Players of Gor (45 page)

"More larma!" said the creature. "More larma!"

I gave it some more larma. There was not much left. "They intend to use me in the baiting pit," I speculated.

"No," said the creature. "Worse. Far worse. Nim Nim help."

"I don't understand," I said.

"Bosk want escape?" it asked.

"Yes," I said.

"More larma," it said. "More larma!"

I gave it the last of the larma.

"Bosk want escape?" it asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Nim Nim help," it said.

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14
   
The Urts; How Nim Nim Was Made Welcome in the Pack; The Warrior's Pace

 
"There!" squealed the small creature. "There! There! The people! Nim Nim escape! Nim Nim free!"

We had emerged through a cut between two rocky outcroppings and ascended a small hill. It was near the tenth Ahn, the Gorean noon. We had left the city, emerging well beyond the walls early this morning. We were naked. The lower portion of my body was covered with dirt and blood from our trek though the brush. it, too, had been cut from the stones and sides of the narrow sewers through which we had made our way. "Nim Nim good urt," he had told me. "Urts find way!"

"Strip, enter the cubicle of the bathing cisterns," had said our jailer, five of his fellows, armed, behind him, before dawn. "Wash your stinking bodies, then emerge."

Our chains, in this area below the prison, had been removed.

"Why?" I asked.

"Obey," he had said.

I was puzzled about this. The luxury of baths is seldom permitted to Gorean prisoners, whether they are of the male or female sort. To be sure, a girl will usually be scrubbed up and made presentable before she is brought up for sale.

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Perhaps they had something special in mind for us.

I saw the menacing movement of weapons.

We stripped.

"Leave your clothing here," said the jailer. "Enter the cubicle of the bathing cisterns."

We were prodded with the points of spears through a heavy wooden door.

"Wash well," called a man, laughing.

"We would not wish your stink to offend the crowds," laughed another man.

Immediately I thought of the baiting pit, and the screaming, betting, enthusiastic crowds there. But Nim Nim had told me that it was something far worse than this which they had planned for me.

"Have pity on poor sleen," laughed a man.

"You would not want to make them sick, would you?" asked another. That was, I suppose, very funny. The sleen is one of the least fastidious of Gorean animals. I commonly makes the tarsk, usually thought of as a filthy animal, seem like an epicure. I thought again, of course, from these comments, of the baiting pit in the courtyard.

The heavy door of the cubicle of the bathing cistern closed behind us. I heard it locked. It was very dark inside. there was a light coming from somewhere high above, through some sort of narrow, shuttered aperture.

"It is hard to see," I said.

"Nim Nim see," said the small beast, clutching at my wrist with both if its hands. I began to pull me through the room. Once my foot splashed into the shallow concave approach to a cistern. there was a smell in the place. This area, I suspected, was probably more in the nature of a sump beneath the prison than a bath. In a few moments my eyes could make out things reasonably well. The eyes of the urt people, I gathered, adjusted very quickly to darkness. This may be an adaptive specialization, having to do with the fact that urt packs are often active at night.

"Here, here," said the small creature, eagerly. It pulled me to a grating in the floor. "Nim Nim not strong enough!"

I fixed my hands about the bars of the grating. I pulled at it. It seemed very solidly anchored in the cement. It did pull up a bit at one edge. It was extremely heavy. I was not surprised that the small creature could not move it. I wondered if many men could have moved it.

"Pull! Pull!" said Nim Nim.

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"I cannot move it," I said.

"Pull! "Pull!" said Nim Nim.

I crouched down, getting my legs under me. Then, largely using the force of my legs, pushing up with them, I pulled against the bars. The side which had lifted before a bit, no, a little at a time, to my elation, with small sounds of loosening, breaking mortar, rose upward. The mortar, perhaps, in years of drainage here, if the area did function largely as a sump for the prison, might have been loosened.

"See! See!" whispered Nim Nim.

I thrust the heavy ;grating, loose now, to the side.

Nim Nim scuttled into the dark, circular crevice. In a moment, half sickened by the stench, my body moving against the slimy sides of the opening, I followed him.

We stood now, in the neighborhood of noon, on a small hill, some pasangs from the walls of Brundisium. We had emerged through rocky outcroppings below. There was muchs tone in this area. It could have been quarried. Much of this tone, in its great surrounding, irregular alignments, seemed almost to form the cerrated ridge of some vast, ancient, natural bowl, now muchly crumbled and weathered. These outcroppings, with their breaks and opening, encircled an area perhaps more than two pasangs in width. Guided by Nim Nim, who had sometimes ridden upon my back, and other times upon my shoulders, I had come to this place. Now he had leaped down from my shoulders. "Nim Nim safe now!" he cried, pointing downward into the shallow, muchly encircled valley below. In that broad, sweeping, concave area I could see what Nim Nim called the "people". Never before had I seen an urt pack that huge. I must have contained for or five thousand animals.

"Hold!" called a voice, authoritatively.

I turned suddenly, swiftly about.

"Good trick! Good trick!" cried Nim Nim. "Nim Nim good urt! No pit for Bosk! Worse! Much worse! Nim Nim help! Nim Nim help!"

I felt sick. I remembered his words in the cell. I had not immediately understood, I had then supposed that he meant to help me escape, as indeed, clearly, later, seemed to be the intent of his words. Now I understood that it had been no accident he had been put in with me. He had been, from the geginning, the partisan of my enemies.

"Nim Nim help?" he cried, delightedly. "Nim Nim help! Nim Nim good urt! Now Nim Nim free!"

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"Kneel, Bosk of Port Kar," said Flaminius. I knelt. With Flaminius were the jailer, and his other fellows. Several had set crossbows trained on me. More importantly, one held the leashes of three snarling sleen.

"He looks well, naked and on his knees, Bosk of Port Kar, before men of Brundisium," said the jailer.

"Are you of Brundisium?" I asked Flaminius.

"I am in the fee of Brundisium," he said. "But I am of Ar."

I did not understand the sort of triumph which seemed to characterize the voice of the jailer. The alliances of Brundisium were with Ar, not with Tyros or Cos. I measured the distance between myself and the jailer. I wondered how long it would take to break his neck. I did not think I could reach him before the quarrels of crossbows would lodge themselves in my body. I was not a female, joyfully, rightfully, on her knees before men. The accent of Flaminius, now that I thought of it, did have traces within it which suggested Ar. To be sure, these things are sometimes difficult to determine with accuracy. It was certainly not obviously an accent of Ar. If he was of Ar, he had probably been out of the city for year.

"I thought you were to have had a bath," smiled Flaminius. "Instead it seems you are in desperate need of one."

I did not respond to him.

"Did you enjoy your trip, crawling through the slime sewers of Brundisium?" he asked.

I did not speak.

"To be sure, your journey in the open air and sun has doubtless removed some of the stink from you."

Several of the men behind him laughed.

"Even now, men are repairing the various gratings which we loosened or removed for your convenience, as well as narrowing several of the conduits."

I regarded him.

"Oh, yes," he said, "this has all been well planned."

"Would it not have been simpler to slay me in the prison?" I asked.

"Simpler, yes," said Flaminius, "but far less amusing."

"I see," I said.

"The arrangements in your cell, its location, and so on, were intended to encourage you to be apprehensive, and to think about escape."

"I do not think I needed much encouragement," I said.

"Apparently not," he said. "We noticed, of course, that you did not use your bedding. That was clever of you. Without

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something of that sort it is harder, of course, to set sleen on your trail."

"I thought you might intend to use me in the baiting pit," I said.

"Of course," said Flaminius. "Indeed, it was intended that you should fear that. ON the other hand, it did not seem politically expedient, at least at this time, to have Bosk of Port Kar, that being a city theoretically neutral to Brundisium, publicly slaughtered in one of our baiting pits."

"I would suppose not," I admitted. Some of the men of Brundisium, several functionaries and soldiers, for example, and guards in the prison, were familiar with my identity. Under such circumstances it would surely be difficult to conceal it from a crowd attending a public spectacle.

"Accordingly, we arranged your escape," said Flaminius, "risking nothing, of course."

"Nothing?" I asked.

"Of course not," said Flaminius. "How do you think we followed you so discreetly, allowing you your lead of better than an Ahn, until, at our pleasure, we chose to close the gap and apprehend you here?"

I looked down at the urt pack in the valley below. "I was brought here, deliberately, of course," I said.

"Of course," said Flaminius. "But even if you had not chosen to follow our little friend's advice in this matter, we could have apprehended you easily anywhere in the vicinity, and then brought you here, as we wished."

"The sleen," I said.

"Certainly," he said. "Look." He signaled to one of the men standing by the fellow with the sleen. He drew forth from a sack the ragged tunic I had worn in the cell.

"Clever," I said.

Outside the entrance to the cubicle of the bathing cisterns, before being prodded within by the spears of our keepers, Nim Nim and I had been forced to strip. We had then been herded into the darkness and the door closed and locked behind us. It had all seemed very natural. I now realized that it had been part of the plan of Flaminius. After the door had been closed behind us the clothing, or at least mine, had doubtless been taken down to the sleen pens. Then it was only necessary, later, to pick up our trail outside the city, at the termination of one of the conduits, where it would empty into one of ht long, half-dry drainage ditches about a half pasang outside the walls.

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"Look," grinned Flaminius, and he signaled again to the fellow who held the rags I had worn.

He held them near the sleen. Instantly, furiously, snarling, they seized the garment, tugging and tearing at it.

"Enough!" said Flaminius.

The fellow freed the garment from the sleen, shouting at them, half tearing it away from them. Even though he was their keeper and they were doubtless trained to obey him, and perhaps only him, it was not easy for him to regain the garment.

Flaminius then took the garment, and looked at me. "Behold, Bosk of Port Kar," he laughed, "naked and kneeling before us, outwitted, terrified into the desire for escape, then led to believe his escape was successful, then his hopes dashed, now realizing how he was never out of our grasp. Behold the stupid, outwitted fool!"

I was silent.

"Are you not curious as to your fate?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

Flaminius then threw me the garment he had taken from the sleen keeper. It was in shreds, little more than dangling tatters, from the teeth of the ravaging, contesting sleen. "Put it on," he said. "No, do not rise. Draw it on as you kneel."

The men laughed at me as I knelt before them then, a few dangling tatters about my neck and body. The sleen eyed me eagerly.

"Would not the stroke of the sword be quicker?" I asked.

"Yes, but not as amusing," said Flaminius.

"Perhaps you should draw back, that you not be injured in the charge of the sleen," I suggested.

"Remain kneeling," he warned me.

"I am somewhat mystified about many things," I said. "Perhaps this is an opportune moment to request an explanation. May I inquire, accordingly, what might be your interest in me, or that of your party? Why, for example, was the fellow named Babinius sent against me in Port Kar? What was the point of that? Similarly, why should there have been an interest in Brundisium in my apprehension? Who, or what, IN Brundisium, has this interest in me, and why?"

"You would like me to respond to your questions, would you not?" he asked.