Savages of Gor (2 page)

She lowered herself to her belly and, holding my ankles gently with her hands, covered my feet with kisses. Her lips, and her tongue, were warm and wet.

"I love you, my Master," she said, "and I am yours."

I stepped back from her. "Go to the foot of the couch," I told her, "and curl there."

"Yes, Master," she said. She then, on her hands and knees, crawled to the foot of the couch and, drawing up her legs, curled there on the cold tiles.

When I went to the door, I stopped and looked back, once, at her. She, curled there on the cold, damp tiles, at the foot of the couch, the chain on her neck, regarded me.

The only light in the room was from the tiny tharlarion-oil lamp which, earlier, Thurnock had placed on the shelf near the door.

"I love you, my Master," she said, "and I am yours."

I then turned about and left the room. In a few Ahn, near dawn, men would come to the room and free her, and then, later, put her to work with the other women.

"How many are there?" I asked Samos.

"Two," he said.

"Are they alive?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

"This seems an unpropitious place for a meeting," I said. We were in the remains of a half-fallen, ruined tarn complex, built on a wide platform, at the edge of the rence marshes, some four pasangs from the northeast delta gate of Port Kar. In climbing to the platform, and in traversing it, the guards with us, who had now remained outside, had, with the butts of their spears, prodded more than one sinuous tharlarion from the boards, the creature then plunging angrily, hissing, into the marsh. The complex consisted of a tarn cot, now muchly open to the sky, with an anterior building to house supplies and tam keepers. It had been abandoned for years. We were now within the anterior building. Through the ruined roof, between unshielded beams, I could see patches of the night sky of Gor, and one of her three moons. Ahead, where a wall had mostly fallen, I could see the remains of the large tarn cot. At one time it had been a huge, convex, cage like lacing of mighty branches, lashed together, a high dome of fastened, interwoven wood, but now, after years of disrepair, and the pelting of rains and the tearings of winds, little remained of this once impressive and intricate structure but the skeletal, arched remnants of its lower portions.

"I do not care for this place," I said.

"It suits them," said Samos.

"It is too dark," I said, "and the opportunities for surprise and ambush are too abundant."

"It suits them," said Samos.

"Doubtless," I said.

"I think we are in little danger," he said. "Too, guards are about."

"Could we not have met in your holding?" I asked.

"Surely you could not expect such things to move easily about among men?" asked Samos.

"No," I granted him.

"I wonder if they know we are here," said Samos.

"If they are alive," I said, "they will know."

"Perhaps," said Samos.

"What is the purpose of this parley?" I asked.

"I do not know," said Samos.

"Surely it is unusual for such things to confer with men," I said.

"True," granted Samos. He looked about himself, at the dilapidated, ramshackle building. He, too, did not care overly much for his surroundings.

"What can they want?" I wondered.

"I do not know," said Samos.

"They must, for some reason, want the help of men," I speculated.

"That seems incredible," said Samos.

"True," I said.

"Could it be," asked Samos, "that they have come to sue for peace?"

"No," I said.

"How can you know that?" asked Samos.

"They are too much like men," I said.

"I shall light the lantern," said Samos. He crouched down and extracted a tiny fire-maker from his pouch, a small device containing a tiny reservoir of tharlarion oil, with a tharlarion-oil-impregnated wick, to be ignited by a spark, this generated from the contact of a small, ratcheted steel wheel, spun by a looped thumb handle, with a flint splinter.

"Need this meeting have been so secret?" I asked.

"Yes," said Samos.

We had come to this place, through the northeast delta gate, in a squarish, enclosed barge. It was only through slatted windows that I had been able to follow our passage. Any outside the barge, on the walkways along the canals, for example, could not have viewed its occupants. Such barges, though with the slats locked shut, are sometimes used in the transportation of female slaves, that they may not know where in the city they are, or where they are being taken. A similar result is obtained, usually, more simply, in an open boat, the girls being hooded and bound hand and foot, and then being thrown between the feet of the rowers.

I heard the tiny wheel scratch at the flint. I did not take my eyes from the things at the far end of the room, on the floor, half hidden by a large table, the area open behind them leading to the ruined tarn cot. It is not wise to look away from such things, if they are in the vicinity, or to turn one's back upon them. I did not know if they were asleep or not. I guessed that they were not. My hand rested on the hilt of my sword. Such things, I had reason to know, could move with surprising speed.

The wick of the fire-maker was now aflame. Samos, carefully, held the tiny flame to the wick of the now-unshuttered dark lantern. It, too, burned tharlarion oil.

I was confident now, in the additional light, that the things were not asleep. When the light had been struck, with the tiny noise, from the steel and flint, which would have been quite obvious to them, given the unusual degree of their auditory acuity, there had been only the slightest of muscular contractions. Had they been startled out of sleep, the reaction, I was confident, would have been far more noticeable. I had little doubt they were, and had been, from the first, clearly and exactly aware of our presence.

"The fewer who know of the warrings of worlds, the better," said Samos. "Little is to be served by alarming an unready populace. Even the guards outside do not understand, clearly, on what business we have come here. Besides, if one had not seen such things, who would believe stories as to their existence? They would be regarded as mythical or stories of wondrous animals, such as the horse, the dog and griffin."

I smiled. Horses and dogs did not exist on Gor. Goreans, on the whole, knew them only from legends, which, I had little doubt, owed their origins to forgotten times, to memories brought long ago to Gor from another world. Such stories, for they were very old on Gor, probably go back thousands of years, dating from the times of very early Voyages of Acquisition, undertaken by venturesome, inquisitive creatures of an alien species, one known to most Goreans only as the Priest-Kings. To be sure, few Priest-Kings, now, entertained such a curiosity nor such an enthusiastic penchant for exploration and adventure. Now, the Priest-Kings had be- come old. I think that perhaps one is old only when one has lost the desire to know. Not until one has lost ones curiosity, and concern, can one be said to be truly old.

I had two friends, in particular, who were Priest-Kings, Misk, and Kusk. I did not think that they, in this sense, could ever grow old. But they were only two, two of a handful of survivors of a once mighty race, that of the lofty and golden Priest-Kings. To be sure, I had managed, long ago, to return the last female egg of Priest-Kings to the Nest. Too, among the survivors, protected from assassination by the preceding generation, there had been a young male. But I had never learned what had occurred in the Nest after the return of the egg. I did not know if it had been viable, or if the male had been suitable. I did not know if it had hatched or not. I did not know if, in the Nest, a new Mother now reigned or not. If this were the case I did not know the fate of the older generation, nor the nature of the new. Would the new generation be as aware of the dangers in which it stood, as had been the last? Would the new generation understand, as well as had the last, the kind of things that, gigantic, shaggy and dark, intertwined, lay a few feet before me now? "I think you are right, Samos," I said.

He lifted the lantern now, its shutters open.

We viewed the things before us.

"They will move slowly," I said, "that they may not startle us. I think that we, too, should do the same."

"Agreed," said Samos.

"There are tarns in the tarn cot," I said. I had just seen one move, and the glint of moonlight off a long, scimitar like beak. I then saw it lift its wings, opening and shutting them twice. I had not detected them earlier in the shadows.

"Two," said Samos. "They are their mounts."

"Shall we approach the table?" I asked.

"Yes," said Samos.

"Slowly," I said.

"Yes," said Samos.

We then, very slowly, approached the table. Then we stood before it. I could see now, in the light of the lantern, that the fur of one of the creatures was a darkish brown, and the fur of the other was almost black. The most common color in such things is dark brown. They were large. As they lay, together, the crest of that heap, that living mound, marked by the backbone of one of them, was a few inches higher than the surface of the table. I could not see the heads. The feet and hands, too, were hidden. I could not, if I had wished, because of the table, have easily drawn the blade and struck at them. I suspected that the position they had taken was not an accident. Too, of course, from my point of view, I was not displeased to have the heavy table where it was. I would not have minded, in fact, had it been even wider. One tends to be most comfortable with such things, generally, when they are in close chains, with inch-thick links, or behind close-set bars, some three inches in diameter.

Samos set the lantern down on the table. We then stood there, not moving.

"What is to be done?" asked Samos.

"I do not know," I said. I was sweating. I could sense my heart beating. My right hand, across my body, was on the hilt of my sword. My left hand steadied the sheath.

"Perhaps they are sleeping," whispered Samos.

"No," I said.

"They do not signal their recognition of our presence," said Samos.

"They are aware we are here," I said.

"What shall we do?" asked Samos. "Shall I touch one?"

"Do not," I whispered, tensely. "An unexpected touch can trigger the attack reflex."

Samos drew back his hand.

"Too," I said, "Such things are proud, vain creatures. They seldom welcome the touch of a human. The enraged and bloody dismemberment of the offender often follows upon even an inadvertent slight in this particular."

"Pleasant fellows," said Samos.

"They, too," I said, "Like all rational creatures have their sense of propriety and etiquette."

"How can you regard them as rational?" asked Samos.

"Obviously their intelligence, and their cunning, qualifies them as rational," I said. "It might interest you to know that, from their point of view, they commonly regard humans as sub rational, as an inferior species, and, indeed, one they commonly think of in terms little other than of food."

"Why, then," asked Samos, "would they wish this parley?"

"I do not know," I said. "That is, to me, a very fascinating aspect of this morning's dark business."

"They do not greet us," said Samos, irritably. He was, after all, an agent of Priest-Kings, and, indeed, the first captain of the council of captains, that body sovereign in the affairs of Port Kar.

"No," I said.

"What shall we do?" he asked.

"Wait," I suggested.

We heard, outside, the screaming of a predatory ul, a gigantic, toothed, winged lizard, soaring over the marshes.

"How was this rendezvous arranged?" I asked.

"My original contact was made by a pointed, weighted message cylinder, found upright two days ago in the dirt of my men's exercise yard," said Samos. "Doubtless it was dropped there at night, by someone on tarnback."

"By one of them?" I asked.

"That seems unlikely," said Samos, "over the city."

"Yes," I said.

"They have their human confederates," he said.

"Yes," I said. I had, in my adventures on Gor, met several of the confederates of such creatures, both male and female. The females, invariably, had been quite beautiful. I had little doubt that they had been selected, ultimately, with the collar in mind, that they might, when they had served their purposes, be reduced to bondage. Doubtless this projected aspect of their utility was not made clear to them in their recruitment. She who had once been Miss Elicia Nevins, now the slave Elicia in my holding, chained now nude by the neck to my slave ring, had been such a girl. Now, however, instead of finding herself the slave of one of her allies, or being simply disposed of in a slave market, she found herself the slave of one of her former enemies. That, I thought, particularly on Gor, would give her slavery a peculiarly intimate and terrifying flavor. It was an Ahn or so until dawn now. Soon, doubtless, she would be released from the ring. She would be supervised in relieving and washing herself. Then she would be put with my other women. She then, like the others, after having been issued her slave gruel, and after having finished it, and washed the wooden bowl, would be assigned her chores for the day.