Norman, John - Gor 08 - Hunters of Gor.txt
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“Face us,” said Marlenus.
Verna, seething, did so.
“You see then in this woman,” said Marlenus, “though she is beautiful, an
unreadiness.”
“Yes,” I said.
“You may clothe yourself,” said Marlenus.
Verna, in fury, reach down and snatched up the bit of slave silk. She jerked it
about her body. She then stood there, facing us.
“Look upon her,” said Marlenus.
I did.
“Raw and ignorant,” he said.
He then indicated that she should again kneel to one side, and take up the
two-handled wine vessel, that she be ready, when we wished, to serve us once
more.
Marlenus did not take his eyes from the beautiful slave.
She looked away.
“In her, as yet,” said Marlenus, “there is a coldness, an arrogance, a
loftiness, a stubborn defiance, a pride, an ice.”
“In the eleventh passage hand,” I said, “many rivers are frozen.”
She looked at Marlenus, in fury.
“But in En’Kara,” I said, “again the rivers flow free.”
“Serve us wine,” said Marlenus, “and then leave.”
The girl did so.
When she had left, Marlenus looked at me. “I did not permit ice in the bodies of
my slave girls,” he said.
I smiled. “In time,” I said, “she will doubtless learn that she had been
branded. She will doubtless learn her silk and her collar.” I took a sip of
wine. “In En’Kara,” I said, “perhaps the rivers will flow free.”
Marlenus laughed.
I looked at him.
“I am a Ubar,” he said.
“I do not understand,” I said.
“What is it to me,” he asked, “if she should, in months, of her own accord, come
to understand her brand, her silk and her collar. What is it to me, if she
should, in months, of her own accord, choose to fasten a talender in her hair?”
I regarded him.
“Do you truly think,” he asked, “that I, Marlenus of Ar, will wait for En’Kara.”
“I suppose not,” I said.
“Other men,” said Marlenus, “might be content to wait for the breezes of En’Kara
to loosen the ice, to soften it and let the river run unimprisoned.”
I looked into his eyes.
“In owning a woman,” said Marlenus, “as in the game, one must seize the
initiative. One must force through an attack that is overwhelming and
shattering. She must be crushed, devastated.”
“Mastered?” I asked.
“Utterly,” he said.
Marlenus played a savage game. I did not envy Verna. She was totally
unsuspecting.
There was a shallow bowl of flowers, scarlet, large-budded, five-petaled
flaminiums, on the small, low table between us.
He reached out with his large hand and took one of the flowers.
He held it in the palm of his hand. His hand began to close.
“If you were this flower,” asked Marlenus, “and you could speak, what would you
do?”
“I suppose,” I said, “if I were such a flower, I would beg for mercy.”
“Yes,” said Marlenus.
“Verna,” I said, “Is strong willed. She is extremely proud, extremely
intelligent.”
“Excellent,” said Marlenus.
His hand closed more on the flower.
“Such women,” said Marlenus, “ once conquered, make the most abject and superb
slaves.”
“I have heard this,” I said.
Incidentally, brilliant and imaginative women, particularly if beautiful and
high-born, are avidly sought in Gorean slave markets. High intelligence, and
imagination, perhaps interestingly from the point of view of a man of Earth, are
highly prized in women by Gorean men. Indeed, a woman who is known to be
intelligent and imaginative will bring a much higher price than some duller, but
more beautiful, sister in bondage. Goreans, unlike many men of Earth, have very
little interest in stupid women. The ideal candidate, for the Gorean slavers
snare is a highly intelligent, beautiful, imaginative woman, one who is strong
willed, proud and free. It is such women that Goreans enjoy making slaves.
Perhaps, surprisingly, once conquered, once they have learned their brand, once
they have learned their collar and silk, they make the most helpless, the most
incredibly delicious slaves.
“Suppose,” I said to Marlenus, “the flower does not beg for mercy.”
“Then,” said he, beginning to close his fist on the flower, “it is destroyed.”
“You play a savage game,” said I, “Marlenus.”
He dropped the flower back into the shallow bowl, among other, unthreatened,
buds.
“I am a Ubar,” he said.
Marlenus would not wait for the ice in the river to melt. He was a Ubar. He
would shatter it.
Verna was totally unsuspecting.
“I will tell her,” said Marlenus, “when to put a talender in her hair.”
I nodded. Verna’s conquest would be total. She would be made his, utterly.
“When does you game begin?” I asked Marlenus.
“It has already begun,” said Marlenus.
“How is that?’ I asked.
“She will attempt to escape tonight,” said Marlenus.
I regarded him, puzzled.
“Surely, together,” he smiled, “we have motivated such an attempt?”
It was true. I doubted that Verna, unless conquered, would willingly endure
another examination of the sort to which we had casually subjected her this
evening, the rather detailed appraisal of a slave girl by masters.
“Did you note,” asked Marlenus, “how deferentially she served us the last cup of
wine?”
I smiled. “Yes,” I said. “It was served almost as if a slave girl served it.”
“It was her attempt,” said Marlenus, “to pretend to be a slave. She served it as
she thinks slave girls serve.” He smiled. “Later,” he said, “when she knows
herself owned, she will serve, and naturally, as a slave girl serves.”
I supposed it was true. The true slave girl knows that she is owned. This makes
a difference in how she performs many tasks. Her body, in almost all of its
movements, will betray her bondage. It is difficult for a free woman to imitate
the actions of a slave girl. She does not know truly what it is to be slave. She
has never been taught. She has not been slave. Similarly it is difficult for a
slave girl to imitate the actions of a free woman. Knowing that she is, in
actuality, owned, it is very difficult for her to act as though she were free.
She is frightened to do so. Sometimes slavers use these differences to separate
the two categories of Gorean female. Sometimes, when a city is being sacked,
high-born free women, fearful of falling into the hands of chieftains of the
enemy, have themselves branded and collared, and don slave tunics, and mix with
their own slave girls, to prevent their identity from being known. Such
high-born women may, by a practiced eye, be detected among true slave girls.
They are then handed over to chieftains, for use in the public humiliation
ceremonies to be inflicted upon the conquered city, for public rebranding and
recollaring, and subsequent public distribution to high officers. The test may
be as simple as removing a girl’s tunic and telling her to walk across a room.
It may be as simple as telling her to present her lips to those if a warrior.
Similarly, slave girls, attempting to escape, can be separated out from free
women, even when all are veiled and wear the robes of concealment. Again, the
tests may be simple. Once, in Ko-ro-ba, I saw a slaver, before a magistrate,
distinguish such a girl, not even one of his own, from eleven free women. Each,
in turn, was asked to pour him a cup of wine, and then withdraw, nothing more.
At the end, the slaver rose to his feet and pointed to one of the women. “No!”
she had cried. “I am free!” officers of the court, by order of the magistrate,
removed her garments. If she were free, the slaver would be impaled. When her
last garment had been torn away, there was applause in the court. The girl stood
there. On her thigh was the brand. She was braceleted and leashed, and given to
the slaver. He led her, weeping, away to his slave chain.
“She attempted to serve as a slave,” said Marlenus, “to put us off our guard.”
“Then you think,” I asked, “that tonight she will attempt an escape?”
“Of course,” said Marlenus. “And I expect that by now she has left the camp.”
I looked at him, astonished.
“I gave orders for her departure not to be noticed,” smiled Marlenus.
“It is dark,” I said. “She will have a long start.”
“We can get her back when we wish,” he said. “I have arranged for the girls of
Hura, more than a hundred of them, to be in the forests about the camp. If they
do not pick her up, I shall go forth in a day or so and retrieve her myself.”
“You seem confident,” I said.
“There is little possibility of losing her,” said Marlenus. “I had her bedding,
a blanket changed this morning. She thinks that she washed her blanket but I
substituted another, an identical one from another girl.”
“Tonight,” I said, “she would not have slept on the cleaned blanket.”
“Of course not,” said Marlenus.
“And,” I said, “in Laura there are trained sleen.”
“Yes,” said Marlenus. “And given the scent of her blanket there will not be
difficulty in picking her up, even if we begin to search days from now.”
The sleen is Gor’s most perfect hunter.
“Even,” said Marlenus, “if we did not have the blanket the smell of the shelter
in which she slept last night should be sufficient for the sleen.”
“You are thorough,” I said.
“More thorough than you understand,” smiled Marlenus. He went to a heavy chest
at the side of the room and, with a key hung at his belt, unlocked it. He drew
from it some bits of scarlet slave silk. “I had her put these on yesterday,” he
said. He grinned. “One of my men, unknown to her, pretended to be a merchant,
arrived in the camp. He pretended he wished me to buy a consignment of pleasure
silk for use in my pleasure gardens. He seemed anxious that I buy. He begged
that Verna, who stood nearby, be permitted to display the product, so that I
might better judge its sheen and quality. I consented and ordered her to do so.
I pretended to purchase several rolls. When she removed the silks we put them to
one side, as though for washing.” He laughed. “Of course,” he said, “when she
was gone I locked them in the chest.”
I thought of the fierce sleen, with their fangs and blazing eyes, long-bodied,
six-legged, like a furred lizard.
“She has no chance of escape,” I said.
“She thinks, however,” said Marlenus, “that she had an excellent chance. She
does not know Hura’s band. She thinks her bedding has been changed. She knows of
no clothing, unwashed, which remains behind her. She will fear only that sleen,
if we used them, might pick up her scent from the shelter in which she slept.”
“She will think, then,” I said, “that she has a chance, perhaps and excellent
on, with her lead and the darkness, of escaping.”
“Yes,” said Marlenus.
“But she has no chance of escape,” I said.
Marlenus nodded his head. “That is true,” he said. “She had no chance of escape.
“Ubar,” said a voice. It was one of the guards.
“The girl, Verna,” he said, “had fled.”
“Thank you, Warrior,” said Marlenus, dismissing the man. Then Marlenus turned to
me. ”You see,” said he, : the game is already begun.”
I nodded.
Marlenus looked about himself. He saw, to one side, the large board of one
hundred yellow and red squares, the tall weighted pieces.
“Would you care for a game?” asked Marlenus.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “It is late now, Ubar.”
He laughed. “Good-night,” he said.
I turned and left. I looked back once, to see Marlenus regarding the board,
intently, it placed now before him on the table. He was moving pieces, trying
combinations, lines and permutations.
I thought of Verna fleeing through the night forest, swiftly, silently, wary,
excited, elated, heart beating.
I looked again to see the Ubar in his tent, his fist beneath his chin, regarding
the board of the game.
Verna was a lovely tabuk. Unknown to herself she was still on his tether.
Scarcely had Marlenus flung his Ubar’s Tarnsman to Ubar’s Builder’s Seven when
we heard the cry at the gate.
It was a hot afternoon, late in the afternoon. It was the day following Verna’s
flight.
We rose together, and went to the gate, and had it opened. We saw Verna
immediately. There were two short choke straps on her neck, each half by a
different panther girl. Her wrists had been bound behind her back. Further, at
two places, across her shoulders and belly, her arms with coils of binding
fiber, very tight, were pinioned. She knelt between her two captors. There were
several more girls, armed, behind her.
She looked up, angrily. Her head was high.
A dark-haired, tall girl strode forward.
“Greetings, Hura,” said Marlenus.
“Greetings, Ubar,” said the woman. I saw that Mira stood behind her. Mira was
much pleased.
Verna was clad only in the bit of yellow slave silk she had worn when she
escaped. It was half torn from her. Shreds of it were held by the binding fiber
on her body. She was barefoot. There were many scratches on her legs and body.
About her neck, and shoulders and arms, and back, she had been switched.
“We have caught an escaped slave,” said Hura.
Verna struggled in the bonds.
“A branded girl, collared,” said Hura. She struck Verna in the shoulder with the
butt of her spear, that of a free woman.
Hura reached to Verna’s collar. She dug her fingers between the neck and the
steel, and jerked it, twice. “The collar of this slave girl, she said, “says
that she belongs to Marlenus of Ar.”
“That is true,” said Marlenus.
Hura laughed. She was a tall, long-legged girl, rather hard looking, not
unbeautiful. She seemed strong. I did not trust her. She spoke loudly. Her laugh
was not pleasant.
Marlenus was looking down on Verna, bound kneeling at his feet. She looked up at
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sp; him, boldly, angrily.
“It is true,” said Marlenus. “This is one of my girls.”
“I am not one of your girls!” screamed Verna. “I am not one of your girls! I am
Verna! Verna, the outlaw woman! Verna, the panther girl!”
“She is pretty, isn’t she?” asked Hura.
“A lovely girl,” said one of the panther girls, holding one of the choke straps.
“Slave silks befits such a pretty little bird,” said another girl.
Verna struggled in her bonds.
“Do not injure your pretty body,” warned Hura, “You will be less pleasing to
men.”
“She-sleen!” wept Verna.
“Doubtless,” said Mira, “she would be even prettier in cosmetics and earrings.”
“Traitress!” screamed Verna. “Traitress!”
“Slave girl!” said Mira. “Slave girl!”
“She fled from us last night,” said Marlenus.
“We have caught her,” said Hura.
“I will give you a steel knife,” said Marlenus, :and forty arrow points for
her.”
“Very well,” said Hura.
The knife and arrow points were brought, and Hura took them.
The choke straps were removed from Verna’s throat. With her foot, spurning her,
Hura thrust her to the ground at the feet of Marlenus. She lay on her left
shoulder, looking up at him.
“Next time you may not be so fortunate, Marlenus,” she said.
“Get up,” he said.
She struggled to her feet. He took her hair in his hand and bent her over, her
head at his waist, holding her as one does a female slave.
“You, Hura,” said Marlenus, “and your lieutenant, Mira, may watch, if you wish.”
“We would be honored, Ubar,” said Hura. She, and Mira, followed Marlenus, he
holding Verna as a slave girl, within the stockade. I followed them. Behind us
the gates were swung shut and locked.
“I do not care if you beat me,” said Verna, in pain. “I have felt the whip.”
But Marlenus dragged her past the whipping post. I could see that this
frightened her.
Marlenus stopped at the side of his great tent, in an open space.
“Summon the camp,” he said. “Bring, too, the slaves.”
He forced Verna to her knees beside him. He removed his hand from her hair.
Soon the camp had gathered around, huntsmen, tarnsmen, retainers, slaves.
Watching, too, circled about, were Verna’s girls, in their panther skins,
chained together by the right ankle. There was no one in the camp who was not