It looked at me, one lip moving back a bit, revealing the tip of a fang.
“In the Tarsk Market,” I said, “the device, the translator, transformed your language into Gorean, but it did not translate the masters’ Gorean into your language. Thus, you know Gorean.”
I knew that some individuals can follow a language which they do not care to speak, or are not adept at speaking Too, how could a beast such as this articulate the phonemes of a human language, presumably no more than we could recreate the sounds of its own speech. How could one speak the language of a jard, a vart or tharlarion, even if they had a language?
The beast reached to the small device on its chain, slung about its neck. It pressed a portion of the device, at its center.
I had the sense that the device had been deactivated.
Then, straightening up, it seemed to growl, a guttural rumbling, some Ihn in duration, perhaps ten or fifteen, above me, and I shuddered. “Please, Master,” I said. “Use the device, the translator. You cannot expect me to understand you.”
I fought not to understand, for I thought I could not, or should not, understand, and perhaps I did not want to understand, and perhaps I would refuse to understand, and then, to my astonishment, it occurred to me that I had understood.
I looked up at him, in amazement.
He had said that he was Grendel, high Kur, once from the world of Agamemnon, Eleventh Face of the Nameless One, self-exiled from his world, that he might accompany and guard a woman, the Lady Bina, once, too, of that world.
“You understand,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” I said.
To be sure, I understood very little of what had been said.
“Most of my kind, if I have a kind,” he said, “cannot articulate Gorean, or well, certainly not without a translator. My throat is different, and my tongue, a little. There are reasons for this, which need not concern you. I can make myself understood in Gorean, if you will make the necessary adjustments. It is hard, at first, easy later.”
“Agamemnon,” I said, “was an ancient king, on Earth.”
“That is not his name, of course,” said the beast, “but you could not pronounce his name. ‘Agamemnon’ seemed a suitable substitute for the true name. It was suggested by humans, for some reason. They wanted, or needed, some name, it seems. Similarly, you cannot pronounce my true name. But I am called Grendel. That name, too, was invented by humans. I gather it is the name of a monster, a grotesque anomaly, a lonely thing of bogs, and marshes and wildernesses, unpleasant to look upon, hated and feared, perhaps the result of an experiment which turned out badly, so that seems appropriate.”
“I am a slave,” I said.
It occurred to me an instant later that I might have claimed to be a free woman, and thus, suitably, to be freed. Might I have confused or deluded him? Would he even understand these things? I would not have dared such a stratagem with a native Gorean, of course, even in my terror, for fear of the frightful consequences attendant on being discovered in such a deception.
I did not want to live the rest of my life in ankle chains, my throat locked in a high collar, of weighty iron, with points.
How one would long then for a common collar, and the simple exposure of a common tunic!
“Yes,” he said.
But of course I was a slave, and must be understood as such by the beast. I wore no collar, true, for the collar of the gambling house had been removed, but the slave mark was in my thigh, small, lovely, obvious, unmistakable. Too, I had been purchased. And I had been bound, and leashed, as a slave.
There was no doubt as to what the former Allison Ashton-Baker now was. She was slave.
“Sell me, sell me!” I said.
Again the lips moved back a bit, about the fangs.
“Please do not eat me, Master,” I said.
“I do not eat human,” it said.
I caught my breath. I shuddered with relief.
Was he telling the truth?
The mien of the beast, the size, the fangs, the eyes, set forward in the head, suggested the carnivore.
It reached down and scooped me up, gently, in its arms.
I felt very small within them.
“Please sell me,” I begged.
“I do not own you,” it said.
I twisted, helpless, in the bonds.
“Lie still,” it said.
I supposed that she spoken of as the Lady Bina owned me. Had she bought me for another, I wondered. Had she bought me for the beast?
Had I been bought as food for it, cheap food?
“Be still,” it said.
I then lay quietly, enfolded in its mighty arms, miserable, and it moved swiftly, but warily, along the dark street.
Once a fellow appeared, a shadow, in a doorway, but was greeted with so sudden, and fierce, a snarl, that he quickly withdrew.
I think I was as frightened as the fellow in the doorway, who withdrew so quickly, so silently, a shadow vanishing back amongst other shadows.
It was I, after all, goods, who was within the arms of the beast.
We continued on, for better than several Ehn.
I realized, as our journey continued, that I was being carried as a free woman is carried. The slave is commonly carried over the left shoulder, head to the rear, steadied by the bearer’s left arm. In this way the slave may not see where she is being taken, what lies before her bearer, and, too, she may understand herself as goods, so carried, as much so as a sack of suls, a roll of matting, a crate of larmas, a bundle of tur-pah. In this way, too, her bearer’s right arm is free.
I realized I had spoken, and more than once, without permission.
I had not been punished for this, nor even warned of so untoward an indiscretion, so culpable a presumption.
Too, I was being carried as a free woman.
I was reasonably sure that the Lady Bina, from her accent, was not of Ar, and from her demeanor, perhaps not of Gor itself. I suspected that I, in my ignorance, might be as much informed as she of Gorean ways and culture. Too, the beast, I suspected, was not of Gor. He did not even understand, I gathered, how a slave was to be carried. Thus, he might not understand many things about the treatment of slaves. This I might turn to my advantage. But he had tied me as a slave, and well. Too, had he not spoken of another world? I suspected then that not only the beast but the strikingly beautiful Lady Bina herself might derive from such a world. She, I was sure, was human, quite human. I did not understand the nature of the beast. It was a form of life, a fearful form of life, with which I was hitherto unacquainted.
I lay as quietly as possible in the arms of the beast, being carried through the dark streets.
My hopes of acquiring a suitable master had been muchly dashed after the burning of the gambling house, and my translation, with that of my chain sisters, to the Tarsk Market. What suitable master would have recourse to such a market for a slave? One would hope to find there, if slaves at all, only pot girls, kettle-and-mat girls, she- tarsks, so to speak. I certainly did not consider myself a she-tarsk. I had been popular enough, and as a slave, in the gambling house. Its patrons had not found the former Allison Ashton-Baker, barefoot, collared, briefly and seductively tunicked, remiss as, or displeasing as, a slave. And how she had enjoyed the eyes of the men upon her, well understanding such appraisals as evidence of her value! The free woman is doubtless priceless, but the slave has an actual value, what men are willing to pay for her. My thoughts of a master had varied from time to time. Sometimes it seemed to me that I would like a weak master whom I might control, manage, and manipulate, rather
