Witness of Gor (109 page)

Suddenly the figure spun about. "Do not approach," it warned us.

The officer of Treve stepped back.

"Tal," said the officer of Treve.

"Tal," said the figure. "Do not approach." It seemed a strange time and place for such greetings.

"Reports are to be made, on the depths," said the officer of Treve.

"They have been prepared," said the figure. "Other dispositions, too, have been made. You will find all is in order.”

"Come back with us," said the officer.

"You have had me watched," said the figure, angrily, accusingly.

"Come back with us," said the officer.

"Sir?" asked the guard, to the officer's right.

"No," said the officer to him.

"Do not approach," warned the figure. From its tunic it drew forth its stiletto.

"Back," said the officer to the guard, who stepped back.

"You, too!" said the figure.

The officer, reluctantly, for I suspect he had planned to rush forward, stood back.

"Leave," said the figure.

"No," said the officer.

"I would be alone," said the figure.

"You are not alone," said the officer.

"Go!" said the figure.

"I have authorization to this surface," said the officer.

"Stay back!”

The officer stopped.

"Who is with you?" asked the figure.

"Demetrion," said the officer.

"It is Janice, too, is it not?" asked the figure.

"Yes," said the officer.

"Was your service satisfactory, Janice?" asked the figure.

"It is my hope it was, Master," I said, frightened.

"If it was not, you must expect to be severely punished, or slain," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"You are standing," he observed.

"Forgive me, Master!" I said, falling to my knees. Had I been trained for nothing? "You will stand back," said the figure to the men.

"We are back," the officer assured him.

The figure then returned the stiletto to his tunic. He then stepped up, to the wall about the surface of the tower. It was there that Tenrik had once held me. I had been ordered to look down. I had seen the rocks hundreds of feet below.

This was a place not only for the discomfiture of slaves.

It was also a place of execution.

From this place criminals and traitors were sometimes cast down, to the rocks below.

It was for that reason, doubtless, that he had come here.

"Hold!" cried the officer, Terence.

The figure paused on the height of the wall, and turned to face us.

There was no way, now, in which we could reach him before he would have time to act.

I wondered if the officer should have come to the surface of the tower.

Perhaps he should not have come.

Our presence here, I feared, was cruel, and intrusive.

"We have not yet concluded our Kaissa match," said the officer.

Most Gorean matches, as I understand it, consist of an odd number of games, for example, eleven or twenty-one. Needless to say, the matches sometimes take days to finish. Their current match had been set at eleven games. Each had, if I had not lost count, won five games.

"I wish you well," said the figure.

"Hold!" cried Terence. For the figure had turned to the outside, standing on the wall, that unlikely brick-and-mortar margin, that brink of forever.

"I have lost a prisoner," said the figure.

"It is nothing," said the officer. "So, too, have others, thousands of others!”

"I have betrayed my trust, my post. I have betrayed my oath. That is not nothing.”

"Come down," said the officer.

"I am a traitor to my word, and to the city. I have shamed the Home Stone.”

"No," said the officer.

"It has been defiled.”

"No!" protested the officer.

"Such a stain can be cleansed only with blood.”

The figure turned again toward the mountains.

"Hold!" cried the officer.

"Master!" cried a voice, that of Fina, running across the surface of the tower. Yards behind her came the guard who had been sent to fetch her.

The pit master came down from the wall, in fury. He grasped Fina in his arms, who was weeping, who clung to him.

The pit master turned a baleful glance upon the officer. "I left her chained!" he said, in anger.

"That she could not follow you, of course," said the officer of Treve.

"But she has been freed.”

"I will die with you, Master!" she wept. "We shall die together, in one another's arms!”

"No," cried the pit master, in fury, thrusting her from him. She fell to the stones, and grasped him about the leg.

He shook himself free and glared down at her. "Return to the depths, now!" he said.

"No," said the officer. "Do not do so!”

"You have no right to do this!" cried the pit master.

"I have every right," said the officer. "You do not own her. She is the property of the state of Treve. We are not in the depths now. And my rank, I remind you, considerably exceeds yours.

Who do you obey, Fina?”

"You, Master!" she cried, defiantly.

"Very well," said the pit master, regarding the officer. "For the moment, you win.”

He could, of course, come again to this place sometime, unbeknownst to us, or to another.

Indeed, he might thrust himself upon that slim blade concealed within his tunic.

"Come, Master!" cried Fina, leaping up, and springing to the wall itself, where he had stood.

"Come down!" cried the pit master, in horror. He put out his hand, but he was afraid to approach her, for fear she might leap down, or he might, inadvertently, cause her to lose her balance. "Come down, I beg you!" he wept.

"You beg a slave?" she laughed.

"She should certainly be beaten," said the officer.

"Come down!" cried the pit master!

"Let her jump," said the officer. "She is only a slave.”

"She is Fina!" he wept.

"Come up, Master," she laughed. "Let us die together. Let us leap to the rocks below, caught one last time in one another's arms!”

"No!" he cried.

"I love you!" she cried. "I will not live without you.”

"You cannot love me," he wept. "I am a beast, a monster, hated and shunned, so born, and so condemned to live.”

"You will never know the beauty, the shining beauty, the truth, I see within you!" she cried.

"I give you my word," said the officer, "within the rights of my code, and sworn in the name of the Home Stone itself, that if you shall accomplish upon yourself this injustice, I shall see that she will be free to follow you, whether it be from this ledge, or by the cord or knife.”

"No!" cried the pit master.

"It is so sworn.”

"Come, let us die together, Master," said Fina.

"I, not you!" he said.

"We," she said.

"No!" he said.

"Then I alone!" she said. "Do you think that I can live, having caused you to compromise your honor?”

The pit master turned about, crying out with misery, his fists clenched.

"Keep her in chains," the pit master begged the officer. "Guarantee to me her life.”

"That of a mere slave, do not be foolish.”

"So you would set me this dilemma," said the pit master, "that either she must die or I must lose my honor?”

"And if she is to be the reason you cannot retain your honor, it seems that she, herself, is resolved to die.”

"Come down," said the pit master to Fina.

"Master?" she asked the officer.

"Remain where you are," said the officer.

"Sleen!" cried the pit master.

"It seems we have reached an impasse," said the officer, lightly.

"And how is it to be resolved?" asked the pit master, in fury. I feared he might extract that stiletto from his tunic and drive it into the heart of Terence.

"Easily," said Terence, "by Kaissa.”

"Kaissa?”

"Of course.”

"I see.”

"Slave," said Terence to Fina. He snapped his fingers. "Come down!”

Fina came down from the wall.

The pit master hurried forward, to clasp her to him, but the officer interposed himself. "No,”

he said, sternly. "You do not own her. She is the property of Treve. Do not touch her." The pit master, bewildered, stepped back. Fina, too, was startled. The officer took her firmly by an arm and thrust her, as a slave, to Demetrion. He was the guard who had come first with us to the surface of the tower. He who had fetched Fina was Andar. "Bind her, hand and foot, and kneel her to the side," said Terence to Demetrion. Then to Andar he said, "Fetch a lantern, and a board, and pieces.”

Fina, in a moment, was kneeling to one side, her wrists tied behind her back, and fastened to her crossed, bound, ankles. She could not rise to her feet. It is a quite common tie. It is often used in training, to accustom women to kneeling before men. She had first been put on her stomach. The hands are tied behind the back first, and then the ankles tied, and brought up, behind, and fastened to the bound wrists. The woman is then put to her knees.

Andar, a little later, brought a lantern, and the board and pieces.

"The match is apparently of importance to you," said the pit master, bitterly, sitting down, cross-legged, before the board.

We heard the second bar sound. Tarn wire swayed overhead.

"You understand what is involved here," said the officer.

"Yes," said the pit master.

"And you," asked the officer of Fina.

"I think so," she said.

"If you win," said the officer to the pit master, "you may gleefully splash yourself upon the rocks at the foot of the wall, thereby bringing joy to the hearts of local wild sleen, and the slave, bound by her fear of compromising your honor, which compromise would then be in violation of our arrangements, will not seek to follow you in the path you have chosen. If I win, you will accept my concept of what is honorable in this matter, and so, too, will the slave.”

"Agreed, for myself and for the slave," said the pit master.

"And no action pertinent to these matters is to be taken until the game is done?”

"Agreed, for myself and the slave," said the pit master.

"And this is sworn?”

"It is sworn.”

"By the Home Stone?”

"By the Home Stone itself!" said the pit master, angrily.

"Excellent," said the officer.

He then picked up the board, with the pieces on it, went to the wall, and threw the entire board and pieces out into space, over the wall.

"What have you done!" cried the pit master, in horror, rising up.

Fina was laughing and crying.

"I do not feel like playing now," said the officer. "Perhaps some other time.”

"No, no," cried the pit master.

"As you may recall," said the officer, "no action pertinent to these matters is to be taken until the game is done.”

"Play!" demanded the pit master.

"I think not," said the officer.

"You have tricked me!" cried the pit master, in fury.

I began to cry, too. The game, I realized, would never be played.

"Sometimes," said the officer, "the best Kaissa is no Kaissa.”

"It seems you have won," said the pit master.

"It is all of us who have won," said the officer. "Untie her," he said to Andar.

Andar undid the knots which restrained Fina, and she, unbidden, leapt up and threw herself into the arms of the pit master, sobbing and laughing.

He held her to him, in confusion, in fury, in consternation.

"Up, Janice," said the officer, and I sprang to my feet, joyfully.

"It is chilly here," he said. "You must be half frozen. It is well you are with us. Else you might be picked up as a stray by the watch.”

"Yes, Master," I said.

"Perhaps you can warm some wine in my compartments," he said.

"Gladly, Master," I said.

"You do not mind if I return her to the pits later in the morning, do you?" inquired Terence of the pit master.

"She is to be returned by the tenth Ahn, as you know," said the pit master.

I did not understand that. It sounded as though something had been arranged.

"Granted," said Terence.

"You tricked me," said the pit master.