Fighting Slave of Gor (38 page)

I watched Bares going toward the equipment shed. He carried the shorn hair and the shears. The sack in which the shorn,hair of Kajirae was kept until it was marketed was in the equipment shed, where the shears were kept.

"Stand, shorn slave," said Kenneth to the girl.

She quickly stood.

"Remember," said be, "you are now no longer a lady's house slave. You are now a stable slut."

She then, fearfully, stood straight and beautifully. To see her in the brief rag of a stable slut, she standing so beautifully, the narrow collar on her throat, was to desire to rape her.

"Not bad," commented Kenneth.

The girl trembled. Her small hands were still locked behind her back, in slave bracelets.

"Not bad at all," said Kenneth.

Bares was now returning to the vicinity, having bound and discarded the hair in the hair sack. Too, he had replaced the shears in the shed.

"Ah," said Batas. "She is not unattractive for a shorn slave."

"Yes," said Kenneth.

"She will be a pleasant addition to the Kajirae in the stables," said Batas.

"I think so," said Kenneth.

"I must be on my way soon," said Borto,
who
was the driver of the tharlarion wagon.

Barns went to the discarded, enameled collar, now open, which lay in the wagon bed. He removed the second key from it, that which opened the slave's bracelets. He went behind the girl and freed her hands. He threw the opened bracelets, leaving the key in one of the bracelet locks, to the wagon bed. Borto lifted up the rear gate of the wagon and, with two hooks, fastened it in place.

"I wish you well," said Borto to the two free men.

"I wish you well," said Kenneth to him.

"I wish you well," said Barns to him.

In a few moments Borto had climbed to the wagon box and, with a crack of his
whip,
had urged the two tharlarion whose reins he controlled into motion.

Borto began to sing.

I watched the wagon departing, its wheels leaving tracks in the soft dust of the stable yard. In the wagon, hooded, head down, tied on her knees, bound hand and foot, her shoulders shaking, was Telitsia, an animal bound for the market.

I turned again to regard Taphris.

"Turn your hip out," said Kenneth. "Place your feet like that," he said, kicking her right foot. "Suck in your gut. Put your palms on your thighs. Lift your head"

Taphris was learning quickly that she was no longer in the house, but in the stables, a province in which she was
a
woman and in which men were supreme.

"Bend over at the waist," said Kenneth. "More!"

Her knees were flexed. Her head was then at his hip.

Kenneth stepped back from her. I could see that he was not displeased to have the lovely Tahpris at his mercy.

She did not dare raise her head.

"Bares," said Kenneth, "will show you your kennel, and your duties."

"Yes, Master," she said.

Bares placed his hand in her hair, grasping it firmly.
She
winced.

She had not moved her head, of course, for she knew she had been placed in a common leading position for slave girls.

She tried to look up at Kenneth, but the hand of Barns did not permit it. She must look to the dirt at her feet.

Bares turned away from us, leading her.

"Bares," said Kenneth.

"Yes," said Bares, stopping, and looking back.

"See that the new girl is worked well," said Kenneth.

"The south stables should be cleaned," said Bares.

"Shoveled and scrubbed," said Kenneth.

Barns grinned.

"And then water must be drawn and carried to fill the tanks in stables six through ten"

"Yes," said Bares. He turned then and strode away, pulling the half-running Taphris beside him.

Water is drawn from wells. It is then carried, in yoked buckets, to great wooden tubs in certain of the stables.

I did not envy the beautiful Taphris.

Kenneth turned to me. "You cannot read," he said.

"No, Master," I said, "not Gorean." Slaves are commonly kept illiterate. It makes them more helpless. It gives the masters more control over them. Besides, it is said, why should a slave know how to read?

"I do not think our little friend, Taphris," said Kenneth, "has fallen in the favor of the Mistress."

"Oh, Master?"

"No," he said.

"But she has been sent to the stables," I said.

"And she will learn what it is to be a stable slut," said Kenneth, grimly.

I smiled. I had little doubt but what Kenneth said was true.

"May I inquire as to the contents of the note, that which accompanied her?" I asked I gathered that Kenneth would have been willing to let me read it, had I been able to do so.

"It specifies that she is to be exempt from assignment to male stable slaves, that she is not to be given to them for wench sport."

"That is interesting," I said.

"And, further, it specifies that under certain conditions she is to be granted certain freedoms of observation and movement. Too, once, weekly, she is to be sent to the house on some errand or other."

"What are these conditions under which she is to be granted movement and freedom of observation?" I inquired.

"Conditions deemed pertinent to the cognizance of a certain male slave's whereabouts and activities," he said.

"Mine?" I asked.

"Yes," said Kenneth, grinning.

I said nothing.

"Our lovely Taphris, it seems," said Kenneth, "has business in the stables."

I said nothing.

"It seems the Mistress has not forgotten her former silk slave."

I did not speak.

"Taphris is a spy," said Kenneth. "She has been sent to the stables by the Mistress to spy on you."

"I see," I said.

"Beware of her," he said.

"I will," I said.

20
I
LEARN
THAT
THE
MISTRESS
WILL
HAVE
HOUSE
GUESTS

I reeled back, sprawling in the sand. I could feel blood about my mouth.

I grunted, kicked. He threw himself at me, fists striking.

I heard the screams of the crowd, in the tiers. I rolled to one side, eluding the attacker.

I staggered up. He, too, then, was on his feet. I tried, gasping, to thrust him away. He struck me in the gut with his head, driving me half to the wall. He again lowered his head. I clasped my hands, and flung them upward, catching him under the chin and he staggered backward. I spit blood into the sand. He again rushed at me, seizing me, and flung me against the low palings. "Fight! Fight!" I heard. "Jason!" I heard. "Kaibar!" I heard. "Now you have him!" I heard. "Get away from the wall!" Kenneth was screaming. The slave, Kaibar, then, of the stables of Shandu, holding his hands together, slashing sideways, struck me with his left elbow, and then his right. "Get away from the wall!" I heard. I grunted, taking a blow in the gut and then another, the fists now, like battering rams. "Get away from the wall!" screamed Kenneth. But it was not he, the bastard, who was pinned against it. I clenched Kaibar, holding to him, gasping. He tried to shake me from him. "Do not delay the fight!" Warned the referee, moving about us. I felt his whip lash at me. Then he was between us, forcing us apart. But I was now in the center of the pit. Kaibar and I faced one another. We were both bloody, and exhausted. He struck at me with his balled fist. I blocked the blow. He was strong. My arms ached. Even to parry the blows of a strong man takes its toll.

My shoulders and arms- ached. I could scarcely lift them. Kaibar staggered toward me again. Again I seized him, holding to him.

We heard then the bar being struck.

"Here!" called Kenneth. I, turning about, followed the sound of his voice and in a moment he had seized me and pulled me down on the box. Bares, with a sponge, dipped in a bucket, squeezed water over my head.

"You are doing splendidly," Kenneth assured me.

I could not even answer him.

Bares sponged sand and blood from my body.

"Drink," said Kenneth to Taphris, who knelt at our side.

She thrust the bottle filled with water, thick with sugar, to Kenneth who, holding it for me, poured some of it down my throat. I spit the rest of it away into the sand. Kenneth pushed the bottle back to Taphris.

Bares now toweled my body. Weakly I pushed him away. The sweat and water on my body, I hoped, would tend to slide blows away, were they struck at oblique angles.

He then dried the leather on my fists, that it would grip when it struck flesh.

The bar was again struck, a sharp, ringing note.

"You have him now," said Kenneth. "Finish him quickly."

I was half thrust to my feet and staggered toward the center of the pit. Kenneth, I decided, was insane. Yet he had seen hundreds of such bouts.

I took the first blow, staggering to the side. I straightened and, stumbling, smashed my fist into the gut of Kaibar. He reached for me, and I struck aside his hands, and struck him on the left side of the face. We stood in the sand, unsteadily.

"Fight!" cried the referee. "Fight!" cried the crowd. The crowd, mostly, was an excited and motely assortment of low caste males, but, here and there, there were veiled women amongst them, generally these, too, of low caste. There were, in favored seats, some upper-caste Goreans, recognizable by the colors and qualities of their robes, and among these, here and there, heavily veiled, erect and lovely, some upper-caste women. At one end of the enclosure, where it was entered, there was a barred gate. Behind this, pressed against it, watching, excited, holding to the bars, were collared, halfnaked slave girls, stable sluts, crying out for the champions of their various stables.

"Fight!" cried the referee. His lash fell on Kaibar.

I suddenly felt chilled. I realized then I should have permitted Bares to towel my body, drying it. I feared I might be seized with muscle cramps. The sweat and water, too, now that I had paused, sticky on my hot body, formed an adhesive surface which I feared might hold the leather of Kaibar.

"Fight!" cried the referee. His lash stung my back. The referee's lash again then fell on Kaibar, and again on me.

Kaibar and I again staggered toward one another. I had survived the eighteenth fighting period.

Then suddenly it seemed that the gunni were again on my hands and that I stood in the training barn before the great post. I could hear, but only as in the distance, the crying of the crowd, the screaming of the women, slave and free. I must work against time. Did not Kenneth hold the vial of sand? Blows it seemed I rained with an avalanche of lead on the reeling post shuddering in its braces. I must beat the sand. I could, and would. I lunged against the post, inches from it, blow after blow. Then spitting blood from my mouth, my legs covered to the knees with sweat and sand, pounding, laughing, exultant, terrible, I saw the post shatter away, falling from me.

"Stop! Stop!" was crying Kenneth. He ran to me, holding me. I stood bloody in the sand. At my feet, bloody, covered with sand, unconscious, lay Kaibar.

"Is he dead?" someone was crying.

"No," called the referee.

I was dragged to the center of the sand and my hands, one by the referee, the other by Kenneth, the trainer, were lifted in victory.

I threw back my head, sucking in air. My hands were swollen. The bloodied leather was cut from my hands.

"I shall have a champion who can beat your Jason!" cried Miles of Vonda, from the side of the wall.

"Bring him then forth!" cried Kenneth. "The stables of the Lady Florence of Vonda will await him!"

I had beaten the champion of the stables of Miles of Vonda two weeks ago. It had been that match which had established my precedence among the fighting slaves of the stables in the vicinity of Vonda. It had been that match which had resulted in my being named the local champion. This victory had not set well with Miles of Vonda. It was not merely that his own champion had been defeated and that he had lost a goodly bit of coin on the wagering involved, but that he had been, in the past, like several other young swains in the vicinity, an unsuccessful suitor, in the matter of the companionship, for the hand of the Lady Florence of Vonda.

I was half dragged, half pushed, by a crowd, Kenneth and Barus close to me, Taphris behind, through the barred gate leading to the sand pit. Another match, to hold the interest of the crowd, would soon be beginning. I pressed through people, slave and free, who pressed about me, congratulating me, many trying to touch me, even free persons. Slave girls, their eyes bright, their breath hot, tried to press themselves piteously against me. Some fell to their knees as I passed, trying to seize my legs and kiss at my thighs and ankles as I passed. Women know that they are the natural spoils of conquering males. I saw even the eyes of free women bright and wild over their veils.