Rebels of Gor (81 page)

“Abandon her,” said Tajima. “Let her be left behind. She is a slut of the house of Yamada. Did you not see the disgraceful, mute pleadings of her small, curved body last night? She shames her station, and freedom. Even in tight thongs of leather she well displayed the mere goods which are she!”

“No, no!” wept the Lady Kameko.

“This is a slave,” said Tajima, “not a free woman.”

“She is free,” I said.

“A cavil,” said Tajima. “Did you not see her move in her bonds?”

“Still,” I said, “free.”

“Could a slut chained on a shelf, a wretched
kajira
reaching through bars, soliciting buyers, have done more?” asked Tajima.

“Mercy!” she wept.

“Be respectful, friend,” I said to Tajima. “Remember that she is free.”

“She,” said Tajima, “is not one of your distant, exalted free women on the continent, one of mighty towers and high cities, resplendent in the rich, colorful robes and veils of concealment, one possessing a Home Stone. This is a face-stripped slut of the house of Yamada, a brief cloth tied about her worthless body.”

“I beg indulgence in my plight,” said the Lady Kameko to Pertinax.

“None for her,” said Tajima.

“She is free,” I insisted.

“A slave masquerading as a free woman,” said Tajima.

“Regard me, noble one, handsome, blond warrior,” said the Lady Kameko to Pertinax, “behold me, helpless and destitute, a high lady of a great house!”

“A fallen house,” said Tajima.

“I stand before you,” said the Lady Kameko to Pertinax, “utterly helpless, barefoot, ill clad, my hands tied behind me, a rope leash wound about my neck!”

Tajima drew the switch from his sash. “I shall whip this worthless slut from our presence,” he said.

A small gesture of my hand deterred him.

“Noble one,” said the Lady Kameko to Pertinax, “am I not of interest?”

“Perhaps to tarsks, to peasants,” said Tajima.

“Consider me!” she begged.

“Away with you!” said Tajima.

“Regard me,” said Lady Kameko to Pertinax.

And Pertinax, once the diffident, timid Gregory White of Earth, now a tarnsman of Gor, did indeed regard the Lady Kameko.

“Am I not of interest?” she asked.

She trembled in place, scrutinized.

“Please, noble one,” she said.

“Please!” she whispered.

It was very quiet in the hallway.

“Kneel before me, kiss my feet, and declare yourself a slave,” said Pertinax.

Swiftly the Lady Kameko knelt before Pertinax, her hands tied behind her, the coarse, rope leash about her neck, put down her head, and kissed his feet.

She then looked up. “I am a slave,” she said.

It was done, I thought. A free woman can utter such words, but she, then a slave, cannot retract them. No longer had the Lady Kameko a name. She was now a property, a vendible beast.

“I claim you,” said Pertinax.

“I am owned,” she said.

“Here,” said Tajima to Pertinax, handing him the switch. “Strike her, twice, that she will know she is subject to your whip.”

Pertinax gave her two smart blows, one high on the left arm, the other, a back stroke, high on the right arm. Tears were in her eyes. He then held the switch before her and she lifted her head, and bent forward a little, and humbly licked and kissed it. He then returned the implement to Tajima.

She kept her head down. She was no longer useless, or a burden. She was now a slave.

“We will now be on our way,” I said.

“Heel me,” said Pertinax to his new slave.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

* * *

Following the tiny swordlike scratches on the tiles, landings, and stairs, scratches which were spaced at different intervals, we had descended from the fourth level to the second level, and, eventually, had arrived at what seemed a stout wooden wall.

“The scratches end here,” I said.

“Thus,” said Tajima, “the end of our search is here.”

“The wall seems solid,” I said.

“The palace is large, and many passages are narrow and intricate,” said Pertinax. “Perhaps the scratches do not lead to a trophy room, but merely blaze a trail, that Nodachi might not inadvertently retrace his steps.”

“If that is the case,” I said, “he may not have found the trophy room.”

“The palace is intricate,” said Tajima, “but it is not a maze.”

“We do not know,” I said, “that the scratches were made by Nodachi.”

“The sword is his sign,” said Tajima. “He did not know our whereabouts. He left them for us, that we might follow.”

“The scratches end here,” said Pertinax.

“If he were set upon, or gave up the search,” I said, “the last scratch would be parallel to the corridor, not perpendicular to it.”

“Precisely,” said Tajima. “We are thus at the trophy room.”

“It is well concealed,” I said.

“But it must be easily accessible,” said Tajima. “Free women must be able to come and go, to tend the trophies. The shogun might wish to view them from time to time, to display them to guests, and such.”

“Search the wall,” I said. “There must be a panel, or pivot.”

“And where?” asked Tajima, smiling.

“At the last scratch,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

A moment later the wall turned.

“Tal,” said Nodachi, sitting, waiting for us.

“Tal,” I said. “Perhaps you heard us, on the other side of the wall.”

“Yes,” he said, “Tarl Cabot, tarnsman.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “you might have opened the wall, or informed us how it might have been opened.”

“No, Tarl Cabot, tarnsman,” said Tajima. “Nodachi is Nodachi. It is up to us to discover the secret ourselves.”

“I see,” I said. We then bowed to Nodachi and said, “Tal,” which bows he politely returned, with an inclination of his head.

* * *

“I think,” had said Nodachi, a field sword across his legs, as he sat cross-legged in the trophy room, “Lord Yamada is in the palace.”

I had doubted that that was true.

Tajima had speculated that Lord Yamada, in defeat, would have had recourse to the ritual knife.

This, too, had been doubted, by Nodachi.

If Lord Yamada was dead, it seemed the contest, if it existed, betwixt wagering Priest-Kings and Kurii had been decided. I knew not what this might bode for the future of Gor. Indeed, I was not clear on which side either force had placed its wager. Did Priest-Kings favor Lord Temmu or Lord Yamada? Which, if either, was favored by Kurii? Surely both Kurii, or some Kurii, and Priest-Kings, or some Priest-Kings, had collaborated in the readying of, and the flight of, the iron dragon. It seemed Kurii, or some Kurii, might have favored Lord Temmu, as I had been brought within his compass on a northern beach long ago, in a ship departed from a steel world. But was this in virtue of an agreement between Priest-Kings and Kurii? Tiny bits of evidence suggested one interpretation, and tiny bits of evidence suggested another. Perhaps, for all I knew, there was no wager, only the suspicion of, or the rumor of, a wager. And if there was a wager, I had no assurance that its outcome would be respected by either Priest-Kings or Kurii. Were these not independent, powerful, sovereign species, under no shared law, subject to no common sovereign, capable of imposing its will, but rather stood opposite one another in a state of nature, rather as two larls might face one another, snarling, contesting territory. And who would presume to give law to the savage larl?

She who had been the Lady Kameko was outside, in the corridor, kneeling, bent over, bound. The name ‘Kameko’ had been put on her, as a slave name. The tie in which she had been placed was an efficient and familiar slave tie. In it the slave leash is utilized. The slave is knelt. Her head is to the floor and the leash is taken back, before and under her body, and then used, tautly, to tie her ankles together. By the taut leash her head is held in place, tightly, down to the floor. Her wrists were left as they had been, tied behind her back. One has then, before one, a helpless, aesthetically attractive, compact slave package or bundle, so to speak. It is a tie in which a woman is in little doubt that she is a slave.

“We have not found Haruki,” I said.

“He is in the garden, at work,” said Nodachi.

“Even in a time of madness, dissolution, the failure of discipline, of social and military chaos?” I said.

“It is well that the garden be tended,” said Nodachi.

“Does he know that you are free?” I asked.

“No,” said Nodachi.

“You think that Lord Yamada remains in the palace?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Nodachi. “He is shogun.”

“Perhaps you think he will come here, to revel in his trophies?” I asked.

“To console himself with past glories?” asked Tajima.

“Lord Yamada is shogun,” said Nodachi. “He looks to the future.”

“He has no future, Master,” said Tajima.

“He will then die, attempting to bring it about,” said Nodachi.

I was uneasy in the trophy room, and Pertinax sat near the door, so to speak, where we had pivoted the wall.

I thought the air was better there, near the corridor.

The former Lady Kameko, now Kameko, was, as noted, outside, in the corridor, where she would await the pleasure of masters. Pertinax had removed her clothing before binding her.

Slaves are animals, and animals need not be clothed.

There were, I conjectured, more than two hundred heads in the trophy room, on shelves, on tables, suspended from the ceiling. The air in the trophy room was oppressive with the perfumes used to preserve, and anoint, the heads. The long black hair of each was oiled and combed carefully. The teeth of several had been dyed black, which, in the eyes of some, particularly high ladies, I had learned, is accounted a beautification, a fashionable and aristocratic embellishment, an enhancement of charms, rather, I suppose, like the drug-dilated pupils of Renaissance ladies, or, depending on the culture, whitening powders, rouges, lipsticks of motley colors, eye shadows, and other variations of cosmetic ingenuity. The eyes of several of the heads had been replaced with jewels or precious stones, mostly, it seemed, jade.

“The palace is large,” I said.

“Lord Yamada will be in the room of the great dais,” said Nodachi, “in the prime audience chamber, where taxes and tributes are presented, where vassal daimyos are received.”

“He is not hiding?” I said.

“Lord Yamada does not hide,” said Nodachi.

“But you are here,” I said.

“I have been waiting for you,” he said. “Arm yourselves.”

Chapter Fifty-Nine

What Occurred in the Audience Chamber

“Greetings, great and noble lord,” said Nodachi, bowing. “I have come to kill you.”

The audience chamber, though I had not seen it before, probably because it was reserved for formal occasions, state functions, and such, was surely a centerpiece in the palace of Lord Yamada. It was a large room, spacious, and deep. The dais was a foot or so above the level of the general flooring. The boards of the flooring, and those of the dais, were of dark, polished wood, and the walls, also of dark wood, were ornamented by numerous characters, designs, and images of light wood, inlaid in the darker wood. The characters were in Pani script, in which they transcribe Gorean, rather as those in the Tahari transcribe Gorean in their own flowing script. These characters were unintelligible to me. The designs seemed on the whole, to me, swirling and abstract, though they may have been meant to suggest the surging of waves and the curling, startling movements of wind. The images were of natural objects, such as trees, flowers, and animals, predominantly birds, and, amongst them, predominantly, of water fowl. The dais itself was sternly severe. There were various portals in the room through which it might be entered or left. Nodachi had entered through the main portal, facing the dais, walked to the dais, bowed, and politely announced himself. The light in the chamber seemed poor to me. It was supplied by small lamps, some of which were mounted in the walls, and some of which hung from the ceiling, descending, in some cases, to within a yard or so of the floor. One would, in such a case, move carefully amongst them. Perhaps they were intended to illuminate small tables about which one might sit, cross-legged. But there were no such tables in the room now. Given the lighting, I would not, personally, have preferred such a venue for the work of steel. Better an open court, on an overcast day, where one need not be concerned with the glare of the sun. Occasionally there was a screen in the room, near the walls, which screens were decorated rather in the fashion of the walls, save that the screens were paneled with silk, and the images, and such, were painted on the silken panels.