NOTE: This story is based on the John Norman Chronicles of Gor series of novels. (As always, copyrights are the property of the copyright-holder(s).) Translations for Gorean words (those whose meaning cannot be determined by context) can be found at a number of websites. And for those Gor fans who quibble with details or believe this goes too far afield of the Chronicles of Counter-Earth, remember ... this is fiction.
Senses and sensation gradually returned, leaving oblivion heading into a nightmare.
Marius Razi was chained head and foot, spreadeagled on a floor, naked. He did not know where he was or how he had gotten there.
One moment he was walking on a street in Ar. Suddenly, a woman had appeared in front of him, nude except for a loincloth — a lure girl, he now realized.
Then, apparently from behind because he had not seen anyone else, a large hand carrying a repcloth slammed him in the face. As soon as he involuntarily breathed in, he smelled what he dimly recognized as capture scent. And then he lost consciousness.
Sometime in the process of his capture he had lost not only his clothing and his boots, but his dagger and his quiva, which he kept strapped above his right ankle.
Marius' libido, which had occasionally overwhelmed his sense, had now gotten him into a predicament of unknowable danger.
"My newest kajirus," said a man's voice.
"Who are you?" Marius asked from the floor.
"Your new master."
"I am not a kajirus," said Marius angrily. "I am a free man!"
"And yet, you are not free, are you?"
The speaker, the master of this house, wore the green robes of the caste of physicians. He appeared to be about 20 years older than Marius, lean with flowing gray hair, as he bent over the spread-out Marius. The man had a dry, soft voice.
"I would welcome you to my house," the master said, "but it is unnecessary to welcome slaves."
Marius was lying on the floor of an interior courtyard of a house. Judging from the angle of the sun on his naked body, it was later in the day; the sun had not gone down past the interior walls of the courtyard. The stone on which his body lay had absorbed sun during the day, making it feel warm on his back.
Before whatever was now happening to him, Marius wore the clothing of a scribe, from the blue caste. He was not, strictly speaking, a scribe, however. Marius served the Ubar of Ar as closer to a warrior than anything else, but in secret, as part of the Priest-Kings' war against the Kurii. Marius' responsibility was to find and neutralize those in Ar who might be allied with the Kurii. Part gatherer of intelligence, part warrior, part assassin.
Marius was paid well for his service. He was allowed to kill if necessary, and he was expected to die if necessary, to fulfill his Ubar's missions.
Marius was a Tuchuk, the most fierce of the four tribes of the Wagon Peoples. As a member of the blue caste, he knew the Double Knowledge — that Gor was a planet and not the center of the universe, and the existence of Earth, a planet exactly opposite Gor — and did not believe in magic, as did the Low Castes. As a Tuchuk, he worshiped the Spirits of the Sky, although in secret and infrequently, and not the Priest-Kings. His training allowed him to fit in in the cities that were the last place the Wagon Peoples wanted to live. The Tuchuk concealed their fighting abilities and their native intelligence with a slightly insolent attitude and wit.
Marius came to Ar after his journey from the Plains of the Wagon Peoples to the Sardar Mountains, a journey required of all Goreans by the time they reach age 25. After surviving the several-thousand-pasang trip to Sardar, instead of returning to the Plains, or going to Turia, the largest city on the plains, he chose his own path and traveled to Ar. He began the journey to his work by casually mentioning that on his journey from the Sardar Mountains to Ar he had killed a wild Kurii who had attacked him.
Soon after, he met Seyyal Talibah, a man 25 years older than Marius who, though he had lived in Ar his entire life, knew of the Tuchuk. Talibah trained Marius in the warrior arts, noticed his native intelligence, and recruited him for a nameless branch of Ar government that performed unofficial special tasks for the Ubar of Ar.
Marius was 94 horts and more than 50 Gorean stone, with eyes the color of the sky, thick brown hair with lighter highlights that brushed his wide shoulders, muscular arms, a broad chest and powerful legs. Marius found in his travels that free women found him highly desirable, interest he sought to accommodate whenever he had the opportunity, rationalizing the Gorean aphorism that "men have sex; women are sex."
He enjoyed the challenge of not just the conquest, but of making a free woman kick and yield like a slave — eight times, in the case of one blonde free woman. The woman started the Rite of Submission but Marius stopped her, because he did not want her as a slave but was unwilling to subject her to being enslaved by someone else.
Marius neither owned a slave nor had ever had a free companion. The work he did was not conducive to commitments or entanglements, to the point where he had not renewed his pledge to the Home Stone of Ar ever since he began his work, but the city authorities had never brought it up to him, though he legally risked expulsion from the city. His aversion to commitment and the ability to buy a pagar kajira's services gave him options on the nights he sought companionship in the arms of a kajira or just release between the legs of a kajira; either, or both, was guaranteed for a price.
"You call yourself a free man?" asked the master. "Where is your clothing? Have you no property?"
This posed a dilemma for Marius. His instructions were to do his work in secret so that no one else knew his true identity. His identification papers had his actual name on them, but listed his occupation as "scribe." He had no identification for himself in his actual work.
And, of course, those identification papers were nowhere on his person now.
"I am a scribe," said Marius.
"Prove it," said the master.
The additional dilemma was that though he spoke in the cultured tones of a scribe, he did not look like a typical scribe, someone who spent his days in chambers reading or writing books. His actual work required him to be in top physical condition, something that was not often said of scribes. Before his abduction, Marius had been walking down a Arn street wearing a blue shirt, black pants and brown boots, all of which showed off his physique. He nonetheless managed to convince those he encountered that he was indeed a scribe merely by his self-confidence, his ability to act as though he was supposed to be where he was.
