Hunters of Gor (23 page)

on Earth many men did not even know their wives. They did not truly look upon

them. Never, truly, had they seen them. But a Gorean master will know every

inch, and care for every inch, of one of his slave girls. He will know every

hair, every sweet blemish of her. In a way she is nothing to him, for she is

only slave. But in another way she is very important to him. She is one of his

women. He will know her. He will want to know her completely, every inch of her

body, every inch of her mind. Nothing less will satisfy him. She is his

property. He will choose to know his property thoroughly.

For a long time Marlenus studied the expressions on Verna’s face. I had thought

that her face was expressionless, but, as I, too, studied it, looking upon it

with great attention and care. I saw that it was marvelous and changing and

subtle. And I understood then that our simple words for emotions, such as pride,

and hate, and fear, are gross and inadequate. The sharpened stone clutched in

the hand of a shambling beast is a delicate instrument compared to the clumsy

noises, these piteous vocabularies, with which we, unwary men, dare to speak of

realities. I know of no language in which the truth may be spoken. The truth can

be seen, and felt, and known, but I do not think it may be spoken. Each of us

learns it, but none of us, I think, can tell another what it is.

Marlenus looked up at me.

He nodded with his head toward the line of girls, pressed back on the grass,

steel at their throats, struggling bound in the arms of captors.

“You may have any of them, if you wish,” said Marlenus.

“No, Ubar,” I told him.

After an Ahn Marlenus said. “We shall return to Verna’s camp. We shall spend the

night there. In the morning we shall return to my camp, north of Laura.”

He rose to his feet.

“Present the slaves,” said Marlenus, “to their leader.”

One by one, the girls, their wrists still bound behind their back, their right

ankles still in coffle, were dragged before Verna.

Some struggled. Few held up their heads.

“Verna!” wept one. “Verna!”

Verna did not speak to her.

Then the girls, in coffle, were led away into the darkness, herded by the butts

of spears. Some wept.

“At your camp,” Marlenus informed Verna, “we will put them in proper chains.”

Marlenus then released Verna’s wrists, and her right ankle. She was still bound

to a stake by the left ankle.

“Stand,” he said.

She did so.

“Bracelets,” he said.

She looked at him, with hatred.

“Bracelets,” he snapped.

She put her head in the air and placed her hands behind her back.

Marlenus locked bracelets on her. They were slave bracelets.

“Have you no heavier chains?” she asked.

“Free yourself,” said Marlenus.

The girl struggled, helplessly. In the end she was, of course, as perfectly

secured as before.

“They are slave bracelets,” said Marlenus. “They are quite adequate to hold a

woman.”

Verna shook with fury, and turned her head away.

Marlenus then took a length of binding fiber, of some eight feet in length, and

knotted one end of it about Verna’s throat. The other end he looped twice about

his belt.

He then bent down and, with his sleen knife, slashed the binding fiber that

still fastened her left ankle to the stake.

Verna was now free of the stakes. She had exchanged the bondage of the stakes

for that of bracelets and leash.

She looked at him. She stood before him, her wrists fastened behind her back,

her neck in his tether.

“Are you always victorious, Marlenus of Ar?” she asked.

“Lead us, little tabuk,” said Marlenus, “to your stall.”

She turned about, in fury, her head in the air, and led us through the darkness

toward her camp.

“We have much to talk about,” Marlenus was telling me. “It has been long since

we have seen one another.”

11
   
Marlenus Holds a Flaminium

In the camp of Marlenus, some pasangs north of Laura, I supped with the great

Ubar.

His hunting tent, hung on its eight great poles, was open at the sides. From

where we sat, cross-legged, across from one another, before the low table, I

could see the tent ropes stretched taut to stakes in the ground, the drainage

ditch cut around the base of the tent, the wall of saplings, sharpened, which

surrounded the camp. I could see, too, Marlenus’ men at their fires and

shelters. Here and there were piled boxes, and rolls of canvas, and, too, at

places, were poles and frames on which skins were stretched, trophies of his

luck in the sport. He had, too, taken two sleen alive, and four panthers, and

these were in stout cages of wood, lashed together with leather.

“Wine,” said Marlenus.

He was served by the beautiful slave girl.

“Would you care for a game?” asked Marlenus, indicating a board and pieces which

stood to one side. The pieces, tall, weighted, stood ready on their first

squares.

“No,” I said to him. I was not in a mood for the game.

I had played Marlenus before. His attack was fierce, devastating, sometimes

reckless. I myself am an aggressive player, but against Marlenus it seemed

always necessary to defend. Against him one played defensively, conservatively,

postitionally, waiting, waiting for the tiny misjudgment, the small error or

mistake. But it was seldom made.

Marlenus was a superb player.

He had not been able to handle me as well as he liked on the board. This had

whetted his appetite to crush me. He had not been able to do so. In the past

year, in Port Kar, I had grown much fond of the game. I had tried to play

frequently with players of strength superior to my own. I found myself often,

eventually, capable of beating them. Then I would seek others, stronger still. I

had studied, too, the games of masters, in particular those of the young,

handsome, lame fiery Scormus of Ar, and of the much older, almost legendary

master of Cos, gentle, white-haired Centius, he of the famed Centian opening.

Scormus was fierce, arrogant and brilliant. The medallion and throne of Centius

was no, by many, said to be his. But there were those who did not agree. The

hand of Centius now sometimes shook, and it seemed his eyes did not see the

board as once they did. But there few men on Gor who did not fear as the hand of

Centius thrust forth his Ubar’s Tarnsman to Physician Seven. It was said that

Scormus of Ar and Centius of Cos would sometime meet at the great fair of

En’kara, in the shadow of the Sardar. Never as yet had the two sat across from

one another. Cos, like Tyros, is a traditional enemy of Ar. It was said that Gor

awaited this meeting. Already weights of gold had been wagered on its outcome.

Players, incidentally, are free to travel where they wish on the surface of Gor,

no matter what might be their city. By custom, they, like musicians, and like

singers, there are few courts at which they are not welcome. That he had once

played a man such as Scormus of Ar, or Centius of Cos it the sort of thing that

a Gorean grandfather will boast of to his grandchildren.

“Very well,” said Marlenus. “Then we shall not, now, play.”

I held forth my cup, for wine. The slave girl filled it.

“When will you fare forth to an exchange point?” I asked.

Marlenus had now been in his camp for five days, hunting. He had made no effort

to reach the exchange point, or its vicinity, where Talena was held slave. It

would lie through the forests to the west, above Lydius, on the coast of Thassa.

“I have not yet finished hunting,” said Marlenus. He was in no hurry to free

Talena.

“A citizen of Ar,” I said, “lies slave.”

“I have little interest,” said Marlenus, “in slaves.”

“She is a citizen of Ar,” I said.

Marlenus looked down into his cup, swirling the liquid. “Once, perhaps,” said

Marlenus, “she was a citizen of Ar.”

I looked at him.

“She is no longer a citizen of Ar,” said Marlenus. “She is a slave.”

In the eyes of Goreans, and Gorean law, the slave is an animal. She is not a

person, but an animal. She has no name, saving what her master might choose to

call her. She is without caste. She is without citizenship. She is simply an

object, to be bartered, or bought or sold. She is simply an article of property,

completely, nothing more.

“She is Talena,” I said.

“I know of no person by that name,” said Marlenus.

“Surely,” I said, “you will have pity on a slave, however unworthy, who was once

a citizen of Ar?”

“I shall free her, or have her freed,” said Marlenus. He looked down. Then he

looked up at me. “I will send men to free her, while I return to Ar,” he said.

“I see,” I said.

“But,” said Marlenus, “I think I will have a few days hunting first.”

I shrugged. “I see,” I said, “Ubar.”

Marlenus snapped his fingers, pointing to his cup on the table.

The slave girl came forward, from where she knelt to one side, and, kneeling,

from a two-handled vessel, filled it. She was very beautiful.

“I, too, shall have wine,” I said.

She filled my cup. Our eyes met. She looked down. She was barefoot. Her one

garment was a brief slip of diaphanous yellow silk. Her brand was clearly

visible beneath it, high on the left thigh. On her throat, half concealed by her

long blond hair, was a collar of steel, the steel of Ar.

“Leave us, Slave,” said Marlenus.

She did so.

The girl had been beaten earlier in the afternoon. She had run away. Marlenus,

with two huntsmen, had taken her within the Ahn. Marlenus, who had hunted in the

forests since his boyhood, was a master of woodcraft. She had been unable to

elude him. Dazed, shocked, she had been swiftly caught and returned to camp.

Marlenus had then handed her over to a huntsman. She had been stripped and,

hands tied over her head to a post, had been given ten lashes. Marlenus, and

most of those about the camp, had not bothered to watch. It was simply a slave

girl being punished. The punishment was so light because it was the first time

the girl had attempted to run away. Also, she was new to her collar, and did not

yet fully understand the futility of her condition. During her beating, and

afterward, Marlenus and I had been engaged in playing the game. Her had beaten

me once, and I had drawn twice. After her beating, she had been left bound to

the post for two Ahns. When Marlenus ordered her freed from the post, he stood

nearby. “Do not attempt to run away again,” he told her, and then turned away.

Verna made a beautiful slave girl. She was exquisitely bodied, extremely

intelligent and extremely proud.

Marlenus treated her no differently than any other new girl.

This infuriated Verna. She had been one of the most famed outlaw women on Gor.

In the camp of Marlenus she was only another girl.

Long ago, more than a year ago, when he had first captured Verna on a hunting

expedition, prior to her escape and acquisition of Talena, and her return to the

forests, he had intended to bring her to Ar in triumph and there, in the great

square before Ar’s central cylinder, publicly enslave her. This time, he had put

the iron to her, and her girls, the first night he had arrived in his camp north

of Laura, as though they might have been the meanest of captures. She had been

branded eleventh, casually and insolently, in her turn, for that had been her

place in the slave coffle when the camp had been reached. With a similar lack of

ceremony Marlenus had fastened her collar on her.

But in some respects Marlenus had treated her differently from the others, as

more of a slave, more of a common girl. The others were treated, for the time,

more as panther girls. She was treated more as a common wench, who might have

been any slave girl.

The panther girls, in Marlenus’ camp, though they were kept chained, were

permitted to wear the skins of panthers.

Verna had stood before him, waiting to be given the skins of panthers. Instead,

she had been thrown slave silk.

“Put it on,” had said Marlenus.

She had done so.

I noted, and I do not doubt but that it was detected, too, by Marlenus, that her

body, as she drew the brief, exotic, degrading silk about her, subtly and

mistakably, was shaken by an involuntary tremor of sensuality. Then she was

again Verna. I suppose it was the first time her body had felt silk. I have

often wondered at the excitement generated in women by the simple feel of silk

on their bodies. I gather that it is a sensuous experience. Surely it would be

difficult for a woman to wear silk and not, by that much more, be aware of her

womanhood. But perhaps Verna’s response was not simply to silk. Indeed, that

would hardly account for the totality of her involuntary response, her body’s

betrayal. It was not ordinary silk Marlenus had thrown to her. It was not

ordinary silk which she then, for the first time, felt on her body. It was the

softest and finest of diaphanous silks, clinging and betraying. It had been

milled to reveal a woman most exquisitely and beautifully to a master. It was

brief, exotic, humiliating, degrading. It was, of course, slave silk. I wondered