Beasts of Gor (46 page)

The man had struck it again when it had seized the snow sleen but the blow, again, had not proved mortal. There was blood about its neck where the blade had cut at the side of the throat.

It seized the lance from the man and broke it in two. The man then began to run towards us.

The Kur flung the pieces of the broken lance to the side. The sleen, fresh-killed meat, lay behind in the snow. The sled, too, was now abandoned. Its supplies of meat and sugar, or whatever edibles it might carry, were now free to the depredations of the Kur.

It did not concern itself with the sleen or the sled, however. It looked at the man.

I knew then it was not an ordinary beast. A simple Kur, hungry, predatory, aggressive, would have presumably seized up the body of the sleen or perhaps meat from the sled and, in the face of the charging red hunters, made away, feeding as it retreated.

It dropped to all fours and began to pursue the man. I knew then it must be a ship Kur.

It was not after meat, but after the man.

He sped past me, and I braced myself, my arm drawn back, lance ready.

“Ho, Beast!” I cried. “I am ready for you!”

The Kur pulled up short, some twenty yards from me, baring its fangs.

“Come now, and taste my lance!” I cried.

A common Kur then, I think, would have charged. It did not. Behind me I could hear the red hunters, some hundred yards away, and running toward me.

I took another step toward the Kur, threatening it with the lance.

In moments the Kur would be surrounded by a swarm of men, screaming, striking at it, hurling their weapons into its body.

With a last enraged snarl the Kur, not taking its eyes from us, moving sideways and back, moving on all fours, slipped diagonally away from us to our left. We ran toward it but it turned suddenly and reached the body of the sleen first and, dragging it by a hind paw, hunched over, moved swiftly away over the snow-covered tundra.

Before it had turned I had seen that it had worn in its ears two golden rings.

We watched it disappear over the tundra.

“You have saved my life, all of you,” said Ram.

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

We clasped hands.

“I thought I would find you in the village of Kadluk and Imnak,” he said.

Imnak had been with us at the wall. Too, I had not gone south.

“Do you have Bazi tea?” asked Akko. “Do you have sugar?” asked Naartok. The word ‘Naartok’ in the language of the Innuit means ‘Fat Belly’. In many cases there is no particular correspondence between the name and the individual. In Naartok’s case, however, the name was not inappropriate. He was a plump, jolly fellow with a weakness for sweets prodigious even among red hunters.

“Yes,” said Ram, “I have tea and sugars. And I have mirrors, and beads and knives, and many other trade goods.”

This news was welcome indeed. No traders, because of the wall, had come to the north for months.

“We will make a feast for our friend!” cried Kadluk.

“Oh,” moaned Akko, “it is unfortunate that there is so little meat in the camp, and so our feast will be such a poor one.”

“Also,” said another fellow, “the women did not know anyone was coming, so they will not have any water boiling.”

It takes some time to get water boiling over an oil lamp, though, to be sure, the flame can be elongated and enlarged by manipulating and trimming the wick moss.

“That is all right,” said Ram.

Actually, of course, the camp was heavy with meat. There had not been so much meat in the camp for years and the women, even now, were busy preparing a splendid feast.

“We are sorry,” said Kadluk, looking down.

“That is all right,” said Ram, cheerfully. “Even a little piece of meat with friends makes a great feast.”

The red hunters looked at one another slyly.

We turned about and, some men drawing the sled, began to trek back to the camp. Ram, of course, a trader for years, was familiar with the tricks and jokes of red hunters. It had not escaped his notice, for example, that he had been met by almost every male in the village better than two pasangs from the permanent camp. He thus knew both that he was expected and, from the number of men available to meet him, that there must be much food in the camp. Otherwise many men would be out on the ice with their families.

“The beast was after you,” I said.

“It was hungry,” he said.

“It was not after the snow sleen, or the food you were carrying,” I said. “It was after you, specifically.”

“I find that hard to believe,” said Ram. “You speak as though it were intelligent.”

“I believe it to be so,” I said. “Did you not notice the rings in its ears.”

“Of course,” said Rain.

“Surely they are ornaments,” I said.

“It escaped from a master,” speculated Ram. “Doubtless he placed such ornaments in its ears.”

“It was by its own will, I believe,” I said, “that those rings were put in its ears.”

“That seems to me unlikely,” said Ram. “Did you not see how like a beast it was?”

“Do you think,” I said, “because something does not look like a man that it cannot be intelligent?”

Ram turned white. “But intelligence,” he said, “if coupled with such ferocity—”

“It is called a Kur,” I said.

Ablaze with light was the feasting house.

Arlene, naked, the strap of bondage on her throat, head down, knelt before Ram, lifting a plate of boiled meat to him.

He thrust a thumb under her chin and roughly pushed up her chin.

“Who is this pretty little slave?” he asked. “She looks familiar.”

She looked at him, in terror.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “She is the one who commanded us at the wall.”

“Yes,” I said.

“You made her your slave,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Is she any good?” he asked.

“You will soon find out,” I told him.

He laughed.

“Remain kneeling here before us, Girl,” I told Arlene.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

Ram and I took meat from her plate, and she remained where she was, kneeling back on her heels.

“I am sure the beast was hunting you,” I said.

“Perhaps,” said Ram.

“How do you like our poor feast?” asked Kadluk, coming by.

It is the greatest feast I have ever eaten,” said Ram. “It is glorious.”

“Maybe it is not bad,” said Kadluk, puffing his head down, grinning, and sliding over to his place.

“But did it follow you for a long time?” I asked.

“I do not know,” said Ram.

“I speculate, though I do not know,” I said, “that it intercepted you, that it had been waiting for you.”

“How would it know where to wait?’ he asked.

“I fear,” I said, “my presence in this village is known. When I did not return south, it would be speculated I would go north. Only one red hunter was at the wall, Inmak. Surely it would be thought that I might then go to his village. Too, I may have been spied on here. I do not know.”

Ram regarded me. “I understand little of this,” he said.

“I think it was known,” I said, “that I would be, or was, in the village of Kadluk. In Lydius, we had been seen together, too. Thus, when you came north it might be thought that you were seeking me.”

“I made no secret of this,” said Ram.

“Thus, if the enemy, if we may speak of them so, knew my location and your intent, to contact me, it would be simple to lay an ambush for you outside of the village.”

“Yes,” he said.

“What did not occur to them, I suspect,” I said, “is that the sound of your sleen would carry as far as it did, and that the hunters would come forth to greet you.”

“There is another possibility, a fearful one,” said Ram.

“What is that?” I asked.

“In following me,” he said, “I may have led foes to your location.”

“That is possible,” I said. “But if it is true, it is acceptable.”

“How is that?” asked Ram.

“I think it is the desire of at least one other that I participate in an interview. I have come north, in a sense, responding to an invitation. If it is known where I am, the enemy may attempt to contact me here.”

“Or kill you,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Why would the Kur attempt to kill me?” asked Ram.

“Perhaps you are carrying information it did not wish me to receive,” I said.

“In Lydius,” he said, “Sarpedon, the tavern keeper, and several others, like myself, newly arrived from the wall, suddenly and without warning, tell upon Sarpelius and his henchmen.” Sarpelius, I recalled, had been the heavy, paunchy fellow who had taken over the tavern from Sarpedon. He had worked with several others, who had functioned to impress workers for the wall.

“Sarpedon now has his tavern back?” I inquired.

“Of course,” said Rant “Sarpelius and his men, before we sold them from the wharves as naked slaves, were persuaded to speak.”

“Doubtless that was wise of them,” I speculated.

“Their information was not so precious to them that they preferred to retain it in the face of death by torture,” said Ram. “Sarpelius, for example, did not wish to be thrust feet first, bit by bit, into a cage of hungry sleen.”

“It would not be pleasant,” I admitted.

“But it seems, unfortunately, as minions, they knew little.”

“What did you gather?” I asked.

“The one called Drusus, whom we knew at the wall,” he said, “paid their fees and issued their instructions. Tarnsmen transported the workers, drugged, to the wall.”

“What of the girls?” I asked. I remembered Tina and Constance. “They were not at the wall.”

“We learned from Sarpelins, from what he had learned from Drusus, that there was a headquarters farther north, one which could be reached only in the late spring, summer or early fall.”

“Perhaps it is at sea,” I said. The sea, being frozen, would be impassable to shipping in the winter.

“Perhaps,” he said.

“But, too,” I said, “tarns, like most birds, will fly in the arctic only during those seasons.”

“That is true,” he said.

“I think the headquarters, however,” I said, “must be at sea.”

“Why is that?” asked Ram.

“If it were on the land,” I said, “I think the red hunters, of one village or another, in their hunting, would have come across it. It would be, I assume, a large installation.”

“I do not know,” said Ram.

“Did you learn more?” I asked.

“We learned that it was to this mysterious headquarters that Drusus reported. Too, it is to that headquarters that, from time to time, choice slave beauties were taken.”

“Such as Tina and Constance,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “You see, I thought you might have known this and thus had come north to find Constance.”

“You have come north then primarily,” I said, “seeking Tina.”

“Yes,” he said.

“But she is only a slave,” I smiled.

He reddened. “But she is my slave,” he said, angrily. “She was taken from me, and I do not like that.” He struck himself on the chest. “No one takes a slave from Ram of Teletus!” he said. “I will fetch her back, and then, if I wish, I will give her away, or beat and sell her.”

“Of course.” I said.

“Do not misunderstand me,” he said, irritably. “It is not the girl who is important, for she is only a slave. It is the principle of the thing.”

“Of course,” I granted him. “Yet there seems much time and risk involved in recovering someone who is probably only a silver-tarsk girl.”

“It is the principle of the thing,” he said.

“Of course,” I said.

“You seem very agreeable,” he said.

“I am.” I said.

“I think Tina is my perfect slave,” he said, grinning. “I must have her at my feet. kneeling, in the shadow of my whip.” He then looked, seriously, at me. “I hoped to join you in the north,” said he. “Together we might seek out Tina and Constance.”

“Who is Constance, Master?” asked Arlene.

“One who, like yourself, was once free,” I said. “She is now a lovely slave. She might teach you much about being a woman.”

“Yes. Master,” said Arlene, putting her head down.

I was bringing her along slowly in her slavery.

“You, Slave,” I said to Arlene, sharply. She lifted her head, quickly.

“Yes. Master.” she said, frightened.

“Meat,” I said.

She lifted the plate of boiled meat to us. Ram and I helped ourselves.

“What do you know about a headquarters in the north, Girl?” I asked her.

“Nothing,” she whispered, “Master.”

I took another piece cf meat. I regarded her. I put the meat in my mouth, and chewed it.

“I did not say to take back the plate, Girl,” I said.

“Forgive me, Master,” she said, holding it as she had. I continued to regard her. “I really know nothing, Master,” she said. “Drusus brought moneys. He was my contact. I know nothing!”

I took another piece of meat.

“I supervised work at the wall. I thought myself then the superior of Drusus. I do not know where he came from or where he obtained what moneys he brought. I supposed, in truth, there were other operations or facilities on this world, but I did not know their location.” Tears sprang into her eyes. “Believe me, I beg you,” she said. “If there is a headquarters somewhere I know nothing of it. I beg you to believe me, Master!”

“Perhaps I believe you,” I said.

She half fainted. I thought it true what she had said, not only from her asseverations and the fact that I had come to be able to read with facility her face and body in the months I had owned her, but from the general circumstances of the situation. When she had been free she had not, I was sure, recognized the carving of the head of a Kur for what it had been. I recalled her puzzlement, which I think was genuine, in the hall to the south, that which had formed her own headquarters near the now-broken wall. Too, I did not think that the Kurii would permit minor minions, such as she had been, though not understanding herself so, to know more than was absolutely necessary to perform their parts in their complex plans. Too, interestingly, it is difficult for a woman who is naked before a man to lie to him. Clothing makes it easier to lie. Naked, a woman is exposed not only physically to a man but, in a sense, psychologically, as well. She fears, psychologically, exposed as she is, that she can hide nothing, that he will see all, and detect all, that she is utterly open and vulnerable to him in all ways. This, for subtle and subjective reasons, having to do with psychology, makes it hard for her, when she is fully exposed to his scrutiny, to lie convincingly. She fears, somehow, he will know. And, actually, of course, there is something to her fear, indeed, a great deal. When she tries to lie there is a fear involved and this fear, in subtle ways, in subtle drawings back, in tensenesses, is manifested in her beautiful body, proclaiming it that of a liar. Many times a girl does not know how the master knows she is lying. At the slave ring, struck, she cries out in her misery. How could he have known? The answer is simple. Her body betrayed her. It told him. Too, slave girls seldom lie, for the punishments connected with lying can be extremely severe. A girl may be thrown alive to sleen for having lied. The severity of the possible punishments attendant upon falsehood in a slave tend, too, of course, to increase the fear of falsehood, and this fear then, felt deeply in the body, is all the more difficult to conceal. I would suppose that slave girls are among the most truthful of intelligent organisms, at least when stripped and confronted seriously by the master. They must be. Lying, serious lying, is not permitted to them This is not to deny, however, that petty lying, pilfering and such, where the master is not directly concerned or affected, is often tolerated, if not encouraged. That sort of thing is expected of slave girls. They are, after all, slaves. For example, when a former free woman, now enslaved, steals her first pastry from another girl, this is often smiled upon, and punished, if at all, quite lightly. The master is not displeased. It is taken as evidence that the girl is now learning to be a slave. Slaves do that sort of thing. The petty jealousies and resentments. that build up among girls make them easier to control The master, to whom they belong, though he will normally refrain from interfering in their squabbles, is, of course, if need be, the ultimate arbiter for all their disputes. He owns them.