Mercenaries of Gor coc-21 Page 8

  "Of course," she said.

  Slaves are goods. Thus, whether they are protected, or defended, or not, depends on the decisions of free persons, like the defense or protection of other goods, whatever they might be, for example, sacks of gold, crates of sandals, tethered tharlarion, caged vulos, and strings of fish. Many a caravan has saved itself by leaving lovely slaves behind in the desert, to slow the pursuit of marauders. So, too, more than one merchantman has saved itself by jettisoning beauties too luscious to be left behind by lustful pursuers. Better to lose part of a cargo, they reason, than all of it.

  "Do you wish to come with us?" asked Hurtha.

  "Yes," she said.

  "Do you come with us as a woman?" he asked.

  "Yes," she said. "I will come with youa€”as a woman,"

  He threw the dagger, with its sheath, to the side of the road.

  She looked at it. I took her by the arm and conducted her to where Tula knelt, her head to the dirt. "This is a free woman," I told Tula. "She will be traveling with us," Tula, scarcely lifting her head, pressed her lips to the sandals of Boabissia, kissing them. "Mistress," she said. I then conducted Boabissia to the vicinity of Feiqa. Feiqa had once been the Lady Charlotte, of Samnium, a high lady in that city, one of aristocratic birth and upbringing, from one of her finest families, one prominent on her Street of Coins. Feiqa pressed her lips to the sandals of Boabissia, kissing them. "Mistress," she whispered. "What?" inquired Boabissia, imperiously. Feiqa again pressed her lips to Boabissia's sandals, kissing them. "Mistress," she said, trembling. "These slaves," I said to Boabissia, "as you are a free woman, are at your disposal. On the other hand, you do not own them. Accordingly you are not to mutilate them or cause them permanent harm or serious injury unless they prove themselves to be, in some small way, at least, disobedient or displeasing." "I understand," said Boabissia.

  "Even then," I said, "it will be expected that you would first obtain the permission of their master."

  "That is a common courtesy," said Boabissia.

  "You may count, of course," I said, "on his understanding and sympathy, and his respect for your wishes, as those of a free woman."

  "Of course," said Boabissia.

  "In lesser matters of course," I said, "where lesser exactitudes and punishments might be in order, you may, as any free person, at your whim, and without consulting the master, subject them to typical disciplines, things useful in helping them to keep in mind what they are."

  "I understand," said Boabissia.

  The slaves trembled. She was a free woman. The slave has some defense against a vital powerful male, female submission behaviors, indeed, the piteous and desperate prostration of her beauty and service at the feet of his authority and lust. This defense, however, minimal and uncertain as it may be, seldom avails her against the displeasure of the hostile free female.

  "Oh!" said Boabissia.

  Hurtha had taken her under the arms and swung her up to the wagon box.

  "Good," said Mincon. "We must be on our way."

  To, be sure, the other wagons from this camp were now more than a pasang or two down the road.

  "We will never catch up," said Mincon.

  "On your feet, imbonded sluts," I said.

  Tula and Feiqa leapt up, Tula in her neck chain, Feiqa with the rope on her neck.

  "May I speak, Master?" asked Feiqa.

  "Yes," I said.

  She touched her earrings. I saw that she was incredibly pleased to have them. Not only were they beautiful, though, indeed, they were not expensive, but in Gorean eyes, they much confirmed, deeply and positively, her status upon her. I could see she was thrilled to wear them. What a slave they made her! "Master," she said, "may I sometimes be given slave silk?"

  I smiled. None but a slave would put on slave silk. It is so tantalizingly beautiful and diaphanous that it seems to make a woman almost more naked than naked, and yet in such a way, driving a man almost mad with passion, that he can scarcely control himself, that he can scarcely rest, or think, having seen her in such a way, until he can put his hands on her, and part it, and thus reveal her as wholly bared, and helpless, and his. "Perhaps," I said.

  "Thank you, Master," she whispered happily. I was pleased with Feiqa. She was now beginning to get in touch with her sexuality, indeed, with the deepest sexuality in the human female, that of the slave.

  I saw the fists of Boabissia clench.

  "Is anything wrong?" I asked.

  "Put the slut back, behind the wagon," said Boabissia, "where she, like the animal she is, led, may follow with the other."

  "Please?" I asked.

  "Yes, please," said Boabissia, angrily.

  "Very well," I said. I decided I would do this, at least this time, in deference to the wishes of Boabissia. She was after all, a free woman. I gathered she did not wish to glance to the side and see the beautiful, collared, scantily clad slave. She preferred, for whatever reason, it seemed, but one apparently no unusual for free women, to have her behind the wagon, out of sight. I myself, on the other hand, would have preferred keeping Feiqa at the side of the wagon. Indeed, I would rather have enjoyed, from time to time, looking down approvingly on the helplessness and seminudity of my nearby, neck-roped chattel. Surely, too, I had a right to do this if, and whenever, I pleased. It was merely another of the many, unlimited prerogatives attaching to my relationship to her, that of master to slave. I considered keeping her where she was. Still, Boabissia did not want her there, and Boabissia was, after all, a free woman. I supposed I should respect her wishes, at least once in a while. Too, I had earlier decided to move Feiqa. There did not seem much point in changing my mind, now. Too, there was much to be said objectively for putting Feiqa back of the wagon. Perhaps in indulging my own pleasure in seeing her I had been, inadvertently, too permissive with her. Surely I did not wish her to grow arrogant. Too, considering what she was, it was fitting that she was behind the wagon, attached to it by her neck rope.

  "Master?" asked Feiqa.

  "Be silent," I said.

  "Yes, Master," she said.

  I untied her tether and led her to the back of the wagon. There were three rings there, the central ring, to which Tula had been chained, generally used for tethering, and two smaller, side rings, auxiliary rings, sometimes used for tethering, sometimes used for drawing a second wagon or cart. I tied her tether to the side ring on the right. She was smiling. I think she enjoyed being disturbing to Boabissia. To be sure, she should watch her step in such matters. I did tie her hands behind her back. I heard Boabissia gasp, and then she turned away. Such a tying makes a woman so helpless.

  "We are ready," I called.

  "Ho!" cried Mincon to his beast. He shook the reins and cracked the whip. The wagon moved forward, and rolled up onto the stones of the Genesian Road. In a bit we were moving forward. Hurtha and I walked beside the wagon. Boabissia, moving with the motion of the wagon, swaying with its motion, rode on the wagon box. Tula and Feiqa, her hands tied behind her, followed behind. I looked back, and they looked down, not meeting my eyes. Both were lovely. It was fitting, of course, that they followed on their tethers.

  Both were domestic animals.

  "We will never catch up," said Mincon, grumbling. Then he cracked the whip again.

  6 Hurtha's Feast

  "Hurtha," said I, "what have you there?"

  "Fruits, dried and fresh, candies, nuts, four sorts of meats, choice, all of them, fresh-baked bread, selected pastries," responded he, his arms full, "and some superb paga and delicate ka-la-na."

  "Where did you get such things?" I asked.

  "They were intended for the mess of the high officers, up the road," he said. "They did not arrive there apparently," I said.

  "Have no fear," he said. "I purchased them honestly."

  "You bought them surreptitiously from sutlers," I speculated. "To be sure," he said, "the negotiations were conducted behind a wagon. On the other hand, it is surely not up to me to criticize the discretion o
f such fellows, nor how and where they conduct their business."

  "I see," I said. I hoped earnestly that if these dealings were found out that any penalties which might be involved, in particular, such things as torturings and impalements, would be visited upon the sutlers and not on their customers, and particularly not on folks who might be traveling with their customers. To be sure, the rigors sometimes technically contingent upon such discoveries and exposures seldom actually resulted in the enactment of dismal sanctions, maimings, executions, and such, bribes instead, gifts and so on, usually changing hands on such occasions.

  "Feast heartily," said Hurtha, unloading, half spilling, his acquisitions near the fire at our campsite.

  "You should not have done this," I said to him.

  "Nonsense," he said, depreciatingly, smiling, letting me know that lavish gratitude on my part, however justified, was not even necessary.

  "This is the food of generals," I said.

  "It is excellent," agreed Hurtha.

  "It is the food of generals," I said.

  "There is plenty left for them," Hurtha assured me.

  "You should not of done this," I said.

  "It is time that I paid my share of the expenses," he said.

  "I see," I said. It was difficult to argue with that.

  "These are Ta grapes, I am told," he said, "from the terraces of Cos." "Yes, they are," I said. "Or at least they are Ta grapes,"

  "Cos is an island," he said.

  "I have heard that," I said. "These various things must have been terribly expensive."

  "Yes," said Hurtha. "But money is no object."

  "That is fortunate," I said.

  "I am an Alar," Hurtha explained. "Have a stuffed mushroom."

  I pondered the likely prices of a stuffed mushroom in a black-market transaction in a war-torn district, one turned into a near desert by the predations of organized foragers, in particular, the price of such a mushroom perhaps diverted at great hazard from the tables of Cosian generals.

  "Have two," said Hurtha.

  My heart suddenly began to beat with great alarm. "This is a great deal of food," I said, "to have been purchased by seventeen copper tarsks, and two tarsk bits." That was, as I recalled, the sum total of monetary wealth which Hurtha had brought with him to the supply train, that or something much in its neighborhood.

  "Oh," said Hurtha, "it cost more than that."

  "I had thought it might," I said.

  "Have a mushroom," said Hurtha. "They are quite good."

  "What did all this cost?" I asked.

  "I do not recall," said Hurtha. "But half of the change is yours." "How much change do you have?" I asked.

  "Fourteen copper tarsks," he said. "You may keep them," I said.

  "Very well," he said.

  "I am quite hungry, Hurtha," said Boabissia. "May I have some food?" "Would you like to beg?" he asked.

  "No," she said.

  "Oh, very well," said Hurtha. He then held out to her the plate of mushrooms. It did not seem to me that she needed to take that many. "Ah, Mincon, my friend, my dear fellow," said Hurtha. "Come, join us!"

  I supposed he, too, would dive into the mushrooms. Still, one could not begrudge dear Mincon some greed in this matter, for he was a fine driver, and a splendid fellow. We had been with him now four days on the road. To be sure, we had received a late start on each of these days, and each day later than the preceding. It was difficult to get an early start with slaves such as Tula and Feiqa in the blankets. Boabissia, a free woman, must wait for us, of course, while we pleasured ourselves with the slaves. I think she did not much enjoy this. At any rate, she occasionally seemed somewhat impatient. Too, her irritability suggested that her own needs, and rather cruelly, might quite possibly be upon her.

  Feiqa and Tula, those lovely properties, hovered in the background. I supposed that they, too, would want to be fed. I dared not speculate at what time we might be leaving in the morning. I hoped we could arouse Mincon and Hurtha at least by noon. There was even paga and ka-la-na. Mincon began to pick mushrooms off the plate and feed them to Tula. Did he not know she was a slave? "Thank you, Master," she said, being fed by hand. Sometimes slaves are not permitted touch food with their own hands. Sometimes, in such a case, they are fed by hand; at other times their food might be thrown to them or put out for them in pans, and such, from which then, not using their hands, on all fours, head down, they must feed, in the manner of she-quadrupeds, or slaves, if it be the master's pleasure.

  Another mushroom disappeared. Had Tula not had some bread earlier?

  "Have a mushroom," said Hurtha. Mincon even gave a mushroom to Feiqa. I was watching. He was certainly a generous fellow with those mushrooms.

  "No, thank you," I said. I wondered if, in the eating of such a mushroom, one became an inadvertent accomplice in some heinous misadventure.

  "They are good," Hurtha insisted.

  "I am sure they are," I said. I was particularly fond of stuffed mushrooms. There was no problem for the slaves, of course. No one would blame them, any more than one would blame a pet sleen for eating something thrown his way. Mincon and Boabissia might get off, I thought, watching them eat. After all, they did not know where the food came from. Mincon was a trusted driver, and a well-known good fellow. Boabissia was fresh from the wagons, She might be forgiven. Too, she was pretty. Hurtha, of course, might be impaled. I wondered if I counted as being guilty in this business whether I ate a mushroom or not. I knew where they came from, for example. It would be too bad to be impaled, I thought, and not have had a mushroom, at all. "What are they stuffed with?" I asked Hurtha.

  "Sausage," he said.

  "Tarsk?" I asked.

  "Of course," he said.

  "My favorite," I said. "I shall have one."

  "Alas," said Hurtha. "They are all gone."

  "Oh," I said. "Say," I said, "there seems to be a fellow lurking over there, by the wagons."

  Hurtha turned about, looking.

  It was undoubtedly a supply officer. I supposed it would be wrong to put a knife between his ribs. I did, however for at least a moment, feverishly consider the practicalities that might be involved in doing so.

  "Ho!" cried Hurtha, cheerfully, to the fellow.

  The fellow, who was a bit portly, shrank back, as though in alarm, near one of the wagons. Perhaps he was not a supply officer. He did not have a dozen guardsmen at his back, for instance.

  "Do you know him?" I asked. "Of course," said Hurtha. "He is my benefactor!"

  I looked again.

  "Come," called Hurtha, cheerily. "Join us! Welcome!"

  I feared the fellow was about to take to his heels.

  "I am sorry the mushrooms are all gone," said Hurtha to me.

  "That is all right," I said.

  "Try a spiced verr cube," he suggested.

  "Perhaps later," I said, uneasily. The portly fellow near the wagon had not approached, nor either had he left. He seemed to be signaling me, or attempting to attract my attention. But perhaps that was my imagination. When Hurtha glanced about he did not, certainly, seem to be doing so. I did not know him, as far as I knew.

  "They are very good," said Hurtha, "though, to be sure, they are not a match for the stuffed mushrooms."

  "Excuse me," said Mincon, "but I think that fellow over there would like to speak to you."

  "Excuse me," I said to Hurtha.

  "Certainly," he said.

  In a moment I had approached the portly fellow by the wagon. "Sir?" I asked. "I do not mean to intrude," he said, "but by any chance, do you know the fellow sitting over there by the fire?"

  "Why, yes," I said. "He is Mincon, a wagoner."

  "Not him," said the fellow. "The other one."

  "What other one?" I asked.

  "The only other one," he said, "the big fellow, with yellow, braided hair, and the mustache."

  "That one," I said.

  "Yes," said he.

  "He is called Hurtha," I said.

/>   "Are you traveling with him?" he asked.

  "I may have been," I speculated. "One sees many folks on the road. You know how it is."

  "Are you responsible for him?" he asked.

  "I hope not," I said. "Why?"

  "Not an ahn ago," he said, "he leaped out at me from behind a wagon in the darkness, brandishing an ax. "The Alars, at least one, are upon you! he cried."

  "That sounds like Hurtha," I admitted.

  "It was he," averred the fellow.

  "You might be mistaken," I said.

  "There are not many like him with the wagons," said the fellow.

  "Perhaps there is at least one other," I said.

  "It was he," said the fellow.

  "You can't be sure," I said.

  "I am sure," he said.

  "Oh," I said.

  "He then, brandishing his ax, importuned me for a loan. I was speechless with terror. I feared he might mistake my reticence for hesitation."

  "I understand," I said, sympathetically.

  " "Take it, " I cried. " "Take my purse, my gold, all of it! " " "As a gift, he asked, seemingly delighted, though perhaps somewhat puzzled. "Yes, I cried. "Yes!

  "I see," I said. To be sure, when Hurtha had seen this fellow a few moments ago, he had referred to him not as his "creditor," but rather, now that I recalled it, warmly, as his "benefactor."

  "Shall I summon guardsmen from down the road?" he asked.

  "I do not think that will be necessary," I said.

  "In that purse," he said, "there were eighteen golden staters, from Tyros, three golden tarn disks, one from Port Kar, and two from Ar, sixteen silver tarsks from Tabor, twenty copper tarsks, and some fifteen tarsk bits."

  "You keep very careful records," I said.

  "I am from Tabor," he said.

  "Probably you are a merchant, too," I said.

  "Yes," he said.

  I had feared as much. The merchants of Tabor are famed for the accuracy of their accounts. "Well?" he said.

  "Would you care to join us?" I asked.

  "No," he said.

  "There is plenty to eat," I said.

  "I am not surprised," he said.

  "It is not my fault," I said, "if you, of your own free will, decided to make my friend a generous gift."