Norman, John - Gor 20 - Players of Gor.txt

by Players of Gor [lit]

  “Eternally, undyingly,” he assured me.

  “Perhaps you would consider granting me a favor,” I said.

  “Just ask,” he said.

  “I would like to join your troupe,” I said.

  “No,” he said.

  “I thought you just said to ‘just ask’,” I said.

  “You are correct,” said Boots. “That is exactly what I had in mine, that you

  should just ask, only that, and nothing more. Now, where are my wagons?”

  “You are a hard man,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, “I am a grim fellow. But one does not attain my heights by being

  soft.”

  “Your wagons are in that direction,” I informed him.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “You will not reconsider?” I asked.

  “No,” said Boots, “and what am I to do without a Brigella?”

  “I do not know,” I said.

  “I am ruined,” said Boots.

  “Perhaps not,” I opined, hopefully.

  “Are you a business man?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “I will thank you, then,” said Boots, “to have the decency to refrain from

  forming an opinion on the matter.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Do you know where I can find a Brigella?” he asked.

  “Perhaps you could buy one,” I said.

  “Not just any girl can be a Brigella,” he said.

  “I suppose not,” I said.

  “I am ruined,” he said.

  “At least you now have a golden courtesan,” I said, “and I expect that she will

  prove profitable in the tent as well.”

  “Perhaps,” said Boots.

  “I would like to join your troupe,” I said.

  “It is out of the question,” said Boots. “Now, where are those wagons?”

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  “That way,” I said.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “More to the left,” I said.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “You would not have to pay me!” I called out, after him.

  “No, no,” he said, waving his hand, “it is out of the question.” He then

  continued on his way, muttering about Brigellas, expenses, free women, fate,

  elusive wagons and the woes that sometimes afflict honest men.

  Security in Brundisium, I had learned earlier from Boots, was tight. I wondered

  why this might be. I was curious to know, too, why at least some in that city

  seemed to have an interest in Tarl Cabot, or Bosk, of Port Kar. Much seemed to

  me mysterious in Brundisium. It might be an interesting place to go visiting, I

  thought. Too, it had been a long time since I had gone hunting. I was sorry that

  I had not been able to join Boots’s troupe. None, I thought, would be likely to

  suspect a lowly member of a group of strolling players. It would have been a

  superb cover. Tomorrow, before nightfall, I suspected, Boots’s wagons would

  leave the fair, probably heading west, probably on the road of Clearchus. It is

  a dangerous road. There was no law against two traveling it. Boots had

  disappeared now among the booths and stalls of the fair.

  ***

  “Please, let me yield!” she whispered. “I beg to be permitted to yield! Please,

  Master, let me yield! Please, Master! Please, Master!”

  I looked down into her eyes. She looked up at me, through her hair, wildly,

  piteously.

  “No,” I said.

  She moaned. She tried to control her breathing. Her beauty was held tense,

  rigid, almost motionless. I heard the tiniest sound of the chain on her ankle.

  the collar, the flat, snug, unslippable band on her throat, locked behind the

  back of her neck, was lovely.

  We were some two hundred pasangs west of the fairgrounds, at the edge of the

  woods of Clearchus, just off the road of Clearchus. I had traveled for the last

  few days in the vicinity of the troupe of Boots, but not really with it. We had

  traversed the woods of Clearchus, Boots losing little time in the business,

  without incident. He had, this afternoon, at the edge of the woods, for local

  villagers, given his first performances since the fair, from which, as we had

  anticipated, he had been duly expelled, that following from various complaints

  lodged with the

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  fair’s board of governance by a certain free woman, the Lady Telitsia of

  Asperiche. He had also, given the supposed gravity of his offenses, been fined

  three silver tarsks and publicly flogged.

  He had not been in a good mood that evening. Such things, of course, are not

  that unusual in the lives of players. Worse, perhaps, two of his company had

  joined another troupe, taking advantage of an opportunity at the fair, the

  fellows who commonly played the comic father and the comic pedant. Boots was now

  trying to make do with his Chino and Lecchio, two other fellows, his Bina and

  his new “golden courtesan.” Things were so bad that he had, this afternoon,

  actually interspersed his dramatic offering with what were more in the nature of

  variety or carnival acts. One must make do as one can.

  Fortunately his Chino was an accomplished juggler and his Lecchio was excellent

  as a comic tight-rope walker. Boots himself was very skillful in the matter of

  slight-of-hand and magic. Indeed, his dilapidated, oval-roofed wagons seemed a

  veritable repository for all sorts of wondrous paraphernalia, much of it having

  to do with matters of illusion and legerdemain. This multiplicity of skills,

  incidentally, is not all that uncommon with players. Most of them, too, it

  seems, can do things like play the flute or kalika, sing, dance, tell jokes, and

  so on. They are generally versatile and talented people.

  Boots’s player, incidentally, the kaissa player, the surly, masked fellow,

  called usually “the monster” in the camp, remained, too, with the troupe. He

  remained, as far as I could tell, from what I had heard this afternoon,

  consistently and insolently adamant to Boots’s please that he manage to lose a

  game once in a while, if only for the sake of business, or, at the least, make

  an effort to play a bit less well. Nonetheless, even as it was, he did make some

  contribution to the welfare of the troupe. His kaissa games, for what it is

  worth, usually brought in a few coins. There was something I wanted to talk with

  him about, sometime.

  “Please, Master,” whimpered the girl.

  “Are you ready?” I asked.

  “Yes, yes, yes!” she said, tensely.

  “‘Yes’ what?” I asked.

  “Yes, Master!” she said, helplessly, tensely.

  “Very well,” I said. “You may yield.”

  “Aiii!” she screamed, wildly, inarticulately, in release, in relief, in animal

  gratitude. Then she cried, “Oh! Oh!” and thrashed beneath me. “Oh!” she cried.

  “Oh!” She clutched me, desperately. Her legs, with a rattle of the chain, locked

  abo
ut me. “Oh!” she cried. Her fingernails dug deeply into my back.

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  Then again she could speak. “I yield me!” she cried. “I yield me to you, Master!

  I am yours! I am yours, yours, yours! Oh, yes, I am yours, yours.” She clung

  then to me, sobbing and gasping. I heard the chain on her ankle.

  “Your yielding,” I said, “was satisfactory—for a new slave.”

  She looked at me wildly, and then moaned softly, continuing to cling helplessly

  to me.

  “There are, of course,” I said, “infinite horizons and varieties of such

  responses, ranging from ravishings in which the slave, by one means or another,

  is driven almost to the point of madness by the pleasures inflicted upon her,

  ravishings in which the master, in his cruelty, and despite her will, forces her

  relentlessly and helplessly to, and beyond, ecstasy, giving her no choice but to

  accept total sexual fulfillment, to putting her helplessly to lengthy and gentle

  services, warm and intimate, in which her slavery and condition are well brought

  home to her.”

  “Sometimes, too, I gather,” she whispered, “the slave must serve in varieties of

  manners regardless of her desires of the moment or will.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “she is at the master’s disposal, completely, for all forms of work and duties.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “She is to be diligent and obedient in all things,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “That, too,” she whispered, “is rewarding and gratifying.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Very much so.”

  “Interesting,” I said.

  “The being of the slave, like the being of the master,” she said, “is a

  totality.”

  I lay on my back, looking up at the ceiling of the tent. She was right, of

  course. These things are totalities, modes of being. Too, I knew, from my own

  experience, that nothing fulfills maleness like the mastery. He who would be a

  man must be a master. he who surrenders his mastery surrenders his manhood. I

  wondered what those who flocked like sheep to their own castration received in

  recompense for their manhood. I supposed it must be very valuable. But it this

  were so, why did they feel it necessary to shrill so petulantly at others, those

  who scorned them and had chosen different paths?

  I could hear Boots outside the tent. He was a few yards away, around the

  campfire with Chino and Lecchio. “Lamentations!” cried Boots. “Surely we are

  ruined! Surely we shall all starve!

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  There are not two copper tarsks in the coin kettle! What hope is there these

  days for artists such as we! That the skilled and famous company of Boots

  Tarsk-Bit, actor, promoter and entrepreneur, that company whose performances are

  commanded by high cities and ubars, the finest theatrical company on all Gor,

  should be forced to resort to mere carnival acts, that it should have to stoop

  to jugglery and somersaults, to mere tricks and illusions, to entertain village

  bumpkins, solid, noble fellows though they may be, is almost too much to bear.

  What shall be our fate first, I wonder, to merely starve in simple dignity or to

  perish in shame from such humiliation?”

  “You are wrong about at least on thing, Boots,” said Chino.

  “Can it be?” asked Boots.

  “Yes,” said Chino. “There are more than two copper tarsks in the coin kettle.”

  “Oh?” said Boots.

  I heard coins shaking in a metal kettle. “Listen,” said Chino. “There is at

  least a silver tarsk’s worth here.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Boots.

  “Count it yourself,” said Chino.

  “Yes,” said Boots. “Ah! Ah, yes. I did not realize my skills with magic were

  still that mysterious and baffling. Very good. Excellent, excellent. Excellent,

  indeed! You did well also, of course, Chino, my friend, and you, too, Lecchio.

  Well, it is as I always say, a bit of variety is a good thing. And one cannot

  always be too serious about art, you know. Upon occasion one should take a

  respite form even high drama. Too, excessive significance is not always good for

  the digestion. Also, we still need a Brigella, and desperately. I think,

  accordingly, that it will not be amiss if, upon occasion, particularly in

  somewhat less enlightened and more remote locations, we intermix a dash of

  legerdemain and prestidigitation, as well as a bit of carnival hilarity,

  prankery, and such, the sort of things that you folks are good at, with our

  nobler offerings. To be sure, we will still remain fundamentally true to the

  theater, for we are primarily, when all is said and done, serious actors. Too,

  our reputation depends on it. What do you think? I am glad that you agree.”

  I lay on my back, looking up at the ceiling of the tent. I felt the girl’s cheek

  against my thigh. I remembered when she had been the free woman, Rowena of

  Lydius, whom I had first seen in the house of Samos. How proud she had been! She

  was now a contented slave, a girl who had been named “Rowena” at a man’s thigh.

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  “The somersault on the rope was very good,” Boots was telling Lecchio. “You

  should try to do it twice.”

  Boots’s little Bina was chained in another tent. I thought perhaps I might try

  her sometime.

  “Perhaps even three times, and backwards,” Boots was saying.

  I smiled to myself. He was talking, of course, about Lecchio’s somersaults. The

  little Bina was very pretty, but I thought, rather clearly, she had not yet been

  brought to slave heat. I had gathered, from various tiny indications, back at

  the fair, and this afternoon, that Boots was not altogether satisfied with her.

  As a collared slave, I feared, she had much to learn. Too, she seemed to have a

  nasty streak in her. More than once I had heard her deride the “monster.” In

  this I think she showed little judgment. He, at least, was free, whereas she,

  though she seemed not to fully understand it, was imbonded.

  “It was funny, too,” said Boots, “when you fell off the rope. Perhaps you should

  include that in the act.”

  “I did not do it on purpose,” said Lecchio. “I am out of practice. I nearly

  broke my neck.”

  I supposed I might as well soon depart from the neighborhood of Boots’s company.

  Surely there seemed little point in continuing any longer in its vicinity. My

  own small camp was within two hundred yards. To be sure, there was little there

  but a bedroll, some supplies and weapons, purchased at the fair. I had not seen

  fit to purchase a shield or spear, or even a bow, with sheaf arrows. Such

  things, I feared, might mark me as one to be reckoned with, or watched, on

  perhaps familiar with weapons. I supposed I would arouse enough suspicion in the

  neighborhood of Brundisium as it was, coming to their city as a lone male with


  no obvious business. I did have a sword and I had also purchased a set of Tuchuk

  quivas, their famed saddle knives. The set consists of seven knives, one for

  each of the seven sheaths in the Tuchuk saddle. They are balanced for throwing.

  I was rather skillful with them. I had learned their use long ago in the lands

  of the Wagon Peoples, or, as some think of them, on the plains of Turia. I must

  soon leave the tent. I must return to my own small camp. I must get a good

  night’s sleep, and start out early in the morning.

  “Ho!” I heard Boots call, suddenly. “Who is there?”

  I was suddenly alert. It was a bit late now. The performances had been over for

  some hours. I was not at all sure that villagers or travelers would be about at

  this time.

  “What is wrong?” asked the girl, sensing the change in me.

  “Be silent,” I said.

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  “Who are you?” called Boots. There was no answer. Whoever it was had not

  identified themselves.

  I slipped into my tunic and picked up my sword, in its scabbard, the belt looped

  about the scabbard.

  “Come forward,” called Boots. “I know you are out there. Do not be afraid.

  Identify yourselves. Come into the light.”

  “If they wish to know if one was with you,” I said to the girl, “tell them that

  he fled.”

  “What is going on?” she said.

  I cautioned her to silence, holding my finger across my lips. This is a very

  natural gesture. I do not know if the gesture, considered as a Gorean gesture,

  had an independent development, or if, specifically, somewhere in the remote

  past, it had an Earth origin. There are many Gorean gestures, of course, some of

  which are very similar to Earth gestures and some of which are not. Another way

  of warning an individual to silence, incidentally, is to touch the fingers

  twice, lightly, to the lips. The origin of that gesture, as far as I know, is

  uniquely Gorean. I looked back at the female. Her lip trembled. She was

  frightened. She wanted desperately to speak. She could not speak, of course. She

  was a slave. She had been silenced. I lifted up the back of the tent, and

  inspected the terrain behind it. I would take my leave in this fashion. I looked

  back once more at the girl. She was kneeling, looking after me, frightened. She