“My poems are priceless,” he said.
“You think you should have asked for more than a silver tarsk?” I asked, alarmed.
“No,” he said. “I should not have sold them at all.”
“I see,” I said, relieved. “But they are probably not really all that bad.”
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“I realized it with the last poem,” he said, miserably. “I looked down at the silver tarsk in my hand, and at the poem in the fellow’s hand, and it all became clear to me. I saw then how terrible was the thing I had done, selling my poems, my own poems, my precious, priceless poems! They now belonged to another! Better I had torn my heart out and sold it for a tarsk bit!”
“Perhaps,” I said.
“I then begged the fellow to take back his worthless tarsk, and return the poem to me.”
“And did he do so?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Hurtha, looking up at me.
“Well,” I said, “it all ended well then.”
“No,” he said, tears in his eyes. “You do not understand.”
“We are now short a tarsk?” I said.
“No!” cried Hurtha. “There were four other poems sold! I shall never be able to recover those poems! They are gone, gone!” He put his head again in his hands, sobbing. “I shall never be able to find all those fellows again. Scarcely had I sold them the poems than they all hastened away, covetous, lucky, greedy fellows, lest I change my mind. Now I shall never be able to find them again and appeal earnestly, fervently, to their better selves, and higher natures, to take back their filthy money. What a fool I was! My poems, gone! Sold for a mere four silver tarsks! Waste! Dishonor! Misery! Ruin! Tragedy! What if this story should ever get back to the wagons? I am unworthy of my scars!”
“Hurtha, old fellow,” I said, gently.
“Yes,” he said.
I placed my hand on his shoulder.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Look,” I said.
He lifted his head and looked up.
“Here,” I said, softly. I held forth to him the four copies of poems which had been given to me earlier by his four customers, or patrons.
“It is they!” he cried, wonderingly, tears in his eyes.
“Yes,” I said.
“You knew!” he cried.
I shrugged.
“You could not let me go through with it!” he wept. “You sought them out! You purchased them back! You have saved me from myself, from my own folly!”
“It is little enough to do for a friend,” I said.
He leaped to his feet and embraced me, weeping, tears in his eyes. I struggled for breath, clutching the four poems. I speculated that this must be much like the grip of the dreaded, constricting hith. Surely that, capable of pulverizing a fellow, crushing his bones and popping him like a grape, could scarcely be worse.
“How can I ever thank you?” he cried, stepping back, holding me, proudly, looking at me.
“Between friends,” I said, “thanks are neither needed, nor possible.”
“You, too, are overcome with emotion!” he cried, sympathetically.
“I am trying to breathe,” I told him.
“Let me have those poems,” he said. He took them and put them with the one he had kept, that retrieved from his last transaction, the one in which, happily, I had had no part. “I have them back, thanks to you!” he said.
I had now caught my breath, nearly.
“There they are,” he said, blissfully, regarding them, “written down, in little marks.”
“That is the way most things are written down,” I said.
“Are they well transcribed?” he asked.
“I think so,” I said. I took a deep breath.
“Are you all right?” asked Hurtha.
“Yes,” I said. “Occasionally there is a line which is difficult to make out, and there seems to be a misspelled word here and there.” That was to be expected, I supposed, given the fact that they had presumably been written in a condition of some agitation, under a condition of some stress. There was an occasional spot on the parchment. Perhaps sweat had dropped from someone’s brow there.
“You are sure you are all right?” he said.
“Yes, I am all right now,” I said.
“I am not surprised that a small mistake, perhaps a poorly formed letter, an irregular margin, or such, might have been made,” said Hurtha. “Some of the fellows transcribing the poems were actually shaking. They seemed almost overwhelmed.”
“I am not surprised,” I said. “It was all part of the impact of the experience of hearing them for the first time, I suppose,” I added.
“Yes,” said Hurtha. “It would seem so.”
“You do not know your own power as a poet,” I said.
“Few of us do,” said Hurtha.
“Well,” I said, “fortunately, we have the five poems back. It would be too bad to have lost them.”
“A tragedy, yes,” said Hurtha, “but I have others.”
“Oh?” I said.
“Yes, more than two thousand,” he said.
“That is a great many,” I said.
“Not really, considering their quality,” he said.
“You are prolific,” I said.
“All great poets are prolific,” he said. “Would you care to hear them?”
“Not at the moment,” I said. “You see, I have just, this evening, read some of them. I do not know if I could take more, just now.”
“I understand,” said Hurtha. “I am one well aware of the complexities of coping with grandeur, of the exquisite agonies attendant upon wrestling with nigh ineffable sublimities, with the excruciating intensities of the authentic aesthetic experience, with the travails of poignant significance, with the exhausting consequences of confronting sudden and startling distillations of meaning. No, old friend, I understand these things full well. I shall not force you beyond your strength.”
“Thank you,” I said.
He looked down at the poems in his hand. “Can you believe,” he asked, “that these saw light only this evening, that I dictated them upon the spot?”
“Yes,” I said.
He stood there, looking down at them, in awe of his own power.
“I wonder if poems should be written down,” he said.
“I have a very poor handwriting,” I said, “and I am particularly bad at the lines that go from right to left.”
“I am illiterate,” said Tula, quickly, in the crisis of the moment forgetting even to request permission to speak.
“So am I,” said Mincon, happily.
Boabissia, of course, was also illiterate. She sat on the ground with her back against the right, rear wagon wheel, her ankles still bound together.
Hurtha looked at Feiqa. She could read and write. She was highly intelligent, and had been well educated. She was of a well-known city. She had even been of high station, before being enslaved, before becoming only an animal subject to her masters. She turned white.
“She is a slave,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” said Hurtha, dismissing her then from his mind.
Feiqa threw me a wild look of gratitude. To be sure, much of the copy work, lower-order clerical work, trivial account keeping, and such, on Gor, was done by slaves. Hurtha, however, I thought, apparently correctly, might prefer having his poems transcribed by free folks. It had been a close call for Feiqa.
“I am starving,” I said.
Hurtha consulted his internal states. “So, too, am I,” he reported. “But I remain firm in my resolve not to sell my poems. Better starvation.”
“Certainly,” I said.
“What are our resources?” he inquired.
“Something like two copper tarsks, and some four or five tarsk bits,” I said.
“Not enough,” he said.
“I agree,” I said.
“What are we to do?” asked Hurtha.
“Work?” I
speculated.
“Be serious,” he admonished me. “We are in desperate straits. This is no joking matter.”
“Untie my ankles,” said Boabissia.
Hurtha and I looked at one another.
“You take her left hand and I will take her right,” said Hurtha.
Boabissia tried to scramble to her feet but, bound as she was, she fell. Then we had her wrists, and pulled her back, by them, to the wagon wheel.
“What are you doing?” cried Boabissia.
I tied her left wrist back to one of the spokes, and Hurtha, similarly, fastened her right wrist back, to another spoke.
“What are you doing?” asked Boabissia.
“You have seen several of the fellows about looking at Boabissia, haven’t you?” asked Hurtha of me.
“Of course,” I said. “Though there are many slaves in Torcadino, and lovely ones, apparently there is a dearth of free women here, particularly of ones not veiled.”
“Veil me then!” she begged.
“It is time you earned your keep, Boabissia,” said Hurtha.
“What do you mean?” she cried. “I am a free woman!”
“I think I can round up a few interested fellows,” said Hurtha.
“What are you thinking of!” she cried. She struggled, helplessly.
“She wanted her ankles untied,” said Hurtha.
“Yes,” I said.
“No, no!” she cried. “Do not untie my ankles!”
Hurtha dropped the ankle cords to one side. She clenched her ankles tightly together. She pulled desperately, futilely, against the thongs that held her wrists to the spokes. Hurtha left the vicinity of the wagon.
“Relax, Boabissia,” I encouraged her. “You have serious sexual needs, which you have been frustrating for too long. This has been evident in your temper, and in your demeanor and attitudes. This will do you a great deal of good.”
“I am not a slave!” she said, weeping, struggling. “I am a free woman! I do not have sexual needs!”
“Perhaps not,” I said. To be sure, it was difficult, and probably fruitless, to argue with a free woman about such matters. Too, I might have misread what seemed to be numerous and obvious signs of need in her. Perhaps free women neither needed nor wanted sexual experience. That, I supposed, was their business. On the other hand, if they did not want or need sex, the transformation between the free woman and the slave becomes difficult to understand. To be sure, perhaps it is merely the collar, and the uncompromising male domination, which so unlocks, and calls forth, the passion, service and love of a female.
“What are you doing?” she asked, weeping.
“Doubtless men will be here soon,” I said.
“What are you doing?” she wept.
I put the opaque sack over her head and tied it, with its own strings, under her chin, close about her neck, rather like a slave hood. “This will make it easier for you,” I said. “I am veiling you. Too, this will enable you, by shutting out certain extraneous factors, to concentrate more closely on the exact nature of your sensations.”
“Release me!” she wept.
“No,” I said.
I heard a fellow near me. I looked about. “She is certified free?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Examine her.”
He thrust Boabissia’s dress up, high, over her breasts. He examined her thighs, and the usual brand sites on a Gorean female slave.
“How much?” he asked.
“She is only a free woman,” I said. I put a copper bowl on the ground, beside her, at her left. “She is not trained. Only a tarsk bit.” It was the smallest, least significant Gorean coin, at least in common circulation.
“In advance,” I said. Men are commonly disappointed in free women, and almost certainly if they have experienced the alternative. They are not slaves, trained in the giving of pleasure to men. Some free women believe that their role in lovemaking consists primarily in lying down. Should they become slaves the whip soon teaches them differently.
“Of course,” he said. The coin rattled into the copper bowl.
“No!” wept Boabissia. She clenched her ankles tightly together. Then her ankles, one in each hand of the fellow, were parted.
* * * *
It was now late in the evening.
Hurtha happily shook the copper bowl. In it were several coins. I had not kept track. We were now, at any rate, once again solvent.
“How do you feel?” I asked Boabissia.
She twisted in the thongs and turned to the side. She whimpered, softly.
We had kept Tula and Feiqa under the blanket in the back of the wagon. We had not wanted them to distract our visitors.
I looked at Boabissia. She made another small, soft, whimpering noise. Some of the men, in their intense excitement, I feared, had been somewhat stronger, or ruder, with her than might have been appropriate for a free woman. Indeed, some had handled her almost as though she might have been a slave. We had not cautioned them to gentleness, however. After all, they had paid their tarsk bits.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Yes,” she whispered.
I put my ear down close to her. Her head in the sack, it tied on her, fastened under her chin, she did not know my nearness. I listened to the tiny, soft noises she made. It was like a soft moaning or tiny whimpering. It was almost inaudible. I knew such sounds. I smiled. She was still feeling, even now, wonderingly perhaps, the results of her havings. Perhaps she was trying, even now, in her depth of her femininity, to understand what had been done to her, to come to grips with her feelings, with those sensations which men had seen fit to induce in her.
I leaned back. “You are sure you are all right?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
I pulled down her dress, and freed her wrists. They were ringed with thong marks.
She, her palms on the dirt, half knelt, half lay, by the wheel. Her head, still in the sack, was down.
“Did you take me?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Did Hurtha have me?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Why not?” she asked.
“You are a free woman,” I told her. I then removed the sack from her head. Her face was red, and broken out. Her hair was damp. I turned the sack inside out, that it might dry and air. Boabissia turned away from me, apparently not wanting to meet my eyes. I do not think she wanted us to see her face. She was afraid, I think, of what we might see there. We would respect this. She was, after all, a free woman. We would, similarly, in deference to her feelings, keep Feiqa and Tula under the blanket for a time, lest their eyes suddenly, inadvertently, meet hers, and women read in one another’s eyes truths which might be deeper than speech.
“Good night,” I said to her.
“Good night,” she said.
I watched her pull her blanket about her. She suddenly shuddered. “Oh!” she said. Then she pulled the blanket more tightly about her shoulders. We would not chain her. She was not a slave. She was a free woman. She might leave, if she wished.
12
It Is a Standard, That of a Silver Tarn
“The city is taken!” I heard. “The city is taken!”
I lay absolutely still for an instant. I heard no clash of weapons. There were no sounds of rushing feet, of flight. No cries of pain, of men stabbed in their blankets.
I did hear the ringing of an alarm bar in the distance.
My eyes might have appeared closed to a careless observer. They were open. Peripheral vision is important at such times. In that first instant, every sense suddenly alert, I appeared to be still asleep. There was the wagon. There were the remains of the fire. I detected no movement in my immediate vicinity.
No longer now did I even hear the cry of the man.
The first object that moves is often that which attracts the immediate attention of the predator. Too, the swiftest moving object, particularly that which moves silently, and with obvious menace or purp
ose, is often construed, and generally correctly, by the attacker as the most dangerous, that to be dealt with first. Those overcome with surprise, those expostulating or cursing, those stunned, may be left for the instants later. There is a dark mathematics in such matters, in the subtle equations balancing reaction times against the movements of blades. One gambles. Is the instant one waits, that instant of fearful reconnoitering, that instant in which one hopes to convince a foe that one is temporarily harmless, an instant of loss, or of gain? Does it grant him his opportunity, or does it obtain you yours? Much depends on the actual situation. If one is roused by known voices, one generally rises quickly. The defensive is being assumed. If one does not know what is occurring, it is sometimes wise to find out before leaping up, perhaps into the weapons of enemies who might be as close as one’s elbow. My right hand was on the hilt of my sword, my left on the sheath, its straps wrapped about it, to steady the draw. Doubtless I appeared to be still asleep. But no sounds of carnage rang about me.
I sat up quickly, freeing myself from the blankets. I did not draw the weapon. I saw no immediate need to do so. I slung it, on its strap, over my left shoulder. The scabbard can be discarded more quickly in this suspension than in one which crosses the body.
“Hurtha,” I said, “wake up.” I moved his shoulder.
“What is it?” he said. “Is it not early?”
“Something strange is going on,” I said. “Get up. There was an alarm bar ringing.”
“I hear nothing,” he said, sitting up.
To be sure, the bar had now stopped ringing.
“I do not understand it,” I said. “A fellow was crying out that the city had been taken. I do not hear him now. Too, the alarm bar was ringing. I heard it.”
“It is very early,” said Hurtha.
“Get up,” I said.
I looked over to Boabissia. Her eyes were open. She was looking at me, frightened.
“Did you hear the alarm bar?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Get up, Hurtha,” I said. He had once again returned to his blankets.
“It is too early,” he said. Actually it was not all that early. Some other folks were now up, too, about the camp.
“You may be in jeopardy of your life,” I informed him.
Mercenaries of Gor Page 13
