Swordsmen of Gor

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