I heard men coming into the room which I had left.
Gasping, my bare feet hurting on the stones, I ran back down the passageway.
I darted through the steel door. I spun, running my hands along the door, to find a way to lock it. I cried out with misery. Its five bolts could not be shut. They were controlled by a vertical bar, which slid in brackets. The bar was padlocked back.
I ran again.
I did not know if the, men who had entered Borchoff's office were in pursuit of me or not.
I stopped once again, trying to twist the slave bells, one by one, from the five-linked anklet which I wore, with its twenty bells. If I had had a tool to insert in the rings I might have done so. But I had no tool. The task was beyond the strength of my fingers.
I heard men in the passage.
My heart sank. I was still belled.
Then I thought that if I might reach the room of slave-girl preparation I might obtain the key to the bells. The keys were kept in a shallow wooden box in that room, a box the key to which was generally in Sucha's keeping. If the box were not open I might be able to break it, or its small lock, and thus obtain the keys.
I ran back along the passage.
In a few moments I reached the small iron door, through which I had first been introduced into the quarters for slaves.
It opened from this side.
I knelt down and opened the door, peering through. I saw a girl being dragged by the hair from the room, bent over, stumbling and weeping at the side of a warrior. I saw another girl, Melpomene, thrown on her stomach on the tiles beside the pool, a warrior kneeling across her body, tying her hands behind her back. Then he threw her over his shoulder and carried her lightly from the room. Only one other person did I see in the room, red-haired Fina, stripped, lying at the gate to her slave alcove; her left wrist wore a slave bracelet; the matching bracelet was closed, locked, about one of the bars of the alcove. She looked at me, miserably. I could not help her. She would wait for the return of her captor.
I tore bits of slave silk from my garment and wedged them in the two bolt receptacles, that the door not shut behind me.
I hurried to the room of slave girl preparation. It appeared in disarray, ransacked. I gathered girls had been taken there. The box containing the keys had been broken open, perhaps by men, looking for jewelries. Keys were scattered about.
I heard shouting, screaming.
Frenziedly I tried keys in the first of the locks. Outside the door I saw Sulda flee past. I shrank back.
She was taken on the far side of the pool. "Do not tag me," she screamed. Then I heard her cry out. Moments later I saw her, wrists tied behind her, her hair down about her face, being thrust along, stumbling, held by the upper arm, at the side of a warrior.
"Hurry her to the parapet," I heard someone call.
I found the key to the slave bells. I unlocked the first tiny lock, and then the next four. The five-linked, joined circlets, opened. I cast the bells aside.
I then crept from the room of slave girl preparation, and, slipping about the side of the pool, went to the small iron door. I did not exit through it. I heard men on the other side, approaching. I turned again and fled, this time running through the barred gate which leads from the quarters of slaves. I then passed. through the second gate. I felt the carpet under my feet.
I must find a place to hide!
I ran lightly down the hall.
Suddenly, ahead, from a side passage, I saw two men emerge. They held a girl, Tupa, between them.
I turned again, to flee back down the hall.
But, behind me, now, came two more men, doubtless those I had heard behind the small iron door, who had then entered the quarters for slaves, examined them, and the room for slave girl preparation, and emerged through the two gates.
I was trapped in the corridor. I shrank back against the wall.
They approached. "It is the Dina," said one of them.
"Let her go," said the other.
Then the four men joined and went hack toward the great hall, taking Tupa with them.
I stood back against the wall, breathing heavily, bewildered, terrified. They had not secured me.
I did not understand this. Did they not want me? Was I not suitable for them?
Was I to be left free?
At the far end of the hall, away from the gates leading to the quarters of slaves, I saw a figure, that of a man, tall, handsome, strong, splendid, with the bearing of one who leads Gorean warriors.
It was he called Rask of Treve. I turned and fled away.
I crouched in the dark passageway, cornered. I saw the tiny lamp approach, from far down the passageway. I felt the walls of the passageway about me.
Behind me there was a barred gate, locked.
The lamp came closer.
There were walls of stone on either side of me.
He lifted the lamp, and the light fell upon me. I knelt. "Be merciful to a poor slave, Master," I whispered.
"Kneel," said he, "with your belly and cheek against the wall, and place your hands behind your back, with your wrists crossed."
I did so. He placed the lamp he carried on a shelf to one side. He placed the sword he carried behind him on the stones of the flooring and crouched behind me. Binding fiber was looped about my wrists and pulled tight; then it was tied; I winced; I was helpless. He took me by the arms and turned me, sitting me down on the flooring, my knees up, my back against the stone wall.
"Be merciful to a poor slave, please, Master," I whispered. I had muchly taunted him, and much had I delighted myself at his expense. Now I wore his binding fiber, and was alone with him, in a dark passageway deep below the keep of Stones of Turmus.
I blinked against the light of the lamp.
He withdrew an object from his pouch, and held it before me. "Do you know what this is?" he asked.
It was like a small, veined, metal leaf, narrowly ovate in shape. It had a tiny hole in the wider end, in which, in a tiny loop, there was twisted a small wire. On the leaf, indented m, was a sign, and some tiny printing.
"Do you know this sign?" asked the man.
"No, Master," I whispered.
"It is the sign of Treve," he said.
"Yes, Master," I said.
"Can you read this?" asked the man, pointing to the printing.
"No, Master," I said. I could not read Gorean. I was illiterate in the language. This was not uncommon. Many masters think it desirable to keep a girl illiterate in their language, thinking it makes them easier to control and puts them more at their mercy. Other masters differ in this, relishing the ownership and absolute domination of literate girls, preferably those who are well educated, highly intelligent and gifted. Such girls must be regarded as quite valuable; on the block they commonly bring the highest prices. It is also said they make the best slaves. Had I been sold on Earth I would have counted as such a girl; on Gor, however, I was only another piece of illiterate collar meat.
"It is my name," said the man. "Rask."
"Yes, Master," I said.
"It is with these devices," said the man, holding up the tiny leaf, with its wire, sign and printing, "that we of Treve, in our various ventures of raiding, mark our booty."
"Please, no, Master!" I cried.
I shrank back against the wall. He held my left ear lobe, pulling it taut. I cried out, wincing, as the wire pierced the lobe, and then he threaded the wire through and, twisting the ends together, formed a tiny loop, from which the silver leaf dangled. I felt it at my left cheek.
"It will be pleasant to tag you," he had said to me earlier. I had not understood him at the time. I now understood him. I looked at him with horror. I had been tagged.
"You do not now appear so insolent as formerly," he said.
"No, Master," I wept.
He then seized my ankles and pulled me from the wall. I threw my head back, moaning. An ear had been pierced. This, in itself, is little or nothing, but on Gor it is mighty in its po
rtent. The other ear, almost certainly now, to match its mate, would sometime be pierced, and I would then be a "pierced-ear" girl, the lowest of female slaves. I had heard another girl crying out earlier, as she had been tagged, although at the time I had not understood what had been done to her. It had not been the pain which had made her cry out so miserably but its meaning. An ear had been pierced.
I looked up at Rask of Treve reproachfully. He laughed. He well understood what he had done to me, and he knew well, too, that I understood.
"Is your vengeance sweet, Master?" I asked him.
"I have not yet begun to take my revenge, pretty little slave," he said. He thrust apart my ankles.
I resolved to resist him. I turned my head to the side, and heard the small sound of the silver leaf, on its tiny loop, fastened in my ear, touch the stones of the flooring of the passage.
But his hands were sure.
"No," I begged, "do not make me yield to you!"
But he did not see fit to show me mercy. I cried out with misery, lost in sensation, lifting my body to him, piteous for his slightest touch.
When he finished with me I lay between his feet, a shattered, yielded slave girl.
He lifted his head. "Smoke," he said.
I, too, smelled smoke.
"The keep is afire," he said. "On your feet, Slave."
I struggled to my feet, bent over.
We journeyed through flaming halls. In a few Ehn we emerged, after climbing stairs, on the roof of one of the buildings, and, thence, by a narrow bridge, crossed to one of the parapets. There there were several tarns, great fierce saddle birds of Gor. I could see fire licking through the roof of one of the buildings. The parapet was crowded. Goods were bound over the saddles of tarns. Strings of plates and vessels were tied at the pommels. Girls stood beside the winged monsters, their hands over their heads, slave braceleted through the stirrups of the beasts. They would dangle from the stirrups in flight, two on a side. Behind some of the beasts there were tarn baskets, on trailing ropes. Girls, too, and various goods, had been thrust in these. I saw Sucha, her hands braceleted over her head, at one of the stirrups. She looked terrified. Men mounted swiftly to the saddles. Below in the courtyard, chained together, I could see Borchoff, and the soldiers and staff of the keep. There was much smoke about them. I saw tharlarion, released, in the courtyard. Men struggled not to be trampled. I was pulled along by the arm, by my captor. "Let us hurry, Captain," said one of the men.
"We must move under the cover of darkness," said a lieutenant. "We must be at the merchant rendezvous before dawn."
"To your saddle, Lieutenant," grinned Rask of Treve.
The man grinned, and leapt to the ladder leading to the high saddle of the great beast.
I saw below that the great gate of the keep had been swung open. Tharlarion rushed through.
I was thrust into the hands of a soldier, who conducted me to one of the tarn baskets.
Borchoff, below in the courtyard, looked upward. Rask of Treve lifted his hand to him, in a salute of warriors. The gate had been opened. Borchoff and his men might make their way, though chained, to safety.
Then Rask of Treve looked about himself, making swift inspection of his men and tarns, and their burdens, riches and slave girls.
The soldier lifted me lightly from my feet and thrust me, feet first, through a hatchlike opening, with flat door, in the top of the tarn basket. He pushed my head down, thrusting me down between the other girls. I crouched down, wedged in. I could scarcely squirm. I looked up, seeing the flat door swung shut. In an instant he had tied it closed. I knelt. We could not stand upright. Eight of us were imprisoned in the basket. Our wrists were tied behind our backs. Silk, and gold, too, had been thrust in the basket. I looked about. Scarcely could we move. From the left ears of the other girls, as from mine, there dangled a silver leaf, a tag, which had been placed upon them by the men who had taken them.
"Ho!" cried Rask of Treve.
I thrust my head to the wall of the basket.
"Ho!" cried the men of Rask of Treve.
The man who had placed me in the basket, and then tied it shut, climbed swiftly to the saddle of his tarn; our trail lines, those attached to the basket in which we were confined, ran to the tarn's stirrups. When the tarn took to flight the basket, following it, would be lifted into the air. He awaited only the command of flight.
"Ho!" cried Rask of Treve. He drew back on the first strap of his tarn's harness.
"Ho!" cried his men.
Rask of Treve's tarn smote the air with its mighty wings. I was frightened. The span of those wings may have been thirty feet or more.
His tarn, screaming, departed the walls of the keep of Stones of Turmus. Those of his men followed him. Even in the shelter of the basket the torrent of air was frightening. If one had stood upon the parapet surely one would have been hurled in its blasts to the courtyard below.
There was a moment of slack and then the lines on the basket drew taut. Our tarnsman drew the basket over the courtyard and, gaining altitude there, then departed the walls of the keep, following the others. When the basket dropped from the parapet toward the courtyard we screamed, frightened, but then it swung below the tarn, and we felt ourselves being lifted high into the air, as though toward the moons of Gor itself.
I wondered how many slave girls, helpless and bound, a tiny silver leaf dangling from their ear, had been carried by the men of Treve in this basket, and how many more in the future would find themselves its captive.
I could see the keep of Stones of Turmus in flames, dropping away below us.
13
I Am Publicly Auctioned
The sheet was ripped from me. I cried out, startled.
"Ascend the block, Slave Girl," said the man.
"Yes, Master," I said. He prodded me with his whip.
I looked at the worn stairs of solid wood, leading in their spiral upward. I glanced down at the other girls, Sulda and Tupa among them, who sat huddled at the foot of the block, clutching their sheets about them. Sucha, and others, had already been sold.
"It cannot be happening to me," I said to myself. "They cannot be going to sell me."
I felt the whip push against my back. Slowly I began to ascend the wide, concave stairs, worn by the bare feet of countless slave girls before me.
There were twenty steps to the height of the block.
My hair was longer now, as it had not been cut on Gor, save to trim and shape it. It now fell below my shoulders, and swirled behind me, shaped into the "slave flame."
No longer did I wear the Turian collar; it had been roughly filed from my neck by a male slave, under the whip of his overseer. He had been struck once when he had let his finger touch the side of my neck. I do not know if he did it on purpose or not. No longer did I wear in my left ear the silver leaf, identifying me as a catch of Rask, a warrior and raider of the city of Treve. I had been sold before dawn at a slaver's camp on the outskirts of the city of Ar. I had been thrown naked to the slaver's feet. Swift, expert assessment had been done upon me. I cried out in misery. I brought Rask of Treve, my captor, fifteen copper tarsks. This was not bad for an Earth girl in the current market. This figure had been entered into accounts, on a ledger. On another ledger, one kept by one of Rask's men, this figure was also entered, with a sign following it, indicating him to whose private account the amount was to be credited, he who had taken me, Rask, the warrior of Treve. When the figure pertinent to my sale had been entered in the two ledgers the wire loop, from which dangled the silver leaf, had been cut from my ear. The silver leaf was then returned to him who kept the ledger for Rask of Treve, and he dropped the leaf, with others, into a nearby box. Humiliated, then, I was thrown to the slaver's chain, behind Sulda. A ring lock was placed through the Turian collar, which I wore at the time, and a link in the slaver's chain, and then snapped shut, securing me on the chain by the collar, with the others. The chain was heavy. Tupa was then added to the chain after me. She brought her ca
ptor only twelve copper tarsks.
John Norman - Gor 11 Page 38
