He thrust his scimitar back in his sheath. He threw back his head and laughed, and then tore down the veil, that we might look on his face. He grinned at us.
“It is the bandit, Hassan!” cried a guard.
I drew my scimitar and stood between him and Suleiman.
The kaiila pranced. The man uncoiled a long desert whip from his saddle.
“I come for a slave,” he said.
The long blade of the whip lashed forth. Alyena, her head back, cried out with pain. Four coils of the whip, biting into her, lashing, snapped tight about her waist. He yanked her, stumbling, the prisoner of his whip, to the side of his kaiila. By the hair he yanked her across his saddle.
He lifted his hand to us. “Farewell!” he cried. “And my thanks!” He then spun the kaiila and, as guards swarmed after him, to our astonishment, leapt the kaiila, catlike, between pillars, through one of the great arched windows of the palace room. He struck a roof below, and then another roof, and then was to the ground, racing away, men turning to look after him.
I, and others, turned back from the window. On the cushions lay Suleiman, Pasha of Nine Wells. I ran to him. I saw Hamid, who was the lieutenant of Shakar, captain of the Aretai, slip swiftly behind hangings, a dagger, bloodied, held within his cloak.
I turned to Suleiman. His eyes were open. “Who struck me?” he said. There was blood deep in the silk of the cushions.
Ibn Saran drew forth his scimitar. He did not seem languid now. His eyes blazed. He seemed a silken panther, lithe, tensed for the spring. He pointed the scimitar at me. “He!” he cried. “I saw it! He did it!”
I leaped to my feet.
“Kavar spy!” cried Ibn Saran. “Assassin!”
I spun about, facing steel on all sides.
“Cut him down!” cried Ibn Saran, raising his scimitar.
6
A Slave Girl Testifies
The bodies of the two girls, stripped, lay on the narrow rectangles, networks, of knotted ropes, on the racks. The ropes, slung, were pressed down with their weight. Their hands were at their sides, but ropes were attached to them, and fixed on the axle of the windlass, above their heads. Both wore collars. Their ankles were roped to the foot of the device.
I knelt on the circle of accusation. My wrists were manacled behind my back. On my neck, hammered, was a heavy ring of iron, with two welded rings, one on each side, to which chains were attached, these chains in the hands of guards. I was stripped. My ankles were chained.
“Cut him down!” had cried Ibn Saran, raising his scimitar.
“No!” had said Shakar, captain of the Aretai, staying his arm. “That would be too easy.”
Smiling, Ibn Saran had sheathed his weapon.
Ropes had been put upon me.
I struggled in the chains. I was helpless.
“Let the testimony of slaves be taken,” said the judge.
The red-haired girl on the rack cried out in misery. The testimony of slaves, in a Gorean court, is commonly taken under torture.
Two brawny male slaves, stripped to the waist, spun the two handles on the racks.
The red-haired girl, she who had been one of the matched set of slaves, who had had in her charge the tray of spoons and sugars, wept. Her wrists, and those of the other girl, as the long wooden handles turned, were pulled up and over her head. The red-haired girl writhed on the cords. “Master!” she wept.
Ibn Saran, in silken kaftan, and kaffiyeh and agal, strode to the rack.
“Do not be frightened, pretty Zaya,” he said. “Remember to tell the truth, and only the truth.”
“I will, Master!” she wept. “I will.”
At a sign from the judge the handle moved once, dropping the wooden pawl into the ratchet notch. Her body was now tight on the rack; her toes were pointed; her hands were high over her head, the rough rope slipped up her wrists, prohibited from moving further by its knots and the wide part of her hands.
“Listen carefully, little Zaya,” said Ibn Saran. “And think carefully.”
The girl nodded.
“Did you see who it was who struck noble Suleiman Pasha?”
“Yes,” she cried. “It was he! He! It was he, as you, my Master, have informed the court.” The girl turned her head to the side, to regard me. “He!” she cried.
Ibn Saran smiled.
“Hamid it was!” I cried, struggling to my feet. “It was Hamid, lieutenant to Shakar!”
Hamid, standing to one side, did not deign to look upon me. There were angry murmurs from the men assembled in the court.
“Hamid,” said Shakar, not pleased, standing near, “is a trusted man.” And he added, “And he is Aretai.”
“Should you persist in accusing Hamid,” said the judge, “your penalties will be the more severe.”
“He it was,” said I, “who struck Suleiman.”
“Kneel,” said the judge.
I knelt.
The judge signaled again to the slave who controlled the handle of the red-haired girl’s rack. “No, please!” she screamed.
Once more the handle moved and the pawl slipped into a new notch on the ratchet. Her body, now, was lifted from the network of knotted ropes and hung, suspended, between the two axles of the rack.
“Masters!” she cried. “Masters! I have told the truth! The truth!”
The pawl was moved yet another notch. The girl, now hurt, screamed.
“Have you told the truth, pretty Zaya?” inquired Ibn Saran.
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, Master, Master!” she wept.
At a signal from the judge the handle was released. The axle of the windlass at the girl’s head spun back and her body fell into the network of knotted ropes. One of the slaves removed the ropes from her wrists and ankles. She could not move, so terrified she was. He then threw her to the side of a wall, where another slave, pushing against the side of her neck, fastened a snap catch on her collar, securing her by a chain to a ring in the floor. He then took a narrow, eighteen-inch thong and bound her hands behind her back. She then lay there, on her side, trembling.
“Let the testimony of the second slave be taken,” said the judge.
Her wrists were already over her head. She was stripped. She looked at me. She wore a collar.
“Think now, my pretty,” said Ibn Saran. “Think carefully, my pretty.”
She was the other girl of the matched set, the other white-skinned wench, she who had had in her charge the silvered, long-spouted vessel of black wine.
“Think carefully now, pretty Vella,” said Ibn Saran.
“I will, Master,” she said.
“If you tell the truth,” he said, “you will not be hurt.”
“I will tell the truth, Master,” she said.
Ibn Saran nodded to the judge.
The judge lifted his hand and the handle on the girl’s rack moved once. She closed her eyes. Her body was now tight on the rack; her toes were pointed; her hands were high over her head, the rope tight, taut, on her wrists.
“What is the truth, pretty Vella?” asked Ibn Saran.
She opened her eyes. She did not look at him. “The truth,” she said, “is as Ibn Saran says.”
“Who struck noble Suleiman Pasha?” asked Ibn Saran, quietly.
The girl turned her head to look at me. “He,” she said. “He it was who struck Suleiman Pasha.”
My face betrayed no emotion.
At a signal from the judge the slave at the handle of the girl’s rack, pushing it with his two hands, moved the handle. When the pawl slipped into its notch her body was held, tight, suspended, between the two axles of the rack.
“In the confusion,” said Ibn Saran, “it was he, the accused, who struck Suleiman Pasha, and then went, with others, to the window.”
“Yes,” said the girl.
“I saw it,” said Ibn Saran. “But not I alone saw it.”
“No, Master,” she said.
“Who else saw?” he asked.
“Vella and Zaya, slaves
,” she said.
“Pretty Zaya,” said he, “has given witness that it was the accused who struck Suleiman Pasha.”
“It is true,” said the girl.
“Why do you, slaves, tell the truth?” he asked.
“We are slaves,” she said. “We fear to lie.”
“Excellent,” he said. She hung in the ropes, taut. She did not speak.
“Look now again, carefully, upon the accused.”
She looked at me. “Yes, Master,” she said.
“Was it he who struck Suleiman Pasha?” asked Ibn Saran.
“Yes, Master,” she said. “It was he.”
The judge gave a signal and the long handle of the rack, fitting through a rectangular hole in the axle, moved again.
The girl winced, but she did not cry out.
“Look again carefully upon the accused,” said Ibn Saran. I saw her eyes upon me. “Was it he who struck Suleiman Pasha?”
“It was he,” she said.
“Are you absolutely certain?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“It is enough,” said the judge. He gave a signal. The handle spun back. The girl’s body fell into the network of knotted ropes. She turned her face to me. She smiled, slightly.
The ropes were removed from her wrists and ankles. One of the male slaves lifted her from the rack and threw her to the foot of the wall, beside the other girl. The slave there took her by the hair, holding her head down, and, between the back of her neck and the collar, thrust a snap catch, closing it. He then, roughly, burning the side of her neck, slid the catch about her collar, to the front; there he jerked it against her collar; the chain then, which fastened her, like the other girl, to a ring in the floor, ran to her collar, under her chin. He then, as he had with the other girl, with another narrow thong, tied her hands behind her back. She kept her head down, a slave.
7
I am Informed of the Pits of Klima;
An Escape is Arranged
I lifted my head.
I smelled it, somewhere near. But I saw nothing. I tensed. I sat against the stone wall, formed of heavy blocks. I pulled my head out from the wall, but it would not move far. To the heavy collar of iron, to each of its two, heavy welded rings, one on each side, there was fastened a short chain, fixed to a ring and plate, bolted through the drilled stone. My hands, each, were manacled to the wall, too, on short chains, to my left and right. I was naked. My ankles, in close chains, were fastened to another ring, in the floor, before me, it, too, on a plate, bolted through the floor block.
I sat forward, as far as I could, listening. I sat on the stone, on straw, soiled, which was scattered on the floor to absorb wastes. I looked to the door, some twenty feet across the stone floor; it was of beams, sheathed with iron. There was a small window, high in the door, about six inches in height, eighteen inches in width. It bore five bars. There was a musty smell, but the room was not particularly damp. Light reached it from a small window, barred, some twelve feet above the floor, in the wall to my right. It was just under the ceiling. In the placid, diagonal beam of light, seeming to lean against the wall, ascending to the window, I saw dust.
I distended my nostrils, screening the scents of the room. I rejected the smell of moldy straw, of wastes. From outside I could smell date palms, pomegranates. I heard a kaiila pass, its paws thudding in the sand. I heard kaiila bells, from afar, a man shouting. Nothing seemed amiss. I detected the odor of kort rinds, matted, drying, on the stones, where they had been scattered from my supper the evening before. Vints, insects, tiny, sand-colored, covered them. On the same rinds, taking and eating vints, were two small cell spiders. Outside the door I could smell cheese. The smell, too, of Bazi tea was clear. I heard the guard move, drowsy, on his chair outside the door. I could smell his sweat, and the veminium water he had rubbed about his neck.
Then I sat back against the stones. It seemed I had been mistaken.
I closed my eyes. “Surrender Gor,” had come the message, presumed from the steel worlds. “Surrender Gor.” And, earlier, months ago, a caravan boy, Achmed, the son of the merchant, Farouk of Kasra, had found the inscription on a rock, “Beware the steel tower.” There had been, too, the message girl, Veema, whose very body had borne the warning, “Beware Abdul.” I thought little of that now, however, for Abdul had been the water carrier in Tor, surely a minor agent of Others, the Kurii, little to be feared, no more than a gnat in the desert. I had not chosen to press the juices from the body of that insect. I had let him flee in terror. I still did not know, however, who had sent the warning, “Beware Abdul.” I smiled. There seemed little reason to beware of such a nonentity.
On the trip to Nine Wells, in the company of Achmed; his father, Farouk; Shakar, captain of the Aretai; Hamid, his lieutenant, and a guard of fifteen riders, I had seen the stone, led to it by Achmed.
“The body is gone!” cried Achmed. “It lay here!”
The stone, however, remained, and the message scratched upon it. It was scratched in Taharic, the lettering of the Tahari peoples. Their language is Gorean, but they, like certain other groups, usually isolated groups, did not use the common Gorean script. I had studied the Taharic alphabet. Since the alphabet is correlated with Gorean phonemes, it is speedily mastered, little more than an incomplete cipher, by one who knows Gorean. One oddity about it, from the point of view of one who reads Gorean, is that it possesses signs for only four of the nine vowels in Gorean. There was, however, even for me, no difficulty in reading the inscription. No vowel sound had to be interpolated, or determined from context, in this message. Each sign was clear. The message as a whole was explicit, unmistakable. The vowel sounds which are explicitly represented, incidentally, are represented by tiny marks near the other letters, rather like accent marks. They are not, in themselves, full-fledged letters. Vowel sounds which are not explicitly represented, of course, must be inserted by the reader. At one time in Taharic, apparently, no vowel sounds were represented. Some Taharic scholars, purists, refuse to countenance vowel signs, regarding their necessity as a convenience for illiterates.
“There is no body here now,” had said Shakar, captain of the Aretai.
“Where could it have gone?” asked Hamid, his lieutenant.
His question was not an ill-advised one. There was no sign about of picked bones, or of the work of scavengers. Had there been sand storms the rock, too, presumably, would have been covered. Sand storms in the Tahari, incidentally, though upon occasion lengthy and terrible storms, may rearrange dunes, but they seldom bury anything. The whipping sand is blasted away almost as swiftly as it is deposited. Further, of course, a body in the Tahari decomposes with great slowness. The flesh of a desert tabuk which dies in the desert, perhaps separated from its herd, and unable to find water, if undisturbed by the salivary juices of predators, remains edible for several days. The external appearance of the animal, beyond this, can remain much the same for centuries.
“It is gone,” said Shakar, turning his kaiila, and returning to the caravan.
The others followed him.
I lingered a bit longer, looking on the inscription. “Beware the steel tower.” Then I, too, turned my kaiila, and returned to the caravan.
“Surrender Gor,” I thought.
I leaned back against the stone. I moved my head a bit, turning my neck inside the heavy collar. I pulled a bit at the wrist manacles, on my left and right. I heard the chain subside to the stones. I felt a trickle of sweat move down my left forearm, and slip under the iron on my left wrist. I pulled wildly against the wrist manacles; the collar cut into my neck; I twisted my ankles in the ankle irons, and pulled the chain against the ring. Then, furious, I sat back against the stones. I was a prisoner. I was absolutely helpless.
I closed my eyes again. Suleiman had not died. The blow of the assassin, in the confusion, had failed to find its mark.
The judge, on the testimony of Ibn Saran, and that of two white-skinned, female slaves, one named Zaya, a red-haired gir
l, the other a dark-haired girl, whose name was Vella, had sentenced me as a criminal, a would-be assassin, to the secret brine pits of Klima, deep in the dune country, there to dig until the salt, the sun, the slave masters, had finished with me. From the secret pits of Klima, it was said, no slave had ever returned. Kaiila are not permitted at Klima, even to the guards. Supplies are brought in, and salt carried away, by caravan, on which the pits must depend. Other than the well at Klima, there is no other water within a thousand pasangs. The desert is the wall at Klima. The locations of the pits, such as those at Klima, are little known, and, to protect the resource, are kept secret by mine agents and merchants. Women are not permitted at Klima, lest men kill one another for them.
Then again, unmistakably, this time, the odor came to my nostrils. The hair rose on the back of my neck.
I strained against the iron, the chains. I was nude. I was completely helpless. I could not even put my hands before my body.
I must wait.
I smelled Kur.
“Is there someone there?” called the guard. I heard his chair scrape. I heard him get to his feet.
He received no answer. There was only silence.
I sat still. I moved not even the chain.
He walked toward the threshold of the large room, or hall, which gives access to the cells. He walked carefully. There is no door on the threshold. It is a narrow threshold, lying at the foot of a set of narrow, twisting, concave stairs.
“Who is there?” he called. He waited. There was no answer.
He turned about, and went back to his chair. I heard him sit down again. But in a moment, suddenly, the chair scraped back again, and he was on his feet. “Who is there!” he challenged. I heard his scimitar leave its sheath.
“Who is there!” I heard him cry once more, then heard him turning, wildly, facing about, here and there, in the hall.
Tribesmen of Gor Page 15