Players of Gor

by Norman, John;

  There was then a growling in the corridor outside of the bars, and a scratching of claws on stone. I also heard several men and the sound of arms. In a moment or two the Kur from the courtyard below, no longer dragging the part of a sleen, perhaps having finished it, or having had it dragged from him, was ushered past our cell, and prodded, its ropes then removed, a chain still on its neck, into a cell down the way. It had moved slowly past us, slowly and stiffly, as though in great pain. It now, now that it was no longer fighting for its life, seemed exhausted and weak. Much of its fur was matted with dried blood. I did not think it would be likely to survive another such bout in the courtyard. As it had passed our cell it had looked in at me. In its eyes there had been baleful hatred. I was human.

  I looked back at the representative of the urt people. He suddenly scurried back to his straw, crouching on it, looking up at me. He had been approaching the table quite closely. He had finished his meal. It seemed reasonable to suppose then that he had intended, or hoped, his own food gone, to steal some of mine, that to be accomplished while my attention was distracted by the passage of the Kur in the hall. I smiled. The little creature was doubtless indeed familiar with the routines, the possibilities and opportunities, of prison life.

  It turned its eyes away from mine, not wanting to meet them. It pretended to be examining its straw for lice.

  It was one of the urt people. It had a narrow, elongated face and rather large, ovoid eyes. It was narrow-shouldered and narrow-chested. It had long, thin arms and short, spindly legs. It commonly walked, or hurried, bent over, its knuckles often on the ground, its head often moving from side to side. This low gait commonly kept it inconspicuous among the large, migratory urt packs with which it commonly moved. Sometimes such packs pass civilized areas and observers are not even aware of the urt people traveling with them. The urt packs provide them with cover and protection. For some reason, not clear to me at that time, the urts seldom attack them. Sometimes it would rear up, straightly, unexpectedly, looking about itself, and then drop back to a smaller, more bent-over position. It was capable of incredible stillness and then sudden, surprising bursts of movement.

  I made a small clicking noise, to attract its attention. Immediately, alertly, it turned its head toward me.

  I beckoned for it to approach.

  It suddenly reared upright, quizzically.

  “Come here,” I said, beckoning to it.

  When it stood upright it was about three and a half feet tall.

  “Do not be afraid,” I said. I took a slice of hard larma from my tray. This is a firm, single-seeded, applelike fruit. It is quite unlike the segmented, juicy larma. It is sometimes called, and perhaps more aptly, the pit fruit, because of its large single stone. I held it up so that he could see it. The urt people, I understood, were fond of pit fruit. Indeed, it was for having stolen such fruit from a state orchard that he had been incarcerated. He had been netted, put in a sack and brought here. That had been more than six months ago. I had learned these things from the jailer when he had thrust the creature in with me. The creature approached, warily. Then it lifted its long arm and pointed a long index finger at the fruit. “Bet! Bet!” it said. “Pay! Pay!”

  “No,” I said. “I made no bet with you.” It was referring, I gathered, to the Kur baiting which had taken place this morning in the courtyard, visible from our window. It had probably picked up the expressions from the crowd. I did not know if it understood the concepts of betting and paying or not.

  “I do not owe this to you,” I said. “It is mine.”

  The creature shrank back a bit, frightened.

  “But I might give it to you,” I said.

  It looked at me.

  I broke off a piece of the pit fruit and handed it to him. He ate it quickly, watching me.

  “Come here,” I said. “Up here.” I indicated the surface of the table.

  He leapt up to the surface of the table, squatting there.

  I broke off another bit of the hard fruit and handed it to him. “What is your name?” I asked.

  He uttered a kind of hissing squeal. I supposed that might be his name. The urt people, as I understood it, commonly communicate among themselves in the pack by means of such signals. How complicated or sophisticated those signals might be I did not know. They did tend to resemble the natural noises of urts. In this I supposed they tended to make their presence among the urts less obvious to outside observers and perhaps, too, less obvious, or obtrusive, to the urts themselves. Too, however, I knew the urt people could, and did upon occasion, as in their rare contacts with civilized folk, communicate in a type of Gorean, many of the words evidencing obvious linguistic corruptions but others, interestingly, apparently closely resembling archaic Gorean, a language not spoken popularly on Gor, except by members of the caste of Initiates, for hundreds of years. I had little difficulty, however, in understanding him. He seemed an intelligent creature, and his Gorean was doubtless quite different from the common trade Gorean of the urt people. It had doubtless been much refined and improved in the prison. The urt people learn quickly. They are rational. Some people keep them as pets. I think they are, or at one time were, a form of human being. Probably long ago, as some forms of urts became commensals with human beings, so, too, some humans may have become commensals, traveling companions, sharers at the same table, so to speak, with the migratory urt packs.

  “What do they call you here?” I asked.

  “Nim Nim,” it said.

  “I am called Bosk,” I said.

  “Bosk, Bosk,” it said. “Nice Bosk. Pretty Bosk. More larma! More larma!”

  I gave the creature more of the hard larma.

  “Good Bosk, nice Bosk,” it said.

  I handed it another bit of larma.

  “Bosk want escape?” it asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Bad men want do terrible thing to Bosk,” it said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nim Nim afraid talk,” it said.

  I did not press the creature.

  “Few cells have table,” it said, fearfully. “Bosk not chained.”

  I nodded. “I think I understand,” I said. Not being chained, and because of the table, I had been able to witness the cruel spectacle in the courtyard. That I supposed now, given the hints of the small creature, was perhaps intended to give me something to think about. I shuddered. Much hatred must I be borne in this place.

  “More larma!” said the creature. “More larma!”

  I gave it some more larma. There was not much left. “They intend to use me in the baiting pit,” I speculated.

  “No,” said the creature. “Worse. Far worse. Nim Nim help.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Bosk want escape?” it asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “More larma,” it said. “More larma!”

  I gave it the last of the larma.

  “Bosk want escape?” it asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Nim Nim help,” it said.

  14

  The Urts;

  How Nim Nim Was Made Welcome in the Pack;

  The Warrior’s Pace

  “There!” squealed the small creature. “There! There! The people! Nim Nim escape! Nim Nim free!”

  We had emerged through a cut between two rocky outcroppings and ascended a small hill. It was near the tenth Ahn, the Gorean noon. We had left the city, emerging well beyond the walls early this morning. We were naked. The lower portion of my body was covered with dirt and blood from our trek through the brush. It, too, had been cut from the stones and sides of the narrow sewers through which we had made our way. “Nim Nim good urt,” he had told me. “Urts find way!”

  “Strip, enter the cubicle of the bathing cisterns,” had said our jailer, five of his fellows, armed, behind him, before dawn. “Wash your stinking bodies, then emerge.”

  Our chains, in this area below the prison, had been removed.

&n
bsp; “Why?” I asked.

  “Obey,” he had said.

  I was puzzled about this. The luxury of baths is seldom permitted to Gorean prisoners, whether they are of the male or female sort. To be sure, a girl will usually be scrubbed up and made presentable before she is brought up for sale.

  Perhaps they had something special in mind for us.

  I saw the menacing movement of weapons.

  We stripped.

  “Leave your clothing here,” said the jailer. “Enter the cubicle of the bathing cisterns.”

  We were prodded with the points of spears through a heavy wooden door.

  “Wash well,” called a man, laughing.

  “We would not wish your stink to offend the crowds,” laughed another man.

  Immediately I thought of the baiting pit, and the screaming, betting, enthusiastic crowds there. But Nim Nim had told me that it was something far worse than this which they had planned for me.

  “Have pity on the poor sleen,” laughed a man.

  “You would not want to make them sick, would you?” asked another. That was, I suppose, very funny. The sleen is one of the least fastidious of Gorean animals. It commonly makes the tarsk, usually thought of as a filthy animal, seem like an epicure. I thought again, of course, from these comments, of the baiting pit in the courtyard.

  The heavy door of the cubicle of the bathing cistern closed behind us. I heard it locked. It was very dark inside. There was a little light coming from under the door. There was a bit more light coming from somewhere high above, through some sort of narrow, shuttered aperture.

  “It is hard to see,” I said.

  “Nim Nim see,” said the small beast, clutching at my wrist with both of its hands. It began to pull me through the room. Once my foot splashed into the shallow concave approach to a cistern. There was a smell in the place. This area, I suspected, was probably more in the nature of a sump beneath the prison than a bath. In a few moments my eyes could make out things reasonably well. The eyes of the urt people, I gathered, adjusted very quickly to darkness. This may be an adaptive specialization, having to do with the fact that urt packs are often active at night.

  “Here, here,” said the small creature, eagerly. It pulled me to a grating in the floor. “Nim Nim not strong enough!”

  I fixed my hands about the bars of the grating. I pulled at it. It seemed very solidly anchored in the cement. It did pull up a bit at one edge. It was extremely heavy. I was not surprised that the small creature could not move it. I wondered if many men could have moved it.

  “Pull! Pull!” said Nim Nim.

  “I cannot move it,” I said.

  “Pull! Pull!” said Nim Nim.

  I crouched down, getting my legs under me. Then, largely using the force of my legs, pushing up with them, I pulled against the bars. The side which had lifted before a bit, now, a little at a time, to my elation, with small sounds of loosening, breaking mortar, rose upward. The mortar, perhaps, in years of drainage here, if the area did function largely as a sump for the prison, might have been loosened.

  “See! See!” whispered Nim Nim.

  I thrust the heavy grating, loose now, to the side.

  Nim Nim scuttled into the dark, circular crevice. In a moment, half sickened by the stench, my body moving against the slimy sides of the opening, I followed him.

  * * * *

  We stood now, in the neighborhood of noon, on a small hill, some pasangs from the walls of Brundisium. We had emerged through rocky outcroppings below. There was much stone in this area. It could have been quarried. Much of this stone, in its great surrounding, irregular alignments, seemed almost to form the serrated ridge of some vast, ancient, natural bowl, now muchly crumbled and weathered. These outcroppings, with their breaks and openings, encircled an area perhaps more than two pasangs in width. Guided by Nim Nim, who had sometimes ridden upon my back, and other times upon my shoulders, I had come to this place. Now he had leaped down from my shoulders. “Nim Nim safe now!” he cried, pointing downward into the shallow, muchly encircled valley below. In that broad, sweeping, concave area I could see what Nim Nim called the “people.” Never before had I seen an urt pack that huge. It must have contained four or five thousand animals.

  “Hold!” called a voice, authoritatively.

  I turned suddenly, swiftly about.

  “Good trick! Good trick!” cried Nim Nim. “Nim Nim good urt! No pit for Bosk! Worse! Much worse! Nim Nim help! Nim Nim help!”

  I felt sick. I remembered his words in the cell. I had not immediately understood, I had then supposed that he meant to help me escape, as indeed, clearly, later, seemed to be the intent of his words. Now I understood that it had been no accident he had been put in with me. He had been, from the beginning, the partisan of my enemies.

  “Nim Nim help!” he cried, delightedly. “Nim Nim help! Nim Nim good urt! Now Nim Nim free!”

  “Kneel, Bosk of Port Kar,” said Flaminius. I knelt. With Flaminius were the jailer, and his other fellows. Several had set crossbows trained on me. More importantly, one held the leashes of three snarling sleen.

  “He looks well, naked and on his knees, Bosk of Port Kar, before men of Brundisium,” said the jailer.

  “Are you of Brundisium?” I asked Flaminius.

  “I am in the fee of Brundisium,” he said. “But I am of Ar.”

  I did not understand the sort of triumph which seemed to characterize the voice of the jailer. The alliances of Brundisium were with Ar, not Tyros or Cos. I measured the distance between myself and the jailer. I wondered how long it would take to break his neck. I did not think I could reach him before the quarrels of crossbows would lodge themselves in my body. I was not a female, joyfully, rightfully, on her knees before men. The accent of Flaminius, now that I thought of it, did have traces within it which suggested Ar. To be sure, these things are sometimes difficult to determine with accuracy. It was certainly not obviously an accent of Ar. If he was of Ar, he had probably been out of the city for years.

  “I thought you were to have had a bath,” smiled Flaminius. “Instead it seems you are in desperate need of one.”

  I did not respond to him.

  “Did you enjoy your trip, crawling through the slime sewers of Brundisium?” he asked.

  I did not speak.

  “To be sure, your journey in the open-air and sun has doubtless removed some of the stink from you.”

  Several of the men behind him laughed.

  “Even now, men are repairing the various gratings which we loosened or removed for your convenience, as well as narrowing several of the conduits.”

  I regarded him.

  “Oh, yes,” he said, “this has all been well planned.”

  “Would it not have been simpler to slay me in the prison?” I asked.

  “Simpler, yes,” said Flaminius, “but far less amusing.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “The arrangements in your cell, its location, and so on, were intended to encourage you to be apprehensive, and to think about escape.”

  “I do not think I needed much encouragement,” I said.

  “Apparently not,” he said. “We noticed, of course, that you did not use your bedding. That was clever of you. Without something of that sort it is harder, of course, to set sleen on your trail.”

  “I thought you might intend to use me in the baiting pit,” I said.

  “Of course,” said Flaminius. “Indeed, it was intended that you should fear that. On the other hand, it did not seem politically expedient, at least at this time, to have Bosk of Port Kar, that being a city theoretically neutral to Brundisium, publicly slaughtered in one of our baiting pits.”

  “I would suppose not,” I admitted. Some of the men of Brundisium, several functionaries and soldiers, for example, and guards in the prison, were familiar with my identity. Under such circumstances it would surely be difficult to conceal it from a crowd attending a public spectacle.

  “Accordingly, we arranged your escape,
” said Flaminius, “risking nothing, of course.”

  “Nothing?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” said Flaminius. “How do you think we followed you so discreetly, allowing you your lead of better than an Ahn, until, at our pleasure, we chose to close the gap and apprehend you here?”

  I looked down at the urt pack in the valley below. “I was brought here, deliberately, of course,” I said.

  “Of course,” said Flaminius. “But even if you had not chosen to follow our little friend’s advice in this matter, we could have apprehended you easily anywhere in the vicinity, and then brought you here, as we wished.”

  “The sleen,” I said.

  “Certainly,” he said. “Look.” He signaled to one of the men standing by the fellow with the sleen. He drew forth from a sack the ragged tunic I had worn in the cell.

  “Clever,” I said.

  Outside the entrance to the cubicle of the bathing cisterns, before being prodded within by the spears of our keepers, Nim Nim and I had been forced to strip. We had then been herded into the darkness and the door closed and locked behind us. It had all seemed very natural. I now realized that it had been part of the plan of Flaminius. After the door had been closed behind us the clothing, or at least mine, had doubtless been taken down to the sleen pens. Then it was only necessary, later, to pick up our trail outside the city, at the termination of one of the conduits, where it would empty into one of the long, half-dry drainage ditches about a half pasang outside the walls.

  “Look,” grinned Flaminius, and he signaled again to the fellow who held the rags I had worn.

  He held them near the sleen. Instantly, furiously, snarling, they seized the garment, tugging and tearing at it.

  “Enough!” said Flaminius.

  The fellow freed the garment from the sleen, shouting at them, half tearing it away from them. Even though he was their keeper and they were doubtless trained to obey him, and perhaps only him, it was not easy for him to regain the garment.