Captive of Gor (50 page)

kneels joyfully, the handsome and splendid Pron, skilled huntsman of lofty

Treve. The next day they left the camp, taking their girls with them. (pg. 352)

We kissed one another good-bye. “I love you, El-in-or,” had said Inge. “I love

you, too, Inge,” I had wept. “I love you, El-in-or,” had said Rena. “I, too,

love you,” I had said. “I wish you all well.”

They then, in the brief green tunics of the slaves of huntsmen, shouldered their

burdens and followed their masters through the double gate of the palisade.

Their lives would be hard, but I did not think them dismayed, nor unhappy. The

huntsman lives a free and open life, as wild and swift, and secret as the beasts

he hunts, and his slaves, whom he insists on accompanying him, must, too, learn

the ways of the forests, the flowers and the animals, the leaves and wind. I do

not know where Raf and Pron may now be, but I know them well served by two

wenches, the slave girl, Inge, and the slave girl, Rena, who were well trained

in the pens of Ko-ro-ba, and who loves them.

I looked up.

The heavy lid of wicker was now being placed on the tarn basket. Immediately, on

the body of the girl across from me, there was a reticulated pattern of shadows.

I could not free myself.

The lid was tied down.

The man who would fly the tarn then went to the kitchen shed, to have his lunch.

I had sought to please Rask of Treve in many ways, and found, to my

astonishment, that I was eager to do so, and took great pleasure in doing so. I

wanted to be many women to him, and yet the same, always El-in-or. A man is a

strange beast I think, for he both desires one woman and many women, and perhaps

most he desires one woman who will be to him many women, others, delicious

others, and yet always, too, herself. I became many women to Rask of Treve,

fresh females, yet again El-in-or. Sometimes I would be a new girl, frightened,

young, much fearing him, as Techne might have been; sometimes I would be as

though of the scribes, much as Inge might have been, refined, dismayed at her

fate’ sometimes as a fine lady, of wealth and position, of high caste, as Rena

had been, who now must find herself to be humbled as a mere, rightless, collared

(pg. 353) wench’ and sometimes I would be a lonely slave, or a drunken slave, or

a defiant girl, determined to resist, or a cruel red-silk slave, determined

herself to conquer, and in all this, always, his El-in-or.

But, too, sometimes Rask of Treve, after touching me, would hold me, and kiss

me, for long hours. I did not truly understand him in these hours, but in his

arms lay content and fulfilled. And then one night, when the fires were low, for

no reason I clearly understood, I begged that I might be permitted to know him.

“Speak to me of yourself,” he said. I told him of my childhood, my girlhood, and

my parents, and the pet my mother had poisoned, and of New York, and my world,

and my capture, and my life before it had begun, before he had seen me naked in

the cell of the Ko-ro-ban pens. And, too, in various nights, he had spoken to me

of himself, and of the death of his parents, and of his training as a boy in

Treve, and his learning of the ways of tarns and of the steel of weapons. He had

cared for flowers, but had not dared to reveal this. It seemed so strange, he,

such a man, caring for flowers. I kissed him. But I feared, that he had told me

this. I do not think there was another to whom he had ever spoken this small and

delicate thing.

We had begun to take long walks beyond the palisade, hand in hand. We had much

spoken, and much loved, and much spoken. It was as though I might not have been

his slave. It was then that I had begun to fear that he would sell me.

Oh when his need was upon him he would sometimes use me as a slave girl, with

harsh authority, sometimes even making me suffer under his domination, and, too,

sometimes when my need was upon me I would beg him for chains and cords, that I

might be fully owned, or would present myself to him as a contemptuous, untamed

girl, who must be conquered, provoking him to my utter conquest, but, too, now,

we would sometimes love tenderly, and at sweet length. It depended much upon our

moods. Sometimes we were master and slave, and sometimes we were something else,

that I dare not speak, but I feared now, (pg. 354) much, that he would sell me.

For what place could there be for this other thing in the war camp of Rask of

Treve.

But mostly we sported and pleasured, hiding from ourselves this other thing,

both of us perhaps not wishing to speak it. In one week I had even begged him to

place in my nose the tiny golden ring of a Tuchuk slave girl, and in that week I

had served him as such, clad even in the Kalmak, Chatka and Curla, my hair bound

back with the red Koora. In another week, I had, the nose ring removed, served

him as a Torian girl, and in another as a simple wench of Laura, and in another

as an exquisite pleasure slave of Ar.

Then one day we had done little but speak to one another, at great length, with

much gentleness and intimacy, and in the night, after our lovings, had spoken

together, long, lying before the fire. He had held me, sadly. I had known then

that he would sell me.

In the morning, after I had returned to the shed, he again summoned me to his

tent.

“Kneel,” he had said.

I did so, his slave.

“I am tired of you,” he told me, suddenly, angrily.

I put down my head.

“I am going to sell you,” he said.

“I know,” I said, “master.”

“Leave, Slave,” he said.

“Yes, Maser,” I said.

I did not weep until I returned to the shed.

I felt the knots of my wrists being checked, and I winced, as they were

tightened. Then my throat, by the straps, was drawn back tighter against the

wicker, and this bond, too, was tightened. The other girls, too, winced in

protest, some crying out.

I had asked one thing of Rask of Treve, before, stripped, I had entered the tarn

basket.

“Free Ute,” I had asked him.

He had looked at me strangely. Then he had said. “I will.”

Ute, freed, might then do what she wished. she might go to Rarir, or Teletus, I

supposed. But I knew that she would (pg. 355) seek out one named Barus, of the

Leather Workers, whose name she had often moaned in her sleep. I did not even

know his city.

“Into the basket,” had said the man who would fly the tarn.

“Yes, Master,” I had said to him. I was no longer the slave of Rask of Treve. I

now belonged to this stranger, to whom I, and the others, had submitted

ourselves. It was he, now, who held absolute power over my life and body. There

was now a fresh, but locked, steel collar on my throat.

The man now was checking the knots at the lid of the basket. It was tight. Our

ankles were bound together at the center of the basket; our wrists were bound

behind our back, to the wicker; our throats were independently secured, the

knots outside, keeping us in place. He had finished his lunch. We were stripped,

helpless slave girls, his.

I had been sold for nine pieces of gold.

The man mounted to the saddle of the tarn. The tarn screamed and began to beat

its wings. Then the basket jerked forward, on its leather runners, and skidded

across the clearing, and then, swung below the tarn.

I was on my way to the market.

* * *

I was sold from the great block of the Curulean, in Ar, for twelve pieces of

gold, purchased by the master of a paga tavern, who thought his patrons might

enjoy amusing themselves with me, a girl who wore penalty brands.

I served for months in the paga tavern. Among those I served were guards,

formerly of the caravan of Targo. They were kind to me. One was the fellow whom

I had fought, by the fire, but to whom I must now completely yield. Another was

the guard who had escorted me to the house of the physician, whom I had once

provoked. Another was the one who had caught me, when I had fled from the hut in

the forest, and returned me to Targo. And there, too, were others, even he who

had driven the slave wagon in which I had been often confined; even he who had

first harnessed me to the tongue of Targo’s one wagon, when I had first been

captured by him. after serving them completely I would press them with questions

of Targo, and the other guards, and their slaves. They told me much. Targo had

recovered many girls, and was now rich. He was intending another trip northward,

though not to do business with Haakon of Skjern. The men I served, Targo’s men,

and others, who might have me for the price of a cup of paga, I gave much

pleasure, and from them, too, I received much pleasure. But none of them were

Rask of Treve. That master had won the heart of the slave girl who was Elinor

Brinton. She could not forget him.

Then one night I heard, “I will buy her,” and I stood transfixed with fear. I

could scarcely pour the paga into his cup. The bells on my ankles and wrists

rustled. I felt his hand on the bit of diaphanous yellow silk I wore in the

tavern. “I will buy her,” he said. It was the small man, who had touched me

intimately when I had lain bound in my own bed on Earth, the small man who had

threatened me in the hut in the northern forests, who had been the mountebank,

the master, I had thought, of the strange beast, the terrible beast. It was the

man who had wanted me to poison someone. I knew not who.

His hand was now locked on my wrist. I had not escaped him. “I will buy her,” he

said. “I will buy her.”

* * *

The small man bought me for fourteen pieces of gold. I was taken, on tarnback,

braceleted and hooded, to the city of Port Kar, in the delta of the mighty Vosk.

In a warehouse, near the piers, I knelt, head down, at their feet.

“I will not serve you,” I said.

The small man was there, and the beast, squatting, shaggy, regarding me, and,

too, to my surprise, Haakon of Skjern.

“I have felt the iron,” I said. “I have felt the whip. I will not kill for you.

You may kill me, but I will not kill for you.”

They did not beat me, nor threaten me.

They lifted me by the arm, and dragged me to a side room.

(pg. 357) I screamed. There, his wrists bound by ropes to rings, stood a

bloodied man, head down, stripped to the waist.

“Eleven men died,” said Haakon of Skjern,” but we have him.”

The man lifted his head, and shook it, clearing his vision. “El-in-or?’ he said.

“Master!” I wept.

I pressed myself to him.

He regarded them. Then he said to me, “I am of Treve. Do not stain my honor.”

By the hair I was dragged from the presence of Rask of Treve, and his head,

again, fell forward on his chest.

The door closed.

“In time,” said the small man, “you will receive a packet of poison.”

I nodded, numbly. Rask of Treve must not die! He must not die!

“You will be placed in the house of Bosk, a merchant of Port Kar,” he said. “You

will be placed in the kitchen of that house, and you will be used to serve his

table.”

“I can’t,” I wept. “I cannot kill!”

“Then Rask of Treve dies,” said the small man. Haakon of Skjern laughed.

The small man held up a tiny packet. “This,” he said, “is the poison, a powder

prepared from the venom of the ost.”

I shuddered. Death by ost venom is among the most hideous of deaths.

I wondered how it was that they could so hate this man, he called Bosk of Port

Kar.

“You will comply?” asked the small man.

I nodded my head.

* * *

“Wine, El-in-or!” cried Publius, master of the kitchen of Bosk of Port Kar.

“Take wine to the table!”

Numbly, shaking, I took the vessel of wine. I went to the door of the kitchen,

and went through the hallway, and stopped before the back entrance to the hall.

(pg. 358) It had not been as hard as I had feared to be entered into the house.

I was sold, for fifteen pieces of gold, to the house of Samos, a slaver of Port

Kar. Samos himself was abroad upon Thassa, in ventures of piracy and

enslavement, and it was through a subordinate that I was purchased. Publius, the

kitchen master of the house of Bosk, drunken, in a dicing match, in a paga

tavern of Port Kar, had learned that there was an interesting girl, newly

brought to the house of Samos, one who had been trained in the pens of Ko-ro-ba,

one who wore the brand of Treve. It was also said that she was beautiful.

Publius, who would, upon occasion, need new girls in the kitchen, as others were

given away or sold, was intrigued. I suspect he seldom had the opportunity to

chain trained pleasure slaves to the wall of his kitchen after the completion of

the evening’s work.

The subordinate, though in the absence of Samos, thinking to please him, sold me

to Publius for only fifteen pieces of gold, which price he had paid. I was thus,

in effect, in part, a gift to the house of Bosk from the house of Samos. The

house of Bosk and the house of Samos, it seemed, stood on good terms, the one

with the other. Both Samos and Bosk, it seems, were members of the Council of

Captains, the sovereign power in Port Kar.

I liked the house of Bosk, which was much fortified, spacious and clean. I was