Conspirators of Gor cog[oc-31

by John Norman

  I trusted it was securely in place.

  At last, to my relief, I came to the coin stall nearest the praetor’s platform. I understood I was to wait there, or in the vicinity.

  For what was I to wait?

  Was it here I was to wait for Lord Grendel to arrive and, at his leisure, kill me?

  Without rising to my feet I pushed open the half-gate of the stall and crawled inside.

  I then closed and latched the gate.

  I huddled within.

  The wooden sides of the stall were comforting. If affording little protection, they would, at any rate, as they were surmounted, or thrust aside or splintered apart, warn me of his approach.

  It was very quiet.

  I heard nothing.

  As time went by, more and more time, I began to suspect that some mistake, or misunderstanding, had taken place.

  Far off I heard the bar for the First Ahn.

  It was still early then, very early.

  Later I heard the sounding of the bar for the Second Ahn.

  Was I to stay here all night?

  I then became afraid, even though it was the middle of the night, that I might be apprehended in the market, in the morning, when guardsmen, at the praetor’s signal, opened the market to the stallsmen, merchants, and dealers.

  That would not be pleasant.

  Still, as individuals milled about, early, I thought, perhaps I could mix in, and, unnoticed, make my way back to the domicile.

  I heard, far off, the ringing of the Third Ahn.

  Perhaps, I thought, I should return home.

  It is lonely here, and dark, and cold, but, clearly, if something were to happen, it would have happened by now. I was heartened. Now, I was sure, reasonably sure, nothing would happen.

  Return to the domicile, Allison, I said to myself.

  No, I said to myself. I will stay, if only a little longer.

  Again the clouds parted, and, again, one of the moons was visible. I rose up a little, and looked over the counter of the stall. The market was again bathed in cool light, and then, again, with the rolling of clouds, the moon was obscured, and the market became once more a jumble of shadows, a weird terrain of the night, a frightening desert of darkness, so different from the brightness, the bustle, the noise and tumult of the day. Across the plaza the lamp, on its pole, was still lit.

  I will go back to the domicile, I thought.

  It was at that moment that I heard a heavy, grating sound, a scraping sound, some yards away.

  Something heavy, and metal, was being moved, shaken, being wrenched, and then was forced free, and thrust to the side.

  A moment later I heard it replaced.

  I knew I was to wait, and stay in place.

  But I could not have run then, even had I wished to do so.

  Run, I thought, run, but I could not do so.

  I sensed something was outside, being very still.

  Then I sensed something moving toward me. I had tried to be silent, but it was approaching.

  Then something struck against the side of the stall. Had it not seen the barrier? It is clumsy, I thought.

  I looked up, toward the ridge of the counter and there, a darkness against a darkness, I saw a wide, shaggy, massive head.

  It is Lord Grendel, I thought, come to kill me.

  I heard a snuffling sound, as though scent were being taken. A dark tongue moved about fangs. Broad ears, pointed, like lifted hands, seemed to emerge from that head, against which they must have been laid. They turned toward me, as though they might have been eyes, inclining downward, peering downward.

  I knew that I was not to cry out, and that I was not to struggle. The instructions of Lord Grendel had been clear on that point. Oddly, I did not think I could even whisper, or speak, let alone cry out, nor could I move.

  I was terrified.

  Suddenly the stall’s frontage was torn away, from before me, and struck clattering to the side, and I saw the large shape there, intent, crouched down. Then it moved a little forward, reaching out, moving its arms back and forth, uncertainly, as though it could not see for the darkness, but even I could see that much.

  I sobbed as it scrambled forward, and seized me.

  It held me tightly, clutching me to it, and I sensed filth, and slime, from the sewer, and was almost overwhelmed by the smell of Kur. I was aware of a broad, deep chest, hot and covered with damp, matted hair. In some parts of its journey it must have moved through water. I sensed a mighty heart beating within that expanse. I heard again the snuffling sound and felt the broad, distending nostrils of the beast moving about my neck and shoulders. Then one paw was placed on my head, carefully, and I felt it moving about, through my hair. I wore no kerchief. Then I felt the paw, feeling about, clumsily, under my chin. I feared then I was to be strangled, or that my neck was to be broken. I now knew this was not Lord Grendel for Lord Grendel was not awkward; for all his size, and power, he was remarkably graceful; his movements were as sure as those of a stalking sleen; too, he was dexterous; the same paw which might tear the iron handle from a gate could lift a pin from the floor, and fetch a stone of choice from a lady’s jewel box. But the paw did not crush me, but thrust up, seizing the collar, briefly, which it then, almost immediately, relinquished.

  It then thrust me back, away from it, against the back of the stall. My shoulder was bruised.

  I half lay against the wood, regarding it with horror.

  I had not cried out, I had not resisted.

  Then there issued from that monstrous thing on the other side of the stall a series of low noises, almost as though they might have been those of larl, or sleen. There was nothing human there, but the stream of sound was clearly articulated, and I knew it was speaking to me. I understood nothing. Did it hope I might understand it? Did it think I might have a translator?

  The scent of Lord Grendel, I knew, was on me. At least he had said so. Had that encouraged it to speak? Did it suspect that something was in the vicinity, or even in the stall, which might understand it? Could it not see we were alone?

  “I do not understand you,” I whispered, though I was as sure it could not understand me as I knew I could not understand it.

  Lord Grendel, I knew, had superb night vision. The Kur, like the sleen, I suspected, might be at home in the night. What then, I wondered, is wrong with this terrible thing, scarcely a body’s length away? Why is it so tentative, so uncertain?

  Then again, as it had from time to time, one of the moons, white and cold, the only one now visible, was discernible, if only for a moment, but the moment was enough to tell me that the thing so near, so near I could almost touch it, was blind. There were twin darknesses in that massive head, flesh, and hair, where eyes, large, bright and glistening, must once have been but no longer were.

  The thing then, as grievously wounded as it might have been, had not died in the sewers, as conjectured, but somehow survived. Blind, unable to defend itself save erratically, awkwardly, it must have been struck an innumerable number of times. Trails of blood had led to a sewer, the grating of which it must have felt with its feet. None had cared to follow it into that darkness. It had been supposed it had bled to death somewhere below the streets.

  Its eyeless head was facing me.

  How could it be alive?

  But it was alive.

  It must be hard, I thought, to kill such things. It was hard to conceive how tenaciously and unsurrendering, how difficult to quench, how stubbornly, the fires of life might burn in so mighty a frame, in the dark, sheltered furnace of so awesome a physical engine.

  It did not move.

  Was it waiting for me to move?

  It would be difficult to catch urts in the sewers, so alert and quickly moving. It would have to feed. It would come, occasionally, out of the sewers, however clumsily, to seek slower, easier game.

  It was blind, but it could smell, and it could hear.

  I remembered the last instruction of Lord Grendel. I was to hurry home.<
br />
  I suspected that Lord Grendel would have been almost certain that the killings in the city were the results of the attack of a Kur. Indeed, he may have examined bodies. Perhaps that explained the blood on his paws, and arms, which had so dismayed me. Certainly he would, in any case, well know the work of a predatory Kur, the nature of its stalking, its strike, how it was likely to feed, and such. As the Kur from the carnival had disappeared into a sewer, that clear from the trail of blood, Lord Grendel, in his peregrinations at night, may have scouted various accesses to the sewer system of Ar, of which there are a great many. Then there had been word of the seemingly rash flight of the thieves, seemingly so inexplicable, emerging in daylight in the market of Cestias, in the vicinity of the very platform of a praetor, with guardsmen aplenty about, amongst the vendors and stalls. He must have come, then, I supposed, after dark, to the deserted market. There he may have established, to his satisfaction, by the trail of scent, that the Kur may have emerged, even frequently, perhaps habitually, from this particular opening, which, at night, would be in an area unlikely to be traversed by humans. I recalled he had said, “The killings must stop.” Too, I supposed, some relationship must exist, or be supposed to exist, amongst Kurii. Might not a human, or some humans, be disposed to aid another human, in similar straits? Perhaps he and the Kur shared a world, or a sort, a kind of being, or a blood. Were they not, despite the views of the Lady Bina, both Kur?

  I knew I was to hurry home.

  But might it not, if I should move, leap forward, reach out, and seize me?

  I unlatched the half-gate of the stall. Surely I was not going to exit the stall where the one side had once stood, until broken away by the beast, for that opening was behind it. I would have to pass the beast. I was very quiet in unlatching the gate, but there was a tiny sound, and the ears moved alertly, slightly, forward, toward that tiny sound.

  I rose to my feet, and, not taking my eyes off the large, crouching, dark shape across the stall, opened the gate, and backed through. I was then a few feet outside the stall. I heard the beast strike against the wood, and then, feeling for the opening, pull the gate from its hinges. A sweeping paw convinced it that the opening was not to its liking. Wood was torn aside, and the thing was outside the stall.

  There had been noise when it had torn away the frontage of the stall, a brief, clear shattering of the market’s silence, which I trusted no one heard, and now, too, though less, when it tore away the gate and forcibly enlarged the threshold, that its bulk, paws extended before it, might exit frontally. Kurii, I would later learn, tend to avoid constricted spaces, and will seldom enter a space which has but a single opening. A narrow space is one in which it may be difficult to defend oneself, and a space with but a single opening is a space in which one might be cornered, or trapped.

  The beast and I, separated by some feet, faced one another.

  I heard a voice, behind me, one I recognized.

  “Get behind me,” it said.

  “Master!” I breathed. “You live!”

  “The thing is dangerous,” he said. “Get behind me.”

  “I feared you slain,” I whispered.

  There was a low, growling sound from the beast. Clearly it was uncertain as to what was occurring.

  I did not turn around. I did not wish to take my eyes from the beast.

  “Please, leave, Master,” I whispered. “I am sure it is more dangerous to you than to me.”

  “Oh!” I said, startled, for a leash loop was dropped about my head, pulled close, and snapped shut. I was leashed!

  “I see, barbarian,” he said, “you must be taught to obey.”

  How I would have been terrified to hear those words, under different circumstances! But I needed not be taught to obey; the former Allison Ashton-Baker, on Gor, had well learned how to obey!

  “Flee, Master,” I whispered. “It may not kill you. I think myself in small danger. I think you are in great danger.”

  A hand on my arm, my right arm, jerked me to the side, and back, over an extended foot, and I sprawled, twisting, to the stones of the market. It is a simple, effective, unpleasant, crude way to put a slave to her belly. The leash was now behind me, looping up to his hand. I twisted about, to my side. “Run, Master!” I said. “I have no way to communicate with it. Run, run, Master!”

  But he stood between me and the beast.

  He cast down the leash, back. The strap was over my legs.

  “Run, Master!” I begged.

  He stood between me and the beast.

  He was unarmed!

  There could be no mistaking then the menace in the sound which now emanated from the throat of the beast.

  It did not know what was occurring. It was impatient. It was growing angry. It was displeased.

  He waved his arm, angrily. “Begone!” he said. “Away! Away!”

  “Run, Master!” I begged. “Please, run, Master!”

  But he stood his ground, and would not abandon me.

  Clearly the beast, blind as it was, must be aware that I was not in motion, and that something, with a different scent, a different voice, belligerent and obstructive, now stood between us.

  I would have given much for a translator.

  “Away!” he cried to the beast.

  At that moment the beast hurled itself forward, with startling, incredible swiftness, and I saw him whom I had earlier sought, him whom I had earlier feared lost, dismembered, on Clive, struck to the side with a reckless, wide, sweeping, indiscriminate, mighty blow, one that might have loosened or dislodged planking or a beam. The Metal Worker was flung a dozen paces to the side, to strike amongst chests and boxes beside a stall. I saw him struggle to his feet, amongst the debris, waver, and then fall.

  I had heard no snapping of a neck or spine.

  I think he was then unconscious, or half unconscious.

  I feared the beast might then go to the body and, while it yet lived, begin to feed, but, rather, it turned, again, to face me.

  I rejoiced, even in my terror for his life, that the Metal Worker lived. It was not he then but, I supposed, one of his caste, who had perished on Clive, or in the vicinity of Clive.

  But then I recalled that he was naught but another arrogant Gorean brute with little respect for women, a natural master, who would survey women appraisingly, conjecturing what value they might possess, if any, in a collar. There was a leash on my neck. I pulled at it. It was his! I feared it was locked there.

  I tore, futilely, at the leash!

  I was pleased that he lived, if only that I might despise him the more, and loathe him ever the more deeply.

  How dared he put me on a leash?

  But I was, of course, a slave.

  I was thus fittingly to be leashed, thonged, braceleted, roped, chained, gagged, blindfolded, should masters please.

  The beast was facing me.

  I had a sense of its power, from the stall, the broken wood, from the strength of Lord Grendel, as one of its sort, from killings in the streets of Ar, from the improbable, sightless blow it had delivered, which had struck a large, grown man stumbling, reeling, yards to the side.

  I fear I then lost what little nerve or courage I might have had, for I turned about, and, frantic, wanting only to escape, sped toward the perimeter of the market. I knew I could not outrun the thing, but I could see, and it could not. Surely then one might be able to elude it!

  I kept hearing it behind me, and then I did not hear it, and, then, suddenly, it was almost at my side, reaching out.

  I realized then how foolish my flight had been.

  It might not be able to see, but it could hear, and it could take my scent, mine, I suppose, and, more importantly, that of Lord Grendel. Indeed, why else, unless to feed, would it follow me? It smelled Kur about me, and was following me, to make contact with another, or others, of its kind.

  How it must have welcomed the message which I bore, a message I would not even have known I bore, had it not been for the words of Lord Gr
endel.

  Did it know I had tried to escape?

  If it did, it did not seem to object, perhaps for it knew also that I could not escape.

  I feared I might be killed, for my flight, but it was crouched near me, unperturbed, expectantly. From my experience with Lord Grendel, I realized it was not angry.

  Then I realized it would not kill me, of course, at least not now, for I was the link between it and one or more of its kind, the key to its rejoining one or more of its kind.

  I sank weakly to my knees.

  I became aware that the beast had picked up my leash. I was then startled, for it had snapped the leash, twice. I responded instantly, as the trained beast I was. When I was standing, and I stood very straight, shoulders back, belly in, slender, and slimly erect, as one must, for one is a slave, the leash was snapped again, once. That is the signal to move. It is common, as in promenades, when the slave is to precede her master. If the slave follows her master, no such signal is required. The pressure on the collar ring makes clear that she is to move, as any other owned, tethered beast. I then began to make my way, preceding the monster, on its leash, toward the shop of Epicrates. I now knew it, as Lord Grendel, was not only rational, but informed. It knew how to manage slaves, how to handle and control them, and what to do with them. Perhaps, on some world or other, it even owned slaves. I was also now more willing to credit Antiope’s conjecture that slaves were exempt from the predations of the beast, or beasts, in the street. The slave, after all, as the free woman does not, has uses. Of what value is a woman, save for her pretensions and vanities, until she is collared, after which she will learn there are uses, a large number of them, to which she may be put? The free woman may be beheaded or impaled; the slave, an animal, will be preserved and protected, to be distributed or sold.

  How was it, I wondered, that the Metal Worker had been in the vicinity of the market of Cestias tonight?

  He stalks me, I thought. He finds me of interest. He wants me. It is not unusual, of course, for a man to want a slave. What male does not want one or more slaves?