Rogue of Gor (25 page)

"But I am free," she said.

"So, too, were they," said the man, angrily, gesturing to the bound woman at the railing of the pirate galley.

She shrank back, suddenly frightened.

I saw Kliomenes, some seventy yards away, directing his men and the enforced laborers, citizens of Victoria, loading the galleys.

"You there, Female," called a pirate, his eye roaming the crowd, "step forth!"

The men holding the ship's pole, frightened, lowered it.

"Step forth!" said the pirate.

The woman shook her head, pressing back against the men.

"Unhood her, face-strip her," ordered the pirate.

"Protect me, save me, please," she begged.

Her hood was thrust back. Her veil was torn away. She was lovely. The price she would bring would be good. I wondered why such a woman would come to the wharves in a time of such danger. Surely she must have understood the peril to which she would be exposing herself.

"Step forth, Beauty," said the pirate.

Numbly, she approached him. I made to move, but two men restrained me.

Swiftly, before us all, in the light of the flames, was the woman stripped by the pirate's blade.

"Lie down," said he.

She hesitated, and looked at him in anguish. "Or do you wish to be slit like a larma?" he asked. His sword jabbed into the sweet roundedness of her belly.

Swiftly, then, she lay at his feet, her back on the harsh, tarred boards.

The pirate then looked at us, and laughed. "Here, at my feet, supine, stripped, is a free woman of Victoria. Do any of you dispute her with me?" Two men restrained me. No others moved.

"Kneel," he ordered the woman. She did so.

He then placed the point of his blade against her fair throat.

Numbly, slowly, lifting her arms, the blade between her arms, her fingers trembling, she tied the bondage knot in her own hair. She looked at him. "Please, spare me, Master," she said.

For a long moment or two the point of the blade remained at her throat, as the pirate considered the girl's plea. I saw his eye roam her now imbonded curves.

He laughed. He thrust his blade back in its sheath. She almost fainted with relief.

"On your feet!” he said. "Run to the nearest galley! Beg to be displayed there, as the loot you are!"

"Yes, Master!" she cried and, leaping up, fled toward the galley, a commanded slave.

"We do what we wish with Victoria," said the pirate. "Do any of you gainsay me?" None spoke. He then laughed again, and, turning about, went back toward the galleys.

I watched the new slave being bound at the railing, with the others.

"I say she wanted the collar," said a man.

"They all do," said another.

They did not know, of course, a woman such as Miss Beverly Henderson.

She could not be a slave.

But what, I asked myself, if she were, in her secret heart, as Alison, in Ar, and Peggy, in Victoria, both themselves surely slaves, had claimed, a true slave? If she were, she had made a great fool of me, in pretending to be free, in being often displeasing, in daring to sell Lola, in attempting to betray me to the guardsmen of Port Cos, in disparaging me in the tavern of Hibron. What if she were a slave? Could she be truly a slave? The very thought almost made me wish to cry out with fury and pleasure. If she were a slave I would find this out. And then, somehow, against all obstacles, I would make her mine, mine own. I would own her, nor would I be gentle with the slave. She owed me much. Yes, I vowed, if she were a slave, I would have her in my collar! And she would soon then well know herself a slave! I would treat her, the desirable little slut, and slave, with a ruthlessness and a power that would become legendary in Victoria!

I then could no longer deny it. I wanted Miss Beverly Henderson as my slave girl.

"We will pay the tribute in the morning," said another man.

"We have no choice," said another.

"We should never have entered into difficulties over the matter," said another man.

"True," said another man.

The smoke stung my eyes. The man had, by now, stopped ringing the alarm bar. The crowd was mostly silent. One could hear the flames.

"We have been taught our lesson," said one of the men.

"Policrates owns Victoria," said another.

"It is true," said another.

I turned about and left the crowd. I made my way slowly away from the wharves. I began to walk slowly back toward the tavern of Tasdron.

Many were the thoughts in my head.

I had seen a free woman of Victoria stripped with no more mercy than would have been shown to a slave. I had seen her kneel naked before a pirate and, his blade at her throat, with her own hands, tie the knot of bondage in her hair, in full view of hundreds of her fellow citizens.

I had seen the disorganization, the fear, the demoralization of the men of Victoria. I had seen the insolence of the pirates, the burning of buildings.

And the men of Victoria, though greatly outnumbering the pirates, had not fought.

The tribute would be paid.

And, too, I had learned, and I mused on this, that I wanted to own Miss Beverly Henderson, yes, literally own her, as a man on Earth might own a pair of boots, or a pig or a dog, or as a man on Gor might own, say, a tarsk or a pet sleen, or, lower than either, as he might own a slave.

"Do not!” I cried. I seized the figure, his body poised, hunched over the sword; its point to his belly, its hilt in his hands, braced against the stones of the dark street. "No!" I cried. I struggled, briefly, with him. Then with the bottom of my foot I kicked the sword to one side and it slid upward, tearing through the tunic. He dropped to his hands and knees, vomiting, and scrambled for the sword, seizing it. He cried out in fury, and frustration, the blade now in his hands. He rose to his feet, reeling. "Who are you to interfere in this matter?" he howled. He lifted the blade and approached me. I saw it waver. He steadied it, placing one hand upon the other, on the hilt. It again lifted. I stood my ground. I did not think he would strike me. Then the blade lowered and the man sobbed, and backed against the wall, and lowered himself, sitting to its base, the sword on the stones beside him. He bent over, his head in his hands. "Who are you to interfere?" he wept.

"Surely there are others better than yourself against whom you might turn your sword," I said, angrily.

"Give me a drink," he said.

"Has it come to this," I asked him, "the glory, the codes, the steel?"

"I want a drink," he said, sullenly.

"I have but returned from the wharves," I told him. "Surely you, and the others, from the tavern of Tasdron, did not fail to hear the alarm?"

"There is no business of mine at the wharves," he said.

"Yet," said I, "you had left the tavern. Will you tell me you were not bound for the wharves?"

"I can do nothing," he said. "I could do nothing."

"Yet sick, your senses swirling, you left the tavern," I said. "This street leads to the wharves."

"I fell," he said. "I could not even walk."

"Do you wish to hear what occurred at the wharves," I asked, angrily.

"I am useless," he said. "I could do nothing. I am no good."

"At the wharves," I said, "there were pirates, few more than half a hundred of such men, under the command of Kliomenes, lieutenant to Policrates."

"I do not wish to hear of these matters," he said.

"In the view of hundreds of those of Victoria these men, so few of them, burned and looted, laughing and with impunity, as it pleased them. And in the view of hundreds of those of Victoria, angry, but inactive and cowering, not daring to protest, were lofty free women of this town publicly stripped and bound, thence to be carried into shameful slavery, to wear their collars at the feet of buccaneers."

"Women belong in collars," he said, angrily.

"And would you then," I asked, "willingly deliver them, prizes more fittingly yours, into the hands of such men as Kliomenes and Policrates. Are they more men than you, that such beauties should kneel at their feet rather than, fearfully, at yours?"

He lowered his head again, putting it in his hands.

"I would have thought," I said, "that it would be men such as you who might strike terror into the hearts of men such as they, that it would be men such as you whom groveling slave girls, wary of the whip, might fear even more to displease than they."

"Give me a drink," he said.

"You are, then, so fond of Kliomenes and Policrates that you are willing, graciously, to surrender to them the women and other treasures of this town."

"I am not of Victoria," he said.

"Few in Victoria,"' I said, "are of Victoria, it seems. Yet many reside here. If not men such as we, who, then, is of Victoria?"

"I am sick," he said.

"There was no leadership at the wharves," I said. "Insult was done upon this town with impunity. I saw hundreds of men, fearful, milling about, with no one to lead them. I saw them intimidated by a handful of organized, ruthless fellows, strutting and vain as vulos. I saw free men impressed into the service of loading the goods of the town onto the galleys of the thieves. Men, unprotesting, fearful, saw their properties purloined and burned. Flames linger yet on the wharves. Smoke hangs in the air."

He was silent.

"We missed you on the wharves," I said.

"Why did you interfere in my affairs?" he asked.

"Once," said I, "in the tavern of Tasdron you saved my life. Is it not my right, then, to save yours?"

"We are, then, even," said he, bitterly. "We now owe one another nothing. Go now, leave me."

"I have seen Glyco, a merchant, a high merchant, of Port Cos, these several days in earnest converse with you. I think, surely, that he, fearing the union of the pirates of the east and, west, was entreating you to lend support to some scheme of resistance."

"You are shrewd," said the man.

"Yet his entreaties, I gather, have proven fruitless."

"I cannot help him," said the man.

"Yet that he came to you suggests that your courage, your brilliance in such matters, have never been forgotten."

"I am no longer who I once was," he said.

"I gather you once stood high among the guardsmen of Port Cos," I said.

"Once I was captain in Port Cos," he said. "Indeed it was I who once drove the band of Policrates from the vicinity of Port Cos." He looked up at me. "But that was long ago," he said. "I no longer remember that captain. I think he is gone now."

"What occurred?" I asked.

"He grew more fond of paga than of his cods," he said. "Disgraced, he was dismissed. He came west upon the river, to Victoria."

"What was his name?" I asked.

"I have forgotten," he said, sullenly.

"Had you been upon the wharves," I said, "things might have gone differently."

"Why did you not lead them?" he asked, angrily.

"I am only a weakling and a fool," I said, "and I am untrained."

He said nothing.

"One such as you might have made a difference."

He extended his right hand. It was large, but unsteady. It shook.

"At one time," he said, "I could strike a thousand blows, to the accuracy of a hair, I could thrust a thousand times, within the circle of half a hort, but now, now, see what has become of me." His hand, shaking, then fell. He closed his fist and pressed it against the stones of the dark street. He wept. "Policrates could have killed me in the tavern," he said. "He knew my weakness. But he did not do so. For the sake of old memories, I deem, vestiges of vanished realities, he spared me." He looked up at me. "We were youths together on the wharves of Port Cos," he said. "Each of us turned to the trades of steel, I to that of the guardsman, he to that of the marauder."

"What did Glyco wish of you?" I asked.

"A plan, a rallying point, a flag of memory, a leader, an assault upon the stronghold of Policrates."

"And what did you tell him?" I asked.

"It would take a hundred siege ships, and ten thousand men to take the stronghold of Policrates," he said.

I nodded. I did not think his estimates in error. For all practical purposes, considering the forces that could realistically be marshaled upon the river the stronghold of Policrates was impregnable. I had heard similar asseverations from others. Miss Beverly Henderson, and her beauty, the thought crossed my mind, were now locked behind those lofty, dark walls.

"The situation, then, is hopeless?" I asked.

"Yes, hopeless," he said.

"Tomorrow," I said, "the tribute is to be paid to Policrates."

The man shrugged.

"It is said," I said, "that the pirates own Victoria."

"It is true," he said. "It is true."

"And are there none to gainsay them?" I asked.