Renegades of Gor

by Norman, John;

  I watched the rope on the grapnel for a moment and noted that although it was taut it did not exhibit the differential tensions which it would if it were being climbed. I pulled it loose then and, letting its tautness do the work, let it fly back over the walkway and the crenelation. Had I more time or been of Ar’s Station, perhaps I might have waited until it was being climbed and then, after a while, cut the rope. This sort of thing, as you might imagine, tends to be somewhat frustrating to the fellows who are climbing the rope, particularly if they are some seventy feet or so up the wall at the time. It takes great courage, incidentally, to climb such a rope in daylight under battle conditions. I did not doubt but that one or two of the fellows on the other side of the wall were probably just as pleased that it had come back as it did. It also takes great courage, incidentally, though it is much easier to do, to climb a siege ladder, particularly when the walls are heavily or stoutly defended. It is better, I think, for the individual attacker, particularly if the walls are high, over twenty feet, say, to try to enter over the bridge of a siege tower or, even better, through a breached wall or gate.

  I looked through the crenelation again, standing back from it. The siege towers were still at least two hundred yards away. It takes time to move such cumbersome objects. Their progress forward was steady, but so slow, it seemed sometimes almost like watching the hands of a clock move.

  I passed a lad standing behind one of the embrasures with a crossbow. He was too young to be on the wall. One quarrel reposed in the guide of his bow. Beside him, leaning against the inside of the parapet, were some more quarrels, only two of which were crafted, one feathered, one with light metal fins. The others were little more than filed rods, neither feathered nor finned. With these, too, there were some wooden quarrels, blunt-headed, such as boys sometimes use for bringing down birds. I did not think they would be effective. Perhaps, ideally targeted, launched from within a yard or so, one might cause a fellow to lose a grip on a ladder. More likely they would serve as little more than irritants. I smelled hot oil on the parapet, and a cauldron of it was boiling, which I passed. Buckets on long handles could be dipped into this, the oil fired, and then poured on attackers. The oil tends to hold the fire on the object. I passed two catapults on the walkway. They were quiet now, not even manned. I proceeded on toward the raised platform over the main gate, where the impaling spear, flashing in the sun like a polished needle, was mounted. I passed another lad, too, also, in my opinion, too young to be on the wall. Better these fellows had been running about the windy corners of the markets, looking for the veils to blow about the faces of free women or pursuing slave girls, pulling up their brief skirts, playing “brand guess,” or busying themselves playing stones or hoops behind the shops. He was crouching beside a pile of stones, building stones, and tiles. It is hard to throw these with accuracy without standing above the crenelation. This exposes the caster, of course. He seemed lost in his thoughts. I wondered if he had been on the wall before. I supposed he had a mother, who loved him. When I passed him, he looked up. I saw then that he had been on the wall before, and that, though his age might indeed be that of a boy, that he was a man. He then put down his head again, returning to his reflections, whatever might have been their nature. Near the steps to the raised platform I passed two men with long-handled tridents. These are used to thrust men and ladders back from the wall.

  Turning, about fifty yards behind me, I saw the upright of a single-pole ladder jut from the outside over the wall. The two men, gaunt and weary, paid it no attention. Back there, however, a cluster of defenders sped to the place. The ringing of swords came to my ears. More than one fellow leapt over the crenelation but the ladder itself was thrust back. This isolated the Cosians who had attained the wall. Men swarmed about them. Two were cut down and a third climbed back over the wall and leapt away, plunging to its foot, preferring to risk the consequences of such a fall rather than face certain death on the walkway. The bodies of his two comrades, stripped of weapons, half hacked to pieces, were flung after him. I hurried up the broad stone steps to the surface of the platform over the main gate. This area, at least at the moment, perhaps because of its height, and its position over the gate, the ground below soon to be blocked by the ram, the men working it protected by its sturdy shed, was empty. It would have made an excellent command post for Aemilianus, I thought, but, I gathered, he must be below, in the vicinity of the gate. Perhaps he thought, and rightfully, for all I knew, that there lay the greatest danger. I supposed that by now tons of rock would have been piled behind the gate. Still the ram might attempt its entry there, pounding through the brass facing riveted into the thick beams of the gate, punching, driving it back, snapping the crossbars, forcing back, blow by blow, even the rock and sand behind.

  I placed Lady Publia on her back at our feet, near the mount for the spear.

  I then dismissed her from my mind, for the moment.

  I considered the approaching towers, the thousands of men I could see in the field, the ladders being carried, the supporting engines. I then regarded the walls. There were too few men there. The results of the battle were a foregone conclusion. The Cosians had waited long for this day.

  I looked up to my left. There, on a pole, defiantly, snapped a torn flag, bearing in yellow the single letter ‘Ar’ on a red background with, beneath it, a wavy yellow band. This was the flag of Ar’s Station, signifying the power of Ar on the Vosk. I did not think it would be there long.

  I then lifted the tall impaling spear from its mount, laying it, with a sound, beside the supine, bound figure. She tried to rise but, her ankles thonged together, she fell. She tried to scramble back, but I reached out and took her ankle, and then pulled her where I wanted her, closer, across the stones.

  “Please, no!” wept Lady Claudia, putting out her hand. I brushed her aside.

  I then addressed myself to Lady Publia. “Would you care to confess yourself a slave?” I inquired.

  She thrashed about, uttering wild, affirmative whimpers, nodding her head in the hood, vigorously.

  “You recognize my voice, do you not?” I asked.

  Again she nodded. This was the first she would have realized, for certain, I supposed, that she had come to the height of the wall, to the foot of the impaling mount, on my shoulder, and not on that of the executioner. Hope would be springing up wildly within her, for the executioner not knowing who she was, and thinking she was the Lady Claudia, would presumably have simply put her on the spear and went about his business, probably, pulling off his mask, to some post on the wall. I, on the other hand, she knew, knew well who she was. Too, my words must have given her some hope that she might have, at my hands, at least some slim chance for life, albeit that it might have to be purchased at so alarming a cost as consigning herself by her own words to a fate no less than the degradation and categoricality of uncompromising Gorean bondage.

  Lady Claudia put out her hand and touched me on the shoulder, gratefully.

  I pulled Lady Publia to her knees.

  “Are you a slave?” I asked.

  She nodded, vigorously.

  Lady Claudia clapped her hands with delight, she herself no better.

  “Do you beg permission,” I asked, “to legalize the matter, to speak appropriate words of self-enslavement?”

  She nodded, vigorously, again.

  I then loosened the hood and pushed it up, about her head and forehead. I had not remembered she was so beautiful. I then loosened the two ties of the gag and pulled the wadding out from her mouth, letting it hang over the loosened cords, putting the whole by her throat. She looked at me, wildly, gratefully.

  “Speak,” I said.

  “I am a slave!” she said.

  “She is a slave!” said Lady Claudia softly.

  The prisoner shrank back, frightened, shuddering, helpless, thrilled, now knowing herself slave.

  “You are now a slave, Publia,” said Lady Claudia, wonderingly.

  “She is no longer Publia,
” I said to Lady Claudia. “She has not yet been named.”

  The slave looked at me, in awe.

  Then she cried out, suddenly, as I replaced the wadding in her mouth, tightening it in again, with the cords.

  “What are you doing?” asked Lady Claudia, frightened.

  I saw the slave’s eyes regarding me, wildly, just before I drew the hood again, over her beautiful features, securing it in place, tying the cord at the back of her neck.

  “What are you doing?” cried Lady Claudia.

  “She has got us this far,” I said. “This is as far as we could expect to get with her, unchallenged, she in her guise as you. She has done as much for us as she can. She has thus served her purposes.”

  “What do you mean?” whispered Lady Claudia.

  I reached for the impaling spear.

  “No,” said Lady Claudia.

  I pressed the point of the spear against the interior of the slave’s thigh. She threw back her head, and moaned.

  “You knew she would declare herself a slave!” said Lady Claudia.

  “She is a slave,” I said. “It was fitting.”

  “I am no less a slave than she!” said Lady Claudia.

  “That is true,” I said.

  “And now,” she cried, “that you have won from her her confession that she was slave, and she has said the words themselves, enacting embondment upon herself, you would put her, now, not even in the dignity of the free woman, but in the misery and degradation of a shamed slave, upon the spear!”

  “Do you not think this slave, when she was a free woman,” I asked, “would not have enjoyed seeing you on the spear?”

  “No matter!” cried Lady Claudia. “No matter!”

  “Those of Ar’s Station,” I said, “will expect to see her on the spear. If she is not there, I do not think we will get very far. When we leave the platform here, let them think our work has been done. Then we will draw away somewhere, I removing this mask, you retaining your rags and veil.”

  “No!” said Lady Claudia.

  “It may be our only hope at escape,” I said, “you falling to Cosians, I perhaps managing to mingle with them.”

  “You are a brave man,” she said. “I admire you. You have been strong with me. You have been kind to me. You have risked much for me. I want you to escape. I see your reasoning. But if there must be a body on the spear, let it be mine. It is I who am guilty of treason, not she. Thus, it is I who should be impaled, not she.”

  “But you are a free woman,” I said. “She is only a slave.”

  “You know, truly,” she said, “she is no more a slave than I, if as much a slave as I. Surely in the cell, often enough, I gave you ample evidence that my fitting destiny was to give my entire being to the selfless love and service of a man!”

  “You pity her because you are yourself no better than a slave,” I said.

  “I would pity her if she were a free woman,” she said, “and I pity her now, that she is a slave.”

  “Because you, yourself, are a slave,” I said.

  “Perhaps,” she wept. “I do not know.”

  Within the hood, I smiled. Slaves, as is well known, are on the whole far more loving and compassionate than free women. That is probably because they are so much more female than the free woman.

  “We must hang her on the spear,” I said, jocularly.

  Suddenly Lady Claudia flung her body across that of the slave, as though she would protect her from me. It was a touching gesture, I thought. To be sure, it was a little silly. I could fling her a dozen feet away at my will, or, if I wished, with a judicious blow, little more than a quick tap on the diaphragm, have her instantly on her back helpless, gasping for breath. If necessary, I could bind her, or, if I wished, in an instant, strike her senseless.

  “You would protect her, wouldn’t you?” I asked.

  “Yes!” she wept.

  “She is perhaps your worst enemy,” I reminded her.

  “It does not matter,” she wept.

  “You have incredibly deep feelings and emotions,” I said. “You would make a superb slave.”

  She looked up at me, puzzled. Her veil was wet with tears.

  “Such things are common in slaves,” I said. “They are muchly embonded by their feelings. It is one of the beautiful things about the slave, the emotions which suffuse them, to which they are subject, that bind them, as much as chains.”

  The emotional depths of the slave are beyond the ken of the free woman, with her egotism, her defensiveness, her pride, her self-absorption, her shallowness, her superficiality, her artful self-promotion. Some free women regard their sex as a weapon, to be used in economic and sexual wars. These are to be disarmed, and sold, their sex then placed at the disposition of others, their buyers, their masters. Sometimes a free woman is taught to regard her sex as an unimportant and embarrassing contingency, meaningless to her personhood. In her intelligence she recognizes the falsity of this and disbelieves it, but she faces a bleak landscape, a vacant, gray horizon, beyond the house of this fabrication. She is aware of her sex, but fears it, even distrusts it, with its secret whisperings. She may even, pathetically, regret it, and might tragically, absurdly, prefer to be a man, but, even so, she knows she is not. and can never be. That can never be, nor should it be. What a repugnant triumph would be such a charade! In such a victory, were it possible, she would bring about only her own ruin. In a sense, then, she knows she cannot be other than herself, but is unwilling to accept herself. And so she tries to pretend she is not herself. In a sense, then, she tries to live a lie. She is alienated from her deepest self, which she hysterically denies, and from which she hides in terror. The fact that she can never be a man is not an occasion for a misplaced regret, however, but an occasion for recognizing gratefully, elatedly, that she is something else, something very different, something as unique, and precious and wonderful, a woman.

  The slave, of course, is wholly and unmitigatedly a woman. She is permitted to be nothing else, nor does she wish to be permitted to be anything else.

  Her true identity is at last imposed upon her.

  This is as unqualified and uncompromising as the collar, as her bared knees on the tiles or carpet, as her soft lips pressed tenderly, gratefully, to the master’s whip.

  There is no escape for her now, no escape from this honesty, this truth.

  It has been done to her.

  She is slave.

  The slave is surrendered, is helpless, obedient, and loving; she knows herself wholly owned and wholly female; she relishes her domination, and her bonds; she is fulfilled to kneel, and kiss, and serve. She is a female, radically, wants to be such, desires to be such, and loves to be such. She now understands the complementarities of nature, that only in relation to the most male, the master, can she be the most female, the slave. And so, in her place in nature, at a man’s feet, content, she lives and loves. It is no wonder then that slave’s emotional nature is a thousand times deeper and richer than that of her emotionally homeless sister, the wan free woman, pallid in her moral vagrancy.

  Can a free woman, truly, not understand how a slave rejoices to be owned, to belong to a man? Can a free woman, truly, not understand how a slave can be grateful for her domination, for her mastering?

  Can she not, then, sense the emotional depths of the slave?

  Let the free woman, then, in a quiet moment, listen to the whispers within her.

  “You are not then disappointed in me?” she asked.

  “Certainly not,” I said. “One prizes emotions in a woman.”

  “Even though they make us more slavelike?”

  “Surely you are aware that the most desirable women are slaves,” I said. “Why else do you think they are put in collars?”

  “I must attempt to conceal my emotions,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I am free,” she said. “Emotions reveal me. They disrobe me. They put me at the mercy of others. They make my heart naked.”

>   “Let your heart be naked,” I said. “Be disrobed. Be at the mercy of others.”

  “Then I would be a slave!” she whispered.

  “It is true,” I said, “that a slave must reveal her feelings, her emotions. She is not allowed to hide anything. She is to be open, in all ways, to the master.”

  “I think I should like to be so open,” she said.

  “You would have no choice,” I said.

  “How free then is the slave!” she said.

  “In that way,” I said.

  “Masters and slaves talk?”

  “Certainly,” I said, “frequently, and at length. To be sure, the slave may be naked, chained to a ring, or naked, at his feet, on a leash.”

  She shuddered, thrilled.

  I looked down at the former Lady Publia.

  “What do you think we should do with this trussed, hooded slut?” I asked.

  The former Lady Publia squirmed, then struggled to a half-sitting position, frantically, but then, helpless, lapsed back.

  “Spare her!” said the Lady Claudia.

  The hooded, bound slave whimpered, pleadingly.

  “Do you ask that as a free woman?” I inquired.

  “I ask it as a free woman,” she said. “But if I were a slave I should ask it, too, begging it tearfully, at your feet.”

  “She was your enemy,” I reminded her.

  “No matter!” she insisted.

  “Do you think she would display such solicitude on your behalf?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Yet you would intercede for her?”

  “Yes!”

  I saw that a great transformation had taken place in the character of Lady Claudia since her capture and incarceration.

  She had become woman enough for the collar.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered.

  “I am freeing the ankles of our fair captive,” I said. “In that way she can be the more easily mounted on the spear.”

  “Desist, I beg you!”

  “Too, then, her kickings, and squirmings, can be more obvious to observers. Too, she can more easily try to hold the spear with her feet, and thus strive to stop her descent. To be sure, given the weight involved and the smoothness of the pole she will be unsuccessful. The best she can hope for is to delay the matter for a time, perhaps for a few Ehn.”