Tribesmen of Gor (56 page)

"Does it not matter to you?" she cried.

"No," I said.

"Do you not love me!" she wept.

"No," I said.

"But you have come here," she said. "She struggled. "You have risked much." She wept. "What is it then you want of me?" she asked.

I laughed. "I want to own you," I said.

"You are a man of Earth!" she protested.

"No," I told her. "I am of Gor."

She shuddered in her bonds. "You are," she whispered. "I see it in your eyes. I am at the mercy of a man of Gor." Her beauty, helpless in its leather bonds, shuddered with the comprehension of what this might mean.

I turned away.

"Tarl!" she cried.

I turned again, angry.

"Am I to be kept as a slave?" she asked.

"Yes," I told her.

"Under full discipline?" she said, disbelievingly.

"Yes," I said.

"To the whip?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Could you, Tarl," she asked, "whip me? Could you be capable of that, if I displeased you? Could you, once of Earth, be so strong?"

"You have already much displeased me," I told her. I recalled Nine Wells, when she had smiled. I remembered the window in the wall of the kasbah, the kiss she had flung me, the token of silk.

"Am I to be whipped now?" she asked. It would have been easy, parting the back of the rag she wore, she tied as she was, to whip her then. She knew that.

"No," I said.

I went to her and took the bit of faded silk, which I had carried to Klima and back. She looked at it, in misery. I tied it about her left wrist, above the binding fiber. She wore it as I had worn it.

"When will you whip me?" she asked.

"When it is to my convenience," I said.

The door burst open and two men, back to me, backing through the door, embattled, fighting, others outside the door, entered the room. Scimitars clashed. One of them turned wildly. I unsheathed my scimitar. He knew me then for an enemy. We engaged. He fell back from my blade. The other fellow was cut down by the door. I threw aside the robes of the man of the Salt Ubar. Those outside the, door lifted their scimitars to me.

 
"I shall join you presently," I told them.

 
With my boots I rolled the two fallen men from the room closed the large double door and again turned to face Vella. We were then again alone in the room, in the light of the single tharlarion-oil lamp.

 
I turned again to face her. She sat on the floor, bent forward, her wrists tied to her ankles; the rag she wore was well up her thighs; the pleasures of her breasts were not much concealed, as I had torn the garment; the calves of her legs, drawn up, were marvelous; her face, her hair, was beautiful.

"You are an exquisitely beautiful slave, Vella," I said.

"One men wish to own?" she said.

"Yes,' I said."

"And on this world," she wept, "I can be owned!"

"You are owned," I told her.

"Yes," she wept. "I know. I know that I am owned."

"I think," I said, "that I will give you to Hakim of Tor."

She suddenly looked at me. "No! No!" she wept. "No, please, no!"

"I can do what I wish," I informed her.

"Oh, no, no, no!" she wept. She knew then the true misery of the slave girl.

I went to her and pulled down the rag from her right shoulder. With a lipstick, from one of the tiny drawers in the vanity, I inscribed Taharic script on her shoulder.

 
"What does it say?" she wept.

"It says," I said, "'I am the slave girl of Hakim of Tor."'

She looked at the writing in horror upon her body. "No, Tarl, please, no!" she cried.

I stood up. She looked up at me.

"Tarl!" she wept.

"Be silent," I said, "Slave Girl."

She put her head down. "Yes," she said.

"Yes?" I asked.

She looked up. There were tears in her eyes. "Yes," she whispered, "Master."

I strode from her, and closed the door behind me. There was slaughter to be done in the halls. It was the work of men. There was a time for work, and a time for the pleasures of slave girls. It was now the time for work. I strode toward the sound of metal clashing in the distance.

25

THE SECOND KASBAH FALLS;

WHAT WAS DONE TO TARNA

"Where is Ibn Saran!" demanded Haroun, in the flowing white of the high Pasha of the Kavars.

The man kneeling before him, wrists bound behind his back, cried out, "I do not know! I do not know!"

"The kasbah is invested," said another man. "It is ours. He is not within the kasbah. He did not escape.

"He must be still within!" cried another man.

Haroun, or Hassan, as I continued to think of him, with his boot, spurned the bound prisoner.

"He must be still within the kasbah!" cried he who had shouted before.

     
"Burn the kasbah," shouted another.

"No," said Haroun. The kasbah was too valuable to burn. He wanted it, for Kavars.

I looked at the bound prisoners in the great room, kneeling. Ibn Saran was clearly not among them.

     
Outside, in the shadow of the kasbah wall, there were many other prisoners. Ibn Saran was not among them either. Ibn Saran was not the only man missing. I did not detect, among the prisoners or the fallen" the small Abdul, the water carrier and henchman of the great Abdul, Ibn Saran, the Salt Ubar, nor Hamid, traitor to the Aretai, who had struck Suleiman Pasha.

Haroun spun about, his burnoose swirling, and, angrily, leaped to the dais of the Salt Ubar, and strode upon it, like a frustrated larl.

"Let us assume, Pasha," said I to Hassan, "that Ibn Saran entered this kasbah."

"He did," cried a man,

"Let us assume further that our search has been most thorough and that our lines resisted penetration."

"These seem reasonable assumptions," said Haroun, "but how is it possible they can all be true and yet Ibn Saran neither fallen nor in chains?"

"There is another kasbah nearby, that of his confederate, Tama," I said.

"It could not be reached across the desert," said a man.

"Yes! Yes!" cried Haroun. "Come with me!" Followed by many men, carrying lamps, be descended to the pits and dungeons and storage areas below the kasbah. An hour later, beneath a trap door, And behind what appeared to be shelving in a small underground storage room, we found the door.

Broken open, it proved to lead to a dark tunnel. This tunnel provided a communication, under the desert, with the neighboring but small kasbah of Tarna, the desert chieftainess.

"Ibn Saran," said a man, "is doubtless in the kasbah of Tarna."

"But we have not invested that kasbah," moaned a man.

"Thus," cried another, "Ibn Saran has slipped through our lines. He will then flee from the kasbah of Tama. We have lost him."

"I think not." smiled Haroun.

The men were silent. Then his vizier, Baram, Sheik of Bezhad, spoke. "How can it be that we have not lost him, Pasha," he asked.

"Because," said Haroun, "the kasbah of Tama is invested."

"That is impossible," said Suleiman Pasha, leaning on a man, a scimitar still in his hand. "No Aretai are there." Other pashas, too, spoke. The Char had not invested it, nor the Luraz, nor the Tajuks or the Arani, or the others.

"By whom, Pasha," asked Suleiman, "if not by Kavars, and not by Aretai, and not by we others, is the kasbah of Tarna invested?"

"By a thousand lances, a thousand riders of the kaiila," said Haroun.

"And whence did you procure these thousand lances?" asked Suleiman.

Haroun smiled. "Let us discuss these matters over small cups of Bazi tea at the end of the day," he suggested. "There are more important matters to attend to at the moment."

Suleiman grinned. "Lead on, sleen of a Kavar," he said. "You have the audacity of Hassan the bandit, to whom you bear a striking resemblance,"

"I have been told that," said Haroun. "He must be a dashing, handsome fellow."

"That matter may be discussed over small cups of Bazi tea at the end of the day," said Suleiman, looking narrowly at Haroun.

"True," said Haroun.

Hassan then turned and led the way into the tunnel. Hundreds of men, including myself, followed him, many bearing lamps.

It was on the height of the highest tower of the kasbah of Tarna that Hassan, I close behind him, cornered Ibn Saran.

"Comrades!" said Ibn Saran. Then he lifted his scimitar.

"He is mine," said Hassan.

"Beware," I said.

Immediately the men engaged. Seldom had I witnessed more brilliant play of the scimitar.

Then the two men stepped back from one another, "You fight well," said Ibn Saran. He stood unsteadily. "I could always beat you," he said "

"That was years ago, said Hassan.

"Yes," said Ibn Saran, "that was years ago." Ibn Saran lifted his scimitar to me in salute.

"One gains a victory," I said. "One loses, an enemy."

Ibn Saran inclined his head to me, in Taharic courtesy. Then his face went white, and he turned, and staggered to the parapet of the tower. He fell to the desert below.

 
Hassan sheathed his sword. "I had two brothers," he said. "One fought for Priest-Kings. He died in the desert. The other fought for Kurii. He died on the tower of Tarna's kasbah."

 
"And you?" I asked.

 
"I thought to remain neutral," he said. "I discovered I could not do so."

 
"There is no neutrality," I said.

 
"No," be said. Then he looked at me. "Once," he said, "I had two brothers." He clasped me about the shoulders. There were tears in his eyes. "Now," he said, "now I have only one.

 
We had shared salt at Red Rock, on a burning roof.

 
"My brother," I said.

 
"My brother," he said.

 
Hassan shook himself. "There is work to do," he said. We hurried down from the tower, to the wall below. There I saw, from the wall, on the desert below, prisoners being herded back to the kasbah, men who had attempted to flee the walls and escape into the desert.

 
Herded at the point of a lance, bound, was Abdul, the water carrier. At the point of another lance, too, herded, ropes on his neck, between two kaiila, staggering, bloody, was Hamid, who had been the lieutenant to Shakar, captain of the Aretai. Shakar himself rushed forth from the kasbah to take charge of the miserable Hamid. Hamid, whatever might be his guilt in the matter of the striking of Suleiman Pasha, had obviously fought with the men of the Salt Ubar, and had raised his blade against his own tribe, the Aretai.

Other prisoners, too, were being brought back from the desert. Haroun's lances had well invested the kasbah.

Hassan and I went down to the yard of the kasbah.

Startled was I to discover in the courtyards, mounted in the high saddle of the kaiila, the leader of Hassan's mystery lancers, who had invested the kasbah of Tarna. He swept aside his wind veil.

"T`Zshal!" I cried.

He, bearded, grinned down at me from the saddle, a lance in his hand.

"I sent," said Hassan, Haroun, high Pasha of Kavars, "a thousand kaiila, a thousand lances, supplies, to Klima. I thought such men might prove useful."

T'Zshal raised the lance. The kaiila reared. "We shall not forget the Kavars, Pasha," said T'Zshal.

I feared that Hassan had made a terrible mistake. Who would dare to arm such men?

T'Zshal turned the kaiila expertly. He had once been of the Tahari, and then, with a scattering of sand, men following him, returned to the desert, again to supervise his men in their encircling ring of will, steel and kaiila flesh.

Hamid and Abdul knelt in the sand, bound.

Hassan held his blade to the throat of Hamid. "Who struck Suleiman Pasha?" he inquired. Hamid looked up at him. Suleiman and Shakar stood near. "It was I," said Hamid.

"Take him away," said Suleiman Pasha. Hamid was dragged away.

"How did you know it was he who struck me?" asked Suleiman.

"I was there," said Hassan. "I saw it."

"Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars!" cried Shakar.

Hassan smiled.

"No!" he cried. "There were none there but Aretai, Ibn Saran, Hakim of Tor and" Shakar stopped.

"And Hassan the bandit." said Hassan.