The Usurper

by John Norman

  “Bring your goods through here,” said a man, high on the barricade.

  He indicated a narrow opening below him and to his right, where two other men had swung back a makeshift gate of planks, with projecting spikes.

  “Move,” said the driver.

  The slaves, in line, proceeded.

  “They are nicely shackled, close shackled,” said a man.

  “They will not rush quickly away, so impeded,” said a fellow.

  “I think they will stay muchly where we want them,” said another.

  Within the barricade Cornhair saw there were several more men, variously armed, most with clubs.

  “The ankles of women look well in shackles,” said a fellow.

  “Consider their hands, chained behind their backs,” said another, approvingly.

  “Excellent,” said another.

  “Women look well, stripped and in chains,” said a man.

  “Would that we had our free women so,” said a man.

  Slaves may be discussed so, for they are not free women.

  The fellow at the height of the barricade, who seemed to be first amongst these men, called out, apparently to some fellows beyond the barricade, in the vicinity of the looted shops.

  “Stay away!” he called out. “If you come here we will club out your brains, if you have any!”

  “Keep moving,” said the driver. “It is not far now.”

  To her surprise, Cornhair heard music, coming from a tavern. Within there were lights. Men loitered about.

  Too, here, behind the barricade, some shops were open, and men were about, though she saw no women. Cornhair did not realize it but there were parts of Telnar to which the general unrest in the city had not much penetrated, or, perhaps better, had not been permitted to much penetrate. Many of the windows in the walls above the shops did remain shuttered. Fear, she supposed, hid behind shutters. Strange, she thought, how life might differ, from one side of a wall to another, how civilitas and the jungle might exist within yards of one another. In parts of Telnar, musicians and street dancers performed, recitals and plays were presented; poets sang their work to the music of flute and lyre; in other parts, streets were unlit and doors were bolted, blood flowed and men roamed the streets like wolves.

  “We are here,” said the driver. “Stand here. I will deliver you. I must have a receipt.”

  He strode to a heavy double door, and swung the knocking ring thrice against its bolted metal plate.

  He turned back to the slaves.

  “You are to be sold tonight,” he said.

  He was then admitted.

  The slaves, naturally, remained in place. Should the Masters return, and find them elsewhere, even slightly, or differently ordered, it might mean the lash.

  In a few moments two men emerged from the double door, the driver and another, from within.

  He from within carried a switch.

  Slaves view such things with apprehension.

  How different it is from being a free woman!

  The driver folded a paper, and thrust it into his tunic, presumably the receipt. “I must gather my horses,” he said. “I abandon the wagon. It is an impediment. It has been noted. Perhaps, with good fortune, in better days, it can be reclaimed.”

  “Return by some circuitous route,” suggested the man from within.

  “I return not now at all,” said the driver. “I am under a different instruction.”

  “The wharf house is closed, I take it,” said the man.

  “Things there are not safe,” said the driver.

  “Things are not safe here, either,” said the man from within.

  “I fear a landing,” said the driver.

  “The palace and senate have proclaimed such a thing impossible,” said the man from within.

  “Let us hope that dreaded Abrogastes is listening,” said the driver.

  “There are the batteries,” said the man from within.

  “That is true,” said the driver.

  “Farewell,” said the man from within.

  “Farewell,” said the driver.

  The driver then turned about to unharness his horses, and the man from within, with his switch, approached the slaves, and regarded them, not speaking.

  “Lift your heads,” he said.

  The slaves stood, and stood well, not wishing to be cuffed, or switched.

  Inspected, they refrained from meeting his eyes.

  Slaves are accustomed to being looked upon by men.

  It is part of being a slave.

  “Average goods,” he said.

  He then tapped the first girl lightly with the switch indicating she should proceed within.

  “You, too,” he said to the second girl.

  With a rustle of her shackling, she followed the first girl.

  He paused at the side of Cornhair, but then, to her uneasiness, moved beyond her.

  Why was that?

  And could it be true, that they were “average goods”?

  “I like red hair,” he said to the girl behind Cornhair. “I think you will bring your share of darins. Why were you not, I wonder, in an earlier lot?”

  She then moved forward, making her way through the double doors. Cornhair could see lamp light within.

  Why was I not in an earlier lot, wondered Cornhair. I have been accounted beautiful. Surely, when I was a free woman, I was thought beautiful, very beautiful. And, indeed, was beauty not germane to the plans of Iaachus, Arbiter of Protocol, when he sought to recruit an agent for a clandestine mission of great import, an arbitration of delicate political matters by means of a poisoned dagger? Well do I remember when I, to my indignation, to my mortification, to my outrage and humiliation, was ordered to strip myself, I, the Lady Publennia Calasalia, of the Larial Calasalii, before him, as though I might be a captive, even a slave! But I was found beautiful, even beautiful enough to wear a collar! And thus the poisoned dagger would be delivered to me, and not to another! And as a slave, too, surely men have found me beautiful. Surely it is not difficult to comprehend their appraising regard, their assessment of the likelihood that I might look well on my belly before them, my lips pressed to their boots.

  “You, Slave Five,” said the man, “have a nice width, would be a cuddly package in a Master’s grasp.”

  Cornhair heard a rustle of chain, but the slave did not respond.

  “You came from the delta, by keel boat,” he said.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “Proceed,” he said. “Inside, your chains will be removed, and before you are put in your cage, you will be washed and fed.”

  “Yes, Master,” she said. “Thank you, Master.”

  Cornhair, understandably, was uneasy, at her apparent neglect.

  She felt the switch under her chin, and she lifted her head more.

  “You tremble,” he said. “Are you afraid?”

  “Yes, Master,” she whispered.

  “You are rather slight,” he said.

  “Forgive me, Master,” she said.

  “But such as you look well, stripped, on your hands and knees, in a cage.”

  Cornhair was silent.

  “But all women do,” he said.

  Cornhair started.

  “Yes,” he said, “all women.”

  He then walked about Cornhair, and paused when he was again on her left.

  “Blond hair, blue eyes,” he said.

  “May I speak?” asked Cornhair.

  “Certainly,” he said.

  “Why does Master concern himself with me?” she asked. “Should I not be within, to be relieved of my impediments, as the others, to be cleaned and fed, before my caging?”

  “Yes,” he said, “you are the same one. I am sure of it.”

  “M
aster?” said Cornhair.

  “You were on a sales shelf in Harmony Street,” he said, “with others, the placard on your neck. And you failed of a sale in the market of Horace, in Endymion’s Way.”

  “I was soon sold from the house,” she said.

  “After having entertained the leather, I suspect,” he said.

  “Yes, Master,” she said, wincing, recalling the generous application of the torch of leather to her back, her hands tied over her head, to a ring.

  “But you seem different now,” he said.

  “Different, Master?” she said.

  “Let us see,” he said.

  “Oh!” she said.

  “Ah,” he said, “the little beast is now ready for a Master.”

  Cornhair trembled, not speaking.

  “What are you?” he asked.

  “A slave, Master,” she said.

  “For what do you exist?”

  “To give pleasure to Masters,” she said.

  “You are going to be pretty on the slave block, are you not?” she was asked.

  “I will try, Master,” she said.

  “You are going to be such on the slave block,” said the man, “so desirable, so exciting, and pathetically needful, that every man in the house will want to own you, that every man in the house will want his collar on your neck, that every man in the house will want to throw you in chains to his feet.”

  “I will try, Master,” she said.

  “You want to be in a collar, and in chains at a Master’s feet,” he said.

  “Master?” she said.

  “You want to be in a collar, and in chains at a Master’s feet,” he said, again.

  “Yes, Master,” she said, startled. “I want to be in a collar, and in chains at a Master’s feet.”

  “Yes,” thought Cornhair, shaken, and trembling, “I want to be in a collar, and in chains at a Master’s feet. I am a slave!”

  “Enter,” said the man, indicating the portal of the double door, the lamp somewhere within. “Enter, the House of Worlds.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “I would feel easier,” said Otto, “if I carried the long sword.”

  “So mighty a blade would speak of barbarism,” said Julian. “We need not cleave open the timbers of gates, shatter posts, cut off the heads of horses. Be content with your captain’s blade.”

  “Why could I not wear freer garments?” asked Otto.

  “Be content with the uniform of your office,” said Julian.

  Otto, or Ottonius, it might be recalled, had been commissioned to recruit comitates amongst Otungs, to supplement the auxiliary forces of the empire, this in support of the project of Julian of the Aureliani, to stiffen resistance to barbarian influxes of a hostile nature, to shore up threatened borders, to enact selected missions, to enlist barbarians on behalf of a flagging empire, corrupt and degenerating, unwilling or unable to unilaterally mount and sustain its own defenses. Might not the empire be refreshed and invigorated with new blood? Let barbarians see the standards of the empire as their own, to be fought for, even died for, rather than as those of a foe. Sidonicus, Exarch of Telnar, had managed to acquire an artifact, a medallion and chain, high symbol of the Vandal nation, on Tangara, and have it delivered to Ingeld, a Drisriak, the second son of Abrogastes, the Far-Grasper. By means of this artifact, Ingeld hoped to bring together the Alemanni and the Vandals in a coalition which might doom the empire. The reward of Sidonicus, for the bestowal of the medallion and chain on a Drisriak, was to be the conversion of united barbarian nations to a particular faith, not surprisingly his own, which they would then impose on the empire. Interestingly, he was simultaneously negotiating, much to the same end, with the empire, with the end in view that his faith be decreed the official faith of the empire, whilst all other faiths, as false faiths, dangerous to the koos, or such, were to be rooted out and destroyed. The empire’s reward in this would be that Sidonicus, breaking with Floonian tradition, let alone the teachings of Floon, as nearly as they could be determined, would then release his followers, in their millions, to support and defend the empire, to observe its laws, to pay its taxes, to pledge it allegiance, to take up arms in its behalf, to fight for it, even unto death. In either case, obviously, his faith would be triumphant, whether advanced by the rude insignias of barbarism or by the silver standards of Telnaria itself. The one plot, however, that of the medallion and chain, as we have learned, was subverted when Julian, who was familiar with the original artifact, from the cell of an Emanationist brother in the festung of Sim Giadini on Tangara, produced a great many copies of the artifact, which were distributed widely, to the dismay and consternation of Ingeld’s projected allies. As a consequence the Alemanni, or the Aatii, as they appear in the imperial accounts, remained the major threat to the empire, and other barbarian nations, in particular, the Vandals, remained to one side, like wolves in the darkness, curious, patient, watching a fire, hostile to the Alemanni, but bearing no love to the empire.

  “Why needed my beard be shaved, my hair be cut?” growled Otto.

  “Your scrub of a beard was not much of a beard,” said Julian.

  “Short, it is harder to seize in combat,” said Otto.

  “Cease complaining, my friend,” said Julian, walking briskly forward.

  “My hair,” grumbled Otto. “What would they say in the hall?”

  “You are not in the hall now,” said Julian. “In Telnar men do not wear their hair like the mane of a Herul dog.”

  “How many charges have you left?” asked Otto.

  “Four,” said Julian. “Two were lost at the river.”

  “You could buy others,” said Otto.

  “The empire controls such things,” said Julian. “The populace is to be defenseless.”

  “Like cattle,” said Otto.

  “It is the empire’s way,” said Julian.

  “In the streets, in the dark, narrow streets?” said Otto.

  “I doubt you can find them there now,” said Julian. “Months ago, one charge might cost five to ten thousand darins, even here, in Telnar. Have you five to ten thousand darins?”

  “No,” said Otto.

  “I have concealed the pistol,” said Julian. “If it was known we had such a weapon, we might be killed for it.”

  “Civilitas,” said Otto, scornfully.

  “Civilitas,” said Julian, “is more frequently praised than practiced.”

  “Men stare at me,” grumbled Otto.

  “And they might stare at a torodont, were it walking here, on Palace Street,” said Julian. “You are large, your stride, your coloring, are not typically Telnarian.”

  “Good,” said Otto.

  “At least you are not clad in skins, with a necklace of claws,” said Julian. “Remember your troubles on the Summer World.”

  This remark pertained to an occurrence which had taken place several months ago.

  “There is the senate,” said Julian. “See the columns, the dome.”

  “Is this wise, to approach the palace?” asked Otto. “Surely Iaachus, and others, perhaps even the empress mother, have little love for the Aureliani, and any enleagued with them. Indeed, we established on Tangara, from the blond slave, that it was he, Iaachus, who hoped to strike at you, and your plans, by means of my assassination.”

  “By the way,” said Julian, “you slew the slave, after lengthy tortures, did you not?”

  “No,” said Otto. “We marked her, and sold her to Heruls. She sold for one pig.”

  “Excellent,” said Julian. “There are better things to do with a woman than kill her. Their necks look well in collars. Collars keep them nicely in their place.”

  “Others escaped,” said Otto, “Phidias, captain of the Narcona, and two others, lesser officers, a Lysis and a Corelius.”

  “I have no do
ubt they reported the work well done to Iaachus,” said Julian.

  “And yet,” said Otto, “we approach the palace?”

  “Surely Iaachus will not slay us before the throne,” said Julian. “Too, I think things may have changed. Iaachus is a devious fellow, but he is not irrational, no more than a knife or pistol. I think that he, in his way, is as concerned for the empire as we, though doubtless only in so far as it advances his own interests.”

  “You will crave an audience?” asked Otto.

  “It cannot be refused,” said Julian. “I am cousin to the emperor.”

  “If we can make it to the gate of the palace grounds,” said Otto, looking about himself.

  “I think we shall,” said Julian. “There are guardsmen about. There is peace here, guaranteed by the drawing of bows, the leveling of spears.”

  “Not so elsewhere,” said Otto.

  “No, I think not,” said Julian. “I gather that much of the city is in chaos.”

  “Somewhere, above the blue sky,” said Otto, “lurk the Lion Ships of Abrogastes.”

  “I do not think he can long maintain the blockade,” said Julian. “I would give him no more than four days.”

  Otto walked beside Julian, quietly.

  “I do not understand the blockade,” said Julian. “Why would it be mounted? What is it to accomplish?”

  “Perhaps,” said Otto, “it is not a blockade.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “Whho has purchased me, Master?” begged Cornhair. “I could not see. The house was dark. I was illuminated by torchlight.”

  Cornhair had been sold last night.

  She was still, the following morning, in the selling house, that maintained on Varl by the House of Worlds.

  The slaver’s man held a bit of cloth in his hand.

  “One who saw you first in the slave bath,” he said, “with the others.”

  “We were alone,” said Cornhair.

  “You, and the others,” he said, “were seen through the grid, high, in the wall. Did you expect privacy?”

  “I thought we were alone,” said Cornhair.