Norman, John - Gor 23 - Renegades of Gor.txt

by Renegades of Gor [lit]

  long-handled tridents. These are used to thrust men and ladders back from the

  wall.

  Turning, about fifty yards behind me, I saw the upright of a single-pole ladder

  jut from the outside over the wall. The two men, gaunt and weary, paid it no

  attention. Back there, however, a cluster of defenders sped to the place. The

  ringing of swords came to my ears. More than one fellow leapt over the

  crenelation but the ladder itself was thrust back. This isolated the Cosians who

  had attained the wall. Men swarmed about them. Two were cut down and a third

  climbed back over the wall and leapt away, plunging to its foot, preferring to

  risk the consequences of such a fall rather than face certain death on the

  walkway. The bodies of his two comrades, stripped of weapons, half hacked to

  pieces, were flung after him.

  I hurried up the broad stone steps to the surface of the platform over the main

  gate. This area, at least at the moment, perhaps because of its height, and its

  position over the gate, the ground below soon to be blocked by the ram, the men

  working it protected by its sturdy shed, was empty. It would have made an

  excellent command post for Aemilianus, I thought, but, I gathered, he must be

  below, in the vicinity of the gate. Perhaps he thought, and rightfully, for all

  I knew, that there lay the greatest danger. I supposed that by now tons of rock

  would have been piled behind the gate. Still the ram might attempt its entry

  there, pounding through the brass facing riveted into the thick beams of the

  gate, punching, driving it back, snapping the crossbars, forcing back, blow by

  blow, even the rock and sand behind.

  I placed Lady Publia on her back at our feet, near the mount for the spear.

  I then dismissed her from my mind, for the moment.

  I considered the approaching towers, the thousands of men I could see in the

  field, the ladders being carried, the supporting (pg.268) engines. I then

  regarded the walls. There were too few men there. The results of the battle were

  a foregone conclusion. The Cosians had waited long for this day.

  I looked up to my left. There, on a pole, defiantly, snapped a torn flag,

  bearing in yellow the single ‘Ar’ on a red background with, beneath it, a wavy

  yellow band. This was the flag of Ar’s Station, signifying the power of Ar on

  the Vosk. I did not think it would be there long.

  I then lifted the tall impaling spear from its mount, laying it, with a sound,

  beside the supine, bound figure. She tried to rise but, her ankles thonged

  together, she fell. She tried to scramble back, but I reached out and took her

  ankle, and then pulled her where I wanted her, closer, across the stones.

  “Please, no!” wept Lady Claudia, putting out her hand. I brushed her aside.

  I then addressed myself to Lady Publia. “Would you car to confess yourself a

  slave?” I inquired.

  She thrashed about, uttering wild, affirmative whimpers, nodding her head in the

  hood, vigorously.

  “You recognize my voice, do you not?” I asked.

  Again she nodded. This was the first she would have realized, for certain, I

  supposed, that she had come to the height of the wall, to the foot of the

  impaling mount, on my shoulder, and not on that of the executioner. Hope would

  be springing up wildly within her, for the executioner not knowing who she was,

  and thinking she was the Lady Claudia, would presumably have simple put her on

  the spear and went about his business, probably, pulling off his mask, to some

  post on the wall. I, on the other hand, she knew, knew well who she was. Too, my

  word must have given her some hope that she might have, at my hands, at least

  some slim chance for life, albeit that it might have to be purchased at so

  alarming a cost as consigning herself by her own words to a fate no less than

  the degradation and categoricality of uncompromising Gorean bondage.

  Lady Claudia put out her head and touched me on the shoulder, gratefully.

  I pulled Lady Publia to her knees.

  “Are you a slave?” I asked.

  She nodded, vigorously.

  (pg.269) Lady Claudia clapped her hands with delight, she herself no better.

  “Do you beg permission,” I asked, “to legalize the matter, to speak appropriate

  words of self-enslavement?”

  She nodded, vigorously, again.

  I then loosened the hood and pushed it up, about her head and forehead. I had

  not remembered she was so beautiful. I then loosened the two ties of the gag and

  pulled the wadding out from her mouth, letting it hang over the loosened cords,

  putting the whole by her throat. She looked at me, wildly, gratefully.

  “Speak,” I said.

  “I am a slave!” she said.

  “She is a slave!” said Lady Claudia softly.

  The prisoner shrank back, frightened, shuddering, helpless, thrilled, now

  knowing herself a slave.

  “You are now a slave, Publia,” said Lady Claudia, wonderingly.

  “She is not longer Publia,” I said to Lady Claudia. “She had not yet been

  named.”

  The slave looked at me, in awe.

  Then she cried out, suddenly, as I replaced the wadding in her mouth, tightening

  it in again, with the cords.

  “What are you doing?” asked Lady Claudia, frightened.

  I saw the slave’s eyes regarding me, wildly, just before I drew the hood again,

  over her beautiful features, securing it in place, tying the cord at the back of

  her neck.

  “What are you doing?” cried Lady Claudia.

  “She has got us this far,” I said. “This is as far as we could expect to get

  with her, unchallenged, she in her guise as you. She had done as much for us as

  she can. She had thus served her purposes.”

  “What do you mean?” whispered Lady Claudia.

  I reached for the impaling spear.

  “No,” said Lady Claudia.

  I pressed the point of the spear against the interior of the slave’s thigh. She

  threw back her head, and moaned.

  “You knew she would declare herself a slave!” said Lady Claudia.

  “She is a slave,” I said. “It is fitting.”

  “I am no less a slave than she!” said Lady Claudia.

  (pg.270) “That is true,” I said.

  “And now,” she cried, “that you have won from her her confession that she was

  slave, and she has said the words themselves, enacting imbondment upon herself,

  you would put her, now, not even in the dignity of the free woman, but in the

  misery and degradation of a shamed slave, upon the spear!”

  “Do you not think this slave, when she was a free woman,” I asked, “would not

  have enjoyed seeing you on the spear?”

  “No matter!” cried Lady Claudia. “No matter!”

  “Those of Ar’s Station,” I said, “will expect to see her on the spear. If she is

  not there, I do not think we will get very far. When we leave the platform here,

  let them think our work has been done. Then we will draw away somewhere, I

  removing this mask, you retaining your rags and veil.�
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  “No!” said Lady Claudia.

  “It may be our only hope at escape,” I said, “you falling to Cosians, I perhaps

  managing to mingle with them.”

  “You are a brave man,” she said. “I admire you. You have been strong with me.

  You have been kind to me. You have risked much for me. I want to escape. I see

  your reasoning. But if there must be a body on the spear, let it be mine. It is

  I who am guilty of treason, not she. Thus, it is I who should be impaled, not

  she.”

  “But you are a free woman,” I said. “She is only a slave.”

  “You know, truly,” she said, “she is no more, if as much, a slave as I. Surely

  in the cell, often enough, I gave you ample evidence that my fitting destiny was

  to give my entire being to the selfless love and service of a man!”

  “You pity her because you are yourself no better than a slave,” I said.

  “I would pity her if she were a free woman,” she said, “and I pity her now, that

  she is a slave.”

  “Because you, yourself, are a slave,” I said.

  “Perhaps,” she wept. “I do not know.”

  Within the hood, I smiled. Slaves, as is well known, are on the whole far more

  loving and compassionate than free women. That is probably because they are so

  much more female then the free woman.

  “We must hang her on the spear,” I said, jocularly.

  (pg.271) Suddenly Lady Claudia flung her body across that of the slave, as

  though she would protect her from me. It was a touching gesture, I thought. To

  be sure, it was a little silly. I could fling her a dozen feet away at my will,

  or, if I wished, with a judicious blow, little more than a quick tap on the

  diaphragm, have her instantly on her back helpless, gasping for breath. If

  necessary, I could bind her, or, if I wished, in an instant, strike her

  senseless.

  “You would protect her, wouldn’t you?” I asked.

  “Yes!” she wept.

  “She is perhaps your worst enemy,” I reminded her.

  “It does not matter,” she wept.

  “You have incredibly deep feelings and emotions,” I said. “You would make a

  superb slave.”

  She looked up at me, puzzled. Her veil was wet with tears.

  “Well, we had better hang this slave on the spear,” I said, removing my sword

  belt.

  “You have been joking,” she said, suddenly. “You never intended to put her on

  the spear!”

  “She is going to hang on the spear all right,” I said. I then removed the sword

  from the sheath and thrust the sheath up, between the slave’s back and the

  ropes, and then forced the point of the spear up, high, into the sheath. This

  did not do the sheath any good, distending it, but then it was not one, I

  reminded myself, for which I had had to put out my own tarsks. I then buckled

  the sword belt, making a new hole in the belt with my knife, tightly about the

  slender waist of the slave, up a bit, so it, too, was hidden behind the thickly

  coiled ropes. The spear’s point was now entered into the sheath, the sheath held

  in place behind the slave by her ropes, and the slave’s body held against the

  sheath and spear by the rope and belt. She could not slip down the spear because

  of the spear’s insertion in the sheath. In this way, when the spear was placed

  in the mount, it would appear, I hoped, that the slave had been mounted on the

  spear. To see that this was not so, I thought one would probably have to be

  rather close. There is not much blood, incidentally, with the sort of impalement

  which, I had gathered, they had intended for the prisoner, as the spear itself,

  in such an impalement, packs the wound.

  “You are sparing her!” breathed Lady Claudia.

  (pg.272) “Of late,” I said, “she has been concerned to be pleasing.”

  The former Lady Publia shuddered, realizing what might as easily have been her

  fate.

  I then lifted the spear up and inserted it, down, into its mount.

  We heard some cheers from down on the wall, a handful presumably greeting the

  appearance of the impaling spear, seemingly burdened. Most of the fellows,

  though, I suspected, had other things on their mind. Behind the slowly

  approaching towers, partly in their cover, advanced hundreds of men. the towers

  themselves were now little more than seventy-five yards from the wall. They had

  now aligned themselves, and the dropping of the bridges, when the towers were in

  position, would be simultaneous. Surely men should be drawn up from below to

  help defend the wall. The smaller probes, now, those of the scattered grapnels

  and single-pole ladders, had ceased. There were dozens of supporting grapnel and

  ladder crews, however, now approaching between the towers.

  “Wriggle,” I commanded the new slave, bound on the spear. “Wriggles well, and

  deliciously, or I shall set you on the spear properly!”

  She then wriggled, and writhed, helplessly.

  “Could you really put her on the spear?” asked Lady Claudia, softly.

  “Certainly,” I said. It was true.

  We heard laughter from down on the wall, and, I think, even from Cosians below

  the wall. They, too, had little respect for traitresses.

  Lady Claudia shuddered.

  “Not too much,” I cautioned the new slave, “mostly at first, then less. Then

  hold yourself tense, trying not to move.”

  The new slave, hung in the ropes, moaned her acquiescence.

  “What is wrong?” I asked Lady Claudia.

  “It could have been I, truly impaled,” she said.

  “But it is not,” I said.

  “The ram pounds the gate,” she said.

  We could feel the vibrations, even here.

  “Let us leave,” I said to Lady Claudia.

  “There is no safety,” she said.

  Down on the lower walkway we looked back to the battlements (pg.273) over the

  gate. It did look as though the former Lady Publia were on the spear.

  The towers were now but thirty yards away. There was no way their discharge,

  their rushing, armed effluxes could be stayed by the men here.

  “If she is rescued,” said Lady Claudia, looking back at the lovely, nude figure,

  seemingly mounted upon the impaling spear, “doubtless she will deny she is a

  slave.”

  “But even so,” I said, “she would still be a slave, and would know it in her

  heart.”

  “Yes,” said Lady Claudia.

  The slave cannot free herself. She can be freed only by an owner. The condition

  of slavery does not require the collar, or the brand, or an anklet, bracelet or

  ring, or any such overt sign of bondage. Such things, as symbolic as they are,

  as profoundly meaningful as they are, and as useful as they are for marking

  properties, identifying masters, and such, are not necessary to slavery. They

  are, in effect, though their affixing can legally effect imbondment, ultimately,

  in themselves, tokens of bondage, and are not to be confus
ed with the reality

  itself. The uncollared slave is not then a free woman but only a slave who is

  not then in a collar. Similarly a slave is still a slave even if her brand could

  be made to magically disappear or, if she has been a made a slave in some other

  way, if she had not yet been branded. Indeed, some masters, somewhat foolishly,

  I think, dally in the branding of their slaves. Indeed, some, perhaps the most

  foolish, do not brand them at all. Such girls, however, when they come into the

  keeping of new masters, usually discover that that oversight is promptly

  remedied.

  “The slave who lies about her slavery,” I said, “is not thereby the less a

  slave. It is only that she is then a lying slave.”

  “I have heard that bondage is difficult to conceal,” said Lady Claudia.

  “That is particularly so,” I said, “if one has been a slave for a time. It can

  be given away in many ways, by the movements of the body, by certain timidities,

  and deferences, dispositions to kneel, slips of the tongue, and such. Slavers,

  and others, it is well known, can often pick out a slave from among women all

  clad in the Robes of Concealment, by (pg.274) simply having her walk, or speak,

  or by looking in her eyes. She is then disrobed, the brand revealed, and given

  over for punishment.”

  She looked up at me.

  “I spoke of legal bondage, of course,” I said. “Perhaps you meant natural

  bondage, that of the woman who is by nature a slave?”

  She looked down.

  “That,” I said, “is independent of the proprieties of legal bondage, of course.”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “To be sure,” I said, “that condition of the natural slave, like that of the

  legal slave, can be difficult to conceal, particularly under certain stimulus

  conditions. It need not remain, however, simply a guilty secret locked in the

  heart of a frustrated, unfulfilled free woman, not yet in the keeping of her

  master. It can be shown by such things as her profound psychological

  dispositions to selflessly serve and love, her desire for, and response to, male

  domination, her understandings of chains and the whip, the quickening, deepening

  and intensification of her sexuality under conditions of bondage, her happiness

  and fulfillment when she finds herself placed in her proper relationship to the