by John Norman
Two nights ago it had been a night for Paga. Tonight, I felt, was a night for Ka-la-na. I was pleased to learn there would be some in the wagon.
I looked at Harold and grinned. “I am grateful,” I said.
“Properly so,” remarked Harold and leaped to his kaiila, untethering the beast and springing to its saddle. “Without me,” he said, “you will never find your wagon and I for one will dawdle here no longer!”
“Wait!” I cried.
His kaiila sprang from the room, bounding across the carpet in the next hall, and then thudding down a corridor toward the main entrance.
Muttering I jerked loose the reins of my kaiila from the column to which I had tethered it, leaped to the saddle and raced after Harold, not wishing to be left behind somewhere in the streets of Turia or among the dark wagons beyond the gate, pounding on wagon after wagon to find which one might be mine. I bounded down the stairs of the palace of Phanius Turmus, and sped through the inner and outer courtyard and out into the street, leaving the startled guards trying to salute me as a commander.
A few yards beyond the gate I hauled my kaiila up short, rearing and pawing the air. Harold was sitting there calmly on the back of his kaiila, a reproachful look on his face.
“Such haste,” he said, “is not seemly in the commander of a Thousand.”
“Very well,” I said, and we walked our kaiila at a stately pace toward Turia’s main gate.
“I was afraid,” I said, “that without you I would not be able to find my wagon.”
“But it is the wagon of a commander,” said Harold, as though puzzled, “so anyone could tell you where it is.”
“I did not think of that,” I said.
“I am not surprised,” said Harold. “You are only a Koroban.”
“But long ago,” I said, “we turned you back.”
“I was not there at the time,” said Harold.
“That is true,” I admitted.
We rode on a while.
“If it were not for your dignity,” I remarked, “I would settle these matters by racing you to the main gate.”
“Look out!” cried Harold. “Behind you!”
I spun the kaiila and whipped my sword from its sheath. I looked about wildly, at doorways, at roof tops, at windows.
“What?” I cried.
“There!” cried Harold. “To the right!”
I looked to the right but could see nothing but the side of a brick building.
“What is it?” I cried.
“It is,” cried Harold decisively, “the side of a brick building!”
I turned to look at him.
“I accept your wager,” he cried, kicking his kaiila toward the main gate.
By the time I had turned my animal and was racing after him he was almost a quarter of a pasang down the street, bounding over beams and rubbish, and litter, some of it still smoking. At the main gate I overtook him and together we sped through it, slowing our mounts on the other side to a decorous pace suitable to our rank.
We rode a bit into the wagons and then he pointed. “There is your wagon,” he said. “Mine is nearby.”
It was a large wagon, drawn by eight black bosk. There were two Tuchuk guards outside. Beside it, fixed in the earth, on a pole, there was a standard of four bosk horns. The pole had been painted red, which is the colour of commanders.
Inside the wagon, under the door, I could see light.
“I wish you well,” said Harold.
“I wish you well,” I said.
The two Tuchuk guards saluted us, striking their lances three times on their shields.
We acknowledged the salute, lifting our right hands, palm inward.
“You certainly have a fast kaiila,” remarked Harold.
“The race,” I said, “is all in the rider.”
“As it was,” said Harold, “I scarcely beat you.”
“I thought I beat you,” I said.
“Oh?” asked Harold.
“Yes,” I said. “How do you know I didn’t beat you?”
“Well,” said Harold, “I don’t know but that would certainly seem unlikely, would it not?”
“Yes,” I sail, “I suppose so.”
“Actually,” said Harold, “I am uncertain who won.”
“So am I,” I admitted. “Perhaps it was a tie,” I suggested.
“Perhaps,” he said, “incredible though that might seem.”
He looked at me. “Would you care to guess seeds in a tospit?” he inquired. “Odd or even?”
“No,” I said.
“Very well,” said he, grinning, and lifted his right hand in Gorean salute. “Until morning.”
I returned the salute. “Until morning,” I said.
I watched Harold ride towards his wagon, whistling a Tuchuk tune. I supposed the little wench Hereena would be waiting for him, probably collared and chained to the slave ring.
Tomorrow I knew the assault would begin on the House of Saphrar and the tower of Ha-Keel. Tomorrow one or both of us, I supposed, might be dead.
I noted that the bosk seemed well cared for, and that their coats were groomed, and the horns and hoofs polished.
Wearily I gave the kaiila to one of the guards and mounted the steps of the wagon.
Chapter 25
I AM SERVED WINE
I entered the wagon and stopped, startled.
Within, a girl, across the wagon, beyond the tiny fire bowl-in the centre of its floor, standing on the thick rug, near a hanging tharlarion oil lamp, turned suddenly to face me clutching about herself as well as she could a richly wrought yellow cloth, a silken yellow sheet. The red band of the Koora bound back her hair. I could see a chain running across the rug from the slave ring to her right ankle.
“You!” she cried.
She held her hand before her face.
I did not speak, but stood dumbfounded, finding myself facing Elizabeth Cardwell.
“You’re alive!” she said. And then she trembled. “You must flee!” she cried.
“Why?” I asked.
“He will discover you!” she wept. “Go!”
Still she would not remove her hand from before her face.
“Who is he?” I asked, startled.
“My master!” she cried. “Please got”
“Who is he?” I inquired.
“He who owns this wagon” she wept. “I have not yet seen him!”
Suddenly I felt like shaking, but did not move, nor betray emotion. Harold had said that Elizabeth Cardwell had been given by Kamchak to a warrior. He had not said which warrior. Now I knew
“Has your master visited you often?” I asked.
“As yet, never,” said she, “but he is in the city and may this very night come to the wagon!”
“I do not fear him,” I said.
She turned away, the chain moving with her. She pulled the yellow sheet more closely about her. She dropped her hand from before her face and stood facing the back of the wagon.
“Whose name is on your collar?” I asked.
“They showed me,” she said, “but I do not know I cannot read.”
What she said, of course, was true. She could speak Gorean but she could not read it. For that matter many Tuchuks could not, and the engraving on the collars of their slaves was often no more than a sign which was known to be theirs.
Even those who could read, or pretended to be able to, would affix their sign on the collar as well as their name, so that others who could not read could know to whom the slave belonged. Kamchak’s sign was the four bosk horns and two quivas.
I walked about the fire bowl to approach the girl. “Don’t look at me,” she cried, bending down, holding her face from the light, then covering it with her hands. I reached over and turned the collar somewhat. It was attached to a chain. I gathered the girl was in Sirik, the chain on the floor attached to the slave ring running to the twin ankle rings. She would not face me but stood covering her face, looking away. The engraving on the Turia
n collar consisted of the sign of the four bosk horns and the sign of the city of Ko-ro-ba, which I took it, Kamchak had used for my sign. There was also an inscription in Gorean on the collar, a simple one. I am Tarl Cabot’s girl. I restraightened the collar and walked away, going to the other side of the wagon, leaning my hands against it, wanting to think.
I could hear the chain move as she turned to face me.
“What does it say?” she begged.
I said nothing.
“Whose wagon is this?” she pleaded.
I turned to face her and she put one hand before her face, the other holding the yellow sheet about her. I could see now that her wrists were encircled with slave bracelets, linked to the collar chain, which then continued to the ankle rings. A second chain, that which I had first seen, fastened the Sirik itself to the slave ring. Over the hand that shielded the lower part of her face I could see her eyes, and they seemed filled with fear. “Whose wagon is it?” she pleaded.
“It is my wagon,” I said.
She looked at me, thunderstruck. “No,” she said, “it is the wagon of a commander he who could command a Thousand.”
“I am such,” I said. “I am a commander.”
She shook her head.
“The collar?” she asked.
“It says,” I said, “that you are the girl of Tarl Cabot.”
“Your girl?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Your slave?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
She did not speak but stood looking at me, in the yellow sheet, with one hand covering her face.
“I own you,” I said.
Tears shone in her eyes and she sank to her knees, trembling, unable to stand, weeping.
I knelt beside her. “It is over now, Elizabeth,” I said. “It is finished. You will no longer be hurt. You are no longer a slave. You are free, Elizabeth.”
I gently took her braceleted wrists in my hands and removed them from her face.
She tried to twist her head away. “Please don’t look at me, Tarl,” she said.
In her nose, as I had suspected, there glinted the tiny, fine golden ring of the Tuchuk woman.
“Don’t look at me, please,” she said.
I held her lovely head with its soft dark hair in my hands, gazing on her face, her forehead, her dark, soft eyes, with tears, the marvellous, trembling mouth, and set in her fine nose, delicate and lovely, the tiny golden ring.
“It is actually very beautiful,” I said.
She sobbed and pressed her head to my shoulder. “They bound me on a wheel,” she said.
With my right hand I pressed her head more closely against me, holding it.
“I am branded,” she said. “I am branded.”
“It is finished now,” I said. “You are free, Elizabeth.”
She lifted her face, stained with tears, to mine.
“I love you, Tarl Cabot,” she said.
“No,” I said softly, “you do not.”
She leaned against me yet again. “But you do not want me,” she said. “You never wanted me.”
I said nothing.
“And now,” she said, bitterly, “Kamchak has given me to you. He is cruel, cruel, cruel.”
“I think Kamchak thought well of you,” I said, “that he would give you to his friend.”
She withdrew from me a bit, puzzled. “Can that be?” she asked. “He whipped me, he — touched me,” she shuddered, “with the leather.” She looked down, not wanting to look Into my eyes.
“You were beaten,” I said, “because you ran abbey. Normally a girl who does what you did is maimed or thrown to Been or kaiila, and that he touched you with the whip, the Slaver’s Caress, that was only to show me, and perhaps you, that you were female.”
She looked down. “He shamed me,” she said. “I cannot help it that I moved as I did I cannot help that I am a woman.”
“It is over now,” I told her.
She still did not raise her eyes, but stared down at the rug.
“Tuchuks,” I remarked, “regard the piercing of ears as a barbarous custom inflicted on their slave girls by Turians.”
Elizabeth looked up, the tiny ring glinting in the light of the fire bowl.
“Are your ears pierced?” I asked.
“No,” she said, “but many of my friends on Earth who owned fine earrings, had their ears pierced.”
“Did that seem so dreadful to you?” I asked.
“No,” she said, smiling.
“It would to Tuchuks,” I said. “They do not even inflict that on their Turian slaves.” I added, “And it is one of the great fears of a Tuchuk girl that, should she fall into Turian hands, it will be done to her.”
Elizabeth laughed, through her tears.
“The ring may be removed,” I said. “With instruments it can be opened and then slid free leaving behind no mark that one would ever see.”
“You are very kind, Tarl Cabot,” she said.
“I do not suppose it would do to tell you,” I remarked, “but actually the ring is rather attractive.”
She lifted her head and smiled pertly. “Oh?” she asked.
“dyes,” I said, “quite.”
She leaned back on her heels, drawing the yellow silken sheet more closely about her shoulders, and looked at me, smiling.
“Am I slave or free?” she asked.
“Free,” I said.
She laughed. “I do not think you want to free me,” she said. “You keep me chained up like a slave girl!”
I laughed. “I am sorry!” I cried. To be sure, Elizabeth Cardwell was still in Sirik.
“Where is the key?” I asked.
“Above the door,” she said, adding, rather pointedly, “just beyond my reach.”
I leaped up to fetch the key.
“I am happy,” she said.
I picked the key from the small hook.
“Don’t turn around!” she said.
I did not turn. “Why not?” I asked. I heard a slight rustle of chain.
I heard her voice from behind me, husky. “Do you dare free this girl?” she asked.
I spun about and to my astonishment saw that Elizabeth Cardwell had arisen and stood proudly, defiantly, angrily before me, as though she might have been a freshly collared slave girl, brought in but an Ahn before, bound over the saddle of a kaiila, the fruit of a slave raid.
I gasped.
“Yes,” she said, “I will reveal myself, but know that I will fight you to the death.”
Gracefully, insolently, the silken yellow sheet moved about and across her body and fell from her. She stood facing me, in pretended anger, graceful and beautiful. She wore the Sirik and was, of course, clad Kajir, clad in the Curia and Chatka, the red cord and the narrow strip of black leather; in the Kalmak, the brief vest, open and sleeveless, of black leather, and in the Koora, the strip of red cloth that bound back her brown hair. About her throat was the Turian collar with it chain, attached to slave bracelets and ankle rings, one of the latter attached to the chain running to the slave ring. I saw that her left thigh, small and deep, bore the brand of the four bosk horns.
I could scarcely believe that the proud creature who stood chained before me was she whom Kamchak and I had referred to as the Little Barbarian; whom I had been able to think of only as a timid, simple girl of Earth, a young, pretty little secretary, one-of nameless, unimportant thousands of such in the large offices of Earth’s major cities; but what I now saw before me did not speak to me of the glass and rectangles and pollutions of Earth, of her pressing crowds and angry, rushing, degraded throngs, slaves running to the whips of their clocks, slaves leaping and yelping and licking for the caress of silver, for their positions and titles and street addresses, for the adulation and envy of frustrated mobs for whose regard a true Gorean would have had but contempt; what I saw before me now spoke rather, in its way, of the bellowing of bosk and the smell of trampled earth; of the sound of the moving wagons and the w
histle of wind about them; of the cries of the girls with the bosk stick and the odour of the open cooking fire; of Kamchak on his kaiila as I remembered him from before; as Kutaituchik must once have been; of the throbbing, earthy rhythms of grass and snow, and the herding of beasts; and here before me now there stood a girl, seemingly a captive, who might have been of Turia, or Ar, or Cos, or Thentis; who proudly wore her chains and stood as though defiant in the wagon of her enemy, as if clad for his pleasure, all identity and meaning swept from her save the incontrovertible fact of what she now seemed to be, and that alone, a Tuchuk slave girl.
“Well,” said Miss Cardwell, breaking the spell she had cast, “I thought you were going to unchain me.”
“Yes, yes,” I said, and stumbled as I went toward her.
Lock by lock, fumbling a bit, I removed her chains, and threw the Sirik and ankle chain to the side of the wagon, under the slave ring.
“Why did you do that?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she responded lightly, “I must be a Tuchuk slave girl.”
“You are free,” I said firmly.
“I shall try to keep it in mind,” she said.
“Do so,” I said.
“Do I make you nervous?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
She had now picked up the yellow sheet and, with a pin or two, booty from Turia probably, fastened it gracefully about her.
I considered raping her.
It would not do, of course.
“Have you eaten?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“There is some roast bosk left,” she said. “It is cold. It would be a bother to warm it up, so I will not do so. I am not a slave girl, you know.”
I began to regret my decision in freeing her.
She looked at me, her eyes bright. “It certainly took you a long time to come by the wagon.”
“I was busy,” I said.
“Fighting and such, I suppose,” she said.
“I suppose,” I said.
“Why did you come to the wagon tonight?” she asked. I didn’t care precisely for the tone of voice with which she asked the question.
“For wine,” I said.
“Oh,” she said.
I went to the chest by the side of the wagon and pulled out a small bottle, one of several, of Ka-la-na wine which reposed there.