Slave Girl of Gor (47 page)

Borchoff's fists clenched.

"Chain him," said the man, indicating the very chains with which he himself, earlier, had been secured.

The chains were snapped on Borchoff.

"Who are you," demanded Borchoff, in fury, his wrists and ankles confined.

"Is it the nineteenth hour?" asked the man.

"Yes," said Borchoff.

"I am Rask," he said, "of the caste of warriors, of the city of Treve."

The slave girls screamed, and I broke, and fled with them. Behind us we could hear orders being given. The fortress would be sacked.

I fled wildly down a dark passageway. I could hear a man behind me. Then he turned aside, to pursue another girl. The silk was half torn from me.

I tried to tear off the slave bells on my ankle. A girl sped past me, turning into another hallway. I looked wildly about. I saw a steel door. I slipped through. It was not guarded. Beyond the door was a passageway. I ran panting, slave bells jangling on my ankle, down this passageway. Then, opening a door, I saw a new passageway, one in which there burned a lamp, hanging on a chain. I remembered this second passageway. I had been conducted through it on my first day in Stones of Turmus. It was lined with barred gates. I pulled at the barred gates. Then I backed away from them. It would not be wise to hide within, could I even gain admittance. Behind lay treasures. They would be sure to be looted. I must look for the grosser storage places, those in which bulk goods were kept. These places, I remembered, were farther down the passageway, on the other side of a steel door. I fled down the passageway. I came to the heavy steel door. It was not now guarded. I left it ajar. Gate after gate I tried along the passageway below the steel door, those gates giving access to the storage areas for larger, less valuable merchandise, but all were locked. I jerked at the bars. I could not open them. I wept with frustration. I looked wildly back down the passageway, frightened. If anyone should enter the passageway I would be immediately visible, a fleeing, hunted, beautiful, half silked, belled slave girl. I jerked again at the bars of a gate. I could not hide! There was no place to hide! I spun about, miserably, my back to the bars, moaning. I could feel them against my back. I looked again down the passageway. No one was yet in it. I touched the collar I wore. I clutched the bit of silk which still clung, loose, about my hips. I moaned. I was too beautiful, I knew, to be treated gently by Gorean men. I feared their ropes and whips. I was a slave! Who knew what they would do to me, if they would catch me! I saw then, below me, down the hallway, the door to the office of Borchoff. I ran to the door, pulled it open and entered. On the wall I saw the whip with which I had been disciplined, after some strokes of which I had begged, tamed, sobbing, to wear a collar. I touched the collar at my throat. I shrank back from the sight of the whip. Even the sight of a whip strikes terror into the heart of a slave girl. She knows what it can do to her. She has felt it. One of the most frightening things to a girl about the whip is the knowledge that the Gorean male, if he is not pleased with her, will use it, and without hesitation. I heard shouting from the passageway leading to the other door of Borchoff's office. I heard the striking of swords. I heard a girl scream. I heard a girl crying out piteously, pounding and scratching hysterically at the other side of the door. I hesitated. Then I heard her, an instant later, screaming, being pulled away from the door. "Bind her and take her to the parapets," I heard. "She is your tag," said a voice. "I shall take the next." I heard the girl cry out, in sudden pain. Then, a few moments later, I heard her being dragged away. I heard other voices. Then I moved back toward the door through which I had entered. The handle of the other door was being tried. Then I heard men kicking at the panels. I saw wood breaking in, splintering, and an arm reaching through, to unlatch the door. I turned and fled away, back the way I had come.

I heard men coming into the room which I had left.

Gasping, my bare feet hurting on the stones, I ran back down the passageway.

I darted through the steel door. I spun, running my hands along the door, to find a way to lock it. I cried out with misery. Its five bolts could not be shut. They were controlled by a vertical bar, which slid in brackets. The bar was padlocked back.

I ran again.

I did not know if the, men who had entered Borchoff's office were in pursuit of me or not.

I stopped once again, trying to twist the slave bells, one by one, from the five-linked anklet which I wore, with its twenty bells. If I had had a tool to insert in the rings I might have done so. But I had no tool. The task was beyond the strength of my fingers.

I heard men in the passage.

My heart sank. I was still belled.

Then I thought that if I might reach the room of slave-girl preparation I might obtain the key to the bells. The keys were kept in a shallow wooden box in that room, a box the key to which was generally in Sucha's keeping. If the box were not open I might be able to break it, or its small lock, and thus obtain the keys.

I ran back along the passage.

In a few moments I reached the small iron door, through which I had first been introduced into the quarters for slaves.

It opened from this side.

I knelt down and opened the door, peering through. I saw a girl being dragged by the hair from the room, bent over, stumbling and weeping at the side of a warrior. I saw another girl, Melpomene, thrown on her stomach on the tiles beside the pool, a warrior kneeling across her body, tying her hands behind her back. Then he threw her over his shoulder and carried her lightly from the room. Only one other person did I see in the room, red-haired Fina, stripped, lying at the gate to her slave alcove; her left wrist wore a slave bracelet; the matching bracelet was closed, locked, about one of the bars of the alcove. She looked at me, miserably. I could not help her. She would wait for the return of her captor.

I tore bits of slave silk from my garment and wedged them in the two bolt receptacles, that the door not shut behind me.

I hurried to the room of slave girl preparation. It appeared in disarray, ransacked. I gathered girls had been taken there. The box containing the keys had been broken open, perhaps by men, looking for jewelries. Keys were scattered about.

I heard shouting, screaming.

Frenziedly I tried keys in the first of the locks. Outside the door I saw Sulda flee past. I shrank back.

She was taken on the far side of the pool. "Do not tag me," she screamed. Then I heard her cry out. Moments later I saw her, wrists tied behind her, her hair down about her face, being thrust along, stumbling, held by the upper arm, at the side of a warrior.

"Hurry her to the parapet," I heard someone call.

I found the key to the slave bells. I unlocked the first tiny lock, and then the next four. The five-linked, joined circlets, opened. I cast the bells aside.

I then crept from the room of slave girl preparation, and, slipping about the side of the pool, went to the small iron door. I did not exit through it. I heard men on the other side, approaching. I turned again and fled, this time running through the barred gate which leads from the quarters of slaves. I then passed. through the second gate. I felt the carpet under my feet.

I must find a place to hide!

I ran lightly down the hall.

Suddenly, ahead, from a side passage, I saw two men emerge. They held a girl, Tupa, between them.

I turned again, to flee back down the hall.

But, behind me, now, came two more men, doubtless those I had heard behind the small iron door, who had then entered the quarters for slaves, examined them, and the room for slave girl preparation, and emerged through the two gates.

I was trapped in the corridor. I shrank back against the wall.

They approached. "It is the Dina," said one of them.

"Let her go," said the other.

Then the four men joined and went hack toward the great hall, taking Tupa with them.

I stood back against the wall, breathing heavily, bewildered, terrified. They had not secured me.

I did not understand this. Did they not want me? Was I not suitable for them?

Was I to be left free?

At the far end of the hall, away from the gates leading to the quarters of slaves, I saw a figure, that of a man, tall, handsome, strong, splendid, with the bearing of one who leads Gorean warriors.

It was he called Rask of Treve. I turned and fled away.

I crouched in the dark passageway, cornered. I saw the tiny lamp approach, from far down the passageway. I felt the walls of the passageway about me.

Behind me there was a barred gate, locked.

The lamp came closer.

There were walls of stone on either side of me.

He lifted the lamp, and the light fell upon me. I knelt. "Be merciful to a poor slave, Master," I whispered.

"Kneel," said he, "with your belly and cheek against the wall, and place your hands behind your back, with your wrists crossed."

I did so. He placed the lamp he carried on a shelf to one side. He placed the sword he carried behind him on the stones of the flooring and crouched behind me. Binding fiber was looped about my wrists and pulled tight; then it was tied; I winced; I was helpless. He took me by the arms and turned me, sitting me down on the flooring, my knees up, my back against the stone wall.

"Be merciful to a poor slave, please, Master," I whispered. I had muchly taunted him, and much had I delighted myself at his expense. Now I wore his binding fiber, and was alone with him, in a dark passageway deep below the keep of Stones of Turmus.

I blinked against the light of the lamp.

He withdrew an object from his pouch, and held it before me. "Do you know what this is?" he asked.

It was like a small, veined, metal leaf, narrowly ovate in shape. It had a tiny hole in the wider end, in which, in a tiny loop, there was twisted a small wire. On the leaf, indented m, was a sign, and some tiny printing.

"Do you know this sign?" asked the man.

"No, Master," I whispered.

"It is the sign of Treve," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"Can you read this?" asked the man, pointing to the printing.

"No, Master," I said. I could not read Gorean. I was illiterate in the language. This was not uncommon. Many masters think it desirable to keep a girl illiterate in their language, thinking it makes them easier to control and puts them more at their mercy. Other masters differ in this, relishing the ownership and absolute domination of literate girls, preferably those who are well educated, highly intelligent and gifted. Such girls must be regarded as quite valuable; on the block they commonly bring the highest prices. It is also said they make the best slaves. Had I been sold on Earth I would have counted as such a girl; on Gor, however, I was only another piece of illiterate collar meat.

"It is my name," said the man. "Rask."

"Yes, Master," I said.

"It is with these devices," said the man, holding up the tiny leaf, with its wire, sign and printing, "that we of Treve, in our various ventures of raiding, mark our booty."

"Please, no, Master!" I cried.

I shrank back against the wall. He held my left ear lobe, pulling it taut. I cried out, wincing, as the wire pierced the lobe, and then he threaded the wire through and, twisting the ends together, formed a tiny loop, from which the silver leaf dangled. I felt it at my left cheek.

"It will be pleasant to tag you," he had said to me earlier. I had not understood him at the time. I now understood him. I looked at him with horror. I had been tagged.

"You do not now appear so insolent as formerly," he said.

"No, Master," I wept.

He then seized my ankles and pulled me from the wall. I threw my head back, moaning. An ear had been pierced. This, in itself, is little or nothing, but on Gor it is mighty in its portent. The other ear, almost certainly now, to match its mate, would sometime be pierced, and I would then be a "pierced-ear" girl, the lowest of female slaves. I had heard another girl crying out earlier, as she had been tagged, although at the time I had not understood what had been done to her. It had not been the pain which had made her cry out so miserably but its meaning. An ear had been pierced.

I looked up at Rask of Treve reproachfully. He laughed. He well understood what he had done to me, and he knew well, too, that I understood.

"Is your vengeance sweet, Master?" I asked him.

"I have not yet begun to take my revenge, pretty little slave," he said. He thrust apart my ankles.

I resolved to resist him. I turned my head to the side, and heard the small sound of the silver leaf, on its tiny loop, fastened in my ear, touch the stones of the flooring of the passage.

But his hands were sure.

"No," I begged, "do not make me yield to you!"

But he did not see fit to show me mercy. I cried out with misery, lost in sensation, lifting my body to him, piteous for his slightest touch.

When he finished with me I lay between his feet, a shattered, yielded slave girl.