Swordsmen of Gor

Chapter Twenty-Seven TARNCAMP IS ABANDONED

Doubtless the smoke could be seen for pasangs. As the huts and sheds, the warehouses and bath houses, and cook houses, dormitories and arsenals, and the dojo, collapsed in flaming timbers and planks, hundreds of men, in columns, following wagons, drawn by tharlarion, took the mysterious well-rutted road which had led eastward, southeastward, from Tarncamp and the training area. By evening the debris of these areas would cool into blackened wood and warm, gray ash, and these residues of the conflagration, extinguished, would be scattered about, broken up, and dragged by designated work gangs into the forest. In two or three years I supposed the forest would reclaim these hitherto cleared areas, and there would remain few records and clues as to what had taken place here, where timber had been harvested and men trained for wars whose projected venues were unknown, and possibly remote. In any event, Tarncamp and its plaza of training were being abandoned.

“Do you not march?” asked a fellow, a pack on his shoulder, slung over the haft of a spear.

“Later,” I informed him.

“You are not aflight,” he said.

“No,” I said.

The tarns, from the plaza of training, had been early aflight, their squadrons led by Tajima.

“Are you out of favor?” he asked.

“Perhaps,” I said.

“Put yourself on your sword,” he said. “It will be quicker.”

“Join your unit,” I advised him.

I did not know if Lord Nishida had further need for me or not. In any event, Pertinax and I had been invited to accompany him, with his guard, and the invitations of daimyos, however politely extended, are not to be ignored. I did not doubt that Tajima had reported to Lord Nishida my flight of the preceding late evening, and my seeming encounter with an unidentified tarnsman, an encounter I had refused to explain to him. I did not begrudge the conveyance of this sort of intelligence to Lord Nishida, nor did I resent Tajima being the modality of its conveyance. He owed that duty to his daimyo, as I might owe similar duties to captains in whose commands I might serve, or to those codes which did so much to define and clarify my caste, the scarlet caste, that of the warriors.

“Look,” said Pertinax, pointing.

“I see,” I said.

In one of the wagons trundling past were several contract women, among them Sumomo and Hana, both of whom were under contract, as I understood it, to Lord Nishida.

Neither woman signified that she recognized us.

This is not unusual, in public, with such women.

I wondered what each might look like, slave clad.

But then I recalled they were contract women.

I speculated that Tajima would not have minded having the lovely, haughty Sumomo at his feet, not as a contract woman, of course, but as something far less, and far more desirable.

Then the wagon had disappeared amongst the trees.

I was sure Lord Nishida did not trust me, but I did not feel slighted by any suspicions he might harbor. In his place I would doubtless have entertained a similar wariness. He did not know me, I was not of the Pani, I had not turned a failed assassin, Licinius, over to him for the expected justice of prolonged torture, and there was the matter of yesterday night, when I had mysteriously left the camp and had apparently engaged in a clandestine rendezvous with a stranger. I doubted that, under similar circumstances, I would have trusted myself.

He must have need of me, I thought. I doubted the Pani were indulgent with respect to redundant personnel, hangers-on, parasites, passive burdens. But this is not unlike Goreans, as a whole. They see no point to sheltering and sustaining those who can work and do not do so. They are commonly sold to quarry gangs, harbor dredgers, laborers in the latifundia, the great farms, and such. Sometimes they are simply put outside the walls, naked, for beasts, human or otherwise. Even brigands have no use for them, unless it be to sell them, or use them as feed for sleen. But there are few such cases, for it is part of the Gorean ethos that one, if able, should work. And the capacity for work is determined by physicians, neither by politics nor rhetorics. Perhaps if the caste and council democracies, so to speak, had taken a different turn such individuals might have constituted a constituency, so to speak, exploitable by the unscrupulous, but the several forms of democracy, of aristocracies, of oligarchies, of tyrannies, and such, amongst which power tended to be divided, had not taken such a turn. Theft is rare on Gor, and so, too, is ambition masked as compassion.

A cage wagon rolled past, in which, turning and twisting about one another, agitated, were several larls. These were the beasts, primarily, who had patrolled outside the wands. They were trained from cubhood, to respond to secret commands. Accordingly, one who knew these commands might command them, venture beyond the wands, and so on. Ashigaru prowled the edges of the road, lest any of Lord Nishida’s minions, primarily mercenaries, be tempted to avail themselves of an unobstructed highway to another prince, one with perhaps a deeper purse.

Some smoke hung in the air, from the burning.

More wagons took their way past, and more men, afoot, with packs.

I had in the past noted certain tharlarion, their comings and goings. From the departure of one to its return I had counted, on the average, six days. I took it then that whatever destination might lie at the end of the road to the east was some three or so days distant, on foot. Most of the camp would, of course, move on foot. I supposed those on tarnback might complete their journey in a few Ahn.

I conjectured that I knew the mysterious destination. Had it not been hinted at, even long ago, by Pertinax? But I did not anticipate what I would encounter there.

“Look,” said Pertinax, approvingly, for he was becoming male, and Gorean, “— slaves.”

“Yes,” I said.

The lead girl, on a slack, coarse tether, fashioned of Gorean hemp, was fastened by the neck to a ring on the back of a wagon. She followed it, on her tether, some seven or eight feet behind. The others followed her in line, all on the same rope. The ends of the tether were only at the ring, before the first girl, and behind the neck of the last girl. In this way, when the rope is knotted about the neck of each girl, save for the first and last girl, there being no free end, there is no access, save perhaps by a knife, or such, to a means of undoing the knot. The small wrists, too, of each girl were corded together behind their backs. They walked well, maintaining the lovely, erect, graceful posture of the female slave, rather like that of a dancer, which was by now second nature to them. Free women may be slovenly, and shuffle, or slouch or slump to their heart’s content, but such luxuries are not permitted to the collar girl, for she is owned by men. They also kept their heads up, and their eyes forward. Girls in coffle are often forbidden to look about, but are to keep their line, their head position, and so on. Too, they are often forbidden speech in coffle. Here and there, as another such wagon passed, it, too, with its coffle of beauties, I noted a switch-bearing Ashigaru in attendance, doubtless lest one of the slaves be tempted to look about, or be so foolish as to attempt to communicate, or even whisper, to another of the “beads on the slaver’s necklace.” The girls following the wagons were barefoot, and tunicked. Slave girls are often conveyed in slave wagons, their ankles chained about a central bar locked in place and aligned with the long axis of the wagon, but these were afoot. Most commonly in coffle, however, though not in this march, the girls have their hands free but, naked, are chained together by the neck. Too, they are permitted, within reason, to look about, to converse, and such. In the common coffle there is usually much freedom, particularly when being conducted between cities. They are normally naked, to save on laundering, to prevent the soiling of garmenture, and such. These slaves, however, as noted, were tunicked. I speculated that this was permitted not so much for their sake, for they were slaves, as to reduce the temptation which they might otherwise present to the hundreds of males in the march. On this point I wondered if that psychological stratagem, if such it was, was well founded, as there are few sights as sexually provocative as the sight of a lovely, young female in a slave tunic.

I watched another coffle pass by.

Women are so beautiful!

It is no wonder men make them slaves.

“Thank you for abiding,” said Lord Nishida.

I bowed.

“It will be easier,” he observed, “when we are beyond the smoke.”

“Yes,” I said.

He was with a guard of some twenty Ashigaru, with officers. The captain of his guard, Ito, was prominent among these men. I found I did not much approve of Ito, and this assessment, I fear, was darkly reciprocated.

As I could, I examined the countenance of Lord Nishida, but it appeared benign and pleasant. I detected nothing indicative of displeasure in that bland facade which might indifferently mask either approbation or menace. Perhaps, I thought, I might read the heart of the daimyo more easily in the countenance of his captain than in his own. I had no doubt, as noted, that Lord Nishida knew of last night’s flighted interview over the forest with some unrecognized tarnsman. Perhaps he suspected me of having had the tarn of the guard drugged, which guard had, incidentally, as Seremides had assured me, returned unharmed to camp.

“Would you like to speak with me?” I asked.

“It is always a pleasure to speak with you,” said Lord Nishida. “Of what would you like to speak?”

“Of nothing,” I said.

“The smoke is unpleasant,” said Lord Nishida. “Let us address ourselves to the road.”

We fell in then with a company of Ashigaru, their glaives shouldered.

It did not surprise me that Lord Nishida accompanied his men on foot. The wagons were for supplies, for contract women, for the ill and lame, and such, if there were any. Commanders, unless wounded, incapacitated, or such, are not goods or freight, so to speak. Had there been kaiila he would doubtless have ridden, but there were no kaiila. Too, though some daimyos might have had recourse to sedan chairs, palanquins, or such, Lord Nishida, whom I had seen as a warrior, and one of some formidableness, would eschew such.

I wondered if he knew the location of the former Ubara of Ar, Talena, once the daughter of Marlenus, Ubar of Ubars.

Surely she could have been taken as she had been taken, from the very height of the Central Cylinder, if Seremides’ account was at all correct, only by means of either Kurii or Priest-Kings.

I considered putting the question to him, directly, but did not do so. It is unwise to move in kaissa when the board is obscure, when the number of pieces, their nature, and their positions are uncertain.

Only a fool would move then and risk a Ubar, or a Ubara.

I heard the snap of a switch and a girl’s sudden cry of pain. The switch of one of the attending Ashigaru, I gathered, had found its mark, administering a stinging rebuke for some slave’s indiscretion.

Earlier this morning Ashigaru had gathered in the slaves. Part of the camp was even then burning. One could smell the smoke, and sense the heat. Following the summons and the concomitant instructions, Pertinax and I had tunicked Cecily and Jane and tied their wrists behind their backs. If masters can strip slaves at their pleasure why can they not dress them, as well? One may either face the slave or have them face away from one. One then has them raise their arms, and one can slip the tunic over them, perhaps jerking it down and tight, so that they will well understand that the garment is a slave garment, and is put upon them by a male. As is well known the garmenture of a slave, if any is permitted, is at the discretion of the master. Interestingly, this is extremely meaningful to a woman, and is profoundly sexually stimulatory to them. We had then tied their hands behind their backs and prepared to turn them over to the nearby Ashigaru. Also profoundly sexually stimulatory to the female is the hands-behind-the-back tie. This increases their sense of vulnerability and helplessness, which, in turn, given the pervasive natural ratios of dominance and submission, and the female’s understanding of herself, that she is a slave, stimulates, enhances, and intensifies their slave reflexes, nicely readying them for their conquest and use. So I took Cecily in my arms and felt her squirming gratefully against me, her moist lips eagerly seeking mine. Pertinax similarly took his Jane in hand, and, bending her backward in his arms, ruled her lips with a master’s kiss. We then thrust them stumbling to the waiting Ashigaru who took the hair of each in a separate hand and, bending them over at the waist, conducted them both in a common leading position to some point of collection.

“Would you not, rather,” I had asked Pertinax, “it had been Saru?”

“Jane is excellent collar meat,” he said.

“I am sure of it,” I said. “But would you not rather it had been Saru?” I was pleased, incidentally, as suggested earlier, that he now seemed to grasp the nature of women, and their proper place in an advanced civilization. Many men of Earth had not.

“Saru is a slut,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “but such make excellent slaves.”

“She is different,” he said. “She is from Earth.”

I saw then that he wished, or seemed to wish, to see the females native to Gor in one way, and those native to Earth in another way, those of Gor as natural slaves, fit for the collar, ideally to be embonded, and those of Earth not, despite their absolute identity as human females. Did he truly think the women of Earth, I wondered, were different from, or superior to, the women of Gor? That seemed to me absurd. They made slaves every bit as good as the women of Gor. Certainly slavers thought so, and so, too, did buyers in hundreds of markets. Were this not so they would not be brought to the slave platforms of Gor. Indeed, some Goreans preferred them. In any event, the Earth-girl slave, having been starved of her sex on Earth, taught by a pathological, adversarial culture to fear, belittle, resent, and suspect it, discovers on Gor to her astonishment and elation that her sex is here not only of interest, but of inestimable importance and value. She will even be bought and sold as a female. Too, on Gor, she is likely to find herself the property of a dominant male, by whom she will find herself wholly mastered, as only a slave can be mastered, and handled and desired, and possessed, with a raw, animal passion for which her old world has failed to prepare her. And so, bidden with as little as a snapping of fingers, she quickly kneels and presses her soft lips to his whip, and rejoices, and is alive. I doubted Pertinax would have his rather disparaging comparison of the Gorean woman and the woman of Earth, in terms of dignity and such, had he ever met a Gorean free woman, particularly of high caste, compared to whom the free woman of Earth, less free than merely not yet collared, would be thought of at best as little more than a possible serving slave, perhaps one who might serve as a serving slave to her serving slaves. Could he not bring himself to understand that women were women, that the Gorean woman and the woman of Earth were both females, that neither was, nor should be, an imitation man, that they were quite different from men. To men they were complementary, neither, given those whims of nature which had been selected for and validated in the arena of possibilities, confirmed in caves and justified in villas, mansions, and palaces, ratified over millennia, identical nor antithetical. Should the women of Earth, then, any more than the Gorean woman, be denied her womanhood, her most profound needs and desires, the right of the natural woman, in her heart desiring to be mastered and possessed, the right to be owned, and fulfilled, the right, so to speak, to be collared? Must they comply with alien requirements, forever manifest facades and images imposed upon them from without? Too, did he not understand that his precious Saru was now, as a simple matter of fact, no longer a petty, haughty scion of fluorescently lit corridors and paneled offices, but was now a slave, merely that, nothing more, as much so as had she been such in Assyria, in Babylon, in Rome, or Damascus, and that her slave fires had been ignited? Interesting, I thought, that he thought little of, and would understand, accept, and welcome slave needs and slave passions in his Jane, recognizing their propriety, perfection, and naturalness, but was unwilling to understand, accept, or approve of them in Lord Nishida’s Saru. Did he not understand that Saru was as much a slave, and every bit as appropriately, naturally, and fittingly so, as his Jane? The collar was on her neck as rightly, as ideally, and perfectly, as it was on his Jane. Indeed, whip-exhibited on a sales platform she might have brought a few tarsk-bits more.

She was a slave. Could he not understand that?

“She is not different,” I said. “She is a woman.” Indeed, as noted, Saru’s slave fires had been ignited, and she was now their helpless, pleading prisoner, as much as any other slave, whether of Gor or Earth, in whom this lovely, irreversible development had occurred.

Once a woman’s slave fires have been ignited she can no longer be but a slave. She then needs the collar.

Without it she is in torment, and lost.

With it, she is whole.

“She is worthless,” he said.

“She is pretty,” I said.

“She is the property of Lord Nishida,” he said.

“True,” I said.

“Let us go to the center of camp,” had said Pertinax. “We are to join the guard of Lord Nishida, as I understand it.”

“Yes,” I had said.

We then left the hut which, shortly thereafter, was set afire.