Players of Gor (47 page)

I suddenly leapt to the beast who's neck I had broken. I looked to the men on the hill. They had not yet released the sleen. I tore away a tusk, breaking it loose, from the side of the

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jaw of the dead animal. Then, feverishly, with a will, I thrust it through its pelt and, pulling and tearing, using my hands, and teeth, as well, I began to remove its skin. Perhaps they would think I had gone mad. Yet I did not think it would take Flaminius long to grasp my intent.

I looked back wildly back to the crest of the hill. Already the sleen, unleashed, were racing down the grassy slope.

I continued my work.

I tore loose part of the skin. I ran the side of my hand, like a knife, between it and organs and hot fat. I put my foot on the rib cage and, pressing down, then release the pressure, then pressing down, and releasing again, I turned the rib cage, drawing the pelt, rip by rip, away from it. I turned again to see the progress of the sleen. They could be upon me now in by Ihn. I could see their eagerness, their eyes. I tore the pelt mostly away from the animal. I had no time to remove the lolling, dangling head. With my foot, thrusting, I removed most of the remaining body and entrails from the hide, and clutching it, with both hands, wrapping it about my hips, I entered the pack.

Part of the hide was still warm on my skin. It was wet and sticky about me. MY legs and thighs were bloody from it. I wedged between urts. Their fur was warm and oily. I felt their ribs through it, the movement of muscles beneath it. Noses pushed toward me. I pushed on, fighting to make my way through the bodies. Almost at the same instant the sleen reached the pack and plunged toward me. One climbed over the bodies of the closely packed urts, snapping and snarling. Its jaws came within a foot of me, and then it fell between the startled urts, it spinning about then, confused. I kept pushing through the urts, toward the other side of the pack, more than a hundred and fifty yards away. Behind me I suddenly heard again that hideous squeal of an urt, once ore the stranger-recognition signal.

The sleen is a tenacious tracker, I told myself. It is a tireless, determined, tenacious tracker. Such thoughts had run through my mind earlier, when I had first come to the edge of the pack. They had then seemed provocatively, somehow significantly, but with no full significance which I had then grasped, lurking, prowling, at the borders of my understanding. Now I realized the thought with which my mind must have then been toying, the marvelous, astounding possibility which at that time I had not fully grasped, that possibility which would have seemed then, had I been fully aware of it, so disappointingly remote, yet so intriguing. But had I not acted upon this understanding, immediately, almost instinctively, whose earlier significance only

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now came fully home to me? I had. What had once been only a hint, a puzzling, intriguing thought which I had scarcely understood, had, in the thicket of circumstances, in the crisis of an instant, become a coercive modality of action, that path upon which one must boldly and irrevocably embark. I had required only the mchanism of my p[passage. Given that, everything, luminously, like the pieces of a puzzle, had fallen into place. Nothing could follow me through the urts. Nothing, not even sleen.

I pressed on. Behind me I heard the intensification and multiplication of the squeals. The sleen is a tenacious tracker. In its way it is an admirable animal. It does not give up; it will not retreat. I turned about to look back. I could see three swarming locations in the pack, almost as though gigantic tawny insects infested the area, clambering about atop each other. I saw a sleen rearing up on its hind legs, its shoulders and head emergent from the hill of swarming, clambering urts. An urt was clutched lifeless in its jaws. It shook it savagely. Then it fell back under the urts, and I could no longer see it. I pushed on. Then I could not move further. Too many urts, seemingly intent upon me, crowded about me. I was ringed. Then it seemed I stood in a clear place, an open place, an empty place, a central place, almost like a dry, lonely pool, separated out from, isolated in the midst of, those tawny bodies. I did not move. Necks craned towards me, noses twitching and sniffing. I did not move.

Through the bodies an urt came pressing towards me. It was a large urt, darkly furred. It had one tusk broken at the side of its jaw. it was about four feet high at the shoulder, extremely large for this type of animal. It had a silvered snout. I recognized it. it was the urt Nim Nim had earlier identified as the leader of the pack. It began to sniff me, its nose moving and twitching.

"Tal, ugly brute," I said, softly.

I turned, keeping it in sight as it circled me, sniffing. Then it had completed its circuit. Those small, myopic eyes peered up at me.

"You are a stinking, ugly brute," I whispered.

It sniffed me again, beginning at my feet and then lifting its head until it seemed, again, to look me in the eyes. When it had lowered its head I had lowered the pelt I grasped, holding it about me, that it might be near its nose. When it had lifted its head I had raised the pelt, too, keeping it muchly between us. It did not seem muchly concerned with the head of the urt which was still, by the skin, attached to the pelt. Its responses in this situation I assumed, I trusted, I hoped, would be activated almost

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exclusively by smell, and not by the smell of blood, or human, but by the smell of the pelt, by the pack odor.

I breathed a sigh of relief. It had turned away. The animals now returned to their business. Again was the pack tranquil, save where some animals, here and there, fed on sleen.

"Farewell, ugly brute," I said.

I then began, again, to press through the urts, wading through the pack. Once, a few yards before me and to my right, I saw a small, elongated head rise up suddenly, peering at me. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it disappeared. Again, then, I could see only the animals. This was the only concrete sign I had to suggest that there might be urt people traveling with the pack.

In a moment or two, now, I had emerged on the other side of the pack. I could see Flaminius, and his men, on the other side of the pack, quite near, now, to its edge. I observed them for a time. I watched while tow or three crossbow quarrels, their energy spent in the distance, looped over the pack and fell short of me. Then they turned about, hurrying back the way they had come. They perhaps had tharlarion somewhere. I then turned, and climbed through the broken, cerrated edges of this natural stone bowl, found myself in the open fields, and began to run, with the long, slow warrior's pace, that pace in which warriors are trained, that pace which may be maintained, even under the weight of weapons, accouterments and a shield, for pasangs.

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15
       
What Occurred in the Camp of Boots Tarsk-Bit

"Here he is!" cried Boots. "We have caught him for you!"

Lecchio and Chino held my arms.

In a moment, led by Boots, running, puffing, at the side of them, with a swirl of dust from the paws of the tharlarion, they were in the camp, the riders.

"Sleen! Sleen!" I cried to those of the troupe of Boots Tarsk-Bit.

The tharlarions now swirled about me.

I shook Chino and Lecchio violently in the swirling dust, my head down, almost dislodging them from me. But they retained their grip.

"Hold him! Hold him!" cried the Lady Yanina. "Do not let him escape!"

"Have no fear! He is in the keeping of Boots Tarsk-Bit," called Boots, "actor, promoter, entrepreneur and friend to noble citizens of Brundisium!" he then approached me, carrying manacles. "It is you who are the sleen," he said. Then he said to Chino and Lecchio, "Pull the sleen's hands behind him!" this was done, and the manacles were snapped on me. Chino and Lecchio, however, continued to hold my arms. Petrucchio, with the great wooden sword he used in playing the parts of the "Captain," stood resolutely by. Publius Andronicus stood near, a look of great satisfaction on his face. The player stood a bit away, his arms folded, dispassionately observing the proceedings.

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Rowena, Lady Telitsia and Bina knelt in terror to one side, slaves, fearful in the presence of free persons, trembling in the face of this sudden invasion of the camp. Besides her collar, which was Boots's, to whom she belonged, Bina wore a slave bracelet. It had been put on her wrist by the player, whose bracelet it was, signifying that her use was his.

I pulled at the manacles. "Do not attempt to free yourself, fool," said Boots. "You have been manacled by Boots Tarsk-Bit!"

"Well done, friend to Brundisium!" cried Lady Yanina.

Boots bowed low to the Lady Yanina and then, beaming, handed her the key to the manacles. She seized it, laughing, and lifted it, in triumph, showing it to her men.

"I thought you might return here!" she said to me, in triumph, brandishing the key at me. "Flaminius did not think so! He is looking elsewhere! He is scouring the countryside! 'He would not be so much a fool as to return there,' he laughed at me. But I am more clever than he, a thousand times more clever! I thought that just for such a reason y ou would dare to return here, the one place most would be sure you would not go! I was right! I begged men and tharlarion from Belnar! Almost against his better judgment he granted them to me. We rode here, in all haste. My judgment is vindicated! Let Flaminius writhe in envy! It is I who was right! It is I who am triumphant! You are my prisoner, my prisoner alone, Bosk of Port Kar, the prisoner of the Lady Yanina!" Again she brandished the key at me, I looking up at her, she on the tharlarion. Then, laughing, she dropped the key triumphantly into the bosom of her garment.

"Your face is naked," I said.

"Stand away from him!" she cried. Then she drew forth a coiled whip from beside her saddle and struck me with it twice.

"Your legs look well," I said.

Again she struck me, and then again.

"I note that you have not yet been permitted footwear," I said. Her feet, bare in the stirrups of the saddle, were dark with dirt, as were her lower legs, from her ride. Her legs did indeed look well, covered with dust though they might be, shapely against the leather of the saddle, and the thick, scaled hide of the tharlarion. The skirt she had been permitted was almost slave short and was cut at the sides. She had not been permitted sleeves in the garment. She was attractive. Probably most men would have wanted to clean her up a bit before using her. It was interesting to conjecture what she might look like washed and combed, and perfumed, and put in a bit of slave silk, and appropriately collared, of course. The skirt she wore, though it

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came high on her thighs, and was cut at the sides, had a very high waist, its belting cord cinched just under her breasts. Yes, altogether it was a fetching ensemble. Men who had an eye for women must have designed it and she, doubtless, had been given no choice but to wear it. It was opaque, of course. That was surely a concession to her status, that of the free woman. If I came to own her I thought I might give her a similar garment, but one of diaphanous silk. Too, I might shorten it a bit. The inmates of such garment, incidentally, suitable collared, of course, also look well bedecked with barbaric Gorean slave jewelry. Some women, in the beginning, object strenuously to such jewelry, but soon they are begging for it. Her hair, I noted, was loose. This was also doubtless meaningful. Slaves must often wear their hair in such a fashion.

She struck me twice more with the whip, wheeling about on the tharlarion.

"Your hair is loose," I observed.

"Sleen! Sleen!" she screamed.

Again and again the whip fell. I closed my eyes, that I not be blinded. I was pleased she did not have a man's strength. Then, sweating, angrily, she replaced the whip at the side of her saddle.

I grinned at her. Yes, she would look well, properly attired, or properly unattired, cringing at my feet in a collar, knowing that her least discrepancy from the absolute perfections of slave service would instantly bring upon down her the stroke of the five-stranded slave lash, or worse.

"Laugh, fool!" she cried. "It is you who are in manacles! It is you who are my prisoner!"

I looked up at her, not speaking.

"You were the cause of my reduction in rank," she cried. "You were the cause of my loss of status in Brundisium, my descent from favor in the eyes of my Ubar, Belnar, the reason I have been denied the right to conceal my features, my right as a free female, the reason I have been placed in brief, shameful garments, forcing me to make clear to men my femaleness, the reason I may not bind my hair, but must wear it as though it might be that of a slave, but that is all finished now. Now all changes! No, fool, you will be the reason not only for my restoration to privilege and station in Brundisium, the reason for my new rise to favor in the court, in the eyes of Belnar, my Ubar, but the cause, as well, of my attaining there, in the palace and in the service of my Ubar and the state, new heights of

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prestige, status and power! Let Flaminius weep with envy! I shall be a thousand times higher than he!"

"How is it that you follow a woman?" I asked one of the men.

"We follow the orders of Belnar," he said.

"I see," I said. Women, although they may occasionally function as artifacts, or symbols, or mystical objects, or something along these lines, seldom release the following instinct in men. Men, accordingly, do not on the whole, care to follow them. In doing so they generally feel uncomfortable. It makes them uneasy. They sense the absurdity, the unnaturalness, of the relationship. It is thus that normal men commonly follow women only unwillingly, and only with reservations, usually also only within an artificial context or within the confines of a misguided, choiceless or naive institution, where their discipline may be relied upon. Their compliance with orders in such a situation cannot help but be more critical, more skeptical. Their activities tend then to be performed with less confidence, and more hesitantly. This often produces serious consequences to the efficiency of their actions. It is interesting to note that even women seldom care to follow women, particularly in critical situations. The male, biologically, for better or for worse, appears to be the natural leader. In the perversion of nature, of course, anything may occur. It is ironic that certain leaders will place women over subordinates, for one reason or another, whom they would never accept as their own leaders. Most men, of course, find it easier to inflict inconvenience and pain on others than on themselves.