Rebels of Gor (45 page)

“As soon as I learned of your presence here,” said Haruki, “given the possible eventuations involved, I instructed the village metal worker to have an iron ready.”

“An iron?” said the girl.

“You are a man of excellent forethought,” said Tajima.

“I shall fetch the brazier,” said Haruki. “We will attend to the matter privately. The less that the village knows the better. You had best bind her and hold her mouth.”

“What are you going to do?” said the girl.

“Mark you, of course,” said Tajima.

“Mark?” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“No!” she cried.

My hand stifled what might have been a scream on the part of the slave. Her eyes were wide, and wild, over my hand.

Tajima attended to her binding.

In a bit, Haruki returned, bearing, on its carrying ring, insulated with folds of cloth, a brazier, from which two handles protruded.

The girl’s thigh was washed and dried, and the matter was expeditiously attended to.

After an Ehn or so, I removed my hand from her mouth.

I did not know the brand, but, I gathered, in Pani script, it unambiguously identified her as a slave.

“I am marked, marked!” she said.

“Yes,” I said, “marked as what you are, a slave.”

“No,” she wept. “No!”

“Rejoice,” I said. “It is possible, now, that your father would not even regard you as worthy to be fed to his eels.”

“More likely,” said Haruki, “as a branded little beast, he would merely throw you to them naked.”

“It has been done to me,” she said. “I wear the slave mark.”

“It is a lovely brand,” I said. “Like the tunic, the collar, and such, it is designed not merely to identify you as a slave but to enhance your beauty, as well.”

“Is it pretty?” she said.

“Yes,” I said, “it might be the envy of many free women.”

“But its meaning!” she said.

“True,” I said. “Its meaning is clear, and indisputable.”

Her bonds, applied to assist in controlling her movements during the application of the iron, were removed, and she was again placed on all fours before her master, Tajima, he of the tarn cavalry.

“Let us beat her,” said Haruki, the cluster of knotted ropes once more dangling from his hand.

“Please do not beat me, Master,” said the slave.

“But you recognize you are subject to the whip?” said Tajima.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

Tajima took the ropes and said to the slave, “I shall toss these ropes to the side of the hut. You will fetch them on all fours, lift them in your teeth, and then return before me, on all fours. You will then lift them in your mouth to me, and, when I accept them, you will kneel, and await my pleasure.”

She looked up at him, wonderingly, frightened.

He flung the ropes to the side of the hut.

In the dim light of the small lamp we watched her make her way to the ropes, pick them up in her teeth, and then return to her place before Tajima. She lifted her head to her master, timidly, the ropes dangling from her mouth. Tajima took them from her, gently.

“Kneel,” he said.

He then looked into her awed, uplifted eyes.

I knew that expression on a woman’s face. It is not unusual when the woman is kneeling before her master.

“Kiss my feet,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she whispered, bending forward, and putting down her head.

Had I detected a thrill of submission in those simple words?

Had the radical sexual dimorphism of the human species suddenly become real to her?

Did she understand it at last?

Did she sense the possible fulfillments, and liberation, of the collar, the joy of a sensed, unalloyed, apprehended truth, a truth which it would now seem to her pointless, even absurd, to deny or dispute, a truth in the light of which she, now a slave, would, to her joy, have no choice but to live?

We watched, for several Ihn, while she addressed herself to the performance of her simple task, so replete with its symbolism of acknowledged social chasms, the difference between slave and master.

“Look up,” said Tajima.

The slave complied.

“You lick and kiss the feet of a master well,” said Tajima. “You are clearly a slave, and belong on your knees before a man.”

“Yes, Master,” she said.

It is a common Gorean view that all women are slaves, only that some are collared and some are not yet collared.

I have often been puzzled as to why free women commonly hate and despise slaves. Do they see the slave as a rival? Do they resent the preference of men for the slave? Do they envy the slave? Do they fear the slave in themselves? Do they object to the slave’s openness and freedom, to the liberation of her femininity, to her desire to selflessly love and serve, to her happiness, to her passion, to her sexual fulfillments, to her categorical ownership by a master whom she must serve, who will have, and without qualification, whatever he wishes from her? In any event, the relationship between the free woman and the slave is scarcely symmetrical. The free woman is free, and the slave is a slave. Whereas the free woman may hate and despise the slave, and treat her with all the cruelty, harshness, and contempt she pleases, the slave may not reciprocate in the least. It could be her death to do so. The slaves, in their vulnerability and weakness, so unguarded and defenseless, subject to sale, to the chain and whip, live in terror of free women.

“As I recall, from the supper,” said Tajima to the prisoner, the knotted ropes dangling from his hand, “you believed slaves should be whipped.”

“I was not then marked, not then in a collar, Master,” she said.

“You have changed your view?” he said.

“It is my hope that Master will not whip me,” she said.

“But you are now subject to the whip, are you not?” he asked.

“Yes, Master,” she said. “I am now subject to the whip.”

He then held the loops of knotted rope to her face.

“Kiss the whip,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

We watched while the slave tenderly pressed her lips to the ropes, and then looked up, into the eyes of her master.

It was a beautiful, and touching, ceremony, enacted in the dim light of the lamp, in a small hut on the outskirts of a Yamada village.

“You have now returned the rope, and deferred to it,” said Tajima. “You may now beg to be beaten if you are not fully pleasing.”

“I beg to be beaten,” she said, “if I am not fully pleasing.”

“You realize it will be done to you,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“You may now retire to the corner,” he said, indicating a dark corner of the hut, to which the dim lamplight scarcely penetrated, “and kneel there, grasping your ankles with your hands, until summoned forth.”

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“And you will keep your head down,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

I saw that Tajima, despite his Earth origin, knew how to treat a slave. She is to be kept with perfect discipline. Perhaps he had learned this in Tarncamp, or Shipcamp. Surely there had been enough slaves there, for work, and the pleasure of men.

“Master,” she said.

“Yes?” he said.

“Am I Sumomo?” she asked, timidly.

“Not unless I have it so,” said Tajima. “And if I should have it so, it will be a slave name, put on you by my pleasure.”

“Yes, Master,” she said.

The slave drew back.

“What will you name her?” I asked.

“What do you think of ‘Sumomo’?” he said.

“I scarcely think that the most judicious of choices,” I said.

“Nor I,” he said.

“Forgive me,” I said.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“She is a beautiful slave,” I said.

“Her hair is wretched,” he said, “and her body filthy.”

“Doubtless there is a comb, and slave tub somewhere,” I said.

“Doubtless,” he said.

“There are many beautiful names,” I said.

“Has she earned a beautiful name?” he asked.

“Perhaps not yet,” he said. “Slave,” he called.

“Master?” she said, from the half darkness.

“Are you kneeling, your ankles grasped in your hands, your head down?” he inquired.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“You are ‘Nezumi’,” he said.

I heard sobs, from the darkness.

“What is your name?” he inquired.

“‘Nezumi’, Master,” she said.

“I do not know the name,” I said.

“It is an old word for an urt,” he said.

“I see,” I said.

“I shall return the brazier and irons,” said Haruki. “In the meantime, prepare to depart. Few know we are here, and it is dangerous.”

Chapter Thirty

We Have Paused at an Inn to Gather Intelligence

“Sake, more sake!” said the Ashigaru, striking the low table with the metal cup.

“Nezumi!” called Tajima.

Nezumi hurried to the table bearing the earthen vessel.

“That is a sorry slave,” said the Ashigaru. His two fellows laughed.

“How so?” asked Tajima.

“The hair,” said one of the Ashigaru.

“True,” said Tajima.

Nezumi was actually far more presentable than earlier. Her body and hair were now washed, and her garment. She was still barefoot, of course, and the garment was still the tiny rag of a field slave. Tajima had tried, with his knife, to shape her hair a bit. It would, of course, in time, grow out.

“She is cheap, and all I could afford,” said Tajima. “How fares the march north?”

“The pace is leisurely,” said the Ashigaru. “The shogun moves with deliberation.”

“It spares the men,” said one of the Ashigaru.

“You are rice thieves,” said the innkeeper.

“Requisitions must be made,” said their leader.

I did not think the innkeeper would have spoken as he had if a warrior had been present. It might have meant his head. The Ashigaru, like most, were of the peasants, and took no umbrage at the annoyance of the innkeeper.

Near the door of the inn, inside, were several sacks of rice, while, outside, a handcart waited.

I was to one side, behind a silken screen, sitting cross-legged with Haruki, before another table. Such screens may afford privacy, for example, dividing a larger space into semi-secluded, individual dining areas. The screen, on the house side, so to speak, was decorated with a fanciful image, that of a large, winged, fearsome beast. “It is a dragon,” had said Haruki. Such images were not infrequently encountered in the islands, but, more commonly, one encountered images of a gentler, more tranquil nature, snow-capped mountains, forests, winding streams, placid villages, and such. There seemed to me many contrasts, if not paradoxes, in the Pani culture. Perhaps where life may be short, and jeopardy is often afoot, when the morning may not guarantee the evening, one is more likely to see and appreciate beauty, and fix it, as one can, for a moment of contemplation. It was a culture with a place for both the blossom and the glaive, a culture where one might, a sword within reach, unroll a painting and, bit by bit, meditate upon its elements, where a warrior might attend sensitively to the delicacy of his calligraphy and a general might compose poetry on the eve of battle.

“The shogun marches against the lands of Temmu,” said Tajima.

“Of course,” said one of the Ashigaru.

“No attempt has been made at swiftness of approach or stealth,” said Tajima.

“A lame man may move more rapidly than an army,” said another of the Ashigaru.

“One cannot conceal the movements of thousands of men,” said the leader.

“The shogun moves with the implacability of the seasons,” said another. “In this way the onslaught, in its inevitability, will be the more feared.”

“Let the tarsks of the traitorous rebel, Temmu, the Wicked, cringe in anticipation,” said the leader.

“But are there not demon birds to fear?” inquired Tajima.

“I have seen them in the sky,” said one of the Ashigaru. “They do nothing; they watch, and go away.”

It was easy to hear this conversation from behind the screen. We were some fifteen days now from the palace of Lord Yamada. After the fourth day we had begun to move east, and had thought to then parallel the northern road. In this way we hoped to reach the countryside controlled by Lord Temmu apart from the march of Yamada, but not that far behind it. Our practice, until recently, had been to house ourselves in selected villages, some known to Haruki, and some scouted by him, in the daylight Ahn, and then move, again, at night. To be sure, we had been unable to obtain much intelligence from the villages. We had finally, after avoiding villages for three days, approached this inn. It lay in the territory of one of Lord Yamada’s daimyos, on a road leading to the northern road. Travelers, coming and going, from various points, merchants, and others, shelter and refresh themselves at inns, and, accordingly, inns are likely to be repositories of information and what might purport to be information, repositories of rumors, news, reports, and conjectures. What we had not counted on at the inn was that we might encounter foragers of Yamada in its precincts. We had not, of course, encountered them further west. Fortunately this encounter, to this point, had proved not only innocuous, but propitious with respect to our needs. From whom more informed might we garner the intelligence we sought than from Ashigaru of the shogun himself? When three of them had spilled into the inn, Tajima had hailed them, greeted them like long lost brothers, and, to their pleasure, stood for several rounds of sake.