Prize of Gor (114 page)

He uttered a tiny sound, scarcely audible.

His two compeers, scarcely seeming to move, joined him.

The officer turned about, angrily, and returned to where the spokesman, thonged, had been put on the grass. “Reinforce the watch,” said the officer. Then he, several of his men about him, looked down at the spokesman. “Kneel the urt!” he said. The spokesman, still helplessly bound, was put to his knees.

Kardok and his two compeers were now scarcely noticed. They were curled together, as she had seen them before, as though for warmth, a mass of heat and fur, innocent domestic animals, harmless trained beasts, gentle, massive, slothful creatures who might, prodded into movement by a ribboned wand, delight children at the fairs. It seemed like a single, somnolent mountain of fur. Ellen knew it was alive. She could sense its breathing. It seemed almost unnaturally still. It was not far away. Perhaps it was asleep. But, no, Ellen did not think so. The eyes of Kardok were open.

“There are two prairie sleen beyond the perimeter!” called a soldier, from several yards away.

“I was followed by sleen, two sleen,” said the spokesman. “I was running, through the night. I saw them. They stayed with me, some yards away, they drew closer, silently. I ran. I was struck. I lost consciousness!”

“The tarsk drew them here!” said a soldier, irritably.

“They may have been with us on the march,” said Mirus. “I may have seen one of them once. I am not sure. Sometimes we saw spoor.”

“How many are there?” asked a soldier.

“Two,” said one of the soldiers.

“We do not know,” said another. “Others, local sleen, might gather in.”

“Yes,” said another, looking about.

“There is little to fear if we are armed, and alert,” said the officer.

“They are closer now than is common, to a camp,” said one of the soldiers, uneasily.

Needless to say, the common prey of the wild sleen is not the human being, but the human being is not safe from them. He lies within their prey range. Indeed, they will attack animals larger than humans, kaiila, wild bosk, and such.

The officer then directed his attention to the spokesman. “You do not know who struck you, or how many?” he asked.

“No,” said the spokesman.

“It would be easy to put you outside the camp,” said the officer.

“Do not do so!” begged the spokesman.

“We are civilized,” said the officer. “We could mercifully untie you, and then turn you out with our best wishes for your health and safety.”

“Let me stay! Protect me!” said the spokesman.

“And how will you buy your rent space within the camp?”

“I will speak! I know things! Things on which hang the fate of worlds! I can speak of gold beyond that which you sought! Gold compared to which that is a paltry sum! I can speak of weapons which can devastate cities in a moment, leaving no more than poisonous ashes! I can make Cos the mistress of Gor, and you the master of Cos!”

“You are mad,” said the officer.

“No! No!” said the spokesman. “Ask those who were with me, ask them!”

“He is mad,” said Mirus.

“He is mad,” said the sleenmaster.

The slave noted that Mirus cast a glance to one side, to a thick patch of heavy grass. She turned, as she could, but saw nothing there. Then she forgot, for the time, this seemingly puzzling inadvertence or inattention on his part.

“Speak,” said the officer.

“Secure the beasts!” said the spokesman.

The officer threw a hasty glance at the three beasts, seemingly no more than a somnolent mound of fur.

“Do not be absurd,” said the officer.

“If you are finished with us,” said Portus Canio, “free us, and we will harness the tharlarion and move on, with the wagon.”

“I will keep the slave,” said the officer.

“Free us,” said Portus Canio.

“Kill them all!” cried Tersius Major, the pistol in hand.

“Consider the matter,” said Portus Canio. “If those in the grassland wished, several of you would now be dead. The great bow can strike from a distance. The camp was entered secretly last night. Your throats could have been cut. If you would return alive to Brundisium or see the coasts of Cos once more, release us. Within the walls of Ar we might be mortal enemies; here, in the grasslands, in this place, in this moment, we may be mere wayfarers, fallen in with one another, in the midst of a desolation.”

“Kill them all!” cried Tersius Major.

“But we have apprehended you,” said the officer.

“Perhaps,” said Portus Canio, “you never saw us.”

“I have lost men,” said the officer, angrily.

“Bandits,” said Portus Canio. “And did you not slay the entire band?”

The officer looked about, from man to man.

“I have never seen these men,” said a soldier.

“Nor I,” said another, looking out over the grasslands.

“Kill them all!” screamed Tersius Major.

“Free them,” said the officer. “And return their weapons to them.”

“No!” said Tersius Major.

“I will not risk my men,” said the officer.

The pistol then was leveled at the breast of the officer.

“Discard it,” said the officer. “Put it with the others, at the edge of the camp, while there is still time. You are living surely only with the sufferance of Priest-Kings.”

Mirus smiled.

“No, no!” said Tersius Major. Then he howled with anguish and lowered the pistol. But he made no effort to put the weapon with the others. Five such pistols, of six, the slave recalled, had been accounted for. In the pistol which Tersius Major held there was left, allegedly, one cartridge, and but one cartridge. The other weapon had doubtless been lost, somewhere, in the fray.

“That one,” said the officer, indicating Selius Arconious, bound at the wheel, “free from the wheel, but keep bound.”

“The slave?” asked one of the soldiers.

“Unhobble her,” said the officer. “Those in the grasslands will not be interested in mere domestic stock. She is a well-curved little thing, though somewhat young. She will look well on an auction block in Cos.”

“Please, no, Masters!” wept the slave. She cast a wild glance at Selius Arconious, who pulled angrily at his bonds, at the wheel.

The officer then climbed to the surface of the wagon and held up a spear, but with the point down.

In this fashion was a cessation of hostilities proposed.

It was impossible to know, of course, if this token was seen, or, if seen, accepted.

The heavy hobbles were removed from Ellen’s ankles and she was lifted to her feet, where she stood, for a moment unsteadily.

Her eyes met those of Selius Arconious. He was her master. Quickly, as naturally as the movement of a cloud, the bending of a stalk of grass, the fluttering of a leaf, she hurried to kneel before him and put her head down, and kissed his feet.

“Oh!” she cried in pain, yanked up and back, away from him, cruelly, by the hair, and thrown to her side in the grass, much where she had been before.

She looked up in terror at one of the soldiers.

“You belong to Cos, slut,” she was told.

Meanwhile Portus Canio, freed of his bonds, had risen awkwardly to his feet, rubbing his wrists. Fel Doron, and the third fellow, Loquatus, skilled with the crossbow, soon joined him. Mirus, the sleenmaster and their wounded fellow were left bound, as was the spokesman. Selius Arconious was freed from the wheel, but his wrists remained tied behind his back. He glared balefully at the officer, who paid him no attention. Some weapons, which had been those of Portus Canio and his fellows, were put on the grass, near the wagon. They did not yet arm themselves.

Selius Arconious, though freed from the wheel, continued to stand near it, angrily, bound.

Portus Canio regarded Tersius Major. “We shall find you,” he said. “We shall hunt you down, traitor to Ar.”

“I do not fear you,” said Tersius Major, lifting the pistol. “I am the equal of a Priest-King!”

Then Tersius Major turned to the officer. “You will take me with you to Brundisium,” he said.

“Only if you discard the forbidden weapon,” said the officer. “I will not risk my men.”

“Coward! Coward!” said Tersius Major. “There is no danger, no danger! You are a coward!”

“I am responsible for my men,” said the officer. “Else I might respond to you appropriately, in a different time, in a different place.”

“Coward!”

The officer turned to Portus Canio and his fellows, who were backing the tharlarion toward the wagon, to hitch it in place.

“I would keep the young fellow bound for a time,” he said, indicating Selius Arconious. “I do not think he will be able to follow us in the grasslands. But if he attempts to follow us, and finds us, and tries to regain this animal, our curvaceous little she-beast there on the grass, we will kill him.”

Ellen cast a wild glance at her master. She pulled at her braceleted wrists.

“Leash her,” said the officer.

“Stand,” said the soldier nearest Ellen, he who had drawn her away from the feet of her master, Selius Arconious.

Ellen stood, instantly. Gorean slave girls obey masters, instantly and with perfection. Goreans, you see, do not coddle their slave girls. The least hesitancy can be cause for discipline.

The soldier then took a length of rope and knotted it to the length of rope which was already on her neck, that which Mirus, in his attempt, during the fray, to make away with her, had slashed short, an attempt foiled by Selius Arconious. The knot was jerked tight. Ellen was leashed.

The eyes of more than one of the soldiers glinted upon her. Ellen cast a glance downward, and trembled. She knew that few sights were more stimulatory to masculine beasts than a leashed woman. The leash, too, made it clear to her that she was no more than an animal.

The officer returned his attention to the spokesman, who knelt before him, in the grass, naked and bound, hand and foot.

“You were going to speak,” the officer reminded him.

“Secure the beasts,” said the spokesman.

The officer cast a glance at the three beasts, but, again, there seemed nothing of interest there.

“That will not be necessary,” he said.

“Then I will not speak,” said the spokesman.

“Who will bind them?” asked the officer, looking skeptically at the beasts.

“Let others speak, those others,” said the spokesman, indicating Mirus, the sleenmaster and the wounded man, the latter bound, as the two others, but he unconscious in the grass, “let them speak first!”

“If you would save the lives of your friends,” said the officer, irritably. “Speak.”

“No, no,” said the spokesman.

Mirus and the sleenmaster pulled at their bonds, and regarded the spokesman with fury.

“It must be pleasant to have such a friend,” mused the officer. Then he said to one of his men. “Free those brigands.”

The spokesman watched with horror as the bonds restraining Mirus, the sleenmaster and the wounded fellow were slashed away. Mirus and the sleenmaster stood, rubbing their wrists, angrily regarding the spokesman.

“No, no, no,” said the spokesman.

“He knows nothing,” said the officer, contemptuously. “Kill him.”

A dagger was whipped from its sheath. A hand seized the spokesman by the hair and pulled his head back, exposing his throat.

“No!” whispered the spokesman.

The dagger paused, wavering, the energy of the arm behind it revealing itself in the conflicted hesitation of the blade, narrow, bright, quivering, arrested by a sudden monitory glance from the officer.

In this moment, Mirus, within the cover of this distraction, all eyes on the officer, the spokesman, the threatening soldier with the dagger, with a flash of robes, threw himself across the grass, toward the place to which the slave had earlier seen him glance. There, as men looked about, startled, he seized up from the thick grass a closed holster and, in a moment, had freed the sixth pistol from its sheathing.

Even Tersius Major, who held a weapon, was taken aback.

Mirus now faced the group, the pistol, removed from its hiding place, ready in his hand. The slave had no doubt that he was adept with the weapon.

“Put it down,” said the officer, in horror. “It is a forbidden weapon!”

“Stand where you are,” said Mirus. “And spare me the prattle about weapons, forbiddings, laws, Priest-Kings and such! I am not a child!”

Fel Doron would have moved toward Mirus, but he was warned back by Portus Canio.

“What do you want?” asked the officer.

Mirus fixed his eyes upon the slave. He gestured toward himself with the weapon, violently. “Here, slave girl,” said he, “now!”

“Do not move,” snapped Selius Arconious.

“Come here!” snapped Mirus.

“I cannot, Master!” said Ellen. “My master has forbidden it.”

“Your master?” said Mirus.

“Yes!” cried Ellen. “My master!”

“Who is your master?” said Mirus.

“Selius Arconious, of Ar,” cried Ellen. “I am owned by Selius Arconious of Ar, tarnster, of the caste of Tarn Keepers!”

“I will have you!” said Mirus.

Ellen sank to her knees in the grass, in terror, weeping.

“Stand back,” she heard Mirus say. Then he was standing beside her. She felt the muzzle of the weapon through her hair, pressing, at the side of her head. It cut her there.

“If I cannot have her,” said Mirus, “no one will!”

“You will never be able to leave the camp,” said the officer. “Foes lurk, poised, unseen.”

“If I cannot have her, no one will!” cried Mirus.

Ellen shut her eyes. The muzzle of the gun hurt her. She wondered if she would even hear the report of the weapon. She remembered the boards irrupting from the corner of the wagon. Surely, at point blank range, it would tear half her head away.

“Stop!” said Selius Arconious.

Mirus straightened.

“I will give her to you before I will have her die,” said Selius Arconious.

The slave lifted her head, startled.

There was a terrible pause. Mirus lowered the weapon, it then at his thigh. “Then it seems,” said he, “that your love is greater than mine.”

Ellen knelt in the grass, shaken, startled, disbelievingly, bewildered. Had these men, such men, spoken of love? Love? Did they not know she was a slave? Love, for a slave?