Plunder of Gor (48 page)

“I dare not lie, Mistress,” I said. “I am a slave!”

“You were ordered by your master to lie,” she said.

“No, Mistress!” I said.

“It is plausible that Lord Arcesilaus might wish to communicate with Lord Grendel,” she said. “Plans abound, dark winds scurry about, secrets are in the streets. The most likely faction opposed to Lord Arcesilaus would be that of the deposed Lord Agamemnon, but his faction is inert as of late, indeed, perhaps dissolved, and, to the best of our knowledge, Lord Agamemnon, lacking a body, is little to be feared. Your story is absurd. Why would Lord Arcesilaus duplicate the experimental debacle that resulted in the formation of Lord Grendel? And if someone did, it would not be sent to Gor, and proffered as a present. More likely, if only to avoid offense, it would be sequestered in some remote corner of a steel world. How insulting it would be to even let Lord Grendel know that such a monstrosity might exist. No, your story is grossly false, patently so, but what is not clear is what you or your master might have in mind. What is your purpose?”

“I have spoken the truth, Mistress,” I said.

“I do not believe you,” she said.

“Forgive me, Mistress,” I said. “If Mistress will untie my ankles, I will return to my master.”

The Lady Bina put back her head, and laughed, I thought rather merrily.

“Mistress?” I asked, uneasily.

“Surely you do not think this matter is so expeditiously settled,” she said, “that you are now going to leap up and rush off to your master, that you will be allowed to slip away with impunity?”

“I do not understand,” I said.

“You will remain here,” she said.

“Surely not,” I said.

“You will not escape,” she said.

“‘Escape'?” I asked. “I do not understand,” I said.

“You will accompany Lord Grendel to the meeting, where your lie will be confounded and exposed, and thence you may be used for sleen feed,” she said.

I attempted, wildly, irrationally, in sudden panic, to spring to my feet, but, my ankles bound, I fell heavily to the flooring, before the door.

“You see, dear Grendel,” she said, “binding a slave's ankles is an excellent way to control her.”

I turned about, sitting, my ankles now before me, and reached to undo the cords. Did I not know I had not been given permission to do so? Did I not know I was now a Gorean slave girl?

“Are you going to run away?” she asked.

“Please, Mistress!” I wept, quickly removing my hands from the cords.

The Lady Bina seized me by the ankles and drew me across the floor, to the wall. There was a slave ring there, anchored in the floor. I glimpsed a collar and chain.

“Mistress!” I protested.

“On your belly, worthless, lying slut, worthless beast,” said the Lady Bina, “and put your wrists behind your back.”

There were two decisive snaps and my wrists were fastened behind me, in slave bracelets.

“Please, no, Mistress!” I wept.

But then the collar was snapped about my neck, and by this, and its chain, I was fastened to the slave ring near the wall.

I was still on my belly.

“You look well as a chained slut,” she said. “Indeed, do not they all?”

“Please free me!” I begged.

“Surely, as a slave,” she said, “you are used to being on a chain, being helpless in bracelets, and such.”

“Let me go,” I begged.

“Surely you suspect you will remain here, my dear,” said the Lady Bina, “until you are so privileged as to be taken to a certain rendezvous, in the neighborhood of the Twentieth Ahn, at which time you will be turned over to an agent of Lord Arcesilaus.”

I moaned.

“I understand your apprehension,” she said. “Too, do not expect that your sex, your collar, and your beauty, such as it is, will protect you at such a meeting. You are not one of their own females, a high female, of Kur blood. As a lying, displeasing slave you may well be cast naked to leech plants or fed to sleen, or, more mercifully, perhaps, to save time, be simply, swiftly, bitten to death.”

“I am a poor slave,” I said. “I know nothing of these things.”

The Lady Bina then undid the knots of the cords wound about my ankles, and put the cords to the side.

“While waiting,” she said, “perhaps you would care for a handful of slave pellets or a bowl of slave gruel?”

“Mercy, Mistress,” I said.

“It seems not,” she said, and turned away.

The floor was hard.

I turned on my side, and pulled futilely at the encirclements, fastened so snugly on my wrists.

“Please, Mistress!” I begged.

“Were you given permission to speak?” she asked.

“No, Mistress,” I said.

“Be silent,” she said.

“Yes, Mistress,” I said.

I felt the weight of the chain, dangling from the collar ring. I pulled again, at the bracelets.

“You will be blindfolded, of course,” said the Lady Bina. “That will give them the option of sparing you, should they be so inclined. One supposes you might be worth something, off a slave block. In any event, you will learn what is to be done with you.”

“Thank you, Mistress,” I whispered.

I looked to the large beast, across the room, still crouched before the doorway. It was looking at me. I quickly lowered my head. One must be careful of looking into the eyes of the free.

I hoped I might be spared.

Chapter Forty-Three

I heard the rubbing of stone on metal, long, firm, rhythmic, smooth strokes.

I sat in the wagon, my back against the side of the wagon box, my legs drawn up. My wrists were still confined behind my back in the slave bracelets. I could feel the stones of the street as the wagon rumbled forward. I was blindfolded. The leash had been put on me before the blindfolding, in the apartment of the Lady Bina and Lord Grendel. The Lady Bina had remained in the apartment. I had been carried downstairs, and hoisted onto the wagon bed. I had heard canvas being drawn, so I supposed the wagon was a closed wagon.

“Can you understand me?” asked the beast.

I hesitated a moment, and then said, “Yes, Master.”

I had understood him long ago, when I, with Lita, had watched him pass with she whom I now knew as the Lady Bina. Her name had been subsequently made clear to me by my master, and that he was a Lord Grendel. Too, I was now more alert to, and familiar with, the transformations or qualifications of Gorean phonemes that might occur with such a form of life given my interactions with the beast, Eve, in Brundisium.

“Good,” he said. “The translator will not be needed.”

The wagon was being drawn by a draft tharlarion. I could tell this from the sound of claws on the stones. I supposed it to be a small one, as such is the case with most fee wagons within the city.

I continued to hear the rubbing of the stone on metal.

I did not know the driver. It was, doubtless, a pay wagon, or fee wagon, such as might be hired about the city. The Lady Bina, I gathered, had arranged the conveyance, probably engaging the first that came to hand. I suspected it would be exited before we approached the rendezvous point.

“You are Phyllis?” he asked.

“A slave is named as masters please,” I said.

“So, what is your name?” he asked.

“Phyllis, Master,” I said.

“You should be more prompt, slave,” he said.

“Forgive me, Master,” I said.

“I suspect,” he said, “you may have told the truth.”

“I did!” I said, eagerly. “I did, Master!”

“The Lady Bina,” he said, “is suspicious, and impetuous, and thinks little of slave girls.”

“She is free,” I said.

“I have often thought,” he said, “that she should best be stripped and collared herself.”

“But she is free!” I said.

“Were you not once free, somewhere?” he asked.

“Once,” I said, “—legally.” Surely I had been legally free on Earth, but I had learned, on Gor, that even on Earth I had been a slave, a slave in the profoundest of senses, a natural slave, a bred slave, born to be fittingly collared. It was only that, on Earth, I had not met masters. On Gor there was no dearth of masters. How differently I viewed the men of Gor from how I had viewed those of Earth! How weak, helpless, moved, and thrilled, I felt, as a woman, to be amongst such men. Perhaps even the free women of Gor experienced such feelings. Were they not, too, women? But then they were not owned.

“She would look well on her knees, in a collar,” he said.

“It is where we belong, Master,” I said.

“Her origin,” he said, “was a steel world. She was once the pet, a grooming pet, of Lord Arcesilaus.”

“I do not understand,” I said.

“Kurii, not unoften,” he said, “keep human females as pets. Their bodies can warm feet; their fine, small teeth are excellent for grooming, for ridding pelts of parasites.”

“I did not know,” I said.

“Most are not taught to speak, but only to recognize simple commands in Kur, much as a sleen might learn to respond to certain vocalizations in Gorean. Without speech, what is a human but another beast?”

“She spoke well,” I said.

“She is highly intelligent,” he said. “She learned much Gorean on the steel world, from some who could speak the language. Lady Delia, the companion of Epicrates, taught her to read Gorean. In many respects she is untutored and naive. She knows little of Gorean culture. She holds herself in high regard, deeming herself, as many lovely women, the fairest woman on Gor. Indeed, she once sent a slave to propose her companionship to Marlenus of Ar, that she would become thereby the Ubara of Ar. The poor slave, unfortunately, was much ridiculed, and well beaten. The Lady Bina found this rebuff of her suit surprising, and somewhat annoying. It took days for the slave to recover. In some respects she is imminently practical, and, in others, oblivious of practicalities which, to a normal person, suitably acculturated, would seem patent, practicalities of Home Stone, of family, of caste, of station, of power, and such. She is not, really, either moral or immoral. Similarly one would not expect a sleen, or a pet urt, to be either moral or immoral. They are merely what they are.”

“Master is different,” I speculated.

“Perhaps,” he said. “I have wondered, I have thought, I have had friends, I have felt the voice, the call, of honor.”

“How is it,” I asked, “that Master is on this world?”

“You looked upon me,” he said. “You have seen how hideous I am, neither Kur nor human, naught but a monstrosity. How could I endure to remain amongst the mighty and beautiful? Better to hide on this world, pretending to no higher office than that of a pet, or guard brute.”

“But the Lady Bina,” I said.

“She is ambitious, as well as beautiful,” he said. “She, however naively, intends to acquire fame, wealth, and power on Gor, an open world, one with many humans, through the weapons of her intelligence and beauty. Gor lies before her, a world to conquer, a jewel to possess. If you were she, would you not have hurried to Gor?”

“How is it that she was brought to Gor?”

“By my request, for her sake, to Lord Arcesilaus, whom I once served in a time of dark troubles.”

“This is hard for me to understand,” I said. “How is it that you are with the Lady Bina?”

“Unbeknownst to herself,” he said, “she needs counsel and protection. Who would watch out for her on this world, if not I? Who would protect herself from herself, if not I? Too, she is not a wicked thing, or not intentionally so, perhaps only, occasionally, accidentally so. Too, we are fond of one another. Surely a human can be fond of a brute, just as a brute may be fond of a human.”

“Surely there is more,” I said.

“Perhaps,” he said. “I am part human, and the human part of me surely sees how lovely she is, and, in a way, how helpless she is. She is a treasure, remote, and yet at hand.”

“You care for her,” I said.

“You looked at me,” he said.

“Even so,” I said.

“But not in the way you may think,” he said.

“I suppose not,” I said.

“I had a human mother,” he said.

“I understand so,” I said, shuddering.

I heard the stone continuing to move on the metal.

“Is she still alive?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I killed her.”

“Surely not,” I said.

“She saw me,” he said, “what she had produced, what was taken from her body, and she killed herself.”

“You did not kill her,” I said.

“As much as if my hand had been on the knife,” he said.

“No,” I said. “You are innocent, wholly so. You are in no way responsible. Do not think such thoughts. Forgive me, Master, but you are mistaken. She took her own life. I do not think it likely she held you. I do not think she nursed you. I do not think she knew you.”

“Who would care to know a monster?” he asked.

How could I respond to that?

“One,” he said, “once did, on the steel world, in the time of the tribulations, in the time of dark troubles, a member of the scarlet caste.”

I was silent.

The stone continued to move on the metal, and I suddenly realized the meaning of the sound. The blade of a weapon, apparently a large and heavy weapon, was being sharpened.

“By now,” he said, “we are outside the city, on the Viktel Aria, moving north.”

“I do not know, Master,” I said.

“We will soon halt the wagon, and proceed on foot,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” I said.

“There will be a guide,” he said.

“Perhaps he will wish to blindfold you,” I said.

“Doubtless,” he said.

“He will then do so,” I said.

“No,” he said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because he will not wish to die,” he said.