“For some five years,” said he, “since I infiltrated the kasbah and deposed my predecessor.”
“You serve Kurii,” I said.
The man shrugged. “You serve Priest-Kings,” said he. “We two have much in common, for we both are mercenaries. Only you are less wise than I, for you do not serve upon that side which will taste the salt of victory.”
“Priest-Kings are formidable enemies,” said I.
“Not so formidable as Kurii,” said he. “The Kur,” said he, “is persistent. It is tenacious. It is fierce. It will have its way. The Priest-Kings will fall. They will fail.”
I thought that what he said might be true. The Kur is determined, aggressive, merciless. It is highly intelligent, it lusts for blood, it will kill for territory and meat. The Priest-King is a relatively gentle organism, delicate and stately. It has little interest in conflict; its military posture is almost invariably defensive; it asks little more than to be left alone. I did not know if Priest-Kings, with all their brilliance, and all their great stores of knowledge on their scent-tapes, had a glandular and neurological system with which the motivations and nature of Kurii could be understood. The true nature of the Kurii might elude them, almost physiologically, like a menacing color they could not see, a terrible sound to which their sensors were almost inert. A man, I felt, could know a Kur, but Priest-Kings, I suspected, could only know about a Kur. They could know about them, but they could not know them. To know a Kur one must, perhaps, in the moonlight, face it with an ax, smell the musk of its murderous rage, see the eyes, the intelligence, the sinuous, hunched might of it, the blood black at its jaws, hear the blood cry, stand against its charge. A creature who had not known hatred, lust and terror, I suspected, would be ill-fitted to understand the Kur, or men.
“What you say is quite possibly true,” I said.
“I shall not ask you to serve Kurii,” said the man.
“You honor me,” I said.
“You are of the Warriors,” he said.
“It is true,” I said. Never had I been divested of the scarlet. Let who would, with steel, dispute my caste with me.
“Well,” said the man on the dais, “it is late, and we must all retire. You must be up before dawn.”
“Where is Vella?” I asked.
“I have confined her to her quarters,” he said.
“Her quarters?” I said.
“Yes,” said he. “She is a valued slave, a high slave.”
“She is not of the Tahari,” I said. “And, too, is she not merely an Earth slut?”
He smiled.
“As an Earth slut,” I said, “I would have expected you to keep her in a cage, or kennel, doubtless low in the kasbah, or perhaps have your men occasionally chain her naked to the foot of your couch.”
The slavery of Earth girls on Gor is often harsh. Whereas they are often keenly desired they are often, too, viewed with great contempt. Little lenience will be shown to them. A common punishment for a slave girl of Gorean origin is to give her an Earth-girl name, Jane, Audrey, Margaret, such names. From the Gorean point of view the Earth girl is not only not Gorean, and thus different, and thus likely to be despised, at least at first, but is usually viewed as an illiterate barbarian, which, of course, from the Gorean point of view, she usually is. Too, some Goreans, those familiar with the Second Knowledge, occasionally have some inkling, though an imperfect one, of certain negativistic, antibiological cultural pathologies of Earth, in virtue of which they suspect that some of the Earth women may have formed incorrect views on certain matters; too, they suspect she may have profited from and perhaps even sought, wittingly, to exploit such pathologies; this does not please them. Accordingly, then, they are occasionally willing to spend some time correcting the misapprehensions of the Earth girl on certain matters, and to treat her, in her collar, to some useful lessons on the proper relationships of men and women, or, at least, of masters and slaves. Why should she not learn the truth, even, if need be, stripped, on her knees, her lips pressed fearfully to the whip? Certainly Earth women have much to learn on Gor. Their lessons usually begin early. Sometimes Earth women are brought to Gor clothed. In the slave houses they are sometimes brought before the curule chair of the house master in their strange, unfamiliar garments. “You are no longer on Earth,” they are told. “You are now on Gor. Take off your clothes, and kneel.” They are then fitted with chains. Later they are branded, and will receive their first collar, a house collar. Shortly thereafter their training will begin.
At the feet of strong men, they learn their lessons quickly, and well.
To be sure, these almost generic cruelties to which Earth girls in Gorean bondage so often found themselves subjected, such strictures, have tended to subside somewhat in the past year or two, as Earth girls become less exotic, and become a more familiar commodity in the markets, are more visible on the streets, at least of the major cities, and so on. Indeed, many men seem to prefer them. That is not difficult to understand. They are lovely properties. Too, they kneel well, and, soon, gratefully; they blossom in the collar, and become beautiful.
On Gor, they have at last the opportunity to meet men of a sort they had only dreamed of before, in furtive, secret dreams, dreams which thrilled and frightened them, virile, uncompromising, powerful men, masters of women, men before whom they could only find themselves slaves, and they find themselves, too, on a fresh, unpolluted, beautiful, natural world, one such as Earth might once have been, and in a natural culture, one exciting and beautiful, and congenial to nature, one building upon and enhancing nature rather than contradicting her.
On Gor they are rescued from the political and sexual deserts of Earth; branded, collared, dressed revealingly, they find themselves for the first time in their lives, though embonded, far more free than they could ever have believed possible on Earth; gone is the ennui, the vacuity; on Gor they find themselves real, prized and meaningful; on Gor they find themselves, for the first time in their lives, totally alive.
Soon, most desire with all their being, in joy and gratitude, to make their masters happy. It is no wonder they are popular as slaves, and that some bring high prices. They soon find a fulfillment in love and service, and submission, which they would never have believed possible on Earth. Their place in society, as slave, is understood, accepted, and approved, even celebrated. They are prized, and relished. They become radiant, and zealous, and passionate, hot, devoted and dutiful. They set themselves to win the love of their master, and not unoften they succeed. Many then become the love slaves of love masters. They are kept as slaves, of course, for they are slaves; too, of course, as slaves, they are kept under perfect discipline. She, as other slaves, would not want it any other way. How could she, or any other slave, respect a master too weak to enforce discipline, too weak to get the whole slave from her? They are radiant. They are joyous in their collars.
To be sure, not all slaves are love slaves.
“Here,” said he, “she is a high slave, respected, accorded dignity, esteemed and pampered. Think of her thusly. Indeed, some of my men fear her influence over me.” Here he looked about, but the men about did not meet his eyes. One or two smiled thinly, looking down. I gathered that the lovely Vella, the former Miss Elizabeth Cardwell, though not of the Tahari, and only of Earth, must indeed be a high slave in the kasbah of Abdul, the Salt Ubar. I recalled how beautiful she was, and how she had betrayed me. “But I shall keep your suggestions in mind,” he said, “should she grow lax in her attentions, and fail to be fully pleasing, in the least particular.”
“Must I address you,” I asked, “as Abdul?”
The man lowered his veil. “No,” he said, “not if you do not wish to do so.”
“I know you better under another name,” I said.
“That is true,” said the man.
Hassan began to struggle. He could not part the fiber on his wrists. The ropes burned on his throat. He was held by the guards on his knees.
The blade of a scimita
r stood at his throat. He was quiet.
“Are we to be slain at dawn?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
I looked at him puzzled. Hassan, too, seemed shocked.
“You will begin a journey, with others, at dawn,” said the man. “It will be a long journey, afoot. It is my hope that you will both arrive safely.”
“What are you doing with us?” demanded Hassan.
“I herewith,” said Ibn Saran, “sentence you to the brine pits of Klima.”
We struggled to our feet, but each of us, by two guards, was held.
“Tafa, Riza,” said Ibn Saran, to two of the girls, “strip.” They did so, to collar and brand. “You will be taken below, to the dungeons,” said Ibn Saran to us. “There you will be chained by the neck in separate cells. In the cell of each, we will place a naked slave girl, she, too, chained by the neck, her chain within your reach, that you may, if you wish, pull her to you.”
“Ibn Saran is generous,” I said.
“I give Hassan a woman,” said he, “for his audacity. I give you, too, a woman, for your manhood, and for we are two of a kind, mercenaries in higher wars.” He turned to one of the girls. “Straighten your body, Tafa,” he said. She did so, and stood beautifully, a marvelous female slave. “Chain Riza,” said he to one of the guards, selecting the women who would serve us, by his will, “beside Hassan, this bandit, and Tafa by the side of this man, he of the Warriors, he whose name is Tarl Cabot.”
Metal leashes were snapped on the girls’ throats.
“Regard Tafa, Tarl Cabot,” said Ibn Saran. I did so. “Let Tafa’s body give you much pleasure,” he said. “For there are no women at Klima.”
We were turned about and taken from the audience hall of the Guard of the Dunes, Abdul, the Salt Ubar, he who was Ibn Saran.
14
The March to Klima
I took another step, and my right leg, to the knee, broke through the brittle crusts. The lash struck again across my back. I straightened in the slave hood, my head thrown back by the stroke. The chain on my neck jerked forward and I stumbled in the salt crusts. My hands clenched in the manacles, fastened at my belly by the loop of chain. My left leg broke through a dozen layers of crust, breaking it to the side with a hundred, dry, soft shattering sounds, the rupture of innumerable fine crystalline structures. I could feel blood on my left leg, over the leather wrappings, where the edge of a crust, ragged, hot, had sawed it open. I lost my balance and fell. I tried to rise. But the chain before me dragged forward and I fell again. Twice more the lash struck. I recovered my balance. Again I waded through the crusts toward Klima.
For twenty days had we marched. Some thought it a hundred. Many had lost count.
More than two hundred and fifty men had been originally in the salt chain.
I did not know how many now trekked with the march. The chain was now much heavier than it had been, for it, even with several sections removed, was carried by far fewer men. To be a salt slave, it is said, one must be strong. Only the strong, it is said, reach Klima.
In the chain, we wore slave hoods. These had been fastened on us at the foot of the wall of the kasbah of the Salt Ubar. Before mine had been locked under my chin I had seen the silver desert in its dawn. The sky in the east, for Gor, like the Earth rotates to the east, had seemed cool and gray. It was difficult to believe then, in the cool of that morning, as early as late spring, that the surface temperatures of the terrain we would traverse would be within hours better than one hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit. Our feet, earlier, had been wrapped in leather sheathing, it reaching, in anticipation of the crusts, later to be encountered, to the knees. The moons, at that time, had been still above the horizon. Rocks on the desert, and the sheer walls of the Salt Ubar’s kasbah, looming above us, shone with dew, common in the Tahari in the early morning, to be burned off in the first hour of the sun. Children, and nomads, sometimes rise early, to lick the dew from the rocks. From where we were chained, I had been able to see, some two pasangs to the east, Tarna’s kasbah. An excellent tool had the Salt Ubar characterized her. She had not, however, been able to hold Hassan and me. The Salt Ubar had speculated that he would enjoy better fortune in this respect. The collar was locked about my throat.
An Ahn before dawn I had been aroused. Tafa, sweet and warm, on straw, strewn over the cool stones, lay against me, in my arms. On her throat was a heavy cell collar, with ring; attached to the ring was some fifteen feet of chain, it attached to a plate near our heads. I was similarly secured. The plates were no more than five inches apart. When we had been placed in the cell a tiny lamp had been put on a shelf by the door. The stones were broad, heavy blocks, cool, wet in places, over which lay a scattering of damp straw. We were perhaps a hundred feet below the kasbah. The cell had not been much cleaned. There was a smell, as of humans, and urts. Tafa screamed but she, unleashed, was thrown to the wall, and her fair throat placed in the waiting cell collar, it then snapped shut. I was then, too, secured. “Do not keep me in this place!” screamed Tafa. “Please! Please!” But they did not unlock the collar. An urt scampered across the stones, disappearing between two blocks of stone in the wall. Tafa screamed and threw herself to the feet of one of the jailers, holding his legs, kissing at him. With his left and right hand he checked the collar at her throat, holding it with his left hand and, with his right, jerking the chain twice against the ring, then threw her from him, to the straw. The other man similarly checked my collar. Then, with a knife, he cut the two ropes from my throat, and freed me of the binding fiber. He took the shreds of rope and binding fiber with him when he left the cell. The heavy door, beams of wood, sheathed with plates of iron, together some eight inches thick, closed. The hasps were flung over the staples, two, heavy, and two locks were shut on the door. At the top of the door, some six inches by ten inches, barred, was an observation window. The guards looked in. Tafa sprang to her feet and ran to the length of her chain, her hands and fingers outstretched, clawing toward the bars. Her fingers came within ten inches of the bars. “Do not leave me here,” she cried. “Please, oh, please, oh Masters!” They turned away. She moaned, and turned from the door, dragging at the chain with her small hands. She fell to her hands and knees and vomited twice, from fear and the stench. An urt skittered past her, having emerged from a crack in the floor between two stones and moved swiftly across the floor, along one wall, and vanished through the crack which had served as exit for its fellow a few moments earlier. Tafa began to weep and pull hysterically at the chain and collar on her throat. But it was obdurately fastened upon her. I checked my own collar and chain, and the linkage at the ring and plate. I was secured. I looked at the tiny lamp on the shelf near the door. It smoked, and burned oil, probably from tiny rock tharlarions, abundant south of Tor in the spring. I looked at Tafa. She shook her head. “No,” she said. “You are sentenced to Klima.”
I leaned back against the wall. “You will be only a salt slave,” she said.
I watched her. With the back of her right wrist she wiped her mouth. I continued to watch her. She half knelt, half sat, her head down, the palms of her hands on the floor of the cell.
I picked up, where it lay on the stones, fastened to the plate and ring near mine, the chain which ran, looped, lying on the floor, to her collar, several feet away.
“No!” she cried angrily. I held the chain. I did not pull it to me. “Salt slave!” she cried. She jerked the chain taut with her two hands, on her knees, backing away. My hand rested on the chain, lightly. It was tight on its ring, taut. I removed my hand from the chain.
Watching me, catlike, Tafa lay on her side in the straw. I looked away. Tafa, no longer under the eye of her master, the feared Ibn Saran, had a slave girl’s pride. She was, after all, a lock-collar girl, who had been once free, who was beautiful, who had, at Two Scimitars, brought a high price, a price doubtless improved upon, if only slightly, by the agents of Ibn Saran, when they had bought her for their master. Slave girls, commonly obsequious a
nd docile with free males, who may in an instant put them under discipline, are often insolent and arrogant with males who are slave, whom they despise. Salt slaves, in the Tahari, are among the lowest of the male slaves. The same girl who, joyously, would lasciviously writhe at the feet of the free male, begging him for his slightest touch, would often, confronted with male slaves, treat them with the contempt and coldness commonly accorded the men of Earth by their frustrated, haughty females; I have sometimes wondered if this is because the women of Earth, cheated of their domination by the aggressor sex, see such weaklings, perhaps uneasily or subconsciously, as slaves, men unfit to master, males determined to be only the equals of girls, stupid fools who wear their own chains, slaves who have enslaved themselves, fearing to be free. Goreans, interestingly from the point of view of an Earthling, who has been subjected to differing historical conditioning processes, do not regard biology as evil; those who deny the truths of biology are not acclaimed on Gor, as on Earth, but are rather regarded as being curious and pathetic. Doubtless it is difficult to adjudicate matters of values. Perhaps it is intrinsically more desirable in some obscure sense to deny biology and suffer from mental and physical disease, than accept biology and be strong and joyful, I do not know. I leave the question to those wiser than myself. For what it is worth, though doubtless it is little pertinent, the men and women of Gor are, generally, whole and happy; the men and women of Earth, generally, if I do not misread the situation, are not. The cure for poison perhaps is not more poison, but something different. But this matter I leave again to those more wise than myself.
My hand again picked up Tafa’s chain, where it was fastened to the plate near mine. Instantly, her eyes, which she had closed, her arm under the left side of her head, opened. I took up a fist of the chain. “Salt slave!” she said. She rose to her knees. She jerked with her weight against the chain. This time I did not release it. Her hands slipped on the chain. She tried to jerk it again, holding it more firmly. I did not release the chain. It was as though it had been fastened anew, but a fist shorter than it had been. “No!” she cried. I took up another fist of chain. She sprang to her feet. “No! No!” she cried. I put my two hands on the chain. I drew it another few inches toward me. She stumbled forward some inches, then stood, bracing herself, her hands on the chain. “No!” she cried. I took up another fist of the chain, her neck and head were pulled forward. She was in an awkward position. She could not brace herself. She gave some inches and again braced herself, throwing her weight back against the chain. It did not yield. She wept. “No! No!” she said. It interested me that she would attempt to pit her strength against mine. The strength of a full-grown woman is equivalent to that of a twelve-year-old boy. Goreans read in this an indication as to who is master. Foot by foot, slowly, across the floor of the cell, she slipping, screaming, struggling, I drew her toward me. I saw the small oil lamp was growing dim, the oil almost depleted, the wick smoking. Then my fist was in the girl’s collar and I threw her to her back at my side. With my left hand I lifted the heavy collar chain from her body and threw it over her head and behind her. I saw her wild eyes, frightened. With some straw I wiped her mouth, cleaning it, for earlier, in her revulsion and terror, her horror at the place and manner in which she found herself incarcerated, she had from her own mouth soiled both herself and the cell. “Please,” she said. “Be silent,” I told her. The lamp sputtered out.
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