Mercenaries of Gor

by Norman, John;

  “Have you learned anything from this, Feiqa?” I asked.

  “Yes, Master,” she wept.

  “What?” I asked.

  “That I am a slave,” she said.

  “And are you aught but a slave?” I asked.

  “No, Master,” she said. “I am a slave, and only a slave.”

  “Do not forget it, Feiqa,” I told her.

  “No, Master,” she sobbed, fervently.

  “Will you stay the night?” asked the free woman.

  “With your permission,” I said.

  “You are welcome here,” she said. “But you will have to sleep your animal outside.”

  I glanced down at Feiqa. She was still shuddering. It would be difficult for her, I supposed, at least for a time, to cope with her new comprehensions concerning the nature of her condition.

  “I do not allow livestock in my house,” said the free woman.

  I smiled, looking down at Feiqa. To be sure, the former rich young lady of Samnium was now livestock, that and nothing more. Too I smiled because of the free woman’s concern, and outrage, at the very thought of having a slave in the house. This seemed amusing to me for two reasons. First, it is quite common for Goreans to keep slaves, a lovely form of domestic animal, in the house. Indeed, the richer and more well-to-do the Gorean the more likely it is that he will have slaves in the house. In the houses of administrators, in the domiciles of high merchants, in the palaces of Ubars, for example, slaves, and usually extremely beautiful ones, for they can afford them, are often abundant. Secondly, it is not unusual either for many peasants to keep animals in the house, usually verr or bosk, sometimes tarsk, at least in the winter. The family lives in one section of the dwelling, and the animals are quartered in the other.

  “Go outside,” I told Feiqa.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “Would you like a little more food?” I asked the free woman. “I have some more.”

  She looked at me.

  “Please,” I said.

  She took two more wedges of yellow Sa-Tarna bread. I put some more sticks on the fire.

  “Here,” she said, embarrassed. She drew some roots, and two suls, from her robe. They had been freshly dug. Dirt still clung to them. She put them down on the stones, between us. I sat down cross-legged, and she knelt down, opposite me, knees together, in the common fashion of the Gorean free woman. The roots, the two suls, were between us. She rocked the child in her arms.

  “I thought you could find no roots.” I smiled.

  “Some were left in the garden,” she said. “I remembered them. I came back for them. There was very little left though. Others obviously had come before me. These things were missed. They are poor stuff. We used to use the produce of that garden for tarsk feed.”

  “They are fine roots,” I said, “and splendid suls.”

  “We even hunt for tarsk troughs,” she said, wearily, “and dig in the cold dirt of the pens. The tarsk are gone, but sometimes a bit of feed remains, fallen between the cracks, or missed by the animals, having been trampled into the mud. There are many tricks we learn in these days.”

  “I do not want to take your food,” I said.

  “Would you shame me?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Share my kettle,” she said.

  “Thank you,” I said. I took one of the roots and broke off a bit of it in my hand. I rubbed the dirt from it. I bit into it. “Good,” I said. I did not eat more, however. I would let her keep her food. I had done in this matter what would be sufficient. I had, in what I had done, acknowledged her as the mistress in her house; I had shown her honor; I had “shared her kettle.”

  “Little Andar is asleep,” she said, looking at the bundled child.

  I nodded.

  “You may sleep your slave inside the threshold,” she said.

  3

  Tula

  “Throw back your hoods, pull down your veils, females!” laughed the wagoner.

  The women crowding about the back of the wagon, many with their hands outstretched, the sleeves of their robes falling back, cried out in consternation.

  “—if you would be fed!” he added.

  These women must be new, I thought. Probably they had come only recently to the wagons, probably trekking overland from some contacted village, perhaps one from as far away as fifty pasangs, a common range for the excursions, the searches and collections of mounted foragers. Most of the women I had seen following the wagons, at any rate, knew enough by now to approach them only bareheaded, as female supplicants, too, to be more pleasing to the men who might possibly be persuaded to feed them, with their hair as visible and loose as that of slaves. Similarly, most had already discarded or hidden their veils, even when not begging. They did not even wear them in their own small, foul, often-fireless makeshift camps near the wagons, camps, to be sure, to which men might sometimes come. It had been discovered that a woman who is seen with a veil, even if she has lowered the veil, abjectly and piteously face-stripping herself, is less likely to be fed than one with no veil in evidence. Too, of course, it had been quickly noted that such women, too, tended to be less frequently selected for the pleasure of the drivers. The men with the wagons had not seen fit to permit the women the dignity of veiling. In this, of course, they treated them like slaves.

  “Please!” cried a woman, thrusting back her hood and tearing away her veil. “Feed me! Please, feed me!” The others, too, then, almost instantly, hastily, each seeming to hurry to be before the others, some moaning and crying out in misery, unhooded and unveiled themselves.

  “That is better, females,” laughed the driver.

  Many of the women moaned and wept.

  They were now, to be sure, I mused, in their predicament and helplessness, even though free women, as the driver had implied, little more than mere females. One could probably not be more a female unless one was a slave.

  “Feed us!” they cried piteously to the driver, many of them with their arms outstretched, their hands lifted, their palms opened, crowding and pressing about the back of the wagon. “We beg food!” “We are hungry!” “Please!” “Feed us, please!” “Please!”

  I looked at their faces. On the whole they seemed to be simple, plain women, peasant women, and peasant lasses. One or two of them, I thought, might be suitable for the collar.

  “Here!” cried the driver, laughing, throwing pieces of bread from a sack to one and then another of the women. The first piece of bread he threw to the woman who had been the first to unhood and face-strip herself, perhaps thereby rewarding her for her intelligence. He then threw pieces to certain others of the women, generally to those who were the prettiest and begged the hardest. Sometimes, not unoften, these pieces of bread were torn away from the prettier, more feminine women by their brawnier, huskier, more masculine fellows. Where there are no men, or no true men, to protect them, feminine women will, in a grotesque perversion of nature, be controlled, exploited and dominated by more masculine women, sometimes monsters and mere caricatures of men. Yet even such grosser women, sometimes little more than surrogates for males, can upon occasion, in the hands of a strong, uncompromising master, be forced to manifest and fulfill, realizing then for the first time, the depths of their long-denied, long-suppressed womanness. There are two sexes. They are not the same.

  “More, more, please!” begged the females.

  Then, amusing himself, the driver tossed some bits of bread into the air and watched the desperate, anxious women crowd and bunch under it, pushing and shoving for position, and trying to leap upward, thrusting at one another, to snatch at it.

  “More, please!” they screamed.

  I saw again a large straight-hipped woman seize a piece of bread fiercely from a smaller woman, one with a delicious love cradle. Then with both of her hands she thrust it in her mouth and, bending over, shouldering and thrusting, fought her way back to where, crouching down, watching for others, she could eat it alone. None could t
ake it from her, save a man, of course, who might have done it easily.

  “That is all!” laughed the driver.

  “No!” wept women.

  “Bread!” wept others.

  It was clear that something, in spite of what the driver had said, remained in the sack. He grinned and wiped his face with his arm. It had been a joke.

  “Another crust, please!” begged a woman.

  “Feed us!” cried another.

  “You are the masters!” wept one of the women, suddenly. “Feed us! Please, feed us!”

  The driver laughed and drew forth a handful of crusts from the sack, which crusts apparently constituted the remainder of its contents. Then he flung these over the heads of the women, well behind them. They turned about and, running, flinging themselves to their hands and knees in the dirt, scrambling about, snatching and screaming, fought for them.

  The driver watched them for a time, amused. Then he turned away, and, stepping among the bundles in the wagon bed, went to the wagon box. This type of box serves both as the driver’s seat, or bench, and as a literal box, in which various items may be stored, usually spare parts, tools and personal belongings. It usually locks. He lifted the lid of the wagon box, which lid served also as the surface of his seat or bench, and dropped the empty sack within, and then shut the box. Also, from near the box, in front of it, near where his feet would rest in driving, he picked up a tharlarion whip. He had had experience with such women before, it seemed.

  “No more!” he said, angrily. “No more!”

  Women now again, pathetic and desperate, robes now wrinkled and dirty from where they had knelt, and crawled and fought for the crusts and crumbs in the dirt, began to approach the wagon. The whip lashed out, cracking over their heads. They fell back.

  “More!” they begged. “Please!”

  “It is all gone,” said the driver. “It is all gone now! Get away, sluts!”

  “You have bread!” wept one. This was true, of course. The wagon’s lading was Sa-Tarna bread, and also, incidentally, Sa-Tarna meal and flour. It creaked under perhaps a hundred and fifty Gorean stone of such stores. These supplies, of course, were not intended for vagabonds or itinerants who might be encountered on the road but for the kitchens set up at the various nights’ encampments.

  “Back, sluts!” he cried. “I carry stores for soldiers!”

  “Please!” wept more than one woman.

  “I see that it was a mistake to have fed you anything!” he cried angrily.

  “No, no!” cried a woman. “We are sorry! We beg your forgiveness, generous sir!”

  “Please, more bread!” wept others.

  He lifted the whip, menacingly. It was a tharlarion whip. I would not care to have been struck with it.

  “Get back!” he cried.

  Some crowded yet more closely about the wagon. “Bread!” they begged. “Please!” Then the whip fell amongst them and they, though free women, fell back, away from it, crying out in pain, and scattering.

  “Tomorrow then,” he cried, angrily, “if you wish, there will be nothing for any of you!”

  “No, please!” wept the women.

  “Kneel down,” he said. Swiftly they fell on their knees, behind the wagon. “Heads down to the dirt,” he commanded. They complied. I was not certain that it was proper to command free women in this fashion. It was rather as one might command slaves. Still, women, even free women, look well, obeying. The slave, of course, must obey. She has no choice.

  “You may lift your heads,” he said. “Are you contrite?” he inquired.

  “Yes,” moaned several of the women.

  “Perhaps you are moved to beg my forgiveness?” he asked.

  “We beg your forgiveness, generous and noble sir!” called a woman.

  “Yes, yes!” said others.

  “Well,” he said, seemingly perhaps a bit mollified, “we shall see.” He then put down the whip and took his place on the wagon box. He released the brake, pulling its wooden handle back on its pivot with his left hand, freeing its leather-lined shoe from the left front wheel. “Ho!” he cried to the tharlarion and, with a crack of the whip, a creak of wood, a rattle of chain traces, and a grunt from the beast, was on his way. I watched the wagon for a moment or two, trundling down the road on its wooden-spoked, iron-rimmed wheels.

  I tied a rope on Feiqa’s neck. “Come along,” I told her.

  In a few moments I had caught up with the wagon. I looked back. The women in the road were only now getting to their feet. Doubtless they were still terribly hungry. Many, too, seemed weary and dazed. They had apparently come only this morning from some village to the road. They had now begun to learn what it was for a woman to follow the wagons.

  I took my pack from Feiqa’s back and threw it, and my spear and shield, into the wagon. I then climbed up to the wagon box beside the driver. “Tal,” said he, looking over at me.

  “Tal,” said I to him. I tied Feiqa’s neck rope to the side of the wagon. She stayed close to the side of the wagon, almost so close that I could reach out and touch her. She was frightened, I think, at the looks she received from some of the free women at the side of the road. “No!” said the driver, sternly, more than once, lifting his whip, as such women rose to their feet, as though to approach him. Not all of these women, of course, followed the wagons. Some, doubtless, merely came from their villages, or the remains of their villages, down to the side of the road to beg as the wagons passed. In such villages, I supposed, there might still be some food. When that was exhausted perhaps these women, too, would put their belongings in a bundle and trek after the wagons. One of the women did come up beside the wagon with a switch and struck Feiqa in fury three times. Feiqa, on her rope, moving, shrank small before her, trying to cover her face and body. There is little love lost between free women and slaves, particularly in these times. “Oh!” cried Feiqa, suddenly stung by a stone, hurled by another woman. She then walked weeping, almost pressed against the side of the wagon. She could not even think of daring to object to such treatment, of course. In the hut of the free woman, last night, she had learned, unconditionally, that she was a slave. I wondered if the former rich young woman of Samnium had herself, in bygone days, accorded slaves similar treatment. I supposed so. It is not uncommon on the part of free women. Now, of course, as a slave herself, she would understand clearly what it was to be the one who is subjectable to such treatment. Perhaps free women would treat slaves somewhat differently if they understood that one day it might be they themselves whom they might find in the collar. In these attacks, of course, Feiqa was in no danger of being seriously injured, or disfigured or maimed. Accordingly, I did not take any official notice of them.

  The wagons, for the most part, were well scattered apart on the road. Their intervals were irregular and sometimes one or another of them stopped. We had come to the vicinity of the road, the Genesian Road, early this morning. Surmounting a rise, we had seen it below us, and the wagons, in their long line, stretched out in the distance. We had then descended the gentle declivity slowly, through the wet grass, to its side. I had some idea of the forces of Cos which had made their landing at Brundisium earlier in Se’Kara. I had seen the invasion fleet entering upon its peaceful harborage at Brundisium. Never before on Gor, I suspected, had such forces been marshaled. It was an invasion, it seemed, not of an army, but of armies. To be sure, many of its contingents were composed of mercenaries sworn to the temporary service of diverse fee captains, and not Cosian regulars. It is difficult to manage such men. They do not fight for Home Stones. They are often little more than armed rabbles. Many are little better than thieves and cutthroats. They must be well paid and assured of ample booty. Accordingly the tactics and movements of such groups, functions of captains who know their men well, and must be wary of them, are often less indicative of sound military considerations, strategic or otherwise, than of organized brigandage. I did not think that such men would stand well, even in their numbers, against the well-trained so
ldiers of Ar.

  “I trust you are not a brigand,” said the driver, not looking at me.

  “No,” I said.

  “You would not get much here,” he said, “except Sa-Tarna meal and such.”

  “I am not a brigand,” I said.

  “Have you fled from some captain?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “You are a big fellow,” he said. “Are you in service?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Do you seek service?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “You own your own weapons?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Raymond, he of Rive-du-Bois, is recruiting,” he said. “So, too, is Conrad of Hochburg, and Pietro Vacchi.” These men were mercenary captains. There were dozens of such companies. If one owns one’s own weapons, of course, one need not be armed at the expense of the company. Too, if one owns one’s own weapons, it may usually be fairly assumed that one knows how to use them. Such men, then, may receive a certain preference in being added to the rolls. They are likely to be experienced soldiers, not eager lads just in from the farms. In many mercenary companies, incidentally, there are no uniforms and no issuance of standard equipment. Too, many such companies are, for most practical purposes, disbanded during the winter, the captain retaining then only a cadre of officers and professionals. Then, in the spring, after obtaining a war contract, sometimes obtained by competitive bidding, they begin anew, almost from the beginning, with recruiting and training. It was quite unusual, incidentally, for such men as Raymond and Conrad to be recruiting now, in Se’Kara. It was really a time in which most soldiers on Gor would be thinking about the pleasures of winter quarters or a return to their own villages and towns. There are usually diverse explanations, depending on the situation, for the type of forced recruiting to which men in some of the villages had been subjected. Sometimes a passing army desires merely to amplify its forces, or replace losses, particularly among the lighter arms, such as bowmen, slingers and javelin men. Sometimes the recruiting is done more for the purposes of obtaining a labor force, for siegeworks and entrenching camps, than for actual combat. Sometimes the mercenary captains, whose negotiated, signed contracts call for the furnishing of certain numbers of armed men for their various employers, have little choice but to impress some reluctant fellows, that their obligatory quotas may be met. More than one fellow has sworn an oath of allegiance with a sword at his throat. Most mercenaries, of course, join their captains voluntarily. Indeed, skilled and famous captains, ones noted for their military skill and profitable campaigns, must often close down their enlisting tables early in En’Kara.