Guardsman of Gor (13 page)

I did not see either the slave, Beverly, or the slave, Florence, among them. Doubtless they, like many of the other slaves, were within the holding, preparing, under whips, the feast for their masters. I regarded the slaves. Even in such gowns and in the performance of movements so decorous I found them maddeningly exciting. How excruciatingly beauti. ful and desirable are women! How difficult it is even to look upon them and not scream with desire. One could scarcely conceive of what such women would be later at the feast when, stripped or clad in rags, or perhaps insulted with a bit of silk, perhaps tied about their left ankle, they must, in the full exposure of their slavery, present themselves before strong men. I did not think their dances then would be so dec. orous, but would be such as to manifest the full sexual needs of women, under the command of men. I could conceive of them crawling on their knees, if so commanded, serving. I could conceive of them, as I had seen them at other Gorean feasts, their bodies stained with food and drink, caught by the hair, thrown on the low tables and raped by masters, and then raped again. They were naught but slaves. There was no service, pleasure or intimacy so delicious, so profound, so prosaic or so unexpected, that they must not render, and swiftly, at the merest whim of a master. They were, after all, naught but slaves.

I looked away from the girls. The door leading within the holding, and the walls, must be taken, swiftly.

The Tuka now drew alongside the walk. Mooring lines were now made fast. Miles of Vonda made ready to disem. bark. Kliomenes waited to greet him. The girls had now stopped dancing. In their left arms they cradled the baskets of flower petals. With their right hands they reached into the baskets of petals, to cast them on the walk, in the path of Miles of Vonda and of the men disembarking from the Tuka. The symbolism of the casting of such petals is perhaps rea. sonably clear. Feminine, and soft and beautiful, they are cast before the tread of men. Is the token in this not obvious? Men are the masters, the conquerors and victors. Beneath their feet, theirs, surrendered, lie the petals of flowers. In this we may see a lovely gesture, one of both welcome and submission, and one in which the order of nature is beautifully

and sensitively acknowledged. But, of course, there are many ways in which the order of nature may be acknowledged. Another is that in which the woman, naked and collared, branded, under a man's whip, writhes at his feet to the beating of drums.

"Welcome to the Masters," sang the girls.

Miles of Vonda stepped upon the rail of the Tuka and he, and other men, leaped to the walk.

"Welcome to the Masters. Welcome to the Masters, all!" sang the girls, casting their petals on the walk before the men emerging from the Tuka.

I saw Kliomenes seizing the hand of Miles of Vonda. Aemilianus and his men must move to the door. The halls must be taken.

"All is yours," sang the girls, "and we are of the all. Welcome, Masters, all!"

The Tina drew alongside the walk. We cast out our mooring lines. Scarcely were they fast when Callimachus, followed by myself, and others, leaped over the rail. Callimachus, and his men, must seize the walls.

"Welcome, Masters, welcome, all!" sang the girls.

Aemilianus, followed by men, moved swiftly, past startled pirates, toward the iron door.

"Hold, hold there!" cried Kliomenes, suddenly. He had seen Callimachus and myself. "There are spies among you!" he cried. Then the sword of Miles of Vonda was at his throat. "Order your men to throw down their arms!" said Miles of Vonda. My sword then, too, threatened him, at his belly. The arms of Kliomenes were pinned behind him by two men. Slave girls screamed. Baskets of petals fell to the walk. They shrank back against the wall, armed men moving past them. "Throw down your arms," called Miles of Vonda to the pirates on the walk, "or you are dead men:' "Throw down your arms!" called Kliomenes, hoarsely. We saw Aemilianus, followed by a file of men, thrust through the iron door. Beyond it, almost instantly, we heard shouts, and then some swordplay,- and running feet. Callimachus, followed by his file of men, raced up the steps toward the walls. I saw two pirates, cut from the steps, fall twisting and striking against stone to the sea yard below. A pirate leapt past me and fled down the walk. I pursued him. Then ahead of him another ship was at the walk's edge.

"The Tais!" cried the pirate. Men leapt from her rail, ahead of him. He threw down his sword. I moved past him, through the men of the Tais, toward the wall. No pirates must escape. I raced toward the wall's height. Swordplay there was sharp. I cut one man from the wall. I thrust a man through who was climbing through an opening in the parapet. I cut my way through men and swords.

I saw, to my alarm, pirates in the water, in the sea yard, swimming toward the gate. I forced my way into the west gate tower. I struck the sword from the hand of the pirate within and spun him about, seizing him by the neck. I thrust him toward the interior balcony, that opening into the chamber of the windlass.

"Order the lowering of the gate, the plunging lowering of the gate!" I said. "Lower the gate," he cried. "Loose the gatel Loose the gate!" Cries of dismay rose from the water below, within the sea yard. With a rattling thunder of chain and iron the huge gate splashed downward into the water, its bars entering and anchoring themselves in their deep, subsurface sockets.

"We surrender!" called the pirates on the wall. Swords were flung down. I put my prisoner with the rest. From the wall's height I could see the walk near the holding crowded with our men, emerged from the holds of the Tuka and Tina. The fleet of Policrates, as I knew, some forty ships, was abroad, to prevent reinforcements from the eastern towns, should they appear, from proceeding westward to assist at the defense of the chain. Accordingly, within the fortress, under the command of Kliomenes, only' a small force had been left, some two hundred to two hundred and fifty men. These would have been sufficient to hold the fortress against a significant attack, but, once the enemy, in numbers, as we were, were within, the defense of the holding would be a lost cause.

From the wall, looking down and across the sea yard, Callimachus and I saw Aemilianus emerging from the holding. He looked upward, toward the wall. He lifted his bloody sword into the air.

"We have won," said Callimachus.

"This battle," I said.

"Yes," he said.

We would not raise over the holding of Policrates the flags of Port Cos, or of Victoria, or of Ar's Station.

XI

MILES OF VONDA AND I OBSERVE

SLAVES, UTILIZING THE SCREENED

BALCONY ABOVE THE CENTRAL

SLAVE QUARTERS

"Would you care to join me, my friend, Miles of Vonda?" I asked.

"Yes," said he.

It was the night of our victory, that in which we had taken the holding.

I put the heavy key into the lock on the door, and opened it.. It led onto a narrow balcony, screened by intricate grillework, which, some twenty feet above the floor, encircled the area of the central slave quarters.

The room below was lit by lamps.

We observed the girls through the grillework. It is so designed that they do not know when they are under observation,-and when they are not. Anything that they might do or say, thus, for all they know, is being seen and heard by men. This is acceptable. They are slaves.

"Yes," I said, softly, "she is beautiful."

Miles of Vonda, I saw, could not take his eyes from one slave. She sat against the far wall, her hands upon her knees. She was auburn-haired, and luscious. She was clad in her collar, and a bit of yellow rag. She had once been the Lady Florence of Vonda. She was now the mere slave, Florence.

I saw the fists of Miles of Vonda clench.

"If we are successful," I said, "doubtless she, and the others, will be distributed." These girls, of course, like silver and gold, and rich cloths, were loot, and prizes. "You have thus far played a significant and handsome role in our business, Miles of Vonda," I said. "If you desire her, it is quite possible she will be allotted to you, as a portion of the spoils."

"If I want her," said Miles of Vonda, lightly. "There are doubtless numerous others captive below who are quite as beautiful."

"Doubtless," I granted him, "but, yet, she is quite lovely."

"Yes," he said, looking upon her, "she is." I smiled to myself. Did Miles of Vonda seek to conceal from me his affection for a mere slave? It was obvious that he cherished that slave. I had little doubt but what he would die for her.

"It seems that you, too," said Miles of Vonda, looking at me, "find one of these slaves of interest."

"Several are not displeasing to my senses," I admitted.

"What of that exquisite little brunet?" he asked.

"Which one?" I asked.

"That one," said he, indicating a collared girl in a scandalously brief bit of red rag sitting below and across from us, near the foot of the opposite wall.

"Her?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

I shrugged. It was not impossible that my eyes had more than once strayed to her.

I saw her petulantly, impatiently, push another girl away from her, who had, apparently in her opinion, come too close to her.

"She apparently has a nasty streak in her," said Miles of Vonda.

"She is from Earth," I said. "The whip can take that out of her."

"Could you whip her?" asked Miles of Vonda.

"Of course," I told him. What woman could respect a man who is not strong enough to put her under the whip?

We continued to look downward into the central room of the slave quarters. Many such rooms are quite lovely, resplendent with multicolored tiles and rich hangings, and beautifully appointed with baths and columns, but this was not such a room. This was more in the nature of a gloomy, forbidding, ill-lit, stoutly secure incarceration chamber for fe

males. The walls were high and stern; the tiles were large and dark. In the center of the room there was a cistern. To one side there was a trough for wastes. Scraps of food were commonly thrown to the girls through a window in the grillework on the side of the room to our left. It is not common on the part of pirates to pamper their slaves. All the girls in the holding we had placed in this one room, that they might, for our convenience, be located in a single place. Among them, too, we had placed Shirley and Lola, who had been at the prows of the Tuka and Tina when we had entered the sea yard. Before we had put them in with the other girls we had given them brief slave tunics, that they might have some prestige among their new fellow slaves. When the fellow had thrust Lola into the room, earlier in the afternoon, I had, from the concealment of the balcony, wishing to keep my presence in the holding unknown to the brunet, observed what had ensued. Seeing the small, exquisite brunet in the bit of red rag, Lola had shrieked with pleasure. "You sold me!" she cried, delightedly, more of her body covered by her brief slave tunic than was covered of the body of the brunet by the scrap of red cloth she had been allotted. "You sold me!" she cried. "Now, you, too, wear a collar!" The brunet, terrified, had shrunk back against the wall. The fellow who had brought Lola to the central room of the slave quarters took her by the hair and shook her head. "She is not to be attacked, or blinded," he told her. This warning I had instructed him to issue to Lola, anticipating her hostility, which was only too understandable, against the brunet. "Yes, Masterl Yes, Master!" had wept Lola. She had then been locked inside, with Shirley, and the others. I had instructed Lola, clearly and firmly, prior to her confinement in the central room of the slave quarters that she was to mention to no one that I was present in the holding. A similar injunction was imposed upon lovely Shirley. These girls would keep this secret. They were slaves. They did not wish to be fed to sleen. Accordingly, though the brunet would know that, to her woe, she, now in her own collar, was confined with a girl to whom she had once been almost as Mistress, she would not begin to know or suspect that one named Jason, of Victoria, a free man, resided now within the same holding as she.

"How beautiful are slaves," said Miles of Vonda.

."Yes," I said.

I watched Lola moving toward the brunet. She had, I gathered, seen the brunet push the other girl away, earlier. She sat down, apparently indolently, next to the brunet, and stretched her body languorously, as a slave girl. Though Lola seemed thoughtless and unconcerned in what she did, neither I nor the brunet could be under any delusion as to what was transpiring. She then, as though wearily, and paying no attention, intruded herself even more closely to the brunet. Would the brunet push her away, as she had the other? If so, Lola would not, strictly, have attacked her. The first blow would have been struck by the brunet. Lola, it could then seem, could only be defending herself. I smiled to myself. Lola's defense, I was certain, might leave the little brunet half torn to pieces. I saw the shoulders of the little brunet shake, and then she sobbed, and leaped to her feet, fleeing, She ran across the room. Lola, then, lay down in her place, and curled up, catlike, to sleep. The brunet then sought another place. "Go away!" said a girl pushing at her. Weeping, the brunet then went to another place. "Go away!" said another girl. The brunet then went and knelt, head down, her dark hair to the floor, before a girl. "Yes," said the girl, "you may rest here, there is enough room for two." It was the girl whom the brunet, earlier, had pushed away. "Thank you," said the brunet, and lay down there. That, then, would be her section of the tiles for the night. It would be there that she would, this night, sleep. I saw her briefly rise up on the palms of her hands, and, furtively, regard Lola. Then, quickly, she lay down again. She trembled. She feared Lola. This pleased me. I smiled to myself. There was another, too, whom she would soon learn to fear, and well, he who would be her master.

"I count eighty-nine," said Miles of Vonda, "including those two, both yours, whom we brought in at the prows of the Tuka and Tina."

"That is correct," I said.

"An exquisite lot," said Miles of Vonda.

"Pirates have excellent taste in slave flesh," I said.

"Have the barred alcoves and the cell blocks, and the kennels, been emptied?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"They are all here?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"What of the pens," said he, "those deep below the fortress?"

"They, too, have been emptied," I said. "See those in the corner, those naked, and in close chains?"

"Yes," said he.

"They are the ones from the pens of which you have spoken," I said.

"Were they in close chains in the pens?" he asked. He did not inquire pertaining to clothing. It is common to keep girls naked in the pens. Not only is this excellent for discipline, but it is more sanitary.

"No," I said. "We put them in close chains only upon bringing them to this room. That they were in the lower pens suggested that they might be being disciplined, or were perhaps not well trained, or were new to their collars."

"The close chains, then," said he, "are in compensation for their being brought to an upper level."