Conspirators of Gor

Chapter Thirty-Three

“Provender, Masters,” I said, “and ka-la-na.”

I set down the tray on the table-like shelf to the right of the great portal, as one looks out, toward the Voltai. There is a small, open guard station there.

“How red your body is,” said one of the two guards.

This was so, even though I knew myself collared kajira.

“Some of the ka-la-na is spilled,” said one of the two guards.

“It was difficult coming through the corridors,” I said. “The masters, their hands!”

“Shall we beat her?” asked one of the guards to the other.

“Let us have a kiss instead,” said the other.

He opened his arms, and I hurried to him, and I was enfolded in his arms, and our lips met. I was held very tightly, and the kiss was a typical claiming kiss of a master. He then thrust me away, I half turning, into the arms of his fellow, and I found myself again handled as what I was, a slave girl.

“Shall we mark her thigh?” asked the first guard.

“It is early,” said the other. “There may be others. We can search her out later.”

“She may then be marked for another,” said the first guard.

“Then another day,” said the second guard.

The guards then turned to the tray.

I stood before the wide, double-gated portal, looking out onto the sunlit mountains. It was very beautiful.

It was doubtless through this portal that Mina, weeks ago, unnoted, had slipped from the Cave.

Through this same portal, too, weeks ago, the Lady Bina had been welcomed to the Cave, together with her party.

Through this portal, too, recently, Tiresias had been driven from the Cave, to wander sightless amongst the escarpments, the peaks, and crags.

It was chilly by the portal, but I dallied, for the bright, sharp air, and the vista. I did not, of course, cross the threshold.

It was now early in the fall, the second week in Se’Kara. We were aware that the wagons of Pausanias, now substantially emptied, were being refitted for a return journey, possibly to Ar. I did not know when they would depart. He would certainly wish to leave, however, before the late fall, and the commencement of the first snows. In the winter the Voltai is, for most practical purposes, impassable. I supposed he would not return, if he were to return, until the spring. I was not clear, nor was Master Desmond, as to the role the unusual cargo which had been borne by the wagons was to play in the affairs of the Cave. It did seem obvious that most of these goods, or supplies, had been transferred to the more restricted zones of the Cave, where there lay, supposedly, various laboratories and workshops. I speculated that the cargo, which I had gathered from Master Desmond seemed curious and exotic, might be expensive. This suggested substantial economic resources at the disposal of the Cave. Too, of course, it would be expensive to transport any cargo over long distances through dangerous, uninhabited areas, over perilous routes. I supposed it was unlikely that large quantities of gold or silver, for obtaining goods, would be carried in the wagons, as such an indiscretion, difficult to conceal, would be likely to attract the attention not only of outlaw bands but of some of the less savory “free companies,” assemblages of mercenaries, usually under a captain, who fought for fee, whose services were usually available to the highest bidder. Sometimes sides were changed in the midst of a single war. Who knew what clandestine gold might now have found its home in a new purse? Might the fellow beside you suddenly turn on you? Accordingly, much of the financing involved in such matters would doubtless be accomplished by means of drafts, notes, letters, and such, things mysterious, even unreal, to many Goreans, but familiar to the Merchants of the coin streets, pieces of paper which, like birds of the air, might only occasionally light upon a silver branch or rock of gold.

“Masters!” I cried, pointing.

The two guards came to my side, shading their eyes.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It is a big one,” said the first guard.

“Masters?” I said.

“It is far off, kajira,” said the second guard. “It is much larger than it appears.”

“It is a larl,” said the first guard.

It was the first larl I had seen, though I had heard much of them. It is a much larger animal than the sleen, and it has four, not six, legs. It lairs in dens, and does not burrow like the sleen in the wild. It is carnivorous, and it most commonly hunts in the day. The sleen, in the wild, is predominantly nocturnal. The larl is probably the most fearsome land predator on Gor. The sleen, on the other hand, is Gor’s finest tracker. Domesticated sleen, tracking sleen, hunting sleen, herding sleen, guard sleen, war sleen, are relatively common on Gor. Domesticated larls are rare. Few people have seen one.

I stepped back a bit, behind the threshold.

“Do not be afraid, kajira,” said the first guard. “There is little to interest a larl here.”

“Except perhaps a tasty kajira,” said the second guard.

They laughed.

“They do not approach the portal,” said the first guard. “They do not understand it. It is different, unfamiliar, to them. Perhaps they fear being trapped. It is aversive to them.”

“Perhaps one will be more curious than another,” I said.

“Or more hungry,” said the first guard.

I shivered. I put my arms about my body.

“Do not be afraid,” said the first guard.

“I am not afraid,” I said. “I am cold.”

“You may withdraw,” said the first guard.

“You may return later for the tray, the utensils,” said the second guard.

“Or send another for them,” said the first guard.

“A pretty one,” said the second guard.

“I shall stand back a bit, if I may,” I said.

“As you wish,” said the first guard.

They then went again to the shelf to the right, where reposed their small meal.

I had been cold near the entrance, as it was a brisk day in Se’Kara, and I was camisked. Later in the year a camisked girl in the Voltai would presumably die of exposure, if she were not first devoured by beasts which, in the late fall, winter, or early spring, being half-starved, become unusually aggressive. I was not uncomfortable, back from the portal. The temperature in the Cave is kept equable by the Kurii, largely for the sake of their human allies, as Kurii, given their pelting, can easily sustain temperatures which, to a human, would be not only uncomfortable, but dangerous. In any event the Kurii, who seemed to tolerate a wide variety of atmospheric conditions with equanimity, had apparently arranged the Cave’s temperature and humidity with the comfort of humans in mind. Indeed, I thought the temperature in the Cave, if anything, might be a bit warm. But what do Kurii know of humans, or care to know of humans? In any event, one would think nothing of encountering half-naked kajirae in the Cave even should the outside temperatures be freezing and the cold winds moan and roar about the peaks. The girls, of course, will be well aware of the contrast between the scantiness of their garmenture and the nature of the outside world.

I stood there, back from the portal, and listened to the chatting of the guards, mostly dealing with racing tharlarion and the price of women in Venna, and the small noises of utensils.

In the place of cells, where I had first encountered Grendel in the Cave, I had learned something of the politics of worlds. Those Kurii of the Cave, stubborn refugees of a putatively lost cause, impenitent and undissuaded, I had gathered, hoped to enleague themselves with one or more of the remote steel worlds, with the end in view of a conquest of Gor, and, perhaps eventually, if wished, of Earth. It was thought that Grendel, who stood high on one of these steel worlds, and was a hero of a recent revolution, might further this project. Doing so, of course, would be to repudiate the ends and principles for which he had earlier fought, and to ally himself with the very forces which had sought to destroy him and his party. The Grendel I had thought I had known, of matchless courage, integrity, and honor, would rather have perished uncomplainingly beneath the knives and irons of his enemies. I had feared only that he might be torn between the clear demands of honor and his troubling, profound solicitude for a single human female, the naive, unrealistic, ambitious, frivolous, charming Lady Bina. This solicitude was hard to understand, as he was a mere beast, and she was clearly human. If he had been human, or fully human, which he was not, the dilemma might, at least in principle, have been comprehensible. As it was, it made no sense. If it were not absurd, so out of the question, biologically, and such, one might have thought some sort of infatuation, even love, was involved. Certainly human history was filled with men who had betrayed a family, a party, a state, friends, allies, principles, honor, themselves, for the sake of an affair, a dalliance, a smile, a kiss. Surely the sparkling eyes of a free woman, and the hint of lips beneath a veil, had brought more than one general to defeat, more than one Ubar to ruin. It is said the man conquers with a sword, the woman with a kiss. How different from the slave who may be merely whipped and bought.

My fears in this matter had been twofold; first, that the Lady Bina, having succumbed to the blandishments of Kurii, might prevail upon Grendel to join their party, and, second, she being in their power, he might, to procure her comfort and safety, perform whatever tasks they might ask of him. I recalled his fear that she might be harmed if he refused to cooperate. To avoid that, I had speculated that he might do much. “Perhaps everything,” he had said.

What I had failed to anticipate were his revelations to me prior to our entry into the so-called Audience Chamber of Agamemnon, spoken of as the “Theocrat of the World,” and the “Eleventh Face of the Nameless One.” There I had understood, for the first time, that he had no more respect for, or feeling for, the Lady Bina than the other Kurii. She had been for them no more than a piece in their games, of value only for her possible effect on Grendel, but now, given his lack of concern for her, even his contempt for her, she was no longer even that. His motivations, made clear to me, were wealth and power. How clever he was! His initial reluctance to further their cause, as one might see now, had been no more than a ruse to raise the stakes, presumably to the governorship of a world. I had been wrong about Grendel. I saw him now as he was, ruthless, cruel, treacherous, ambitious, and greedy. Part Kur, he was perhaps more than Kur, adding to the horror of one species the worst of another.

“One comes!” called the first guard, looking about, pointing toward the trail outside the portal.

Each seized his spear.

“Beware,” said the second guard. “Do not challenge. See! It is a golden chain!”

Only four in the Cave wore the golden chain, Lucius, putatively first in the Cave, Timarchos, Lysymachos, and, of late, some days ago, Grendel.

The guards uneasily drew back their spears, and stepped aside.

I knew the entering beast. For me to effect this recognition it was not necessary for me to note a golden chain, nor hear him speak. I could recognize him easily, from Ar, from the domicile of Epicrates, from the place of cells, from the audience chamber. After weeks in the Cave, where Kurii were frequently encountered, I could also easily note the subtle difference about the eyes, and, of course, if one looked, that of the appendages, for the hands and feet of the entering beast were five-digited, not six-digited. These differences would have been instantaneously obvious to a Kur, but I am sure that many humans would have seen little or no difference between Grendel and a purely bred, or full-blooded, Kur. There would also, of course, if the beast were to speak, be a difference in the sounds uttered. They were neither purely human nor purely Kur. A human first encountering Grendel’s Gorean might find it difficult to understand but, after a short while, with certain adjustments, it was easily intelligible. I gathered that his Kur was closer to Kur, than his Gorean to Gorean. In any event, however it might seem to a Kur, I saw little difference between the Kur of Grendel and that of his Kur fellows with whom he readily and frequently conversed.

Grendel growled as he passed the guards, and they drew back a bit more. They would have been more at ease had they kept their spears at the ready, drawn back, in the two-handed thrusting position.

He had entered from the outside. I recalled that he had told me, before the meeting in the audience chamber, that he had been given his freedom, and might even leave the Cave if he wished. His natural pelting would protect him from the weather. I envied him his capacity to come and go as he might please. Aside from the question of garmenture, a kajira who left the Cave might be accounted a fugitive, and hunted down, as such. Mina, as I recalled, was to have been fed alive to lesser Kurii until Trachinos, pleased with her lineaments, had purchased her.

When Grendel turned to me, I dropped to my knees, and lowered my head, fearing to look into the eyes of such a monster. I remembered a glimpse of the golden chain swinging against that large, dark chest, the translator dangling from it, and then he had passed.

A bit later, the first guard said, “Kajira.”

I then gathered up the tray, utensils, goblets, and the emptied bottle of ka-la-na, and made my way back to the kitchen.

As I passed the wagons of Pausanias, drawn up within the portal, I noted some of his men inspecting an axle, the wagon raised a few horts from the level.