Nomads of Gor (88 page)

    
"Will you now return to Turia?" asked Dina.

  
"No," said Tenchika, smiling. "I will remain with Albrecht

  
With the wagons."

  
Albrecht himself was busy elsewhere, talking with Conrad,

  
Ubar of the Kassars.

  
"Here," said Tenchika, thrusting the small cloth sack she

  
held into Dina's hands. "These are yours you should have

  
them you won them."

  
Dina, wondering, opened the package and within it she

  
saw the cups and rings, and pieces of gold, which Albrecht

  
had given her for her victories in the runnings from the bole.

    
'Wake them," insisted Tenchika.

    
"Does he know?" asked Dina.

    
"Of course," said Tenchika.

    
"He is kind," said Dina.

       
"I love him," said Tenchika, kissing Dina and hurrying

       
away.

       
I approached Dina of Turia. I looked at the objects she

       
held. "You must have run well indeed," I remarked.

       
She laughed. "There is more than enough here to hire

       
help," she said. "I shall reopen the shop of my father and

    
   
brothers."

       
"If you like," I said, "I will give you a hundred times

       
that."

         
"No," she said, smiling, "for this is my own."

       
Then she lowered her veil briefly and kissed me. "Good-

       
bye, Tarl Cabot," she said. "I wish you well."

         
"And I," I said, "wish you well noble Dina of Turia."

       
She laughed. "Foolish warrior," she chided, "I am only the

       
daughter of a baker."

         
"He was a noble and valiant man," I said.

         
"Thank you," said she.

       
"And his daughter, too," I said, "is a noble and valiant

       
woman and beautiful."

       
I did not permit her to replace her veil until I had kissed

       
her, softly, one last time.

       
She refastened her veil and touched her fingertips to her

       
lips beneath it and then pressed them to my lips and turned

       
and hurried away.

       
Elizabeth had watched but she had shown no sign of anger

       
or irritation.

         
"She is beautiful," said Elizabeth.

       
"Yes," I said, "she is." And then I looked at Elizabeth.

       
"You, too," I told her, "are beautiful."

         
She looked up at me, smiling. "I know," she said.

        
"Vain wench," I said.

       
"A Gorean girl," she said, "need not pretend to be plain

       
when she knows that she is beautiful."

       
'what ~ true," I admitted. "But where," I asked, "did you

       
come by the notion that you are beautiful?"

       
"My master told me," she sniffed, "and my master does

       
not lie does he?"

       
"Not often," I said, "and particularly not about matters of

       
such importance."

      
'And I have seen men look at me," she said, "and I know

      
that I would bring a good price."

        
I must have appeared scandalized.

   
   
"I would," said Elizabeth firmly, "I am worth many tarn

      
disks."

 
"You are," I admitted.

 
"So I am beautiful," she concluded.

 
"It is true," I said.

 
"But," said she, "you will not sell me---will you?"

 
"Not immediately," I said. "We shall see if you continue to

 
please me."

 
"Oh, Tarl!" she said.

 
"Master," I prompted.

 
"Master," she said.

 
"Well?" I asked.

 
'I shall," she said, smiling, "strive to continue to please

 
you." '

 
"See that you do," I said.

 
"I love you," she said suddenly, "I love you, Tarl Cabot,

 
Master." She put her arms about my neck and kissed me.

 
I kept her long in my arms, savoring the warmth of her

 
lips, the delicacy of her tongue on mine.

 
"Your slave," she whispered, "Master, forever your

 
slave."

 
It was hard for me to believe that this marvelous, collared

 
beauty in my arms was once a simple girl of Earth, that this

 
astounding wench, Tuchuk and Gorean, was the same as

 
Miss Elizabeth Cardwell, the young secretary who 80 long

 
before had found herself inexplicably thrust into intrigues and

 
circumstances beyond her comprehension on the plains of

 
Gor. Whatever she might have been before, a clock number,

 
a set of records in a personnel file, an unimportant employee,

 
with her salary and benefits, under the obligation to please

 
and impress other employees, scarcely more important than

 
herself, she was now alive, and free in her emotions though

 
her flesh might be subject to chains; she was now vital,

 
passionate, loving, mine; I wondered if there were other girls

 
of Barth in whom a transformation might be wrought,

 
others who might, not fully understanding, long for a man

 
and a world a world in which they must find and be

 
themselves, for no other choice would be theisms world in

 
which they might run and breathe and laugh and be swift and

 
loving and prized and in their hearts at last open and free

though paradoxically perhaps, for a time, or until the man

should choose otherwise, wearing the collar of a slave girt

But I dismissed such thoughts as foolish.

 
None remained now in the court of the Ubar other than

 
Kamchak and Aphris, Harold and Hereena, and myself and

 
Elizabeth Cardwell.

        
Kamchak looked across the room to me. "Well," said he,

       
"the wager turned out well."
                
~

       
I recalled he had spoken of this. "You gambled," I said,
  
I

       
"when you did not surrender Turia to return to defend the

       
bask and wagons of the Tuchuks that the others, the Kataii

       
and Kassars, would come to your aid." I shook my head. "It

       
was a dangerous gamble," I said.

       
"Perhaps not so dangerous," said he, "for I know the

       
Kataii and the Kassars better than they knew themselves."

       
"You said there was more to the wager though," I re-

       
marked, "that it was not yet done."

       
"It is now done," said he.

       
"What was the latter part of the wager?" I asked.

       
'That," said he, "the Kataii and the Kassars and, too, in

       
time the Paravaci would see how we might be divided against

       
ourselves and singly destroyed and would thus recognize
                                

the need for uniting the standards, bringing together the -

       
Thousands under one command"

       
"That they would," I said, "recognize the need for the

       
Ubar San?"

       
"Yes," said Kamchak, "that was the wager that I could

       
teach them the Ubar San."
                   

       
"Hail," said I, "Kamchak, Ubar San!"
        

       
"Hail," cried Harold, "Kamchak, Ubar San!"

       
Kamchak smiled and looked down. "It will soon be time

       
for hunting tumits," he said.

       
As he turned to leave the throne room of Phanius Turmus,
  

       
to return to the wagons, Aphris lightly rose to her feet to

       
accompany him.
                              

       
But Kamchak turned and faced her. She looked up at him,

       
questioningly. It was hard to read his face. She stood quite

       
close to him.

       
Gently, ever so gently, Kamchak put his hands on her arms

       
and drew her to him and then, very softly, kissed her.
    

       
"Master?" she asked.

       
Kamchak's hands were at the small, heavy lock at the back

       
of the steel, Turian collar she wore. He turned the key and

       
opened the collar, discarding it.

       
Aphris said nothing, but she trembled and shook her head

       
slightly. She touched her throat disbelievingly.

       
"You are free," said the Tuchuk.
            

       
The girl looked at him, incredulously, bewildered.

         
"Do not fear," he said. "You will be given riches." He

 
smiled. "You will once again be the richest woman in all of

 
Turia."

  
She could not answer him.

 
The girl, and the rest of us present, stood stunned. Most of us

 
knew the peril, the hardship and danger the Tuchuk had

 
sustained in her acquisition; all of us knew the price he had

 
been willing to pay only recently that she, fallen into the

 
hands of another, might be returned to lam

  
We could not understand what he had done.

 
Kamchak turned abruptly from her striding to his kailla,

 
which had been tethered behind the throne. He put one foot

 
in the stirrup and mounted easily. Then, not pressing the

 
animal, he took his way from the throne room. The rest of us

 
followed him, with the exception of Aphris who remained,

 
stricken, standing beside the throne of the Ubar, clad perhaps