  She heard the snap of the silken canopy over her head. Part of the arena was now in the shade.

  “I love it that men are strong, and will do with me, as they will,” she thought. “I do not mind being sold. I hope to have a good Master. But I will have whatever Master buys me. I am a slave.”

  One of the men was now leading the string of tunicked, neck-roped slaves down from the tiers.

  She was not sure they would be mixed with the new slaves. Perhaps they would be sold in Telnar. That was apparently not to be the case with the new slaves.

  “What will be done with me,” wond
ered Cornhair. “I will be given away, or sold.”

  It occurred to her quite naturally now that she would be given away or sold. She had stood on a slave shelf, bared, with a placard on her neck. She had been exhibited, stripped, on a sales block, displayed as goods. There was now no doubt that she might be given away or sold. She now understood herself, wholly and deeply, as what she was, a slave. Her hopes and fears were now those of a slave. Her consciousness was now the consciousness of a slave

  She now wished to be a slave, and to belong, and obey, and serve.

  “I am a slave,” she thought. “It is what I am. It is what I want to be. Let others have their freedom. I have experienced that. Now I want to be owned, to belong. I want to be handled, dominated, exploited, and ravished. I want to be vulnerable and helpless. I want a Master. I need a Master.”

  “May I speak, Master?” asked the slave, Delia, of the man with the rifle.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “What is to be done with us, with myself, and those who were with me?”

  “For the most part,” he said, “you will be scattered amongst a hundred markets on a hundred worlds.”

  “I have gathered you are not a boat man, not a river man, not even a river pirate,” she said.

  “No,” he said.

  “The names ‘Gundlicht’ and ‘Hendrix’,” she said, “are not Telnarian names.”

  “No,” he said.

  “May I inquire as to the nature of my Master?” she asked.

  “I am Alemanni,” he said, “or, as you will have it, of the Aatii.”

  “No!” she cried.

  “It is so, pretty animal,” he said.

  “A barbarian owns me!” she cried in misery. “I am the property of a barbarian!”

  “Amongst the Alemanni,” he said, “my tribe was the Drisriaks. I was high amongst them. I broke away, to form a new tribe, the Ortungen. We fared badly, muchly struck down by the forces of Abrogastes.”

  “Abrogastes,” she said, “the great barbarian lord whose fleets and armies attack and plunder worlds, which threaten the empire itself, Abrogastes, he called the Far-Grasper? His very name is scarcely dared spoken in Telnar!”

  “He is my father,” said the man with the rifle. “I am Ortog, his son, no longer in his favor.”

  “Woe,” she wept, “I am not only fallen into the hands of a barbarian, but into the hands of the son of the dreaded Abrogastes himself.”