Plunder of Gor (71 page)

“Order, brothers!” cried Lucilius, his frenzied Kur streaming rapidly but passively through Lord Grendel's translator. “Let Kur not fight Kur! Do not do war upon one another!”

But I feared that few of those Kurii embroiled with one another in that melee, adherents of Surtak or Lucilius, tearing at one another, teeth locked in bodies, rolling in the grass, much attended to the plea of he who had been, but shortly before, their acknowledged leader.

“Differences may be amicably resolved,” roared Lucilius, grasping his bloody ax. “Let reconciliation be proclaimed! Let fruitful, gentle peace abide! Traitors may be sought out and slain in a quieter, more pleasant time.”

“Return to your posts! Put up your weapons! Heed your officers, those loyal to me!” screamed Decius Albus to the soldiers and guards.

I looked about.

Several knots of war, in moving, violent tangles, roiled in the field. There were cries. Weapons clashed. I saw a man sink to the ground. Elsewhere in the field, and at its edges, men faced one another, many in a threatening manner. Some held Kurii at bay with leveled spears. Many men, clearly, wavered, seemingly confused, surely not knowing what to do, willing neither to obey nor to refuse to obey.

“Soldiers of Ar,” cried Drusus Andronicus, “those of you who are men, those of you who are worthy of the Home Stone of Ar, would you let lovely properties that should be yours, and may be yours, perish under the fangs of maddened beasts?”

“No!” cried a man.

“Are they worth only that?” cried Drusus Andronicus.

“No!” said more than one man.

“Discipline!” called an officer.

“Return to your ranks,” called another.

“They are not free persons, enemies to be met in battle, enemies who would kill you, enemies who must fear your blades,” cried Drusus Andronicus. “They are loot, objects, goods, kajirae, lovely, domestic stock, to be penned and owned, and fitted with chains, and sold.”

“Yes, yes!” called more than one man.

“Surely, as men,” called Drusus Andronicus, “you can think of better things to do with such goods, kajirae, can you not, than feed them to hungry beasts, better things to do with them than put them to the purpose of a beast's provender.”

“Certainly!” laughed a man.

I understood that laugh, the laugh of a proud, free Gorean male.

I think I would have been terrified to have heard such a laugh on Earth. In that laugh was bespoken the truth that there were two sexes, and that one sex was the fit property of the other. Hearing it, I was well reminded not only that I was a woman, but that I was, on this world, aside from the obvious biotruths of a species, a particular sort of woman, that here I was, in full and complete legality, naught but a property, a vendible, purchasable object.

How far I was from my former world!

The kajirae, I amongst them, huddled together, all of us naked, and collared, near the stake to which Kurik, my master, had been chained. We were slaves, female slaves. Our fate was not in our hands. It would be determined by men.

“Albus will summon more men,” said Kurik.

“It will take time,” said Drusus Andronicus.

“Doubtless he has already done so,” said Kurik.

“Possibly,” said Drusus Andronicus.

“From the wagons, the guards,” said Kurik.

“Quite possibly,” said Drusus Andronicus. “Beware the Assassin.”

“He remains in position, he does not charge,” said Kurik.

“Interesting,” said Drusus Andronicus.

“I could not stand against his skills,” said Kurik.

“Nor, I think, could I,” said Drusus Andronicus. “Why does he not advance?”

“We are two,” said Kurik.

“In a moment, given the fire of that sword, we could be none,” said Drusus Andronicus.

“He kills for pay,” said Kurik.

“Matters are uncertain,” said Drusus Andronicus. “Gold moves that blade, not words, not honor. What merchant would part with his goods while lacking the likelihood of recompense? What rational craftsman would sell his services without the assurance of gain?”

My master looked to me, sharply.

“Phyllis!”

“Master?” I said.

“Men are confused,” he said. “Gaps may be found in ranks. You are kajira. Men may be reluctant to strike you. You may be able to make your way to the wagon. Attempt to do so.”

I recalled that he had earlier encouraged me to return to the wagon, but I had not been able to do so.

“No!” I said. “I do not wish to do so. Forgive me, but I will remain here. You are in terrible jeopardy. I will not leave you!”

“You will obey,” he said.

“I will stay with you!” I cried.

“Go!” he said.

“They will not permit me passage!” I said. Did he think I was a free person? Did he not realize I was kajira?

“Hurry!” he said.

Tears burst from my eyes. I leapt to my feet and raced amongst men, some fighting, toward the perimeter of the field. A Kur turned savagely about, snarling, but I was past it. At the perimeter, I was turned back, resolutely, unhesitantly, as I had anticipated. I was treated identically at the other open perimeter. I was kajira. There was no escape for me. And Kurii fronted the field before the stands. It had doubtless seemed to the soldiers that I was trying to escape. Given the circumstances they would have supposed me to have been, understandably enough, I suppose, frantic with fear. Perhaps that is why they only turned me back, sternly, and did not throw me to my belly and slash the tendons behind my knee on both legs, hamstringing me. Goreans do not look lightly on the foolishness of slaves attempting to escape. And how would one escape, slave clad or stripped, branded and collared? And where could one escape to, in a world in which one could be but one thing, a slave? And why had my master wanted me to reach the wagon? I knew it to be empty. And the guards had determined that to their own satisfaction. Surely he remembered all that.

Miserable in one sense, but far from disheartened in another, cheered that I might return to the side of my master, to be with him, no matter what might ensue, I made my way back toward the stake.

The slaves were huddled there, together. How pathetic they looked. And, in a moment, I must take my place amongst them. I supposed it was much the same when a city falls and its more attractive women are stripped and gathered together, to await what will be done with them. To be sure, the captives would not as yet have been marked and collared. Interestingly, aside from proprietary markings and suitable collarings, it is easy to distinguish between two such groups, one of stripped free women and one of stripped kajirae. There would be a softness and vulnerability, a readiness, an appetition, and vitality, to the kajirae that would not yet characterize the free women. The kajirae have learned that they are women, and slaves. If necessary, they have learned it under the whip. The slave is not a pseudomale. She is a woman, and feminine, extremely feminine. She accepts her femininity, and rejoices in it. It is what she is, and wants to be. In her complementarity to the male, in her yielding to him, in her submission to his dominance, in her slave to his master, she finds herself.

In a moment, on the side rather near my master, I knelt amongst the other slaves. I trusted they would not think that I had been weak, foolish, or stupid, or incredibly naive, that I had essayed an escape, or perhaps they merely thought that I had simply lost my head and fled, that I had hoped, absurdly, to make my way unscathed between the spears.

Could I have been so ignorant, so lacking in understanding?

Did I not know that our only hope of survival lay in the blades of certain men, who might prize us as the goods we were?

I was muchly uneasy.

“Stupid fool,” said a slave.

“She is doubtless a barbarian,” said another, scornfully.

“I was commanded!” I retorted.

“Give her sandals,” said another.

“Better, put her in the Robes of Concealment,” said another. “She is not well covered.”

“Surely she is a free woman,” said another.

“But there is a collar on her neck,” said another.

“Then she is a slave,” said another.

“But a stupid slave,” said another.

“Assuredly,” said another.

Paula was in the group, near to Drusus Andronicus, but had not spoken. I saw tears in her eyes. She regarded me sympathetically, tenderly. She would know I had not left the group of my own free will, that I had not deserted it, that I had not tried to save myself, leaving the others to their fate. She would know that the abuse heaped upon me was not warranted. I had not tried to escape. I had not rushed stupidly, hysterically away. She was my friend. Happily she did not suspect how I had betrayed her. I felt guilt, keenly. I had so wronged her! Lyris was near Surtak, crouched behind him. I understood her to be an unusually beautiful female Kur, and yet that was lost upon me. What but another beast, gross and ruthless, agile and powerful, could find her so? The former Lady Alexina, blond-haired and blue-eyed, now collared, and doubtless marked, wholly stripped, as were we all, knelt toward the center of our group. It is not unusual for slaves to be kept naked; it helps to remind them, like the collar on their necks and the mark on their thigh, that they are slaves. Surely I knew well the joy of being kept naked before my master. I saw Tyrtaios, standing easily, his sword unsheathed, who had not stirred from his earlier position to the side, regard her. She trembled in terror, and put her head down, and tried to hide herself amongst the others, others whom yesterday she might have despised, but from whom she was now no different, merely another kajira.

I looked up at my master. The slave is well accustomed to looking up at free persons from her knees. How right it seems, after a time, that we should kneel before the free. Indeed, we can be terribly uneasy if not permitted to kneel, even terrified not to kneel. I recalled when, on my former world, in the office, he whom I would come to know as Kurik of Victoria, had inquired why I was standing before him. “You should be on your knees,” he had said. How puzzled, disconcerted, and then infuriated, I had been. I had not known then that I was a slave and he a master. How swiftly then, had I known these things, I would have hastened to my knees before the will, might, and glory of such a male, so different from the men I knew. How piteously I would have trembled and hoped to please him! Surely one such as he might find some use for one such as I! Had nature not designed us for ones such as he, to kneel naked before them, our necks in their collars, our heads down, our lips to their feet?

“Forgive me, Master,” I said, looking up. “I failed.”

“I did not expect you to succeed,” he said.

“I tried,” I said.

“One can do no more,” he said.

“Master is kind,” I said.

“How so?” he said.

“You hoped,” I said, “that I might have saved myself.”

“I had hoped,” he said, “that we both, and Grendel, and perhaps others, might have been saved.”

“I do not understand,” I said.

“That you might have reached the wagon, and returned.”

“The wagon was empty,” I said.

“Then,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“But perhaps not now,” he said.

“I do not understand,” I said.

“We are lost,” said Drusus Andronicus. “Reinforcements have come from the wagons, some tens of guards.”

“I feared so,” said Kurik.

There were cries of dismay, wails of misery from the kajirae.

“Your foes are there!” cried Decius Albus from the box, pointing toward Surtak, Drusus Andronicus, Kurik, and Lord Grendel. “Deploy! Ready yourselves. Attack upon my signal.” He then turned to Lucilius, intent and monstrous, beside him in the box. “Fear not, noble High One,” he said, “the festivities will shortly continue, and with appetites yet better whetted!”

Surtak, clutching his ax, looking about, called out to Lucilius, wildly, desperately, his Kur picked up by Lord Grendel's translator. “You are within the rings,” he cried. “I pronounce you so! Descend and meet with me.”

“I think not,” returned Lucilius. “The matter is done. Test the might of your single ax against twenty spears, from twenty sides!”

I saw men encircling us.

“We are armed,” said Drusus Andronicus to Kurik. “Now none can deny us the right to die well.”

I looked about.

About the edges of the field several soldiers maintained their position. Discipline seemed frayed. Isolated men, backing away from one another, were in the field. Some had fallen, bloodied in the grass. One Kur lay some yards from us, unmoving. Kurii drew back toward the stands. The field seemed strangely quiet. We, the small group at the stake, Surtak, Drusus Andronicus, Kurik, and Lord Grendel, who had no weapon save claws and fangs, and the larger group, the kajirae, were encircled. I saw the eyes of the soldiers about us, but feet away, eyes narrowed, watchful, alit within the apertures of those fierce-seeming helmets, the openings so like a “Y” in shape, the lowered spears, the points threatening us, moving slightly, like the heads of a ring of osts. It was like a trap of steel, a trap from which there was no escape, a trap not yet sprung. I felt sick, perhaps as a tabuk might, with nowhere to run, a tabuk ringed with sleen.

Decius Albus raised his hand.

But then he lowered his hand, looking past us, toward the perimeter of the field, opposite the stands.

Two figures were approaching, that of a small free woman, and, one might suppose, her pet.

The free woman was clad in the full regalia of the Robes of Concealment, and yet, surely to the shock and dismay of some of the soldiers, and the awe or delight of others, had disdained veiling. Who would care to conceal such beauty?

“One side, oafs!” she cried. “Dare not obstruct the path of a free woman, not so much as brushing her sleeve, lest I summon the guardsmen of Ar and have you remanded to the nearest pole of impalement! Aside, all of you, now! I have business here! Stand aside, aside!”