Swordsmen of Gor (2 page)

“I did not realize then what it was, what it would be, to be overwhelmed, owned, and mastered.”

“You are content?” I said.

“Yes,” she said, “joyfully so.”

“But it does not matter,” I said, “one way or the other.”

“No,” she said, “I know that. It does not matter, one way or the other.”

I looked out to sea.

No sails were seen.

The horizon was clear.

“You, and others,” she said, “fought against Agamemnon, furthering the ends of other Kurii, those opposed to him. Are not you, then, and your colleagues, friends, allies, with them?”

“For a moment, we were,” I said. “It was a brief intersection of interests, a moment when we traveled a single road.”

“And that road has forked?” she said.

“I think so,” I said. “Kurii are intent, and steadfast.”

“But we have been brought here, and put here, alive.”

“Doubtless in virtue of an arrangement with Priest-Kings,” I said.

“Who are Priest-Kings?” she asked. “What are Priest-Kings?”

“Do not concern yourself with the matter,” I said.

“Curiosity,” she said, “is not for one such as I?”

“No,” I said. “Such as you are for other things.”

“‘Other things’?” she said.

“Certainly,” I said.

“I can no longer see the ship of Peisistratus,” she said, looking after the path of the ship, shading her eyes.

“I gather it is to make landfall within territories under the hegemony of Ar, and there disembark the Lady Bina and her cohort, and guard, Lord Grendel.”

“To what purpose?”

“I know not,” I said.

“She expects to become a Ubara,” she said.

“She is clever, and beautiful,” I said, “but the thought is madness.”

“But she was put there, with her guard, Lord Grendel. Do you think this is a guerdon for obscure services she rendered, or a gift to Lord Grendel?”

“It seems unlikely,” I said.

“If you have been placed here, in this verdant wilderness, at the will of Priest-Kings, whoever or whatever they may be, might not the Lady Bina and Lord Grendel have their purposes, as well?”

“I do not know.”

“Why have you been put here?”

“I do not know,” I said.

“I see nothing about,” she said.

“Nor I,” I said.

“You have your bow, some arrows, a sword, a knife,” she said.

“Rejoice,” I said, looking about.

“It does not seem we were put here to perish,” she said.

“No,” I said, looking back to the forest, “but we may perish.”

“There are animals?” she said.

“Doubtless,” I said.

“Men?” she asked.

“One does not know,” I said.

“We have some provisions,” she said, “bread, a bota of ka-la-na.”

“I will hunt,” I said. “We will seek water.”

“When Peisistratus disembarks Bina —” she said.

“
Lady
Bina,” I said, sharply, narrowly.

“Yes,” she said, quickly, “
Lady
Bina.”

I wondered if she were testing me. That would have been unwise on her part. No love was lost between her and the beauteous Lady Bina, but that was no excuse for an impropriety in this matter, however inadvertent or slight. There were forms to be observed. Too, a chasm, a world, separated her from the Lady Bina. The gulf between a tarsk and a Ubara was less than the gap between one such as she and one such as the Lady Bina. To be sure, I had often thought that the Lady Bina would herself look quite well in a collar.

How did she expect to become a Ubara?

She did not even have a Home Stone.

And there was a Ubara in Ar, if only a Cosian puppet on the throne, Talena, a traitress to her Home Stone, Talena, once the daughter of the great Ubar, Marlenus of Ar, whose whereabouts, as far as I knew, were unknown.

“When Peisistratus disembarks the Lady Bina and Lord Grendel,” she said, “whence then he?”

“He will undoubtedly continue his work,” I said. I did not elaborate on the nature of his work, but she was substantially familiar with it. Peisistratus, and his crews, were in their way mariners and merchants. He doubtless had one or more bases, or ports, on Earth, and one or more on Gor, and I knew he had one on the Steel World from which we had been brought, that now under the governance of Arcesilaus, now theocrat of that world, and now, claimedly, Twelfth Face of the Nameless One.

“He is a slaver,” she said.

“He doubtless deals in various commodities, in various forms of merchandise,” I said.

“He is a slaver,” she said.

“Yes,” I said, “certainly at least that.”

“Predominantly that,” she said.

“Perhaps,” I said. “I do not know.”

“I saw the capsules on the ship,” she said.

“He is a slaver, certainly,” I said.

“Perhaps he thinks he is rescuing women from the ravages of Earth,” she said.

“That seems unlikely,” I said.

“At a price, of course,” she said.

“Oh?” I said.

“A rag, if that, and a mark, a collar,” she said.

“I doubt that his motivations are so benevolent, so thoughtful,” I said, “even mixedly so. And, on the other hand, his motivations are certainly not villainous, or malevolent. Do not think so. You know him too well for that. I think of him primarily as a business man, obtaining, transporting, and selling, usually wholesale, wares of interest.”

“Women,” she said.

“Perhaps an occasional silk slave, to delight a free woman,” I said.

“Mostly women,” she said.

“Almost always,” I said.

“They sell better,” she said.

“Of course,” I said. “They are the most fitting, appropriate, and natural form of such merchandise.”

“‘Merchandise’?” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Goods?”

“Of course.”

“They view us as animals, as cattle,” she said.

“There is nothing personal in it, or usually not,” I said. “To be sure, one might take a particular female who has displeased one, in one fashion or another, and have her brought to Gor, to keep her, or see her sold off to the highest bidder, that sort of thing.”

“As cattle!” she said.

“No,” I said, “as less, as females.”

“It seems I have an identity, and a value,” she said.

“Certainly,” I said.

“But I was not brought to the Prison Moon by him, or by one such as he,” she said.

“No,” I said. “But do not be distressed, for he assured you that you would have been well worthy of selection and transportation, that you were exactly the sort of goods which would have been well enclosed, so to speak, in one of the capsules.”

I had found myself, months ago, imprisoned in a container on the Prison Moon, sharing the container with two individuals, a young Englishwoman, Miss Virginia Cecily Jean Pym, and a lovely Kur Pet, who had later come to be the Lady Bina. These were both free women and I, who had seemingly displeased Priest-Kings had been, apparently, enclosed with them as an insidious punishment, that, sooner or later, as I weakened, becoming more bitter, frustrated, outraged, and needful, my honor would be compromised, or lost. And, after that, I do not know what fate they might have planned for me, perhaps a hideous death, perhaps a wandering life of exile, beggary, and shame. One does not know. Both were, at the time, though without Home Stones, yet free women, you see, and thus, given the nobility of their status, not to be lightly put to one’s pleasure, certainly not without suitable provocation. It is difficult to convey the dignity, importance, and social standing of the Gorean free woman to one with no first-hand awareness of the matter. They have a position and elevation in society which far transcends that of, say, the free woman of Earth who is usually not so much free as merely not yet enslaved. The analogy is imperfect but suppose a society of rigid status, of severe hierarchy, and the rank and dignity that might be attached to the daughter of, say, a royal or noble house. One in such a society would not be likely to think of bedding such an individual, at least as a serious project. To be sure, a Goth, a Turk, a Saracen, a Dane might have fewer inhibitions in such a matter.

Kurii had raided the Prison Moon, freed me, and brought me to what was then the Steel World of Agamemnon.

But this event and various ensuing events, as I understand it, have been elsewhere chronicled.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Ramar,” I said, “must be freed.”

“Is that wise?” she asked.

“I do not know,” I said. “But it was for this reason that I had him brought to Gor.”

I had first seen Ramar in an arena on the Steel World, a milieu in which his ferocity, might, and cunning, in virtue of dozens of bloody victories, were renowned. Bred for dark sports, trained to hunt and kill, he was a prize of his breed, a champion of his kind. Later, in the insurrection, he, and other sleen, as Agamemnon grew more desperate, uncertain, and frightened, had been freed, that they might hunt down, destroy, and devour his foes, in particular ill-armed humans who might be party to the rebellion. A Kur, unarmed, is a match for a sleen. A Kur, armed, has little to fear, unless taken unawares. In turn, the revolutionaries, primarily the rebel Kurii, primarily on behalf of their human allies, had set a number of heavy, metal traps, more than two-hundred pounds in weight, baited with haunches of tarsk, traps fastened by heavy chains to large stakes sunk deeply into the ground, and in one such trap this beautiful animal, this great, fierce, dangerous, six-legged, sinuous monster, Ramar, had been caught. In this trap, held by its steel teeth, clamped deeply into his left rear leg, to the bone, bleeding and tortured, jerking against the stake and chain, then quiescent and silent, he would have died, of prolonged pain, or thirst. He was a large, noble animal, and beautiful in the hideous way in which a sleen can be beautiful, and it did not please me that such a creature should perish so miserably. Doubtless unwisely, I managed, with great difficulty, to open the trap, and the beast, freed, withdrew, vanished, limping, into the brush. He had not attacked me. Perhaps it had not occurred to him to do so. Later, we had encountered one another now and again. I think some record of this is elsewhere available. Following the denouement of the insurrection on the Steel World in question and, seemingly, in virtue of some interaction or agreement between Priest-Kings and victorious Kurii, it was determined that I, and others, were to be returned to Gor. Might we have hoped that our labors on the Steel World had pleased, or, at least, appeased, Priest-Kings? Could such forms of life be mollified? And could they not then have been satisfied, at last, and have seen fit, in their wisdom, to free us from their interests? Certainly we had, or some of us, however unintentionally or inadvertently, served them. Surely they now had less to fear from one of the greatest and most dangerous of the Kurii, Lord Agamemnon, an ambitious, skilled, determined, brilliant, gifted, implacable foe. In any event I had not been slain, or returned to the horrors of the Prison Moon. I now found myself again on Gor. I had then little hope that Priest-Kings had finished with me, as I would have fervently desired. Had that been so should I not have been returned, liberated and thanked, perhaps even bountifully rewarded, to my holding in Port Kar? But I was here, somehow, on this remote beach, the forest behind me. In leaving the Steel World I had brought Ramar with me. He deserved, I thought, the woods or forests, the plains or mountains, the openness and freedom, of Gor, not the steel platings and inserted gardens, the contrived geography, of a Steel World. Let him live as a sleen, in a world fit for him. Indeed, let men live in worlds fit for them. Too many live in their own Steel Worlds, and know not this, know not their prisons.

“He will turn wild,” she said.

“He is wild,” I said.

“He will become dangerous,” she said.

“He is dangerous now,” I said.

I unbuckled the thick, spiked collar from the throat of the giant, lame sleen, Ramar, and pointed behind us, to the forest. The large, round eyes regarded me, as though quizzically.

“Yes,” I said, “friend. Go.”

A protestive growl emanated from the throat of the beast. It wound its body about me, moving, curling about me. I thrust the heavy body from me.

“Go,” I said, sternly. “Yes, it is my wish.”

“He does not want to go,” she said.

“Go,” said I, to the sleen.

I then, impulsively, knelt down and seized the massive body about the neck, and buried my face in the fur of his shoulder.

“You are crying,” she said.

“No,” I said.

I then stood, and wiped my eyes with the back of my forearm.

“You are crying,” she said.

I scorned to respond to so foolish an allegation.

Ramar whimpered.

“The forest is there!” I said to him, turning his head with my hand toward the forest. “That is your world!” I said, pointing. “Go! Go!”

I watched the sleen take its leave, its left, hind foot marking the sand, where he dragged it behind him.

Then he was gone.

I then turned to regard her.

“Wipe the tears from your cheek,” I told her.

She obeyed.

To be sure, emotion is acceptable for women, and certainly for such as she, the sort which, though the least, is the most female of all women.

She had been one of the two women who had been enclosed with me in the small, transparent container on the Prison Moon, two who had been deliberately, carefully selected by Priest-Kings, with all their shrewdness and science, with all their malevolent expertise, to constitute exquisite temptations for me, who were intended to be such as would prove irresistible to me, either of them a suitable engine to accomplish in time the destruction of my honor, either one of which was a banquet to lure me, tormented and starving, inevitably, sooner or later, from the rigors of my codes.

I regarded her.

She who had become the Lady Bina had been, at that time, long ago, in the container, no more than a Kur pet, a human pet of a superior life form, the Kurii, one at that time not even speeched, one at that time no more than a simple, naive, luscious, appetitious little animal. Surely the little beast was exquisitely desirable, who could deny that, but even then the other, the dark-haired captive, the English girl, Miss Virginia Cecily Jean Pym, clearly the product of a pathological culture, inhibited, unpleasant, arrogant, nasty, with such clearly ambivalent feelings toward men, even hostility toward males, was the one on whom I most wished to lay my hands, she whom I most desired to seize and subdue, whom I thought it would be most amusing to have in my arms, and force to buck and squirm, and whimper and plead, and cry out and beg, and weep in my arms her helpless, unconditioned, grateful, rapturous submission, that of the shattered, devastated, begging female to the will of the possessive, uncompromising, owning male. I do not think that she was objectively superior to the Kur pet, and might even have brought a lower price than the Kur pet in most markets, but she was somehow very special to me. Indeed, I have little doubt that she had been selected for me, with great care and skill, perhaps from amongst thousands, that she had been matched expertly to my inclinations, preferences, and needs, inclinations, preferences, and needs of which I might not even have been aware. Two other factors, too, I suspect, were involved. As she had been matched to me, I suspect that I had been matched to her, as well. The Priest-Kings, I suspect, had, so to speak, fitted us together. Had she no need of such as I, the temptation would have been primarily mine, and it would have failed of its devastating symmetricality. But I, so desiring her, how helpless I would have been, had she been, sooner or later, similarly distressed and tormented. How could we have then failed to embrace, and therewith comply with the will and intrigues of Priest-Kings?