Assassin of Gor coc-5

by John Norman

  By the twentieth week of their training the girls could converse rather adequately in Gorean, and Virginia and Phyllis continued to improve. Elizabeth, of course, was totally fluent in the language. Elizabeth's accent was interesting, for it was, in effect, Tuchuk; the accent of the girls was that of Ar. I noted, however, that Sura had insisted that the girls not refine their accents overly much, for it must remain clear they were barbarians; further, Virginia and Phyllis were encouraged to slur and lisp certain sounds, it being thought appealing in female slaves; on the other hand Sura, who did not slur and lisp these sounds herself, did not insist on it, for some reason, with the girls; accordingly Elizabeth, Phyllis and Virginia, not being forced to do so, did not adopt this affectation. I learned independently, from Ho-Tu, that this particular form of speech defect was, however, no longer in style; perhaps if it had been Sura would have been more adamant.

  Once Virginia had, in our compartment, with Elizabeth and Phyllis, shyly looked up at me, and asked if I knew the name of the blond guard, he with blue eyes, who came upon occasion to observe the training.

  "Relius," said I.

  "Oh," said she, dropping her head.

  "The fellow with him often," I volunteered, "is Ho-Sorl."

  "The ugly one?" asked Phyllis. "The one with the black hair and the scar on the side of his face?"

  "I do not think he is ugly," I said, "but I think you mean the same one as I. He does have black hair and there is a scar on the side of his face."

  "I know him," said Phyllis. "He keeps looking at me. I detest him."

  "I thought," said Elizabeth, "you were dancing to him this morning."

  "I was not!" snapped Phyllis.

  "And yesterday," laughed Elizabeth, rocking back, clapping her hands, "when Sura asked him to stand forth that one of us might approach him to administer the First Kiss of the Captive Slave Girl, it was you who first sprang to your feet."

  "I have scarcely ever seen anyone move so fast," commented Virginia.

  "It's not true!" cried Phyllis. "It's not true!"

  "Perhaps he will buy you," suggested Elizabeth.

  "No!" cried Phyllis.

  "Do you think we will be sold at the Curulean?" asked Virginia of me.

  "It is apparently the plan of Cernus," I said.

  "I wonder," said Virginia, "if someone like Relius will buy me."

  "Perhaps," said Elizabeth.

  "I doubt it," said Phyllis. "You are too skinny and your face has pocks."

  "I am not ugly," said Virginia. "And I cannot help it that I do not have a body like yours."

  Phyllis tossed her head, sniffing.

  "I was afraid of men," said Virginia, her head down. "But now I find I am curious about them. I did not know what to do, or how to act with men. But now I am a slave, and I am being taught. I am being shown what to do. I am not so afraid of men now." She looked at Phyllis. "I want a man," she said.

  "Slave!" jeered Phyllis.

  "Don't you want a man?" asked Virginia, tears in her eyes.

  "I will have nothing to do with men," said Phyllis.

  "Oh yes you will, Pleasure Slave," Elizabeth assured her, "oh yes you will!"

  Phyllis cast her a withering glance.

  "I wonder what it would be like to be in the arms of a man," said Virginia.

  "Like Relius?" asked Elizabeth.

  "Yes!" said Virginia.

  Phyllis laughed.

  Virginia dropped her head. "I am ugly," she said. "I am unworthy of being sold at the Curulean."

  "You're a slave!" laughed Phyllis. "Only a slave! Virginia the little slave!"

  "I am a slave," said Virginia. And she added, "And so are you!"

  "I am not a slave!" cried Phyllis.

  "Pretty little slave!" laughed Virginia, pointing her finger at her.

  "Never say that to me!" screamed Phyllis, leaping to her feet.

  "Pretty little slave!" screamed Virginia.

  Phyllis leaped upon her and in an instant the two girls were rolling and scratching on the stones, screaming at one another.

  "Stop them!" cried Elizabeth. "Stop them!"

  I spoke calmly. "Free men do not much interfere in the squabbles of slaves."

  The two girls stopped fighting. Phyllis stood up, breathing heavily. Virginia rose to her feet, and stepped back. She brushed back her hair with her right hand. Both girls looked at me.

  "Thank you," said Virginia.

  "It is time that you returned to your cells, Slaves," said I.

  Virginia smiled. Phyllis, not speaking, turned and went to the door, but there she turned once more, looking at me, waiting for Virginia.

  Virginia regarded me. "You are a man," she said. "Does Master find the slave Virginia ugly?"

  "No," I said, "the slave Virginia is not ugly. The slave Virginia is beautiful."

  There were tears in her eyes. "Could such a man as Relius, do you think," she asked, "desire such a slave as Virginia?"

  "Doubtless," I said, as though irritated with her question, "were the slave Virginia not White Silk the man Relius would have asked for her long ago."

  She looked at me gratefully.

  It is, incidentally, one of the perquisites of employment in the house of a slaver that a member of the guard or staff may ask for, and generally receive, the use of whatever Red Silk Girls he pleases. Elizabeth had not been bothered in this particular because she was, by general recognition, solely mine while I remained in the house.

  "And," I said, rather loudly, looking at Phyllis, "were the slave Phyllis not White Silk she would have found herself used frequently, and well, by the man Ho-Sorl."

  Phyllis looked at me in fury and turned, leaving the room. She walked beautifully, sinuous in her rage.

  "The slave Phyllis," I sad, rather loudly again, "has learned much from Mistress Sura."

  Phyllis cried out and turned in the hall, her fists clenched. Then she spun about with a cry of rage and ran weeping down the corridor.

  Elizabeth clapped her hands and laughed.

  I glared at Virginia, who still stood in the room. "Go to your cell, Slave," I said.

  Virginia dropped her head, smiling. "Yes," she said, "Master," and then turned and left. She, too, walked beautifully.

  "It is hard to believe," said Elizabeth, "that she once taught classics and ancient history in a college."

  "Yes," I said, "it is."

  "On Earth," said Elizabeth, "I do not think a woman would dare walk so beautifully."

  "No," I said, "I do not think so."

  The training of the slave girls progressed. It had begun, following the period entirely consumed with exercises, with such small things as instruction on how to stand, to walk, to kneel, to recline, to eat, to drink. Grace and beauty, following Sura, and I would scarcely dare dispute such an authority, is mostly a matter of expression, both that of the face and body. I could, week to week, see the change in the girls, even Elizabeth. Some of the things they were taught seemed to me very silly, but I, at the same time, found it difficult to object.

  One thing of that sort I recall is a trick where the girl feeds the master a grape held between her teeth. She may or may not have her wrists braceleted behind her back for this particular feat. One leg is folded beneath her and the other is extended behind her, toes pointed, and then she lifts the grape delicately to your mouth. Elizabeth and I used to laugh heartily over this one, but I think it was effective, as I seldom got beyond the third grape.

  "Observe," once had said Elizabeth to me, to my amusement, in the secrecy of out compartment, "the twelfth way to enter a room."

  I had observed. It was not bad. But I think I preferred the tenth, that with the girl's back against the side of the door, the palms of her hands on the jamb, her head up, lips slightly parted, eyes to the right, smoldering at just the right temperature.

  "How many ways are there," I asked, sitting cross-legged in the center of the compartment, on the stone couch, "to enter a room?"

  "It depends on th
e city," said Elizabeth. "In Ar we are the best; we have most ways to enter a room. One hundred and four."

  I whistled.

  "What about," I asked, "just walking straight through?"

  She looked at me. "Ah," said she, "one hundred and five!"

  A good deal of the training of the slave girl, surprisingly, to my naive mind, was in relatively domestic matters. For example, the Pleasure Slave, if she is trained by a good house, must also be the master of those duties commonly assigned to Tower Slaves. Accordingly, they must know how to cut and sew cloth, to wash garments and clean various types of materials and surfaces, and to cook an extensive variety of foods, from the rough fare of Warriors to concoctions which are exotic almost to the point of being inedible.

  Elizabeth would regularly bring her efforts back to the compartment, and the nights were not infrequent when I longed for the simple fare at the table of Cernus, or perhaps a bowl of Ho-Tu's gruel. One dish I recall was composed of the tongues of eels and was sprinkled with flavored aphrodisiacs, the latter however being wasted on me as I spent, to Elizabeth's consternation, the night lying on my side in great pain.

  Elizabeth was, however, to my satisfaction, taught a large number of things which, to my mind, were more appropriate to the training of slave girls, including a large number of dances, dozens of songs, and an unbelievable variety of kisses and caresses. The sheer mechanics of her repertoire, theoretically outfitting her to give exquisite pleasure to anyone from an Ubar to a peasant, are much too complex and lengthy to recount here. I do not think, however, that I have forgotten any of it. One thing that I thought was nice was that Elizabeth had asked Sura about the dance she had begun to perform but could not finish, when we had first come to the house of Cernus, the dance which is accompanied by the Tuchuk slave song. Sura, who seemed to know everything, taught the rest of it, song and all, to her, and to the other girls. For good measure she also taught them the independent dance, sometimes called the Dance of the Tuchuk Slave Girl, which I had once seen performed at a banquet in Turia.

  "Know that you are beautiful," Sura had once said to them. "Now I will teach you to dance."

  My own duties during these months in the House of Cernus remained light, consisting of little more than accompanying Cernus on infrequent occasions on which he left the house, a member of his guard; in the city Cernus traveled in a sedan chair, borne on the shoulders of eight men. The chair was inclosed and, under the blue and yellow silk which covered it, there was metal plating.

  The night that Phyllis Robertson, under the torches in the hall of Cernus, while we supped, performed the belt dance, was the last day of the Eleventh passage hand, about a month before the Gorean New Year, which occurs on the Vernal Equinox, the first day of the month of En'Kara. The training of the girls, over the months, had been substantially completed, and would be for all practical purposes finished by the end of the twelfth passage hand.

  Many houses would doubtless have put them up for sale in En'Kara, but Cernus, as I had heard, was saving them for the Love Feast, which occupies the five days of the fifth passage hand, falling late in the summer.

  There was a variety of reasons why he was postponing their sale. The most obvious was that good prices are commanded on the Love Feast. But perhaps more importantly he had been spreading rumors throughout the city of the desirability of trained barbarians, of which he now had several in training, those who had been brought to Gor with Virginia and Phyllis, some who had been brought to the pens earlier and not sold off immediately, and a large number who had been brought in subsequent trips to the Voltai by the ship of the slavers; I had sometimes but not always accompanied Cernus on these missions; to the best of my knowledge one or another of the black ships had come seven times to the point of rendezvous, since the one I had first seen; the House of Cernus now, altogether, had better than one hundred and fifty barbarians in training, under the tutelage of various Passion Slaves; I gathered that the reports of Sura and Ho-Tu on the progress of the first group, that of Elizabeth, Virginia and Phyllis, had been extremely encouraging.

  In postponing the sales until the Love Feast, of course, there would be time to complete, at least substantially, the training of a large number of barbarian girls. Also, as Cernus doubtless intended, the delay would give his delicately seeded rumors, pertaining to the desirability of barbarians, time to circulate, time to stimulate the imagination and inflame the curiosity of potential buyers. I gather his planning must have been successful, for sales generally in Ar during the first two months of the New Year were down somewhat from seasonal norms, as though Ar's gold for slaves was being held somewhat, in anticipation of the Love Feast.

  I recall one incident worthy of note from that night Phyllis performed the belt dance.

  It was rather late in the evening, but Cernus had remained long at table, playing game after game with Caprus the Scribe.

  At one point he had lifted his head, listening. Outside, in the air overhead, we heard a storm of wings, tarnsmen aflight. He smiled, and returned to his game. Later we heard the marching of men's feet outside in the streets, the clanking of weapons. Cernus listened, and once again turned to his game. A few minutes later we heard a great deal of shouting, and running about. Again Cernus listened, and smiled, and then returned to the study of the board.

  I myself was curious to know what was occurring, but I did not leave the table. I had made it a practice normally to eat beside Ho-Tu, to come to the table with him and leave with him, and Ho-Tu was not yet ready to leave. He had finished his gruel but he was sitting there listening to a slave girl, sitting on furs between the tables, playing a kalika. Several of the guards and staff had left the tables, retiring. Even the girls at the wall had been unchained and returned, after the evening's sport, to their cells. Phyllis and Virginia, and Elizabeth, had long since left the hall.

  Ho-Tu was fond of the music of the kalika, a six-stringed, plucked instrument, with a hemispheric sound box and long neck. Sura, I knew, played the instrument. Elizabeth, Virginia and Phyllis had been shown its rudiments, as well as something about the lyre, but they had not been expected to become proficient, nor were they given the time to become so; if their master, at a later date, after their sale, wished his girls to possess these particular attributes, which are seldom involved in the training of slave girls, he himself could pay for their instruction; the time of the girls, I noted, was rather fully occupied, without spending hours a day on music.

  The slave girl sitting on the furs, for the kalika is played either sitting or standing, bent over her instrument, her hair falling over the neck of it, lost in her music, a gentle, slow melody, rather sad. I had heard it sung some two years ago by the bargemen on the Cartius, a tributary of the Vosk, far to the south and west of Ar. Ho-Tu's eyes were closed. The horn spoon lay to the side of the empty gruel bowl. The girl had begun hum the melody now, and Ho-Tu, almost inaudibly, but I could hear him, hummed it as well.

  The door to the hall suddenly burst open and two guards, followed by two others burst in. The first two guards were holding between them a heavy man, with a paunch that swung beneath his robes, wild-eyed, his hands extended to Cernus. Though he wore the robe of the metal workers, though now without a hood, he was not of that caste.

  "Portus!" whispered Ho-Tu.

  I, too, of course, recognized him.

  "Caste sanctuary!" cried Portus, shaking himself free of the guards and stumbling forward and falling on his knees before the wooden dais on which sat the table of Cernus.

  Cernus did not look up from his game.

  "Caste sanctuary!" screamed Portus.

  The Slavers, incidentally, are of the Merchant Caste, though, in virtue of their merchandise and practices, their robes are different. Yet, if one of them were to seek Caste Sanctuary, he would surely seek it from Slavers, and not from common Merchants. Many Slavers think of themselves as an independent caste. Gorean law, however, does not so regard them. The average Gorean thinks of them simply as Slavers, but, if
questioned, would unhesitantly rank them with the Merchants. Many castes, incidentally, have branches and divisions. Lawyers and Scholars, for example, and Record Keepers, Teachers, Clerks, Historians and Accountants are all Scribes.

  "Caste sanctuary!" again pleaded Portus, on his knees before the table of Cernus. The girl with the kalika had lightly fled from between the tables.

  "Do not disturb the game," said Caprus to Portus.

  It seemed incredible to me that Portus had come to the House of Cernus, for much bad blood had existed between the houses. Surely to come to this place, the house of his enemy, must have been a last recourse in some fearful set of events, to throw himself on the mercies of Cernus, claiming Caste Sanctuary.

  "They have taken my properties!" cried Portus. "You have nothing to fear. I have no men! I have no gold! I have only the garb on my back! Tarnsmen! Soldiers! The very men of the street! With torches and ropes! I barely escaped with my life. My house is confiscated by the state! I am nothing! I am nothing!"

  Cernus meditated his move, his chin on his two fists, one above the other.

  "Caste sanctuary!" whined Portus. "Caste sanctuary, I beg of you. I beg of you!"

  The hand of Cernus lifted, as though to move his Ubar, and then drew back. Caprus had leaned forward, with anticipation.

  "Only you in Ar can protect me," cried Portus. "I give you the trade of Ar! I want only my life! Caste Sanctuary! Caste Sanctuary!"

  Cernus smiled at Caprus and then, unexpectedly, as though he had been teasing him, he placed his first tarnsman at Ubara's Scribe Two.

  Caprus studied the board for a moment and then, with an exasperated laugh, tipped his own Ubar, conceding the board and game.

  Cernus now, while Caprus replaced the pieces of the game, regarded Portus.

  "I was your enemy," said Portus. "But now I am nothing. Only a caste brother, nothing. I beg of you Caste Sanctuary."

  Caprus, looking up from his work, regarded Portus. "What was your crime?" he asked.

  Portus wrung his hands, and his head rolled wildly. "I do not know," he cried. "I do not know!" Then, piteously, Portus lifted his hands to Cernus, Master of the House of Cernus. "Caste Sanctuary!"