Prize of Gor

by John Norman

  She was dimly, half-consciously aware of a figure leaping on the fallen man, a knife flashing.

  “On, on!” he cried to the tharlarion.

  As the tharlarion reared again she was aware of Mirus cursing, and a weight, a body, was hanging onto the bridle, pulling the animal down, fiercely, yanking downward, twisting its neck.

  The animal suddenly lost its balance and went wildly to its side, Ellen being thrown free, rolling to the turf, and then the beast, a moment later, rose up, scrambling, and squealing, and rushed away, out into the grasslands.

  “You!” cried Mirus, in fury.

  Before him stood Selius Arconious, his body bloody, filthy from war, his tunic torn and soiled, gasping for breath, regarding Mirus furiously, balefully.

  “I believe you have something of mine,” he said.

  Mirus in fury reached to his belt and drew his pistol, and it was centered on the heart of Selius Arconious.

  Ellen, lying to one side, cried out, “No, Master, please!” A vision went through her mind of the wood on the back of the wagon leaping into the air, the sound of the shot, the smell of the expended cartridge, the exploding splinters bursting into the air, now weirdly in slow motion in her memory.

  Surely Selius Arconious knew the meaning of that weapon. Yet he faced Mirus with equanimity.

  “You do not deserve a slave,” he said.

  Mirus hesitated, confused.

  “For you are not a man,” said Mirus.

  “I will show you who is a man!” snarled Mirus, and steadied the weapon in two hands.

  “Why are you not at your post?” asked Selius Arconious.

  Mirus lowered the weapon.

  “Now,” said Selius Arconious, “you know the meaning of Gor.”

  With a cry of anger Mirus hurried away.

  Selius Arconious, looking about, lifted the bound slave, enwrapping her in his arms. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Is it of concern to Master?” inquired the slave.

  Selius scowled, and then smiled. “No,” he said. He then, looking about, carried her back to the wagon. “Stay here,” he said.

  She turned away from him, under the wagon, kneeling, lifting her bound wrists to him. “Master’s slave wears his collar,” she said. “Perhaps he will untie her?”

  “Is it not foolish for a slave,” he asked, “kneeling, to face away from a man as you are doing, with her wrists bound like that?”

  “Perhaps, Master,” she said.

  “What if I order you to put your head to the turf?” he asked.

  “Then I must instantly obey my master,” she said.

  There was a pair of shots from the west, and Selius Arconious hurried away. She watched him move away, half bent over, moving swiftly. She saw a Cosian, his upper body, rise from the grass. There was another shot, and he fell.

  She realized there had been little firing.

  “Ammunition!” she heard, a cry in English from the north.

  She saw the spokesman, his robes torn, drawing back. Another man was with him, come from the west.

  “Ammunition!” she heard again.

  The spokesman called back, in English. “There is no more, fool! The extra rounds were in the saddle bags. It is gone with the tharlarion! We have used the last rounds, those from the stores of the slain tharlarion.”

  Ellen, who understood this discourse, trembled with apprehension.

  A Cosian, helmeted, rose to his feet, carefully, his bow half drawn, some fifty yards away.

  Then, beside him, carefully, there rose another.

  A tarn, with suspended basket, soared near. The spokesman replaced his now-useless weapon in his belt, and lifted his hands. He was not fired on from the basket. The tarn swung about. “No more lightning!” called the spokesman to the fields. “No more lightning! We surrender!”

  Ellen recalled that when she had seen Selius Arconious he had no longer had the crossbow. The quarrels, too, she surmised, had been expended.

  More Cosians emerged from the grass, some with bows, about the camp.

  They began to close in.

  Selius Arconious, with Fel Doron, and Portus Canio, slowly, upright, wearily, approached the wagon. Another of Portus’s men came, too, from a different direction. Ellen saw no more of his group.

  Selius Arconious motioned that Ellen should emerge from under the wagon, and the slave complied, and came to kneel at the feet of her master, frightened.

  Four men were left of the party of the spokesman, including himself. The other three were the man who had been wounded, who had called out for ammunition, the sleenmaster, and Mirus. None had been slain in the recent fray, presumably because of their weaponry. Perhaps the Cosians had given them a wide berth. Perhaps they had not been able to approach closely enough to engage with the small bows. Those were not the mighty peasant bows that guard the autonomy of Gorean hamlets. Of the four tarns with baskets, two had been brought down with pistol fire, and the strapmasters of the other two had muchly, judiciously, maintained their distance. One had approached a moment ago, however, given the relative quiet of the field, that to which the spokesman had indicated his capitulation. The other could be seen in the distance, a remote speck, safely away.

  A subcaptain advanced through the grass, before the other soldiers. Some of the soldiers had bows. Some had spears and some shields. She wondered if the shields would stop a bullet. All had bladed weapons, generally the short, wickedly bladed Gorean gladius. The subcaptain had advanced with his men. Goreans like to lead from the front. Ellen recognized him. She had seen him before, at the tarnloft of Portus Canio, when in the coffle and elsewhere.

  The tarn and tarn basket which had recently soared over the camp had now landed, some fifty yards away. Two archers and a strapmaster emerged from it. She did not see Tersius Major, whom she had heard was with the attackers. He was, she supposed, in the other tarn basket, which he perhaps commanded, which was still little more than a speck in the sky, far off. To be sure, it seemed closer now.

  Motioned by swords and spears the three surviving beasts were herded, shambling, blinking, seemingly docile, toward the wagon. As nearly as Ellen could tell, they had not figured in the fighting. It seemed they had been left alone, as irrelevant to the fray. To be sure, they probably would have been fired upon if they had either attacked, or attempted to flee. Two had been killed in the first attack. Perhaps because they had assumed threatening postures. The Cosians, thought Ellen, do not know what to make of them. They think they are some form of simple animal. Then it occurred to her that that was precisely what the beasts would wish the Cosians to think. Had they not been putatively caged in the festival camp?

  “Who is first here?” asked the subcaptain.

  “I am,” said the spokesman.

  “I am,” said Portus Canio.

  The subcaptain smiled.

  “You have strange pets,” he said to Portus Canio.

  “They are not mine, and they are not pets,” said Portus Canio. “They are rational and dangerous.”

  “They are simple performing animals, completely harmless,” said the spokesman. “We are carnival masters. We took you for brigands. We did not know. Forgive us for resisting the rightful authority of Cos.”

  “You would do well to recognize the insignia, the uniforms, of Cos,” said the subcaptain.

  “Alas, how true,” said the spokesman.

  Far off, in the grass, some two hundred yards away, or so, the second tarn and tarn basket had now landed.

  “Some of these men,” said the subcaptain, indicating Portus Canio, Fel Doron and their other fellow, “are escaped prisoners, and two of them clearly conspirators against Cos. The other, the tarnster, is somehow one of them. A theft of considerable consequence has taken place, accomplished by several men. These prisoners, or some of them, and surely the tarnster, who had fresh gold to squander from the mint at Jad, knows something of the matter.”

  “We had no idea,” said the spokesman.

 
“And you are obviously in league with them, rendezvousing in the prairie.”

  “No, we fell in with them by accident,” said the spokesman.

  “You followed them for days, and we kept you under surveillance,” said the subcaptain.

  “In a sense, yes,” admitted the spokesman, “my young friend here,” he here indicating Mirus, “was interested in obtaining this slave,” and here he indicated Ellen, “and we, as good fellows, loyal friends and such, abetted him in his search.”

  “I can understand his interest,” said the subcaptain. “I remember her. I think we confiscated her in the name of Cos.”

  “Yes,” said Portus Canio, “but she was later purchased from Cos, in the festival market outside Brundisium, openly and honestly purchased.”

  “With Cosian gold,” said the subcaptain.

  “Surely it is a reliable currency,” said Selius Arconious, as though concerned.

  “Quite,” smiled the subcaptain. He looked about. “I see you have two sleen,” he said.

  “Useful for tracking,” said the spokesman.

  “I am well aware of the utilities of sleen,” said the subcaptain. “You are first here?”

  “Yes,” said the spokesman.

  “Remove your clothing,” said the subcaptain.

  “What?” said the spokesman.

  “It will be useful in giving your scent to sleen,” said the subcaptain.

  “No!” said the spokesman.

  “Also, I will determine if you are armed.”

  “Here is my weapon,” said the spokesman. “It is useless now. It contains no more lightning.” He drew the weapon from its holster, and held it, butt first, toward the subcaptain. But the subcaptain drew back.

  “Here,” said the spokesman.

  “I will not touch it,” said the subcaptain, his face suddenly pale.

  “Why not?” asked the spokesman.

  “It is a forbidden weapon, surely,” said the subcaptain.

  The spokesman smiled.

  “Put it down there, in that bare spot, on the far side of the wagon,” said the subcaptain. This spot was yards from where they stood. Ellen had never before seen fear in the face of the subcaptain.

  The spokesman went to the place indicated, and put the pistol down.

  “You others, as well,” said the subcaptain, addressing himself to the sleenmaster, Mirus and their wounded fellow.

  Each of these, too, put his weapon where indicated. Four weapons then lay in the dirt.

  “There were six such devices,” said Portus Canio. “Two would seem to be missing.”

  “There were only four,” said the spokesman.

  “Six,” said Portus Canio.

  “Remove your clothing,” said the subcaptain to the spokesman. “I think it is time to exercise the sleen.”

  “The other two are lost!” said the spokesman.

  “Now,” said the subcaptain.

  “Here,” said the spokesman, miserably. He removed a second pistol, which he had thrust in his belt, behind his back.

  “Does it contain lightning?” asked the subcaptain, the officer.

  The spokesman hesitated. He then said, “One, one bullet, one bolt.” He had been saving this, it seemed.

  “Put it with the others.”

  This was done and the spokesman then, at the gesture of one of the soldiers, with the point of a drawn knife, returned to the place near the wagon.

  “One such device must be still missing,” said Portus Canio.

  “I do not know where it is!” cried the spokesman.

  “Kill him,” said the subcaptain, the officer, to the soldier with the drawn knife.

  “No, no!” cried the spokesman and began to tear away his robes. They were then to one side.

  “Please!” said the spokesman.

  “Kneel,” said the officer.

  The spokesman, trembling, knelt naked in the grass beside the wagon.

  The soldier then took him by the hair, jerked his head back, and put his knife to his throat. He then looked to the subcaptain.

  “No,” said the subcaptain, musingly. “I think it will be more interesting to see him run for sleen.”

  “No, no,” whimpered the spokesman.

  Kardok and the two beasts, his fellows, crouched down, regarded the spokesman.

  He looked at them, shaking his head, wildly.

  They looked away, as though failing to comprehend his gesture.

  At this point, from across the grass, at last, from the place of the last tarn basket, where it had landed some two hundred yards away, cautiously, came Tersius Major. With him were two archers and a strapmaster. He paused at the edge of the camp.

  The subcaptain, with a gesture of contempt, waved him forward.

  “All is secure?” inquired Tersius Major.

  “Yes,” said the subcaptain.

  Tersius Major surveyed Portus Canio and his party.

  “We meet again,” said Portus Canio. His hands moved, ever so slightly, as though they might consider wrapping themselves about the throat of Tersius Major.

  “You will pay, tharlarion of Ar,” said Tersius Major, “for the inconvenience, the humiliation, you have caused me.”

  “You are less than an urt of Ar,” said Portus Canio, “for you have betrayed your Home Stone.”

  “Not at all,” said the officer. “It is only that his Home Stone is not yours. His is, you see, far more valuable. It is gold.”

  “What is going on here?” asked Tersius Major.

  “We have conquered,” said the officer. “He who kneels before you is, I take it, first amongst our conspirators.”

  “We know nothing of your charges!” said the spokesman.

  One of the two sleen lifted its head, and looked about, briefly. Its ears were erected. Its nostrils flared for a moment. And then it put its head down. The other had its head on its paws.

  “Where is the lightning?” asked Tersius Major, hesitantly.

  “I think it is gone, or most of it,” said the subcaptain. “But some of the metal clouds from which it strikes are there.” He indicated the discarded pistols. “One lightning bolt allegedly lies within the nearest device. One device seems to be missing.”

  “We do not know where it is!” said the spokesman. “It is lost, doubtless somewhere in the grass!”

  Tersius Major’s eyes went from face to face, from Portus Canio, to Fel Doron, to Selius Arconious, to their other fellow, and thence to the kneeling spokesman, to the sleenmaster, to Mirus, to the wounded man. Eight men. The Cosians had some twenty soldiers at the wagon. Two tarns, unattended, with their baskets, were in the fields.

  Then the eyes of Tersius Major glittered on the kneeling slave, tunicked, bound, the remainder of the rope leash, which had been slashed by Mirus’s blade, still on her neck.

  “Greetings, little Ellen,” he said.

  “Greetings, Master,” said Ellen.

  “She is a sleek little beast,” said Tersius Major. “It will be a pleasure to own her.”

  “Her disposition will be decided by higher authority,” said the officer. “I may ask for her myself. I think she will be lovely, curled in the furs at my feet.”

  “We shall see about that,” said Tersius Major.

  “It is not impossible that a praetor may speak for her, even a stratigos or a polemarkos.”

  “She is worthy,” said Selius Arconious, “to be kept as no more than a pot girl, or a kettle-and-mat girl, or perhaps as a shaved-headed, hobbled camp slut.”

  Ellen flushed, angrily.

  “You should look more closely,” said the officer.

  Ellen smiled at Selius Arconious, innocently. There was perhaps the flicker of a tiny triumph in her glance.

  “One might always strip her, and make an assessment,” said Selius Arconious.

  Ellen jerked suddenly, inadvertently, angrily at her bound wrists. She looked up angrily at Selius Arconious. He smiled down at her, benignly. She choked back a sob of frustration. She
was in her place, before him, kneeling, helplessly bound, a slave.

  “You are a clever fellow,” said the officer.

  “Strip her,” said Tersius Major.

  “I will not strip the slave here,” said the subcaptain, “for her figure is such that it might distract my men. And by the coasts of Cos, even tunicked, it is such as might drive a man wild.”

  He regarded Ellen.

  “You will not figure in these matters, the matters of men, pretty little slave girl,” said the officer to Ellen. “No more than a caged tarsk or a tethered kaiila, or any other domestic animal. But do not fear. You will not be forgotten.”

  “Yes, Master,” whispered Ellen, in the full understanding of her condition and nature. She would remain kneeling and bound, meaningless, a slave, awaiting her disposition. Men on this world, she had learned, had not relinquished their sovereignty. They had not, on this world, permitted themselves to be deluded into subscribing to practices and institutions which carried within them the pathological seeds of the subversion of nature. The human being is the child of nature. Once he abandons nature he ceases to be human.

  “You understand that you are meaningless, do you not?” asked the officer.

  “Yes, Master,” said Ellen.

  “Such fluff as she,” he said, “is for the entertainment of men, for the sport of men, of masters. That is what they are good for, nothing else.”

  Ellen flushed crimson, but her body came alive with femininity. It shuddered with meaning. Each cell in her body seemed to awaken and glow, to tremble with understanding. Each chromosome in her body seemed to quiver with vulnerability, each particle of her body seemed to burn with expectation, with readiness. This is the passion of a slave, she thought. How honestly they speak of us. How truly they speak of us! How do they know these truths? How bold they are to enforce them! Can I not, somehow, hide myself from the truths they see so clearly? No, she thought, in my collar I am not permitted to hide. Yes, yes, she thought, they speak truths, mighty truths, lovely truths, deep truths, incontrovertible truths, precious truths, yes, such as I are indeed for the entertainment of men, for the sport of men, of masters! It is that for which we exist, and desire to exist, the pleasure of men, the entertainment of men, the sport of men, of masters! It is that for which evolution has prepared us! Oh, dark, mysterious, subtle, beloved mighty forces of nature! How the world has so casually shaped our species, with such bountiful, thoughtless beneficence, shaping with wise, terrible, tender hands both men and women, giving us as gifts to one another, that they as masters will not be denied their slaves, and that we as slaves will not be denied our masters! Deny me not my subjection to the mastery, dear masters, for in that cruelty you deny me to myself!