“Should you not return to Nine Wells?” asked Haroun of Suleiman.
“No,” said Suleiman. Then be said, “I go to marshal my men.”
The pashas and their guards who bad surrounded us returned to their forces.
Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars, handed the lance and pennon of his office to
one of the men with Baram, his vizier.
“Shall we kill these sleen?” asked Baram, indicating the kneeling, groveling
wretches tethered to the pommel of Haroun’s saddle. They put their heads to the
gravel and sand, trembling.
“No,” said Haroun. “Take them to the tents and chain them there as slaves. There
will be more later. They will bring a high price in Tor.”
The tethers of the wretches were given to a rider. They were taken from the
field.
Orders were given. In a short time, great lines, strung out, began to move
across the desert. In the center were the Kavars and the Aretai. On the right
flank, riding together, were the Ta`Kara and the Luraz, the Bakahs and the
Tashid, the Char, the Kashani and the Raviri. On the left were the Ti’ the Arani
and the Zevar, and, holding the extremity of the flank, forty deep, the Tajuks.
Behind us, behind Haroun and myself, who rode alone, we leading, strung out,
were the long lines of riders, the gathered tribesmen of the Tahari.
“How did things go in the dune country?” asked Haroun.
“Well,” I told him.
He dropped the wind veil about his shoulders. “I see you still wear about your
left wrist a bit of silk,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“You must, in the march, inform me of what occurred in the dune country,” he
said.
“I shall be pleased to do so,” I said. “By what name should I address you?”
“By the name, by which you know me best,” he said.
“Excellent,” said I, “Hassan.”
24 I Bind a Girl, Reserving Her for Myself, I Then Address Myself to the
Duties of Steel
The outcome of the battle, some twenty pasangs from the kasbah of the Salt Ubar,
had never been in doubt. That Ibn Saran met us at all, with the twenty-five
hundred mercenaries be could muster does him much credit.
He was swiftly enveloped. Many of his men, I believe, did not understand the
nature of the forces they faced until we swept over the hills upon them. We
outnumbered them four or five to one. Many of the mercenaries, unable to escape,
discarded their bucklers and dismounted, thrusting their lances and scimitars
into the ground. There was hard fighting, however, in the vicinity of Ibn
Saran’s own men, those of the Salt Ubar and his allies, those who had fought
with Tarna. I came once within one hundred and fifty yards of Ibn Saran; Hassan,
or Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars, came within twenty yards of him, fighting
like a wild animal, but was turned back at last by a wall of bucklers, a hedge
of lances. I did not see Tarna in the battle. I did see her men, but they fought
under Ibn Saran. I gathered she had been relieved of her command.
Late in the afternoon, Ibn Saran, with four hundred riders, broke through our
lines and fled northwest.
We did not pursue him but consolidated our victory.
“He will take refuge in his kasbah,” said Hassan. “It will be difficult to take
the kasbah.”
That was true. If it could not be taken swiftly, it might not be possible to
take it at all. We did not have enough water to maintain our men in the field.
At best we might be able, failing to take the kasbah, to invest it with a
smaller force that it would be practical to supply with water from Red Rock.
Such a siege might last for months. Our extended, thinned lines would invite
attack; it would be difficult, too, even if our investing lines were not broken
in force, to prevent the escape of small parties at night.
“Ibn Saran,” I said, “may slip through your fingers.”
“We must take the kasbah.” said Hassan.
“Perhaps I can help you,” I said. I fingered the ring of the Kurii, which hung
about my neck on its leather string.
The girl knelt before the low vanity with the natural, insolent grace of the
trained slave. She combed, with a broad, curved comb of kailiauk horn, her long,
dark hair. The comb was yellow. She wore a bit of yellow slave silk, her collar.
She was beautiful in the mirror. How like a fool I felt that I had ever
surrendered her. She knelt on broad, smooth scarlet tiles. About her left ankle,
looped, were several golden slave bangles. The light in the room was from two
tharlarion-oil lamps, one on each side of the mirror.
She had not yet noticed the bit of silk I had left to the side.
I regarded the slave, as she combed her hair. She, in a dungeon, in a holding
somewhere of agents of Kurii, had betrayed Priest-Kings. Chained nude in a
dungeon, in the darkness, among the urts, she had screamed for mercy. She had
revealed all she knew of the Sardar, the plans of Priest-Kings, their practices
and devices, the weakness of the Nest. If she fell into the hands of Samos I had
little doubt he would have her bound and thrown to the urts, among the garbage,
in the canals of Port Kar. Emptied of information she had been brought by Ibn
Saran to the Tahari. Here she had, for him, identified me, when I entered the
Tahari. I remembered her as one of the slaves who, bangled, in the high, tight
vest of red silk, the sashed, diaphanous chalwar, had served wine in the palace
of Suleiman at Nine Wells. She had been in the audience chamber when Suleiman
had been struck. She had testified that it bad been I who had attacked him, I
had seen her smile, when taken from the rack, after her testimony. Once she had
served Priest-Kings; then, later, she had well served others, the Kurii and
their agents; I watched her comb her hair, now I suspected she was for most
practical purposes useless in the politics of planets; but she had been spared;
I watched her movements; I smiled; I, too, would have spared her; surely she was
not now completely without use; she retained. I noted, doubtless the reason for
which she had been spared, the general utilities of my charming, pretty slave
girl. Her flesh would bring a high price. To see her was to wish to own her.
Pretty Vella. She put down the comb and reached for a tiny bottle of perfume.
She touched her neck, below the ears, and her body, about the shoulders, with
the scent. I knew the scent.
I had carried it with me to Klima. I had not forgotten it.
Her eye, as she put aside the tiny bottle of perfume, was caught by the bit of
silk, lying to one side on the vanity.
She looked at it, puzzled, curious.
I recalled the morning I had, in chains, waited to be herded with other wretches
to Klima. I had looked up. In a narrow window in the wall of the kasbah, high
over my head, there had stood a woman, a slave girl, veiled and robed in yellow,
a slave master behind her. With the permission of the slave master she had
removed her veil. With what contempt, and scorn, and triumph she bad looked upon
me, a mere male slave, chained and bound for Klima, below her. She had thrown me
a token, a square of silk, slave silk, red, some eighteen inches square,
redolent with the perfume fitted by some perfumer, on the order of her master,
to her slave personality, her slave nature and slave body. It was something by
which I might remember her at Klima, I had vowed to return from Klima. She had
wished to see me hooded and led away. This treat, as useful discipline, despite
her pleas, had been denied her by the slave master. She had thrown me a kiss,
and then, before the slave master, hurried from the window.
I stood back in the room. I flicked the switch on the ring I wore, that I might
be visible to her.
She picked up the bit of silk. She opened it. It was tattered, faded, almost
white. She held it open before her, looking at it. She took it in her hands and
held it to her face, inhaling it. Suddenly she cried out in joy “Tarl!” She
turned, springing to her feet. “Tarl!” she cried. “Tarl!” She ran to me, with a
clash of bangles, and took me in her arms, her head at my chest, weeping. Tarl!”
she wept. “Tarl! Tarl! I love you! I love you!”
I took her wrists, and forced them, slowly, from my body. I held them. She
struggled to reach me, to press her lips to my body. I did not permit this. She
threw her head, in frustration, from side to side. Her face was stained with
tears. She wept. “Let me touch you,” she cried. “Let me hold you! I love you! I
love you!”
I held her, by the upper arms, from me. She looked up into my eyes. “Oh, Tarl,”
she wept. “Can you ever forgive me? Can you ever forgive me?”
“Kneel,” I told her.
Slowly, numbly, the beauty slipped to her knees before me. “Tarl?” she said.
I drew from my garment a rag. It was thin, brief, tattered, much torn; it was
cheap rep-cloth, brown and coarse; it was stained with dirt, with grease. I had
found it in the kitchens of Ibn Saran.
I threw it against her body. “Put it on,” I told her.
“I am a high slave,” she said.
“Put it on,” I told her.
She parted the bit of yellow silk she wore, dropping it to one side. She reached
for the bit of rep-cloth.
“Remove first the bangles,” I told her. She sat on the tiles and, one by one,
slipped the bangles from her left ankle. Then she stood up, and pulled the rag
over her head. Her body involuntarily shuddered as the grease-thick rag slipped
over her beauty and clung snug, revealingly, about it; I examined her, walking
about her; I tore the neckline down, to better expose the beauty of her breasts;
I ripped away a strip from the garment’s hem, shortening it; she must now walk
with exquisite care; I ripped the left side of the garment a bit more, to better
reveal the delicious line from her left breast to her left hip.
I backed away a few feet from her.
She faced me. “The gown much reveals me,” she said, “Tarl.”
“Cross and extend your wrists,” I told her. She did so. With a strip of leather
binding fiber, I fastened them together. The strip was long and enough was left
to lead her, serving as tether.
“We do not have a great deal of time,” I told her. “There will soon be fighting
in the kasbah.”
“I love you,” she said.
I looked at her with fury.
She was startled at my anger. “I am sorry I have so offended you,” she
whispered. “I have suffered much for it. You cannot know how I have suffered,
weeping in the nights. I am so sorry, Tarl!”
I did not speak.
“I was cruel, and terrible,” she said, “and petty.” She looked down, miserably.
“I can never forgive myself,” she whispered. She looked up. “Can you forgive me,
Tarl, ever?” she asked.
I looked about. I could use one of the tharlarion-oil lamps by the large mirror.
“I testified against you at Nine Wells,” she said. “I lied. I spoke falsehood.”
“You did as you were told, Slave Girl,” I told her.
“Oh, Tarl!” she wept. She looked at me, fearlessly. “For Lydius,” she said, “I
wanted to send you to Klima!”
“Your wishes are not of interest to me,” I told her.
She looked at me with horror. She wept then, and put down her head. “I
identified you for Ibn Saran,” she said.
I shrugged.
“Are you not angry!” she cried.
“A slave girl,” I said to her, “owes her master absolute obedience.”
She looked aside, angrily. “I dare not even speak to you what else I did,” she
said.
“You betrayed Priest-Kings,” I told her, “fully, and to the best of your
ability.”
She turned white. “Will it make a difference?” she said.
“I do not know,” I told her. “It could mean the loss of Earth and Gor, the
ultimate victory of the Kurii.”
She shuddered. “I was weak,” she said. “There was a dungeon. I was stripped,
chained. It was dark. There were urts. I was terrified. I could not help myself.
They told me I would be freed.”
By the leather strap I yanked her wrists, indicating to her that they were well
tied. “You will not be freed,” I told her.
“Oh, Tarl,” she wept. Then she asked, “Will what I did make a difference?”
“I do not know,” I told her. “Perhaps those on the steel worlds will not believe
your protestations. They may believe you only spoke sincerely what you believed
to be true, not what, necessarily, was true.”
She shuddered miserably.
“There are many who know of your treachery,” I said. “Doubtless some will he
captured, or fall into the bands of agents of Priest-Kings. Soon your life will
be worth little among the agents of Priest-Kings.” I thought of Samos. He was
not a patient man.
She lifted her eyes to me. “I could be tortured and impaled,” she said.
“You are a slave girl,” I told her. “No such honorable death would be yours. You
would be given one of the deaths of a slave girl, who has not been pleasing. In
Port Kar, doubtless, you would be given the Garbage Death-bound naked and hurled
to the urts in the canals.”
She sank to her knees in horror. I looked at her. In time she again lifted her
head.
“Can you forgive me,’’ she asked, “for what I have done?”
“What seems to concern you,” I said, “does not to me seem to require
forgiveness. You are a slave girl. You were simply obedient to your master. No
man objects to a girl obeying her master.”
“Then,” she said, softly, “you will not even have the kindness to be cruel to
me?”
“I am not lenient,” said I, “Girl, with certain other gratifications you
permitted yourself, which were not commanded of you.”
She looked at me. “What?” she asked.
“At Nine Wells,” I said, “following your testimony, falsely accusing me, when
removed from the rack, you looked upon me, and smiled.”
“So tiny a thing?” she said. “I’m sorry, Tarl.”
“And when I was chained, and bound for Klima’ “ I said, “again you smiled upon
me. You cast me a token, a bit of silk. You blew me a kiss.”
“I hated you!” she cried, from her knees.
I smiled.
“I acted like a slave girl,” she said, her head down.
“Do you k
now why you acted like a slave girl?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
I looked upon her, in the brief garment, bound kneeling before me, looking up at
me. “Because you are a slave girl,” I told her.
“Tarl!” she cried.
There was a sudden pounding on the door. I slipped instantly behind the girl, my
hand over her mouth, my dagger across her throat. She could feel its edge.
“You will not cry out or give the alarm,” I told her.
She nodded, miserably. I removed my hand from her mouth.
“Vella! Vella!” called a voice. There was more pounding.
“Do you not trust me, Tarl?” she asked, softly. “
“You are a slave girl,” I whispered. “Answer. The knife was still at her throat.
“Yes, Master!” called the girl.
“You know that at the twentieth hour you are to give pleasure to the guards in
the north tower!” called the man.
“I am applying my cosmetics,” she called, “I shall hurry!”
“If you are late by so much as five, Ehn, “ be called, “you will be caressed by
the five fingers of leather.” This was an allusion to the Gorean five-strap
slave whip, commonly used on girls because of the softness and width of its
lashes. It punishes severely but, because of its construction, does not
permanently mark the girl.
“I hurry, Master! I hurry!” cried Vella.
The man left.
“You are in great danger,” said Vella. “You must flee.” I sheathed the dagger I
had held her in obedience with.
“Those in the kasbah are in greater danger than I,” I smiled.
“How did you get in?” she said. “Is there a secret entrance?”
I shrugged. “I entered unobserved,” I said. “I looked at her. “Curiosity is not
becoming in a Kajira,” I said.
She stiffened.
I had waited near one of the gates of the kasbah, in the shelter of the ring’s
invisibility. When a reconnoitering party left the kasbah I had simply slipped
unseen within. I had stopped in the kitchens of the kasbah to find a suitable
garment for Vella. Then I had examined various areas, until I found her, in a
room in which girls, who are to be summoned to the pleasure of men, may prepare
themselves.
I looked to the lamps at the side of the mirror. One of them would do well.
Soon, Vella closely before me, her wrists bound, the tether looped about her
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