Gor - Nomads For Gor Part 18

The tiny red-lipped mouth was spread wide with benign satisfaction. I saw the tips of the two golden canines.

Aphris suddenly pulled at the retaining rings, trying to rush to him, now oblivious of the riches of her beauty revealed even to the slaves who carried his palanquin. To them, of course, she was now no more than they, save perhaps that her flesh would not be used to bear the poles of palanquins, to carry boxes nor dig in the earth, but would be appointed even more pleasing than theirs to a master. "Saphrar!" she cried.

"Saphrar!"

Saphrar looked on the girl. He took from a silken pouch lying before him on the palanquin a small gla.s.s, with gla.s.s petal edges like a flower, mounted on a silver stem about which curled silver leaves. Through this he looked on her more closely.

"Aphris!" he cried, as though horrified, but yet smiling.

'Saphrar,'' she wept, "free me!"

''How unfortunate!" wailed Saphrar. I could still see the tips of the golden teeth.

Kamchak had his arm about my shoulder, chuckling.

"Aphris of Turia," he said, "has a surprise coming."

Aphris turned her head to Kamchak. "I am the richest woman in all Turia," she said. "Name your price!"

Kachak looked at me. "Do you think five gold pieces would be too much?" he asked.

I was startled.

Aphris nearly choked. "Sleep," she wept. Then she turned to Saphrar. "Buy mel" she demanded. "If necessary, use all my resources, all! Free mel"

"But Aphris," Saphrar was purring, "I am in charge of your funds and to barter them and all your properties and goods for one slave would be a most unwise and absurd decision on my part, irresponsible even."

its own tasks, lighter and more suitable. doubtless Aphris suddenly looked at him, dumbfounded.

"It is or was true that you were the richest woman in all Turia," Saphrar was saying, "but your riches are not yours I to manage but mine not, that is, until you would have reached your majority, some days from now I believe."

"I do not wish to remain a slave for even a day!" she cried.

"Is its over his eyes rising, "that you would upon reaching your I majority transfer your entire fortunes to a Tuchuk, merely to obtain your freedom."

"Of course" she wept.

"How fortunate then," observed Saphrar, "that such a transaction is precluded by law."

"I don't understand," said Aphris.

Kamchak squeezed my shoulder and rubbed his nose.

"Surely you are aware," said Saphrar, "that a slave cannot own property any more than a kaiila, a tharlarion or sleep."

"I am the richest woman in Turia!" she cried.

Saphrar reclined a bit more on his cus.h.i.+ons. His little round pinkish face shone. He pursed his lips and then smiled.

He poked his head forward and said, very quickly, "You are a slaver" He then giggled.

Aphris of Turia threw- back her head and screamed.

your wardrobes and jewels, your investments and a.s.sets, chattels and lands, became mine."

Aphris was weeping uncontrollably at the stake. Then she lifted her head to him, her eyes bright with tears. "I beg you, n.o.ble Saphrar," she wept, "I beg of you I beg of you to free me. Please! Please! Please!"

Saphrar smiled at her. He then turned to Kamchak, "What, Tuchuk, did you say her price was?"

"I have lowered it,"' said Kamchak. "I will let you have her for one copper tarn disk."

Saphrar smiled. "The price is too high," he said.

Aphris cried out in distress.

Saphrar then again lifted the tiny gla.s.s through which he had regarded her, and examined her with some care. Then he shrugged and gestured for his slaves to turn the palanquin.

"Saphrar" cried out the girl one last time.

"I do not speak to slaves," said he, and the merchant, on the palanquin, moved away toward the walls of distant Turia.

Aphris was looking after him, numbly, her eyes red, her cheeks stained with tears.

"It does not matter," said Kamchak soothingly to the girl.

"Even had Saphrar been a worthy man you would not now be free."

She turned her beautiful head to stare at him, blankly.

"No," said Kamchak, taking her hair and giving her head a friendly shake, "I would not have sold you for all the gold in Turia."

"But why?' she whispered.

"Do you recall," asked Kamchak, "one night two years ago when you spurned my gift and called me sleep?"

The girl nodded, her eyes frightened.

"It was on that night," said Kamchak, "that I vowed to make you my slave."

She dropped her head.

"And it is for that reason," said Kamchak, "that I would not sell you for all the gold of Turia."

She looked up, red-eyed.

"It was on that night, little Aphris," said Kamchak, "that I decided I wanted you, and would have you, slave."

The girl shuddered and dropped her head.

The laugh of Kamchak of the Tuchuks was loud.

He had waited long to laugh that laugh, waited long to see his fair enemy thus before him, thus bound and shamed, his, a slave.

In short order then Kamchak took the key over the head of Aphris of Turia and sprang open the retaining rings. He then led the numb, unresisting Turian maiden to his kaiila.

There, beside the paws of the animal, he made her kneel.

"Your name is Aphris of Turia," he said to her, giving her a name.

"My name is Aphris of Turia," she said, accepting her name at his hands.

"Submit," ordered Kamchak.

Trembling Aphris of Turia, kneeling, lowered her head and extended her arms, wrists crossed. Kamchak quickly and tightly thonged them together.

She lifted her head. "Am I to be bound across the saddle?"

she asked numbly.

"No," said Kamchak, "there is no hurry."

"I don't understand," said the girl.

Already Kamchak was placing a thong on her neck, the loose end of which he looped several times about the pom- mel of his saddle. "You will run alongside," he informed her.

She looked at him in disbelief.

Elizabeth Cardwell, unbound, had already taken her posi- tion on the other side of F~ teak's kaiila, beside his right It might have been the first time s.h.i.+p Kamchak had not hit her hard, but s.h.i.+p To be sure there might have been some doubt that the miserable wench thonged behind Kamchak's kaiila could have been first stake. She was gasping and stumbling; her body glistened with perspiration; her legs were black with wet dust; her hair was tangled and thick with dust; her feet and ankles were bleeding; her calves were scratched and speckled with the red bites of fennels. When Kamchak reached his wagon, the poor girl, gasping for breath, legs trembling, fell exhausted to the gra.s.s, her entire body shaking with the ordeal of her run. I supposed that Aphris of Turia had done little in her life that was more strenuous than stepping in and out of a scented bath. Elizabeth Cardwell, on the other hand, I was pleased to see, ran well, breathing evenly, showing few signs of fatigue. She had, of course, in her time with the wagons, become used to this form of exercise. I had rather come to admire her. The life in the open air, the work, had apparently been good for her. She was trim, vital, buoyant. I wondered how many of the girls in her New York office could have run as she beside the stirrup of a Tuchuk warrior.

Kamchak leaped down from the saddle of the kaiila, puffing a bit.

"Here, here!" he cried cheerily, hauling the exhausted Aphris to her knees "There is work to be done, !"

She looked up at him, the thong still on her neck, her wrists bound. Her eyes seemed dazed.

"There are bask to be groomed," he informed her, "and their horns and hoofs must be polished there is fodder to be fetched and dung to be gathered the wagon must be wiped and the wheels greased and there is water to be brought from the stream some four pasangs. away and meat to ham- mer and cook for supper! hurry! hurry, Lazy Girl!"

Then he leaned back and laughed his Tuchuk laugh, slap- ping his thighs.

Elizabeth Cardwell was removing the thong from the girl's neck and unbinding her wrists. "Come along," she said, kindly. "I will show you."

Aphris stood up, wobbling, still dazed. She turned her eyes on Elizabeth, whom she seemed to see then for the first time.

"Your accent," said Aphris, slowly. "You are barbarian." She said it with a kind of horror.

She turned in fury and followed Elizabeth Cardwell away.

After this Kamchak and I left the wagon and wandered about, stopping at one of the slave wagons for a bottle of Paga, which, while wandering about, we killed between us.

This year, as it turned out, the Wagon Peoples had done exceedingly well in the games of Love War a bit of news we picked up with the Paga and about seventy percent of the Turian maidens had been led slave from the stakes to which they had been manacled. In some years I knew the percentages were rather the other way about. It apparently made for zestful compet.i.tion. We also heard that the wench Hereena, of the First Wagon, had been won by a Turian officer representing the house of Saphrar of the Merchants, to whom, for a fee, he presented her. I gathered that she would become another of his dancing girls. "A bit of per- fume and silk will be good for that wench," stated Kamchak. It seemed strange to think of her, so wild and insolent, arrogant on the back of her kaiila, now a perfumed, silken slave of Turians. ''She could use a bit of whip and steel, that wench," Kamchak muttered between swallows of Paga, pretty much draining the bottle. It was too bad, I thought, but at least I supposed there would be one fellows among the wagons, the young man Harold, he whom the girl had so abused, he who had not yet won the Courage Scar, who would be just as pleased as not that she, with all her contempt and spleen, was now delightfully salted away in bangles and bells behind the high, thick walls of a Turian's pleasure garden.

Kamchak had circled around and we found ourselves back at the slave wagon.

We decided to wager to see who would get the second bottle of Paga.

"What about the flight of birds?" asked Kamchak.

"Agreed," I said, "but I have first choice."

"Very well," he said.

I knew, of course, that it was spring and, in this hemi- sphere, most birds, if there were any migrating, would be moving south. "South," I said.

"North," he said.

We then waited about a minute, and I saw several birds river gulls flying north.

"Those are Vosk gulls," said Kamchak, "In the spring, when the ice breaks in the Vosk, they fly north."

I fished some coins out of my pouch for the Paga.

"The first southern migrations of meadow kites," he said, "have already taken place. The migrations of the forest hurlit and the horned aim do not take place until later in the spring. This is the time that the Vosk gulls fly."

"Oh," I said.

Singing Tuchuk songs, we managed to make it back to the wagon.

Elizabeth had the meat roasted, though it was now consid- erably overdone.

"The meat is overdone," said Kamchak.

"They are both stinking drunk," said Aphris of Turia.

I looked at her. Both of them were beautiful. "No," I corrected her, "gloriously inebriated."

Kamchak was looking closely at the girls, leaning forward, squinting.

I blinked a few Ames.

"Is anything wrong?" asked Elizabeth Cardwell.

I noted that there was a large welt on the side of her face, that her hair was ripped up a bit and that there were five long scratches on the left side of her face.

"No," I said.

Aphris of Turia appeared in even worse shape. She had surely lost more than one handful of hair. There were teeth marks in her left arm and, if I was not mistaken, her right eye was ringed and discolored.

"The meat is overdone," grumbled Kamchak. A master takes no interest in the squabbles of slaves, it being beneath him. He of course would not have approved had one of the girls been maimed, blinded or disfigured.