Conspirators of Gor (44 page)

I knew I was to hurry home.

But might it not, if I should move, leap forward, reach out, and seize me?

I unlatched the half-gate of the stall. Surely I was not going to exit the stall where the one side had once stood, until broken away by the beast, for that opening was behind it. I would have to pass the beast. I was very quiet in unlatching the gate, but there was a tiny sound, and the ears moved alertly, slightly, forward, toward that tiny sound.

I rose to my feet, and, not taking my eyes off the large, crouching, dark shape across the stall, opened the gate, and backed through. I was then a few feet outside the stall. I heard the beast strike against the wood, and then, feeling for the opening, pull the gate from its hinges. A sweeping paw convinced it that the opening was not to its liking. Wood was torn aside, and the thing was outside the stall.

There had been noise when it had torn away the frontage of the stall, a brief, clear shattering of the market’s silence, which I trusted no one heard, and now, too, though less, when it tore away the gate and forcibly enlarged the threshold, that its bulk, paws extended before it, might exit frontally. Kurii, I would later learn, tend to avoid constricted spaces, and will seldom enter a space which has but a single opening. A narrow space is one in which it may be difficult to defend oneself, and a space with but a single opening is a space in which one might be cornered, or trapped.

The beast and I, separated by some feet, faced one another.

I heard a voice, behind me, one I recognized.

“Get behind me,” it said.

“Master!” I breathed. “You live!”

“The thing is dangerous,” he said. “Get behind me.”

“I feared you slain,” I whispered.

There was a low, growling sound from the beast. Clearly it was uncertain as to what was occurring.

I did not turn around. I did not wish to take my eyes from the beast.

“Please, leave, Master,” I whispered. “I am sure it is more dangerous to you than to me.”

“Oh!” I said, startled, for a leash loop was dropped about my head, pulled close, and snapped shut. I was leashed!

“I see, barbarian,” he said, “you must be taught to obey.”

How I would have been terrified to hear those words, under different circumstances! But I needed not be taught to obey; the former Allison Ashton-Baker, on Gor, had well learned how to obey!

“Flee, Master,” I whispered. “It may not kill you. I think myself in small danger. I think you are in great danger.”

A hand on my arm, my right arm, jerked me to the side, and back, over an extended foot, and I sprawled, twisting, to the stones of the market. It is a simple, effective, unpleasant, crude way to put a slave to her belly. The leash was now behind me, looping up to his hand. I twisted about, to my side. “Run, Master!” I said. “I have no way to communicate with it. Run, run, Master!”

But he stood between me and the beast.

He cast down the leash, back. The strap was over my legs.

“Run, Master!” I begged.

He stood between me and the beast.

He was unarmed!

There could be no mistaking then the menace in the sound which now emanated from the throat of the beast.

It did not know what was occurring. It was impatient. It was growing angry. It was displeased.

He waved his arm, angrily. “Begone!” he said. “Away! Away!”

“Run, Master!” I begged. “Please, run, Master!”

But he stood his ground, and would not abandon me.

Clearly the beast, blind as it was, must be aware that I was not in motion, and that something, with a different scent, a different voice, belligerent and obstructive, now stood between us.

I would have given much for a translator.

“Away!” he cried to the beast.

At that moment the beast hurled itself forward, with startling, incredible swiftness, and I saw him whom I had earlier sought, him whom I had earlier feared lost, dismembered, on Clive, struck to the side with a reckless, wide, sweeping, indiscriminate, mighty blow, one that might have loosened or dislodged planking or a beam. The Metal Worker was flung a dozen paces to the side, to strike amongst chests and boxes beside a stall. I saw him struggle to his feet, amongst the debris, waver, and then fall.

I had heard no snapping of a neck or spine.

I think he was then unconscious, or half unconscious.

I feared the beast might then go to the body and, while it yet lived, begin to feed, but, rather, it turned, again, to face me.

I rejoiced, even in my terror for his life, that the Metal Worker lived. It was not he then but, I supposed, one of his caste, who had perished on Clive, or in the vicinity of Clive.

But then I recalled that he was naught but another arrogant Gorean brute with little respect for women, a natural master, who would survey women appraisingly, conjecturing what value they might possess, if any, in a collar. There was a leash on my neck. I pulled at it. It was his! I feared it was locked there.

I tore, futilely, at the leash!

I was pleased that he lived, if only that I might despise him the more, and loathe him ever the more deeply.

How dared he put me on a leash?

But I was, of course, a slave.

I was thus fittingly to be leashed, thonged, braceleted, roped, chained, gagged, blindfolded, should masters please.

The beast was facing me.

I had a sense of its power, from the stall, the broken wood, from the strength of Lord Grendel, as one of its sort, from killings in the streets of Ar, from the improbable, sightless blow it had delivered, which had struck a large, grown man stumbling, reeling, yards to the side.

I fear I then lost what little nerve or courage I might have had, for I turned about, and, frantic, wanting only to escape, sped toward the perimeter of the market. I knew I could not outrun the thing, but I could see, and it could not. Surely then one might be able to elude it!

I kept hearing it behind me, and then I did not hear it, and, then, suddenly, it was almost at my side, reaching out.

I realized then how foolish my flight had been.

It might not be able to see, but it could hear, and it could take my scent, mine, I suppose, and, more importantly, that of Lord Grendel. Indeed, why else, unless to feed, would it follow me? It smelled Kur about me, and was following me, to make contact with another, or others, of its kind.

How it must have welcomed the message which I bore, a message I would not even have known I bore, had it not been for the words of Lord Grendel.

Did it know I had tried to escape?

If it did, it did not seem to object, perhaps for it knew also that I could not escape.

I feared I might be killed, for my flight, but it was crouched near me, unperturbed, expectantly. From my experience with Lord Grendel, I realized it was not angry.

Then I realized it would not kill me, of course, at least not now, for I was the link between it and one or more of its kind, the key to its rejoining one or more of its kind.

I sank weakly to my knees.

I became aware that the beast had picked up my leash. I was then startled, for it had snapped the leash, twice. I responded instantly, as the trained beast I was. When I was standing, and I stood very straight, shoulders back, belly in, slender, and slimly erect, as one must, for one is a slave, the leash was snapped again, once. That is the signal to move. It is common, as in promenades, when the slave is to precede her master. If the slave follows her master, no such signal is required. The pressure on the collar ring makes clear that she is to move, as any other owned, tethered beast. I then began to make my way, preceding the monster, on its leash, toward the shop of Epicrates. I now knew it, as Lord Grendel, was not only rational, but informed. It knew how to manage slaves, how to handle and control them, and what to do with them. Perhaps, on some world or other, it even owned slaves. I was also now more willing to credit Antiope’s conjecture that slaves were exempt from the predations of the beast, or beasts, in the street. The slave, after all, as the free woman does not, has uses. Of what value is a woman, save for her pretensions and vanities, until she is collared, after which she will learn there are uses, a large number of them, to which she may be put? The free woman may be beheaded or impaled; the slave, an animal, will be preserved and protected, to be distributed or sold.

How was it, I wondered, that the Metal Worker had been in the vicinity of the market of Cestias tonight?

He stalks me, I thought. He finds me of interest. He wants me. It is not unusual, of course, for a man to want a slave. What male does not want one or more slaves?

Well, I thought, he, the arrogant brute, will never have me!

He knew my name. I recalled that from the vicinity of Six Bridges. So he must have made inquiries. Yes, I thought, the curves of this slim barbarian have intrigued the mighty master.

Let him pine then in vain!

I recalled how he had commanded me to my knees in the Sul Market, leaving me half-stripped and tied at his feet, how he had pressed himself upon me in the vicinity of Six Bridges, I unable to resist.

I did not even know his name.

I wondered if he were truly of the Metal Workers.

How I despised him!

He would never have me. I would run away. To be sure, it is hard to run farther than the length of the chain on one’s ankle.

I wondered what it would be like to be in his arms.

Would he find me pleasing, acceptable, as a slave? I knew that I, a slave, would have to do my best to please him, and in all the ways of the slave. The slave has no choice in such things, nor does she want one. She soon learns to beg, even pathetically, that she may be permitted to so serve.

How humble, and hopeful, she is, at the feet of her master!

Once, but only once, we were in the vicinity of guardsmen, two, one with a lantern. The beast would not know they were guardsmen, but he must have heard their footsteps, and voices, two voices, male voices. He drew me back, into a small side street, little more than a space between buildings, from which we had just emerged, for I had sought a most clandestine, unfrequented route to the shop of Epicrates, and, holding me tightly against him, covered my mouth tightly with one vast paw. I could not have begun to utter a sound.

The guardsmen passed.

I thought the guardsmen were fortunate that they had not discovered us. Even blind I had little doubt that the beast, from a small sound, the scrape of a boot on the stones, from the movement of a weapon departing from a sheath, from breathing, might locate an enemy. In such an altercation I would run or throw myself to my belly and cover my head with my hands. In such an altercation three might die.

We reached the shop of Epicrates well before the bar signifying the end of curfew. In another Ahn or so, some of the smaller gates would open, and many Peasants, with their baskets and sacks of fresh produce, would begin to make their way to the various markets in the city.

It was with relief that I, on the beast’s leash, it following me, slipped into the doorway to the left of the shuttered front of the shop, and climbed the stairs to the domicile of the Lady Bina and Lord Grendel.

The Lady Bina was asleep, but Lord Grendel was waiting for us.

I collapsed to the floor of the domicile.

I was aware of low noises from the beasts, conversing in Kur.

Shortly after dawn the lantern on its pole at the edge of the market of Cestias would be extinguished, and, a bit later, the market pennon would be hoisted to the height of the pole, above the lantern arm, after which, at the praetor’s signal, guardsmen would open the market.

There would doubtless be some speculation as to the damage undergone by one of the coin stalls.

I then fell asleep.

Chapter Sixteen

“Are you comfortable?” he asked.

“You!” I cried.

His head was thrust through the curtain, at the front of the wagon. His smile was that of a master, gazing on a slave.

I drew back, with a rattle of chain in the wagon bed, the chain sliding along the central bar. I was the only girl in the wagon. It was drawn by a tharlarion. The canvas was a common white, not the blue-and-yellow covering, sometimes silk, usually decorating, covering, a slave wagon. The central bar runs linearly the length of the wagon bed. It is hinged at the forward end and fits into a coupling, within which it is commonly locked, at the back end of the wagon bed. My ankles were shackled, and a foot of chain joined them, the chain looped about the central bar. If one wishes to remove a girl from such a wagon, one either unshackles her, or, more commonly, that she remain ankle-shackled, for example, in a camp, one lowers the back of the wagon and unlocks the bar from the coupling at the rear of the wagon, which, lifted, allows the girl to leave the central bar and wagon.

I moved toward the rear of the wagon and covered myself, as I could.

“Do not bother,” he said. “I like you naked.”