Hunters of Gor (51 page)

I nodded.

Picking up the switch from the sand, with which Ilene had often beaten her, she

struck her.

Ilene cried out. “Please do not beat me!” she wept. “Please do not beat me,

Mistress!”

“I do not choose,” said Rissia, “to comply with the request of a slave.”

She beat Ilene until Ilene wept and screamed, and then could weep and scream no

more.

Then she threw aside the switch and disappeared into the forest.

Ilene, tears in her eyes, her head turned to the side, lay on her stomach in the

sand, confined in the sirik. The entire back of her body was hot and bright with

the scarlet marks of the switch.

“To your knees,” I told her.

Ilene struggled to her knees, and looked up at me.

“Take her to the Tesephone,” I told two of my men, “and put her in the hold with

the other female slaves.”

“Please, Master,” wept the girl.

“And then,” said I, “see that she is sold in Port Kar.”

Weeping, Ilene, the Earth-girl slave, was dragged from my presence. She would be

sold in Port Kar, a great slave-clearing port. Perhaps she would be sold south

to Shendi or Bazi, or north to a jarl of Torvaldsland, Scagnar or Hunjer, or

across Thassa to Tabor or Asperiche, or taken up the Vosk in a cage to an island

city, perhaps eventually to find herself in Ko-ro-ba, Thentis or Tharna, or even

Ar itself. Perhaps she would be carried south in tarn caravans, or by slave

wagons of the Wagon Peoples, the Tuchuks, the Kassars, the Kataii, the Paravaci.

Perhaps she would be, even, the slave of peasants. It was not known where the

lovely Ilene would wear her collar; it was known, though, that she would wear

it, and wear it well; a Gorean master would see to that.

I looked to the beacon. I looked, too, to the Tesephone. Rim’s men had the Rhoda

ready for the tide.

“Carry my chair,’ I said, “to the longboat.”

Four crewmen reached to lift the chair.

“Wait,” I said.

“Captain!” called a voice. “I have caught two women!”

I saw one of my men, one of those set at guard about the beach.

He approached, pushing two captives before him. They wore the skins of panther

girls. Their hands were tied behind their backs. They were fastened together by

a single branch, tied behind their backs.

I did not recognize the,’

“They were spying,” said her.

“No,” said one. “We were looking for Verna.”

“Strip them,” I said. It is easier to get a woman to talk when she is nude.

It was done.

I knew who these women must be.

“Speak,” I said to the comeliest of the two.

“We were in the hire of Verna,” she said, “but we are not of her band.”

“You task,” I told them, “was to guard a female slave.”

They looked at me, startled. “Yes,” she said.

“This slave,” I said, “was the daughter of Marlenus of Ar.”

“Yes,” whispered one.

“Where is she?’ I demanded.

“When Marlenus disowned her,” said one, frightened, “and she was no longer of

value, Verna, through Mira, instructed us to dispose of her, taking a price on

her.”

“For what did she sell?” I asked.

“For ten gold pieces,” said the comeliest of the two captives.

“It is a high price for a wench without caste of family,” I said.

“She is very beautiful,” said one of the girls.

The other wench looked at me. “Did the captain wish her?” she asked.

I smiled. “I might have bought her.” I said.

“We did not know!” cried the comely girl. “Do not punish us, Captain!”

“Do you still have the money?” I asked.

“In my pouch,” cried the comelier of the two captives.

I gestured to Thurnock and he gave me the pouch. With my right hand I counted

out the ten gold pieces. I held them in the palm of my right hand. It was the

closest I had come to Talena in many years. I closed my hand on the coins. I was

bitter. I threw them before the captive women.

“Free them,” I told Thurnock. “let them go.”

They looked at me, startled. Their bonds were removed. They drew on again the

skins of panthers.

“Find Verna in the forest,” I told them. “Give her the coins.”

“Will you not keep us as slave girls?” asked one.

“No,” I told them. “Find Verna. Give her the coins. They are hers. Tell her that

the woman brought a good price because, though she had neither caste nor family,

she is very beautiful.”

“We will do so, Captain,” said the comelier of the two.

They prepared to depart.

“To whom,” I asked, “did you sell the slave?”

“To the first ship which chanced by,” said the comelier of the girls.

“Who was its captain?” I asked.

She looked at me. “Samos,” she said. “Samos, of Port Kar.”

I gestured that they might leave.

“Lift my chair,” said I to the crewmen. “I would return to the Tesephone.”

That night, sitting on the stern castle of the Tesephone, I looked north and

eastward.

The sky to the north and east was bright. On the western coast of Thassa, high

above Lydius, on a remote, stony beach, a beacon burned, marking a place on the

coast where there had once stood a stockade, where men had fought, where deeds

had transpired.

We had poured oil, and wine and salt into the sea. We were enroute to Port Kar.

Before we had left the shore we had set the beacon afire. I could still see its

light.

I did not think I would ever forget it. I sat on the stern castle, wrapped in

blankets, looking back.

I recalled Arn, and Rim and Thurnock, and Hura and Mira, and Verna and Grenna,

and Sheera. I recalled Marlenus of Ar and Sarus of Tyros. I recalled Ilene. I

recalled Rissia. I recalled them all. We had come to Lydius and Laura, and the

northern forests.

Bosk of Port Kar, so wise, so bold and arrogant, had come mightily to the

northern forests. Now, like a maimed larl, heavy, bitter, weighty with pain, he

returned to his lair. He looked back, noting in the sky the light of a beacon,

one which burned on a deserted shore.

Few would see the beacon. Few would know why it burned. I myself did not know.

In time there would be only ashes, and they would be swept away in the rain and

the wind. The tracks of sea birds might, like the thief’s brand, be found in the

sand, but they too, in time, would be washed away.

I would not see Talena in Port Kar. I would have her returned to Marlenus of Ar.

I was cold. I could not feel the left side of my body.

“A good wind, Captain,” said Thurnock.

“Yes, Thurnock,” I said. “It is a fair wind.”

I could hear the snapping of the tarn sail of the Tesephone.

I heard Thurnock’s steps going down to the deck from the stern castle.

I wondered if Pa-Kur, Master of the Assassins, yet lived. I thought it not

impossible.

I heard the creak of the rudder.

I had, in my fever and delirium, cried the name of Vella. I did not understand

this, for I no longer cared for her. She had once resisted my will.

She had fled from the Sardar, when I, in her own best interest, would have

returned her safe to Earth.

It had been a brave act.

But she had fallen slave.

She had gambled. She had lost. I had left her slave. “You do not know what it is

to be a paga slave!” she had cried. I had left her in the collar of Sarpedon,

only another wench, slave in a paga tavern in Lydius.

She had begged for me to buy her. She had begged as a slave.

I laughed.

She was a slave. She would stay a slave.

I do not know why I had cried her name. As a free man I had no interest in slave

girls, save for the brief use of their bodies.

On the arm of the captain’s chair, my fist clenched.

In the distance I could see light in the sky, the illumination from the beacon

which I had ordered set on a remote, deserted beach, high above Lydius on the

coast of Thassa.

I myself did not know why it burned. Perhaps it served simply to mark a place on

the beach, which, for a time, the flames might remember.

I had, for an Ahn, at that place, recollected my honor. Let that be commemorated

by the flames.

Let the fire, if not men, remember what had once there occurred.

“Thurnock!” I cried. “I am cold! Bring crewmen! Carry me to my cabin!”

“Yes, Captain,” called Thurnock.

In the morning there would be only ashes, and they would be swept away in the

rain, and the wind. The tracks of sea birds might, too, like the thief’s brand,

be found in the sand. Too, in time, they would wash away.

“Thurnock!” I cried.

As the chair was lifted, I looked once more to the northeast. The sky still

glowed. I was not dissatisfied that I had set the beacon. It did not matter to

me that few would see it. It did not matter to me that none would understand it.

I myself did not know, truly, why it burned but it had seemed important to me to

set it.

“Carry me to my cabin,” I said.

“Yes, Captain,” said Thurnock.

“It is a fair wind,” said one of the crewmen, as the door to my cabin shut.

“That it is,” said Thurnock. “That it is.”