Tribesmen of Gor

8 I Become Guest of Hassan the Bandit

I did not sleep as well as I might have that night, for from time to time, clouds of riders, with bows and lances, swept through the streets of Nine Wells, returning from one sortie into the desert or another. For better than fifty pasangs about the terrain was apparently combed, again and again, but yielding not even a trail.

I did, however, get several hours of uninterrupted sleep toward morning, when, worn, exhausted, thirsty, slack in their saddles, the bulk of the search parties returned to Nine Wells.

I patronized an unimportant, rather poor sort of establishment, whose proprietor, I suspected, would have had better things to do than attend trials at the chamber of justice. Fortunately this was true. He was, however, informed on the public news. “The assassin fled last night, into the desert,” he told me, “escaping!”

“Incredible,” I said. My response was appropriate, for I, for one, did not believe it.

I had arisen about the ninth hour, which, on Gor, is the hour before noon.

The kaiila I fed in the stable, where he occupied a rear stall, I watered it, too, deeply.

While at breakfast I sent a stableboy on small errands. When I finished breakfast the lad, a sprightly young fellow, had returned.

In my new burnoose and sash, a rather ostentatious yellow and purple, befitting, however, a local merchant, or peddler, who wishes to call attention to himself, I myself went about the shops, making purchases. I obtained a new scimitar. I did not need a sheath and belt. I obtained, too, a set of kaiila bells, and two sacks of pressed-date bricks. These are long, 134 rectangular bricks, weighing about a stone apiece, or, in Earth weight, about four pounds.

In a short while, at the public well near the chamber of justice, I had filled my water bags and collected the latest gossip. “Out of my way,” said a soldier, reaching down to splash water in his face. I deferred to him, which it seemed to me was advisable for a local date merchant. Besides he had had a difficult night of it in the desert. “Have you found the assassin yet?” I asked. “No,” he growled. “Sometimes I fear I am not safe,” I said. “Do not fear, Citizen,” said he. “Very well,” I said.

The search parties would recuperate during the afternoon and night, I had learned. There was little chance of picking up a subtle trail by moonlight. It was impractical to begin again, the men and animals exhausted, until morning.

That would give me a start, I speculated, of some fifteen Gorean hours.

It would be more than sufficient.

In the neighborhood of noon, moving slowly, in the yellow and purple striped burnoose, with sash, water bags at the flanks of my kaiila, sacks of pressed-date bricks tied across the withers, kaiila bells ringing, calling attention to myself and my wares, I left the oasis. Once, the lofty palms small behind me, I had to turn aside, to avoid being buffered by the return of the last of the search parties.

On a hill, more than two hundred pasangs north and east of Nine Wells, two days after I had left the oasis, I reined in, the kaiila turning on the graveled crest.

Below, in the valley, between the barren, rocky hills, I observed the small caravan being taken.

Two kurdahs were seized in the hand of a rider, by their frames, and jerked to the side on the kaiila, spilling their occupants, free girls, in a flurry of skirts, to the gravel.

Drovers and merchants were being herded, at lance point, to a side. A guard, holding his right shoulder, hurried by a lance tip, was thrust with them.

The packs of kaiila were being slashed, to determine the value of the merchandise carried, and whether it would be of value to raiders.

Some of these kaiila were pulled together, their reins in the hands of a rider.

One of the burdens tied among others on the back of one of the pack kaiila was transferred to another beast, one whose rein was held by the rider.

The hands of the free girls were bound before their bodies.

Their hands were bound at the end of long straps. The lengthy, free end of these tethers, then, was, by their captor, looped and secured about his pommel.

One man tried to break and run. A rider, wheeling after him, struck him in the back of the neck with the butt of his lance. He fell sprawling in the dust and rocks.

I saw a water bag being slashed, the water dark on the side of a kaiila it shifting and fearing, the water falling, soaking into the dust.

I saw other water bags thrown to the ground, before the cornered man.

Packs were cut from kaiila, their contents spilling on the ground. These were goods not desired. The kaiila, then, freed of reins and harness, with the flat of scimitars, and cries, were driven into the desert.

The two girls now stood naked in the dust, stripped by the blade of their captor. One of the girls had her hands, wrists bound, in her hair, pulling at it, crying out with misery. The other girl seemed angry. She looked at her bound wrists, her tether, as though she could not believe herself secured to the pommel. Her head was high. She had long, dark hair.

Their captor, who seemed to be chief of the raiders, mounted. He stood in his stirrups. He shouted directions to his men. The raiders, then, as one man, turned their kaiila, and, unhurried, rode slowly from the trail. Two of the men held the reins of two pack kaiila; another man, by the rein, pulled another beast, shambling after him. The leader, his scimitar across his saddle, rode first, his burnoose gentle, swelling in the hot wind, behind him. Tied to his pommel, stumbling, followed his two fair captives.

Behind, the men shouted. Some dared to raise their fists. Others went to the water bags.

On foot, on the trail, they would have only enough water to reach the tiny oasis of Lame Kaiila, where there would be for them doubtless sympathy, but little aid in the form of armed men. Indeed, it lay in a direction away from Nine Wells, which was the largest, nearest oasis where soldiers might be found. By the time word of the raid reached Nine Wells the raiders might be thousands of pasangs away.

I turned my kaiila and dropped below the crest of the hill. I had scouted the camp of the raiders last night.

I would meet them there. I had business with their leader.

“You work well,” I told the slave girl. The camp was abandoned, save for her.

She cried out. The heavy, round-ended pestle some five feet in height, more than five inches wide at the base, dropped. It weighed some thirty pounds. When it dropped, the heavy wooden howl, more than a foot deep and eighteen inches in diameter tipped. Sa-Tarna grain spilled to the ground. I held her by the arms, from behind.

Like the camps of many nomads the camp was on high ground, which commanded the terrain, but was itself concealed among scrub brush and boulders. There was a corral of thorn brush, uprooted and woven together, which served for kaiila.

Within it, now, were four pack kaiila. There were five tents, each of tawny, inconspicuous kaiila-hair cloth, each pegged down on three sides, each with the front, facing east, for the warmth of the morning sun, left open. These tents, typical nomad tents, were small, some ten feet in depth, some ten to fifteen feet wide; they were supported on wooden frames; the ground, within them, leveled off, was covered by mats. At the back the tents were low, stretching to the ground. It is at the backs that goods are stored. In a normal family situation the household articles and the possessions of the women are kept on the left side of the area, and the goods of the men, blankets, weapons, and such, are kept on the right. These goods, both of men and women, are kept in leather bags of various sizes. These, made by the women, are often fringed, and of various colors, and beautifully decorated.

I looked about; there was little difference between this camp and a typical nomad camp. One crucial difference, of course, was the absence of free women and small children. In this camp there was only a slave girl, left behind to pound grain and watch kaiila.

I smiled. This was a camp of raiders.

I released the girl.

She turned about. “You!” she cried. Alyena was fully dressed. She wore a long, bordered skirt, with scarlet thread at its hem, which swirled as she turned; she wore a jacket, tan, of soft kaiila-hair cloth, taken from the animal’s second coat, which had a hood, which she had thrown back; beneath the jacket she wore a cheap, printed blouse of rep-cloth, blue and yellow, which well clung to her.

At her throat was a metal collar, no longer mine.

I observed the drape of the skirt on her hips, the sweet, delicate, betraying candor of her blouse.

Her master had not given her undergarments. What need has a slave for such? She wore slippers.

She looked at me, frightened, her eyes very blue, the hair loose and lovely.

“I see, pretty Alyena,” I said, “you now wear earrings.”

They were golden loops, large, barbaric. They fell beside her neck.

“He did it to me,” she said. “He pierced my ears with a saddle needle.”

I did not doubt it, in this out-of-the-way place. The operation, usually, of course, is performed by one of the leather workers.

“He put them on me,” she said. She lifted her head, and brushed one. I could see she was proud. “They are from his plunder,” she said.

Alyena, as an Earth girl, acculturated to earrings, did not object to them, not in themselves. If she had had objections doubtless they would have pertained to other matters, such as the fact that, against her will, her ears had been pierced; that she had not chosen the rings, but he; and that he, as a master, giving her no choice, not considering her feelings, because it had pleased him, had simply put them on her, making her, his slave, wear them. But she did not seem displeased. She had a healthy flush to her features. Alyena, though she seemed apprehensive, did not seem unhappy.

“Earrings,” I said to her, “by Gorean girls, are regarded as the ultimate degradation of a female, appropriate only in sensual slave girls, brazen, shameless wenches, pleased that men have forced them to wear them, and be beautiful.”

“Do free women on Gor not wear earrings?” asked Alyena.

“Never,” I said.

“Only slave girls?”

“Only the most degraded of slave girls,” I said. “Are you not shamed?”

She laughed, merrily. “Slaves are not permitted pride,” she said proudly.

She turned her head from side to side, the loops swinging.

“Many slave girls,” I said, “once they become used to earrings, come to love them, and even beg them of their masters.”

“I love mine,” she said.

“Only a collar makes a woman more beautiful.” I said.

“I wear both!” said Alyena. She lifted her head, smiling.

“But surely you object?” I inquired.

“Oh, certainly!” she said, quickly. She looked at me. “A slave girl is supposed to object, is she not?”

“I suppose so,” I said.

“Then,” she said, smiling, “I suppose that I object.”

“But your master does with you what he pleases?” I asked.

She squared her shoulders. She stood very straight. Her eyes flashed. “My master,” She said, “does with me precisely what he pleases. He is not weak!”

“I did not mean to imply that he was,” I said.

“My will must bend to his, perfectly, completely, in all “I am nothing. He is all. He is the master.”

“I see,” I said.

“I am owned,” she said. “He commands perfect obedience in me. I have no choice but to give it. I am his slave.”

“And how do you feel about this?” I asked.

She looked at me. Then she said, “I love it.”

“Make me tea,” I said.

Lifting her skirt the girl went to the tent, to make tea. Far off I could see a subtle, almost invisible lifting of dust. The raiders were returning.

I went to the tent, and, on one of the mats, near its entrance, sat down, cross-legged.

I brushed back the hood of the burnoose. It was hot. There is an almost constant hot wind in the Tahari.

“I feared, when first I saw you,” said the girl, measuring the tea, from a tiny tin box, “that you had come to carry me off. But, I suppose, had that been Your intention, you would have already done so.” She had, in the tent, removed the tan jacket of kaiila hair, with hood. As she bent down, her breasts hung lovely against the cheap rep-cloth of the blue and-yellow-printed blouse.

“Perhaps not,” I said.

Her hand shook, slightly, on the metal box of tea. Her eyes clouded.

“You are worked hard here?” I asked.

“Oh, yes!” she laughed. “From morning to dark I am worked. I must gather brush and kaiila dung and make fires; I must cook the stews and porridges, and clean the pans and the bowls; I must shake out the mats and sweep the sand in the tents; I must rub the garments and polish the boots and leather; I must do the mending and sewing; I weave; I make ropes; I bead leather; I pound grain; I tend the kaiila; twice daily I milk the she-kaiila; I do many things: I am, much worked.” Her eyes sparkled. “I do the work here of ten women,” she said. “I am the only female in camp. All unpleasant, light, trivial work devolves upon me.

Men will not do it. It is an insult to their strength.” She looked up. “You, yourself,” she said, “have made me make your tea.”

“Is it ready?” I asked. I looked at the tiny copper kettle on the small stand. A tiny kaiila-dung fire burned under it. A small, heavy, curved glass was nearby, on a flat box, which would hold some two ounces of the tea. Bazi tea is drunk in tiny glasses, usually three at a time, carefully measured. She did not make herself tea, of course.

Casually I glanced at the horizon. The dust was nearer now. On a pole, beside the entrance of the tent, hung a water bag.

“And at night,” I asked the girl, “you are permitted to rest from your labors?”

She was still stained from sweat, from pounding the grain outside the tent.

“My diurnal labors,” she laughed, “may be those of a free women, but do not forget what I am.”

I regarded her.

“I am a slave girl!” she laughed.

“In the night,” I said, “you remove your slippers, and put on silk and bells.”

“If permitted,” she smiled. “Often I serve nude.” She laughed. “It is at night that I truly labor! Oh, the things he has made me do, things I would never have dreamed of!”

“Are you happy?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Do the other riders share you?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said. “I am normally the only girl in camp.

“From time to time there are others?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” she said. “Free women, slave girls, are taken from caravans. What happens to them?”

“They are taken to oases, to be sold,” she said. “My labors as a slave,” she confided, “are not limited to the nights. He uses me often. Sometimes, when his need is on him, he calls me in, sweaty, from work, and makes me serve him.

Sometimes he merely throws my skirt over my head and hurls me to the mats, taking me swiftly, then ordering me to resume my work outside.”

“Are you often whipped?” I asked.

She turned about pulled up her blouse, showing me her back. “No,” she said.

There were few marks on her back, though I saw the traces of a beating or two.

There was scarring. The soft, pliant, broad-bladed five-strap lash had been used. It is the common instrument, if not the switch, used on girls. It is a valuable tool. It punishes with a terrible efficiency, and does not leave the girl permanently marked.

“I was punished twice,” she said, “once, early in the tents, when I dared to be insolent, a second time when I was clumsy.” She smiled. “I have not been insolent nor clumsy since,” she said. She lifted the kettle from the fire and, care fully, poured me a tiny glass of tea.

I took the glass. “Is your master brutal?” I asked.

“No,” she said, “he is not brutal, but he is severe.”

“Harsh?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, “I would say he is harsh”

“But not brutal?”

“No,” she said.

“Your relation to him?”

“Slave.”

“His relation to you?”

“Master.”

“Discipline?” I asked.

She smiled. “I am kept under the strictest of discipline,” she said.

“But you are seldom whipped?”

“Almost never,” she said. “But I know that he is fully capable, as he has demonstrated, of whipping me. Should I not be pleasing, I know that I, as a slave girl, will be lashed.”

“You live under the threat of the whip?”

“Yes,” she said. “And the threat is not empty.” She looked at me. “He is strong enough to get what he wants out of me. He knows it. And I have learned it. He is strong enough, if I do not please him, to lash me.”

“How do you find this?” I asked.

“Meaningful,” she said, “- and thrilling!”

“You seem to enjoy being dominated by a male,” I said.

“I am a woman,” she said. She looked down. “I have discovered feelings I never knew I had,” she said. She looked up. “I have discovered, in the arms of a strong, uncompromising man, how fantastic, how deep and glorious is my female sexuality.”

“You do not speak as a woman of Earth,” I observed.

“I am a Gorean slave girl,” she said, kneeling straight, touching her earrings.

“It seems to me,” said I. “you care for your master.”

“If not restrained by his command,” she said, boldly. “I would lick the dust from his boots!”

Suddenly she looked about. She, too, now, saw the dust. She recognized the raiders were returning. Her eyes, suddenly, were frightened.

“You must flee!” she said. “They may kill you if they find you here!”

“I have not finished my tea.” I said.

“Is it-is it,” she said, standing, uncertainly, “your intention to do harm to my master?”

“I have business with him.” I said, simply.

She backed away. I set the tea down on the sand, between two mats, beside me. I did not think it would spill. She took another step backward. I reached to the side, to pick up a length of chain which lay there, one of several, doubtless ready for securing slaves, anticipated perhaps as prizes from the afternoon’s caravan raid. Alyena turned, and, with a cry, fled from the tent, toward the dust. The length of chain, hurled from my hand, bola-like, caught her about the ankles, whipping about, and she, in a flurry of skirt and blond hair, sprawled, hands outstretched, to the dust. In an instant I was on her, kneeling across her back, my left hand across her mouth, pulling her head up, painfully, and back. I then put my right hand swiftly over her mouth, before she could cry out, and, my left hand in her hair, pulled her to her feet and dragged her back into the tent. I looked about, and found some materials at hand, which I kicked together into a pile on the mats. I then put her on her back on the mats, and, kneeling across her body, transferring my left hand from her mouth, I thrust a scarf, wadded, jeep into her mouth, then fastened it there with several turns of sash, using the extra length of the sash, tying it, to blindfold her. I then threw her on her stomach. With a length of strap I tied her hands behind her back, and, with another scarf, crossed and bound her ankles. I then threw her to the back of the tent, on the right side, which is that side of the nomad’s tent reserved for the possessions of men.

I then went and stood near the entrance of the tent. My kaiila was tethered in the rear.

First over the rise, on his kaiila, with the two girls tethered, stumbling, exhausted, feet bleeding, to the pommel, was the leader. Instantly he saw me and was alert. He cried out to his men. They deployed, circling. I saw the scimitar, lifted, in the hand of the leader.

Unlooping, swiftly, with his left hand, the tethers of the prisoners from his pommel, he threw the straps to one of his men. Behind them I could see the captured pack kaiila. There were nine men, not including the leader. The leader’s kaiila reared. I saw it was his intention, not dismounting, to ride the kaiila against and through the tent, it striking against the beast’s forequarters. It would be ripped from its pegs, the frame shattered, but he, leaning down from the saddle, would have his stroke.

I lifted the water bag from the pole, where it hung outside the entrance of the tent.

One of the men cried out with rage.

I lifted the bag, drinking deeply. I replaced the plug and put back the bag, wiping my mouth on my sleeve. The leader resheathed his scimitar and lightly, dismounted.

I returned to the mats, sat again cross-legged upon them, and picked up my small glass of tea, which I had not yet finished.

He entered the tent, bending down.

“Tea is ready.” I said to him.

He went to the back of the tent and, with a knife, freed Alyena of her restraints. She looked up at him, terrified. But he was not irritated with her.

It is nothing for a man to overpower a female.

“Serve us tea,” he said.

Trembling she measured him a tiny glass of tea. His men stood outside, wary.

“The tea is excellent,” I said.

In sharing their water I had made myself, by custom of the Tahari, their guest.