Renegades of Gor (29 page)

late?”

“It is too possible,” said Aemilianus.

“The safety of the city is in your hands, Captain,” said the young fellow. “The

security of her citizens is your responsibility. I think the in the light of the

events that have taken place you should consider an alternative.”

“Who would do this?” asked Aemilianus.

I did not understand their discourse.

“I would,” said the young man.

“No!” cried an older fellow. “We would die to the last man before we would have

recourse to such an action!”

“They would laugh at us!” said another.

“You were not on the river,” said Aemilianus.

“With your permission, Captain?” said the young man.

“Go,” said Aemilianus, resigned.

“No!” cried another man, but the young fellow had turned, and was already taking

his way from the room.

“He will never make it from the city,” said a fellow.

“He will be dead by dusk,” said another.

“Listen,” said a man. “The trumpets.”

“The morning assault has begun,” said another.

Aemilianus rose up, unsteadily. “Gentlemen,” said he, “let us to our stations.”

Then he looked down, wearily, upon me. “I understand,” he said, “that on the

wall, you were nearly hung.”

I looked up at him, as I could, but said nothing.

(pg.195) “Perhaps it is just as well that you were not,” he said. “Hanging is

too swift a death for a spy.”

I struggled, futilely.

“Put him with the other spy,” said Aemilianus.

12
   
The Cell; The Spy

(pg.196) The tether on my neck was removed.

I stood before an opened iron door.

“Remove his shackles,” said an officer.

My hands and ankles were freed. I was covered by two crossbows. Any suspicions

or sudden move, I was sure, would result in the entry into my body of those two

stubby, heavy iron bolts.

I was then thrust through the door and it shut heavily behind me.

I heard it locked.

I stood in a cell, on huge, flat stones, strewn with straw. There was more straw

piled in the corners of the cell. It was not a small cell. It was perhaps twenty

feet square. It was lit by a shaft of light, descending from a window high in

the wall. This window was barred. The bars appeared to be some two inches in

thickness and were set about two inches apart.

I tried the door. It was sturdy. The hinges were on the other side. It had an

observation panel in it, which, latched, as it was now, could be opened only

from the outside. There was also a narrow paneled opening in the bottom of the

door, also locked now, through which, when it was opened, a pan, say, of water,

or bread, or dampened meal, might be inserted. I looked about the cell. I

checked the floor, the walls. It was a sturdy cell. It was the sort of cell in

which inmates, (pg.197) to their dismay, soon discover that they cannot escape,

that they are helpless, that they are truly prisoners.

I then turned to face the other prisoner.

She shrank back, naked in the straw. She was at the side of the room. She knelt

there, frightened, her knees clenched closely together. When I had been entered

into the room she had cried out in protest and cringed. She had moved her head

and her hands for an instant in such a way as to suggest she wished to bring her

hair forward, before her, to use it to partially cover her breasts and body, but

then she moaned. She could not do so. Her hair, as she had recalled, almost

immediately, had been cropped short. She did pull straw up, about the thighs and

waist, to help hide herself. She now looked at me, wildly, kneeling, huddling in

the straw, covering her body, as she could, with her hands.

“Why have they done this?” she asked.

“What?” I asked.

“Put you in with me!” she said.

“I do not know,” I said.

Then she bend down further, making herself even smaller in the straw, looking up

at me.

“Are you a gentleman?” she asked, plaintively.

“No,” I said.

She moaned. “They must hate me so,” she wept. “They have done this deliberately!

It is not enough that they have removed my clothing and incarcerated me?”

“You are a spy.” I said.

“So, too, then must you be,” she cried, “that you have been put in with me!”

“It seems they think so,” I said, irritably.

“I was caught!” she cried. “What will they do to me?”

“Are you a free woman?” I asked.

“Yes!” she said. “Of course!”

“I do not think it will be pleasant then,” I said.

She moaned.

I looked up at the high window. There was nothing in the room which made it

possible to reach it, even to look out.

“They hardly feed me enough to keep me alive!” she exclaimed.

“You are probably fed as well as others in Ar’s Station,” I said.

(pg.198) “Look,” she said. “They took my hair!”

“In that way,” I said, “they have seen to it that you have done your bit for

Ar’s Station.”

“The city must soon fall,” she said. “We must then be rescued!”

“The citadel,” I said, “can be held long after the walls. They would have time

to deal with us.”

She put her head down, weeping bitterly.

“When are we fed?” I asked.

“At noon,” she said, lifting her head, looking at me, angrily.

“Do they make you perform for your food?” I asked.

She looked at me, in fury.

“I see that they did,” I said.

“No more,” she said. “There is a woman warder now. The men were needed on the

walls.”

“Full usage?” I asked.

“No,” she said, angrily, “such things as dancing, and posing, before the panel.

They never entered the cell.”

“Did you dance and pose well?” I asked.

“When I did not, I was not fed,” she said, bitterly.

“Still,” I said, “you escaped easily.”

“Undoubtedly,” she said, bitterly.

“Did you enjoy dancing and posing?” I asked.

“Are you mad?” she asked.

“Perhaps,” I said. I smiled inwardly. I had noted a tiny movement about her, and

a fleeting, frightened expression, before she had answered so belligerently. I

saw that she was female.

I glanced toward the door.

“There is a woman warder?” I asked.

“Do not rouse your hopes,” she said. “She does not enter the cell.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Claudia, Lady of Ar’s Station,” she said.

:Where were you caught?” I asked.

“On the parapet,” she said. “I did not even know I was suspected until I felt

the rope on my neck.”

I sat down in the straw, facing the door. “Tell me of these things,” I said.

(pg.199) “Doubtless my story, in its way, is not much different from yours,” she

said.

“Perhaps,” I said.

She spoke more freely, not under my eye.

“I did not receive the promotion and advancement which were my due here,” she

said. “I wanted even missions to Ar herself, but others were chosen in my place.

How wrong this was!”

“Continue,” I said.

“I am a beautiful and brilliant person,” she said. “Yet my perfections were

insufficiently rewarded.”

“Perhaps you are only a pretty mediocrity,” I said.

“My talents were ignored,” she said, angrily.

I thought she might, if only latently, have excellent woman talents.

“Then the Cosians were upon us,” she said. “We were all in fear of our lives. It

became clear, after weeks, that Ar was not coming to our rescue. It would be

everyone for himself. The clever must save themselves. I would be clever.

Sometimes at night the women go to the parapets, to lower baskets with money,

for food. Some women, as you probably know, particularly those without money,

stripped themselves and lowered themselves over the wall, surrendering to the

first Cosian they met, selling themselves into slavery for so little as a crust

of bread or a handful of gruel.”

There was still food, though it seemed not much of it in the city. For example,

even she, a caught spy, was still being fed. The women who did this, I

suspected, lowering themselves naked over the wall, their bodies brushing and

touching the stone in their descent, had had motivations deeper than hunger.

Hunger, however, might have provided a convenient and excellent rationalization

for their action. The nudity of the suppliants, of course, was only to be

expected. Stripping themselves, baring their breasts, and such, is natural for

female suppliants, before men. the nudity, too, would make clear their intent,

and make it less likely that they might, in the darkness, be slain as mere

fugitives. Nudity, too, makes it difficult to conceal weapons. For example,

sometimes, when slaves are taken to Ubars, and such, they are stripped and

wrapped in a scarlet sheet, if they are “red silk,” and in a white sheet, if

they are “white silk.” They are then placed in (pg.200) the master’s chambers,

often through a panel in the door, the sheet remaining behind. A girl normally

makes the journey only once in a white sheet, of course. Nudity, all in all, is

not uncommon, in women surrendering to men. it is also not uncommon, of course,

in slaves presenting themselves before masters.

“I see,” I said.

“But such was not for such as I,” she said. “I had no wish to risk being hooded

and chained in a crossing stall in Tyros, being used to breed quarry slaves for

Chenbar, the Sea Sleen.”

I rather doubted that she, who was slight, delicious and well-curved, would have

to fear that fate. Too, most women would spend very little time in a crossing

stall. How long, after all, she placed there without slave wine, at the exactly

ideal moment in her breeding cycle, does it take to impregnate a slave? Most

such slaves are used in this fashion only once or twice, and then they are

assigned other duties.

“I formed the habit of going to the wall with the other women, ‘fishing,’ as we

spoke of it. I made certain, of course, that I went to the same place on the

wall at the same time each night. The first few times I put money in the basket.

Later, when I increased the amount of money, I received some bread and

vegetables. Can you imagine? A silver tarsk for a few suls?”

“The prices are higher now,” I said. I recalled there had been a golden tarn

disk in the basket which had been lowered to me at the foot of the wall.

“Then,” she said, “I began to put messages in the basket, innocent ones at

first, asking questions about the position of the relieving forces, and such.”

“I understand,” I said.

“But my intent seemed quickly grasped,” she said, “for shortly thereafter, with

food, concealed under the cloth, in the bottom of the basket, were questions

pertaining to conditions in the city.”

“Did you respond to these?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“You were at that point a spy,” I said.

“I did not think so, yet,” she said. “Such information was surely general

knowledge.”

“Not necessarily to those outside the city,” I said. “To be (pg.201) sure, there

are usually informers, if not traitors, sometimes several, who can be relied

upon for such details.”

“the next time I drew up the basket,” she said, “there was a very specific

question, concealed in a wedge of Sa-Tarna bread. ‘Are you for Cos?’ it asked.

The next night I lowered the answer, ‘Yes.’”

“You were then a traitress,” I said.

“Ar’s Station had betrayed me!” she said. “It had not given me what I wanted! It

had not even given me missions to Ar. Too, do you think that I, a person such as

I, wanted to remain out here, on the Vosk River, all my life?”

“What happened then?” I asked.

“I then made clear my position, that I would bargain, and bargain severely.”

“You requested food?” I asked.

“I had food,” she said. “I had hoarded it from the beginning of the siege, when

it was still thought that Ar, any day, would arrive with her banners fluttering

in the wind, dispelling the Cosians like the sun the fogs on the river!”

“For gold then?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, “for gold, and jewels!”

“It seems you have little gold and few jewels now,” I said.

I heard her move angrily in the straw.

“Once you had declared for Cos,” I said, “I think you would have been wise not

to begin bargaining for monetary returns.”

“Why not?” she said.

“Because you had declared for Cos,” I said. “Cosians, like those of Ar, or

elsewhere, expect those whose allegiance has been freely given to serve as those

who have given their allegiance freely, and not as merchants or mercenaries.”

“What difference does it make?” she asked.

“Occasionally such things mean the difference between riches and a collar,” I

said.

“I protected myself in my bargaining against such possibilities,” she said,

“demanding, as conditions of my cooperation, not only riches but my safety and

freedom.”

“That you not be made a slave, for example.”

“Yes,” she said.

(pg.202) “But, suppose,” said I, “that in the meantime, perhaps by others, you

had been made a slave.”

“Then that,” she said, “would be the end of it. I would then be a slave. A slave

is a slave.”

“True,” I said. The Cosians had agreed not to make her a slave, not to free her,

if she had already been made a slave. As she had said, a slave is a slave.

“I, too, demanded power in Ar’s Station, should the city not be destroyed, for