Tribesmen of Gor (16 page)

"What do you want for her?" asked Suleiman. He sat on cushions, on rugs of Tor.

  
He wore the kaffiyeh and agal, the cording that of the Aretai.

  
Before us, on the smooth, scarlet, inlaid floor, stood the girl. Her body was relaxed, but, nonetheless, held beautifully. She was looking away. She seemed bored, a bit insolent.

 
    
Low on her hips she wore, on a belt of rolled cloth, yellow dancing silk, in Turian drape, the thighs bare, the front right corner of the skirt thrust behind her to the left, the back left lower corner of the skirt thrust into the rolled belt at her right hip. She was barefoot; there were golden bangles, many of them, on her ankles, more on her left ankle. She wore a yellow-silk halter, hooked high, to accentuate the line of her beauty. She wore a gold, locked collar, and, looped about her neck, many light chains and pendants; on her wrists were many bracelets, on her upper arms, both left and right, were armlets, tight, there being again more on the left arm. She shook her head, her hair was loose.

"Prepare to please a free man," I told the girl.

She was blond, blue-eyed, light-skinned.

 
    
She bent her knees, weight on her heels, lifted her hands, high over her head, wrists close together, back to back, on her thumbs and fingers, poised, tiny cymbals.

 
    
I nodded to the musicians. The music began. There was a bright flash of the tiny finger cymbals and Alyena danced for us.

"Do you like the slave?" I asked.

 
    
Suleiman watched her, through heavily lidded, narrow eyes. His face betrayed no emotion. "She is not without interest," he said.

     
I removed from within my robes the belt in which I had concealed gems. I cut the stitching, which held the two sewn pieces together and, one by one, placed the gems on the low, inlaid, lacquered table behind which, cross-legged, sat Suleiman. He looked at the gems, taking them, one after the other, between the first finger and thumb of his right hand. Sometimes he held them to the light. I had made certain I knew, within marketing ranges, the values of the stones, and what, within reason, they would bring in weights of pressed dates.

 
    
To the right of Suleiman, languid, sat another man. He, too, wore kaffiyeh and agal, a kaftan of silk. He was a salt merchant, from Kasra.

 
    
"I regret," said Ibn Saran, "that we could not travel together to Kasra, and then Tor."

 
    
"I was called away swiftly," said I, "on matters of business."

 
    
"It was my loss," smiled Ibn Saran, lifting to his lips a tiny, steaming cup of black wine.

 
    
Suleiman, with his finger, pushed back certain of the stones toward me.

     
I replaced these in my wallet. His greatest interest, apparently, lay in the sereem diamonds and opals.

     
Both sorts of stones were rare in the Tahari gem trade.

 
    
He lifted his eyes to Alyena. Her body seemed barely to move, yet it danced, as though against her will. It seemed she tried to hold herself immobile, as though fighting her own body, but yet that it forced her to dance, betraying her as a slave girl to the gaze of masters. Her eyes were shut, her teeth clenched on her lip, her face agonized; her arms were above her head, her fists clenched, and yet, seemingly in isolation, seemingly against her resolve, her body moved, forcing her to be beautiful before men. A fantastic intensity is achieved by this dancer's artifice. It was not lost on Suleiman, or Ibn Saran.

 
    
I had waited a month at the Oasis of Nine Wells before being granted an audience with Suleiman.

 
    
Ibn Saran, not taking his eyes from Alyena, lifted his finger. From one side a slave girl, barefoot, bangled, in sashed, diaphanous, trousered chalwar, gathered at the ankles, in tight, red-silk vest, with bare midriff, fled to him, with the tall, graceful, silvered pot-containing the black wine. She was veiled. She knelt, replenishing the drink. Beneath her veil I saw the metal of her collar.

 
    
I had not thought to have such fortune. She did not look at me. She returned to her place with the pot of black wine.

 
    
Ibn Saran lifted another finger. From the side there hastened to him another girl, a fair-skinned, red-haired girl. She, too, wore veil, vest, chalwar, bangles, collar. She carried a tray, on which were various spoons and sugars. She knelt, placing her tray on the table. With a tiny spoon, its tip no more than a tenth of a hort in diameter, she placed four measures of white sugar, and six of yellow, in the cup; with two stirring spoons, one for the white sugar, another for the yellow, she stirred the beverage after each measure. She then held the cup to the side of her cheek, testing its temperature; Ibn Saran glanced at her; she, looking at him, timidly kissed the side of the cup and placed it before him. Then, her head down, she withdrew.

 
    
I did not turn to look back at the first girl, she who held the silvered pot.

 
    
I wondered if she belonged to Suleiman or Ibn Saran. I supposed to Suleiman, for it was within his palace that we sat, concerned with our business.

 
    
Suleiman, reluctantly, pushed two more stones back toward me. Not speaking, I put them in my wallet.

 
    
In her dance, Alyena turned. I smiled. Beneath the small of her back, on the left side, I could see, through the yellow silk, that the bruise had not yet healed. She had received it on the caravan march; four days earlier, before the bruise had been inflicted on her, we had been joined by the officers and escort sent forth from Nine Wells. She had received it at a watering place. She had been carrying a large bag of churned verr milk on her head. It had been given to her by an agile, broad-shouldered, handsome young nomad. I had seen it and, in my opinion, she had asked for it. She, with her burden, had walked past him, near him, and as a slave girl. He had leaped to his feet and, swift, with fingers like pliers, had administered a sharp, jocular bit of instruction to the bold wench. Her yelp resounded for a radius of a quarter of a pasang about the watering hole, startling even the verr and kaiila. She dropped the churned verr milk, the bag's seams fortunately for her not splitting, and spun to face him, but he was towering over her, not four inches from her. "You walk well, Slave Girl," he told her. She staggered backward, frightened, stumbling, until she was backed against the backward-leaning trunk of a flahdah tree. She looked up at him. "You're a pretty little slave girl," he said. "I would not mind owning you." She turned her head away. "Oh!" she cried. His hand was on her body, and she, writhing, weeping, with her heels, pushing herself, back scraping on the bark, climbed almost a foot up the slanting trunk, before he, through her veil,

truth of her, the deepest truth of her, which no longer may she conceal."

     
"No!" cried the girl.

 
    
"On such a girl," I said, "brazenly, making it evident to all, they tell the secret, which she is no longer permitted to hide, that she is slave, only slave."

     
"No!" she cried.

     
"Your brand and collar, Alyena," I said, "fit you well."

     
"No!" she wept. I heard her fingers pull at her collar.

     
"Rejoice," said I, "that they are on your body. Many slave girls never know them."

She lay in the dark, twisting, weeping, hobbled, pulling at her collar.

     
Ibn Saran, watching the yellow-silked, collared slave dance, sipped his hot, black wine.

     
I saw that he was interested in the beauty.

 
    
She bent down, her leg extended and, moving it, flexing it, slowly, to the music, from her knee to the thigh, caressed it. Alyena was good, because, in her belly, though she still did not know it, burned slave fire.

 
    
Sometimes she would look at us, her audience. Her eyes said to us, I dance as a slave girl, but I am not truly a slave girl. I am not tamed. I can never be tamed. No man can tame me.

 
    
In time she could learn she was truly slave. There was little hurry in such matters. In the Tahari men are patient.

     
 
Before Suleiman, now, there lay five stones, three sereem diamonds, red, sparkling, white flecked, and two opals, one a common sort, milky in color, and the other an unusual flame opal, reddish and blue. Opals are not particularly valuable stones on Earth, but they are much rarer on Gor; these were excellent specimens, cut and polished into luminescent ovoids, still, of course, they did not have the value of the diamonds. "What would you like for these five stones?" he asked.

     
"A hundred weights of date bricks," I said.

"That is too high," he said.

 
    
Of course it was too high. The trick, of course, was to make the asking price high enough to arrive at some reasonable exchange value later on, and, at the same time, not insult a man of Suleiman's position and intelligence. To make the first price too high, as though I were dealing with a fool, might result in unfortunate consequences for myself, the least among which might have been immediate decapitation, supposing that Suleiman had had an excellent breakfast and a pleasant preceding night with his girls.

     
"Twenty weights of date brick," he said.

     
"That is too low," I said.

 
    
Suleiman studied the stones. He knew his suggested price was too low. He was merely concerned to consider what they might, competitively, be worth.

 
Suleiman was a man of discrimination, and taste; he was also one of high intelligence.

     
It had been he who had organized the trap.

 
    
It had been night, when I had first suspected the nature of the trap, the sixth night after the joining of the caravan of Farouk by the escort of Aretai soldiers.

 
    
The lieutenant to the captain, high officer of the escort, came to my tent. It had been he who had suspected me of being a Kavar spy, who had urged the killing of me. We bore one another little good will. His name was Hamid. The name of the captain was Shakar.

 
    
He looked about himself, furtively, then sat himself in the tent, unbidden, on my mats. I did not wish to kill him.

"You carry stones, which you wish to sell to Suleiman, high Pasha of the Aretai," had said the lieutenant.

     
"Yes," I had said.

 
    
He had seemed anxious. "Give them to me," he said. "I will carry them to Suleiman. He will not see you. I will give you, from him, what they bring in pressed date bricks."

     
"I think not," I said.

     
His eyes narrowed. His swarthy face darkened.

     
"Go," he said to Alyena. I had not yet hobbled her.

     
She looked at me. "Go," I said.

     
"I do not wish to speak before the slave," he said.

 
    
"I understand," I said. Only too well did I understand. Did he find it essential to slay me he would do well not to perform this deed before a witness, be it only a slave.

 
    
He smiled. "There are Kavars about," he said, "many of them."

 
    
To be sure, I had seen, from time to time, over the past few days, riders, in small groups, scouting us.

 
    
When the guards or the men of our escort rode toward them, they faded away into the hills.

 
    
"In the vicinity," said Hamid, "though do not speak this about, there is a party of Kavars, in number between three and four hundred."

     
"Raiders?" I asked.

 
    
"Kavars." he said. "Tribesmen. And men of their vassal tribe, the Ta'Kara." He looked at me closely. "There may soon be war," he said. "Caravans will be few. Merchants will not care to risk their goods. It is their intention that Suleiman not receive these goods. It is their intention to divert them, or most of them, to the Oasis of the Stones of Silver." This was an oasis of the Char, also a vassal tribe of the Kavars. Its name had been given to it centuries before, when thirsty men, who had moved at night on the desert, had come upon it, discovering it. Dew had formed on the large flat stones thereabout and, in the light of the dawn, had made them, from a distance, seem to glint like silver. Dew, incidentally, is quite common in the Tahari, condensing on the stones during the chilly nights. It burns off, of course, almost immediately in the morning. Nomads sometime dig stones before dawn, clean them, set them out, and, later, lick the moisture from them. One cannot pay the water debt, of course, with the spoonful or so of moisture obtainable in this way. It does, however, wet the lips and tongue.