by John Norman
“Please do not strike me any more, Master!” she begged, stumbling. “I am hurrying! I am hurrying!”
Then she stumbled against a free woman, who, in fury, screamed at her, and began to strike and kick at her.
She fell to her knees, and put her head down. “Forgive me, Mistress!” she begged. “Forgive me!”
The free woman, angrily, continued on her way.
“Get up!” snarled the herdsman.
The girl tried to get up but her foot slipped in the mud and she fell to her side.
Instantly the man was on her with the switch, lashing down at her. “Get up, you worthless white slut!” he cried.
She struggled to her feet. “Yes, Master! Yes, Master!” she wept.
“Hurry!” he cried. He struck her again.
“Which way?” she cried, disoriented. She looked about, blindly, her feet in the mud. “Oh! Oh!” she cried, richly struck, and then fell to her knees, sobbing, helpless. He pulled her to her feet by the left arm and thrust her ahead of him, down the street.
“Hurry!” he commanded. He struck her again.
“Yes, Master,” she sobbed, and, again, stumbled on before him, a blindfolded, herded slave girl.
I looked behind me occasionally, but I saw only the normal occupants and passers-by of the streets of Schendi. I wore the garb now of a leather worker. If inquiries had been made it would be recalled that he who had arrived in the Palms of Schendi had been, at least ostensibly, of the metal workers.
“In here, worthless slave,” said the man, and, taking the girl by the arm, thrust her through the doors of a paga tavern, the Golden Kailiauk.
He took her over beside a wall, across from the main door, and close to a small side door.
“Lie down here,” he told her.
She lay down on the wooden floor.
“On your side,” he said. “Pull your knees up under your chin.”
She then lay there, small, her knees drawn up.
He hurled his brown aba over her, covering her completely, and limped out, through the small side door.
“Does Master desire aught?” asked a black girl, kneeling before me, a paga slave of the establishment.
“Paga,” I said to her. She rose to her feet and went to the vat behind the counter. I sat down, cross-legged, behind a low table, from which vantage point I could see the girl lying on the floor, she covered with the beggar’s aba.
I assumed her herdsman had delivered her to this tavern, that she be picked up by someone else.
I nursed the paga, making it last.
But no one seemed to come for her.
I began to be apprehensive that perhaps some mistake had occurred. What if Ulafi had been mistaken about the girl. What if he had not, really, received two tarsks from Uchafu for her. What if the beggar had made a serious purchase of the girl on behalf of the tavern keeper? What if she were merely being delivered here to be trained as a mere paga girl? I glanced around. There was only one other white girl in the tavern, a dark-haired girl, collared, in yellow pleasure silk, she, too, apparently a paga slave, like the black girls, waiting on the tables. Perhaps the tavern keeper only wanted another white girl, to add variety for his clientele.
I looked at the blond-haired girl lying hidden under the aba. She did not dare to move.
But, no. I recalled clearly that silver had exchanged hands in her sale.
There was no mistake.
I must wait.
I ordered another cup of paga. I played a game of Kaissa with another guest of the tavern. The paga tasted a bit strange, but it was a local paga and there is variation in such pagas, generally a function of the brewer’s choice of herbs and grains. From time to time I glanced at the girl under the aba. I used the Telnus Defense on the fellow, a response to his Ubara’s Gambit, which I thought might be unknown in Schendi, as it had first been seen only last spring at the Fair of En’Kara, near the Sardar Mountains. He met it squarely, however, and I myself, no Centius of Cos, was soon involved in perplexing difficulties. I did manage, narrowly, to eke out a win in the endgame.
“I did not expect you would handle my response to your Ubara’s Spearman to Ubara five as you did,” I told him.
“You were obviously using the Telnus Defense,” he said.
“You have heard of it?” I asked.
“I have read more than a hundred analyses of it,” he said. “Do you think we are barbarians in Schendi?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“I congratulate you,” he said. “You are quite skilled at Kaissa.”
“I did not play my best game,” I said.
“No one ever does,” he said.
“Perhaps you are right,” I said. “You are a fine player,” I said. “Thank you for the game.”
He shook hands, and left. He seemed a nice fellow. Those who play Kaissa are good chaps.
I glanced once more at the girl under the aba. I blinked once or twice. My eyes felt a bit strange, scratchy. My forearms, too, and belly, felt a little itchy. I scratched them.
“Master?” asked one of the girls, a black girl with high, regal cheekbones.
“More paga,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
In another Ahn some musicians arrived. Shortly thereafter, as the tavern grew more crowded, they began to play. My thigh felt irritated. I dug at it with my fingernails.
I watched the white-skinned, dark-haired girl, collared, serving cups to a distant table. She was nicely legged.
A skirl on a flute and a sudden pounding on twin tabors, small, hand drums, called my attention to the square of sand at the side of which sat the musicians.
I then gave my attention to the dancer, a sweetly hipped black girl in yellow beads.
She was skillful and, I suspected, from the use of the hands and beads, had been trained in Ianda, a merchant island north of Anango. Certain figures are formed with the hands and heads which have symbolic meaning, much of which was lost upon me, as I was not familiar with the conventions involved. Some, however, I had seen before, and had been explained to me. One was that of the free woman, another of the whip, another of the yielding, collared slave. Another was that of the thieving slave girl, and another that of the girl summoned, terrified, before the master. Each of these, with the music and followed by its dance expression, was very well done. Women are beautiful and they make fantastic dancers. One of the figures done was that of a girl, a slave, who encounters one who is afflicted with plague. She, a slave, knows that if she should contract the disease she would, in all probability, be summarily slain. She dances her terror at this. This was followed by the figure of obedience, and that by the figure of joy.
I looked about and did not see, any longer, the white-skinned, dark-haired girl, she who had been serving paga.
I was growing irritated, and a little drunk. It seemed to me that by now, surely, the blond-haired barbarian should have been picked up.
I glanced again at the aba by the wall. I could still see, beneath it, the lusciousness of a girl’s curves. What marvelous slaves they make.
Suddenly I howled with rage and threw over the small table behind which I sat. I in two strides was at the aba, and I tore it away.
“Master!” screamed the girl beneath it, looking up, frightened.
It was not the blond-haired barbarian. It was the white-skinned, dark-haired girl, collared, in her bit of pleasure silk, who had been serving paga.
I pulled her to her knees by the hair. “Where is the other girl!” I demanded. “Where!”
“What is going on here?” cried the proprietor of the tavern, who had come in earlier, and was now behind the counter, ladling out paga.
One of the paga attendants came running toward me, but, seeing my eyes; hesitated. Several men were now on their feet. The musicians had stopped playing. The dancer stood still, on the sand, startled.
“Where is the girl who was under this aba,” I demanded. “Where!”
“What girl was i
t?” asked the proprietor. “Whose was she?”
“She was brought in by Kunguni, when you were out,” said one of the black girls.
“I gave orders that he was not again to be admitted to this tavern!” said the man.
“You were not here,” moaned the girl. “We feared to tell a free man he could not enter.”
“Where were you?” called the proprietor to the attendant. “I was in the kitchen,” he said. “I did not know she had been brought in by Kunguni.”
Angrily I threw the girl I held from me.
“Who saw her leave, with whom?” I demanded.
Men looked at one another.
“How came you beneath the aba?” I asked the girl whom I had thrown to one side.
“A man told me to creep beneath it,” she said. “I did not see him! He told me not to look around!”
“You are lying,” I told her.
“Be merciful, Master,” she said. “I am only a slave!”
The paga attendant, he who was closest to me of the crowd, was looking at me, intently. I did not understand this. He edged uneasily backward. I did not understand this. I had not threatened him.
“A silver tarsk to the man who can find me that girl,” I said.
The black girls looked at one another. “She was only a pot girl,” said one of them.
“A silver tarsk,” I said; repeating my offer, “to he who can find me that slave.”
“Look at his eyes,” said the paga attendant, backing away another step.
She could not have been gone long. I must hunt her in the streets.
Suddenly the dancer on the sand threw her hands before her face, and screamed. Then she pointed at me.
“It is the plague!” she cried. “It is the plague!”
The paga attendant, stumbling, turned and ran. “Plague!” he cried. Men fled from the tavern. I stood alone by the wall. Tables had been overturned. Paga was spilled upon the floor.
The tavern seemed, suddenly, eerily quiet. Even the paga girls had fled.
I could hear shouting outside, in the streets, and screaming.
“Call guardsmen!” I heard.
“Kill him,” I heard. “Kill him!”
I walked over to a mirror. I ran my tongue over my lips. They seemed dry. The whites of my eyes, clearly, were yellow. I rolled up the sleeve of my tunic and saw there, on the flesh of the forearm, like black blisters, broken open, erupted, a scattering of pustules.
9. I Decide To Change My Lodgings
“Master?” cried Sasi.
“Do not fear,” I said to her. “I am not ill. But we must leave this place quickly.
“Your face,” she said. “It is marked!”
“It will pass,” I said. I unlocked her bracelets and slipped them into my pouch.
“I fear I may be traced here,” I said. “We must change lodgings.”
I had left the paga tavern by a rear door and then swung myself up to a low roof, and then climbed to a higher one. I had made my way over several roofs until I had found a convenient and lonely place to descend. I had then, wrapped in the discarded aba of Kunguni, made my way through the streets to the Cove of Schendi. Outside, from the wharves and from the interior of the city, I could hear the ringing of alarm bars. “Plague!” men were crying in the streets.
“Are you not ill, Master?” asked Sasi.
“I do not think so,” I said.
I knew that I had not been in a plague area. Too, the Bazi plague had burned itself out years ago. No cases to my knowledge had been reported for months. Most importantly, perhaps, I simply did not feel ill. I was slightly drunk and heated from the paga, but I did not believe myself fevered. My pulse and heartbeat, and respiration, seemed normal. I did not have difficulty catching my breath. I was neither dizzy nor nauseous, and my vision was clear. My worst physical symptoms were the irritation about my eyes and the genuinely nasty itchiness of my skin. I felt like tearing it off with my own fingernails.
“Are you of the metal workers or the leather workers?” she asked.
“Let us not bother about that now,” I said, knotting the cords on the sea bag. I looked about the room. Aside from Sasi what I owned there was either on my person or in the sea bag.
“A girl likes to know the caste of her master,” she said.
“Let us be on our way,” I said.
“Perhaps it is the merchants,” she said.
“How would you like to be whipped?” I asked her.
“I would not like that,” she said.
“Let us hurry,” I said.
“You do not have time to whip me now, do you?” she asked.
“No,” I said, “I do not.”
“I thought not,” she said. “I do not think it is the peasants.”
“I could always whip you later,” I said.
“That is true,” she agreed. “Perhaps I should best he quiet.”
“That is an excellent insight on your part,” I said.
“Thank you, Master,” she said.
“If I am caught, and it is thought that I have the plague,” I said, “you will doubtless be exterminated before I am.”
“Let us not dally,” she said. We left the room.
“You have strong hands,” she said. “Is it the potters?”
“No,” I said.
“I thought it might be,” she said.
“Be silent,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
10. I Make Inquiries Of Kipofu, Who Is Ubar Of The Beggars Of Schendi
The blind man lifted his white, sightless eyes to me. His thin, black hand, clawlike, extended itself.
I placed a tarsk bit in his hand.
“You are Kipofu?” I asked.
I placed another tarsk bit in his hand. He put these two tiny coins in a small, shallow copper bowl before him. He was sitting, cross-legged, on a flat, rectangular stone, broad and heavy, about a foot high, at the western edge of the large Utukufu, or Glory, square. The stone was his etem, or sitting place. He was Ubar of the beggars of Schendi.
“I am Kipofu,” he said.
“It is said,” I said, “that though you are blind there is little which you do not see in Schendi.”
He smiled. He rubbed his nose with his thumb.
“I would obtain information,” I said to him.
“I am only a poor blind man,” he said. He spread his hands, apologetically.
“There is little that transpires in Schendi which can escape your notice,” I told him.
“Information can be expensive,” he said.
“I can pay,” I told him.
“I am only a poor and ignorant man,” he said.
“I can pay well,” I told him.
“What do you wish to know?” he asked.
He sat on his etem in brown rags, a brown cloth wound about his head, to protect him from the sun. There were sores upon his body. Dirt was crusted upon his legs and arms. The peel of a larma lay by one knee. He was blind, and half naked and filthy, but I knew him to be the Ubar of the beggars of Schendi. He had been chosen by them to rule over them. Some said that he had been chosen to rule over them because only he was blind and thus could not see how repulsive they were. Before him the deformed and maimed, the disfigured and crippled, might stand as men, as subject before sovereign, to be heard with objectivity and obtain a dispassionate and honest justice, neither to be dismissed with contempt or demeaningly gratified by the indulgence of one who holds himself above them. But if there were truth in this I think there was, too, a higher truth involved. Kipofu, though avaricious and petty in many respects, had in him something of the sovereign. He was a highly intelligent man, and one who could, upon occasion, be wise as well as shrewd. He was a man of determination, and of iron will, and vision. It was he who had first effectively organized the beggars of Schendi, stabilizing their numbers and distributing and allotting their territories. None might now beg in Schendi without his permission and none might transgress the territory of another
. And each, each week, paid his tax to Kipofu, the inevitable price of government. These taxes, though doubtless much went to the shrewd Kipofu, for monarchs expect to be well paid for bearing the burdens and tribulations of office, served to obtain benefits and insurances for the governed. No beggar now in Schendi was truly without shelter, or medical care or needed go hungry. Each tended to look out for the others, through the functioning of the system. It was said that even members of the merchant council occasionally took Kipofu into their confidence. One consequence of the organization of the beggars, incidentally, was that Schendi did not have many beggars. Obviously the fewer beggars there are the more alms there are for each one. Unwanted beggars had the choice of having their passage paid from Schendi or concluding their simple careers in the harbor.
“I seek information,” I said, “on one who seemed a beggar, who was called Kunguni.”
“Pay,” said Kipofu.
I put another tarsk bit into his hand.
“Pay,” said Kipofu.
I put yet another tarsk bit into his hand.
“None in Schendi who begs is known as Kunguni,” he said.
“Permit me to describe the man to you,” I said.
“How would I know of these things?” asked Kipofu.
I drew forth a silver tarsk.
Kipofu, I knew, through the organization of the beggars, their covering of territories, and their reports, as well as his use of them as messengers and spies, was perhaps the most informed man in Schendi. He, like a clever spider in its web, was the center of an intelligence network that might have been the envy of many a Ubar. There were few tremors in Schendi which did not, sooner or later, reach Kipofu on his simple etem in the square.