The veiled figure, robed in white, with the lance and pennon, nodded his head, accepting the command of these thousands of fierce warriors.
Haroun then turned in his robes. “Greetings, Suleiman,” said he.
“Greetings, Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars,” said Suleiman.
“I heard your wound was grievous,” said Haroun to Suleiman. “Why have you taken to the saddle?”
“Why of course to do war with you,” said Suleiman.
“On grounds, or for sport?” asked Haroun.
“On grounds,” said Suleiman, angrily. “Kavar raids on Aretai communities, the breaking of wells!”
“Remember Red Rock!” cried a Tashid guard.
“Remember Two Scimitars!” cried a man in the retinue of the pasha of the Bakahs.
“No mercy is shown to him who destroys water!” cried a man, one of the Luraz.
Scimitars were loosened. I shifted my wind veil about my face. There were Aretai present. They paid me little attention. I saw Shakar look once at me, and then look troubled, then look away.
“Look!” said Haroun. He pointed to the nude, tethered wretches, bound to his pommel. “Lift your arms, Sleen,” he said to them.
The men lifted their arms, their wrists crossed, bound, over their heads.
“See?” asked Haroun.
“Kavars!” cried one of the Raviri.
“No!” cried Suleiman. “The scimitar on the forearm! The point does not face out from the body!” He looked at Haroun. “These men are not Kavars,” he said.
“No,” said Haroun.
“Aretai raided Kavar oases,” cried a man, a guard among the Ta’Kara. “They broke wells!”
Suleiman’s hand clenched on the hilt of his scimitar. “No!” he cried. “That is not true!”
There was angry shouting among the Kavars and their cohorts.
Haroun held up his hand. “Suleiman speaks the truth,” said he. “No Aretai raided in this season, and had they done so, they would not destroy wells. They are of the Tahari.”
It was the highest compliment one tribesman could pay to another.
“The Kavars, too,” said Suleiman, slowly, clearly, “are of the Tahari.”
The men subsided.
“We have a common enemy, who would put us at one another’s throats,” said Haroun.
“Who?” asked Suleiman.
Haroun turned to the tethered wretches. They lowered their arms and fell to their knees in the gravel and sand of the field. They put down their heads.
“For whom do you ride?” demanded Haroun.
One of the men, miserable, lifted his head. “For Tarna,” he said.
“And whose minion is she?” asked Haroun.
“The minion of Abdul, the Salt Ubar,” said the man. Then he put down his head.
“I understand little of this,” said the young khan of the Tajuks. He carried a leather, black, lacquered buckler on his left arm, a slim, black, tem-wood lance in his right hand. At his side hung a scimitar. He wore a turban, and a burnoose, with the hood thrown back over his shoulders. His eyes, sharp and dark, bore the epicanthic fold. At his saddle hung a conical steel helmet, oddly fashioned with a rim of fur encircling it, bespeaking a tradition in armory whose origin did not seem likely to be the Tahari. The young khan looked about, from face to face. He was angry. “I have come for a war,” he said. “Is there to be no war?”
Haroun regarded him. “You shall have your war,” he said. Haroun looked at Suleiman. “I speak in good faith,” he said. “The Kavars, and all their vassal tribes, are yours to command.”
“I am weak,” said Suleiman. “I am not yet recovered from my wound. Command the Aretai, and those who ride with them.”
Haroun looked at the young Tajuk khan. “And you?” he asked.
“Do you lead me to war?” asked the Tajuk.
“Yes,” said Haroun.
“Then I will follow you,” he said. The young khan spun his kaiila about. Then he turned again, and looked over his shoulder. “Who holds your left flank?” he asked.
“The Tajuks,” said Haroun.
“Aiiii!” cried the young khan, rising in his stirrups, lifting his lance. Then he sped upon his kaiila to his men.
“Should you not return to Nine Wells?” asked Haroun of Suleiman.
“No,” said Suleiman. Then he said, “I go to marshal my men.”
The pashas and their guards who had surrounded us returned to their forces. Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars, handed the lance and pennon of his office to one of the men with Baram, his vizier.
“Shall we kill these sleen?” asked Baram, indicating the kneeling, groveling wretches tethered to the pommel of Haroun’s saddle. They put their heads to the gravel and sand, trembling.
“No,” said Haroun. “Take them to the tents and chain them there as slaves. There will be more later. They will bring a high price in Tor.”
The tethers of the wretches were given to a rider. They were taken from the field.
Orders were given. In a short time, great lines, strung out, began to move across the desert. In the center were the Kavars and the Aretai. On the right flank, riding together, were the Ta’Kara and the Luraz, the Bakahs and the Tashid, the Char, the Kashani and the Raviri. On the left were the Ti, the Arani and the Zevar, and, holding the extremity of the flank, forty deep, the Tajuks.
Behind us, behind Haroun and myself, who rode alone, we leading, strung out, were the long lines of riders, the gathered tribesmen of the Tahari.
“How did things go in the dune country?” asked Haroun.
“Well,” I told him.
He dropped the wind veil about his shoulders. “I see you still wear about your left wrist a bit of silk,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“You must, in the march, inform me of what occurred in the dune country,” he said.
“I shall be pleased to do so,” I said. “By what name should I address you?”
“By the name by which you know me best,” he said.
“Excellent,” said I, “Hassan.”
24
I Bind a Girl, Reserving Her for Myself;
I Then Address Myself to the Duties of Steel
The outcome of the battle, some twenty pasangs from the kasbah of the Salt Ubar, had never been in doubt. That Ibn Saran met us at all, with the twenty-five hundred mercenaries he could muster does him much credit.
He was swiftly enveloped. Many of his men, I believe, did not understand the nature of the forces they faced until we swept over the hills upon them. We outnumbered them four or five to one. Many of the mercenaries, unable to escape, discarded their bucklers and dismounted, thrusting their lances and scimitars into the ground. There was hard fighting, however, in the vicinity of Ibn Saran’s own men, those of the Salt Ubar and his allies, those who had fought with Tarna. I came once within one hundred and fifty yards of Ibn Saran; Hassan, or Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars, came within twenty yards of him, fighting like a wild animal, but was turned back at last by a wall of bucklers, a hedge of lances. I did not see Tarna in the battle. I did see her men, but they fought under Ibn Saran. I gathered she had been relieved of her command.
Late in the afternoon, Ibn Saran, with four hundred riders, broke through our lines and fled northwest.
We did not pursue him but consolidated our victory.
“He will take refuge in his kasbah,” said Hassan. “It will be difficult to take the kasbah.”
That was true. If it could not be taken swiftly, it might not be possible to take it at all. We did not have enough water to maintain our men in the field. At best we might be able, failing to take the kasbah, to invest it with a smaller force that it would be practical to supply with water from Red Rock. Such a siege might last for months. Our extended, thinned lines would invite attack; it would be difficult, too, even if our investing lines were not broken in force, to prevent the escape of small parties at night.
“Ibn Saran,” I said, “may slip thr
ough your fingers.”
“We must take the kasbah,” said Hassan.
“Perhaps I can help you,” I said. I fingered the ring of the Kurii, which hung about my neck on its leather string.
* * * *
The girl knelt before the low vanity, with the natural, insolent grace of the trained slave. She combed, with a broad, curved comb of kailiauk horn, her long, dark hair. The comb was yellow. She wore a bit of yellow slave silk, her collar. She was beautiful in the mirror. How like a fool I felt that I had ever surrendered her.
Such a beauty is made for the collar.
I should have kept her in chains at my feet.
And many were the scores I had to settle with the beauty.
She knelt on broad, smooth scarlet tiles. About her left ankle, looped, were several golden slave bangles. The light in the room was from two tharlarion-oil lamps, one on each side of the mirror.
What a splendid room for a mere slave, I thought. These must be her quarters.
I observed how her breasts lifted, as she combed her hair.
To achieve a similar effect girls are sometimes, in markets, tied with their hands over their head. Sometimes a girl must cross her wrists before her body, palms up. Her wrists are then tied and taken back, over her head, and tied closely to her collar. Another arrangement is to use a bracelet-collar or a two-ring collar, which collars have, respectively, either two bracelets or two rings fixed at the sides. A wrist, then, is either locked in each bracelet, or tied to each ring. All of these arrangements, obviously, are attractive on a woman, which, of course, is one of their purposes. Other purposes are such things as slave security and female arousal. No man, of course, buys a woman, simpliciter, in such constraints. He will wish to examine her in a variety of diverse modalities. Too, of course, no one would be expected to buy a woman clothed.
There were wardrobes about, and chests. There were silken hangings. There was even a small window, though it was barred.
That it was barred was suitable. The quarters were those of a slave. Such details are not only useful in discouraging a foolish girl from even thinking of escape, perhaps by lowering herself with knotted covers to the cruel desert below, where she would be almost sure to die, or be shortly recaptured, crazed and thirsting, but, I suspect, are even more useful in tacitly reminding the more intelligent, lovely, well-curved female beasts within of the severe and uncompromising custody in which, reassuringly, they find themselves. Bars on a window, a coiled chain, a bowl on the floor, such things, all, have their auspicious, comforting psychological effects upon a beauty. They all speak their truths to a woman. They remind her of the fundamental truth of her being, that she is owned, that she is slave. Indeed, the entire life of the slave, physically, mentally, emotionally, is imbued with the reality, beauty, joy, sensitivity, and vulnerability of her condition. Sooner or later, given the acuity of her intelligence, she understands what she has become, what she is, that she is slave, simply and irremediably slave. That is what she is, and there is nothing that can be done about it. How totally different then does the world appear to her! How totally different then, wonderingly, does she appear to herself! How paradoxically free then, how strangely liberated, does she find herself! She throws open the windows, and breathes fresh air. She forces open the doors and runs outside. She feels the sun on her skin, and the wind, and the grass at her ankles. She lifts her hands and face and body to the sun and wind, come home at last, after years of banishment, to nature’s world. She is now, for the first time in her life, free to accept and embrace her deepest and truest identity, her ancient selected-for biological identity, as old as the raid, the hunt in the forest, the cave and leather thongs, the decree of nature, the fruit of evolution’s wisdom, that of the lover, captive and slave of a master.
Many women, of course, know themselves slaves and weep for masters, long before the collar or iron. It is only later that they extend their small wrists, and watch as bracelets are locked upon them.
This room adjoined the larger room outside, with the alcoves, but it was obviously private to her, a high slave. One as favored, as beautiful, as she, did not have to brook the nuisances, the unpleasantries, the closeness, the squabbles, the pettinesses, of lesser slaves.
I had little doubt that she would be much envied by the other girls, being apparently the favorite of the kasbah’s master, the noble Ibn Saran. Too, from her mien I gathered that she would hold herself far superior to such as they.
But did she not know that on her own neck, as much as theirs, there was a collar?
In the room I noted, on a small table to the side, even decanters, doubtless filled with choice wines, perhaps even ka-la-nas of Ar, or Ta-wine, from distant, terraced Cos. Too, on the table, was an assortment of fruits, dates, tospits, doubtless sugared, plums, grapes, and larma.
She continued to comb her hair, languorously. Occasionally she stopped, and lifted her chin a little, and regarded herself, for a time, in the mirror. She seemed well content, and serenely satisfied, with what she beheld there. She smiled. Surely she was entitled to admire her own beauty, for it was considerable. Clearly she knew she was a valuable slave. For her it would not be dark, heavy, rude chains, biting into her flesh, the auctioneer’s whip, the sawdust of the slave block. Rather, perhaps, she might be vended in light, ample, gleaming golden chains, from the purple booths, none but the richest allowed access to the venue of her pricing, and sale.
In the room, in her “quarters,” there was also a wide, low divan, silken and soft.
I wondered if she entertained Ibn Saran, upon occasion, on the broad, lovely surface.
As a high slave she might be permitted the surface of a couch. I could imagine her kneeling beside a master’s couch, as other slaves, not knowing if she would be permitted on its surface or not. She might kneel beside it, timidly, hopefully, looking to the master, to read his will. Permitted the privilege of ascending to its surface, she would first humbly, fervently, gratefully, press her lips to a coverlet, acknowledging the privilege accorded her, before presuming to crawl to his side.
I had heard that she crawled well to him.
She had better do so, I thought.
Ibn Saran was the sort of man to whom a woman could do little other than crawl.
She had not yet noticed the bit of silk I had left to the side.
I regarded the slave, as she combed her hair. She, in a dungeon, in a holding somewhere of agents of Kurii, had betrayed Priest-Kings. Chained nude in a dungeon, in the darkness, among the urts, she had screamed for mercy. She had revealed all she knew of the Sardar, the plans of Priest-Kings, their practices and devices, the weakness of the Nest. If she fell into the hands of Samos I had little doubt he would have her bound and thrown to the urts, among the garbage, in the canals of Port Kar. Emptied of information she had been brought by Ibn Saran to the Tahari. Here she had, for him, identified me, when I entered the Tahari. I remembered her as one of the slaves who, bangled, in the high, tight vest of red silk, the sashed, diaphanous chalwar, had served wine in the palace of Suleiman at Nine Wells. She had been in the audience chamber when Suleiman had been struck. She had testified that it had been I who had attacked him. I had seen her smile, when taken from the rack, after her testimony. Once she had served Priest-Kings; then, later, she had well served others, the Kurii and their agents; I watched her comb her hair; now I suspected she was for most practical purposes useless in the politics of planets; but she had been spared; I watched her movements; I smiled; I, too, would have spared her; surely she was not now completely without use; she retained, I noted, doubtless the reason for which she had been spared, the general utilities of any charming, pretty slave girl. Her flesh would bring a high price. To see her was to wish to own her. Pretty Vella.
She put down the comb and reached for a tiny bottle of perfume. She touched her neck, below the ears, and her body, about the shoulders, with the scent. I knew the scent.
I had carried it with me to Klima. I had not forgotten it.
She looked at it, puzzled, curious.
I recalled the morning I had, in chains, waited to be herded with other wretches to Klima. I had looked up. In a narrow window in the wall of the kasbah, high over my head, there had stood a woman, a slave girl, veiled and robed in yellow, a slave master behind her. With the permission of the slave master she had removed her veil. With what contempt, and scorn, and triumph she had looked upon me, a mere male slave, chained and bound for Klima, below her. She had thrown me a token, a square of silk, slave silk, red, some eighteen inches square, redolent with the perfume fitted by some perfumer, on the order of her master, to her slave personality, her slave nature and slave body. It was something by which I might remember her at Klima. I had vowed to return from Klima. She had wished to see me hooded and led away. This treat, as useful discipline, despite her pleas, had been denied her by the slave master. She had blown me a kiss, and then, before the slave master, hurried from the window.
I stood back in the room. I flicked the switch on the ring I wore, that I might be visible to her.
She picked up the bit of silk. She opened it. It was tattered, faded, almost white. She held it open before her, looking at it. She took it in her hands and held it to her face, inhaling it. Suddenly she cried out in joy, “Tarl!” She turned, springing to her feet. “Tarl!” she cried. “Tarl!” She ran to me, with a clash of bangles, and took me in her arms, her head at my chest, weeping. “Tarl!” she wept. “Tarl! Tarl! I love you! I love you!”
I took her wrists, and forced them, slowly, from my body. I held them. She struggled to reach me, to press her lips to my body. I did not permit this. She threw her head, in frustration, from side to side. Her face was stained with tears. She wept. “Let me touch you,” she cried. “Let me hold you! I love you! I love you!”
I held her, by the upper arms, from me. She looked up into my eyes. “Oh, Tarl,” she wept. “Can you ever forgive me? Can you ever forgive me?”
Tribesmen of Gor Page 40