Zarendargar stood before the barricade, his arms lifted, snarling, his face and body bloody.
"Hold!" cried Alfred to those about him. "Hold! Do not fall back! Attack! Attack!" He cried out in Gorean. There were few there, I supposed, except for the handful of soldiers with him, who understood him. No one moved decisively. "Attack! Attack!" cried Alfred. He took a step forward but none, clearly, intended to follow him, "Attack!" he cried.
The Yellow Knives looked at one another. They were undecided. The Yellow-Knife war chief gestured toward the barricade. The Yellow Knives wavered. It seemed their medicine had failed them. They had lost their medicine.
At this moment Ubar of the Skies appeared behind me, outlined against the sky. He extended his mighty wings and smote them against the air. He uttered the challenge scream of the tarn.
The Yellow Knives then turned and fled.
Kaiila swarmed over and through the barricade, with clubs and lances, and shields and knives. There was confusion below.
Arrows were loosened from the height of the escarpment into the fleeing Yellow Knives. Fighting took place at a dozen places on the trail. Some of our men who were tarnsmen brought their tarns into the fray, raking down at the Yellow Knives. Yellow Knives, crowding, fleeing, forced many of their own number from the trail.
"Look!" I said. In the distance, coming from the west, were columns of dust.
"They are coming!" cried Cuwignaka, elatedly.
"Yes," I said.
These would be the Dust Legs, the Sleen and Fleer, tribes to whom we had sent riders.
We had been the bait, on Council Rock, to lure the Yellow Knives and soldiers into a trap, a trap which these other tribes, acting in coalition, were to spring shut. Clearly their best interests were involved in doing so. The Yellow Knives, in cooperating with white soldiers, had betrayed the Memory. In such a way, according to the Memory, an earlier tragedy, now almost lost in legends, had begun. The Barrens must be protected. Too, sacrilege had been performed, in the attack on a summer camp. Was this not to be avenged? Even more seriously Kinyanpi had come to the more western countries. Such alliances, those of Yellow Knives with forces such as those of the white soldiers and the Kinyanpi, threatened the delicate tribal balances in the Barrens. Such events might produce dislocations, interfering with the migrations of the Pte, the Kailiauk, and forcing tribes from ancestral hunting grounds. Our agents' arguments had been, it seemed, persuasive. Too late had the newcomers arrived to aid in the fray. Not too late, however, were they to close off a hundred avenues of retreat, to interfere with a thousand escapes, to wreak havoc amongst a withdrawing, demoralized, terrorized enemy.
I saw Alfred struck down from behind with the heavy, balled knob of a carved wooden canhpi.
Iwoso was white with terror, roped to her post, seeing the retreat of the Yellow Knives.
Threading his way among the fighting groups on the trail, slowly making his way upward, was he who had been the third of the three war chiefs at the summer camp.
I pointed him out to Hci.
"I have seen him," said Hci.
The man was carrying a bow and arrows. He moved with purpose. An arrow was fitted to the string.
His face, under the fearsome paint, was contorted with rage. He stopped below us, on the trail. Iwoso, helplessly roped to her post, moaned. She cried out something to him, pleadingly. She was in clear view, only a few feet above him. She was well displayed. Her ankles were roped back against the post; at the waist, too, she was fastened to it, the rawhide ropes deep in her belly, and deep, too, in the notch behind the post; her neck, too, was tied to the post; and her hands, as well, in tight, rawhide loops, rather at her sides and slightly behind her. She cried out again to him, pleadingly. She could do little more than squirm in her bonds, and scarcely that. I had seen to it. The arrow, from below, was aligned on her heart. It leapt from the string, speeding toward the naked, roped beauty. Hci interposed his shield, and the arrow, deflected, caromed off a hundred feet in the air. The Yellow Knife below, with a cry of rage, turned then, and fled down the trail.
"I have business," said Hci. Lightly, moving swiftly, discarding his shield, armed now only with his knife, he made his way from our position, to the trail summit, and to the barricade. I then saw him, in a moment, making his way down the trail.
* * * *
Iwoso gasped, and tried to turn her head away, her neck in the ropes.
"Look," said Hci.
Iwoso looked, helplessly, commanded.
The scalp, freshly cut, bloody, dripping, hung before her face, held in Hci's fist.
"It is the scalp of he who would have slain you," said Hci, "he with whom you conspired."
She closed her eyes, shuddering.
"Look," said Hci.
She opened her eyes, looking again upon the bloody trophy.
"Do you understand?" asked Hci.
"Yes, my captor," she said, in a small voice.
Hci then put the scalp in his belt. Blood from it ran down his leg, down his naked thigh, as he wore the breechclout.
It was the scalp of he who had been the third of the war chiefs in the summer camp.
Iwoso then closed her eyes, in misery, turning her head away, her head held in place by the ropes under her chin.
I removed the girth rope from Ubar of the Skies. I took the reins from the sable monster.
"You are free, Sweet Friend," I said. I caressed that savage beak. It put it down, against my side. Ubar of the Skies was not a woman, something to be owned and dominated, something, even with the whip, if necessary, to be forced to love and serve, something which could not be fulfilled until it found itself helplessly, with no recourse whatsoever, will-lessly, at the feet of a master.
"The trail is clear," I said to Hci.
"Yes," he said.
The five Kurii, I saw, those who had been with Sardak and Kog, lay slaughtered on the trail. They had been riddled with arrows and hacked to pieces. Some, I think, may have been slain by Yellow Knives who, in wrath, sensing perhaps a betrayal or fraud in them, had fallen upon them.
It would be a long time, I thought, before Kaiila or Yellow Knives would be likely to again take such beasts for supernatural creatures, visitants from the medicine world.
"Do you see those dusts?" Hci asked Iwoso, pointing to various points in the west.
"Yes," she said.
"Those will be Sleen and Dust Legs, even Fleer," he said, "intercepting your people, doing massacre amongst them."
I could see riders, even, in the Yellow-Knife camp, below. Lodges were burning.
"There will be much loot, many kaiila," said Cuwignaka. "Doubtless they will find their journey worth their while."
"And they need not even have attacked a summer camp," said Hci, bitterly.
Iwoso sobbed.
"Need they?" asked Hci.
"No, my captor," said Iwoso.
"The Yellow Knives are defeated," said Hci to her. "They are scattered. They flee for their lives."
"Yes, my captor," she said.
"There is now no hope of rescue for you, my roped, Yellow-Knife beauty," said Hci.
Iwoso could scarcely move in the ropes. Stripped, it was not with difficulty that she could be assessed.
She regarded Hci.
She had been addressed as 'beauty.' Doubtless she was flattered, as might have been any woman. And yet how terrified, too, might she have been for she well knew that in the Barrens beauties had their uses. And indeed this is not dissimilar to the customs of Gor as a whole. It is common for Goreans, and in particular for male Goreans, to be well aware of the value of beauty, and the many purposes to which it may be appropriately put, and, on Gor, is put.
There are, of course, beauties and beauties, for example, the unparalleled, warm, vital, vulnerable, appetitious, loving, needful beauty of the female slave, and the cold, lofty, imperious beauty, smug and self-satisfied, of the free woman. To be sure, Goreans believe there are two sorts of women, slaves—and slaves.
How easily is the guise of the free woman removed from the hiding slave. How content is the slave, once liberated from the lonely, cruel, externally imposed prison of the sexually inert, rigid, free woman. Surely the most oppressive of chains are those forged by cultures, to keep one apart from oneself. How light and lovely, and honest, is the steel of slave bracelets, confining the beauty's hands behind her back, baring her ready, enflamed loveliness unimpeded to the view, and to the kisses and caresses, of a master, compared to the opprobrious, dismal weight of a negativistic culture's concealed, dishonest bonds. What woman does not wish to kneel, his, stripped, and leashed and collared, before the master of her dreams?
"—and slut," said Hci.
"No, my captor," she said.
"You are now totally alone," he said.
"Yes, my captor," she said.
"You now belong to the Kaiila," he said.
"Yes, my captor," she said.
48
Two Women
"Free this slave," said Hci to Iwoso, pointing to Bloketu.
"Yes, my captor," said Iwoso.
I looked down from the escarpment to the victory camp below, where, yesterday, the Yellow Knives had had their encampment. The site was now occupied by Dust Legs, Sleen, and Fleer.
"I free you," said Iwoso to Bloketu. She fumbled with the knot on Bloketu's collar, removing it from her.
It was early in the morning.
We had brought the girls to the edge of the escarpment, near the posts. We had not roped them to them, however. They had spent the night, as the several nights previously, hooded and bound in the prison lodge. They were still stripped, as before. In another such lodge, hooded and bound, were Alfred, and four of his officers. He had not perished of the blow from the knob-headed canhpi. These were all who had survived of the soldiers.
"Kneel, Free Women," said Hci.
Both of the girls, naked, knelt on the stone at his feet.
"Put your heads down," said Hci.
They lowered their heads.
"I pronounce you both slaves of the Kaiila," said Hci.
They shuddered, slaves.
"Your former names, 'Bloketu' and 'Iwoso'," said Hci, "are now put on you as slave names."
They trembled, named.
"You may raise your heads," said Hci.
They did so, frightened, public slaves. Bloketu tried to read in the eyes of Cuwignaka, and Iwoso tried to read in the eyes of Hci, what was to be her fate. The status of being a public slave tends to be an ambiguous one. What is a girl to do, how is she to act, to whom is she to relate? In such a status she is an impersonal property, as of a state, clan or tribe. No particular master is likely to have any special concern for her, nor can she, as such a slave, ameliorate or improve her condition, or even secure, to some extent, her possibilities of survival, by becoming, in virtue of deep, sweet, delicate, intimate and exquisite relationships, so fulfilling to both the woman and the man, a prized possession of her owner, a treasure to her master.
Hci swung coiled ropes in his hand.
He then struck Iwoso.
"Have you ever been whipped?" he asked.
"Yours is the first blow that was ever put upon my body, Master," she said.
He then struck her again, savagely. "Oh!" she cried, putting her head down to the stone.
"Are you pretty?" asked Hci. "Answer 'Yes' or 'No'."
"No!" said Iwoso.
"Lying slave!" said Hci. He then struck her another blow.
"Are you pretty?" asked Hci.
"Yes," cried Iwoso. "I am pretty!"
"Pretentious, arrogant slave!" cried Hci. "Surely you know that that is a judgment more properly to be made by masters than embonded sluts. It seems you must be whipped."
"Have mercy, Master!" cried Iwoso.
He then struck her, twice more. She sobbed, head down, at his feet.
"Do you persist in being disobedient?" he inquired.
"Master!" she wept, in protest.
"Answer 'Yes' or 'No'," he said.
"Master!" she cried.
"Yes, or no?" he asked.
"No," she wept. "No!"
"Thus," said he, "you admit to having been previously disobedient."
He then struck her, three times.
"Do you persist in being disobedient?" he then inquired, again.
"Yes!" she cried, miserable.
"Then, clearly," he said, "you are to be whipped, or slain." He then struck her five times.
"No," she wept. "No! No!"
"Then, again," said he, "you acknowledge a previous fault."
He then struck her once more.
She lay then, on her stomach, her soft body on the hard stone, her back striped, sobbing, at Hci's feet.
"Have you been tricked?" asked Hci.
"Yes, Master," she sobbed.
"As you see," said Hci, quoting Iwoso's remark to Bloketu in her lodge, overheard by us the night of their capture, "it is not difficult to trick a stupid slave."
"No, Master," she wept.
Bloketu, I thought, had been avenged.
"Have pity on me, Master," wept Iwoso.
"On your knees," said Hci. Both girls, then, were kneeling, stripped, at his feet.
"In virtue of the power vested in me as a commander in the Sleen Soldiers, and in accordance with the wishes of my father, Mahpiyasapa, civil chieftain of the Isbu Kaiila," said Hci, "I pronounce you both free."
They looked up at him, wildly.
"It is said," he said. "Bring the staff and thongs," he said to me.
I brought the long staff, about seven feet long. This was bound behind the necks of Bloketu and Iwoso. I then tied their hands together behind their backs.
"What is going on?" cried Iwoso.
"You have had a taste of slavery," said Hci. "Now you have been freed."
"But, why!" cried Iwoso.
"That you may, together, in the full accountability of the free person," said Hci, "face the justice of the Kaiila people."
Bloketu began to sob.
"No!" cried Iwoso. "No!"
49
Judgment
"There is no doubt as to the guilt of these two," said Mahpiyasapa.
The men about him, and behind him, grunted their assent. "Cinto!" said several. "Surely! Certainly! Agreed!"
The two women, kneeling before the men, the staff bound behind their necks, their hands tied behind their backs, trembled.
"The testimonies have been taken," said Mahpiyasapa. "The evidence is clear. Concerning their complicity in the matter of the attack on the summer camp there is no doubt."
"Cinto!" said the men. "Agreed!"
"They have conspired against the Kaiila people," said Mahpiyasapa.
"Cinto!" said the men.
"They have betrayed the Kaiila," said Mahpiyasapa.
"Cinto!" said the men.
"Have you anything to say?" asked Mahpiyasapa.
The girls, their heads down, the heavy staff behind their necks, did not speak.
"You are found guilty," said Mahpiyasapa.
They trembled, sobbing.
"As one of you was once the daughter of a Kaiila chieftain, Watonka, who was once a great warrior amongst us, and was once my friend, and one of you was once her maiden, I shall not have you subjected to tortures."
"Mahpiyasapa is merciful," said a man.
"Our women will not be pleased," said another man.
"You will be treated with the dignity of free women," said Mahpiyasapa.
"Let the sentence be passed," said Kahintokapa, he of the Casmu Kaiila, he of the Yellow-Kaiila Riders.
Bloketu put down her head.
"Proceed," said Iwoso. "Pass your sentence! I do not fear slavery!"
"In the morning," said Mahpiyasapa, "take them to the summit of the trail, where we had placed the barricade. There, then, from that place, let them be flung to the rocks below."
Bloketu looked at him, aghast.
"No," cried Iwoso. "No! No!"
; 50
What Occurred at the Summit of the Trail
The wind was cool at the summit of the trail, near where the barricade had been placed.
It was shortly after dawn.
The two prisoners were brought forth, stripped, their hands tied behind their back. The hair of both, now, was unbound. They seemed ashen. They seemed numb. It seemed they could scarcely stand. They were brought forth, slowly. Cuwignaka conducted Bloketu by the arm. Iwoso's arm was in the grip of Hci.
"Let their ankles be tied," said Mahpiyasapa.
Bloketu and Iwoso stood while Cuwignaka and Hci, crouching down, looped thongs about their ankles. They tied their ankles together in the fashion characteristic of close hobbles, the ankles not crossed but parallel to one another. In this way the girls, though well secured, could remain standing.
"Are the prisoners present?" asked Mahpiyasapa.
"Yes," said Cuwignaka.
"Yes," said Hci.
"Are their wrists tied?" asked Mahpiyasapa.
"Yes," said Cuwignaka.
"Yes," said Hci.
"Are their ankles tied?" asked Mahpiyasapa.
"Yes," said Cuwignaka.
"Yes," said Hci.
"Let the sentence be carried out," said Mahpiyasapa. Behind him, and standing about, as well, were the members of the council. Others, too, stood about.
Cuwignaka seized Bloketu from behind by the arms. "No, no!" she cried, wildly, throwing her head back. Cuwignaka forced her inexorably, implacably, to the edge. "I beg the alternative!" screamed Bloketu. "I beg the alternative!" screamed Bloketu. "I beg the alternative!"
Cuwignaka looked at Mahpiyasapa.
"What alternative?" cried Iwoso, wildly.
Mahpiyasapa made a sign and Cuwignaka, at the very edge of the surface, released Bloketu. She fell to her knees and scrambled back from the edge, her knees abraded on the rock. She, kneeling, her hands tied behind her, her ankles thonged, wildly, faced Mahpiyasapa. "I beg the alternative," she wept, hysterically, "Master!"
"Master?" asked Mahpiyasapa.
Blood Brothers of Gor Page 55
