I touched the shoulder strap of the scabbard, again, for reassurance. It was tangible. So many realities were not.
Animals are innocent, I thought. They kill, and feed. Men smile, and soothe, and praise, and then kill, and feed.
Is it honor and the codes, I wondered, which separate us from animals, or, rather, is it they which bring us closer to the innocence of the animals.
“How goes the night?” I asked.
“Well, Commander,” I was assured.
There were apparently spies in the camp, and perhaps an assassin. If Lord Nishida was correct at least one of the five men I had met in his tent was a spy, and one was an assassin. If one were an assassin then Lord Nishida was, indeed, so to speak, living with an ost. To be sure, if the assassin were also a spy, or the spy, to be sure a role unusual for one of that caste, I supposed that Lord Nishida was in no immediate danger, for the spy would wish to gather information, and would be unlikely to make his strike, until his reports were complete, or no longer required.
Sometimes free women, collared and branded as slaves, were recruited for purposes of espionage. Is not the beautiful woman, curled at one’s feet, avid to learn the secrets of a house, petulant and pouting if denied, ideally suited to gather the flowers of intelligence? Is it not a natural, and simple, and innocent thing to purchase one of their smiles, at so small a cost as an expression, an unimportant, dropped word, which must, in any case, be meaningless to them? Some did not realize that as soon as they were branded and collared they were truly slaves, and others, doubtless, expected to be freed. They would not be freed, of course, none of them, for their slavery was intended by their employers from the beginning. Is it not a fit recompense for their treachery? Let them stay then in their collars, and, bound at a punishment ring, absorb the lessons of the whip, informing them as to the reality of their condition and the nature of their future. Sometimes, too, amusingly, one of these women, intended for a given house, finds that house outbid, and finds herself wagoned away to another house, perhaps out of the city. Her lamentations and protests, too, soon cease beneath the whip. She learns, too, she is then a true slave, and discovers she is perhaps a thousand pasangs from the house of her intended destination. To her horror, she soon realizes, too, that her recruiters will not attempt to reclaim her, for that might draw attention to themselves and their intentions. She then learns the collar is truly on her, that collar so closely encircling her lovely neck, and so securely, so nicely, locked. She, too, is now a slave. And another woman may easily be obtained to replace her, one with whose placement the employers will hope to have better success. A true slave will never betray her master, for she understands the terrible gravity of such a thing, and her absolute vulnerability. Too, she is now at his feet, and is his slave, and knows herself his slave, and hopes only to please him. To be sure, she might be seized and tortured, and would then speak all she knows. One does not blame her for that, nor any human being, if the torture is exquisitely done. So slaves are kept in ignorance. They cannot reveal what they do not know. Too, it is theirs to serve and please, not to be apprised of the designs and doings of men. Curiosity, it is said, is not becoming in a kajira. The collar is often a woman’s greatest safeguard. Slaves are commonly spared, even in the sacking of a city. But so, too, of course, are verr, tarsks, kaiila, and such.
In the distance the feast was still in progress. I heard strains of a song, an anthem of Cos. Interesting, I thought, how mercenaries, outlaws, renegades, even those who have betrayed and repudiated their Home Stones, remember such things.
I was passed by some fellows returning to their quarters, some leading leashed slaves, their hands tied behind their backs. Others passed, too, with slaves in custody, but differently, the slaves bent over, in leading position, their heads at the hips of free men, held there by the hair, these slaves’ hands fastened, too, behind their backs.
I did not doubt but what these fellows would derive much pleasure from the slaves.
Obviously one of the principal utilities of the female slave is the enormous pleasure which one will see to it that he obtains from her.
How marvelous is the property female!
I passed a post.
“How goes the night?” I inquired.
“Well, commander,” I was told.
At least one of the five was a spy, it seemed, and, perhaps, too, of the dark caste.
I wondered from what source Lord Nishida derived his information. He, too, doubtless had spies. I wondered if he thought me a spy. I wondered if one or more of the five were a spy, or one an assassin, truly, or if I had been told that merely to produce some effect in me. If so, what effect? How would he know that one or more of the five was a spy, or that, amongst the five, there might be an assassin? Might this be conjecture on his part? Might it not even be the result of some aberration, or paranoia? But I did not think Lord Nishida insane. He seemed one of the most coldly sane individuals I had ever met. In a way he reminded me of Pa-Kur, once master of the Assassins, save that Pa-Kur was not such as to be distracted by flowers, by poetry, the servings of tea, by sake, by the delights of delicate women under contract. Pa-Kur had sought power, single-mindedly, at the blade’s edge. For this he had forsworn vanities, or was it, rather, he would sacrifice all for what might prove to be the most evanescent, elusive, and alluring of all vanities, the vanity of vanities, power?
I encountered another sentry.
The night it seemed, was going well.
I thought of the assassins of the medieval Middle East. The caste of assassins was quite different. They were not dupes, fools, madmen, too stupid to understand how they had been manipulated by others, young men drunk with the wine of death, who think they will somehow thrive in the cities of dust. Against such mindless puppets, such naive fools, such lunatics, manipulated by those who send them forth, sitting safe in their mountain fastness, safe in their lair of prevarication and deceit, it is difficult to defend oneself. But the Gorean Assassin, he of the Black Caste, is not a naive, twisted, deluded, managed beast serving the purposes of others, but a professional killer. He wishes to kill and vanish, to live, to kill again. Otherwise he is no more than a clumsy oaf, a failure, having accomplished no more than might have a desperate, simple, misguided fool. If he himself dies, he has botched his work, he has failed, he has shamed his caste.