by John Norman
“But what is your accent?” asked Ellen.
“I fear it is Cosian,” said the girl.
“Then you are Cosian!” said Ellen. She knew how those of Cos were hated in Ar.
“How I can be Cosian?” laughed the girl. “I can no more be Cosian than a kaiila. I am a slave.”
Ellen smiled, despite her anxiety, her defensiveness.
“But I learned my first Gorean,” said the girl, “in slave pens, in Telnus, the capital of Cos.”
“‘Learned’?” said Ellen, startled.
“Yes,” said the girl. “I come from another world. I am a barbarian. Such are now no strangers to Gorean markets.”
“I, too, am a barbarian!” said Ellen.
“I thought so!” laughed the girl. “I am from a place called America.”
“I too am from America!” cried Ellen. “We are both from America!” She then, suddenly, as though something had broken within her, tears running down her cheeks, fell weeping into the arms of the other girl. “They have taken us and brought us here,” she wept. “How terrible they are! How wicked they are! They have branded us, and collared us, and made us slaves!”
“Yes,” smiled the other girl. “We are now slaves. But do not weep. There is no going back. We are now here. And this is now our world. If we would live, we must try to be good slaves.”
Ellen wept, uncontrollably.
“Surely there are worse worlds,” said the girl, consolingly, soothingly. “Consider the beauty of this world, how fresh and glorious it is! Have you known such a place on Earth, surely not many. What a boon, what a privilege it is, to breathe such air, such exuberant air, to see such sights, so striking, so splendid and colorful, to taste fresh, natural foods, not aged and stale, not tasteless, not saturated with alien chemicals! And see how these men love their world and their cities, their fields and forests, how they keep them, how they care for them, and love them, how they will not destroy them, how they will not cut and burn them, nor diminish and exhaust them. There are surely worse worlds than this.”
“But we have been brought here as slaves!” said Ellen.
“Yes,” smiled the girl.
“By what right?” demanded Ellen.
“By the right of their will, it seems,” said the girl. “These are men. They do much what they please, and take much what they want.”
Ellen sobbed.
“As foxes are the natural prey of fox hunters, as deer are the natural prey of deer hunters, so women are the natural prey of slave hunters,” said the girl.
Ellen regarded her, red-eyed, shaken.
“It is easy to see why they took you,” said the girl. “You are very beautiful.”
“Oh?” said Ellen.
“Yes,” said the girl. “And I do not know about you,” she said, “but I belong in a collar.”
“No!” cried Ellen.
“Oh, yes, I am appropriately in my collar,” said the girl. “I am a natural slave. How fortunate I am to have been brought here!”
“No!” protested Ellen.
“But yes,” laughed the girl. “Here I have found love, and the domination I need and crave.”
Ellen regarded her, awed.
“I had not known, from Earth,” said the girl, joyfully, “that men like these could exist, such natural men, such innocently biological males, such intelligent, remarkable, powerful, virile, demanding, uncompromising, magnificent beasts. Such rightfully see such as we as their slaves, and before such men, natural masters, what could such as we be but slaves?”
Ellen sank back, on her heels.
“And,” she laughed, “did I not see you press your lips to the tunic of a male?”
“I hate him!” said Ellen.
“I think we are both slaves,” smiled the girl.
“Who is your master?” asked Ellen.
“Aeschines of Cos,” she replied. “Who is your master?”
“Portus Canio, of Ar,” said Ellen.
“My master is of the Warriors,” she said, “but like many of that caste, he has done various works. Many caste members, as you know, do not concern themselves specifically with caste business. He is not now in fee.”
“My master,” said Ellen, “is of the tarnkeepers.”
“What is your name?” asked the girl.
“‘Ellen.’”
“I am now called ‘Corinne’,” said the girl. “But I have had various names. I have been known as Janice, and, before my current master acquired me, as Gail. I have served in Cos, in the city of Treve, and now in Ar.”
“I fear I have been only in Ar,” smiled Ellen.
“We are not the only barbarians amongst these slaves,” said the girl. “See that one there. She is Priscilla. She is from England. Next to her is Sumomo, from Japan.”
“They are beautiful,” breathed Ellen.
“No more beautiful than you, slave girl,” said the girl.
“You said you were a natural slave!” said Ellen, chidingly.
“Of course,” laughed her interlocutor. “We are women. We are all natural slaves. We are the slave sex. It is in our genes. Surely you know that. We can never be fully happy without our collars.”
“No, no!” wept Ellen.
Then a shadow fell across the kneeling women. Both became silent, instantly. “Be on with your work, slave girls,” said a voice.
The embonded women looked up.
It was a guardsman, of Cos.
“Yes, Master!” said Corinne, frightened.
“Yes, Master!” said Ellen.
They then, as with the others, also now silent, bent to their labors with renewed vigor.
As Ellen attended rather irritably to the tunic of Selius Arconious she realized, with a bit of a start, that she and the other girl, her new friend, Corinne, had been conversing in Gorean, naturally, and without thought. To be sure, it was appropriate that they did so. Their language now, appropriately, was to be the language of their masters.
Ellen angrily soaked, and kneaded, and soaked and kneaded, the tunic of Selius Arconious. Then, twisting water out of it, she slapped it down angrily on the sloping cement shelf before her, beyond her knees, on their towel. “There, Selius Arconious!” she thought. “Take that!” And then she was frightened that she might break threads in the garment, or cause a tiny rent to appear in the fabric. Then she cried out, softly, angrily, to herself. “I must always fear the whip!” she thought. “If my master feels I have been careless with a garment, or have injured it in some way, I will be lashed as a clumsy slave. I would like to rip the garment of the brute, Selius Arconious, to pieces, but if I so much as break a thread I may be punished. I would be whipped, and then, carefully, with needle and thread, my body in agony, I would have to repair the garment, as well. I am helpless. I am so helpless!” She examined the garment with great care, and, to her relief, assured herself that it was undamaged. She then rinsed it, and twisted it, gently, ridding it of water, and placed it in the basket to her left, containing damp, clean laundry. But she resolved to be, when her master was not present, even more provocative before Selius Arconious. In that way she could make him suffer. And she had no doubt but what she had caused him, in the past few days, considerable uneasiness. Just yesterday she had sat in the straw, in the open barn area, sitting to one side of him, as he had worked nearby, and extended her left leg, partly bent, her tunic dropping away, split as it was, to reveal a good deal of thigh. She had then, with apparent interest, seemed to be considering her ankle, and she had then turned to him, her hands at her ankle, and inquired, innocently, “Do you think, Master, that my ankle would look well in a golden shackle?” He had risen, not speaking, and turned away. She had called after him. “I am thinking of asking my master for bells. Do you think I would look well, belled?” Then, angrily, not looking at her, his shoulders tight with fury, he had left the room. She had laughed to herself. That evening, after supper, she knelt before Portus Canio, and asked if she might be belled. “Why?” asked Portus Canio. S
he had shrugged. “I do not know, Master,” she said. “I just thought it might be pretty.” “You are not a paga slave,” he said. “Master!” she wheedled. “They might annoy the tarns,” he said. “Yes, Master,” she had replied, defeated.
As I have mentioned, there were streets in the vicinity of the laundry pools and these streets, as was to be expected, had their share of various forms of traffic, carts, pedestrians, and such. She had even seen, once this morning, the palanquin of a free woman, being borne by male slaves. The heavy outer curtains, and even the light inner curtains, of the palanquin were drawn open and, from her knees, as she worked on the laundry, she could see a free woman reclining within the palanquin, veiled, hooded, clad in the Robes of Concealment. She lay on one elbow, and seemed bored, and indolent. Her eyes, below the hood, above the veil, idly, briefly surveyed the girls at the pools. Then she looked away, apparently weary, apparently bored. “Perhaps one day, fine lady,” thought Ellen, “you will wear a skimpy tunic with no nether closure, and a collar, and be doing the laundry at the pools! Then let the fine ladies look at you on your knees, working! We will see if you are such a fine lady then!”
Suddenly, to her surprise, she heard, to her right, Corinne gasp. Ellen looked over, curious, frightened, and saw Corinne’s eyes wide, looking toward the street, her small, delicate hand before her mouth.
Ellen looked then toward the street, to see what might have produced this effect in her new friend. But she saw little that seemed likely to have precipitated this response. Ellen looked about, and made certain no guardsmen were present. “What is wrong?” she whispered to Corinne.
“Look!” whispered Corinne. It seemed she would have lifted her hand, and pointed, but then she visibly, as with an act of will, restrained such a movement.
“What is it?” whispered Ellen.
“See him, the peasant, there, he, the fourth in the line, those men carrying suls!”
Ellen did indeed see the figure referred to by her companion, but noted little of interest, or little out of the ordinary. To be sure, the man who was fourth in the line, a line of some ten or eleven men, was a very large man, an unusually large man, but many of those of the Peasants are well built, even massive. His hair was long and unkempt, his tunic ragged. He was bearded. He was partly bent over, as were the others, carrying, tied on a frame, in a large, open, netlike sack, large and bulging, a considerable quantity of suls, these golden-skinned, suls, a common, tuberous Gorean vegetable. They were doubtless on their way, coming from one of the nearby villages, to one of the wholesale sul markets in the city.
Ellen became nervous seeing the open, netlike sacks. They reminded her of the heavily corded, open slave sacks she had once seen in her training. She had once been put in one, bound hand and foot, her knees drawn up, it then tied shut, in one of the training rooms. She had then been instructed as to how she might move pathetically, provocatively within such an environment. It had seemed to her that one needed no instruction as to how to act pathetically in such a confinement, for in such an environment she certainly felt, and was, pathetically helpless. Too, she was not clear, as well, how one could even occupy such a close, inhibitory prison, even trying to remain still, without being provocative. Clearly she would be seen as a netted “catch.” There were also open slave sacks of woven, metal cable, cables a quarter of an inch in thickness, some silverish, some black, some steel-colored, with apertures in the form of two to four-inch diamonds, which could be padlocked shut at the top. She wondered what the woman in the palanquin would look like, stripped, eyes wide, terrified, confined in such a sack, crouching there, her fingers hooked through the apertures. Perhaps then, Ellen thought, she would not be so weary, so bored. Perhaps that would add some interest to her life, some spice to her life, the spice of the collar, of chains and the whip.
“It is he!” whispered Corinne.
“Who?” asked Ellen.
“He! It is he!” cried Corinne, softly.
“Who?” asked Ellen.
“I must hurry to my master!” said Corinne, and she, hastily, with two hands, gathered together her laundry, much of it not yet done, and thrust it into her basket. In a moment, to Ellen’s puzzlement, Corinne, clutching her basket, had rushed away.
Ellen looked again to the street but the line of men, bearing suls, had disappeared.
Ellen then returned to her work.
Chapter 19
WHAT OCCURRED IN THE TARN LOFT;
ONE MUST MAKE HASTE
“The shop of Bonto has been burned! He himself has been seized by Cosians!” cried Fel Doron, he of the employ of Portus Canio, bursting into the loft area, from the interior door.
Portus looked up, wildly, from his work, weaving closed a gap in the wickerwork of one of the light tarn baskets. “Bonto knows nothing,” said Portus, angrily, rising to his feet. “He is innocent. He is not involved.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Selius Arconious, looking up from the repair of a saddle.
“Is your Home Stone the Home Stone of Ar?” inquired Portus, suddenly, fiercely, of Selius Arconious.
“Of course,” said Selius Arconious, puzzled.
“What is going on?” asked Tersius Major, coming from the dark ice pantry, where slabs of meat are stored on blocks of ice, covered with sawdust.
“The shop of Bonto has been burned,” said Portus. “Bonto has been seized.”
“But why?” asked Tersius Major. “Did he not pay his taxes? Did he not show deference to a Cosian?”
“They are sweeping the city,” said Fel Doron. “They are arresting, and burning, almost as though on whim. Madness has infected the Cosian sleen. They seek the Delta Brigade!”
“There is no such thing,” said Selius Arconious. “The Delta Brigade is a myth.”
Portus, Fel Doron and Tersius Major exchanged glances.
“It exists,” said Portus, “but it is ineffective, and dilatory, and we must act independently.”
A tarn, one of several in the nearby caged areas, screamed, and snapped its wings.
Ellen understood little of what was going on. She was in an opened, empty cage, nearby, on her knees, with a bucket of water, and a brush, scrubbing, cleaning, the flooring there. She could look back through the stout bars and see and hear the men. She was naked as that was most convenient for the work which she was doing.
“Action at this time is premature,” said Tersius Major.
“What is different now? What has precipitated the actions of the Cosians?” asked Portus.
“One does not know,” said Fel Doron, wildly. “It is rumored something has occurred in the palace.”
“Look into the streets!” said Portus to Tersius Major.
Tersius hurried to the platform outside the huge entry portal to the loft, and, in moments, called back. “There is commotion below. Much running about, shouting.”
“It is said that Myron, Polemarkos of Temos, has entered the city,” said Fel Doron.
Myron, the polemarkos, was the commander of the Cosian, and mercenary, forces in the city. His own camp lay outside the gates. It was said he was a cousin to Lurius of Jad, Ubar of Cos.
“What is the concern below?” called Portus to Tersius, on the platform.
“I can make nothing out,” said Tersius.
“Talena will address the population from the Central Cylinder,” said Selius Arconious. “She will calm the people.”
“Talena!” cried Portus, angrily.
“Our Ubara,” said Selius Arconious.
“False Ubara!” cried Portus, in fury.
“Portus!” called Tersius, from outside the exterior entrance. “Guardsmen, on the bridges! They may be coming here!”
“Why?” asked Selius Arconious.
Portus turned white.
“They are going everywhere!” cried Fel Doron.
“No,” said Portus. “Not everywhere.”
Tersius returned to the interior of the loft.
“Tarns can come and go, and l
eave the city,” said Portus. “Where there are tarns they will be suspicious. Doubtless all tarn lofts will be investigated.”
“Why?” asked Arconious.
“I think they are coming here,” said Tersius, whispering.
“What does it matter?” asked Arconious. “We have nothing to fear.”
Portus rushed inward, to the loft office, and, in moments, carrying a heavy bundle over his shoulder, from which escaped the sounds of metal, emerged, seized up a tarn goad and, throwing open the latch to the huge cot, the general housing area, that mighty cage, which held several of the gigantic winged monsters, rushed within, shouting, the goad brandished and flashing. The birds drew back from the goad uneasily, angrily, and, against the far wall of that immense cot, that great cage, beneath straw, Portus concealed the mysterious bundle. He then, crying out angrily, and twice defending himself with the goad, returned to the central area, latching the gate behind him. The tarn goad he placed in a wall, behind a loose board. Scarcely had he finished this than there was a rude, insistent pounding at the interior door. Ellen looked to the huge tarn cage, that enormous cot, where Portus had concealed the mysterious bundle. Two of the tarns went to it, and put their beaks down to it, but they then withdrew, as it apparently contained nothing of interest to them.
“Continue with your work,” said Portus to Ellen, and she, dutifully, put down her head, and returned to her scrubbing, the stout bristles of the thick brush damp on the wet floor.
“Ah, Masters, welcome!” said Portus, as he opened the interior door, through which burst several guardsmen, their helmets bearing the yellow crest, their weapons at the ready.
“Who is tarnmaster here?” demanded the leader of the intruders, an officer, a lieutenant, or, perhaps better translated, a subcaptain.
“I, noble Master,” said Portus.
“The rest of you,” said the officer, indicating Fel Doron, Tersius Major and Selius Arconious, “kneel. You are in the presence of soldiers of Cos.”
Fel Doron, Tersius Major, and, lastly, angrily, Selius Arconious, knelt.
“You will show me all records of rentals, hirings, and such, of all comings and goings, of all business in this place to the passage hand before last.”