Read Online Assassin of Gor by John Norman - Free Book Online

a forty-five degree angle, more of a dancer's motion than a true run. Elizabeth, I knew, would hate that. I remembered her on the Plains of Turia, in the Land of the Wagon Peoples. There were few girls with her wind and stamina, her strength and vitality, few who could run at the stirrup of a Warrior as well as she. How offensive she must find some slave keeper's notion of the pretty hurrying of a slave girl.
     
    "Lift your head, Girl," said Cernus.
     
    She did so, and I gathered it was the first time she had actually looked on the face of the master of the House of Cernus. Her face was pale.
     
    "How long have you been with us?" asked Cernus.
     
    "Nine days, Master," said she.
     
    "Do you like it here?" asked Cernus.
     
    "Oh yes," she said, "Master."
     
    "Do you know the penalty for lying?" asked Cernus.
     
    Elizabeth, trembling, lowered her head to the floor and crossed her wrists under her, kneeling, as it is said, to the whip. One of Cernus' men-at-arms looked at him, to see if he wished him to secure her to one of the slave rings in the base of the platform for punishment.
     
    Cernus, with a finger, indicated negativity.
     
    "Lift you head, Slave," said Cernus.
     
    Elizabeth did so.
     
    "Remove your clothing," said Cernus.
     
    Without a word Elizabeth did so, standing and pulling the loop at her left shoulder.
     
    "You are very pretty, Little Slave," said Cernus.
     
    "Thank you, Master," said the girl.
     
    "What is you name?" asked Cernus.
     
    "74673," she responded.
     
    "No," said Cernus, "what name would you like to be called by?"
     
    "Vella," said she, "if it pleases Master."
     
    "It is a pretty name," he said.
     
    She dropped her head.
     
    "I see," said Cernus, "that you wear the brand of the four bosk horns."
     
    "Yes," she said.
     
    "Kassar," he said, "isn't it?"
     
    "No, Master," said she, "Tuchuk."
     
    "But where is the ring?" he asked. Tuchuk women, both slave and free, have fixed in their noses a tiny ring of gold, small and fine, not unlike the wedding rings of Earth. The ponderous bosk, on which the Wagon Peoples live, among which are numbered the Kassars and the Tuchuks, also wear such rings, but there, of course, the ring is much larger and heavier.
     
    "My last master," said she, "Clark of the House of Clark in Thentis, removed it."
     
    "He is a fool," said Cernus. "Such a ring is marvelous. It bespeaks the barbarian, the promise of pleasures so wild and fierce a man of the cities could scarcely conceive of them."
     
    Elizabeth said nothing.
     
    "I had a Tuchuk girl once," said Cernus, "a wild girl of the wagons, of whom I was fond, but when she tried to kill me, I strangled her in the chain of the House of Cernus." He fingered the chain and medallion about his neck.
     
    "I am not truly Tuchuk," said Elizabeth. "I am only a girl from the islands north of Cos, taken by pirates of Port Kar, sold to a tarnsman, carried to and sold again in the city of Turia, and hence for twenty boskhides traded to the Tuchuks, where I was ringed and branded."
     
    "How came you to Thentis?" asked Cernus.
     
    "Kassars raided Tuchuk wagons," she said. "I was abducted, later sold to Turians." She spoke numbly. "I was later sold in Tor," she said, "far to the north of Turia. A year later, by slave wagon, I reached the fair of Se'Var near the Sardar, where I was sold to the House of Clark, from which house I and many others were fortunate enough to be purchased by the House of Cernus, in Glorious Ar."
     
    Cernus leaned back again, seemingly satisfied.
     
    "But without the ring," said he, "no one will believe the brand of the four bosk horns." He smiled. "You will be regarded, my dear, as inauthentic."
     
    "I am sorry," said Elizabeth, her head down.
     
    "I will have a smith replace the ring," he said.
     
    "As master wishes," she said.
     
    "I will not hurt much the second time," said Cernus.
     
    Elizabeth said nothing.
     
    Cernus turned to Caprus, who stood near him. "Is she trained?" he