Prize of Gor (108 page)

“If they remembered you,” said a man.

“And, if they did not,” said another man, “you would lie in the grass, crying out for help, with no one to hear, helpless in your ropes, knowing that in three days you would die of thirst.”

“No,” said another man, one of Portus’s fellows, “she would be eaten by wild sleen. I have seen their spoor.”

“I do not think they would forget her,” said Portus Canio.

“And then,” said Fel Doron, “you would find yourself put as the slave you are to their diverse services and pleasures.”

“Yes, Master,” whispered Ellen.

“If you run,” said Selius Arconious, “as soon as you are caught, by whomsoever catches you, I or another, you will be treated as a runaway, and will be subjected to the sanctions appropriately levied against a runaway girl.”

“I do not think, in any event, I would break into a run in the vicinity of sleen,” said Portus Canio.

Ellen shuddered. Such a behavior, she realized, might startle the sleen, and activate the hunting response.

“Tie the slut’s leash to the wagon,” said Selius Arconious, irritably.

Ellen looked at Selius Arconious, tears in her eyes. How he hated her!

Fel Doron drew Ellen, on her knees, to the vicinity of the left, rear wheel of the wagon, thrust her under the wagon, and then tied her leash about the rear axle. She then knelt there, miserable, in the shadows beneath the wagon bed, bound, roped in place. She, slave, it would be done to her, and appropriately, as men wished.

“The tarns are aflight,” said Portus Canio.

“The Cosians must be close now,” said Fel Doron, straightening up.

“See the swing of the baskets,” said Selius Arconious. “I doubt that there are more than three men in a basket, two archers and a strapmaster.”

“Some fifteen or twenty on the ground then,” said the spokesman.

“We do not know,” said Portus.

“Archers?”

“I hope not many,” said Fel Doron.

“The soldiers will be Cosian regulars,” said Portus Canio. “We are not going to meet them blade for blade.”

“If they think their feast is set,” said the spokesman lifting his weapon, “they have not calculated wisely.”

He then left.

“We may yet owe our lives to our enemies,” said Portus Canio.

Mirus, too, turned away.

“I think not,” said Selius Arconious. “A business disrupted may be easily resumed.”

“Consider the beasts,” said Fel Doron. Kardok, hunched down, large-eyed, was viewing them.

The spokesman, bent over, was counseling his men. What he said could not be heard at the wagon.

“Master!” wept Ellen, from her place beneath the wagon.

“Be silent!” he said.

She put her head down, frightened, and was silent. When she lifted her head again, Selius Arconious was gone. Tears ran down her cheeks.

Somehow the men had fanned out, separated, perhaps prone in the grass. She could see the tharlarion of Mirus grazing a few yards away.

She heard two shots, and a cry of surprise, and pain. There was then another pair of shots, this time from behind her. She lay on her belly, putting her cheek to the grass, frightened.

When she lifted her head a little, she saw the bootlike sandals of a Cosian soldier not ten feet away. There was another shot and he suddenly slipped to the earth, his knees giving way.

She heard a cry from somewhere to the east.

A great smooth, sweeping, soaring shadow momentarily darkened the grass and she knew a tarn with its basket had passed, its archers doubtless looking for targets. It would not have been more than fifty feet above her.

She suddenly heard the fierce scratching of a tharlarion’s paws in the turf and she saw Mirus, low in the saddle, racing toward her. He was at the side of the wagon in a moment, fiercely pulling up the saddle tharlarion, rearing, its head jerked back, and he leapt from the saddle, almost at her side. There was a knife in his hand.

She shrank back, and he seized the neck rope, tied about the axle, and slashed it apart. He then dragged her from under the wagon by a bound arm, to the tharlarion. He had a foot in the stirrup, and drew himself up with his left hand, retaining his grasp on the slave with his right hand, hauling her upward with him. An arrow she sensed sped past, like a whisper in the wind.

The tharlarion reared and squealed.

She was then half across the saddle, twisted, on her side, before him. She tried to squirm free and then it seemed her head exploded with pain. His hand was so twisted in her hair she feared great gouts of it would be torn free. Tears burst from her eyes.

“Do not struggle,” said he, “slave girl!”

Then he had her well across the saddle, on her belly, and she, wedged between the pommel and his body, was helpless.

“If I cannot have you,” he said, “no one shall!”

“No, please, Master!” she cried.

“The word suits you well, slut, and always did!” he laughed.

She sobbed wildly. The world seemed to spin as the tharlarion turned and leaped.

“You look well on a leash,” he said, fiercely, “on a rope leash, leashed like the bitch you are!”

She was conscious in the swirl of a helmet before him, but the tharlarion, forced forward, struck into the man and he fell away, reeling backward.

She was dimly, half-consciously aware of a figure leaping on the fallen man, a knife flashing.

“On, on!” he cried to the tharlarion.

As the tharlarion reared again she was aware of Mirus cursing, and a weight, a body, was hanging onto the bridle, pulling the animal down, fiercely, yanking downward, twisting its neck.

The animal suddenly lost its balance and went wildly to its side, Ellen being thrown free, rolling to the turf, and then the beast, a moment later, rose up, scrambling, and squealing, and rushed away, out into the grasslands.

“You!” cried Mirus, in fury.

Before him stood Selius Arconious, his body bloody, filthy from war, his tunic torn and soiled, gasping for breath, regarding Mirus furiously, balefully.

“I believe you have something of mine,” he said.

Mirus in fury reached to his belt and drew his pistol, and it was centered on the heart of Selius Arconious.

Ellen, lying to one side, cried out, “No, Master, please!” A vision went through her mind of the wood on the back of the wagon leaping into the air, the sound of the shot, the smell of the expended cartridge, the exploding splinters bursting into the air, now weirdly in slow motion in her memory.

Surely Selius Arconious knew the meaning of that weapon. Yet he faced Mirus with equanimity.

“You do not deserve a slave,” he said.

Mirus hesitated, confused.

“For you are not a man,” said Mirus.

“I will show you who is a man!” snarled Mirus, and steadied the weapon in two hands.

“Why are you not at your post?” asked Selius Arconious.

Mirus lowered the weapon.

“Now,” said Selius Arconious, “you know the meaning of Gor.”

With a cry of anger Mirus hurried away.

Selius Arconious, looking about, lifted the bound slave, enwrapping her in his arms. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Is it of concern to Master?” inquired the slave.

Selius scowled, and then smiled. “No,” he said. He then, looking about, carried her back to the wagon. “Stay here,” he said.

She turned away from him, under the wagon, kneeling, lifting her bound wrists to him. “Master’s slave wears his collar,” she said. “Perhaps he will untie her?”

“Is it not foolish for a slave,” he asked, “kneeling, to face away from a man as you are doing, with her wrists bound like that?”

“Perhaps, Master,” she said.

“What if I order you to put your head to the turf?” he asked.

“Then I must instantly obey my master,” she said.

There was a pair of shots from the west, and Selius Arconious hurried away. She watched him move away, half bent over, moving swiftly. She saw a Cosian, his upper body, rise from the grass. There was another shot, and he fell.

She realized there had been little firing.

“Ammunition!” she heard, a cry in English from the north.

She saw the spokesman, his robes torn, drawing back. Another man was with him, come from the west.

“Ammunition!” she heard again.

The spokesman called back, in English. “There is no more, fool! The extra rounds were in the saddle bags. It is gone with the tharlarion! We have used the last rounds, those from the stores of the slain tharlarion.”

Ellen, who understood this discourse, trembled with apprehension.

A Cosian, helmeted, rose to his feet, carefully, his bow half drawn, some fifty yards away.

Then, beside him, carefully, there rose another.

A tarn, with suspended basket, soared near. The spokesman replaced his now-useless weapon in his belt, and lifted his hands. He was not fired on from the basket. The tarn swung about. “No more lightning!” called the spokesman to the fields. “No more lightning! We surrender!”

Ellen recalled that when she had seen Selius Arconious he had no longer had the crossbow. The quarrels, too, she surmised, had been expended.

More Cosians emerged from the grass, some with bows, about the camp.

They began to close in.

Selius Arconious, with Fel Doron, and Portus Canio, slowly, upright, wearily, approached the wagon. Another of Portus’s men came, too, from a different direction. Ellen saw no more of his group.

Selius Arconious motioned that Ellen should emerge from under the wagon, and the slave complied, and came to kneel at the feet of her master, frightened.

Four men were left of the party of the spokesman, including himself. The other three were the man who had been wounded, who had called out for ammunition, the sleenmaster, and Mirus. None had been slain in the recent fray, presumably because of their weaponry. Perhaps the Cosians had given them a wide berth. Perhaps they had not been able to approach closely enough to engage with the small bows. Those were not the mighty peasant bows that guard the autonomy of Gorean hamlets. Of the four tarns with baskets, two had been brought down with pistol fire, and the strapmasters of the other two had muchly, judiciously, maintained their distance. One had approached a moment ago, however, given the relative quiet of the field, that to which the spokesman had indicated his capitulation. The other could be seen in the distance, a remote speck, safely away.

A subcaptain advanced through the grass, before the other soldiers. Some of the soldiers had bows. Some had spears and some shields. She wondered if the shields would stop a bullet. All had bladed weapons, generally the short, wickedly bladed Gorean
gladius
. The subcaptain had advanced with his men. Goreans like to lead from the front. Ellen recognized him. She had seen him before, at the tarnloft of Portus Canio, when in the coffle and elsewhere.

The tarn and tarn basket which had recently soared over the camp had now landed, some fifty yards away. Two archers and a strapmaster emerged from it. She did not see Tersius Major, whom she had heard was with the attackers. He was, she supposed, in the other tarn basket, which he perhaps commanded, which was still little more than a speck in the sky, far off. To be sure, it seemed closer now.

Motioned by swords and spears the three surviving beasts were herded, shambling, blinking, seemingly docile, toward the wagon. As nearly as Ellen could tell, they had not figured in the fighting. It seemed they had been left alone, as irrelevant to the fray. To be sure, they probably would have been fired upon if they had either attacked, or attempted to flee. Two had been killed in the first attack. Perhaps because they had assumed threatening postures. The Cosians, thought Ellen, do not know what to make of them. They think they are some form of simple animal. Then it occurred to her that that was precisely what the beasts would wish the Cosians to think. Had they not been putatively caged in the festival camp?

“Who is first here?” asked the subcaptain.

“I am,” said the spokesman.

“I am,” said Portus Canio.

The subcaptain smiled.

“You have strange pets,” he said to Portus Canio.

“They are not mine, and they are not pets,” said Portus Canio. “They are rational and dangerous.”

“They are simple performing animals, completely harmless,” said the spokesman. “We are carnival masters. We took you for brigands. We did not know. Forgive us for resisting the rightful authority of Cos.”

“You would do well to recognize the insignia, the uniforms, of Cos,” said the subcaptain.

“Alas, how true,” said the spokesman.

Far off, in the grass, some two hundred yards away, or so, the second tarn and tarn basket had now landed.

“Some of these men,” said the subcaptain, indicating Portus Canio, Fel Doron and their other fellow, “are escaped prisoners, and two of them clearly conspirators against Cos. The other, the tarnster, is somehow one of them. A theft of considerable consequence has taken place, accomplished by several men. These prisoners, or some of them, and surely the tarnster, who had fresh gold to squander from the mint at Jad, knows something of the matter.”

“We had no idea,” said the spokesman.

“And you are obviously in league with them, rendezvousing in the prairie.”

“No, we fell in with them by accident,” said the spokesman.

“You followed them for days, and we kept you under surveillance,” said the subcaptain.

“In a sense, yes,” admitted the spokesman, “my young friend here,” he here indicating Mirus, “was interested in obtaining this slave,” and here he indicated Ellen, “and we, as good fellows, loyal friends and such, abetted him in his search.”

“I can understand his interest,” said the subcaptain. “I remember her. I think we confiscated her in the name of Cos.”

“Yes,” said Portus Canio, “but she was later purchased from Cos, in the festival market outside Brundisium, openly and honestly purchased.”

“With Cosian gold,” said the subcaptain.

“Surely it is a reliable currency,” said Selius Arconious, as though concerned.

“Quite,” smiled the subcaptain. He looked about. “I see you have two sleen,” he said.

“Useful for tracking,” said the spokesman.