He slave girl had now stepped back two or three more paces, edging away. She was frightened.
“Stay!” I said to her sharply. She cowered.
She was very beautiful in the bit of slave silk. I noted the bells locked on her left ankle. She was slender, dark-haired, dark-eyed. Her eyes were wide. She had exciting legs, well revealed by the slave-height of her brief silk. “What do you want for her?” I asked Samos.
He shrugged. “Four pieces of gold,” he said.
“I will buy here,” I said. I placed four pieces of gild in Samos’ hand. She looked at me, terrified.
One of the guards fetched Rim a tunic, and he drew it on his body. He belted the broad belt, with its large buckle. He shook his shaggy black hair.
He looked at the girl.
She looked at me, her eyes pleading.
My eyes were hard, and Gorean. She shook her head, trembling.
I gestured with my head towards Rim. “You are his,” I told her.
“No! No!” she cried and threw herself to my feet, weeping, her head to my sandals. “Please, Master! Please, Master!” When she looked up, she saw my eyes, and read in them the inflexibility of a Gorean male.
Her lower lip trembled. She put her head down.
“What is her name?” I asked Samos.
“She will take whatever name I give her,” said Rim.
She whimpered with anguish, bereft of a name. The Gorean slave, in the eyes of Gorean law, is an animal, with no legal title to a name.
“In what room shall we lodge this man?” asked one of the two helmeted guards. “Take him,” said Samos, “to one of the large rooms, well appointed, in which we lodge slavers of high rank, of distant cities.” “The Torian room?” asked the guard.
Samos nodded. Tor is an opulent city of the desert, well known for its splendors, its comforts and pleasures.
Rim lifted the girl to the feet by the hair, twisting her head and bending her body. “Go to the Torian room,” he said, “and prepare me a bath, and foods and wines, and gather together whatever you might need, bells and cosmetics, and such, to please my senses.” “Yes, Master,” said the girl.
He twisted her hair more. She winced, her back bent painfully. “Do you wish me to submit to you now?” she begged.
“Do so,” said he.
She fell to her knees before him, and lifted her head to regard him. “I will be your slave,” she said. Then, she knelt back on her heels, lowered her head, and lifted and extended her arms, wrists crossed, as though for binding. She was very beautiful. “I am your slave,” she said, “ — Master.” “Hasten to the Torian room,” said Rim, “In its privacy, I will have use for my slave.” “May I not beg a name?” she asked.
He looked at her. “Cara,” he said.
She had been named.
“Go, Cara,” said he.
“Yes,” she whispered, “Master.” She leaped to her feet and, weeping, fled from the room.
“Captain,” said Rim, regarding me. “I thank you for the wench.”
I nodded my head.
“And no, noble Samos,” said Rim, boldly, “I would appreciate the arousal of one in your employ, a metal worker, to remove this collar.” Samos nodded.
“Further,” said Rim, “I would appreciate your sending me the key to Lady Cara’s collar, that I may remove it, and providing another.” “Very well,” said Samos. “How shall it be inscribed?” “Let is say,” suggested Rim, “I am the slave Cara. I belong to Rim, the Outlaw.” “Very well,” said Samos.
“And, too,” said Rim, “prior to my retiring to the Torian room, I would appreciate a sword, with sheath, a knife, and a bow, the great bow, with arrows.” Rim wished to be armed.
“Were you once of the warriors?” I inquired.
He smiled at me. “Perhaps,” he said.
I tossed him the pouch of gold, from which I had drawn the coins to purchase his freedom, and the arrogant, slender, red-silked girl for him, to be his slave. He caught the purse, and smiled, and threw it to Samos, who caught it. He turned away. “Lead me to your armory,” said he, to one of the guards. “I require weapons.” He left, following the guards, not looking back.
Samos weighed the gold in his hand. “He pays well for his lodging,” said Samos. I shrugged. “Generosity,” I said, “is the prerogative of the free man.” Gold had been nothing to Rim. I suspected then, he might once have been of the warriors.
The torches burned.
Samos and I looked down upon the board, with its hundred squares of red and yellow, the weighted, carved pieces.
“Ubar to Ubar Nine,” said Samos. He looked at me.
I had planned well. “Ubar to Ubar Two,” I said, and turned, robes swirling, and strode to the portal, whence I might leave the hall.
At the broad, bronze-linteled portal I turned.
Samos stood behind the board. He looked up at me, and spread his hands. “The game is yours,” he said.
I regarded him.
“You will not reconsider?” he asked.
“No,” I told him.
2 I Gather Information
“There!” said Rim, pointing off the starboard bow. ”High on the beach!” His slave, Cara, in a brief woolen tunic, one-piece, woven of the wool of the Hurt, sleeveless, barefoot on the deck, graced by his collar, stood behind him and to his left.
I shaded my eyes. “Glass of the Builders,” I said.
Thurnock, of the Peasants, standing by me, handed me the glass.
I opened it, and surveyed the beach.
High on the beach, I saw two pairs of sloping beams. They were high, large and heavy structures. The feet of the beams were planted widely, deeply, in the sand; at the top, where they sloped together, they had been joined and pegged. They were rather like the English letter “A”, though lacking the crossbar. Within each “A”, her wrists bound by wrapped and taut leather to heavy rings set in the sloping sides, there hung a girl, her full weight on her wrists. Each were panther girls, captured. Their heads were down, their blond hair falling forward. Their ankles had been tied rather widely apart, each fastened by leather to iron rings further down the beams.
It was an exchange point.
It is thus that outlaws, to passing ships, display their wares.
We were fifty pasangs north of Lydius, which port lies at the mouth of the Laurius River. Far above the beach we could see the green margins of the great northern forests.
They were very beautiful.
“Heave to,” said I to Thurnock.
“Heave to!” cried he to my men.
Men scrambled on the long yard of the lateen-rigged light galley, a small, swift ram-ship of Port Kar. Others, on the deck, hauled on the long brail ropes. Slowly, billow by billow, the sails were furled. We would not remove them from the yard. The yard itself was then swung about, parallel to the ship and, foot by foot, lowered. We did not lower the mast. It remained deep in its placement blocks. We were not intending battle. The oars were now inboard, and the galley, of its own accord, swung into the wind.
“There is a man on the beach,” I said.
He had his hand lifted. He, too, wore skins. His hair was long and shaggy. There was a steel sword at his side.
I handed the glass of the Builders to Rim, who stood by the rail at my side. He grinned. “I know him,” he said, “He is Arn.” “Of what city?” I asked.
“Of the forests,” said Rim.
I laughed.
Rim, too, laughed.
Only too obviously the man was outlaw.
Now, behind him, similarly clad in skins, their hair bound back with tawny strips of panther hide, were four or five other men, men doubtless of his band. Some carried bows, two carried spears.
The man whom Rim had identified as Arn, an Outlaw, now came forward, passing before the two frames, closer down to the beach’s edge.
He made the universal gesture for trading, gesturing as though he were taking something from us, and then giving us something in return.
One of the girls in the frame lifted her head, and, miserable, surveyed our ship, off shore, on the green waters of Thassa.
Cara looked at the girls tied helpless in the frames, and at the man coming down to the shore, and at the others, high on the beach, behind him, behind the frames.
“Men are beasts,” she said. “I hate them!”
I returned the trading gesture, and the man on the shore lifted his arms, acknowledging my sign, and turned back.
Cara’s fists were clenched. There were tears in her eyes.
“If it pleases you, Rim,” I said, “your slave might, from the sand in the lower hold, fetch wine.” Rim, the Outlaw, grinned.
He looked upon Cara. “Fetch wine,” he told her.
“Yes, Master,” she said, and turned away.
