by John Norman
Two of Portus’s men, weapons in their hands, now crouched under the wagon with her, taking cover from the fire from above. Two others were crouched behind the tharlarion. There were cries of rage from the mounted men about. Their mounts wheeled about, squealing. Men struggled to control them. Two men had dismounted and were looking upward. The beasts howled. One tore at the grass. Another, in frustration, sprang upward, again and again, reaching upward, as if it might clutch and tear the clouds themselves. The sleen fed, now more placidly. There was more gunfire. And then it was suddenly quiet.
Ellen crawled on her knees from under the wagon.
A great bird, a tarn, lay thrashing in the grass fifty yards away, amidst the debris of a tarn basket.
Cosian men at arms, some armed with short bows, such as may be used with convenience from tarn baskets, which may clear the bulwarks and fire amongst the ropes, saddle bows, actually, such as are favored for similar reasons by tarnsmen, were drawing away, afoot. One or two bodies lay near the thrashing tarn. In the distance, but turning now, obviously withdrawing, but not abandoning the field, were four more tarns, each with a tarn basket slung beneath it.
She heard Portus Canio say, “They will come again.”
She then saw, with a gasp of relief, Selius Arconious. In his hand, but empty now, was the second crossbow. He who had held it earlier was to one side. In his inert body there were four arrows. Ellen supposed that the crossbowmen would be the prime targets of the aerial archers, as they would suppose, at least initially, that only those would be able to respond to their attack. That the tarns had withdrawn as they had, so quickly, suggested that the attackers had not anticipated the resistance they had encountered. Doubtless they were startled, and perhaps dismayed, and disconcerted, perhaps even frightened, by the noise of the gunfire, and the damage it might have wreaked amongst them. They would not have expected this. Probably nothing in their experiences would have prepared them for this. Surely they would fear, at least, that these noises, these harms, were the effects of what they had only heard of in stories, the effects of instruments they might have hitherto supposed merely fanciful, the effects of forbidden weapons.
The tarns were now alighting, several hundred yards away.
“They will come again, some on foot,” said Portus Canio. Then he regarded Selius Arconious. “You shot well,” he said.
Selius Arconious shrugged. “I fear not well enough.”
“Two will no longer draw the bow,” said Portus Canio.
“I saw Tersius Major in one of the baskets,” said Fel Doron.
“I, too,” said Portus Canio.
“He was not hit,” said Fel Doron.
“No,” said Portus Canio.
“As I said,” said Selius Arconious, “I did not shoot well enough.”
“How many quarrels are there left?” asked Portus Canio.
“I have two, Loquatus has another,” said Arconious.
“Then we are finished,” said Portus Canio.
“The tharlarion is hit,” said a man.
“I do not think badly,” said another. “The arrow struck away, not lodging in the flesh.”
“There is a wound. It is bleeding,” said a man.
“Attend to it,” said Portus Canio.
The tharlarion was browsing, calmly, in its traces.
The sleen were lying near the body of the translator, their jaws bloody, dried blood even on the fur of their throats. One had its paw on the body. They were now somnolent, their eyes half shut.
Ellen struggled to her feet, beside the wagon.
Those who had been with Mirus had drawn to one side. Two of the beasts were dead. Kardok, standing near them, lifted his head, and turned his eyes toward the wagon, toward Portus’s group.
“Load the bow,” said Portus Canio.
Two of the men who had been with Mirus lay on the grass. One was apparently dead, the other wounded. There had been six humans in the party of Mirus, including himself. Their forces, with the slaying of the translator, whose weapon had apparently been retrieved in the fray by one of those with Mirus, now numbered four, one of whom was wounded. He who had substantially been their spokesman, whom Ellen took to be the leader, who had shot the translator, was unhurt, as was Mirus. Only one of their mounts was both at hand and unhurt. Some may have thrown their riders and fled into the grassland. Two had been killed with arrows. As with the crossbowmen the mounts had been prime targets, as their availability might have facilitated the escape of scattering, fleeing foes. I have heard that there is a saying amongst one of the many Gorean peoples, in this case the “Red Savages of the Barrens,” as they are spoken of, to the effect that an enemy afoot is an enemy dead. I know little of the Barrens. They are supposedly an area of vast prairies somewhere far away, far to the east. Of Portus’s men, who had numbered nine, there were five left.
Staggering across the grass towards Portus’s group was he whom Ellen took to be the leader of the visitors, or, at least, of the humans, he who had spoken for them, he who had killed the translator. She does not know his name. She has spoken of him hitherto by such expressions as “the first rider,” in virtue of his having brought his tharlarion forward, in advance of his fellows. Hereafter, he no longer being mounted, she will refer to him as the “spokesman.” She hopes that this mode of reference will not be found confusing. For better or for worse, it seems to her appropriate. In any event, in putative justification of this decision, if such is required, it seems that he spoke for, and was first amongst, the humans in Mirus’s group, which group might also, she supposes, incidentally, be thought of as Kardok’s retinue. She has no doubt, as of now, that the true leader of the group was the great beast, Kardok. This had not been clearly understood, she is sure, by all members of the group until after the encounter in the grasslands. For example, it seems clear that this had not been clearly understood by Mirus, who seemed to have taken it for granted, and naturally, however unwisely, that the leadership of the group was in the grip of one of his own kind, a human, presumably he whom we now choose to refer to as the “spokesman.” The beasts, Ellen supposes, permitted, and doubtless even encouraged, this misapprehension, perhaps as a concession to human vanity, one acceptable in virtue of its utility in furthering their projects. Portus calmly watched him approach. The spokesman, half dazed, lifted his weapon and trained it on Portus’s chest.
“There were probably five or six men in each basket,” said Portus quietly, gazing into the barrel of the weapon, whose capacities he now well understood. “You killed one tarn and disabled one basket. Most of the soldiers escaped from the basket when the tarn fell. You, and we, may have killed four or five others. Selius Arconious struck at least two. I conjecture then that there are some twenty-five or so left. They will come again. Some will strike from the air. Some will be put afoot. We will be encircled. It is a matter of time. We could scatter into the grasslands. One or two might escape. I do not know. But there is little place to hide, and much can be seen from the air. Each one of us you kill reduces your own probabilities of survival. I think we have a truce now, if we are rational.”
The spokesman lowered his weapon, and looked outward, across the grass, some two to three hundred yards away, to where the tarns had alighted.
“Why did they attack us?” asked the spokesman.
“You were with us,” said Portus Canio. “Perhaps they thought this a rendezvous of sorts.”
“Why did they seek you?” asked the spokesman.
Portus shrugged. “Who knows the aberrations of Cosians?”
Mirus led his mount forward, the only one left to their group. His weapon was thrust in his belt. “They sought him,” said he, nodding toward Selius Arconious. “He bought a slave with Cosian gold, that slave,” he then indicating Ellen who, finding herself under the eyes of a free man, immediately knelt, not wishing to be punished, “gold seemingly of the trove which was diverted from the paymasters of the mercenaries in Ar.”
“Ar then will be restless indee
d,” said the spokesman. “And where is this gold?” he asked Selius Arconious.
“I have forgotten,” said Selius.
“Perhaps you might be helped to remember,” said the spokesman.
“It is gone, sped,” said Portus Canio. “None of us now know where it is.”
“Oh?” said the spokesman.
“Two were with our party,” said Portus Canio. “They knew. Indeed they, and others, were involved in its seizure and concealment. They are now gone. It was our plan that they should leave our march at a certain point, and then go on alone —”
“Alone?” smiled Mirus.
“Yes,” said Portus Canio. “— to keep an arranged rendezvous, and there inform designated others, with a miscellany of wagons and carts, as to the location of the gold in its secret cache, others who will then retrieve the gold and see to its proper distributions and disbursements.”
“I see,” said Mirus.
“Then they, the two who were with our party, will proceed toward Ar.”
“And then you might never see them again?”
“Perhaps not,” said Portus Canio. “One does not know.”
“And did your plan unfold as you had anticipated?”
“Not entirely,” said Portus Canio. “The two of whom I speak left the march early, and secretly.”
“And they knew the location of the gold?” laughed Mirus.
“Yes,” said Portus Canio.
“The gold is lost,” said Mirus.
“No,” said Portus Canio.
“You are a trusting fellow,” said the spokesman.
“There is such a thing as honor,” said Portus Canio.
Mirus looked at him, sharply.
“Even if they should make away with it, or the others to whom they impart information,” said Portus Canio, “it does not much matter, really. The important thing is that it does not reach the mercenary forces in Ar.”
“You are a patriot,” said the spokesman, cynically.
“I have a Home Stone,” said Portus Canio. “Do you?”
“No,” said Mirus, though the question had not been addressed to him.
“It is interesting,” said the spokesman, “that out of the hundreds of wagons leaving the festival camp at Brundisium, and days later, in the vastness of these grasslands, the Cosians managed to locate you.”
“Doubtless they scout in patterns,” said Portus Canio. “And much can be seen from the air.”
“It is possible,” said Mirus, “they were following us.”
“To find the slave through us, and the tarnster through the slave?” asked the spokesman.
“Yes,” said Mirus.
“You should have throttled the slut in the camp,” said the spokesman.
“Even had I desired to do so,” said Mirus, “I could not have done so, as I was outbid.”
“You had your chance at the camp, at the tent,” snarled the spokesman. “We left her to you, you let her go.”
“I did arrange that she would dance publicly, forced to display herself as the mere property-slut she is.”
“And what was the point of that?”
“I think you would not understand,” said Mirus.
Ellen put down her head. She recalled Earth, of so many years ago, and the earlier, radical, pronounced discrepancy in their stations. Then he had had her rejuvenated, become no more than a girl, and had had her danced as a slave. How sweet, she thought, was his revenge. And now, again, there was a radical discrepancy in their stations, but one now a thousand times more radical than that which had characterized their relationship on Earth. He was a free man; she was kajira, a slave girl.
“She danced well,” said the spokesman.
“You saw?”
“Of course. You do not think we would let her get away from us, do you?”
Ellen, kneeling, her hands tied behind her, the rope on her neck, trembled.
“Yes,” granted Mirus, “I was surprised. I did not expect her to be so good.”
“Is she a bred slave?”
“Only in a general sense,” said Mirus.
“She is from Earth, is she not?”
“Yes.”
“A good place to find female slaves.”
“Yes.”
“What did you pay for her there?”
“She was free there,” said Mirus.
“Free?”
“Legally free,” said Mirus.
“What a tragic waste of female.”
“I had her bought to Gor for my amusement.”
“A free woman?”
“The best thing about free women is that they may be made slaves,” said Mirus.
“Yes,” said the spokesman.
“I had known her long ago, and had seen the slave of her.”
“I think that would have required no great feat of perception,” smiled the spokesman.
Ellen jerked at the bonds on her wrists, and then subsided.
She had been bound by a Gorean male.
“True,” said Mirus. “Sometimes such things are obvious.”
“It would have required no great feat of perception, I should have said,” said the spokesman, “— for a slaver.”
Mirus nodded, acknowledging the compliment.
Ellen had heard that a good slaver could discern the needful, waiting slave even in cases in which, prima facie, it might seem unlikely. Behind the brandished facades of freedom, concealed within painstakingly erected ideological fortresses of denial, the victims of self-imposed starvations, a slaver might detect the ready, yearning slave. Ellen had heard of the case of a particularly lovely, young, if somewhat arrogant and condescending, psychiatrist, who believed herself to be treating an alarmingly virile male patient. Unbeknownst to herself the patient was a Gorean slaver, who was scouting her. While she was uneasily, because of her fascination with him, and the unsettling, disturbing stirring in her belly which he produced, attempting to cure him of his masculinity, he was considering if she might do, say, on a slave block or stripped at a man’s feet in slave chains. While she thought herself to be treating him, then, he was, so to speak, measuring her for the collar. He easily pierced, it seems, the facades of falsification and fabrication within which she had attempted to hide the slave of her. A slaver, he easily saw her slave. The question then was was it good enough to be brought to Gor. Yes, he considered her acceptable. Rather than simply schedule her for acquisition, however, he decided that he would force her to face her own deepest feelings. On what would be their last session, while she was earnestly, somewhat pathetically, somewhat desperately, propounding her theories, that he should repudiate his masculinity, theories dictated by policy preferences and much at odds with the insights of seminal depth psychologists, he removed an object from his jacket and threw it on the desk before her.
“What is that?” she asked, though surely she knew. What woman would not?
“It is a slave collar,” he told her.
“A slave collar?”
“The collar of a slave,” he smiled.
“I do not understand.”
“You may put it on, or not.”
“Where is the key?” she asked.
“I hold the key,” he said.
“I do not understand,” she said.
“Put it on your neck, and close it, or not. It is up to you.”
“I do not understand,” she whispered.
He rose from his chair. “I am leaving,” he said. He turned about.
“Wait,” she called plaintively.
He turned about, to face her.
She had never met such a man.
She might never again meet such a man.
In his presence she was half giddy with sensation; she felt confused, weak, overwhelmed with a sense of her femaleness, her femaleness as she had never before felt it. Her femaleness seemed to her suddenly not only nonrepudiable but the most important thing about her, and it was precious, wonderful, and needful; she understood then, in his presence, as sh
e never had before, what she was, undeniably, radically, and fundamentally, a female.
She took the collar and came about the desk, awkwardly, she could later be taught to move well, to stand before him. She seemed very small before him, and female, he in his height, and masculinity.
“It is time you put aside your theories, and learned of reality, and the world,” he said.
She clutched the collar, piteously, in both hands.
“What am I to do?” she said.
He pointed to the rug, before him and she, scarcely understanding what she was doing, shaking with emotion, trembling with sensations hitherto experienced only in her dreams, those exotic corridors of truth, knelt before him.
“You are now as you should be,” he said, “a female — kneeling before a male.”
“Who are you? What are you?” she begged.
“I am a slaver,” he said, “from a world called Gor.”
“There is no such place,” she said.
“You might better judge of that,” he said, “should you find yourself chained at a Gorean slave ring, naked.”
“I, chained, naked?” she said.
He looked down upon her.
“You might be deemed acceptable,” he said.
Tears running from her eyes, kneeling before him, she lifted the collar to him.
“No,” he said, “I shall not make this easy for you. Put it on your own neck, and close it, if you wish.”
She did so.
“The lock,” he said, “goes at the back.”
She lifted her hands and rotated the collar.
In this way the encircling beauty of the band is best exhibited.
“Your breasts,” he said, “are nicely lifted, as you do that.”
She was startled, to hear her femaleness so noted, appreciatively, yet casually.
It was a strange contrast, doubtless, as she knelt before him, in a severe business suit, with skirt, but on her neck a Gorean slave collar. It would have looked less strange, and much better, he supposed, were she in a bit of slave silk, or a tunic, or, perhaps best, naked.
Culture prescribes certain aptnesses.