Barbarian of Gor Chapter Twenty Five

It wasn’t supposed to end like this. These men were my brothers. 

 

I ran towards Rolfe as he lay on his back in the damp grass, his body convulsing from two well aimed gun shot wounds. His sword lay fallen, several yards away from his right hand.

 

“Rolfe!” I dropped to my knees beside him and pressed down with my hands on the most serious looking of the two gunshot wounds, trying hard to staunch the blood flow. He seemed to be in shock. “Stay with me!” I cried. “Keep your eyes open, damn you! You’re not going to die! You’re not going to die!”

 

“Sword…” he croaked as blood coated his lips. “My sword… the Gods…” the fingers of his right hand opened and closed futilely, trying to reach a hilt that was beyond his grasp. “Roland… my sword…”

 

Blood was spreading through his tunic from both wounds. “Stay with me, Rolfe, please!”

 

“Sword…” he gasped again, and his breathing now was getting worse. I rose to my feet, tears welling in my eyes, as I ran to where his sword lay in the wet grass. From somewhere beyond my narrow tunnel vision I heard a fifth gunshot as Rollo tried to rise and was shot again by Adam.

 

“Stop it! Adam, STOP!”

 

I grasped Rolfe’s sword and ran back to where his body lay, only to find it was just a body now. I dropped to my knees weeping piteously. He was my brother. “No… no… no…” I tried to press the hilt of his sword into his open hand, tried to curl the fingers about it, but they were limp and wouldn’t grip. 

 

Rolfe had died without his sword. He would never gain Valhalla. He would never feast with the dead. 

 

I rose again, still weeping. Neither Rollo nor Hergessvar were moving. Both lay still in the grass.

 

Five gunshots had been fired. 

 

Right then and there I wanted to give up. I had lost Felicity. I had lost Kelsee. I had lost Kulai. And now I had lost my brothers. I felt cursed. I felt cursed by this fucking planet. Everything I touched turned to shit. Every time I tried to do the right thing…  I knelt there and howled, letting all the pain and misery wash through me. Again and again I tried to curl Rolfe’s fingers about the hilt of his sword until Felix arrived, knelt beside me and gently pulled me away.

 

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” I sobbed. “It wasn’t supposed to happen.”

 

“Brother,” said Felix, as he pulled me to his shoulder. He said nothing more. He simply held me as I swore and cried. 

 

I sat alone for half an ahn staring out into the sky, watching the clouds roll past. Adam and Felix gave me some time, gave me some space. 

 

I didn’t know whether I wanted to go on; whether I could go on. What was the point? What was the fucking point of living if every action I took led to even more pain and misery? An endless wave of shit.

 

In time Adam came over to me.

 

“They would have done their best to kill us. And they would have taken Kayra in chains to Argentum.”

 

“I know.” I couldn’t look at him.

 

“It wouldn’t have been any kinder to fight them with swords. We would simply have lost.”

 

“I know.” I still didn’t want to look at him. 

 

“I did what I had to do,” said Adam. “The mission.”

 

“How is it you even have a gun?”

 

“I was a Priest King agent on Earth. This is an authorised weapon. They know the difference.”

 

“Are Priest Kings real?”

 

“Yes, yes they are, Roland. Alien intelligences, and, if the stories are true, they were responsible for moving this planet into our solar system before we even evolved out of the sea. It’s science so far beyond our comprehension that it might as well be magic.”

 

“How many bullets do you have for that thing?’

 

“Five less, now, than I would really like to have,” said Adam. “And there’s nowhere I know of where I can find more.” 

 

“Rolfe was an honourable man,” I said, sniffing and wiping snot from my nose with my arm. “They all were. You would have… I think you would have liked them.”

 

“I’m sure I would have,” said Adam. 

 

“He fucking saved my life, you know. Back when I was cast out from Argentum. He fucking saved my life.” I began crying again. “I can’t do this anymore, Adam. I just can’t. I don’t have it in me. Not any more I don’t. So how about you just put a bullet in my head while I’ve got my back to you. Make it quick. Stop me from hurting anymore.” 

 

“I really can’t spare the bullets,” said Adam as he nudged my shoulder.

 

I began laughing, but it was a manic deranged kind of laugh as a reaction to all the horror I had experienced since that first restaurant meeting with Felicity Emery had sent me down this spiral of madness. 

 

“You can’t… spare the bullets…” I said, choking on myself. 

 

“Life’s tough like that,” said Adam. 

 

I insisted we dug a grave for the bodies. I owed them that much. I could see that Adam really wanted to get going without any further delays, but he acceded to my request. The slaves watched us dig with shovels as they remained chained to the stones. I thought of Ana – the former Svetlana. She had watched as her beloved had been gunned down. I couldn’t look at her for a while, but when I did I saw she was hanging slumped against the stones, limp in her bonds. 

 

“We should free her wrists,” I said, “let her pay her respects to Rolfe.”

 

Adam nodded. He freed Ana and helped the crying girl walk to the pit we’d dug. Three bodies lay beside the pit, wrapped in threadbare blankets. We had nothing else to use as funeral shrouds.

 

I watched as Ana fell to her knees and wailed over Rolfe’s corpse. For a moment I felt like joining her.

 

“I’m going to free her,” I said. “We’ll give her a weapon and let her go.”

 

My voice sounded resolute, with no interest in debate. 

 

“She’s your captive,” said Adam.

 

“I owe her something after this. She can be Svetlana again.”

 

I knelt beside the girl and touched her hair, only to have her violently push me away with a sharp punch.

 

“Leave me be!” she cried.

 

“I’m going to free you, Svetlana. I’m going to unlock the collar around your throat. You’ll be a free woman again.”

 

She spat directly in my face.

 

Felix and Adam said nothing as I let the spittle dribble down my face. And then I simply nodded, produced a single collar key and placed it on the ground beside her. “When you’re ready,” I said. And then I left her to grieve for a while. 

 

“If there had been any other way,” said Adam as he walked beside me. “They were going to kill us.”

 

“I know. I understand.”

 

One ahn later we buried the three warriors and marked the grave with a pile of heavy stones. Felix had given Svetlana a cloak which she cut a hole in and wore as a poncho, belting it around her waist with a length of binding fibre. I handed her a knife, still in its scabbard, and watched her carefully as she took it from me. 

 

“I didn’t want this,” I said to her. “Rolfe was my brother.”

 

Svetlana handed me her former collar. “This isn’t the end,” she said.

 

“Yes it is. Svetlana, let me be clear about something. I don’t die. I deserve to die, but I’m never the one who does. I’m a walking curse. Stay away from me, because I’m beginning to think I’m fucking cursed and everyone I know – everyone who means anything to me – fate and destiny seems to fuck them up in my presence.”

 

“I don’t mean anything to you,” said Svetlana.

 

“Actually, you do. Go. Live your life and try to be happy. I know how stupid that sounds now, but please try. Don’t come after me, because it will not end well.”

 

“You took the man I loved, Roland.”

 

“I know.”

 

“And you have taken my sisters. I’m supposed to forget that? I’m supposed to walk away and forget that? Mishka? Danata? Livinnia?”

 

“Danata is too injured to make it out of here. She’d slow you down and you wouldn’t be able to protect her. You wouldn’t leave her, and so you would both end up in collars. I can’t let Livinnia go. That should be obvious. If I had any sense I’d simply kill her, but I can’t… I can’t do that. You know I can’t.”

 

“Why? Because she has pretty legs? Because she looks beautiful in a collar?”

“Yes, I suppose that’s what it is. She looks beautiful in a collar. Women always have that defence, no matter how cruel they may have been while they were free.”

 

“And Mishka?”

 

“You can have Mishka. I give you Mishka.”

 

Svetlana regarded me. “You would free her?”

 

“I will free her. But don’t come after me, Svetlana, because I never die.”

 

“No one cheats death forever, Roland,” said Svetlana with a grim expression. “One day your time will come.”

 

“Not until I am happy, it won’t, and I do not see myself becoming happy for a long time to come. Then you can come and kill me. When I actually have something to lose.”

 

“Then I will come and kill you, Roland of Corcyrus. When I know you have something to lose.”

 

“I wish…” I gazed into Svetlana’s hard eyes. “I so wish things hadn’t worked out the way… that I’d never said goodbye to you all. Those days together in the camp… I had found a home. I had found family. I’m sorry, Svetlana. I am so sorry.”

 

“You will be,” she said. “On the day you find true happiness. I swear it now by the Priest Kings of Gor. I will take what you love from you and then after you have mourned long enough, I will end your life. And I will look into your eyes as you die.”

 

Half an hour later I watched Svetlana and Mishka walk down the hill of Slaver’s point, after they had said a silent farewell to Dana and Nia. I watched as they pressed noses together and thought their unspoken thoughts. Dana and Nia remained in slave collars. I couldn’t free either of them, for very different reasons. 

 

Adam stood beside me as we watched the huntresses walk slowly away in the opposite direction that we would be taking to Torcadino.

 

“I’m not sure that was a wise thing to do,” said Adam. 

 

“Time will tell,” I said. 

 

“You really think you’re cursed?” asked Adam.

 

“Yes. I’m not sure this is going to end well, Adam.”

 

“Torcadino is very close now. Just a little further to go. We’re past the worst.”

 

I gazed up at the sky, gazed up at the rolling clouds, and simply said, “I think it’s going to rain soon.”