Prize of Gor (27 page)

In any event, Ellen was not discontented in her collar. It belongs on me, she thought. And I love it! I belong in a collar! I love it! I love it!

She wished she knew some Gorean songs. Surely some masters would permit her to sing, if she were happy! Some masters, she supposed, would enjoy having their girls singing about their work. She hoped soon to serve a master, and that it would be Mirus. Some girls, she knew, were taught to sing, others to entertain with instruments such as the lute and lyre, and others, it seemed, many, were trained in the dances of slaves. Her own training, she understood, though it had seemed extensive to her, had been almost minimal, quite basic. She wondered if there were some special reason for this. “We will teach you a little,” had said one of her instructrices. “Hopefully you will then be able to survive at least the first night at a master’s slave ring.” Ellen wondered if Mirus, her master, would be pleased, if she were to dance before him as a slave. Had he wondered what she would look like, long ago, when she was his teacher, she wondered, if she were to so dance before him, barefoot, in a bit of swirling silk, in necklaces and coins, in armlets, with bracelets on her wrists and bangles on her ankles, to the flash of ringing zills, summoned, commanded, fearful, begging to please, his. Had she hinted at that, or her slaveness, when she had worn the two small bracelets? Perhaps, she thought. I would like to dance before masters, she thought. It is my hope that I would please them. But, alas, I cannot dance! I cannot even dance the social dances of Earth, let alone the dances of the displayed female slave. The sunlight was pleasant, the air was cool. She thought it must be early spring, assuming this world had a periodicity of seasons.

“Laura,” she said, “someone has hung up some of the things from my basket.”

“I did,” said Laura, irritably. “Perhaps I should not have done so. What if the work-master should come to the roof and find your work not even begun! How soon do you think you would come again to the roof? Or perhaps any of us? Perhaps you would enjoy being tied to the high ring and having your pretty little hide lashed? And the rest of us might be lashed as well, all of us!”

“I am sorry,” said Ellen. “Thank you.” She decided that Laura might not be as unpleasant or stupid as she had supposed.

Laura looked at her, suddenly, sharply. “You are sorry, aren’t you?” said Laura.

“Yes,” said Ellen.

“Let us hurry,” said Laura.

“Yes, Mistress,” said Ellen.

“Get to work, slave!” called Nelsa.

Ellen looked at her, angrily.

“You were dallying,” said Nelsa. “Now I, too, have something to tell!”

“Yes, Mistress,” said Ellen.

Nelsa laughed and continued to hang her wash.

“There are many more baskets below,” said Laura.

One of the girls, clambering on one of the tiered racks, some ten or twelve feet above the surface of the roof, called out, “Look!” She was pointing out, toward the distance, toward one of the towers on the wall. The other girls shaded their eyes and looked in the direction she had pointed. Ellen did, too. She could see nothing in the distance but a flock of birds.

“They will never get past the walls,” said Nelsa, who had climbed up one of the racks, and was now some seven or eight feet above the surface of the roof, her feet on one pole, she clinging to another.

“Let us return to our work,” said another of the girls, glancing warily at the hatchlike opening to the roof.

One did not know when Gart, or another, perhaps some guard, might appear on the roof.

Ellen, with the simple clothespins, attached a sheet to the line. All about her flapped the rows of suspended clothes. She, and the other girls were almost invisible amongst the laundry and the lines.

She found that she enjoyed doing this simple work.

It seemed fitting for her.

She wondered if she were happy.

“May I speak?” Ellen asked Laura.

Laura grunted in response, a pair of clothespins between her teeth, others in her left hand, which also held a corner of a robe.

“Why have we been given gowns?” asked Ellen.

Ellen waited until Laura had finished with the robe.

“To better conceal you,” said Laura. “But do not fear, they are sleeveless, and thus make it likely that you are bond.”

“I do not understand,” said Ellen.

“It is spring,” said Laura, “and that is a popular time for the hunts of tarnsmen, not that those monsters need any seasonal excuse for their predations.”

“What are tarnsmen?” asked Ellen.

“Those of the Warriors, or sometimes mercenaries, or outlaws, or raiders, or bandits, whoever mounts, masters and rides tarns.”

“What is a tarn?” asked Ellen.

“Surely you are apprised of at least the first knowledge?” said Laura.

“But,” said Ellen, “those are only in stories, they are mythological creatures, like the hith, the sleen.”

“I have never seen a hith,” said Laura, “but I have spoken to those who have. I have certainly seen sleen, and tarns. There are sleen in the house, in pens. They are useful in hunting slaves.”

“I have never seen a sleen,” said Ellen.

“You might ask to do so,” said Laura. “Normally a slave girl is only brought into their presence when she is put in close shackles and has her hands braceleted behind her back. Thus she cannot break and run, an action which might prompt the beast’s pursuit behavior.”

“You are teasing me,” said Ellen. “Sleen are supposed to have six legs.”

“They do,” said Laura. “That is efficient, given the length and low, sinuous structure of their body.”

“Oh, Laura!” protested Ellen.

“There are many sorts of sleen,” said Laura. “Most common are the forest sleen and prairie sleen. The forest sleen are larger, and are solitary hunters, or, if mated, pair hunters; the prairie sleen are smaller, and commonly hunt in packs. Some sleen are bred and trained for certain purposes, hunting slaves, and such. The forest sleen commonly buries its dung, thereby tending to conceal its presence; the prairie sleen, running in packs, and more widely ranging, commonly, does not. Sleen have a strong, unmistakable odor. A forester or plainsman, or a sleen hunter, or one trained, can sometimes detect their scent more than two hundred yards away. Caravans in forests often keep verr or tabuk with them, tethering them in the camp at night, as the agitation of such animals sometimes gives warning of the presence of sleen in the vicinity. Sleen, of course, like larls, commonly hunt with the wind blowing toward them. Thus they have your scent and you do not have theirs.”

“Why, really, have we been given gowns?” asked Ellen. “We might as well be naked. There is no one to see us here.”

“Do not be too sure,” said Nelsa, from the rack, still looking outward. “They are circling the city,” she said.

“It is daylight,” said another girl. “There is no reason to fear.”

“Laura, please,” prompted Ellen.

“It is a pleasure for a tarnsman to have his tarn seize in its talons a woman and carry her off, or he may prefer the use of a slave net or a capture loop. She later then, in a safe place, may be suitably secured, say, stripped and roped, and put across his saddle, or simply chained naked to a saddle ring. The ideal, of course, is to catch a free woman, for such is the most prestigious game. Surely that would be more prestigious than picking up someone like you or me, who are merely domestic animals, livestock. Some claim that that is the reason that free women are so cumbersomely and concealingly garbed, and that slaves are so lightly and revealingly clad. Supposedly the tarnsman might thus be lured to the pursuit of an identifiably delightful quarry, something obviously worth owning, as opposed to a free woman who might, when stripped, prove to be as ugly as a tharlarion.”

Tharlarion, Ellen had been told, were reptilian creatures, some of which were allegedly quite large, and domesticated. Supposedly different varieties were used for various purposes, such as war, haulage and racing. She was not sure, at that time, that such things existed, no more than larls, sleen, tarns, and such.

“There may be something to that,” said Laura, “but I suspect that men dress their slaves as they do, if they dress them at all, because they find them exciting to look upon, and wish to call attention to their beauty, and enjoy displaying them as their properties. Men are so vain. You should see how some of them lead naked, painted, bejeweled slaves about on leashes, put them through slave paces publicly, make them dance in the open for tarsk-bits, put them up as stakes in the dicing halls, and marketplaces, and such. And so, perhaps, free women insist on some compensatory distinction, to make it clear that they are not to be confused with such flesh-trash. On the other hand, it is said that beneath all the clothing, the veils, the Robes of Concealment, and such, of a free woman there is still, after all, only the body of a naked slave.”

“But there are no tarnsmen here,” said Ellen.

“Sometimes they break through,” said Laura. “And that is why you have been put in the long gown, and not, say, a tunic. There are two differences here. If the choice is between you and a free woman, the tarnsman will almost certainly notice that you, as your gown is sleeveless, are almost certainly slave, and will thus, presumably, go after the free woman. If the choice is between you, lengthily gowned, and a briefly tunicked slave, whose lovely legs he can take in at a glance, he will presumably go after the briefly tunicked slave. It is difficult to make judicious assessments, as you might suppose, given the brief amount of time at his disposal, time enough for little more than a glimpse, given the distance, the swiftness of the flight, the press of pursuit, and such. To be sure, sometimes women are scouted. It is known when she will be on the bridge, and so on. And so, Ellen, that is why you are dressed as you are.”

“I see,” said Ellen, skeptically.

“To be sure,” said Laura, “if a tarnsman did settle for you, I do not think that afterwards, when he had you squirming naked in his ropes, bound hand and foot, he would be at all disappointed with the nature of his catch.”

“Do tarnsmen exist?” asked Ellen. “Really?”

“To be sure,” said Laura, “you are only a slave. And yet, what is the first thing they do with their exalted, aristocratic, noble, precious, prestigious free woman? They brand her, put her in a collar, and make her a slave, too!”

“You are teasing me,” said Ellen. “Tarnsmen do not really exist.”

“If a tarnstrike should be upon us,” said Laura, “and you cannot get below, just throw yourself to your belly on the roof. That makes it hard to get you, hard for the tarn, hard for the net, hard for the capture loop.”

I shall certainly keep that in mind,” smiled Ellen.

“They have broken through!” cried the girl on the height of a nearby rack, she who had originally called their attention to the agitation in the distance. Ellen looked up at her, wildly. The girl’s hair streamed behind her, the wind whipping her gown back against her body. She clung to the rack, fiercely.

“They will have the wind behind them!” said Laura. “The defenders must fly against the wind. They may be easily eluded, and then they must turn to pursue. They will have lost the tempo of the passage. Intruders may be through and beyond the city in a matter of Ehn!”

“I want to see!” said Ellen.

In the distance one could hear the ringing of a great metal bar, struck repeatedly.

“Get below!” called Laura.

“It is locked!” cried a girl, tugging at the ring that might otherwise have lifted and opened the hatchlike portal that led to the interior of the cylinder.

Another girl joined her, trying to lift the ring.

“There are prize slaves below, and riches,” said Laura. “They do not want to risk them! Stay down, everyone! Stay down!”

Ellen, standing among the flapping clothes, amongst the lines, between racks, shaded her eyes, straining to see into the distance. She could see, in the distance, what appeared to be a flock of birds. It seemed, again, that the perspective was oddly awry. They should be no more than a hundred yards or so away, and yet, at the same time, it seemed they were scarcely within the distant walls. Other birds seemed to rise from her side of the wall, lifting momentarily against the darkness of the wall and then suddenly appearing in the sky, hastening specks, the hills and fields beyond.

“They are coming this way!” called Nelsa, pointing, she, too, on a rack, but lower than the other girl.

“Get down!” cried Laura.

The first girl, she who had first alerted the slaves to the phenomenon in the distance, climbed down from the rack, and crouched near it, amidst the flapping clothes. Nelsa, in a moment, had joined her.

Most of the girls were crouched down. Some lay on their stomachs under the racks, their hands covering their heads.

“I can’t see,” said Ellen, brushing aside clothes, which had blown before her. She fought the laundry shaking and snapping in the wind about her.

“Get down!” called Laura.

“I want to see!” said Ellen.

Then suddenly she flung her hands before her face and screamed, and the world seemed madness about her. There was a wild cry, piercing, at hand, not more than fifteen feet above her, surely the loudest and most terrifying sound she had ever heard, as of some living, immense, monstrous creature, and she was in shadow and then not in shadow, in a shadow that moved and leapt and was shattered with bursts of sunlight, and then darkness, and clothing was torn from the lines by the blasts of wind from the smitings of mighty wings, and one of the racks, seized in monstrous talons, broke into a thousand pieces, and, lifted, fell in a shower of sticks, raining down to the roof. Ellen could not believe what she saw. Above her, now darting away, was a gigantic bird, an enormous bird, a saddlebird, its wings with a span of thirty or more feet, and, seemingly tiny on its back, was a helmeted man!

Ellen had heard an angry cry from the man above her, and words in Gorean she did not recognize, words that had certainly never been taught to her, a slave girl. She had no doubt that the man was cursing, and richly, the failure of his strike.

Then they were away.