by John Norman
“The collar releases the female, which you are,” I said.
“The feelings, the needs!” wept Margot.
“They will grow fiercer with time,” I said. “Shortly, you will crawl on your belly to a male, begging him for his touch.”
“You gave us no choice!” said Margot.
“No,” I said. “You are slaves.”
“I want to be in my collar!” blurted Courtney.
“What are you saying?” cried Margot.
“I want to be what I am,” blurted Courtney, “a meaningless slave!”
“I, too!” wept Millicent, “I want to be a property, owned, a possession, a meaningless slave!”
“No, no!” cried Margot. “Speak not so! Be shamed, shamed!”
“I am not shamed!” said Millicent. “I am proud! I am now myself! I have never felt more free, I have never been more free!”
“Slaves!” exclaimed Margot.
“Yes!” said Millicent.
“Yes!” said Courtney.
“Life is rich and deep, and real,” said Millicent. “Live on its periphery, if you wish.”
“Let conventions, prescriptions, rules, conformities, and fears be your Master,” said Courtney. “I prefer one of flesh and blood, of pride and strength, who sees me as, and treats me as, the slave I am.”
“Lais,” I said, “Millicent and Courtney are now permitted slave tunics.”
“I will find tunics for them,” said Lais.
“Thank you, Master!” said Millicent.
“Thank you, Master!” breathed Courtney.
“What of me?” begged Margot.
“Surely you do not wish a slave tunic,” I said.
“I want one,” she said.
“Why?” I asked.
“I belong in one,” she said. “I have known that since puberty.”
Millicent and Courtney laughed.
“Margot is permitted a slave tunic,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” said Lais.
“Thank you, Master,” whispered Margot.
“Slaves,” I said.
“Yes, Master?” they said.
“Why do you think you were brought here?” I asked.
“We were not told,” said Millicent.
“They tell us little,” said Courtney. “We are slaves.”
“Let me then,” I said, “as I have reports, tell you a little. The House of the Golden Urt in Sybaris has reopened. There are a new ‘Three Ubaras’. Its games are reportedly as dishonest and unfair as before. Both Archelaos, governor of Thera, and Nicomachos, Admiral of the Fleet of the Farther Islands, are patrons. Interestingly, their luck at the tables, and such, seems surprisingly good. These two notables also patronize the tavern, The Living Island, managed by one of whom you have doubtless heard, Glaukos of Sybaris. That tavern, as you know, is intimately involved with corsairs, particularly in the past, with their organization and recruitment. Following the withdrawal of the corsair fleet from Daphna, after the Daphna incident, many mercenaries left the corsair fleet, and few enlisted to take their places. Indeed, the attention of the raiders seemed then to depart from the land and turn to the sea, far from the arrows of a watchful Peasantry. On the other hand, of late, recruitment has begun again. Mercenaries are again taking fee for participating in dark enterprises. Do you not find this of interest?”
None of the slaves spoke.
“If these mercenaries are not mariners and are not intended to be risked against villages, one wonders as to the purpose of their recruitment,” I said.
The slaves remained silent.
“You are all well acquainted with the governor and the Admiral, Archelaos and Nicomachos,” I said, “and men often speak pridefully and loosely in the presence of attentive, beautiful women, especially if lifted upon the gentle wings of paga or ka-la-na.”
“We have told you all we know, Master,” said Margot, fearfully.
“We spoke of Zeuxis, of ships, supplies, equipment, organization, arrangements,” said Millicent.
“Search your memories, deeply,” I said.
“There is no more, Master,” said Courtney.
“Contemplate harbor sharks,” I suggested, “schools of small harbor sharks, like clouds in the water, clouds with teeth.”
“We told you everything!” said Margot.
“I am thinking of selling you,” I said.
“You may do with us as you wish,” said Margot. “We are slaves.”
“In Sybaris,” I said.
“Not in Sybaris!” cried Margot.
“No!” cried Millicent.
“Anywhere but there, Master!” begged Courtney.
“Perhaps the new ‘Three Ubaras’ could use you to tenant the side rooms in The House of the Golden Urt,” I said. “Perhaps Glaukos could find a place for you amongst the paga girls of The Living Island. Perhaps you might simply be vended from a public shelf in downtown Sybaris. To be sure, it would be easy to circulate a rumor that you were once more in the port, and now available for rent or sale.”
“We have been prisoners,” said Margot. “We have told much. This will be suspected by corsairs. Do not let them acquire us. Their displeasure would be deep, their tortures grievous, our deaths mercilessly prolonged.”
“You have heard, I assume,” I said, “of the hoax of The Village of Flowing Gold, the burning of corsair ships, and the near extermination of an entire force of raiders in a waterless, inhospitable region of Daphna.”
“Yes, Master,” said Margot.
“Do you know the name of he who perpetrated that hoax, who wrought that trap, who nearly, at a stroke, brought about the end of the corsairs?”
“No, Master,” said Margot.
“Fenlon of Ti,” I said.
Margot’s hands, behind her, jerked against the confining slave bracelets. Her eyes widened in terror. “No!” she whispered.
“No, no!” cried Millicent.
Courtney’s hands struggled against the slave bracelets. She lifted her head and shook it, and turned it from side to side, wildly, as though she could somehow, by such an absurd means, free herself of the collar. “Take it off!” she begged. “Take it off! Any collar but this! Let it be a high collar, a weight collar, a punishment collar! Let it have inside spikes, anything! But let it not be this collar, not a collar which identifies me as the slave of Fenlon of Ti. Do you not know what would be done to us if we should come into the power of the corsairs?” Again, futilely, she shook her head, and turned it, wildly, in helpless frustration.
“Do not be stupid,” said Margot. “Even if we were not braceleted, even if we could tear at our collars with our hands, we could not begin to remove them. We are slaves. We are in them. They are on us. They are locked on our necks.”
Courtney’s body shook with sobs.
“Please be merciful to poor, helpless slaves, Master,” begged Millicent.
“And,” I said, “as you must understand, it would be easy enough for it to be arranged that you should all come into the power of corsairs, into the power of Archelaos, into the power of Glaukos, perhaps into the power of Nicomachos.”
“Do not do so,” begged Margot.
“Do not let it happen!” said Millicent.
“We beg you!” said Courtney.
“We know no more,” said Margot. “In your interrogation, you were thorough. We were terrified and helpless. We could not resist. You questioned us for Ahn, for days. You drained us of information. You left us dry of fact. You took from us every particle of clandestine intelligence we had to give.”
“We told you all,” wept Millicent.
“We could give you no more,” wept Courtney.
“Be merciful,” said Margot.
“I suspect there is something else,” I said.
“There is noth
ing else,” said Margot.
“Something,” I said, “which is small. Something which you did not think important. Something which you did not recall at the time.”
“Master?” asked Margot.
“Mytilene,” I said.
“That is a town on Chios,” said Margot, “where this year’s Fair of the Farther Islands was held.”
“We were there,” said Millicent.
“What of Mytilene?” asked Margot. “We know no more of Mytilene than thousands of others.”
“Think back,” I said, “long before the fair, something alluded to, perhaps in passing, say, in The House of the Golden Urt, over cups, a remark overheard, a sentence begun and then, obviously, not finished.”
A sudden look of recognition, as of recalling a bird in flight, dating past a window, a little thing scarcely noticed, flickered across the countenance of Margot.
“It was only a thought,” she said.
“But heard long before the fair,” I said.
“It was not important,” she said. “Nothing came of it.”
“What was it?” I asked.
“That Mytilene would host the fair, and might thereby prosper,” she said.
“What else?” I asked.
“One said,” she said, “that Mytilene had walls, and another said that walls could be breached.”
“What else?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “It was only a mere thought.”
“It may no longer be a mere thought,” I said.
I then rose to my feet.
I had gathered that a raid on Mytilene had been considered, even from long before the fair. The remark about breaching walls suggested the use of siege equipment. This sort of thing meshed with Sakim’s speculations. It seemed reasonably clear that an attack on Mytilene was in the offing. And, I suspected, given the currently limited success of the unified corsair fleet, which could no more scour the seas for victims than could a single ship, and the risks of now attacking villages, that it might be soon. That mercenaries were now being recruited afresh in Sybaris also suggested the likely prospect of such an action.
“Lais,” I said, “conduct these slaves to the beach. There, chain them by the left ankle to the pleasure stake, and then remove their other bonds, the neck chain and their slave bracelets. After the crews are done with them, wash and feed them, and then put them in their cages.”
“Yes, Master,” said Lais.
“In the morning,” I said, “before their work assignments, give them slave tunics.”
“Thank you, Master,” said the slaves, gratefully.
“They will look attractive in slave tunics,” I said.
“What woman does not?” asked Lais. “To be sure, the men might prefer them without tunics.”
“The tunic,” I said, “conceals little and suggests much. It proclaims the woman an article of property, a purchasable slave. That in itself is exciting. It is also a garment which is easily removed.”
“Get up, slaves,” said Lais. “We are going to the beach where you will be put to man-use.”
I watched the slaves being conducted from the tent.
I must see that they have new collars. The Fenlon-of-Ti collars had served their purpose, dismaying and terrifying them, presumably advantaging me in my interrogation. Then, should things go badly at Mytilene or elsewhere, and they be seized as slave loot, it was less likely that they would be associated with he who had engineered the hoax of The Village of Flowing Gold. One could always hope, too, that the corsairs, if victorious, might not recognize them as those who had once been the ‘Three Ubaras’, those of the gambling house, The House of the Golden Urt.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
What Cannot Speak May Say Much
The salt scent of Thassa, borne inland over the piers, was bright in our nostrils.
“Some of these piers are guarded,” said Thurnock.
“Few,” I said.
“I wonder why they are guarded,” said Clitus.
“Who knows what arrives and departs from Sybaris?” I said.
“Some ships at closed piers may be corsair ships,” said Clitus.
“I think that is likely,” I said.
“They depart singly and then join at sea,” said Thurnock.
“Presumably,” I said.
“There to mount rams and shearing blades,” said Clitus.
“Or perhaps at some landing nearby,” I said.
“And thus a merchantman becomes a corsair,” said Thurnock.
It was early, but work on Gor commonly follows the sun’s day, not the conventions of clocks, whether of turning gears, ribbons of falling sand, or draining water. Longshoremen trundled carts over the planking, rattling over the wood. Men called to one another. Some fellows, bearing sacks of Sa’Tarna, climbed gangplanks, to deposit their loads according to the directions of cargo officers. One could smell frying sausage.
“Would that I had my trident and net,” said Clitus.
“Let us be inconspicuous,” I said. I myself had left my sword on the Tesephone. Thurnock would not carry his bow, of course, as Sybaris was a stronghold of Cos on Thera, and the weapon laws of Cos forbade bows to any but authorized personnel, guardsmen, guards of officials, and such.
Our guise was that of common workmen, supposedly making our way about the hiring tables, looking for fee.
Some ships, crowded together, sterns to the dock, protected themselves from other ships with thick coils of cushioning rope dangling over their gunwales. Others, at higher-priced wharfage, had their hulls parallel to the pier. Their mooring ropes, fastened to shore cleats at stem and stern, with their conical or disklike urt guards, would, as they lifted and tightened, shed water in a rain of sunlit droplets, and then, again, relaxing, would loop downward, settling again into the water.
“Give way, give way!” cried a voice, and we stepped aside, making way for a railed cart piled with baskets of larmas, a fruit well to have aboard on long voyages.
“What are we here for?” asked Thurnock.
“To learn what we do not know,” I said, “to understand what we do not understand.”
“The possible attack on Mytilene?” asked Thurnock.
“The almost certain attack on Mytilene,” I said.
“Well,” said Thurnock, “I do not think that many of these fellows about, even the rough, coarse fellows who may be corsairs or mercenaries, are likely to tell you what you want to know, whether, or when, Mytilene is to be attacked.”
“I suspect that there are few corsairs or mercenaries on the piers,” I said.
“And if there are,” said Clitus, “they might know no more about it than we. Detailed plans are seldom shared with minions.”
“Then, again,” said Thurnock, “what are we doing here?”
“Sometimes,” I said, “things which cannot speak say a great deal.”
“I do not understand,” said Thurnock.
“We are scouting cargo,” I said.
“Such as siege equipment?” said Clitus.
“That would certainly do very nicely,” I said.
“But items that large, that bulky and distinctive,” said Clitus, “would be easily noticed, and difficult to explain.”
“Too,” I said, “they would be difficult, if not impossible, to conceal.”
“We are wasting our time here,” growled Thurnock.
“Ho, fellows,” called a man. “You are large and strong. Are you looking for fee?”
“Not now,” I said. “Perhaps later.”
He then turned sway, to accost others.
I did not care to abandon our scrutiny of the piers.
“Why does he not set up a hiring table?” asked Thurnock.
“Perhaps he did,” said Clitus.
“If so, unsucc
essfully, it seems,” said Clitus.
There are two harbors at the port of Sybaris, the great harbor, serving the city, and much of Thera, and the smaller harbor, the naval harbor, base of the vessels of the Fleet of the Farther Islands.
From where we were, we could look across the harbor and see the low wall behind which several ships of the Fleet of the Farther Islands lay at anchor.
“I fear our visit is fruitless,” I said.
From where we stood we could hear the water lapping against the pilings supporting the pier.
Ships, mostly small craft, would come and go.
I saw the water break once as a small, slender, spined tharlarion surfaced, and then dove again. Such eschew deeper waters and live on tiny fish and garbage. Its heavy scales doubtless afford it some protection against local predators. On the other hand, its spine is venomous, and it would presumably be the last meal of almost any predator luckless enough to attack it, let alone eat it. Interestingly, the small harbor sharks do not bother it. They apparently find its appearance, for some reason, aversive. One supposes that harbor sharks, perhaps in the far past, which did not find its appearance aversive, might have attacked it and, statistically, would have died and thus failed to replicate their genes. On the other hand, those harbor sharks which, for whatever reason, found its appearance aversive, would leave it alone, and go about their business, including replicating their genes.
“We have been here for two Ahn,” said Thurnock.
“I think three,” I said.
I think we had lost track of the bars, and half bars.
“I am hungry,” said Thurnock.
“There are venders’ carts about, cooking carts,” I said. “What of some hot bread, eggs, and sausage?”
“And a mug of kal-da,” said Clitus.
“Why not?” I said.
Soon we sat side by side on a bench near a vendor’s cooking cart.
“Enjoy your meal,” said Thurnock.
“We have made no progress,” I said.
“The vulo eggs are good,” he said.
I did not doubt it. He had had several.
“The kal-da is now drinkable,” said Clitus, following a careful sip. We had set the three mugs beside us on the bench, waiting for them to cool. I had had my first cup of kal-da in far Tharna, long ago.
