Blood Brothers of Gor (37 page)

"He is dead," said Cuwignaka, looking down.

"Free your lance," I said.

Cuwignaka, his foot on the man's chest, drew loose the lance.

"It is safer in such an exchange," I said, "to strke from the outside, finding his lance away, trying to make your strike above and across it."

"He is dead," said Cuwignaka.

"If hehad dropped his lance more to the right you would have moved into it," I said.

"I killed him," said Cuwignaka.

"It is unfortunate that we did not obtain the kaiila," I said.

"He is dead," said Cuwignaka.

"Attend to my lessons," I said.

"Yes, Tatankasa," said Cuwignaka.

"Hurry," I said. "We are near Grunt's lodge."

"Are you all right?" I asked Wasnapohdi, entering Grunt's lodge.

"Yes," she said, kneeling fearfully in its recesses. "What is going on?" she asked.

"Watonka has betrayed the camp," I said. It is under attack

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by both tarnsmen and Yellow Knives. Has Grunt come back?"

"No," she said. "Cuwignaka, are you hurt?"

"No," he said, trembling. "The blood is not mine."

"Where are my weapons?" I asked Wasnapohdi.

"I killed a man," said Cuwignaka.

"Hre," said Wasnapohdi, going to a bundle at the side of the lodge, unwrapping it. Within it was my belt, with the scabbard and knife sheath, and the small bow I had purchased long ago in Kailiauk, with its sheaf of twenty arrows.

"Tatankasa," said Cuwignaka.

"Yes?" I said. I took the belt in my hands. I had not worn it since I had accepted the collar of Canka.

"Do not arm yourself," said Cuwignaka. "You might be spared as a slave."

I buckled the belt about myself, I lifted the short sword in the scabbard and dropped it back in place. I tested the draw of the knife. The sheath hold was firm but the draw was smooth. I bent the bow, stringing it. I slung the quiver over my shoulder. I would use the over-the-back draw. I took two arrows in my hand, with the bow, and set another to the string.

I looked at Cuwignaka.

"The camp is large, and populous," I said. "It cannot be easily taken, even by surprise. There will be resistance."

Cuwignaka shook his head, numbly. "I cannot fight," he said. "I never could."

"Come, Wasnapohdi," I said to the girl. "We will try to find others. I will try to get you back to Grunt."

She stood, to follow me.

"If necessary, Wasnapohdi," I said to her, "fall on your knees before Yellow Knives, and tear open your clothing, revealing your breasts to them. If they find you attractive they may not slay you. They may only put their ropes on you."

"Yes, Master," she said.

"But I do not need to tell you that, do I," I asked, "for you are a woman."

"No, Master," she whispered. Men are the warriors and women, she knew in her heart, were among the fitting spoils of their vicitories.

At the interior threshold of the lodge I turned again to face Cuwignaka.

"I killed a man," he said, shuddering. "I could never do that again. It is too terrible a thing."

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"The first is the hardest," I said.

"I cannot fight," he said.

"If you remain here," I said, "you must prepare to lie down and die with the innocent."

"Do you respect me, Tatankasa?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, "but death will not. It respects on one. It respects nothing."

"Am I a coward?" he asked.

"No," I said.

"Am I wrong?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"I do not know what to do," he said. "I am troubled."

"I wish you well, mitakola, my friend," I said. "Come, Wasnapohdi."

I briefly reconnoitered, and the left the lodge, Wasnapohdi following me. We threaded our way among the lodges, some of which were burned. Meat racks, with the sheets of dried meat, had been overturned. Pegged-down hides had been half torn up and trampled. I turned one, suddenly. It was Cuwignaka. He was still visibly shaken. He clutched the lance in his hands. "I am coming with you," he said. We then continued on our way.

"Back!" I said. "Down!"

We stepped back and crouched down between a lodge. Eleven riders passed.

"Yellow Knives," I said.

In the belts of several of them were thrust bloddy scalps, the blood run down their thighs and the sides of their legs, across their paint.

"If you do not fight." I asked Cuwignaka, "who will protect the weak, the innocent?"

"I cannot fight," he said. "I cannot help it. I cannot."

"Where are we going, Master?" asked Wasnapohdi.

"Toward the place of the council lodge," I said.

"That is doubtless the center of the attack," said Cuwignaka.

"We do not have kaiila to flee with," I said. "If there is resistance it seems natural to expect it at that point, particularly if it is organized. That is the center of camp. Men can reach it most easily, and strike out from it most easily."

"That is true," said Cuwignaka.

"Come along," I said.

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"Step carefully," I said. "Several have died here."

We picked our way through twisted bodies.

Wasnapohdi threw up.

"These are your people," I told Cuwignaka.

"I cannot fight," he said.

The girl, lying on her back, nude, looked up at us, wildly. Her knees were drawn up. Her ankles were crossed and bound. Her wrists, behind her, were fastened at the small of her back and, by a double thong, looped twice, tightly, about her body, held in place there. I ran my finger under the belly thongs. She winced. In her body there were deep marks from them. I then let the tongus return to their place. The fellow who had tied her had done a good job. The thongs were merciless. A woman, of course, too, because of the glorious nature of her beauty, the sweet flaring of her hips, the lovely swelling of her upper body and breasts, cannot even begin to slip such a bond. A strand of leather, too, short and taut, pulling up her legs, connected her wrists and ankles. It is an efficient tie. In it a woman is utterly helpless. Nearby, in the dirt, its tying string cut away, lay a leather, beaded collar. The girl squirmed. On her left breast, in black pain, probably traced there with a finger, there was a rude mark, to identify her. So easily may a girl change masters.

The girl, squirming, looked wildly up at me.

"Come along," I said to Cuwignaka and Wasnaphohdi.

We left the girl behind us, whimpering. She would stay where she was. Later her new master, if he remembered, would return for her, to claim her. If he did not she was, in any case, clearly marked. When the loot ws sorted out it would be at his feet she would be placed.

"Be quiet," I whispered. "There are others here. This is obviously a collection point."

"How horrifyingly they treat us," gasped Wasnapohdi. "How horrifyingly they tie us, and put us about, as though we might be cord wood."

Even as she spoke a white slave girl, naked her hands bound behind her, running before a kaiila, stubling, prodded by the butt of a lance, was herded into a crowded place between the lodges. She fell among the other women. Some cried out as the kaiila stepped among them. Thegirl's captor dismounted and put his lance down. He then turned the girl to her back and, among the other bound women,

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threw her legs apart. She cried out, his will imposed upon her. He then threw her to her stomach and, with a short leather strap, bound her ankles together. He then turned her about, and jerked her to her knees, facing him. She was shuddering, and could scarcely utter articulate sounds. He then took a small leather sack from his belt and spit inot it. He dipped his finger into the sack and, pressing it firmly down in the sack, swirled it about. He then put the sack down. On his finger was black paint. The pigment is fixed in kailiauk grease. He held her steady with his left hand behind her shoulder and, with his finger, traced a mark on her left breast. He looked at it, and then wiped his finger on his thigh and replaced the sack in his belt. She looked down at the mark. It wsa the mark of her master. She was then, by the hair, thrown among the other women. The man retrieved his lance and then, swiftly, remounted his kaiila. In a moment he had left the place. The woman lay on her back, with the others, left behind. On her left breast, in black paint, was an identificatory mark. Most of the others there, too, wore such marks, but, in their cases, the marks wre different.

"Some of these women," I said to Cuwignaka, "are red, doubtless former free women of the Kaiila."

"Women are born to serve men," said Cuwignaka.

Some of the women, though only a few, were marked not with paint, but with tags, divices of wire with an attached leather disk. The wire is thrust through an ear lobe or the septum and twisted shut, thus fastening the tag on the female.

"Do you think that is true, Wasnapohdi?" I asked.

"Yes, Master," she said, lowering her head. "I think so."

"Why?" I asked.

"Our deepest fulfillments," she said, "are found in obedience, service and love."

"But are these not the primary duties required of the female slave?" I asked.

"Yes, Master," she said.

"It thus seems," I said, "that there is some sort of interesting relationship between the achievement of female fulfillment and the harsh institution of uncompromising female slavery,"

"Yes, Master," she said.

I smiled.

"But we would like to choose our masters." she said.

"Unfortunately," I said, "that is not possible."

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"I am a female slave," she said. "I am well aware of that, Master."

"Sometimes, perhaps," I said, "a woman must find herself at the feet of the very man whom she would have chosen, had she the choice, as her master."

"Perhaps, Master," she said. "But even if she is not so fortunate as to be owned by such a man, there is a gratification for her in being made to kneel and obey, and will-lessly, serve, a gratification connected with the fulfillment of her nature as lover and slave, and connected, too, with the knowledge that she is now at last in her place in nature, and will be kept there."

"I see," I said.

"Too," she said, "it is hard not to fall in love, eventually, with one who is one's master."

"That makes it easier, of course, to control the girl," I said.

"Doubtless, Master," she said, I thought with a trace of bitterness.

Bondage, I thought, must, doubtless, sometimes, be a hard lot for a female. Even whether a girlis clothed or not is up to the master.

"Do you think these women," I asked, surveying the trussed women at the collection point, "will make good slaves?"

"Any woman," she said, "with the proper master, will make a superb slave."

"Look upon them," I said. "You see them nude, helpless and bound, thrown together as the mere properties they are."

"Yes, Master," she said.

"Doubtless you feel keen pity for them," I said.

"Yes, master," she said. "Master!"

I held her so that she could not move. My hand was upon her.

"But you are aroused, WAsnapohdi," I told her.

"Yes, Master," she whispered.

"Why is it," I asked, "that the sight of one female in bondage makes another desire to be placed in the same condition!"

"I do not know, Master," she said.

"Do you desire to be nude, and bound among them?" I asked.

"No, Maser," she said. "I am already with masters."

"I am not a master," said Cuwignaka.

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"Is he a master?" I asked Wasnapohdi. She was a female. She might be able to tell such things.

"There is that in him which could be a master," said Wasnapohdi. "I sense it."

"I wear the dress of a woman," said Cuwignaka. "I will not even fight."

"There is in you that which could be a master," said Wasnapohdi. "I can sense it."

"That is absurd," said Cuwignaka.

"It is you who must decide," she said.

"Look at these women," I said to Cwuignaka. "Many of them are former free women of the Kaiila. Many men, as they are of their own people, regardless of what would be in the best interest of the women, would fight to free them. In such matters they would not consider what would make the women most happy but rather would take their enslavement, irrationally, as being somehow demeaning or insulting to them personally. Thus, for their own anity, really, in the final analysis, the would fight to free them. Too, sometimes men who desire to own slaves but are themselves too weak to do so, or, because of rigidities of cripplings, are psychologically incapable of doing so, will, out of envy, jealousy and spite, fight to free them, in order to deny others the pleasures which they, because of their handicaps and inhibitions, cannot grant to themselves. If I, for one reason or another, cannot have these etraordinary pleasures, then neither, too, shall anyone else, so to speak. Moral fervor is often the outcome of inadequacy. Happy men do not make good zealots. Once again, of course, the best intrests f the women, and whatever might be their true nature, are not considered. They, as usual, though putatively the objects of these wars, are the forgotten ones. All women know that truly strong-drive men desire to own them; a male with strong drives will never be truly content with anything else. Truth is not terrible; it is mearly real."