Plunder of Gor (40 page)

I understood little, if anything, of what had occurred.

She had not been killed.

Not her death then, but her acquisition, it seemed, had been the object of the dreadful intrusion.

But what could they want of her?

Of what value could she be to them, or to anyone?

How could she, or it, such a thing, figure in the plans of rational beasts?

Then I realized, shaken, that she might be a female, as Kurik had said. Might this not be relevant then, somehow? Surely there are better things to do with a female than kill her. Is it not true? One does not kill the female animal. One keeps it. One owns it. One collars it. One masters it. It is not to be slain but enjoyed. The subdued, mastered female is to be worked, and used for pleasure. Free, the woman is a bother and a source of pain. Collared, she is what nature designed her to be, a thing of joy, a possession, an object from which the most inordinate of pleasures may be derived, a slave.

We are women.

It is on our throats that the leash collar will be fastened.

And who does not wish to be on her master's leash?

One of the beasts led the hood-blind, bound, tethered female by the leash toward the door in the large gate fronting the house of Flavius Minor. Another thrust her forward with a broad paw against her back, through the door. I saw no signs of the employees of the house, he who had admitted us, he who had borne the lantern, and their two cohorts. They had fled at the first appearance of the beasts. I did not know where my master was. I assumed he lay somewhere, perhaps amongst the bales, barrels, and crates about the walls. I supposed him unconscious, so grievous was the blow to which he had been subjected. How had he dared to place himself, armed with naught but that sliver of a knife, between a Kur and its quarry?

The largest Kur, it whom I took to be their leader, it with the two rings on its left wrist, to whom the others had seemingly deferred, stood near the fallen lantern, and looked about.

I lay as quietly as I could.

That massive head was facing me. I could see its two large, pointed ears lift from the sides of its head, broaden, and, seemingly cupped, incline toward me.

I had the sickening feeling, even yards away, that it could hear me breathing.

Then it reached down and snatched up the lantern.

“No!” I cried, leaping to my feet.

But the lantern was dashed to the floor, where it shattered in a spattering rainbow of glass and oil, and, a moment later, a hungry torrent of fire, raging, ever enlarging, began its bright feeding, racing across the boards of the floor of the house.

“No!” I cried again, as the large beast began to cast boxes and wired bales, most of rep cloth, on the flames.

His two cohorts had left the building.

I began to cough. My eyes stung.

The beast was wild in its work.

Then it paused, the flames about, and its nostrils flared. It fixed its gaze on a barrel, one amongst several, hurried to it, and broke it open, splintering its lid with a blow of its paw. I smelled tharlarion oil. I watched, in horror, as the beast spread this oil like a fuse about the floor, and into the midst of crates and bales, which fuse, a moment later, took fire, and, ignited, coursed its way like a swift, burning snake through the stored wealth it would claim as its tinder.

I put my hand before my face. I could feel the heat of the flames.

The beast leaped and spun about, and stomped, and turned again, and put its head back, and roared, lifting its paws to the rafters. Then it spun about, again, and again. I think it was dancing, drunk in the wanton joy of destruction.

Then it looked at me, eyes like golden fire, through the flames. I saw the long, dark tongue dart forth and then back between those mighty jaws. It opened its cavernous maw and I saw the fangs red in the firelight. It took a step toward me.

I screamed in fear.

Then, oddly, it crouched down, and, eyes toward me, backed rapidly away, snarling, and then it turned and slipped through the still-open portal in the large gate and disappeared into the night.

A sheet of flame then obscured the area.

“It is important to let it live,” said Kurik, my master. “Much may depend on that, the life of Eve, the opportunity to confute their intentions.”

“Master!” I coughed.

He lowered the crossbow from the leveled position. Doubtless its presence had dissuaded the beast from approaching me more closely. In its jaws a head might be torn from a body. The quarrel, at close range, can sink two horts into a solid beam. The weapon was surely one of the two that had been borne by the cohorts of he who had admitted us.

“There is a rear entrance,” said Kurik, slinging the bow over his shoulder, seizing me by the arm. “I have ascertained it.”

He then began, I coughing and stumbling in his grip, to hasten toward the back of the building.

Flames roared behind us.

In a moment we were in the cool of the night, behind the house of Flavius Minor. Through the open door in the back of the building we could see the fire raging inside.

“In a matter of Ihn,” he said, “the alarms will sound, and a hundred men will be about. We must make away.”

“They are terrible things,” I said.

“They are Kurii,” he said.

“Master has saved the life of his slave,” I said.

“Possibly, possibly not,” he said. “Our friend may have thought the better of approaching you more closely, the barrier of fire, the risk of remaining longer in the house.”

“It feared your weapon!” I said.

“That is possible,” he said.

“Master is hurt,” I said.

“No,” he said.

The left side of his head was bloody.

“Let me bathe and bind your wound,” I said.

“Hurry,” he said, drawing me with him, hurrying down the alley behind the building. “We must not be discovered here.”

“Did you see the thing?” I stammered, shaken, half dragged at his side, stumbling in his grip. “It was glad, joyful, wheeling about, dancing, wreaking pointless, unnecessary destruction.”

“Sometimes one makes a festival of fire,” said Kurik. “Is voracious flame not stimulating? Does it not excite and stimulate, does it not, in all its brightness and heat, speak of violence and power, does it not rage as it wishes, go whithersoever it will, devour as it chooses, destroy what it pleases without heart, qualm, or conscience?”

“Let us proceed more slowly, Master,” I begged.

“The house would have been burned in any case,” said Kurik. “Evidence must perish. No sign is to remain of what took place there. All traces were to be covered. No trail would lead to the house, no trail from the house.”

We had turned right, in the alley, and were making our way between buildings onto a street, that which we had originally descended, leading toward the wharves, where we turned left.

Some men were hurrying by, toward the wharves.

A bar had begun to ring, and the ringing was taken up by others, elsewhere in the city.

“What is going on?” a fellow inquired, pausing.

“I think a fire, at the wharves,” said Kurik.

The fellow who had inquired cast me an appraising look, as though I might have been exposed for my sale, and then hurried on.

I then realized that the scanty paga tunic, so brief and humiliating, in which my master had chosen to place me, consulting me not, for I was a slave, had been half torn away. Also, I again became aware, then, again, from the discomfort, of the abrasions on my right shoulder, and side, sustained in the house of Flavius Minor.

Two more men hurried past.

The street was steep, descending to the wharves.

We climbed.

We crossed the street, to the far side, and turned, to look back.

“There,” said Kurik, pointing.

I could see the surprising brightness in the sky, against the night. I had no doubt that by now the roof might be afire. Even this high, and this far removed from the fire, we could smell smoke.

“There are fire brigades,” said Kurik. “It is not likely the flames will spread beyond the house of Flavius Minor. It has been a century since the Great Fire, which wiped out most of the southern piers.”

I was pleased that we had desisted in our progress. I gasped for breath. I felt now the night was cool. I tried to hold the shreds of the tunic about me.

“The animals, the beasts,” I said, “how fearsome they are, such terrible things.”

“It is said,” said Kurik, “that one, unarmed, could kill a sleen.”

I shuddered.

“But it is said, as well,” said Kurik, “that one would be no match for a larl.”

“I am afraid,” I said.

“They are neither invulnerable nor invincible,” said Kurik. “They are no more immune to the thrust of a spear, the flight of the cable-sprung quarrel, the greeting of the long shaft of the peasant bow, the stab and slash of steel, than other forms of life.”

“But if they derive from metal worlds,” I said, “such bespeaking sophisticated technologies, surely greater weapons and more fearsome power is at their disposal.”

“Doubtless,” said Kurik, “but they would do well to refrain from availing themselves, at least openly, of such advantages on this world.”

“Why?” I asked.

“You need not inquire,” he said.

“Curiosity is not becoming in a kajira,” I said.

“I have heard so,” he said.

“I beg to know,” I said.

“What is not becoming in a kajira?” he asked.

“Curiosity,” I said.

“Be silent,” he said.

“I would know,” I said.

“If you were not well bared,” he said, “I would cuff you.”

“But I am well bared,” I said.

“I think you could do with a taste of the whip,” he said.

“No,” I said, instantly kneeling at his feet. “Please do not whip me, Master! I beg not to be whipped! Be lenient, be kind, Master! I beg it!” I muchly feared the whip, to which, as a slave, I was subject. “Rather let me strive to make amends,” I said.

I pressed my lips to his bootlike sandals, and then looked up at him, frightened.

He was looking down upon me.

“Let me strive to placate you,” I said.

“In the way of the female slave?” he said.

“Yes, Master,” I said.

“You look well on your knees, half naked,” he said.

“It is my hope to please, Master,” I said.

“You are a slave,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” I said.

“And you are a bold, and stupid slave,” he said.

“Master?” I said.

“You cried out twice in the house of Flavius Minor, protesting the Kur's enflaming of the house. This not only recalled to it your existence, and that you were conscious and might act, but marked your very position. You even screamed, once. Such an exclamation might trigger an attack. Not unoften, it might do so. Could you not sense your jeopardy? It is even likely you were within the beast's critical charging distance, within that perimeter within which the least movement can precipitate a charge. It is the same with a sleen or larl.”

I put my head down.

“But your flanks, slave girl,” he said “are not without interest.”

“I am pleased, if Master is pleased,” I whispered.

What had I with which to please him but my body, my needs, and, I fear, the love of a helpless slave?

“Perhaps,” he said, “you would bring a full silver tarsk on the block.”

“I would hope to bring my seller coin,” I said. Indeed, if I did not, I knew I might be beaten.

“You did well in the house of Flavius Minor,” he said, “in the questioning of the female thing, whom we choose to call ‘Eve'. For some Ehn I, and I am sure the others, could not decipher her Gorean. Only toward the end of her interrogation, shortly before our hirsute friends appeared, did I begin to fathom her analogs to the sounds of Gorean. I admire your intelligence.”

“Thank you, Master,” I said.

“To be sure,” he said. “We pick our slaves, in part, for their high intelligence. Such women, subdued, and mastered, fastened in their collars, subject to our whips, are exactly what we wish to own, wholly and uncompromisingly own.”

“Doubtless,” I said, “highly intelligent women make the best slaves.”

“Yes,” he said, “and I wish that you were half as intelligent as your Earth chain sister, Paula.”

“Oh?” I said.

“She was a gem,” said Kurik. “Gloriously bodied, extremely intelligent, with utterly helpless and profound slave needs.”

“I see,” I said.

I had always thought Paula rather plain. She did not dress smartly. She read books. She was unfamiliar with the proper magazines.

“I did well, I trust,” I said, “in interpreting the Gorean of the crated beast.”

“Quite well,” he said. “I was proud to have you in my collar.”

“Perhaps then,” I said, “I should be freed?”

“Why?” he asked.

“In gratitude for my services,” I said.

“Do not be a fool,” he said. “Your services, and more, are owned to me, as you are my slave. Too, as you should understand by now, unless you are quite stupid, more so than I feared, your intelligence is relished and makes you much more pleasant to own.”

“I see,” I said.

“Do you wish to be free?”

“No,” I said.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because, on this world,” I said, “I have learned that I am, and should be, a slave.”

“Excellent,” he said. “And you have learned, as well, I trust, that that is all you are, and no more.”

“Yes, Master,” I said.

He pointed to his bootlike sandals, and I put my head down, my hair falling about his feet, and, tenderly and gratefully, permitted to do so, began to lick and kiss his feet, those of my master. How far I was from the office, and another world!

“Enough,” he said, after a time.