Norman, John - Gor 10 - Tribesmen of Gor.txt

by Tribesmen of Gor [lit]

  they could not see, a terrible sound to which their sensors were almost inert. A

  man, I felt, could know a Kur, but Priest-Kings, I suspected, could only know

  about a Kur. They could know about them, but they could not know them. To know a

  Kur one must, perhaps, in the moonlight, face it with an ax, smell the musk of

  its murderous rage, see the eyes, the intelligence, the sinuous, hunched might

  of it, the blood black at its jaws, hear the blood cry, stand against its

  charge. A creature, who had not known hatred, lust and terror, I suspected,

  would be ill fitted to understand the Kur, or men.

  “What you say is quite possibly true,” I said.

  “I shall not ask you to serve Kurii,” said the man.

  “You honor me,” I said.

  “You are of the Warriors,” he said.

  “It is true,” I said. Never had I been divested of the scarlet. Let who would,

  with steel, dispute my caste with me.

  “Well,” said the man on the dais. “It is late, and we must all retire. You must

  be up before dawn.”

  “Where is Vella?” I asked.

  “I have confined her to quarters,” he said.

  “Must I address you,” I asked. “As Abdul?”

  The man lowered his veil. “No,” he said, “not if you do not wish to do so.”

  “I know you better under another name,” I said.

  “That is true,” said the man.

  Hassan began to struggle. He could not part the fiber on his wrists. The ropes

  burned on his throat. He was held by the guards on his knees. The blade of a

  scimitar stood at his throat He was quiet.

  “Are we to be slain at dawn?” I asked.

  “No,” he said.

  I looked at him puzzled. Hassan, too, seemed shocked.

  “You will begin a journey, with others, at dawn,” said the man. “It will be a

  long journey, afoot. It is my hope that you will both arrive safely.”

  “What are you doing with us?” demanded Hassan.

  “I herewith,” said Ibn Saran, “sentence you to the brine pits of Klima.”

  We struggled to our feet, but each of us, by two guards, was held.

  “Tafa, Riza,” said Ibn Saran, to two of the girls, “strip.”

  They did so, to collar and brand. “You will be taken below, to the dungeons,”

  said Ibn Saran to us. “There you will be chained by the neck in separate cells.

  In the cell of each, we will place a naked slave girl, she, too, chained by the

  neck, her chain within your reach, that you may, if you wish, pull her to you.”

  “Ibn Saran is generous,” I said.

  “I give Hassan a woman,” said he, “for his audacity. I give you, too, a woman,

  for your manhood, and for we are two of a kind, mercenaries in higher wars.” He

  turned to one of the girls. “Straighten your body, Tafa,” he said. She did so,

  and stood beautifully, a marvelous female slave. “Chain Riza,” said he to one of

  the guards, selecting the women who would serve us, by his will, “beside Hassan,

  this bandit, and Tafa by the side of this man, he of the Warriors, whose name is

  Tarl Cabot.”

  Metal leashes were snapped on the girls’ throats.

  “Regard Tafa, Tarl Cabot,” said Ibn Saran. I did so. “Let Tafa’s body give you

  much pleasure,” he said. “For there are no women at Klima.”

  We were turned about and taken from the audience hall of the Guard of the Dunes

  Abdul, the Salt Ubar, he who was Ibn Saran.

  14 The March to Klima

  I took another step, and my right leg, to the knee, broke through the brittle

  crusts. The lash struck again across my back. I straightened in the slave hood,

  my head thrown back by the stroke. The chain on my neck jerked forward and I

  stumbled in the salt crusts. My bands clenched in the manacles, fastened at my

  belly by the loop of chain. My left leg broke through a dozen layers of crust,

  breaking it to the side with a hundred, dry, soft shattering sounds, the rupture

  of innumerable fine crystalline structures. I could feel blood on my left leg,

  over the leather wrappings, where the edge of a crust, ragged, hot, had sawed it

  open. I lost my balance and fell. I tried to rise. But the chain before me

  dragged forward and I fell again. Twice more the lash struck. I recovered my

  balance. Again I waded through the crusts toward Klima.

  For twenty days had we marched. Some thought it a hundred. Many had lost count.

  More than two hundred and fifty men had been originally in the salt chain.

  I did not know how many now trekked with the march. The chain was now much

  heavier than it had been, for it, even with several sections removed, was

  carried by far fewer men. To be a salt slave, it is said, one must be strong.

  Only the strong, it is said, reach Klima.

  In the chain, we wore slave hoods. These had been fastened on us at the foot of

  the wall of the kasbah of the Salt Ubar. Before mine had been locked under my

  chin I had seen the silver desert in its dawn. The sky in the east, for Gor,

  like the Earth rotates to the east, had seemed cool and gray. It was difficult

  to believe then, in the cool of that morning, as early as late spring that the

  surface temperatures of the terrain we would traverse would be within hours

  better than one hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit. Our feet, earlier, had

  been wrapped in leather sheathing, it reaching, in anticipation of the crusts,

  -later to be encountered, to the knees. The moons, at that time, had been still

  above the horizon. Rocks on the desert, and the sheer walls of the Salt Ubar’s

  kasbah, looming above us, shone with dew, common in the Tahari in the early

  morning, to be burned off in the first hour of the sun. Children, and nomads,

  sometimes rise early, to lick the dew from the rocks. From where we were

  chained, I had been able to see, some two pasangs to the east, Tarna’s kasbah. A

  useful tool had the Salt Ubar characterized her. She had not been able to hold

  Hassan and me. The Salt Ubar had speculated that be would enjoy better fortune

  in this respect. The collar was locked about my throat.

  An Ahn before dawn I had been aroused. Tafa, sweet and warm, on the cool stones,

  on the straw, lay against me, in my arms. On her throat was a heavy cell collar,

  with ring; attached to the ring was some fifteen feet of chain, it attached to a

  plate near our beads. I was similarly secured. The plates were no more than five

  inches apart. When we had been placed in the cell a tiny lamp had been put on a

  shelf by the door. The stones were broad, heavy blocks, cool, wet in places,

  over which lay a scattering, of damp straw. We were perhaps a hundred feet below

  the kasbah. The cell had not been much cleaned. There was a smell, as of humans,

  and urts. Tafa screamed but she, unleashed, was thrown to the wall, and her fair

  throat placed in the waiting cell collar, it then snapped shut. I was then, too,

  secured. “Do not keep me in this place!” screamed Tafa. “Please! Please!” But

  they did not unlock the collar. An urt scampered across the stones, disappearing

  between two blocks of stone in the wall. Tafa screamed and threw herself to the

  feet of one of the jailers, holding his legs, kissing at him. With his left and

  right hand he checked the collar at her throat, holding it with his left hand

  and, w
ith his right, jerking the chain twice against the ring, then threw her

  from him, to the straw. The other man similarly checked my collar. Then, with a

  knife, he cut the two ropes from my throat, and freed me of the binding fiber.

  He took the shreds of rope and binding fiber with him when he left the cell. The

  heavy door, beams of wood, sheathed with plates of iron, together some eight

  inches thick, closed. The hasps were flung over the staples, two, heavy, and two

  locks were shut on the door. At the top of the door, some six inches by ten

  inches, barred, was an observation window. The guards looked in. Tafa sprang to

  her feet and ran to the length of her chain, her hands and fingers outstretched,

  clawing toward the bars. Her fingers came within ten inches of the bars. “Do not

  leave me here,” she cried. “Please, oh, please, oh Masters!” They turned away.

  She moaned, and turned from the door, dragging at the chain with her small

  hands. She fell to her hands and knees and vomited twice, from fear and the

  stench. An urt skittered past her, having emerged from a crack in the floor

  between two stones and moved swiftly across the floor, along one wall, and

  vanished through the crack which had served as exit for its fellow a few moments

  earlier. Tafa began to weep and pull hysterically at the chain and collar on her

  throat. But it was obdurately fastened upon her. I checked my own collar and

  chain, and the linkage at the ring and plate. I was secured. I looked at the

  tiny lamp on the shelf near the door. It smoked, and burned oil, probably from

  tiny rock tharlarions, abundant south of Tor in the spring. I looked at Tafa.

  She shook her head. “No,” she said. “You are sentenced to Klima.”

  I leaned back against the wall. “You will be only a salt slave,” she said.

  I watched her. With the back of her right wrist she wiped her mouth. I continued

  to watch her. She half knelt, half sat, her head down, the palms of her hands on

  the floor of the cell.

  I picked up, where it lay on the stones, fastened to the plate and ring near

  mine, the chain which ran, looped, lying on the floor, to her collar, several

  feet away.

  “No!” she cried angrily. I held the chain. I did not pull it to me. “Salt

  slave!” she cried. She jerked the chain taut with her two hands, on her knees,

  backing away. My hand rested on the chain, lightly. It was tight on its ring,

  taut. I removed my hand from the chain.

  Watching me, catlike, Tafa lay on her side in the straw. I looked away. Tafa, no

  longer under the eye of her master, the feared Ibn Saran, had a slave girl’s

  pride. She was, after all, a lock-collar girl, who had been once free, who was

  beautiful, who had, at Two Scimitars, brought a high price, a price doubtless

  improved upon, if only slightly, by the agents of Ibn Saran, when they had

  bought her for their master. Slave girls, commonly obsequious and docile with

  free males, who may in an instant put them under discipline, are often insolent

  and arrogant with males who are slave, whom they despise. Salt slaves in the

  Tahari are among the lowest of the male slaves. The same girl who, joyously,

  would lasciviously writhe at the feet of the free male, begging him for his

  slightest touch, would often, confronted with male slaves, treat them with the

  contempt and coldness commonly accorded the men of Earth by their frustrated,

  haughty females; I have sometimes wondered if this is because the women of

  Earth, cheated of their domination by the aggressor sex, see such weaklings,

  perhaps uneasily or subconsciously, as slaves, men unfit to master, males

  determined to be only the equals of girls, stupid fools who wear their own

  chains, slaves who have enslaved themselves, fearing to be free. Goreans,

  interestingly from the point of view of an Earthling, who has been subjected to

  differing historical conditioning processes, do not regard biology as evil:

  those who deny the truths of biology are not acclaimed on Gor, as on Earth, but

  are rather regarded as being curious and pathetic. Doubtless it is difficult to

  adjudicate matters of values. Perhaps it is intrinsically more desirable in some

  obscure sense to deny biology and suffer from mental and physical disease, than

  accept biology and be strong and joyful, I do not know. I leave the question to

  those wiser than myself. For what it is worth, though doubtless it is little

  pertinent, the men and women of Gor are, generally, whole and happy; the men and

  women of Earth, generally, if I do not misread the situation, are not. The cure

  for poison perhaps is not more poison, but something different. But this matter

  I leave again to those more wise than myself.

  My hand again picked up Tafa’s chain, where it was fastened to the plate near

  mine. Instantly, her eyes, which she had closed, her arm under the left side of

  her head, opened. I took up a fist of the chain. “Salt slave!” she said. She

  rose to her knees. She jerked with her weight against the chain. This time I did

  not release it. Her hands slipped on the chain. She tried to jerk it again,

  holding it more firmly. I did not release the chain. It was as though it had

  been fastened anew, but a fist shorter than it bad been. “No!” she cried. I took

  up another fist of chain. She sprang to her feet. “No! No!” she cried. I put my

  two hands on the chain. I drew it another few inches toward me. She stumbled

  forward some inches, then stood, bracing herself, her hands on the chain. “No!”

  she cried. I took up another fist of the chain, her neck and head were pulled

  forward. She was in an awkward position. She could not brace herself. She gave

  some inches and again braced herself, throwing her weight back against the

  chain. It did not yield. She wept. “No! No!” she said. It interested me that she

  would attempt to pit her strength against mine. The strength of a full-grown

  woman is equivalent to that of a twelve-year-old boy. Goreans read in this an

  indication as to who is master. Foot by foot, slowly, across the floor of the

  cell, she slipping, screaming, struggling, I drew her toward me. I saw the small

  oil lamp was growing dim, the oil almost depleted, the wick smoking. Then my

  fist was in the girl’s collar and I threw her to her back at my side. With my

  left band I lifted the heavy collar chain from her body and threw it over her

  head and behind her. I saw her wild eyes, frightened. With some straw I wiped

  her mouth, cleaning it, for earlier, in her revulsion and terror, her horror at

  the place and manner in which she found herself incarcerated, she had from her

  own mouth soiled both herself and the cell. “Please,” she said. “Be silent,” I

  told her. The lamp sputtered out.

  An Ahn before dawn I had been aroused. Tafa, sweet and warm, on the cool stones,

  on the straw, lay against me, in my arms. Five men, two with lamps, entered the

  cell. A loop of chain was placed about my belly. My wrists were manacled before

  me, the manacles fixed with a ring in the chain. Two of the men, one on each

  side, then thrust a bar behind my back and before my elbows, by means of which,

  together, they could control me. The fifth man unsnapped the collar from my

  throat, and dropped it, with its chain, to th
e stones. I was pulled to my feet.

  Tafa, frightened, awake, knelt at my feet. She bent to my feet. I felt her hair

  on my feet. I felt her lips kiss my feet. She knelt as a slave girl. In the

  night I had conquered her.

  By means of the bar, not looking back, I was thrust from the cell.

  We had stood, the salt slaves being readied for the march to Klima, at the foot

  of the wall of the kasbah of the Salt Ubar. The moons were not yet below the

  horizon. It was cooling, even chilly at that hour in the late spring. Dawn, like

  a shadowy scimitar, curved gray in the east. I could see Tama’s kasbah, some two

  pasangs away. Hassan stood, some four men from me, similarly manacled. Our feet

  had already been wrapped in leather. I saw the collar of the chain lifted,

  snapped on his throat. Dew shone on the plastered walls of the kasbah looming

  over me, on rocks scattered on the desert. A rider, on kaiila, was moving toward

  us, on the sand about the edge of the wall. The scarlet sand veil of the men of

  the Guard of the Dunes concealed his countenance, and a length of it fluttered

  behind him as he rode, and the wide burnoose lifted and swelled behind him. The

  cording of the agal, over the scarlet kaffiyeh, was gold. Men beside me lifted

  the chain and collar. The rider pulled the kaiila up beside me, drawing back on

  the single rein. The collar was snapped about my throat. I felt the weight of

  the chain.

  “Greetings, Tarl Cabot,” said the rider.

  “You rise early, noble Ibn Saran,” said I.

  “I would not miss your departure,” he averred.

  “Doubtless in this there is triumph for you,” said I.

  “Yes,” said he, “but, too, regret, Comrade. One gains a victory, one loses an

  enemy.”

  The men of the Guard of the Dunes were fastening slave hoods on the prisoners of

  the chain. There were several men behind me. This slave hood does not come

  fitted with a gag device. It is not a particularly cruel hood, like many, but

  utilitarian, and merciful. It serves four major functions. It facilitates the

  control of the prisoner. A hooded prisoner, even if not bound, is almost totally

  helpless. He cannot see to escape; he can not see to attack; he cannot be sure,

  usually, even of the number and position of his captors, whether they face him,

  or are attentive, or such; sometimes a hooded prisoner, even unbound, is told