Assassin of Gor (23 page)

She indicated Virginia and Phyllis. "How do you expect me to train uncollared slaves?" she asked.

Ho-Tu grinned. "Call the smith!" said he to the guard. "Plate collars!"

To their surprise, the guard then released the two girls, and Elizabeth as well, from their slave bracelets.

Flaminius gestured that the two girls should try to rise and walk a bit about the room.

Awkwardly, painfully, they did so, stumbling to the edge of the room, then leaning against the wall, taking a step at a time. Elizabeth, now also free, went to their side, trying to help them. She did not speak to them, however. As far as they knew she could speak only Gorean.

When the smith arrived, he took, from a rack in the wall, two narrow, straight bars of iron, not really plates but narrow cubes, about a half inch in width and fifteen inches in length.

The girls were then motioned to the anvil. First Virginia and then Phyllis laid their heads and throats on the anvil, head turned to the side, their hands holding the anvil, and the smith, expertly, with his heavy hammer and a ringing of iron, curved the collar about their throats; a space of about a quarter of an inch was left between the two ends of the collar; the ends matched perfectly; both Virginia and Phyllis stepped away from the anvil feeling the metal on their throats, both now collared slave girls.

"If your training goes well," said Flaminius to the girls, "you will in time be given a pretty collar." He indicated Elizabeth's yellow enameled collar, bearing the legend of the House of Cernus. "It will even have a lock," said Flaminius.

Virginia looked at him blankly.

"You would like a pretty collar, wouldn't you?" asked Flaminius.

"Yes, Master," said Virginia numbly.

"And what of you Phyllis?" asked Flaminius.

"Yes, Master," said the girl, a whisper.

"I will decide if and when they receive a lock collar," said Sura.

"Of course," said Flaminius, backing away a step, bowing his head.

"Kneel," said Sura, pointing to the stones before her feet.

This time Virginia and Phyllis needed no translation, and they, with Elizabeth, knelt before Sura.

Sura turned to Ho-Tu. "The Tuchuk girl," she said, "keeps quarters with the Assassin. I do not object. Take the others to cells of Red Silk."

"They are White Silk," said Ho-Tu.

Sura laughed. "Very well," she said, "to cells of White Silk. Feed them well. You have almost crippled them. How you expect me to train crippled barbarians I am not clear."

"You will do splendidly," said Flaminius warmly.

Sura glanced at him, coldly, and the Physician dropped his eyes.

"In the first weeks," she said, "I will also need one who speaks their tongue. Further, when not in training, they must learn Gorean, and quickly."

"I will send one who speaks their tongue," said Flaminius. "Also I will arrange that they are taught Gorean."

"Translate for me," said Sura, to Flaminius, as she turned and faced the three kneeling girls.

She then spoke to them in short sentences, pausing for Flaminius to translate.

"I am Sura," she said. "I will train you. In the hours of training you are my slaves. You will do what I wish. You will work. You will work and you will learn. You will be pleasing. I will teach you. You will work and you will learn."

She then looked at them. "Fear me," she said. Flaminius translated this, as well.

Then without speaking she flicked on the slave goad and rotated the dial. The tip began to glow brightly. Then suddenly she struck at the three kneeling girls. The charge must have been high, judging by the intense shower of fiery yellow needles of light and the screams of pain from the three girls. Again and again Sura struck and the girls, half stunned, half crazed with pain, seemed unable to even move, but could only scream and cry. Even Elizabeth, whom I knew was swift and spirited, seemed paralyzed and tortured by the goad. Then Sura dialed the goad down, and turned it off. The three girls lying in pain of the stones looked up at her in fear, even the proud Elizabeth, their bodies trembling, their eyes wide. I read in their eyes, even those of Elizabeth, a sudden terror of the goad.

"Fear me," said Sura softly. Flaminius translated. Then Sura turned to Flaminius. "Have them sent to my training room at the sixth Ahn," she said, and turned, and walked away, the slave bells flashing on her ankle.

***

I left the tiers of the racing stadium and began to walk down the long, sloping stone ramp, level by level. There were few leaving the races but I did pass some late comers, moving up the ramps, who had perhaps been detained or had been released from their shops only late in the day. At one corner in the descending ramp there was a small knot of young men, weavers by their garments, who were gambling with the inked knucklebones of verr, shaking them in a small leather cup and spilling them to the stones.

On the ground level, beneath the lofty stands, there was much more life. Here there were lines of booths in an extended arcade, where merchandise of various sorts might be purchased, usually of an inexpensive and low-quality variety. There were poorly webbed, small tapestries; amulets and talismans; knotted prayer strings; papers containing praises of Priest-Kings, which might be carried on one's person; numerous ornaments of glass and cheap metal; the strung pearls of the Vosk sorp; polished, shell brooches; pins with heads carved from the horn of kailiauk tridents; lucky sleen teeth; racks of rep-cloth robes, veils and tunics in various caste colors; cheap knives and belts and pouches; vials containing perfumes, for which extraordinary claims were made; and small clay, painted replicas of the stadium and racing tarns.

I also saw a booth where sandals were sold, cheap and poorly sewn, which the seller was proclaiming were of the same sort as those worn by Menicius of Port Kar. He, riding Yellow, had won one of the races I had just witnessed. He claimed over six thousand wins and was, in Ar and certain of the northern cities generally, a quite popular hero; he was said in private life to be cruel and dissolute, venal and petty, but when he climbed to the saddle of a racing tarn there were few who did not thrill to the sight; it was said no man could ride as Mencius of Port Kar. The sandals, I noted, were selling quite well.

I was approached twice by men who had small scrolls to sell, reputedly containing important information on forthcoming races, the tarns to be flown, their riders, their times recorded in previous races and such; I supposed this would be little more than what was publicly available on the large track boards, and was copied from them; on the other hand, such men always claimed to have important information not contained on the public boards. I knew that when there was such information it would not be to such men that it would be known. "I am lonely," said a kneeling slave girl by one of the booths, lifting her hands to me. I looked at her, a comely wench in soiled Pleasure Silk. She was leashed and her master, who wished to rent her for the quarter Ahn, held the chain with its leather loop wound in his fist. "Use her," said he, "the poor wench is lonely, only a copper tarn disk." I turned and, pressing through the crowd, walked away.

As I was passing under the main arch of the stadium, going to the broad street beyond, called The Street of Tarns because of its proximity to the stadium. I heard a voice behind me. "Perhaps you did not enjoy the races?"

It was the voice of the man who had sat behind me in the tiers, before I had changed my seat to avoid recognition by the small fool Hup, he who had spoken poorly of the Hinrabian on the throne of Ar, and who had purchased a candy from the fool.

It struck me that there was something familiar about the voice.

I turned.

Facing me, clean-shaven, but with a massive, regal face concealed in the hood of a peasant, his gigantic body broad and powerful in the coarse rep-cloth garment of what is thought to be Gor's lowest caste, there stood a man whom I could not mistake, even though it had been years since I had looked upon him, even though his great beard was now gone, even though his body now wore the hood and garment of a peasant. In his right hand there was a heavy peasant staff, some six feet in height and perhaps two inches in width.

The man smiled at me, and turned away.

I reached out and began to walk after him but I stumbled into the body of Hup the Fool, spilling his tray of candies. "Oh, oh, oh!" cried the fool in misery. Angrily I tried to step about him, but then there were others pressing between myself and the large man in the peasant's garments, and he had disappeared. I ran after him but could not find him in the crowd.

Hup hobbled angrily after me, jerking on my tunic. "Pay! Pay!" he whined.

I looked down at him and I saw, in those wide, simple eyes, of uneven size, no recognition. His poor mind could not even recall the face of the man who had saved his life. Irritably I gave him a silver forty-piece, far more than enough to pay for the spilled candies, and strode away. "Thank you, Master," whined the fool, leaping about from one foot to the other. "Thank you, Master!"

My mind was reeling. What did it mean, I asked myself, that he was in Ar?

I strode away from the stadium, my mind confused, unsettled, breathing deeply, wildly.

There had been no mistaking the man in the garments of a peasant, he with the great staff.

I had seen Marlenus of Ar.

13 - MIP

"I so not see how it could have happened," Nela was saying, bending over me as I lay sleepily on my stomach on the heavy striped piece of toweling, about the size of a blanket, her strong dutiful hands rubbing oils of the bath into by body.

"The daughter of Minus Tentius Hinrabius, if none other," said she, "should be safe."

I grunted, not too concerned.

Nela, like most of the others at the baths, could talk of little but the startling disappearance, and presumed abduction, of Claudia Tentia Hinrabia, the proud, spoiled daughter of the Administrator of the City. It seemed she had vanished from the central cylinder, in those portions of it devoted to the private quarters of the Administrator and his family and closer associates, almost under the very noses of Taurentian guardsmen. Saphronicus, Captain of the Taurentians, was reportedly, and understandably, beside himself with frustration and rage. He was organizing searches of the entire city and surrounding countryside, and gathering all possible reports which might bear on the case. The Administrator himself, with his consort, and many others of the high family, had locked themselves in their quarters, secluding themselves in their outrage and sorrow. The entire city was humming with the news and a hundred rumors ran rampant through the alleys and streets and on the bridges of Glorious Ar. On the roof of the Cylinder of Initiates the High Initiate, Complicius Serenus, offered sacrifice and prayer for the speedy return of the girl and, failing that, that she might be found slain, that she might not be reduced to the shames of slavery.

"Not so hard," I murmured to Nela.

"Yes, Master," she responded.

I supposed it quite probable that Claudia Hinrabia had been abducted, though it would not be the only possible explanation for her absence. The institution of capture is universal, to the best of my knowledge, on Gor; there is no city which does not honor it, provided the females captured are those of the enemy, either their free women or their slaves; it is often a young tarnsman's first mission, the securing of a female, preferably free, from an enemy city, to enslave, that his sisters may be relieved of the burden of serving him; indeed, his sisters often encourage him to be prompt in the capture of an enemy wench that their own tasks may be made lighter; when the young tarnsman, if successful, returns home from his capture flight, a girl bound naked across the saddle, his sisters welcome her with delight, and with great enthusiasm prepare her for the Feast of Collaring.

But I suspected that the lofty Claudia Hinrabia, of the Hinrabians, would not dance in pleasure silk at a Collaring Feast. Rather she would be returned for ransom. What puzzled me about the matter was that she had been abducted. It is one thing to drop a loop about a girl on a high bridge in streaking over the walls and quite another to pick up the daughter of an Administrator in her own quarters and make off with her. I knew the Taurentians to be skilled Warriors, wary and swift, and I would have thought the women of the Hinrabians would have been the safest of the city.

"Probably tomorrow," Nela was saying, "an offer of ransom will be made."

"Probably," I grunted.

Although I was sleepy from the swim and the oiling I was more concerned with the wondering about Marlenus of Ar, whom I had seen in the arcade of the races this afternoon. Surely he knew the danger in which he stood once within the environs of Ar? He would be slain in the city if discovered. I wondered what it was that would bring him to Glorious Ar.

I did not suppose that his appearance in Ar had anything to do with the disappearance of the Hinrabian girl because she would have been abducted about the same time that I had seen him in the arcade. Further, abducting a wench from the Hinrabians, if a rather arrogant gesture, would not have brought Marlenus closer to the throne of Ar, nor would it have much hurt the city. If Marlenus had wished to strike the Hinrabians he presumably would have flown his tarn to the central cylinder itself and cut his way to the throne of the Administrator. Marlenlus, I was confident, had nothing to do with the disappearance of the Hinrabian girl. But still I wondered what had brought him to the city.