Savages of Gor (15 page)

The fellow leaning on the rail turned to look at me. "Why do you wish to find Grunt?" he asked.

"I wish to enter the Barrens," I said.

"It is madness to do so," said he.

I shrugged.

"It is unfortunate you did not come to Kailiauk a month ago," he said.

"Why is that?" I asked.

"Settlers, armed, with two hundred wagons, crossed the Ihanke," he said. "Men, women, children. There must have been seven or eight hundred of them. You could have accompanied them. There is perhaps safety in such numbers."

"Perhaps," I said. Such a. party, however, I knew must travel slowly. Also, it would be impossible to conceal its trails and movements.

"You are a big fellow," he said, "and seem quick, and strong. Why did you not sign articles with the troops who left this morning?"

I did not respond to him.

"It was the largest mercenary band ever to leave Kailiauk," he said. "You should have gone with them."

"Perhaps," I said.

"I'm chained! I'm chained!" wept one of the girls in the pit below. She knelt, nude, in the mud. With her small hands, her tiny wrists in their close-fitting manacles, she seized the chain attached to the collar on her neck. She jerked it twice against the back of her neck. It cut at the back of her neck. "I'm chained," she wept, disbelievingly. "Where am I? What has become of me? Where are my clothes? Who are these men? How is it that they dare to look at me? In what place do I find myself?"

"They cannot even speak Gorean," said the man beside me.

"Barbarians," I said.

"Yes," he said. The girl had spoken in English. This had confirmed my surmise as to their origin. I had come to Seibar's market out of curiosity. I had heard he was the major dealer in Kailiauk for barbarian slaves. I did not know, but I suspected that he himself was not in league with Kurii, but merely purchased wholesale lots of such girls from one or more of their agents. Such girls, I gathered, from my conversations with the teamster with whom I had ridden to Fort Haskins, were sold at various points along the perimeter. I had, earlier in the afternoon, on one of my purchased kaiila, scouted the terrain north and south of Kailiauk. In my ride I had come to one place, sheltered among small hills, in which I had found scorched grass and several, rounded six-inch-deep impressions in the earth. It had been there, I speculated, that one of the steel ships of the Kurii had landed. Also there were wagon tracks leading away from the area, toward Kailiauk. I was less fortunate, at various small camps and outlying farms, in obtaining information as to the possible whereabouts of a white trader named Grunt. I did not approach the Ihanke, nor did I wish to do so, if possible, until I knew exactly what I was doing. I did not know, for example, even if it were guarded or not.

"Even if such girls understood Gorean," said the fellow next to me, amused, "they could probably not even understand what was required of them. They probably do not even know the hundred kisses."

"They could be taught," I said.

"That is so," he laughed.

"Stand aside, Gentlemen, if you would," said a voice near us, that of a slaver's man.

We stepped back and he, from a basket, hurled an assortment of scraps, such as crusts of bread and rinds of fruit, into the muddy pit. It was the refuse, the garbage, I gathered, from a meal of the slaver's men.

In the pit the girls regarded the refuse with horror. Then I saw the small, chained hand of one reach forth toward a piece of roll. She picked it up and thrust it in her mouth. Another girl then reached to a bit of fruit. Another then snatched at a gravy-sopped wedge of yellow Sa-Tarna bread. Then, in an instant, in their chains, they scrambled in the mud after the garbage, twisting and shrieking, caught and restricted in their chains, scratching, and rolling and fighting, for the least of the tidbits cast to them by a free man.

"They are slaves," said the man near me, as we returned to the railing.

"Yes," I said. Too, I saw that their education had begun.

"There is better stock inside, I hear," said the man, "hidden away until the time of the sale, some even in the barbarian garments in which they were captured."

"That is interesting," I said.

"But they, too," said the man, "will learn to take food on their belly."

"Of course," I said. Then I turned away from the railing. I was angry that I had not been able to locate Grunt, the trader. In the morning, with or without him, I would enter the Barrens.

7
     
Ginger

"Barbarians! Barbarians for sale!" called the fellow, standing on the circular wooden platform, outside the opened gate of the large, palisaded enclosure.

From within I saw a nude woman, her hands tied behind her back, being dragged forth, each arm in the charge of a slaver's man.

"Barbarians for sale!" call the fellow on the platform. He was a gross, corpulent fellow, and wore a long, opened, soiled shirt of blue-and-yellow silk. His leather trousers were fastened with a wide, triply buckled belt. To this belt was fastened a substantial, beaded sheath, apparently containing a stout, triangular-bladed dagger. He wore, too, kaiila boots, with belled, silver heel points, kaiila goads. In his hand there was a long, supple kaiila quirt of black leather, about a yard in length. His hair was bound back with strands of twisted, blue-and-yellow cloth. His caste, even in the town of Kailiauk, was that of the slavers.

The woman, her hands tied behind her, each arm in the rude grasp of the slaver's man, was thrust to the height of the platform, beside the corpulent fellow.

"In addition to our stock of fine merchandise," called the corpulent fellow, "we have just received a new lot of barbarians!"

These would be the same girls of whom I had seen several this afternoon, in the slave pits within the compound. I had come again, in the evening, after supper, to the compound of Ram Seibar. I thought I might look in on some of the sales. Afterwards I might go to a tavern, to have a cup of paga and see if I could rent a girl to take to my room for the night, to return her in the morning.

"They have not yet been picked over," said the man. "This little plum, juicy with pleasures for a master," he said, indicating the girl on the platform with him, with a gesture of his kaiila quirt, "is one of the sorriest of the lot." This, in my opinion, was not true. I thought she would have ranked rather high among the girls. To be sure, the most luscious merchandise, presumably to be sold rather late in the evening, had probably not even been put in the pits.

"Display her, Lads," said the fellow. The two slaver's men thrust the woman forward, toward the crowd, and bent her backwards. She whimpered.

"And this is one of the worst of the lot," said the fellow. The two slaver's men turned the woman first to one side, and then to the other. "Meat so fresh that it has not yet even been marked!" said the fellow. "That is enough, Lads," he said. They then turned the woman about and dragged her down the steps and back into the compound. 'If you would see more," said the man to those of us gathered about, about the outdoor platform, "you must come within. Within you may buy her, and others like her, from the side blocks. Too, even more luscious merchandise you may seek from the central block in open bidding!" I wondered if the woman knew that she was, in all likelihood, to be soon branded. In most Gorean cities it is illegal to offer an unbranded woman in a public sale. This is presumably in deference to the delicacy and sensibilities of free women. The brand draws a cataclysmic gulf between the Gorean free woman, secure in her arrogance, beauty and caste rights, and the stripped, nameless, rightless slaves, suitably vended as the mere lovely beasts they are in the flesh markets of this primitive, gorgeous world. Unbranded women, of course, may be sold privately, for example, as fresh captures to slavers, or, say to men who have speculated that they might find them of interest.

"Barbarians! Barbarians for sale!" now continued to call the fellow on the wooden platform outside the gate to the compound of Ram Seibar. "In addition to our usual stock of fine merchandise, we have just received a new lot of barbarians. They have not yet been picked over. They will be put up for sale within the Ahn. Step within, Noble Gentlemen, and examine our offerings. Patronize the house of Ram Seibar! Free drinks! No purchase necessary!"

I felt a small tug at my sleeve, and then felt my arm delicately held. I felt a soft cheek pressed against my arm. "Master," whispered a voice. I looked down, and the girl, with loose, auburn hair, looked up. She smiled. "Accompany me to Randolph's tavern," she said. "I will give you much pleasure." About her throat, narrow, sturdy and closely fitting, was a steel collar. I stepped back, that I might see her better. She wore a short, fringed, beaded shirtdress. This came high on her thighs. It was split to her waist, well revealing the sweetness and loveliness of her breasts. It was belted upon her with a doubly looped, tightly knotted rawhide string. Such a string is more than sufficient, in its length, and in its strength and toughness, to tie a woman in a number of ways. She was barefoot. About her left ankle there was, about two inches high, a beaded cuff, or anklet. Her garb was doubtless intended to suggest the distinctive, humiliating and scandalously brief garment in which red savages are sometimes pleased to place their white slaves. One difference, however, must surely be noted. The red savages do not use steel collars. They usually use high, beaded collars, tied together in the front by a rawhide string. Subtle differences in the styles of collars, and in the knots with which they are fastened on the girls' necks, differentiate the tribes. Within a given tribe the beading, in its arrangements and colors, identifies the particular master. This is a common way, incidentally, for warriors to identify various articles, which they own.

"It is my hope that Master will find Ginger pleasing," she said.

"Ginger?" I asked.

"Master?" she asked.

"Are you a barbarian?" I asked.

"Once, Master," she whispered. "But I have been trained. I am no longer a stranger to my collar."

"Watch out!" cried a man.

"Oh!" cried the girl. I seized her and pulled her from the place where she stood. Two kaiila thundered past.

"Make way!" we heard. "Make way!" There was then the thudding of the clawed pads of kaiila, several of them, almost upon us. "Ho! Ho!" called their drovers, riding behind them, swirling their coiled rawhide ropes in the air. I and the others backed against the wall of the compound of Ram Seibar. The kaiila, perhaps a hundred and fifty of them, thundered past. I did not think such beasts should be run through the streets, but it sometimes pleases their drovers to do so. It had happened more than once since I had been in Kailiauk. The kaiila were presumably from the northern ranches and would be sold in Kailiauk, and in the towns to the south.

"It is needless for that to be done in that fashion," said a fellow near me. "There are shorter routes to the corrals and the wired pastures."

"Individuals are sometimes injured," said another man.

"The tavern girls live in terror of them," said another fellow.

I looked down at the girl in my arms. I saw that what he said was true. This pleased me. It was fitting that slave girls lived in terror of free men.

"They do not come that often to Kailiauk," said a fellow, cheerfully.

"When they come," said another, "it is with a thirst for paga and the wenches of the taverns."

"Who can blame them?" said another.

The kaiila ranches, I supposed, were remote, desolate places. Land, which is suitable for farming, and in proximity to towns, is seldom, along the perimeter, put to the uses of grazing.

"They are generally good fellows," said another man.

"They spend their money freely," added another.

"That is a point in their favor," said another.

"A point in our favor," said another.

"Some are dangerous and cruel." said another man.

"Let us hope there will be no killings," said another.

Killings among such men, hot-tempered and aflame with paga, I supposed might occur not infrequently. Too often, I suspected, a suspicion of cheating at stones or disks, or a dispute over a slave, might lead to the flash of steel, the sudden movement of a knife.

"You saved me, Master," said the girl, holding to me.

"Perhaps to some extent," I said, "I have protected the investment of your master." It is well to help a slave keep clearly in mind that she is only an article of property.

"He had me cheaply," she smiled.

"Perhaps I should not have bothered," I said.

"But I am worth more now," she said.

"Oh?" I said.

"Return with me to the tavern of Randolph," said she. "I will show you." She then pressed her body against me, closely and lasciviously, and helplessly, in the manner of the female slave, that of the woman who knows herself completely subject to the will of men. She then put her arms about my neck and, standing on her toes, lifting her lips to mine, kissed me. I then, by the arms, held her from me. "You kiss well, Slave," I told her, "Thank you, Master," she said.

"Is it true that you are a barbarian?" I asked.

"Yes, Master," she said. "I was sold, even, from the house of Ram Seibar."