Captive of Gor (41 page)

you for the female slave,’ he said. And one of them said to him, ‘And we thank

you, Rask of Treve, for our lives.’ Their journey back to the camp of Haakon of

Skjern, afoot, will be long. Rask of Treve then brought me to his camp, where he

made me his slave.”

I looked up at Ute. “You wear the Kajira talmit,” I said.

“The first girl of the work slaves,” said Ute, “had been sold shortly before my

capture. There had been dissensions, factions, among the girls, each wanting one

of their own party to be first girl. I was new. I had no allegiances. Rask of

Treve, by his will, and because, for some reason, he trusted me, set me above

them all.”

“Am I to be a work slave?” I asked.

“Did you expect to be sent to the tent of the women?’ asked Ute.

“Yes,” I said. I had indeed expected to live in the tent of the women, not in a

dark shed, among work girls.

Ute laughed. “You are a work slave.”

I put my head down.

“You were captured, I understand,” said Ute, “southwest of the village of

Rorus.”

I did not speak.

“Accordingly,” said Ute, “you were still seeking my village of Rarir.”

“No!” I cried.

“From whence,” said Ute, “you would have sought the island of Teletus.”

(pg. 287) “No, no!” I cried.

“And on that island,” she said, “you would have presented yourself to my foster

parents, as my friend.”

I shook my head in terror.

“Perhaps they might even have adopted you, in my place, as their daughter,”

suggested Ute.

“Oh no, Ute!” I cried. “No! No!”

“Your life would then have been quite easy, and pleasant,” said Ute.

I put my head down, in terror, to her feet.

By the hair, Ute, bending over me, yanked my head painfully up. “Who betrayed

Ute?” she demanded.

I shook my head.

Ute’s fists were excruciating in my hair.

“Who?’ she demanded.

I could not speak, so terrified I was.

She shook my head viciously.

“Who?” she demanded.

“I did,” I cried. “I did!”

“Speak as a slave!’ demanded Ute.

“El-in-or betrayed Ute!” I cried. “El-in-or betrayed Ute!”

“Worthless slave,” I heard a voice behind me say.

I turned, as well as I could, and saw, to my dismay, Rask of Treve. I closed my

eyes, sobbing.

“It is as you said,” said Rask of Treve, to Ute, “she is worthless.”

Ute removed her hands from my hair, and I put my head down.

“She is a liar, and a thief, and a traitress,” said Rask of Treve. “She is

utterly worthless.”

“Yet,” said Ute, “in a camp such as this, we may find uses for such a girl,

there are many menial tasks to which she might be well applied.”

“See that she is worked well,” said Rask of Treve.

“I shall,” said Ute, “Master.”

Rask of Treve strode from where I knelt, leaving me with Ute.

I looked up at her, tears in my eyes. I shook my head. “You told him?’ I

whispered.

(pg. 288) “He commanded me to speak,” said Ute, “and I, as a slave, must need

obey.”

I shook my head.

“Your master knows you well, Slave,” said Ute, smiling.

I put down my head, sobbing. “No, no.”

“Guard!” called Ute.

A guard approached.

“Unbind the slave,” said Ute.

I lifted my tightly bound wrists to the guard, and he undid the knots. I still

knelt.

“You may now leave us,” said Ute to the guard, and he left.

“Am I truly a work slave?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Ute.

“Am I under your authority?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Ute.

“Ute!” I cried. “I did not mean to betray you! I was frightened! Forgive me,

Ute! I did not mean to betray you!”

“Go into the shed,” said Ute. “There will be work for you tonight, in the

kitchen shed. Tomorrow will be soon enough for you to eat.”

“Please, Ute!” I wept.

“Go into the shed, Slave,” said she.

I rose to my feet and, naked, entered the dark shed. Ute closed the door behind

me, plunging me into darkness. I heard the hasps cover the staples, one after

the other, and then I heard the heavy padlocks snapped shut.

The floor of the shed was dirt, but here and there, under my feet, I felt a

rounded metal bar. I fell to my hands and knees and, with my fingers in the

dirt, felt the floor. Under the dirt, an inch or so, and in some places exposed,

was a heavy gridwork of bars.

Girls locked within this shed would not tunnel their way to freedom.

There was no escape.

Suddenly, locked within, alone in the darkness, I grew panic-stricken.

I flung myself against the door, pounding on it in the darkness with my fists.

Then, sobbing, I slipped to my knees (pg. 289) and scratched at it with my

fingernails. “Ute!” I sobbed. “Ute!”

Then I crawled to one side of the door and sat down, my knees drawn up under my

chin, in the darkness. I was lonely and miserable. I felt the steel collar, so

smooth and obdurate, fastened on my throat.

I heard a tiny scurrying, of a tiny brush urt, in the darkness.

I screamed.

Then it was silent, and again I sat alone in the darkness, my knees drawn up

under my chin. In the darkness I smelled the scent of the Torian perfume.

* * *

Ute was not particularly cruel to me, as I had feared she would be.

She treated me justly, as she did the other girls. It might even had been as

though it were not I who had betrayed her to the slavers of Haakon of Skjern.

I did much work, but I did not find that I was doing more than the other girls.

Ute would not, however, let me shirk. After I had recovered from my fear that

she would exact a vengeance on me for betraying her, I found myself, eventually,

becoming irritated, somewhat, that she would treat me with no more favoritism

than the other girls. After all, we had known one another for many months, and

had been together, I recalled, from well before the time when Targo had first

crossed the Laurius northward to the compound above the town of Laura. Surely

that should have counted for something. It was not as though I were a stranger

to her, as surely were the other girls. Yet, in spite of these considerations, I

was not treated preferentially! I had some consolation in the fact that certain

other girls, who would try to be particularly pleasing to Ute, who would try to

insinuate themselves into her favor, were treated with abrupt coldness. She

treated us all alike. She kept herself remote from us. She did not even sleep or

eat with us, but in the kitchen shed, where she would be chained at night. We

respected her. We feared her. We did what she told us. Behind her lay the power

of the men. Yet we did not much (pg. 290) like her, for she was our superior. We

were pleased that she treated others with justice, not giving them advantages

and privileges over ours, but we were angry that the same justice was meted out,

in turn, to us. We were not given advantages and privileges over them! Surely I,

at least, should have received some consideration, for I had known Ute for many

months, and we had been friends. Yet she treated me no differently than the

other girls, scarcely recognizing me in my work tunic among the others.

When I could, of course, I managed to avoid tasks, or perform them in a hasty,

slipshod manner, that I might save myself inconvenience and labor. Ute could not

watch all the time. Once, however, she caught me, with a greasy pan, which I had

not well scrubbed, but had returned, not clean to the kitchen shed. “Bring the

pan,” said Ute. I followed her, and we walked through the camp. We stopped by

the framework of poles, which I had seen before. There was a horizontal pole,

itself set on two pairs of poles, leaning together and lashed at the top. I had

thought, when first I had seen it, that it was a pole for hanging meat. The

horizontal pole was about nine feet high. Beneath its center, on the ground,

there was an iron ring. This ring was set in a heavy stone, which was buried in

the ground.

I stood there, beneath the pole, by Ute’s side. I held the greasy pan.

“The girl’s wrists,” said Ute, “are tied together, and then she is tied.

Suspended by the wrists, from the high pole. Her ankles are tied together and

tied, some six inches from the ground, to the iron ring. That way she does not

much swing.

I looked at her, holding the pan.

“This is a whipping pole,” said Ute. “You may go now, El-in-or.”

I turned and fled back to the kitchen shed, to clean the pan. After that I

seldom shirked my work, and I made, generally, much effort to do my work well.

It only occurred to me later that Ute had not had me whipped.

Often during the day, and sometimes for days at a time, (pg. 291) most of the

tarnsmen of Rask of Treve would be aflight. The camp then would seem very quiet.

They were applying themselves to the work of the tarnsmen of Treve, attack,

plunder and enslavement.

A girl would cry, “They return!’ and we, eager in our work tunics, would run to

the center of the camp to greet the returning warriors. Many of the girls would

be laughing and waving, leaping up and down, and standing on their tiptoes. I

did not betray such emotions, but I, too, found myself eager, almost

uncontrollably excited, to witness the return of the warriors. How fine they

were, such magnificent males! I hated them, of course, but, too, I, like the

others, most eagerly anticipated their return. And most of all was I thrilled to

witness the return of their leader, the mighty laughing Rask of Treve, whose

very capture loop I had felt on my own body, whose collar I wore, whose I was.

How pleased I was to see him bring back yet another girl, bound across his

saddle, a new prize. How skeptically, and eagerly, with the other girls, I would

silently appraise her, comparing her, always unfavorably, on some ground or

another, with myself. Once Rask of Treve, from the saddle, looked directly at

me, finding me among the mere work slaves, in their work tunics. I had felt an

indescribable emotion, an utter weakness, when our eyes had met. I put my hand

before my mouth. How magnificent he seemed, how mighty among those mighty

warriors, he, their fierce leader.

Many of he girls ran to individual warriors, their eyes shining, leaping up and

seizing the stirrups, pulling themselves up and putting their cheeks against the

soft leather boots. And more than one was hauled to the saddle and well held and

kissed before being thrown again to the ground.

When the tarnsmen would return, with their captives and booty, there would be a

feast.

I would serve at this feast, but when it came time for dancing silks and slave

bells to be withdrawn from the ornate, heavy chests, I would be dismissed to the

shed, where I would be locked, alone.

“Why am I never belled and put in dancing silk?” I demanded (pg. 292) of Ute. I

could scarcely believe that it was I, Elinor Brinton, who so protested. Yet I

heard the words. “Why am in never allowed, late, to serve the men in their

tents?”

“No man has called for you,” said Ute.

And so I, my work tunic removed, would be locked in the shed at night.

I would lie there and, through the crack beneath the heavy plank door, hear the

music, the laughing, protesting screams of the girls, the laughter, the shouts

of satisfaction, of victory of the men.

But no man had called for me. No man wanted me.

How pleased I was to be spared the ignominious usage to which the other girls,

my unfortunate peers, were subjected! How I pitied them. How I rejoiced that I

did not share their fate. I screamed with rage, and taking up handfuls of dirt,

hurled it against the interior walls of the shed, within which I was locked.

At the third or fourth hour of the morning, one by one, the girls, their silks

now removed, would be returned to the shed. How stimulated they seemed, how

untried. How they laughed and talked to one another! How vital they seemed! We

had work the next day! Why did they not go to sleep? One would sing or hum to

herself. Another would cry out some name, that of a tarnsman, to herself with

pleasure. “Ah, Rim,” she would cry out, twisting in the darkness, “I am truly

your slave!”

I pounded my fists in the dirt, angry.

But they would be exhausted in the morning! In the morning they would be

miserable enough! In the morning Ute would almost have to use whips to rout such

lazy girls out of the shed!

I was pleased no one wanted me. I wept.

Sometimes there were visitors to the camp of Rask of Treve, though, one gathers,

there were men in the confidence of Treve.

Generally they were merchants. Some brought food and wines. Others came to buy

the plunder of the tarnsmen. Several of my work-mates were sold, and others,

captured, (pg. 293) brought in on tarnback, took their place, perhaps to be sold

as well in their turn.

When I would, I would manage, in my daily tasks, to pass by the tent of Rask of

Treve, that large, low tent, on its eight poles, of scarlet canvas lined with

scarlet silk.

It was convenient to pass by the tent, you understand, for it was in the center

of the camp, and thus often lay on the shortest route from place to place to

place within the palisade.