Swordsmen of Gor Read online

  I thought she might profit from a bout with the whip.

  That implement is ideally suited to reminding a slave that she is a slave.

  I wondered that he did not strip and tie Constantina, and then let her squirm, jerk, and weep, under the implement.

  I thought she would profit muchly from its attentions.

  Constantina seems a rather fine name for a slave, I thought. It is not unknown, of course, as a free woman’s name. It did seem pretentious for a slave.

  Her tunic seemed a bit ample for that of a slave, as the hem of its skirt came to her knees, and the neckline was modestly high, though open enough to show the collar.

  The tunic itself was heavier and richer, and more closely woven, than was typical of such garments.

  It was almost as though she might have designed it not so much as the garment of a slave, as a garment designed to resemble that of a slave.

  She seemed to have excellent legs. I wondered that her master had not then, in his vanity, chosen to show them off. Gorean masters tend to be very proud of their slaves, rather as men of Earth are proud of their dogs and horses.

  I thought she was nicely figured, though the size, weight and texture of the tunic tended to conceal this to some extent.

  The tunic would be slipped on, over the head. There was, accordingly, no disrobing loop at the left shoulder.

  On the other hand the “strip” command may be obeyed, even so, with grace and alacrity. The garment is usually slipped back over the head as the girl kneels.

  Even in response to a simple, direct command, as suggested, the girl is expected to be graceful. Clumsiness is not acceptable in a slave; she is not a free woman. She is quite different, you see; she is a slave.

  There are, of course, a number of disrobing commands in Gorean, which are less curt and brutal than the direct, blunt, unadorned “Strip.” For example, one might hear “Remove your clothing,” “Bare yourself,” “Disrobe,” “Show me a slave,” “I would see my slave,” “Why are you clothed before me?” “Exhibit my property,” “Display yourself,” “You need not wear your tunic at the moment,” “Remove the impediments to my vision,” “You are lovelier stripped than clothed, are you not?” “What do I own?” “To the collar and brand, girl,” “How were you on the block?” And so on.

  There was, as noted, a collar on her neck.

  I wondered if it was locked.

  I supposed so.

  If locked, I wondered who held the key.

  Surely not she, as she was a slave.

  In her way, she was not unattractive, but that was to be expected, in one who was a slave, or expected to pass as a slave.

  Personally, on the other hand, I thought most Goreans would not have bid on her, as, clearly, she was not yet slave soft, or slave ready. There are enormous differences among women in these matters.

  Although, as I have suggested, she was not unattractive, it must be understood that this was in an Earth sort of way, the way in which many Earth females may be accounted attractive, attractive more in the sense of what they might become, how perhaps they might be, rather than in the sense of what they currently are. By this I mean, despite certain suitabilities of face and figure, she had something of the tightness, the apparent inhibitions, the uncertainties, and confusions, masked with the compensatory arrogance, nastiness, and insolence, of many Earth females, afflicted with the customary ambivalences toward their sex, comprehensible enough, one supposes, given their backgrounds, educations, and conditionings, their subjection to an environment seemingly engineered to produce, depending on a variety of circumstances, and the person, symptoms or tortures ranging from anxiety and neurosis to ill temper, misery, nastiness, pettiness, boredom, and depression.

  “The soup is hot,” said Constantina. “Surely you can tell that, stupid slave. Hurry, wrap the tabuk strips on their skewers, and put them to the fire. Are the suls and turpah ready?”

  “If my eyes do not deceive me,” said Cecily, testily, “my neck is not the only neck which is encircled with a slave band.”

  Constantina drew back her hand, as though to strike Cecily, but she stopped, suddenly, angrily, as Cecily, eyes flashing, was clearly prepared to return the blow, or worse. Fights amongst slave girls can be very disagreeable, with rolling about, clawing, biting, scratching, and such. One is reminded somewhat of the altercations that sometimes take place between sleen, in territorial disputes, mate competition, the contesting of a kill, and so on. In such frays, in the tangling, snarling, twisting, and swirling about, it is sometimes difficult to tell where one beast leaves off and the other begins. It can be worth an arm to try to separate fighting sleen.

  “Why not have her serve naked,” said Constantina. “Is that not commonly done with collared sluts?”

  “Why not have them both serve naked?” I suggested.

  Constantina turned white. Had she never served so, humbly, hoping to please, fearing the switch if she did not?

  “No, no,” said Pertinax, soothingly.

  Constantina’s color returned. She seemed shaken. I found this of interest. Did she not know that, as a slave, she was a domestic animal, as much as a verr or tarsk, and was not permitted modesty?

  Cecily seemed pleased at this slight turn of events.

  Constantina’s hair was blonde and her eyes were blue. Cecily was a dark-eyed brunette. Constantina’s hair was longer than Cecily’s hair, and Constantina was a bit taller than Cecily, and a bit thinner than Cecily. Both would look well at the end of a man’s chain. I supposed Constantina’s hair must be a natural blonde, as Goreans tend to be very strict about such things. Few slavers will try to pass off a girl as being, say, blonde or auburn-haired, if that is not the natural hair color of the slave. In some cases their stock has been confiscated by the city and their establishment burned to the ground. If a girl with dyed hair is brought to Gor her head is normally shaved in the pens, that it may grow back in its natural color. Most slaves, like Cecily, are brunette, except in the north, where blondes are more common. I wondered if Constantina had been purchased in the light of someone’s notion of what might constitute an attractive slave. If this were the case, I was surprised an auburn-haired girl had not been chosen, as auburn hair tends to be prized in most markets. I wondered if Constantina’s buyer had been aware of that. To be sure, he might have found such women appealing, blondes, personally, for some reason. There is a supposition amongst some buyers that blonde slaves tend to be more sexually inert, and less pathetically needful in the furs, than dark-haired slaves, but this supposition is mistaken. Whatever the case may be initially, once the slave fires have been lit in a woman’s belly, whatever her coloring, and such, you have a slave at your feet. The blonde can whimper, beg, and crawl as needfully as any other slave.

  It is pleasant to have women so, at one’s feet.

  To be sure, a woman whose slave fires have not been ignited may have little understanding of this sort of thing, little understanding of the needs, sensations, miseries, and torments to which their embonded sisters are subject.

  It is little wonder then that free women commonly hold female slaves in contempt, despising them for their needs.

  How weak they are, they think.

  But how alive they actually are!

  And how the free woman, fearing to explore the edges of her consciousness, uneasily, perhaps angrily, perhaps inconsolably, senses how much she is missing, herself, to be found only in the arms of a dominant male, a master!

  I glanced about the hut. I saw no slave whip on its convenient peg. This seemed an odd omission in a Gorean dwelling, at least one in which there was a slave, or slaves. It is not that the whip is often used. Indeed, normally, it is seldom, if ever, used, for there is no call for it. The girl knows it will be used if she is in the least bit displeasing, and so there is seldom a call for it. That it is there, and it will be used, if the master sees fit, is usually all that is necessary to keep it securely on its peg.

  I had the sense that his s
lave, Constantina, was surly. It was almost as though she were distempered, to be expected to attend to her duties. I wondered if she attended to the hut, the firewood, and such, at all. Did Pertinax himself, our supposed forester, attend to such things? Were there other slaves about?

  “I suppose,” I said to Pertinax, “you obtain little news here, so far from Port Kar.”

  “One hears things occasionally,” he said. “Transients, like yourself, a coastal peddler, the arrival twice yearly of an inspector and scribe, to review the trees, to inventory the reserves.”

  “You suggested earlier,” I said, “that things might have changed in Ar?”

  “Did I?” he asked.

  “I think so,” I said.

  “A surmise,” he said, “based on the appearance of many intruders.”

  “Surely harvesters, loggers, and such, come occasionally to cull the forests.”

  “Of course,” he said, uneasily I thought.

  “When will they be due?” I asked.

  “One does not know,” he said. “It is intermittent, depending on the needs of the arsenal, of the fleet.”

  “The fellows who disembarked from the ship,” I said, “did not seem harvesters, loggers, or such.”

  “No,” he said. “Not they.”

  “Who are they?” I asked. “What is their business?”

  “I do not know,” he said.

  “The logs must be taken to the coast, for shipment,” I said.

  “Of course,” he said.

  “I saw no track amidst the trees, no road,” I said.

  “It is elsewhere,” he said.

  “I saw no stables for draft tharlarion,” I said.

  “They are elsewhere,” he said.

  “I am surprised there are no crews here, sawyers and carpenters, to dress and shape the wood, to cut planks and joints, such things.”

  “It is not the season,” he said.

  “I see,” I said.

  I had then more evidence that our friend, Pertinax, and perhaps his slave, Constantina, were not what they pretended to be. For one who did not know the ways of Port Kar, it would be a natural assumption, one I pretended to make, that dressing crews would shape and plank a great deal of the wood before shipping it to the south. Indeed, I had often thought that that would be a sensible practice. On the other hand, the artisans of the arsenal, under the command of the master shipwrights, attended to these matters in the arsenal itself. The rationale for this, as it had been explained to me, was that each mast, each strake, each plank, each article of the ship, was to be shaped and customized under the supervision of the arsenal’s naval architects. Accordingly, it would be rare, if it was allowed at all, given the practices of Port Kar, and perhaps the vanity and arrogance of her craftsmen, intending to control to the greatest extent possible every detail of their work, to allow this carpentry to take place in a remote venue in which they had no direct supervision.

  I would learn later, however, something earlier suspected, that something along these lines was taking place within the forest itself, outside the reserves, some pasangs to the south.

  It had to do with the intruders, and the river, the Alexandra.

  And it had little to do, I conjectured, even then, with the reserves of Port Kar and the needs of her arsenal.

  “Foresters,” I said, “normally cluster their huts, in small palisaded enclaves, but I saw no other huts here, nor a palisade.”

  Constantina cast a swift glance at me, and Pertinax looked down.

  “The village is elsewhere,” he said. “This is an outpost hut, near the coast, where we may watch for round ships.”

  “I see,” I said.

  The “round ships” are cargo ships.

  The Gorean “round ship” is not round, of course, though the Gorean would translate as I have it. It is merely that the ratio of keel to beam is greater in the long ship, or ship of war, more length of keel to width of beam, than in the “round ship.”

  The round ship is designed for the carrying of cargo. The long ship is designed for speed and maneuverability. It is like a knife in the water.

  “You are of the warriors, I take it,” said Pertinax.

  “Why should you think so?” I asked.

  “You carry yourself as a warrior,” said Pertinax. “Also, your weapon seems such as theirs.”

  It was the Gorean short sword, or gladius, light, easily unsheathed, convenient, designed for wickedly close work, to move behind the guard of longer, heavier weapons, to slip about buffeted shields or bucklers. It was pointed for thrusting, double-edged for slashing. Lifted and shaken it could part silk.

  “I have fought,” I said.

  “You could be a mercenary,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But I think you are of the warriors,” he said.

  “Perhaps of the assassins,” I said.

  “You do not have the eyes of an assassin,” he said.

  “What sort of eyes are those?” I asked.

  “Those of a fee killer, an assassin,” he said.

  “I see,” I said.

  “You are a tarnsman, are you not?” asked Pertinax.

  “I have not said so,” I said.

  “But you are, are you not?”

  “I have ridden,” I said.

  “Those who know the tarn are not as other men,” he said.

  “They are as other men,” I said. “It is merely that they have learned the tarn.”

  “Then they are different afterwards,” he said.

  “Perhaps,” I said.

  “If they have survived,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Many have died learning the tarn. The tarn is a dangerous bird, aggressive, carnivorous, often treacherous. The wingspan of many tarns is in the neighborhood of forty feet. Humans are small beside them. Many human beings will not approach them. It, like many wild beasts, can sense fear, and that stimulates its aggression. In facing a tarn a human being has little but will to place between himself and the beak and talons. To be sure many tarns are domesticated, so to speak, raised from the egg in the vicinity of humans, taught to expect their food from them, accustomed to harnessing from the age of the chick, and so on. In the past domestic tarns were sometimes freed, to hunt in the wild, and later to return to their cots, sometimes to the blasts of the tarn whistle. That is seldom done now. A hungry tarn is quite dangerous, you see, and the reed of its domesticity is fragile. There is no assurance that its strike will be directed on a tabuk or wild tarsk, or verr. Too, it is not unknown for such tarns to revert, so to speak. I think no tarn is that far from the wild. In their blood, it is said, are the wind and the sky.

  I thought of a tarn once known, a sable monster, whose challenge scream could be heard for pasangs, Ubar of the Skies.

  There had been a woman, Elizabeth Cardwell, whom I, for her own good, had hoped to rescue from the perils of Gor, and return to Earth, but she had fled with the tarn, to escape that fate. When the tarn returned I drove him away in a foolish rage. I had encountered the tarn again, years later, in the Barrens, and we had again been one, but at the end of local wars I had freed him again, that he might again take his place as the master of a mighty flock, that he might be again awing in broad, lonely skies, be again a prince amongst clouds, a lord amongst winds, that he might be again regent and king ruling over the vast grasslands he surveyed.

  The woman, predictably, had fallen slave.

  Encountering her I had left her slave.

  I had encountered her again, later, in the Tahari.

  Once, I would have given her the gift of Earth, returning her to the liberties, such as they are, of her native world, but she had fled. She had chosen Gor. It had been her choice.

  Where was she now?

  She was now in a collar, where she belonged.

  I supposed I should sell her, perhaps to the mercy of Cosians, or into the beaded leather collars of the Barrens, or perhaps south to Schendi. Those of the Barrens and Schend
i know well what to do with white female slaves.

  She had made her choice.

  She had wagered. She had lost.

  She looked well, as other women, in her collar.

  “But you are a tarnsman, are you not?” persisted Pertinax.

  “I have ridden,” I said. I was not clear why this might be important to him.

  “I think the tabuk strips, the suls and turpah, the soup, all, must be ready,” said Pertinax. “Let us have supper.”

  The hut was now redolent with the odors of which, for a forester, at least, must have seemed a feast.

  “There is paga,” said Pertinax.

  “Of the brewery of Temus of Ar?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Pertinax.

  “It must be rare in the forests,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Pertinax.

  “It is my favorite,” I said.

  “I am glad to hear it,” said Pertinax.

  “Serve the men, slave,” said Constantina.

  Cecily looked at her, startled.

  “Surely you will both serve,” I said.

  “He is right,” said Pertinax, cautiously. It seemed he might be afraid to incur the displeasure of the slave.

  Angrily, Constantina went to the side to fetch trenchers and utensils, to assist Cecily, who was already, ladle in hand, at the kettle, apportioning servings into two bowls, forward. Two other bowls were in the background, which might do for the slaves, later, were they given permission to eat. The first food or drink is always taken by the master, but, commonly, following this, the slave receives permission to share in the meal.

  Cecily, kneeling, head down, placed one of the bowls before Pertinax, which was proper, as he was the host. I was then similarly served.

  Constantina, irritably, was placing food on the trenchers, flinging it onto the simple, wooden surfaces. I noted that she was sharing out, already, four trenchers. How did she know she would be given permission to eat? I noticed she put very little on one of the trenchers. I supposed that was the one for Cecily. This irritated me. Cecily after all, was the slave of a guest. I don’t think Cecily noticed, at the time. She did later.