Players of Gor (29 page)

"No," said Boots, "and what am I to do without a Brigella?"

"I do not know," I said.

"I am ruined," said Boots.

"Perhaps not," I opined, hopefully.

"Are you a business man?" he asked.

"No," I said.

"I will thank you, then," said Boots, "to have the decency to refrain from forming an opinion on the matter."

"Sorry," I said.

"Do you know where I can find a Brigella?" he asked.

"Perhaps you could buy one," I said.

"Not just any girl can be a Brigella," he said.

"I suppose not," I said.

"I am ruined," he said.

"At least you now have a golden courtesan," I said, "and I expect that she will prove profitable in the tent as well."

"Perhaps," said Boots.

"I would like to join your troupe," I said.

"It is out of the question," said Boots. "Now, where are those wagons?"

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"That way," I said.

"Thank you," he said.

"More to the left," I said.

"Thank you," he said.

"You would not have to pay me!" I called out, after him.

"No, no," he said, waving his hand, "it is out of the question." He then continued on his way, muttering about Brigellas, expenses, free women, fate, elusive wagons and the woes that sometimes afflict honest men.

Security in Brundisium, I had learned earlier from Boots, was tight. I wondered why this might be. I was curious to know, too, why at least some in that city seemed to have an interest in Tarl Cabot, or Bosk, of Port Kar. Much seemed to me mysterious in Brundisium. It might be an interesting place to go visiting, I thought. Too, it had been a long time since I had gone hunting. I was sorry that I had not been able to join Boots's troupe. None, I thought, would be likely to suspect a lowly member of a group of strolling players. It would have been a superb cover. Tomorrow, before nightfall, I suspected, Boots's wagons would leave the fair, probably heading west, probably on the road of Clearchus. It is a dangerous road. There was no law against two traveling it. Boots had disappeared now among the booths and stalls of the fair.

***

"Please, let me yield!" she whispered. "I beg to be permitted to yield! Please, Master, let me yield! Please, Master! Please, Master!"

I looked down into her eyes. She looked up at me, through her hair, wildly, piteously.

"No," I said.

She moaned. She tried to control her breathing. Her beauty was held tense, rigid, almost motionless. I heard the tiniest sound of the chain on her ankle. the collar, the flat, snug, unslippable band on her throat, locked behind the back of her neck, was lovely.

We were some two hundred pasangs west of the fairgrounds, at the edge of the woods of Clearchus, just off the road of Clearchus. I had traveled for the last few days in the vicinity of the troupe of Boots, but not really with it. We had traversed the woods of Clearchus, Boots losing little time in the business, without incident. He had, this afternoon, at the edge of the woods, for local villagers, given his first performances since the fair, from which, as we had anticipated, he had been duly expelled, that following from various complaints lodged with the

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fair's board of governance by a certain free woman, the Lady Telitsia of Asperiche. He had also, given the supposed gravity of his offenses, been fined three silver tarsks and publicly flogged.

He had not been in a good mood that evening. Such things, of course, are not that unusual in the lives of players. Worse, perhaps, two of his company had joined another troupe, taking advantage of an opportunity at the fair, the fellows who commonly played the comic father and the comic pedant. Boots was now trying to make do with his Chino and Lecchio, two other fellows, his Bina and his new "golden courtesan." Things were so bad that he had, this afternoon, actually interspersed his dramatic offering with what were more in the nature of variety or carnival acts. One must make do as one can.

Fortunately his Chino was an accomplished juggler and his Lecchio was excellent as a comic tight-rope walker. Boots himself was very skillful in the matter of slight-of-hand and magic. Indeed, his dilapidated, oval-roofed wagons seemed a veritable repository for all sorts of wondrous paraphernalia, much of it having to do with matters of illusion and legerdemain. This multiplicity of skills, incidentally, is not all that uncommon with players. Most of them, too, it seems, can do things like play the flute or kalika, sing, dance, tell jokes, and so on. They are generally versatile and talented people.

Boots's player, incidentally, the kaissa player, the surly, masked fellow, called usually "the monster" in the camp, remained, too, with the troupe. He remained, as far as I could tell, from what I had heard this afternoon, consistently and insolently adamant to Boots's please that he manage to lose a game once in a while, if only for the sake of business, or, at the least, make an effort to play a bit less well. Nonetheless, even as it was, he did make some contribution to the welfare of the troupe. His kaissa games, for what it is worth, usually brought in a few coins. There was something I wanted to talk with him about, sometime.

"Please, Master," whimpered the girl.

"Are you ready?" I asked.

"Yes, yes, yes!" she said, tensely.

"'Yes' what?" I asked.

"Yes, Master!" she said, helplessly, tensely.

"Very well," I said. "You may yield."

"Aiii!" she screamed, wildly, inarticulately, in release, in relief, in animal gratitude. Then she cried, "Oh! Oh!" and thrashed beneath me. "Oh!" she cried. "Oh!" She clutched me, desperately. Her legs, with a rattle of the chain, locked about me. "Oh!" she cried. Her fingernails dug deeply into my back.

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Then again she could speak. "I yield me!" she cried. "I yield me to you, Master! I am yours! I am yours, yours, yours! Oh, yes, I am yours, yours." She clung then to me, sobbing and gasping. I heard the chain on her ankle.

"Your yielding," I said, "was satisfactory-for a new slave."

She looked at me wildly, and then moaned softly, continuing to cling helplessly to me.

"There are, of course," I said, "infinite horizons and varieties of such responses, ranging from ravishings in which the slave, by one means or another, is driven almost to the point of madness by the pleasures inflicted upon her, ravishings in which the master, in his cruelty, and despite her will, forces her relentlessly and helplessly to, and beyond, ecstasy, giving her no choice but to accept total sexual fulfillment, to putting her helplessly to lengthy and gentle services, warm and intimate, in which her slavery and condition are well brought home to her."

"Sometimes, too, I gather," she whispered, "the slave must serve in varieties of manners regardless of her desires of the moment or will."

"Of course," I said.

"she is at the master's disposal, completely, for all forms of work and duties."

"Yes," I said.

"She is to be diligent and obedient in all things," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"That, too," she whispered, "is rewarding and gratifying."

"Really?" I said.

"Yes," she whispered. "Very much so."

"Interesting," I said.

"The being of the slave, like the being of the master," she said, "is a totality."

I lay on my back, looking up at the ceiling of the tent. She was right, of course. These things are totalities, modes of being. Too, I knew, from my own experience, that nothing fulfills maleness like the mastery. He who would be a man must be a master. he who surrenders his mastery surrenders his manhood. I wondered what those who flocked like sheep to their own castration received in recompense for their manhood. I supposed it must be very valuable. But it this were so, why did they feel it necessary to shrill so petulantly at others, those who scorned them and had chosen different paths?

I could hear Boots outside the tent. He was a few yards away, around the campfire with Chino and Lecchio. "Lamentations!" cried Boots. "Surely we are ruined! Surely we shall all starve!

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There are not two copper tarsks in the coin kettle! What hope is there these days for artists such as we! That the skilled and famous company of Boots Tarsk-Bit, actor, promoter and entrepreneur, that company whose performances are commanded by high cities and ubars, the finest theatrical company on all Gor, should be forced to resort to mere carnival acts, that it should have to stoop to jugglery and somersaults, to mere tricks and illusions, to entertain village bumpkins, solid, noble fellows though they may be, is almost too much to bear. What shall be our fate first, I wonder, to merely starve in simple dignity or to perish in shame from such humiliation?"

"You are wrong about at least on thing, Boots," said Chino.

"Can it be?" asked Boots.

"Yes," said Chino. "There are more than two copper tarsks in the coin kettle."

"Oh?" said Boots.

I heard coins shaking in a metal kettle. "Listen," said Chino. "There is at least a silver tarsk's worth here."

"Are you sure?" asked Boots.

"Count it yourself," said Chino.

"Yes," said Boots. "Ah! Ah, yes. I did not realize my skills with magic were still that mysterious and baffling. Very good. Excellent, excellent. Excellent, indeed! You did well also, of course, Chino, my friend, and you, too, Lecchio. Well, it is as I always say, a bit of variety is a good thing. And one cannot always be too serious about art, you know. Upon occasion one should take a respite form even high drama. Too, excessive significance is not always good for the digestion. Also, we still need a Brigella, and desperately. I think, accordingly, that it will not be amiss if, upon occasion, particularly in somewhat less enlightened and more remote locations, we intermix a dash of legerdemain and prestidigitation, as well as a bit of carnival hilarity, prankery, and such, the sort of things that you folks are good at, with our nobler offerings. To be sure, we will still remain fundamentally true to the theater, for we are primarily, when all is said and done, serious actors. Too, our reputation depends on it. What do you think? I am glad that you agree."

I lay on my back, looking up at the ceiling of the tent. I felt the girl's cheek against my thigh. I remembered when she had been the free woman, Rowena of Lydius, whom I had first seen in the house of Samos. How proud she had been! She was now a contented slave, a girl who had been named "Rowena" at a man's thigh.

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"The somersault on the rope was very good," Boots was telling Lecchio. "You should try to do it twice."

Boots's little Bina was chained in another tent. I thought perhaps I might try her sometime.

"Perhaps even three times, and backwards," Boots was saying.

I smiled to myself. He was talking, of course, about Lecchio's somersaults. The little Bina was very pretty, but I thought, rather clearly, she had not yet been brought to slave heat. I had gathered, from various tiny indications, back at the fair, and this afternoon, that Boots was not altogether satisfied with her. As a collared slave, I feared, she had much to learn. Too, she seemed to have a nasty streak in her. More than once I had heard her deride the "monster." In this I think she showed little judgment. He, at least, was free, whereas she, though she seemed not to fully understand it, was imbonded.

"It was funny, too," said Boots, "when you fell off the rope. Perhaps you should include that in the act."

"I did not do it on purpose," said Lecchio. "I am out of practice. I nearly broke my neck."

I supposed I might as well soon depart from the neighborhood of Boots's company. Surely there seemed little point in continuing any longer in its vicinity. My own small camp was within two hundred yards. To be sure, there was little there but a bedroll, some supplies and weapons, purchased at the fair. I had not seen fit to purchase a shield or spear, or even a bow, with sheaf arrows. Such things, I feared, might mark me as one to be reckoned with, or watched, on perhaps familiar with weapons. I supposed I would arouse enough suspicion in the neighborhood of Brundisium as it was, coming to their city as a lone male with no obvious business. I did have a sword and I had also purchased a set of Tuchuk quivas, their famed saddle knives. The set consists of seven knives, one for each of the seven sheaths in the Tuchuk saddle. They are balanced for throwing. I was rather skillful with them. I had learned their use long ago in the lands of the Wagon Peoples, or, as some think of them, on the plains of Turia. I must soon leave the tent. I must return to my own small camp. I must get a good night's sleep, and start out early in the morning.

"Ho!" I heard Boots call, suddenly. "Who is there?"

I was suddenly alert. It was a bit late now. The performances had been over for some hours. I was not at all sure that villagers or travelers would be about at this time.

"What is wrong?" asked the girl, sensing the change in me.

"Be silent," I said.

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"Who are you?" called Boots. There was no answer. Whoever it was had not identified themselves.