The Usurper Page 16

  “Your petition is denied,” he said.

  Shuddering, Cornhair kept her head down.

  She should not, of course, have reached for the furs. Such things, as should have been understood, are not permitted to a slave.

  Cornhair was not merely a beautiful woman, but a highly intelligent woman. Yet she had much to learn about her new status, that of the female slave. Given her intelligence, of course, she should learn very quickly.

  The barterings and exchanges now seemed less. Indeed, more than one sled, with new burdens, had been drawn back into the forest, and more than one spread platform of poles, heaped with goods, drawn by its horse, slid over the edge ice and splashed into the chill waters of the Lothar, to ascend shortly the far bank, bordering the now-snowy plains beyond.

  Cornhair heard the squealing of a pig and looked up, startled. A fellow was walking back to a sled, the pig under his arm. Also, at almost the same time, a heap of cloth was cast before her by a squat Herul. How fine such fellows looked, how at ease, mounted, as they left the island, some alone, some, mounted, tending the platform-drawing horses beginning to cross the river, and how ungainly afoot.

  “Dress,” said an Otung.

  Cornhair seized up the garments and eagerly, gratefully, drew them on. How precious they were to her. Had she ever worn anything so warm? She was familiar, in her way, of course, with such garments, as they were such as the Otung women wore, and such as she had often donned and worn in and about the hall of the Otungs. To be sure, these were plain, and shabby, worn, and such, but they were long, and thick, and layered. She also drew on the thick woolen hose. Although she, and the other slaves brought from Inez IV to Tangara on the Narcona, had become familiar with such garments, she and the others slaves had not always been so sedately and concealingly clad. At the evening suppers and feasts in the hall, the Otung women dining apart, in the woman’s hall, a long shed adjoining the greater hall, she, and the others, had served the men naked, hurrying to and fro, responding to their cries, hastening to bring them meat and drink, in particular, spiced and honeyed bror, brewed from golden lee. That slaves should serve so, stripped, and commonly collared, is, incidentally, a not unfamiliar custom amongst not only barbarians, with their rude ways, but is popular, too, amongst many refined gentlemen of the empire. Men, civilized and barbarous, being men, enjoy being served by naked slaves. It is one of the pleasures of ownership, and the Mastery, and few things, it might be added, given the contrasts involved, clothed and unclothed, serving and being served, and such, better impress upon a slave her femaleness and its meaning.

  A tentacled appendage seized the now-dressed Cornhair by the back of the neck, and forced her down, to her knees, her head down.

  She whimpered, frightened.

  She heard a surprising sound, the striking, the clanking, of a clapper within metal, and sensed something under her neck. There was another such sound, and a chain was drawn up about her neck, and behind her neck, closely, and she heard the snap of a lock behind the back of her neck.

  It was the first she had known of, or heard of, the Herul slave bell.

  The point of the bell was not, in particular, to designate its wearer a slave, for all human females in a Herul camp were slaves. Rather it was, first, to remind the slave that she was a slave, and a beast, for such bells were sometimes hung about the necks of cows in the herds, and, second, to mark her movements. Interestingly, even in civilized areas, slaves are occasionally belled, though seldom so simply and crudely. The jangle of bells fastened about a girl’s ankle, wrist, or neck well impresses upon her that she is not like other women, that she is not free, but a slave. Too, it is not unusual that a new slave, one who is not yet sexually subdued, one not yet sexually owned, one who has not yet fully learned her collar, might be belled. This not only helps her to keep in mind, with each jangle, that she is a slave, but is useful for a variety of other reasons, in particular, those associated with location and tracking. How can she conceal her presence when each of her movements is betrayed by the bells put upon her by Masters; and how could she contemplate escape, however absurd such a musing, however foolish such a fancy, where each step would be clearly marked, bright with the informing music of her bondage? Too, as suggested earlier, bells have their effect upon the passions, both those of slaves and Masters. A belled slave, gasping and begging, brought cruelly to the incomparable ecstasies of the slave orgasm, is pleasant to listen to, wild-eyed and gasping, as she bucks and writhes in her chains.

  Cornhair, now clothed, on her knees again, as free men were present, straightened her body, and the bell sounded. She then held it, with two hands, though it was cold, that it not sound. “Master!” she begged. “May I speak?”

  “Yes,” said the fellow.

  “I have been sold?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “You now belong to Heruls.”

  “How many darins did I bring?” she asked, clutching the bell.

  “Vain slut,” he said.

  “Please,” she said, “Master.”

  “You went for a pig,” he said, “which is more than you are worth.”

  The tentacled appendage of a Herul then fastened itself in her hair, and, as she cried out, she was dragged to her feet, and, bent over, her head at his hip, her hands on his wrist, the bell clanking, was conducted to the shore of the island. There, she was thrown to all fours before one of the platforms of spread poles, on which were some empty crates, or coops, which had housed domestic fowl, vardas, in this area, and a long, low, narrow, stout, wood-barred structure, also now empty, one of several in which pigs had been brought to the island.

  A gesture from a Herul’s claw indicated that she should crawl upon the spread platform, then not harnessed to a horse, and enter the wood-barred structure. She hastened within. The bell clanked. She moaned. She clutched it. The smell of the structure’s former denizens assailed her. She heard, behind her, the closing of the structure’s gate. It took but a moment to thong it shut. The Herul then, his hand in its mane, or neck hair, positioned the horse between the draw poles and adjusted its harnessing. Cornhair could turn about only with difficulty. Kneeling, grasping the wooden bars, she saw Otung sleds, laden, being thrust into the water. Some men stood upon them, waiting, with poles. Some sleds, having crossed from the island, now again being drawn, were already vanishing into the forest.

  “Return!” thought Cornhair, clutching the wooden bars. “Come back! Save me! Rescue me! Do not let this be done to me! I acknowledge myself a slave! I have long known it in my heart! I now confess it openly! I will kneel docilely, head down, at the foot of your couch! I will hasten to serve! I will strive to please, as the least of slaves! Keep me! Keep me! I beg it! Keep me!”

  Cornhair was half thrown from her knees in the cage, as the platform on which it was fastened jerked forward. Only her hands on the bars prevented her from falling. She heard the paws of the horse break through the ice at the edge of the island, and then, a moment later, its broad chest was cleaving the chill waters. The boots of the rider were high in the stirrups. Water surged about the beast. Cornhair moaned, as water emerged between the close-set poles of the platform, and, in a moment, as the platform departed further from the bank, it washed over the platform, and through the cage. Her knees and hose were soaked. The wind rose. A large, flat piece of ice, broken loose from the shore upstream, struck, grating, against the platform, and then, as the platform continued its progress, spun slowly away. She could see snow being lifted and blown about on the bank being approached. Then, after a time, the paws of the horse, the rider’s mount, broke ice at the farther shore and the platform, unevenly, was being drawn across stones and sand, and, shortly thereafter, it had ascended the higher bank, and lurched into the seemingly endless, broad stretches of wind-carved snow.

  Cornhair had arrived at the Flats of Tung.

  “You now belong to Heruls,” had said the Otung.

&nbs
p; She clutched the bell, to keep it from clanking.

  Cornhair remained, crouching, between the wheels of one of the wagons. Her fingers held to the clapper in the bell hung about her neck. To be sure, that was forbidden, as much so as stuffing the bell with grass. It was to be free to swing, and sound, as a slave bell must.

  Cornhair was miserable, hiding beneath the wagon.

  To be sure, she had not been summoned, at least not personally, not explicitly, to her knowledge, and certainly she could not be accused of, and had not dared, an unauthorized departure from the camp. That was forbidden. Too, there were hungry dogs about, little better, if at all, than wolves.

  She had been told that Borchu was looking for her. On the other hand, that might not be true. Cornhair was not popular with the other girls. Was it a joke, so cruel a joke? Did they want her to seek out Borchu, and present herself, unbidden, to Borchu’s switch? That would surely give Borchu a pretext to vent her feelings on a human female, not that she had ever needed a pretext, and, indeed, a human female against whom, for whatever reason, she seemed to bear a particular animus. But what if Borchu was indeed looking for her, and the other slave, White Ankles, should inform her that the message of her summons had been duly transmitted, and yet that Cornhair had not fled to her feet, begging, as was required, to do her bidding?

  Cornhair remained where she was, trembling.

  It was now an hour or so past noon.

  Whereas some female slaves in a Herul camp are owned by particular Masters, and wear appropriate identifying disks fastened to the chain of their slave bells, most slaves are what is known as “camp slaves.” For example, Cornhair was a camp slave. Camp slaves, rather as many of the dogs, are the common property of the camp. It is much more prestigious to be a private slave. A particular advantage of being owned by a particular Master is that one is more likely to be fed. It is easy to see why camp slaves look up to, and envy, private slaves. A camp slave, who has no specific owner, must beg, and give pleasure, of one sort or another, before she is fed. That is required. Camp slaves, also, as they are not privately owned, may be disposed of by anyone in the camp, rather as anyone might slay and eat a dog that is not privately owned. It is easy to see why camp slaves are particularly zealous to please Masters, which, in their case, is any free Herul, even a child. They prostrate themselves eagerly. On their belly they hope not to be beaten, and to be spared.

  Most worlds in the Telnarian empire, saving some “same worlds,” in which, interestingly, men and women are supposedly identical, and other worlds, beyond the current borders of the empire, which wax and wane with political and military fortunes, accept, favor, and celebrate, the institution of slavery, with all its personal and public benefits, economic, social, biological, psychological, and so on. For example, it well serves the woman who can be fulfilled only if she finds herself at the feet of a man, his, owned and mastered, and it well serves the man who, in the proud might of his lust and health, chooses to be himself, and own and master his female, rather than be a stranger to his blood and heart. On the other hand, the Master/slave relationship, with its terrors and pains, its pleasures and fears, its values, rewards, and joys, commonly obtains, as seems appropriate, given the selections of nature, within a single species. It is there that the woman finds the man, her Master, and the man finds the woman, his slave. That would not be the case with the humans and Heruls, of course. Each of these species is alien to the other. The complementarities which, in the habits of nature, have been selected for within a single species are seldom selected for between species. Accordingly, within the Herul camp, Cornhair’s loveliness, now, to be sure, somewhat disheveled and sullied, had little relevance to her fate or treatment. Herul males, on the whole, saw little point in protecting her from the excesses of Herul females, no more than a pig, and Herul females, in turn, on the whole, needed not concern themselves with the possible intervention of the camp’s males, short of, perhaps, her killing or maiming. She had, after all, some value. She had cost a pig at the trade island.

  The relation of female to female within a single species is interesting, human female to human female, Herul female to Herul female, with respect to intraspecific competitions, for example, with respect to attractiveness, prestige, status, appeal to males, mate acquisition, and such. Along these lines, within the human species, the free woman commonly resents, and, I fear, is jealous of, the interest of the males of her species in female slaves, whom they may buy, own, and use for their pleasure, and, I suspect, resents, and, I fear, is jealous of, the fulfillments and joys of the owned, mastered slave, she lovingly, content, wholly surrendered and submitted, at her Master’s feet. Then, when dealing with the possible interactions of females of diverse species, not those without commonalities, as, say, those of female pigs and female filchen, but those where some commonalities are involved, for example, speech, rationality, sexual dimorphism, paired appendages, and such, as in the case of humans and Heruls, the natural contempt which, say, a Herul female might feel for a human female can be exacerbated, as was the case with Borchu, by a recognition that Herul males occasionally find the small, soft, well-curved, smooth-skinned bodies of their human female slaves, however surprisingly or peculiarly, of sexual interest. Thus, in such a case, the natural contempt of the Herul female for the human female, which she regards as a despicably inferior sort of thing, rather as she might regard a pig as a despicably inferior sort of thing, is upon occasion, as it was with Borchu, somewhat intensified, if not multiplied exponentially.

  From her position, Cornhair could look to her right, and see the wide, dusty expanse about which the wagons were arranged. Somewhere, she knew, at least one wagon was moved aside, to leave an opening. This arrangement, a wagon gate, makes it possible for armed men to issue forth from any part of the camp, perhaps unnoted from a given direction. It also makes it possible, if several wagons are moved simultaneously, for a large number of men to pour suddenly, perhaps unexpectedly, into the field, an advantage not obtaining with fixed walls and a gate or gates which might be kept under surveillance. There were women and children in sight, some six horses, tethered, a slave, yoked, carrying water to a trough, in two metal pails, doubtless from Venitzia; and another slave tending to a large, camp kettle, of which several could be seen, slung on their iron racks. It took four men to lift some of the camp kettles. Most slaves would be out, somewhere, under the supervision of free women, picking hineen, using their lifted skirts as baskets. In two places Herul men were sitting, cross-legged, facing one another, playing with marked bones, these cast on a blanket between them. Herul men did not attend to camp matters, save for such things as the repair and decoration of the large, colorful, enclosed wagons, like houses on wheels. They tended cattle and horses; taught boys riding and weapons, primarily the bow and lance; hunted, and, as the occasion arose, did war. Occasionally they raided other Herul camps, for horses and women. Beyond the wagons to her right, to the east, she could see, in the far distance, some of the snow-capped heights of the Barrionuevo Range. She looked to her left; somewhere to her left, far off, would be the Lothar River. To the north and south, bending in the wind, were seemingly endless waves of grass. She drew back, further, under the wagon. One of the large, maned dogs was watching her. She would not reach toward it, lest her hand be snapped off. Heruls use dogs to herd cattle, horses, prisoners, and slaves. The dog growled and moved away.

  Cornhair was hungry.

  She was often hungry in the Herul camp.

  She had crawled to Borchu yesterday evening, begging to be put to work, that she might be fed, but Borchu, the Herul female into whose care she had been placed, had declined to offer her work. White Ankles, her arms in the wooden washing pail submerged to her elbows, had smiled, washing Borchu’s hose. She had begged Borchu to cast her even a scrap of garbage, but Borchu, instead, had switched her, reminding her that one such as she, a worthless camp slave, was not to be fed for nothing. One such as she must earn her
food. She had then hung about the camp kettles, until she, with some dogs, had been driven away by the Herul women. She had fled, weeping. The supple branch had muchly stung. The life of she who had once been the rich and spoiled Lady Publennia Calasalia, of the Larial Calasalii, of the honestori, of the patricians, even of the senatorial class, had muchly changed. She who had squandered property was now herself property; her silks had been exchanged for coarse cloth, her jewels for a slave bell locked on her neck. Most devastatingly, she had been marked; on her left thigh, high, under the hip, fixed in place, burned in, was the small, lovely slave rose. She well knew its meaning, and so would others, within the empire, and elsewhere. She was goods, a slave.

  The men were mostly out with the herds. Many left early in the morning, to return at dusk, passing others who were then leaving the camp, who, in turn, would return to the wagons near dawn.

  A slave such as Cornhair, a camp slave, was more likely to be fed by the Herul men than the Herul women. One might always beg to braid a rope, which might be used to bind them; to smooth out the fur of a fellow’s boots with teeth and tongue, to rub down saddles, to polish accouterments, and such. And sometimes they had made her remove her clothes, and perform the “pleading dance” of the female slave. In the empire, there were many “pleading dances,” pleadings to be spared, to be permitted to live, sometimes permitted to female captives, pleadings to be forgiven, pleadings not to be whipped, pleadings to be retained by a Master considering her sale, pleadings to be fed, pleadings for sexual attention and sexual gratification, and such. Among the Heruls, the pleading dances of human females were usually pleadings to be fed. Needless to say, it is one thing for a human female to perform a pleading dance before Heruls who, for the most part, regard her as an alien life form, and quite another to perform such a dance before free males of her own species. The common outcome of such a dance before males of her own species is that she will be dragged away from the fire, into the darkness, usually by the hair, and reminded of what it is to be a slave in the arms of a Master. Such dances are often performed on the slave block, to intensify bids. Many slave houses, naturally, provide instruction in such dances, and several others, and woe to the slave who does not learn them well. In such dance, she is to transform herself into an unabashed, shameless, lascivious object of desire. Such dance well impresses upon her that she is a slave, and only that. Too, such dance has its effect not only upon Masters, but upon the slave herself, such that she is now likely to beg for their touch, that they may relieve her inevitably aroused needs. A trained slave, too, of course, is likely to bring more on the block. So, as would be expected, dance, slave dance, of course, constitutes an integral portion of a slave’s curriculum. This is natural, as it is the very raison d’être, the very reason for being, of the slave to serve men, and provide them with great pleasure. That is what she is for. Sometimes the Heruls would have the human female slaves remove their clothing, and roll about, twisting, and squirming, on the ground. The point of this, for the Heruls, at least commonly, seems to have little or nothing to do with the girls, for they are, after all, slaves, but seems rather to have more to do with some sort of satisfaction they derive from having the women of the enemy at their feet, obedient and prostrate. On the other hand, from their point of view, the exhibition of diverse forms of plunder, say, gold and silver vessels, marble statuary, jewels, paintings, rich, well-woven carpets, and such, would serve much the same purpose, an exhibition of acquired goods, preferably taken from enemies. A visiting Otung, for example, a merchant, ambassador, or such, treated by Heruls to such an exhibition, is less likely to be humiliated or insulted, as to be pleased, as the women are slaves. Indeed he may appreciate the matter as a spectacle thoughtfully presented for his entertainment. On the other hand, should this behavior be inflicted on a free woman, blood might be shed. Lesser things have initiated raids, even wars.