by John Norman
“No,” I said.
***
I pulled the portion of the wadded strip of scarlet sheet, wet and heavy, out of her mouth, a portion of the same, and still attached to it, that I had used earlier to blindfold her. I had thrust it in her mouth to muffle her cries. She was moaning softly, and kissing at me.
“I see that you are still simmering,” I said.
“Simmering?” she laughed, ruefully, softly. “You brought me to a boil, and then, when you had well tasted of me, let me subside, and then again, when it pleased you, made me simmer, and then again brought me to a boil, and then again made me simmer, and then, once again, brought me to a boil.”
I brushed back some blond hair from her face.
“You well know how to prepare a girl for your delectation, Master,” she whispered. “Surely you are a gourmet of slave use, a master chef well trained in the art of preparing delicious slave viands for the satisfaction of your lustful hungers.”
“Be quiet, little delicacy,” I told her.
She then thrust her body again against me, and I saw her need. Again I thrust the portion of the scarlet sheet, wadded, into her mouth. She could not protest. There were tears in her eyes. Again she pressed herself, as she could, against me.
The candle on the table had burned out. It was dark outside. I returned from the window of the cabin.
“Please, Master, once again,” she begged.
“You are an amorous, passionate wench,” I said.
“I cannot help myself,” she said. “I am a female slave.”
I smiled to myself. Slavery brings out the female in a woman.
I gently joined her on the berth. My knife was thrust, point deep, in the wood above the berth, and to one side, to my right, where I might reach it, if need be. It had been necessary only once to hold it to her jugular. I wadded the portion of scarlet sheet together in my hands and then, holding it between the thumb and fingers of my right hand, pushed it back in her mouth, deeply, behind her teeth.
I untied her and put her on her stomach, in the darkness, on the berth. The portion of cloth I had used to gag her lay to the left side of her head. Her head, too, was turned to the left.
“Am I not as low and passionate as the collared sluts of Earth?” she asked.
I took her wrists behind her back. “There is hope for you,” I granted her. I then tied her wrists behind her back.
“Bah,” she said, “a Gorean girl is a thousand times more passionate than an Earth slut.”
“Perhaps,” I said. I smiled. Let them compete with one another, to see who could please men more. Both Earth girls and Gorean girls, I knew, were marvelous. Both were women.
I then pulled the girl to her feet and stood her beside the berth.
“You have tied my hands behind my back,” she said. “You have stood me naked before you. What are you going to do with me?”
I regarded her.
I removed the knife from where I had wedged it in the wood above the berth, to one side and to the right. I held it to her belly.
“Please do not kill me,” she begged.
I thrust the knife in my belt.
She shook with relief.
“It is late,” I said. “Go to the window.”
In the darkness of the cabin, barefoot, stepping softly through the glass and bits of frame scattered on the floor, she went, as commanded, to the window. She stood facing it. I fetched the wadding of scarlet silk which I had earlier used to gag her and put it in my belt. I also fetched the remains of the scarlet sheet from which, standing beside her, I tore what I needed, and then discarded the rest.
“Do you intend to take me with you?” she asked.
I blindfolded her. She would be absolutely helpless in the water.
“Yes,” I said. I thought someone might want her. She was a hot and lovely slave. Perhaps I could give her to Aemilianus.
“Listen,” I said, suddenly. There was a step on the stairs leading down to the companionway.
“It is Reginald,” she said, lifting her head. I did not doubt this. Slaves, like many domestic animals, can often recognize the step of their master.
“Reginald,” she whispered, frightened. Her lip trembled. The step had approached down the companionway, and halted before the cabin door. I heard a heavy key thrust complacently into a lock on the outside of the door. It was late. Reginald had come to enjoy his slave. Gorean masters may or may not knock before entering compartments occupied by their slaves. The decision is theirs, as is the slave. If he knocks it is usually only to make his presence known to the slave, and the knock is commonly authoritative and rude, often startling her, even though she expects it, signaling her in no unclear or ambiguous fashion that she is to prepare herself, and well, to greet him, her master, which she does then in a position of docility and submission, usually kneeling and head down.
I heard the padlock, on its chain, fall to the side of the door. “Flee!” whispered the girl to me. Her head twisted in the blindfold. Her small wrists fought futilely the thongs that confined them.
I heard the door push inward, but, of course, it could not move, as I had secured it from the inside, with a lock and bar.
There was a silence.
I took the towing rope, attached to the board and packet, and looped it, and put it through the girl’s collar. I passed the lower end of the loop about the board and packet.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Is this door locked?” inquired Reginald, not pleasantly from the other side of the door. I smiled. Clearly it was locked.
I pulled the rope tight on her collar.
“Open this door!” said Reginald. He struck the heavy wood with his fist.
The girl moaned. As she moved, the board, on its towing loop, cracked against her legs.
“Open this door!” commanded Reginald. He struck it twice, angrily, with his fist.
“Can you swim?” I inquired.
“No,” she said, “and I am bound!”
“Open the door,” commanded Reginald. Then he shouted, “Artemidorus! Surtus!”
The girl moaned in misery, unable to obey. I thrust her a step toward the window, holding her by the arm. I looked out I saw no small boats in the vicinity.
“Oh, no,” moaned the girl, “please, no!”
I heard men joining Reginald, outside the cabin door.
“I cannot swim,” she said.
“Good,” I said.
“I am bound!” she protested.
“Excellent,” I said.
I then took the wadding from my belt. “No!” she said. Then I pushed it, still heavy and damp, deep in her mouth. Then I secured it in place with a folded, twisted strip from the torn sheet I had decided that she would not now, for the time, be permitted to communicate with me. I would remove the gag from her later, if I chose, at my convenience.
“Luta!” called Reginald. “Are you in there?”
I tossed the board and packet, on its towing rope, outside the window. It caught against her collar. I lifted the helpless girl in my arms.
“Luta! Luta!” called Reginald, angrily. “Are you in there?”
“No one called Luta is in here,” I called back, cheerily, through the door, “but there is one here who once was known by that name, one whom I have renamed ‘Shirley,’ giving her, as seemed fitting, the name of an Earth girl.”
The girl squirmed in my arms, writhing in misery, but could not free herself.
“Who are you? Who speaks?” demanded Reginald.
“I am taking your slave, who is quite good,” I said, “and something else, too, which I have found of interest.”
“Who speaks? Who speaks?” cried Reginald.
“Jason,” said I, “Jason, of Victoria!” Then I climbed to the shattered window and, holding the girl, crouched there for a moment. She was uttering small, muffled sounds, whimpering piteously. Then I leapt into the water. As I leapt to the water I heard the men outside the cabin begin to hurl their sho
ulders against the wood.
Chapter 9 - I ACQUIRE ANOTHER GIRL; I RENEW AN ACQUAINTANCE WITH TWO OLD FRIENDS
“Who is there?” called the fellow from the gunnels of the Tina. “Speak, or we shall fire!”
“Jason,” said I from the dark, cold water. “Jason of Victoria. Help me aboard!”
“It is Jason,” said a voice. I recognized it as that of Callimachus. “Help him aboard!”
I was towing the girl by the hair, on her back, behind me, in the water. Attached to her collar, floating to one side, on its double rope, was the board and packet.
Hands reached down toward me. Two men, clinging to the gunnels, clambered down to assist me.
“What have we here?” asked one of the men.
“A female slave,” I said, “and something else, which is of value.”
The girl was lifted up, by her bound arms, by two men, and hauled over the bulwarks, the board and packet striking against the side of the ship, with her.
I climbed up, after her. In a moment I stood, shivering, on the deck of the Tina.
Callimachus seized me by the arms. “We had feared you were lost,” he said.
“We must make ready to withdraw,” I said. “We cannot withstand an attack in the morning.”
“We were waiting for you,” said Callimachus.
I bent down beside the girl and removed the board and packet, on its rope, from her collar. “Put this in the cabin of the captain,” I said to a man.
“Yes, Jason,” said he.
“What is it?” asked Callimachus.
“I shall explain later,” I said.
“There seems light and consternation on the deck of the Tamira,” said a man. To be sure, we could see ships’ lanterns moving about on the Tamira, some two to three hundred yards across the water.
I smiled. I did not think Reginald would be quick to report his loss to the fleet commander.
“What have we here?” asked a man, lifting a lantern, indicating the girl, who was kneeling on the deck at our feet.
I jerked the blindfold down from her head, until it hung about her neck.
“A pretty one,” said the man.
“Yes,” said another.
The girl looked wildly about, frightened, a prize, among the enemies of her former master.
“You are in the presence of men, Woman,” I said. “Put your head down, to their sea boots.”
Immediately, kneeling, she put her head down to the deck.
“The Tamira is coming about,” said a man. “I think she means to attack.”
“She must be very anxious to recover whatever it was which you took,” said Callimachus.
The girl lifted her head, startled.
“Not you, Pretty Slave,” I told her, “that which was of value.”
She looked at me, tears in her eyes, over the gag, angrily. “Tie her legs, and throw her below decks,” I told a man.
“Yes, Jason,” he said.
“Oarsmen to your benches,” said Callimachus. “All hands to your stations.”
The Tamira must be mad to threaten three ships,” said an officer.
“She is desperate,” said another.
“Reginald may be ready to lose his ship,” I said, “that his loss may be covered, that it may have seemed unavoidable, a fortune of war.”
“Surely he would have no orders to leave the line,” said Callimachus.
“No,” I said, grinning. A cloak was thrown about my shoulders, to warm me from the chill of the water. The girl, her ankles now bound, was carried backwards, her body over the shoulder of a man, to the nearest hatch, that amidships, leading to the hold. Her eyes were wild over the gag. She would be thrown in the hold, and the hatch would be secured. I realized that she would have to be beaten as she had, earlier, raised her head without permission. Such negligences on the part of a slave seldom go unnoticed on Gor.
“It is clear,” said an officer. “The Tamira plans to attack.” He seemed perplexed.
“It is as I had hoped,” I said to Callimachus. “She will, thus, open a hole in their lines.” To be sure, I had not expected Reginald to notice his loss so quickly. I had hoped to have more time to formulate my plans with Callimachus.
“I shall have the signal horns sounded,” said an officer to Callimachus.
“No,” I said, “no, Callimachus!”
“Do not sound them,” said Callimachus to the officer. “It is not yet time to alert and confuse the fleet.”
“Precisely,” I said. Orders, at our proximity with the Olivia and Tais, could be, for the moment, verbally conveyed.
“Is it your intention to exploit that aperture in the enemy line?” asked Callimachus. “It will not remain long. The movement of the Tamira will be quickly noted.”
“Not directly,” I said. “That would be transparent Kaissa, as it is said. Yet the enemy will expect us to dart for that opening.”
“Accordingly, they will shift to cover the position,” said Callimachus.
“Producing numerous realignments of ships, and perhaps consternation,” I said.
“The very wall may be dismantled,” said Callimachus, “opened, in a dozen places.”
“It will not be understood why the Tamira left her position,” I said. “It may be assumed by many ships that the attack has been ordered.”
“The Tamira is bearing down upon us,” said an officer. “Shall we engage her?”
“No,” cried Callimachus. “Helmsmen, hard to starboard! Oar Master, full stroke!”
“Full stroke!” called the oar master. “Port oars inboard!” cried Callimachus. “Port oars inboard!” echoed the oar master.
The Tamira, her port shearing blade passing to port like a quarter moon of steel, slid past our hull, between us and the Olivia.
“There are lights on other ships!” called an officer. Across the water, here and there, we could see lanterns moving. We heard battle horns.
“Draw alongside the Olivia, Callimachus,” I begged. “Orders must be swiftly issued, and unhesitantly obeyed.”
“Do you plan escape?” asked Callimachus.
“I plan not only escape,” I said, “but victory.”
***
We could hear the shouting, as though of a pirate victory, coming from over the water.
My feet slipping on the sand bar I thrust my shoulder against the hull of the Tuka, which had been the lead ship in the first major attack against us three days ago. She had been rammed and wounded, and had been abandoned, left aground on the sand bar, near the chain, half in the water, half on the bar. It was a well-known ship of the Voskjard. Near me other men, with their shoulders, and using oars as levers, pried at the hull, its keel sunk in the sand. On either side of the bar, the Tina and the Tais, with stout ropes, four inches in width, strained, too, to free the Tuka.
The shouting carried over the water. There was a reddish glow to the east, from flames.
“They will soon realize they were tricked,” said a man near me.
“Work, work harder,” I said.
In the confusion and darkness, and in the movement of ships, we had set the Olivia afire, her sails set and her rudders tied in place; she was moving eastward, which would be the likely escape route toward towns such as Port Cos, Tafa and Victoria. Like a majestic torch she would sail into the midst of the enemy. Using this as a diversion the Tina and the Tais, with Aemilianus, and the crew and men of the Olivia, with captured pennons from prize ships taken earlier from the Voskjard, had permitted other ships, like sharks, to pass them, following the light of the Olivia, taking that light for the locale of battle. Soon, of course, if it had not already occurred, it would be discovered that the Olivia was unmanned.
“Work harder!” I said.
We grunted, and pressed our weight against the hull of the stranded Tuka. The great ropes strained. Near me I heard the snapping of an oar, it breaking under the force of the four men using it as a lever. Other men, with spear points, scraped at the sand under the keel.
“I fear there is little time,” called Callimachus from the rail of the Tina.
“It is hopeless,” said the man near me.
The great weight of the Tuka, so dark, so heavy, so obdurate, so seemingly resistant and fixed in place, suddenly, unexpectedly, straining, with a heavy, sliding noise, the keel like the runner of a great sled, leaving a line in the sand, thrust by our forces, moved by the water, slipped backward, six inches.
“Work!” I whispered. “Push! Work!”
The Tuka slipped back a foot. Then another foot. There was a cheer. “Be silent!” I cried.
I left my position and, hurrying, ankle deep in sand and water, lowering my head to pass under the ropes between the Tina and the Tuka, made my way along her hull until I came to the river, and there entered the water, and swam about her stern quarters.
I joined the men on the other side, on the bar, where the great rent had been torn in her side three days ago by the ram of the Tais. The splintered, gaping hole was easily a yard in height and width, the result not only of the ram’s penetration but of the tearing and breakage in the strakes attendant upon its withdrawal. The strike had been well above the water line, when the vessel would ride on an even keel. Yet, in the rolling and wash of battle, it had sufficed, at the time, to produce a shippage of water sufficient to produce listing.
Rendered unfit for combat her captain and crew had abandoned her, doubtless with the intention later, at their leisure, to repair and reclaim her. I peered into the rupture in the strakes. The ropes strained again and the Tuka slipped back another yard. She would soon be free of the bar. I considered, as well as I could, from my position outside the hull, what time and materials might be requisite to restore the Tuka to seaworthiness. Such repairs, of course, must be made upon the river, and in flight. I did not wish to leave her as she was, of course, for she was important to my plans. She was, it was said, a well-known ship of the Voskjard.
“There is a ship approaching!” I heard a man cry.
