Nomads of Gor

by John Norman

  She had not, as I had suspected, deigned to wear the shameful camisk beneath her robes of white and gold.

  The Kassar wench, who had been bound across from her to the opposing stake, had now been freed by a judge and she strode to where Aphris was still confined.

  "Well done, Tuchuk!" said the girl, saluting Kamchak.

  Kamchak shrugged.

  Then the girl, with vehemence, spat in the face of the lovely Aphris. "Slave girl!" hissed the girl. "Slave girl! Slave girl!"

  She then turned and strode away, looking for warriors of the Kassars.

  Kamchak laughed loudly.

  "Punish her!" demanded Aphris.

  Kamchak suddenly cuffed Aphris of Turia. Her head snapped sideways and there was a streak of blood at the corner of her mouth. The girl looked at him in sudden fear. It might have been the first time she had ever been struck. Kamchak had not hit her hard, but sharply enough to instruct her. "You will take what abuse any free person of the Wagon Peoples cares to inflict upon you," he said.

  "I see," said a voice, "you know how to handle slaves."

  I turned to see, only a few feet away, on the shoulders of slaves standing on the bloodied sand, the open, bejeweled, cushioned palanquin of Saphrar of the Caste of Merchants.

  Aphris blushed from head to toe, enfolded transparent in the crimson flag of her shame.

  Saphrar's round, pinkish face was beaming with pleasure, though I would have thought this day a tragic one for him. The tiny red-lipped mouth was spread wide with benign satisfaction. I saw the tips of the two golden canines.

  Aphris suddenly pulled at the retaining rings, trying to rush to him, now oblivious of the riches of her beauty revealed even to the slaves who carried his palanquin. To them, of course, she was now no more than they, save perhaps that her flesh would not be used to bear the poles of palanquins, to carry boxes nor dig in the earth, but would be appointed its own tasks, lighter and more suitable, doubtless even more pleasing than theirs to a master. "Saphrar!" she cried. "Saphrar!"

  Saphrar looked on the girl. He took from a silken pouch lying before him on the palanquin a small glass, with glass-petal edges like a flower, mounted on a silver stem about which curled silver leaves. Through this he looked on her more closely.

  "Aphris!" he cried, as though horrified, but yet smiling.

  "Saphrar," she wept, "free me!"

  "How unfortunate!" wailed Saphrar. I could still see the tips of the golden teeth.

  Kamchak had his arm about my shoulder, chuckling. "Aphris of Turia," he said, "has a surprise coming."

  Aphris turned her head to Kamchak. "I am the richest woman in all Turia," she said. "Name your price!"

  Kamchak looked at me. "Do you think five gold pieces would be too much?" he asked.

  I was startled.

  Aphris nearly choked. "Sleen," she wept. Then she turned to Saphrar. "Buy me!" she demanded. "If necessary, use all my resources, all! Free me!"

  "But Aphris," Saphrar was purring, "I am in charge of your funds and to barter them—and all your properties and goods—for one slave would be a most unwise and absurd decision on my part, irresponsible even."

  Aphris suddenly looked at him, dumbfounded.

  "It is—or was—true that you were the richest woman in all Turia," Saphrar was saying, "but your riches are not yours to manage—but mine—not, that is, until you would have reached your majority, some days from now I believe."

  "I do not wish to remain a slave for even a day!" she cried.

  "Is it my understanding," asked Saphrar, the golden drops over his eyes rising, "that you would—upon reaching your majority—transfer your entire fortunes to a Tuchuk, merely to obtain your freedom."

  "Of course!" she wept.

  "How fortunate then," observed Saphrar, "that such a transaction is precluded by law."

  "I don't understand," said Aphris.

  Kamchak squeezed my shoulder and rubbed his nose.

  "Surely you are aware," said Saphrar, "that a slave cannot own property—any more than a kaiila, a tharlarion or sleen."

  "I am the richest woman in Turia!" she cried.

  Saphrar reclined a bit more on his cushions. His little round pinkish face shone. He pursed his lips and then smiled. He poked his head forward and said, very quickly, "You are a slave!" He then giggled.

  Aphris of Turia threw back her head and screamed.

  "You do not even have a name," hissed the little merchant.

  It was true. Kamchak would undoubtedly continue to call her Aphris, but it would be now his name for her and not her own. A slave, not being a person in the eyes of Gorean law, cannot possess a name in his own right, any more than an animal. Indeed, in the eyes of Gorean law, unfortunately, slaves are animals, utterly and unqualifiedly at the disposition of their masters, to do with as he pleases.

  "I think," roared Kamchak, "I will call her Aphris of Turia!"

  "Free me, Saphrar," cried the girl piteously, "free me!"

  Saphrar laughed.

  "Sleen!" she screamed at him. "You stinking sleen!"

  "Be careful," warned Saphrar, "how you speak to the richest man in Turia!"

  Aphris wept and pulled at the retaining rings.

  "You understand, of course," continued Saphrar, "that at the instant you became slave all your properties and riches, your wardrobes and jewels, your investments and assets, chattels and lands, became mine."

  Aphris was weeping uncontrollably at the stake. Then she lifted her head to him, her eyes bright with tears. "I beg you, noble Saphrar," she wept, "I beg of you—I beg of you to free me. Please! Please! Please!"

  Saphrar smiled at her. He then turned to Kamchak, "What, Tuchuk, did you say her price was?"

  "I have lowered it," said Kamchak. "I will let you have her for one copper tarn disk."

  Saphrar smiled. "The price is too high," he said.

  Aphris cried out in distress.

  Saphrar then again lifted the tiny glass through which he had regarded her, and examined her with some care. Then he shrugged and gestured for his slaves to turn the palanquin.

  "Saphrar!" cried out the girl one last time.

  "I do not speak to slaves," said he, and the merchant, on the palanquin, moved away toward the walls of distant Turia.

  Aphris was looking after him, numbly, her eyes red, her cheeks stained with tears.

  "It does not matter," said Kamchak soothingly to the girl. "Even had Saphrar been a worthy man you would not now be free."

  She turned her beautiful head to stare at him, blankly.

  "No," said Kamchak, taking her hair and giving her head a friendly shake, "I would not have sold you for all the gold in Turia."

  "But why?" she whispered.

  "Do you recall," asked Kamchak, "one night two years ago when you spurned my gift and called me sleen?"

  The girl nodded, her eyes frightened.

  "It was on that night," said Kamchak, "that I vowed to make you my slave."

  She dropped her head.

  "And it is for that reason," said Kamchak, "that I would not sell you for all the gold of Turia."

  She looked up, red-eyed.

  "It was on that night, little Aphris," said Kamchak, "that I decided I wanted you—and would have you—slave."

  The girl shuddered and dropped her head.

  The laugh of Kamchak of the Tuchuks was loud.

  He had waited long to laugh that laugh, waited long to see his fair enemy thus before him, thus bound and shamed, his, a slave.

  In short order then Kamchak took the key over the head of Aphris of Turia and sprang open the retaining rings. He then led the numb, unresisting Turian maiden to his kaiila.

  There, beside the paws of the animal, he made her kneel.

  "Your name is Aphris of Turia," he said to her, giving her a name.

  "My name is Aphris of Turia," she said, accepting her name at his hands.

  "Submit," ordered Kamchak.

  Trembling Aphris of Turia, kneeling, lowered h
er head and extended her arms, wrists crossed. Kamchak quickly and tightly thonged them together.

  She lifted her head. "Am I to be bound across the saddle?" she asked numbly.

  "No," said Kamchak, "there is no hurry."

  "I don't understand," said the girl.

  Already Kamchak was placing a thong on her neck, the loose end of which he looped several times about the pommel of his saddle. "You will run alongside," he informed her.

  She looked at him in disbelief.

  Elizabeth Cardwell, unbound, had already taken her position on the other side of Kamchak's kaiila, beside his right stirrup. Then Kamchak, with his two women, and I, left the Plains of a Thousand Stakes and set out for the wagons of the Tuchuks.

  Behind us we could hear still the sounds of combat, the cries of men.

  * * * *

  Some two hours later we reached the encampment of the Tuchuks and made our way among the wagons and the cooking pots and playing children. Slave girls ran beside us, jeering at Kamchak's tethered prize; free women looked up from their ladles and kettles to stare with jaundiced eye at yet another Turian woman brought to the camp.

  "She was First Stake," called Kamchak to the jeering girls. "What were you?" Then he turned his kaiila suddenly toward them and they would break and run screaming and laughing and then, like a flock of birds, take up once more the pursuit. Kamchak was grinning from ear to ear. "First stake!" he called out to a warrior, jerking his thumb at the stumbling, gasping Aphris. The warrior laughed. "It is true!" roared Kamchak, grinning and slapping the side of the saddle.

  To be sure there might have been some doubt that the miserable wench thonged behind Kamchak's kaiila could have been first stake. She was gasping and stumbling; her body glistened with perspiration; her legs were black with wet dust; her hair was tangled and thick with dust; her feet and ankles were bleeding; her calves were scratched and speckled with the red bites of rennels. When Kamchak reached his wagon, the poor girl, gasping for breath, legs trembling, fell exhausted to the grass, her entire body shaking with the ordeal of her run. I supposed that Aphris of Turia had done little in her life that was more strenuous than stepping in and out of a scented bath. Elizabeth Cardwell, on the other hand, I was pleased to see, ran well, breathing evenly, showing few signs of fatigue. She had, of course, in her time with the wagons, become used to this form of exercise. I had rather come to admire her. The life in the open air, the work, had apparently been good for her. She was trim, vital, buoyant. I wondered how many of the girls in her New York office could have run as she beside the stirrup of a Tuchuk warrior.

  Kamchak leaped down from the saddle of the kaiila, puffing a bit.

  "Here, here!" he cried cheerily, hauling the exhausted Aphris to her knees. "There is work to be done, Wench!"

  She looked up at him, the thong still on her neck, her wrists bound. Her eyes seemed dazed.

  "There are bosk to be groomed," he informed her, "and their horns and hoofs must be polished—there is fodder to be fetched and dung to be gathered—the wagon must be wiped and the wheels greased—and there is water to be brought from the stream some four pasangs away and meat to hammer and cook for supper—hurry—hurry, Lazy Girl!"

  Then he leaned back and laughed his Tuchuk laugh, slapping his thighs.

  Elizabeth Cardwell was removing the thong from the girl's neck and unbinding her wrists. "Come along," she said, kindly. "I will show you."

  Aphris stood up, wobbling, still dazed. She turned her eyes on Elizabeth, whom she seemed to see then for the first time. "Your accent," said Aphris, slowly. "You are barbarian." She said it with a kind of horror.

  "You will see," said Kamchak, "that she wears the pelt of a larl—that she is not collared, that she does not wear the nose ring, that she does not wear the brand." And then he added, "—as you will."

  Aphris trembled, her eyes pleading.

  "Do you wonder, Little Aphris," asked Kamchak, "why the barbarian—though slave—is not clad Kajir, why she does not wear ring, brand and collar?"

  "Why?" asked Aphris, frightened.

  "So that there will be one higher than you in the wagon," said Kamchak.

  I had wondered why Kamchak had not treated Elizabeth Cardwell as any other enslaved wench of Tuchuks.

  "For," said Kamchak, "among your other tasks, my dear, you will perform for this barbarian the duties of a female serving slave."

  This struck fire in Aphris of Turia. She suddenly straightened indignantly and cried out. "Not I—not Aphris of Turia!"

  "You," said Kamchak.

  "A serving slave to a barbarian!"

  "Yes," said Kamchak.

  "Never!" cried the girl.

  "Yes," roared Kamchak, throwing back his head and guffawing, "Aphris of Turia, in my wagon, will be a barbarian's serving slave!"

  The girl's fists were clenched.

  "And I shall see," said Kamchak, "that word of this reaches Turia!" He then bent over and started cracking his knees with his fists, so amused he was.

  Aphris of Turia trembled with rage before him.

  "Please," said Elizabeth, "come away." She tried to take Aphris by the arm.

  Aphris of Turia shrugged away her touch arrogantly, not wishing to feel her hand. But then, head in the air, she deigned to accompany Elizabeth from where we stood.

  "If she does not work well," called Kamchak cheerily, "beat her."

  Aphris turned to face him, fists clenched.

  "You will learn, Little Aphris," said he, "who is master here."

  The girl lifted her head. "Is a Tuchuk too poor," she asked, "to clothe a miserable slave?"

  "I have many diamonds in the wagon," said Kamchak, "which you may wear if you wish—but nothing else will you wear until it pleases me."

  She turned in fury and followed Elizabeth Cardwell away.

  After this Kamchak and I left the wagon and wandered about, stopping at one of the slave wagons for a bottle of paga, which, while wandering about, we killed between us.

  This year, as it turned out, the Wagon Peoples had done exceedingly well in the games of Love War—a bit of news we picked up with the paga—and about seventy percent of the Turian maidens had been led slave from the stakes to which they had been manacled. In some years I knew the percentages were rather the other way about. It apparently made for zestful competition. We also heard that the wench Hereena, of the First Wagon, had been won by a Turian officer representing the house of Saphrar of the Merchants, to whom, for a fee, he presented her. I gathered that she would become another of his dancing girls. "A bit of perfume and silk will be good for that wench," stated Kamchak. It seemed strange to think of her, so wild and insolent, arrogant on the back of her kaiila, now a perfumed, silken slave of Turians. "She could use a bit of whip and steel, that wench," Kamchak muttered between swallows of paga, pretty much draining the bottle. It was too bad, I thought, but at least I supposed there would be one fellow among the wagons, the young man Harold, he whom the girl had so abused, he who had not yet won the Courage Scar, who would be just as pleased as not that she, with all her contempt and spleen, was now delightfully salted away in bangles and bells behind the high, thick walls of a Turian's pleasure garden.

  Kamchak had circled around and we found ourselves back at the slave wagon.

  We decided to wager to see who would get the second bottle of paga.

  "What about the flight of birds?" asked Kamchak.

  "Agreed," I said, "but I have first choice."

  "Very well," he said.

  I knew, of course, that it was spring and, in this hemisphere, most birds, if there were any migrating, would be moving south. "South," I said.

  "North," he said.

  We then waited about a minute, and I saw several birds, river gulls—flying north.

  "Those are Vosk gulls," said Kamchak. "In the spring, when the ice breaks in the Vosk, they fly north."

  I fished some coins out of my pouch for the paga.

  "The first southern migrations of me
adow kites," he said, "have already taken place. The migrations of the forest hurlit and the horned gim do not take place until later in the spring. This is the time that the Vosk gulls fly."

  "Oh," I said.

  Singing Tuchuk songs, we managed to make it back to the wagon.

  Elizabeth had the meat roasted, though it was now considerably overdone.

  "The meat is overdone," said Kamchak.

  "They are both stinking drunk," said Aphris of Turia.

  I looked at her. Both of them were beautiful. "No," I corrected her, "gloriously inebriated."

  Kamchak was looking closely at the girls, leaning forward, squinting.

  I blinked a few times.

  "Is anything wrong?" asked Elizabeth Cardwell.

  I noted that there was a large welt on the side of her face, that her hair was ripped up a bit and that there were five long scratches on the left side of her face.

  "No," I said.

  Aphris of Turia appeared in even worse shape. She had surely lost more than one handful of hair. There were teeth marks in her left arm and, if I was not mistaken, her right eye was ringed and discolored.

  "The meat is overdone," grumbled Kamchak. A master takes no interest in the squabbles of slaves, it being beneath him. He of course would not have approved had one of the girls been maimed, blinded or disfigured.

  "Have the bosk been tended?" asked Kamchak.

  "Yes," said Elizabeth firmly.

  Kamchak looked at Aphris. "Have the bosk been tended?" he asked.

  She looked up suddenly, her eyes bright with tears. She cast an angry look at Elizabeth. "Yes," she said, "they have been tended."

  "Good," said Kamchak, "good." Then he pointed at the meat. "It is overdone," he said.

  "You were hours late," said Elizabeth.

  "Hours," repeated Aphris.

  "It is overdone," said Kamchak.

  "I shall roast fresh meat," said Elizabeth, getting up, and she did so. Aphris only sniffed.

  When the meat was ready Kamchak ate his fill and drank down, too, a flagon of bosk milk; I did the same, though the milk, at least for me, did not sit too well with the paga of the afternoon.

  Kamchak, as he often did, was sitting on what resembled a gray rock, rather squarish, except that the corners tended to be a bit rounded. When I had first seen this thing, heaped with other odds and ends in one corner of the wagon, some of the odds and ends being tankards of jewels and small, heavy chests filled with golden tarn disks, I had thought it merely a rock. Once, when rummaging through his things, Kamchak had kicked it across the rug for me to look at. I was surprised at the way it bounced on the rug and, when I picked it up, I was interested to see how light it was. It was clearly not a rock. It was rather leathery and had a grained surface. I was a bit reminded of some of the loose, tumbled rocks I had once glimpsed in certain abandoned portions of the Place of Priest-Kings, far beneath the Sardar. Among such rocks it would not have been noticed. "What do you make of it?" Kamchak asked.