Tribesmen of Gor (54 page)

That was true. If it could not be taken swiftly, it might not be possible to take it at all. We did not have enough water to maintain our men in the field. At best we might be able, failing to take the kasbah, to invest it with a smaller force that it would be practical to supply with water from Red Rock. Such a siege might last for months. Our extended, thinned lines would invite attack; it would be difficult, too, even if our investing lines were not broken in force, to prevent the escape of small parties at night.

"Ibn Saran," I said, "may slip through your fingers."

"We must take the kasbah." said Hassan.

"Perhaps I can help you," I said. I fingered the ring of the Kurii, which hung about my neck on its leather string.

The girl knelt before the low vanity with the natural, insolent grace of the trained slave. She combed, with a broad, curved comb of kailiauk horn, her long, dark hair. The comb was yellow. She wore a bit of yellow slave silk, her collar. She was beautiful in the mirror. How like a fool I felt that I had ever surrendered her. She knelt on broad, smooth scarlet tiles. About her left ankle, looped, were several golden slave bangles. The light in the room was from two tharlarion-oil lamps, one on each side of the mirror.

She had not yet noticed the bit of silk I had left to the side.

I regarded the slave, as she combed her hair. She, in a dungeon, in a holding somewhere of agents of Kurii, had betrayed Priest-Kings. Chained nude in a dungeon, in the darkness, among the urts, she had screamed for mercy. She had revealed all she knew of the Sardar, the plans of Priest-Kings, their practices and devices, the weakness of the Nest. If she fell into the hands of Samos I had little doubt he would have her bound and thrown to the urts, among the garbage, in the canals of Port Kar. Emptied of information she had been brought by Ibn Saran to the Tahari. Here she had, for him, identified me, when I entered the Tahari. I remembered her as one of the slaves who, bangled, in the high, tight vest of red silk, the sashed, diaphanous chalwar, had served wine in the palace of Suleiman at Nine Wells. She had been in the audience chamber when Suleiman had been struck. She had testified that it bad been I who had attacked him, I had seen her smile, when taken from the rack, after her testimony. Once she had served Priest-Kings; then, later, she had well served others, the Kurii and their agents; I watched her comb her hair, now I suspected she was for most practical purposes useless in the politics of planets; but she had been spared; I watched her movements; I smiled; I, too, would have spared her; surely she was not now completely without use; she retained. I noted, doubtless the reason for which she had been spared, the general utilities of my charming, pretty slave girl. Her flesh would bring a high price. To see her was to wish to own her. Pretty Vella. She put down the comb and reached for a tiny bottle of perfume.
   
She touched her neck, below the ears, and her body, about the shoulders, with the scent. I knew the scent.

I had carried it with me to Klima. I had not forgotten it.

Her eye, as she put aside the tiny bottle of perfume, was caught by the bit of silk, lying to one side on the vanity.

She looked at it, puzzled, curious.

I recalled the morning I had, in chains, waited to be herded with other wretches to Klima. I had looked up. In a narrow window in the wall of the kasbah, high over my head, there had stood a woman, a slave girl, veiled and robed in yellow, a slave master behind her. With the permission of the slave master she had removed her veil. With what contempt, and scorn, and triumph she bad looked upon me, a mere male slave, chained and bound for Klima, below her. She had thrown me a token, a square of silk, slave silk, red, some eighteen inches square, redolent with the perfume fitted by some perfumer, on the order of her master, to her slave personality, her slave nature and slave body. It was something by which I might remember her at Klima, I had vowed to return from Klima. She had wished to see me hooded and led away. This treat, as useful discipline, despite her pleas, had been denied her by the slave master. She had thrown me a kiss, and then, before the slave master, hurried from the window.

I stood back in the room. I flicked the switch on the ring I wore, that I might be visible to her.

She picked up the bit of silk. She opened it. It was tattered, faded, almost white. She held it open before her, looking at it. She took it in her hands and held it to her face, inhaling it. Suddenly she cried out in joy "Tarl!" She turned, springing to her feet. "Tarl!" she cried. "Tarl!" She ran to me, with a clash of bangles, and took me in her arms, her head at my chest, weeping. Tarl!" she wept. "Tarl! Tarl! I love you! I love you!"

I took her wrists, and forced them, slowly, from my body. I held them. She struggled to reach me, to press her lips to my body. I did not permit this. She threw her head, in frustration, from side to side. Her face was stained with tears. She wept. "Let me touch you," she cried. "Let me hold you! I love you! I love you!"

I held her, by the upper arms, from me. She looked up into my eyes. "Oh, Tarl," she wept. "Can you ever forgive me? Can you ever forgive me?"

"Kneel," I told her.

Slowly, numbly, the beauty slipped to her knees before me. "Tarl?" she said.

I drew from my garment a rag. It was thin, brief, tattered, much torn; it was cheap rep-cloth, brown and coarse; it was stained with dirt, with grease. I had found it in the kitchens of Ibn Saran.

I threw it against her body. "Put it on," I told her.

"I am a high slave," she said.

"Put it on," I told her.

She parted the bit of yellow silk she wore, dropping it to one side. She reached for the bit of rep-cloth.

"Remove first the bangles," I told her. She sat on the tiles and, one by one, slipped the bangles from her left ankle. Then she stood up, and pulled the rag over her head. Her body involuntarily shuddered as the grease-thick rag slipped over her beauty and clung snug, revealingly, about it; I examined her, walking about her; I tore the neckline down, to better expose the beauty of her breasts; I ripped away a strip from the garment's hem, shortening it; she must now walk with exquisite care; I ripped the left side of the garment a bit more, to better reveal the delicious line from her left breast to her left hip.

I backed away a few feet from her.

She faced me. "The gown much reveals me," she said, "Tarl."

"Cross and extend your wrists," I told her. She did so. With a strip of leather binding fiber, I fastened them together. The strip was long and enough was left to lead her, serving as tether.

"We do not have a great deal of time," I told her. "There will soon be fighting in the kasbah."

"I love you," she said.

I looked at her with fury.

She was startled at my anger. "I am sorry I have so offended you," she whispered. "I have suffered much for it. You cannot know how I have suffered, weeping in the nights. I am so sorry, Tarl!"

I did not speak.

"I was cruel, and terrible," she said, "and petty." She looked down, miserably. "I can never forgive myself," she whispered. She looked up. "Can you forgive me, Tarl, ever?" she asked.

I looked about. I could use one of the tharlarion-oil lamps by the large mirror.

"I testified against you at Nine Wells," she said. "I lied. I spoke falsehood."

"You did as you were told, Slave Girl," I told her.

"Oh, Tarl!" she wept. She looked at me, fearlessly. "For Lydius," she said, "I wanted to send you to Klima!"

"Your wishes are not of interest to me," I told her.

She looked at me with horror. She wept then, and put down her head. "I identified you for Ibn Saran," she said.

I shrugged.

"Are you not angry!" she cried.

"A slave girl," I said to her, "owes her master absolute obedience."

She looked aside, angrily. "I dare not even speak to you what else I did," she said.

"You betrayed Priest-Kings," I told her, "fully, and to the best of your ability."

She turned white. "Will it make a difference?" she said.

"I do not know," I told her. "It could mean the loss of Earth and Gor, the ultimate victory of the Kurii."

She shuddered. "I was weak," she said. "There was a dungeon. I was stripped, chained. It was dark. There were urts. I was terrified. I could not help myself. They told me I would be freed."

 
By the leather strap I yanked her wrists, indicating to her that they were well tied. "You will not be freed," I told her.

 
"Oh, Tarl," she wept. Then she asked, "Will what I did make a difference?"

 
"I do not know," I told her. "Perhaps those on the steel worlds will not believe your protestations. They may believe you only spoke sincerely what you believed to be true, not what, necessarily, was true."

 
She shuddered miserably.

 
"There are many who know of your treachery," I said. "Doubtless some will he captured, or fall into the bands of agents of Priest-Kings. Soon your life will be worth little among the agents of Priest-Kings." I thought of Samos. He was not a patient man.

She lifted her eyes to me. "I could be tortured and impaled," she said.

"You are a slave girl," I told her. "No such honorable death would be yours. You would be given one of the deaths of a slave girl, who has not been pleasing. In Port Kar, doubtless, you would be given the Garbage Death-bound naked and hurled to the urts in the canals."

She sank to her knees in horror. I looked at her. In time she again lifted her head.

"Can you forgive me,'' she asked, "for what I have done?"

"What seems to concern you," I said, "does not to me seem to require forgiveness. You are a slave girl. You were simply obedient to your master. No man objects to a girl obeying her master."

"Then," she said, softly, "you will not even have the kindness to be cruel to me?"

"I am not lenient," said I, "Girl, with certain other gratifications you permitted yourself, which were not commanded of you."

She looked at me. "What?" she asked.

"At Nine Wells," I said, "following your testimony, falsely accusing me, when removed from the rack, you looked upon me, and smiled."

"So tiny a thing?" she said. "I'm sorry, Tarl."

"And when I was chained, and bound for Klima' " I said, "again you smiled upon me. You cast me a token, a bit of silk. You blew me a kiss."

"I hated you!" she cried, from her knees.

I smiled.

"I acted like a slave girl," she said, her head down.

"Do you know why you acted like a slave girl?" I asked.

"No," she said.

I looked upon her, in the brief garment, bound kneeling before me, looking up at me. "Because you are a slave girl," I told her.

"Tarl!" she cried.

There was a sudden pounding on the door. I slipped instantly behind the girl, my hand over her mouth, my dagger across her throat. She could feel its edge.

"You will not cry out or give the alarm," I told her.

She nodded, miserably. I removed my hand from her mouth.

"Vella! Vella!" called a voice. There was more pounding.

"Do you not trust me, Tarl?" she asked, softly. "

"You are a slave girl," I whispered. "Answer. The knife was still at her throat.

"Yes, Master!" called the girl.

"You know that at the twentieth hour you are to give pleasure to the guards in the north tower!" called the man.

"I am applying my cosmetics," she called, "I shall hurry!"

"If you are late by so much as five, Ehn, " be called, "you will be caressed by the five fingers of leather." This was an allusion to the Gorean five-strap slave whip, commonly used on girls because of the softness and width of its lashes. It punishes severely but, because of its construction, does not permanently mark the girl.

"I hurry, Master! I hurry!" cried Vella.

The man left.

"You are in great danger," said Vella. "You must flee." I sheathed the dagger I had held her in obedience with.

"Those in the kasbah are in greater danger than I," I smiled.

"How did you get in?" she said. "Is there a secret entrance?"

I shrugged. "I entered unobserved," I said. "I looked at her. "Curiosity is not becoming in a Kajira," I said.

She stiffened.

I had waited near one of the gates of the kasbah, in the shelter of the ring's invisibility. When a reconnoitering party left the kasbah I had simply slipped unseen within. I had stopped in the kitchens of the kasbah to find a suitable garment for Vella. Then I had examined various areas, until I found her, in a room in which girls, who are to be summoned to the pleasure of men, may prepare themselves.

I looked to the lamps at the side of the mirror. One of them would do well.

Soon, Vella closely before me, her wrists bound, the tether looped about her forearm, I entered one of the long, tiled halls, carrying one of the lamps.

We passed only one or two men. I wore garments of the men of the Salt Ubar, taken from a prisoner. There were new mercenaries in the kasbah. No notice was taken of me, though much notice was taken of the luscious slave who, so briefly and shamefully clad, preceded me, I saw Vella, the vain wench, lift her body, instinctually, beautifully, brazenly, as the eyes of each man fell upon her. She, a slave girl, found much pleasure in being well displayed before masters.