Conspirators of Gor

by John Norman

  “I will unchain her,” said the man. “Forgive us. We wished to be sure of matters. Our mistake is natural. We were not warned, or sufficiently warned. We did not expect an agent such as yourself, noble Master.”

  I did not think the beast was flattered.

  He seemed to be measuring the distance between himself and the rear entrance, leading to the cage area. The ears were lifted. I heard nothing. There was moisture about its jaws and the fangs were wet with saliva.

  Words came again from the translator.

  “Tell them not to use their bows,” it said. “Before they could appear in the portal, I could strike away your head.”

  “I do not understand,” said the man, disconcerted.

  “Tell them to put their bows down, in the portal, where I can see them.”

  The man turned about. “Is anyone there?” he called.

  “Now,” came from the translator.

  “There is no one there,” said the man.

  “Now,” repeated the translator.

  “There is no one there,” said the man.

  “Do you wish to live?” came from the translator.

  “Do it, do it,” said the man, “put your bows down, in the portal.”

  Two fellows, whom I recognized from the market, then appeared in the portal, and placed crossbows on the floor.

  I had heard nothing, nor, apparently, had the others in the room, only the beast.

  Could one hear a step so soft, the drawing of a cable, the laying of a quarrel in the guide?

  “You will live,” came from the translator.

  A key was thrust into the lock on my manacle, and it was turned, moving the bolt, after which the sides of the device were opened, on their hinges.

  The sheet was removed from me and I was put to my belly before the beast. I scarcely dared raise my head.

  I saw heavy, furred, clawed feet before me.

  “Your principal,” said the man, rising to his feet, “made an excellent buy. She is a beauty. But perhaps you cannot see that, as you are different.”

  The large head lifted and regarded him. “I can see that,” it said.

  I trembled.

  “There is an additional charge, of ten tarsks,” said the man.

  “Perhaps, after all,” came from the translator, “you do not wish to live.”

  “It will be waived, of course,” said the man.

  The beast then, bent over, wary, began to back toward the street. It paused in the portal. “Come with me,” came from the translator.

  I saw the large eyes on me.

  “What would such a thing want of a slave?” asked one of the men.

  “Food?” suggested another.

  I screamed in terror, sprang to my feet, and tried to run back toward the cages, but had moved not a step or two before I was caught in the rear portal by one of the fellows there, and held. I struggled, wildly, but my strength was no more than that of a child in his arms. I began to shudder. I turned to look at the beast, saw the eyes and fangs, screamed again, and lost consciousness.

  Chapter Ten

  I folded the ironed sheets carefully.

  Afterwards I would deliver them about. One launders the sheets at the public troughs, and later sprinkles them, and puts them under the handled irons, heated on the plate over the house fire.

  The tunic I wore was suitable for a woman’s slave, brown, high-necked, and mid-calfed, rather different from what a man would be likely to put on a slave. On the other hand, it was surely not the cruel farce of sul cloth which had been mentioned during the bargaining at the Tarsk Market. In the markets and the streets I had seen the typical garmenture of other women’s slaves, following their mistresses, heads down, modestly, supposedly that they might not reflect upon their mistresses by exchanging glances with passing men, garmentures which served to demonstrate at once the status and taste of the mistress and the presumed, irreproachable deportment of her slaves. To be sure, many a quick smile and sly glance was passed now and then between such a putatively virtuous pet and one hardy, bold fellow or another. Occasionally, caught in such a contretemps, I had seen a girl mercilessly switched, until she cowered, rolling under the blows, sobbing and crying out, and I scarcely dared to speculate what might occur when she was marched home to a whipping ring.

  In the outer room of the Tarsk Market I had been revived abruptly and unpleasantly by a canister of cold water splashed on my body. It took only a startled, miserable instant to recall the occasion of my loss of consciousness, and one of the first sights to greet me were the eyes of that enormous, crouching beast, regarding me, peering out from within that dark, loose, blanket-like robe and hood within which he concealed, as he could, his massive, but strangely agile frame, that of some sort of hirsute, large-chested, muscular bipedalian, or near-bipedalian, form of life, surely one with which I was unfamiliar. It could rear upright, freeing its grasping appendages for the manipulation of tools, but, as I would later learn, it could also move on all fours, using the knuckles of its forelimbs, with great speed, much faster than a man could run, or a woman. Its entire mien suggested a kind of animal which was predatory, aggressive, and carnivorous. Yet I had gathered from the utilization of the device, or translator, which still hung from its neck, I could see the loose chain, it was rational. Interestingly this reassurance of rationality did not allay my trepidation but increased it, for it bespoke no ordinary beast but one which might pursue its ends not blindly, or even merely cunningly, but patiently, wisely, calculatedly. Surely it was an unfamiliar, fearful robe for intelligence to wear. It was no more than a dozen feet from me. None of the men were near it. I struggled a bit, and fell to my side. While unconscious I had been tightly bound. My wrists had been fastened together behind my back, and my arms had been tied tightly to my sides. Also a leather collar was on my neck, from which a leash dangled, and the end of the leash was clutched in one of the beast’s massive paws.

  “Please save me, Masters!” I wept to the men about. “I will be a good slave! Keep me! Am I not pretty? I beg to please you, and wholly, unquestioningly, and abjectly, responding to your least whim, in all the ways of the female slave! I will please you muchly. Rescue me! Do not let me be taken by this beast!”

  Surely they must have some pity, or feeling, for one who was, after all, a female of their own species, though one with a brand incised into her left thigh.

  “Please, Masters!” I wept. “Please, Masters!”

  “You have been paid for,” said the leader of the men.

  “Return his money!” I begged. “Sell me to another!”

  “The money was good,” said Petranos. “Everything is in order.”

  “Please!” I wept.

  “It is too late,” said a fellow.

  “Please, please, please!” I begged, thrusting my head to the floor.

  “This is an honest house,” said the leader of the men.

  I felt the leash draw taut and my head was pulled up, and I must, along the length of the leash, regard the beast.

  With a last, wary look about the room, before which the men shrank back, he backed through the portal, and I could not gain my feet, and was dragged from the room, my shoulder abrading on the wooden floor, and then I was on the stones of the street.

  “Do not eat me!” I begged, from my side, looking to him, frightened, sore, lying on the street, he much as a gloomy boulder in the shadows.

  Two or three of the men appeared in the doorway, dark against the light behind them from the room.

  A low growl, of obvious menace, was emitted from the throat of the beast, and then men withdrew, and the door was shut, and I heard it bolted.

  There was then little light in the street.

  The leash was slackened, and gently snapped, twice.

  This was a signal, to a trained animal.

  I must try to rise to my feet, to be led.

  Perhaps, then, I was not the first woman he had had on his leash! Who had taught a beast this? What of the others?
Had they been eaten?

  I tried to rise, but my legs gave way beneath me.

  “Forgive me, Master,” I said. “I cannot stand. I am too weak. I am too frightened.”

  I cowered then, and expected to be beaten with the free end of the leash, but my legs would still not hold me.

  “Forgive me, Master,” I whispered.

  Again he administered the simple leash signal.

  I tried to rise, struggling, but again slipped to the stones.

  He then approached me, and sat me, facing him. He then crossed my ankles, and, with the free end of the leash, bound them together.

  I watched, with an odd fascination.

  In the house, of course, the slaves are familiarized with various bindings and tetherings to which they might be subjected. Accustoming them to bonds of various sorts is part of their training. Additionally, they are instructed in various responses to various bindings, for example, how to exploit them to their advantage, how to wear them attractively, how to move seductively within them, how to utilize them to enhance their desirability, how to use them in such a way, by movement and expression, as to excite and stimulate the master, and so on. To be sure, ropes, thongs, bracelets, chains, and such, are not only attractive on the slave, but, as she understands her confinement, her vulnerability, and her helplessness, they have their role in intensifying her sexuality, in heightening her receptivity, her readiness, and passion, as well. A slave will often beg for binding. To be sure, the very condition of bondage itself, aside from questions of restraint, with its signals, rituals, garmentures, behaviors, accouterments, expectations, and such, is richly and profoundly sexual; it is a way of life, a richly sexual way of life, and, given the radical sexual dimorphism of the human species, and the selections of millennia, a very natural way of life, one in fulfilling accord with the biotruths of human nature.

  As I watched my ankles being tied I noted the beast was using warrior knots, the sort which quickly and easily secure a woman. As women are common loot on Gor, of greater interest than, say, goblets and tapestries, warriors are instructed in such knots. By their means a woman may be rendered wholly helpless in a matter of Ihn. I moved my ankles a little. They were well tethered.

  Where, I wondered, would such a beast have learned such knots? Surely it was not itself a member of the Scarlet Caste. Perhaps it had once known a warrior, somewhere, on some world or other.

  I knew little of Gor, but it did not seem likely to me that this form of beast would be indigenous to this world.

  “I know you understand Gorean,” I whispered.

  It looked at me, one lip moving back a bit, revealing the tip of a fang.

  “In the Tarsk Market,” I said, “the device, the translator, transformed your language into Gorean, but it did not translate the masters’ Gorean into your language. Thus, you know Gorean.”

  I knew that some individuals can follow a language which they do not care to speak, or are not adept at speaking Too, how could a beast such as this articulate the phonemes of a human language, presumably no more than we could recreate the sounds of its own speech. How could one speak the language of a jard, a vart or tharlarion, even if they had a language?

  The beast reached to the small device on its chain, slung about its neck. It pressed a portion of the device, at its center.

  I had the sense that the device had been deactivated.

  Then, straightening up, it seemed to growl, a guttural rumbling, some Ihn in duration, perhaps ten or fifteen, above me, and I shuddered. “Please, Master,” I said. “Use the device, the translator. You cannot expect me to understand you.”

  I fought not to understand, for I thought I could not, or should not, understand, and perhaps I did not want to understand, and perhaps I would refuse to understand, and then, to my astonishment, it occurred to me that I had understood.

  I looked up at him, in amazement.

  He had said that he was Grendel, high Kur, once from the world of Agamemnon, Eleventh Face of the Nameless One, self-exiled from his world, that he might accompany and guard a woman, the Lady Bina, once, too, of that world.

  “You understand,” he said.

  “Yes, Master,” I said.

  To be sure, I understood very little of what had been said.

  “Most of my kind, if I have a kind,” he said, “cannot articulate Gorean, or well, certainly not without a translator. My throat is different, and my tongue, a little. There are reasons for this, which need not concern you. I can make myself understood in Gorean, if you will make the necessary adjustments. It is hard, at first, easy later.”

  “Agamemnon,” I said, “was an ancient king, on Earth.”

  “That is not his name, of course,” said the beast, “but you could not pronounce his name. ‘Agamemnon’ seemed a suitable substitute for the true name. It was suggested by humans, for some reason. They wanted, or needed, some name, it seems. Similarly, you cannot pronounce my true name. But I am called Grendel. That name, too, was invented by humans. I gather it is the name of a monster, a grotesque anomaly, a lonely thing of bogs, and marshes and wildernesses, unpleasant to look upon, hated and feared, perhaps the result of an experiment which turned out badly, so that seems appropriate.”

  “I am a slave,” I said.

  It occurred to me an instant later that I might have claimed to be a free woman, and thus, suitably, to be freed. Might I have confused or deluded him? Would he even understand these things? I would not have dared such a stratagem with a native Gorean, of course, even in my terror, for fear of the frightful consequences attendant on being discovered in such a deception.

  I did not want to live the rest of my life in ankle chains, my throat locked in a high collar, of weighty iron, with points.

  How one would long then for a common collar, and the simple exposure of a common tunic!

  “Yes,” he said.

  But of course I was a slave, and must be understood as such by the beast. I wore no collar, true, for the collar of the gambling house had been removed, but the slave mark was in my thigh, small, lovely, obvious, unmistakable. Too, I had been purchased. And I had been bound, and leashed, as a slave.

  There was no doubt as to what the former Allison Ashton-Baker now was. She was slave.

  “Sell me, sell me!” I said.

  Again the lips moved back a bit, about the fangs.

  “Please do not eat me, Master,” I said.

  “I do not eat human,” it said.

  I caught my breath. I shuddered with relief.

  Was he telling the truth?

  The mien of the beast, the size, the fangs, the eyes, set forward in the head, suggested the carnivore.

  It reached down and scooped me up, gently, in its arms.

  I felt very small within them.

  “Please sell me,” I begged.

  “I do not own you,” it said.

  I twisted, helpless, in the bonds.

  “Lie still,” it said.

  I supposed that she spoken of as the Lady Bina owned me. Had she bought me for another, I wondered. Had she bought me for the beast?

  Had I been bought as food for it, cheap food?

  “Be still,” it said.

  I then lay quietly, enfolded in its mighty arms, miserable, and it moved swiftly, but warily, along the dark street.

  Once a fellow appeared, a shadow, in a doorway, but was greeted with so sudden, and fierce, a snarl, that he quickly withdrew.

  I think I was as frightened as the fellow in the doorway, who withdrew so quickly, so silently, a shadow vanishing back amongst other shadows.

  It was I, after all, goods, who was within the arms of the beast.

  We continued on, for better than several Ehn.

  I realized, as our journey continued, that I was being carried as a free woman is carried. The slave is commonly carried over the left shoulder, head to the rear, steadied by the bearer’s left arm. In this way the slave may not see where she is being taken, what lies before her bearer, and, too, sh
e may understand herself as goods, so carried, as much so as a sack of suls, a roll of matting, a crate of larmas, a bundle of tur-pah. In this way, too, her bearer’s right arm is free.

  I realized I had spoken, and more than once, without permission.

  I had not been punished for this, nor even warned of so untoward an indiscretion, so culpable a presumption.

  Too, I was being carried as a free woman.

  I was reasonably sure that the Lady Bina, from her accent, was not of Ar, and from her demeanor, perhaps not of Gor itself. I suspected that I, in my ignorance, might be as much informed as she of Gorean ways and culture. Too, the beast, I suspected, was not of Gor. He did not even understand, I gathered, how a slave was to be carried. Thus, he might not understand many things about the treatment of slaves. This I might turn to my advantage. But he had tied me as a slave, and well. Too, had he not spoken of another world? I suspected then that not only the beast but the strikingly beautiful Lady Bina herself might derive from such a world. She, I was sure, was human, quite human. I did not understand the nature of the beast. It was a form of life, a fearful form of life, with which I was hitherto unacquainted.

  I lay as quietly as possible in the arms of the beast, being carried through the dark streets.

  My hopes of acquiring a suitable master had been muchly dashed after the burning of the gambling house, and my translation, with that of my chain sisters, to the Tarsk Market. What suitable master would have recourse to such a market for a slave? One would hope to find there, if slaves at all, only pot girls, kettle-and-mat girls, she-tarsks, so to speak. I certainly did not consider myself a she-tarsk. I had been popular enough, and as a slave, in the gambling house. Its patrons had not found the former Allison Ashton-Baker, barefoot, collared, briefly and seductively tunicked, remiss as, or displeasing as, a slave. And how she had enjoyed the eyes of the men upon her, well understanding such appraisals as evidence of her value! The free woman is doubtless priceless, but the slave has an actual value, what men are willing to pay for her. My thoughts of a master had varied from time to time. Sometimes it seemed to me that I would like a weak master whom I might control, manage, and manipulate, rather as a typical female companion on my native world was accustomed, given the culture in question, to control, manage, and manipulate their male companions, rather to the unhappiness, distress, and frustration of both. Would it not be pleasant to be owned by a weak man, with whom one would be sure of having one’s own way? To be sure, one must be careful. I would be in his collar, and there would be a whip on its peg. But I thought, rather, I must be a true slave, as I wanted a true man, one who would lust after me with power, who would be satisfied with nothing less than owning me, wholly, one who would be to my slave a master, one who would have me kneel before him, naked and collared, perhaps chained, my head to his feet, one who would own me, unequivocally. I wanted to be his, his property, a helpless object, goods, possessed by him, in all the fullness of law, in all the fullness of culture, in all the fullness of nature. I supposed then that I must be in my heart a slave, one radically female, and needful. To such a man I would have no choice but to submit, and wholly, and to such a man I longed to submit, and wholly. It was in the collar of such a man I wanted to be; it was the collar of such a man I longed to wear. It was the touch of such a man which would make me weak and helpless, a yielding, submitted slave. It was the touch of such a man which would set me afire. It was the touch of such a man for which I would beg. But, alas, how can one’s slave be satisfied, as in the lament of so many women of my world, where one has no master?