Kur of Gor (52 page)

"What is it?” called Cabot.

"It must be another tharlarion,” said Grendel. “I do not understand. It was not bloody. It must be another beast!"

Suddenly the saurian rose from the water, as a whale might have breached, and one of the paddlelike appendages was a massive, bleeding stump, and its belly was torn open in a wound yards long, a wound so deep it might have reached the spine of the beast, and gut and blood, and organs, burst from the rupture. Then it fell back into the lake.

Two smaller tharlarion began to attack it, while it still lived.

"Beware!” called Grendel.

Cabot turned and, with the stick, jabbed at the second large head whose jaws, turned sideways, were reaching for him.

But suddenly that beast, too, seemed drawn back, away from the raft, its head and neck sliding back, on the logs, away from the raft.

A moment later a surge of blood and tissue reddened the lake about the raft, as though the lake itself had bled.

"There is something down there!” said Grendel.

"What?” called Cabot. “What?"

"I do not know,” said Grendel.

Suddenly the slave cried out, in pain, and clambered atop one of the logs out of the water.

"What is it?” called Cabot.

"The water,” she said. “The water, Master! It hurts!"

Cabot pressed his hand into the water, and withdrew it, with a cry of pain.

"Look!” called Grendel, pointing to the lake.

Beneath the surface there seemed thousands of flashing, shimmering, lights, darting about, flickering.

With bellows of pain, tharlarion, on all sides, far more than they had understood were in the area, with a churning of water, fled.

"There are charges in the water,” said Grendel. He put his hand into the water and, wincing, drew it back, instantly. “It is not tharlarion,” he said.

"Fish, eels?” said Cabot.

"No,” said Grendel. “No."

"Surely,” said Cabot.

"No,” said Grendel.

"Look!” cried the slave, pointing forward.

There, some twenty or so feet from the raft a shape had arisen slowly, majestically, from the lake. It was certainly in the form of a gigantic aquatic tharlarion. There was the massive body, the huge, paddlelike appendages, a powerful, elongated, snakelike neck surmounted with a massive head, with mighty fanged jaws. But this was all of metal.

The head moved, surveying them. There were two reddish, jewellike lenses where the eyes of a natural saurian might be found. The body itself was scaled, in a way, but with shimmering, overlapping metal plates.

The jaws of the machine, and its rows of arrayed knifelike teeth, were scarlet, bearing traces of the work it had performed below the surface.

Grendel addressed the machine in Kur.

"Turn on your translator!” said Cabot.

Grendel did so, but there was no sound emanating from the immense object before them, either in Kur or Gorean.

The glowing lenses or optical devices regarded them for a few moments, and then the huge machine quietly submerged, leaving only some ripples in its wake.

"It is a body of the Eleventh Face of the Nameless One,” said Grendel, “a body of Agamemnon, Theocrat of the World."

"He now knows where we are,” said Cabot.

"Yes,” said Grendel.

Chapter, the Thirty-Fourth:

THE STORM;

THE CAVE

"The wind is rising,” said Cabot. “How is that? Is the climate not controlled within the world?"

"It is controlled,” said Grendel. “That is why it is rising."

"How could the behemoth body of Agamemnon have been brought to the lake?” asked Cabot. “I have seen little of cartage adequate to such a load."

"There are vehicles,” said Grendel, “but I do not think they were used. Rather I suspect the body was housed near the lake."

"And Agamemnon came to it?"

"Or was brought to it,” said Grendel.

"I do not understand,” said Cabot.

"It is a thought, no more,” said Grendel.

"Agamemnon is Kur, surely,” said Cabot.

"Certainly,” said Grendel, “but what is Kur?"

"I do not understand,” said Cabot.

"Master,” said the slave, shivering, “it grows cold."

"The blanket is lost,” said Cabot.

"Master would have given it to me?” she said.

"Certainly,” said Cabot. “One cares for the beasts which belong to one."

"Yes, Master,” she said.

"Why should the temperature be falling?” asked Cabot.

"I am not cold,” said Grendel.

"It has to do with humans?” asked Cabot.

"I fear so,” said Grendel.

"The revolution has begun?” asked Cabot.

"Perhaps, rather,” said Grendel, “this will prevent it from beginning."

"Weather is a weapon,” said Cabot.

"In this world,” said Grendel.

The slave suddenly shuddered, and moaned.

"What is wrong?” asked Cabot.

"I am miserable, Master,” she said, “and hungry. Please forgive me."

"By morning,” said Grendel, “perhaps tonight, I do not know, we will make landfall. There should be forage ashore."

The slave put her arms about herself, and trembled with cold. The small tunic afforded negligible warmth, and it was still wet, as was her hair, from the events of an Ahn earlier, those in which they had been so grievously imperiled, only to be succored unexpectedly by Agamemnon, Theocrat of the World, or by means of a body under his control.

"The lake grows choppy,” said Cabot.

"There is going to be a storm,” said Grendel.

The raft, mighty as it was, began to respond to the force of swift, rising swells. A wind whipped Cabot's tunic about him, and tore through the fur of Grendel.

The slave, crouched down, whimpered in misery.

The raft lifted, and fell, and tipped, and bucked, and pitched about. Muchly was it at the mercy of the lake's tumult, whether one meaningless and blind, or contrived.

How helpless are even we in the face of such masses and forces!

"Ai!” said Cabot, nearly losing his balance.

"Get down,” said Grendel. “Cling to the ropes."

Cabot crouched down by the slave, and, holding to a rope, put an arm about her, and she put her dark, wet hair against his shoulder.

"It grows dark!” said Cabot.

Too suddenly it seemed that darkness fell.

A driving rain began to fall.

The wind rose further, roaring, lashing the air.

"Grendel!” called Cabot.

"I am here!” he heard, a voice scarcely heard against the wind.

Cold waters washed over the raft. Even Grendel then threw himself down and fastened himself within the raft ropes.

The raft was lifted a dozen feet into the air, again and again, and dropped, and was flung from side to side. Cabot felt the logs loosening beneath him. The slave screamed. A rope tore apart. He felt it rip through his hands, pulled away, carried off into the wind-torn, rain-driven darkness, wound about some shifted, dislodged log. He felt another log beneath his feet then, that of the lower tier of logs, and then it, too, seemed to move from side to side, and, other ropes broken apart, it slipped sideways under the raft, and was swept away, somewhere. Cabot was then in the water, between logs, and the slave clung to him.

"The raft is breaking up!” called Grendel. “Cling to a log, bind yourself to it!"

A heavy log struck against another log.

Had Cabot, or Grendel, or the slave, been placed otherwise than they were surely one or the other of them would have been crushed.

Two other logs crashed together, and one was lost in the night.

Rain continued to torment the raft and lake.

Even Grendel could not see for the darkness, and the rain.

Cold water washed over the remains of the raft, now little more than loosened timbers, held in proximity to one another by strained, then slack, scattered strands of rope.

"Hold to me!” called Cabot to the slave, and he thrust a log away and tried, clinging to another, to work his way from the raft. The slave lost her grip and cried out, but Cabot seized her by the hair and pulled her to him, and then both were clinging to a rope wrapped about a single log, and the raft might then, for all they knew, have been a dozen yards away.

"Call out!” cried Grendel, “and I will try to stay with you! Call out! Call out!"

"Here!” called Cabot. “Here!"

In the darkness, in the cold, blinding water, he thrust the slave to the log, and, with loops of wet rope, loose from the log, fastened her to it, and then he thrust his own arm amongst the ropes, and clung to the log as it pitched about, rising and falling, and sometimes rolling over, taking them beneath the surface, and then it pitched up, again, in the darkness, bringing them again to the surface, they gasping for air, trying to breathe in the ferocity of the rain and wind.

"Here!” cried Grendel, against the storm, scarcely audible.

"Here!” cried Cabot, in response, trusting that his companion's hearing, equivalent to that of a Kur, might detect the sound amidst the wash and roar of the storm.

It is not clear how long the storm lasted, as it is difficult to judge such things. Doubtless to Cabot and his companion, Lord Grendel, and his lovely beast, the slave, she who had been given the name ‘Lita', it seemed a long while, perhaps even the night. On the other hand, more likely, it lasted little more than two or three Ahn.

In any event, whatever may have been the case, it was still dark when Cabot, fastened to the log, awakened, shuddering, and felt a graveled sand beneath his feet, and, then, exhausted, he thrust the log to which he had bound himself forward, foot by foot to the shallower water, and then he was on the beach, and slipped from the log, and freed the unconscious slave from her fastenings, and carried her further, higher, onto the beach, and then, putting her down, collapsed.

Later Cabot awakened in a small cave, to the heat of a fire near its mouth. The slave was still unconscious.

Grendel put a stick on the fire. It was still raining, but gently, outside the cave.

"You are awake,” said Grendel.

Cabot nodded.

"Roast meat,” said Cabot.

"A lake bird,” said Grendel. “I brought it down with a stick."

"It is large, like a Vosk gull, is it not?” asked Cabot.

"I do not know,” said Grendel. “Perhaps, the fauna here is diversely origined."

"From the feathers of the Vosk gull,” said Cabot, “arrows may be excellently fletched."

The slave twisted a little, and whimpered.

"It is warmer,” said Cabot, “not cold, as before."

"Doubtless Agamemnon did not suppose the cold was any longer needed,” said Grendel.

"The weather?” said Cabot.

"Certainly,” said Grendel.

Cabot took the girl, still unconscious, and pulled her tunic off, unceremoniously, roughly, for she was a slave.

"Let us dry this,” said Cabot. “The sand can then be struck from it easily."

Grendel nodded, and arranged a stick, supported on some rocks, near the fire, over which he hung the bit of cloth.

What a lovely, skimpy little thing is a slave tunic, thought Cabot. How tiny, how clinging, how revealing, and how easily removed! And how obvious it is to its occupant and to others that its wearer could be no more than a slave. And how marvelous are women in such garments, in them as they should be, as slaves!

The girl then stirred more.

"She is awakening,” said Grendel.

"In my pouch, from Peisistratus,” said Cabot, “I have some articles, among them slave cord."

"Coins, too,” said Grendel, “even rubies?"

"Yes,” said Cabot, “worthless as they are, here no more than bits of metal, and pretty pebbles."

"Keep them,” said Grendel. “They may prove valuable."

"Here is the slave cord,” said Cabot.

"Your slave is a sorry sight,” said Grendel.

"A washing, a feeding, a grooming,” said Cabot, “would make it clearer to the average fellow why she is in a collar."

"I think such things are not necessary,” said Grendel. “Look upon her."

"True,” said Cabot, “even as she is, it is clear she belongs in a collar."

Cabot then fastened the girl's wrists together, crossed before her, and took the same cord down and crossed her ankles, and fastened them together. Her wrists were then fastened, bound, to her ankles, bound, and she could not lift her hands to her mouth, nor could she reach her wrist cords with her teeth. He then sat her back against the wall of the cave, her knees bent.

"She will soon awaken,” said Grendel.

"Slavers,” said Cabot, “often take a woman in her sleep, and bind her. She retired the night before, as usual, considering, if anything, only the prosaic routines of her next day's quotidian existence. She retires, anticipating nothing, suspecting nothing. Then, later, she awakens, doubtless to her consternation and horror, to find herself bound helplessly."

"Doubtless she cries out,” said Grendel.

"Only if the captor finds it acceptable,” said Cabot. “For she may have been gagged."

"Doubtless awakening so, helplessly bound, is an interesting experience for the woman."

"One supposes so,” said Cabot. “On the other hand, as I understand it, most are sedated, and awaken only later, doubtless days later, to find themselves in a Gorean pen, or cell, naked and in chains."

"Doubtless it is a suitable introduction to their new life,” said Grendel.

"One supposes so,” said Cabot.

The girl opened her eyes, and squirmed a little.

"I am bound,” she said.

She did not seem surprised. Slaves are accustomed to such things.

Sometimes they awaken while being bound, but can do nothing about it. They may then be turned to their back or belly, and put to use, as the slaves they are.

"Slave cord,” said Cabot.

"I am familiar with such cord,” she said.

"Certainly,” said Cabot, “as you are a slave."

She struggled a little, futilely. “I cannot rise,” she said. “I cannot bring my hands to my mouth. I awaken yours, and helpless."

"Not infrequently are slaves bound,” said Cabot. “Few things so contribute to a slave's awareness of her condition as being rendered totally vulnerable, completely defenseless and helpless. Susceptibility to the master's bonds, at his pleasure, finding herself wholly at his mercy, whenever he pleases, well reminds her of what she is and to whom she belongs."