Beasts are also popular in the Stadium of Blades, and fights between various animals, half starved and goaded into fury by hot irons and whips, are common; sometimes the beasts fight beasts of the same species, and other times not; sometimes the beasts fight men, variously armed, or armed slave girls; sometimes, for the sport of the crowd, slaves or criminals are fed to the beasts. The training of slaves and criminals for these fights, and the acquisition and training of the beasts is a large business in Ar, there being training schools for men, and compounds where the beasts, captured on expeditions to various parts of Gor and shipped to Ar, may be kept and taught to kill under the unnatural conditions of the stadium spectacle.
Upon occasion, and it had happened early in Se'Kara this year, the arena is flooded and a sea fight is staged, the waters for the occasion being filled with a variety of unpleasant sea life, water tharlarion, Vosk turtles, and the nine-gilled Gorean shark, the latter brought in tanks on river barges up the Vosk, to be then transported in tanks on wagons across the margin of desolation to Ar for the event.
Both the games and the races are popular in Ar, but, as I have indicated, the average man of Ar follows the races much more closely. There are no factions, it might be mentioned, at the games. Further, as might be expected, those who favor the games do not much go to the races, and those who favor the races do not often appear at the games. The adherents of each entertainment, though perhaps equaling one another in their fanaticism, tend not to be the same men.
The one time I did attend the games I suppose I was fortunate in seeing Murmillius fight. He was an extremely large man and a truly unusual and superb swordsman. Murmillius always fought alone, never in teams, and in more than one hundred and fifteen fights, sometimes fighting three and four times in one afternoon, he had never lost a contest. It was not known if he had been originally slave or not, but had he been he surely would have won his freedom ten times over and more; again and again, even after he would have won his freedom had he first been slave, he returned to the sand of the arena, steel in hand; I supposed it might be the gold of victory, or the plaudits of the screaming crowd that brought Murmillius ever again striding helmeted in the sunlight onto the white sand.
Yet Murmillius was an enigma in Ar, and little seemed to be known of him. He was strange to the minds of those who watched the games.
For one thing he never slew an opponent, though the man often could never fight again; the afternoon I had seen him the crowd cried for the death of his defeated opponent, lying bloodied in the sand, pleading for mercy between his legs, and Murmillius had lifted his sword as though to slay the man, and the crowd screamed, and then Murmillius threw back his head and laughed, and slammed the sword into its sheath and strode from the arena; the crowd had been stunned and then furious, but by the time Murmillius had turned before the iron gate to face them they were on their feet crying his name, cheering him wildly, for he had spurned them; the will of the vast multitude in that huge stadium had been nothing to him, and the crowd, their will rejected, roared his praises, adoring him; and he turned and strode into the darkness of the pits beneath the stadium; even the face of Murmillius was unknown for never, even when the crowd cried out the loudest, would he remove the great helmet with its curving steel crest that concealed his features; Murmillius, at least until he himself should lie red in the white sand, held the adherents of the games in Ar, and perhaps the city itself, in the gauntleted palm of his right hand, his sword hand.
Claudia Tentia Hinrabia, though she had now been gone months from the House, had been kept for better than two months in the cell for Special Captures. In this time her head had been shaved at various times. She was commonly permitted to wear lavish and luxurious robes of concealment, save for hood and veil. The bracelets and chain on her wrists, during this time, save in dressing and in the bath, were never removed. And during such times, before the bracelets and chain were removed, a steel slave anklet would be placed on her left ankle, in order that there be no time that her body would be completely free of slave steel; this anklet she wore even in her bath; it would be removed only after the bracelets and chain had been replaced.
Each evening five lovely, long-haired, uncollared serving slaves would come to her cell, to bathe her and perfume her, to prepare her for love. These girls, under the instructions of Cernus, were extremely deferential, save that they were continually to amuse themselves at the prisoner's expense, making sport of her shaved head, laughing and joking about it among themselves. Four times Claudia Tentia Hinrabia had attempted to kill one of the girls but the others would easily overpower her; and the Hinrabian must endure her bath and her perfuming; when finished the girls would lock her raiment in a chest and then draw a slave hood over her head, locking it in place, and the Hinrabian, stripped, perfumed, hooded, chained, must wait for he for whom she has been prepared.
After two months of such treatment, Cernus, perhaps because he wearied of her body, or because he felt she was now ready, now at the height of her hatreds and miseries, ordered her sent to Tor, where, I heard, she was collared, marked and publicly sold during the ninth passage hand, that preceding the winter solstice. It was thought she would probably return to Ar within two months. There had been nothing clandestine about her sale, and it was unlikely that she would not be able to convince her master, eventually, that she was of high family in Ar and might be richly ransomed. If he were not convinced of her story one of the agents of Cernus would make a good offer for the girl, pretend to be convinced of her identity and hastily return her to Ar. It would be better, of course, if her master, bound to be ignorant of the intrigue, would undertake this business himself.
The time, during this period, seemed to me to pass with incredible slowness. Ar lies in Gor's northern hemisphere; it is rather low in her temperate latitudes; the long cold rains of the winter, the darkness of the days, the occasional snows, turning to black slush in her streets, depressed me. Each day I became more and more angry at the time that was passing. I spoke to Caprus again but he, now irritated, reiterated his position, and would speak with me no more.
Sometimes, to while away the time I would watch the girls in training.
Sura's training room lay directly off her private compartment, which might have been that of a free woman, save that the heavy door locked only on the outside and, at the eighteenth bar, it became her cell.
The training room was floored with wood, laid diagonally across beams for additional strength; one twelve-foot area of the room was a shallow pit of sand; against one wall were various chests of raiment, cosmetics and retention devices, for girls must be trained to wear chains gracefully; certain dances are performed in them, and so on.
To one side there was a set of mats for Musicians, who almost invariably were present at the sessions, for even the exercises of the girls, which were carefully selected and frequently performed, are done to music; against one wall were several bars, also used in exercise, not unlike a training room in ballet except that there were four parallel bars fastened in the wall, which are used in a variety of exercises. Near the chests of raiment and such were several folded mats and sets of love furs.
One entire side of the room, the left, facing the front, was a mirror. This mirror was, as might be expected, a one-way mirror. Various members of the House might observe the training without being noted from behind this glass. I used it sometimes myself, but at other times, sometimes alone, sometimes with others, would enter the room and sit near the back. Sura encouraged males to observe, wanting the girls to sense their presence and interest. And, though I do not think I would have told Elizabeth, her performances with men clearly present, and she knowing it, were almost invariably superior to those in which she did not know herself observed.