Norman, John - Gor 08 - Hunters of Gor.txt

by Hunters of Gor [lit]

  learns it, but none of us, I think, can tell another what it is.

  Marlenus looked up at me.

  He nodded with his head toward the line of girls, pressed back on the grass,

  steel at their throats, struggling bound in the arms of captors.

  “You may have any of them, if you wish,” said Marlenus.

  “No, Ubar,” I told him.

  After an Ahn Marlenus said. “We shall return to Verna’s camp. We shall spend the

  night there. In the morning we shall return to my camp, north of Laura.”

  He rose to his feet.

  “Present the slaves,” said Marlenus, “to their leader.”

  One by one, the girls, their wrists still bound behind their back, their right

  ankles still in coffle, were dragged before Verna.

  Some struggled. Few held up their heads.

  “Verna!” wept one. “Verna!”

  Verna did not speak to her.

  Then the girls, in coffle, were led away into the darkness, herded by the butts

  of spears. Some wept.

  “At your camp,” Marlenus informed Verna, “we will put them in proper chains.”

  Marlenus then released Verna’s wrists, and her right ankle. She was still bound

  to a stake by the left ankle.

  “Stand,” he said.

  She did so.

  “Bracelets,” he said.

  She looked at him, with hatred.

  “Bracelets,” he snapped.

  She put her head in the air and placed her hands behind her back.

  Marlenus locked bracelets on her. They were slave bracelets.

  “Have you no heavier chains?” she asked.

  “Free yourself,” said Marlenus.

  The girl struggled, helplessly. In the end she was, of course, as perfectly

  secured as before.

  “They are slave bracelets,” said Marlenus. “They are quite adequate to hold a

  woman.”

  Verna shook with fury, and turned her head away.

  Marlenus then took a length of binding fiber, of some eight feet in length, and

  knotted one end of it about Verna’s throat. The other end he looped twice about

  his belt.

  He then bent down and, with his sleen knife, slashed the binding fiber that

  still fastened her left ankle to the stake.

  Verna was now free of the stakes. She had exchanged the bondage of the stakes

  for that of bracelets and leash.

  She looked at him. She stood before him, her wrists fastened behind her back,

  her neck in his tether.

  “Are you always victorious, Marlenus of Ar?” she asked.

  “Lead us, little tabuk,” said Marlenus, “to your stall.”

  She turned about, in fury, her head in the air, and led us through the darkness

  toward her camp.

  “We have much to talk about,” Marlenus was telling me. “It has been long since

  we have seen one another.”

  11 Marlenus Holds a Flaminium

  In the camp of Marlenus, some pasangs north of Laura, I supped with the great

  Ubar.

  His hunting tent, hung on its eight great poles, was open at the sides. From

  where we sat, cross-legged, across from one another, before the low table, I

  could see the tent ropes stretched taut to stakes in the ground, the drainage

  ditch cut around the base of the tent, the wall of saplings, sharpened, which

  surrounded the camp. I could see, too, Marlenus’ men at their fires and

  shelters. Here and there were piled boxes, and rolls of canvas, and, too, at

  places, were poles and frames on which skins were stretched, trophies of his

  luck in the sport. He had, too, taken two sleen alive, and four panthers, and

  these were in stout cages of wood, lashed together with leather.

  “Wine,” said Marlenus.

  He was served by the beautiful slave girl.

  “Would you care for a game?” asked Marlenus, indicating a board and pieces which

  stood to one side. The pieces, tall, weighted, stood ready on their first

  squares.

  “No,” I said to him. I was not in a mood for the game.

  I had played Marlenus before. His attack was fierce, devastating, sometimes

  reckless. I myself am an aggressive player, but against Marlenus it seemed

  always necessary to defend. Against him one played defensively, conservatively,

  postitionally, waiting, waiting for the tiny misjudgment, the small error or

  mistake. But it was seldom made.

  Marlenus was a superb player.

  He had not been able to handle me as well as he liked on the board. This had

  whetted his appetite to crush me. He had not been able to do so. In the past

  year, in Port Kar, I had grown much fond of the game. I had tried to play

  frequently with players of strength superior to my own. I found myself often,

  eventually, capable of beating them. Then I would seek others, stronger still. I

  had studied, too, the games of masters, in particular those of the young,

  handsome, lame fiery Scormus of Ar, and of the much older, almost legendary

  master of Cos, gentle, white-haired Centius, he of the famed Centian opening.

  Scormus was fierce, arrogant and brilliant. The medallion and throne of Centius

  was no, by many, said to be his. But there were those who did not agree. The

  hand of Centius now sometimes shook, and it seemed his eyes did not see the

  board as once they did. But there few men on Gor who did not fear as the hand of

  Centius thrust forth his Ubar’s Tarnsman to Physician Seven. It was said that

  Scormus of Ar and Centius of Cos would sometime meet at the great fair of

  En’kara, in the shadow of the Sardar. Never as yet had the two sat across from

  one another. Cos, like Tyros, is a traditional enemy of Ar. It was said that Gor

  awaited this meeting. Already weights of gold had been wagered on its outcome.

  Players, incidentally, are free to travel where they wish on the surface of Gor,

  no matter what might be their city. By custom, they, like musicians, and like

  singers, there are few courts at which they are not welcome. That he had once

  played a man such as Scormus of Ar, or Centius of Cos it the sort of thing that

  a Gorean grandfather will boast of to his grandchildren.

  “Very well,” said Marlenus. “Then we shall not, now, play.”

  I held forth my cup, for wine. The slave girl filled it.

  “When will you fare forth to an exchange point?” I asked.

  Marlenus had now been in his camp for five days, hunting. He had made no effort

  to reach the exchange point, or its vicinity, where Talena was held slave. It

  would lie through the forests to the west, above Lydius, on the coast of Thassa.

  “I have not yet finished hunting,” said Marlenus. He was in no hurry to free

  Talena.

  “A citizen of Ar,” I said, “lies slave.”

  “I have little interest,” said Marlenus, “in slaves.”

  “She is a citizen of Ar,” I said.

  Marlenus looked down into his cup, swirling the liquid. “Once, perhaps,” said

  Marlenus, “she was a citizen of Ar.”

  I looked at him.

  “She is no longer a citizen of Ar,” said Marlenus. “She is a slave.”

  In the eyes of Goreans, and Gorean law, the slave is an animal. She is not a

  person, but an animal. She has no name, saving what her master might choose to

  call her. She is without caste. She is without citizenship. She is simply an

  object, to be bartered, or bought or sold. She is
simply an article of property,

  completely, nothing more.

  “She is Talena,” I said.

  “I know of no person by that name,” said Marlenus.

  “Surely,” I said, “you will have pity on a slave, however unworthy, who was once

  a citizen of Ar?”

  “I shall free her, or have her freed,” said Marlenus. He looked down. Then he

  looked up at me. “I will send men to free her, while I return to Ar,” he said.

  “I see,” I said.

  “But,” said Marlenus, “I think I will have a few days hunting first.”

  I shrugged. “I see,” I said, “Ubar.”

  Marlenus snapped his fingers, pointing to his cup on the table.

  The slave girl came forward, from where she knelt to one side, and, kneeling,

  from a two-handled vessel, filled it. She was very beautiful.

  “I, too, shall have wine,” I said.

  She filled my cup. Our eyes met. She looked down. She was barefoot. Her one

  garment was a brief slip of diaphanous yellow silk. Her brand was clearly

  visible beneath it, high on the left thigh. On her throat, half concealed by her

  long blond hair, was a collar of steel, the steel of Ar.

  “Leave us, Slave,” said Marlenus.

  She did so.

  The girl had been beaten earlier in the afternoon. She had run away. Marlenus,

  with two huntsmen, had taken her within the Ahn. Marlenus, who had hunted in the

  forests since his boyhood, was a master of woodcraft. She had been unable to

  elude him. Dazed, shocked, she had been swiftly caught and returned to camp.

  Marlenus had then handed her over to a huntsman. She had been stripped and,

  hands tied over her head to a post, had been given ten lashes. Marlenus, and

  most of those about the camp, had not bothered to watch. It was simply a slave

  girl being punished. The punishment was so light because it was the first time

  the girl had attempted to run away. Also, she was new to her collar, and did not

  yet fully understand the futility of her condition. During her beating, and

  afterward, Marlenus and I had been engaged in playing the game. Her had beaten

  me once, and I had drawn twice. After her beating, she had been left bound to

  the post for two Ahns. When Marlenus ordered her freed from the post, he stood

  nearby. “Do not attempt to run away again,” he told her, and then turned away.

  Verna made a beautiful slave girl. She was exquisitely bodied, extremely

  intelligent and extremely proud.

  Marlenus treated her no differently than any other new girl.

  This infuriated Verna. She had been one of the most famed outlaw women on Gor.

  In the camp of Marlenus she was only another girl.

  Long ago, more than a year ago, when he had first captured Verna on a hunting

  expedition, prior to her escape and acquisition of Talena, and her return to the

  forests, he had intended to bring her to Ar in triumph and there, in the great

  square before Ar’s central cylinder, publicly enslave her. This time, he had put

  the iron to her, and her girls, the first night he had arrived in his camp north

  of Laura, as though they might have been the meanest of captures. She had been

  branded eleventh, casually and insolently, in her turn, for that had been her

  place in the slave coffle when the camp had been reached. With a similar lack of

  ceremony Marlenus had fastened her collar on her.

  But in some respects Marlenus had treated her differently from the others, as

  more of a slave, more of a common girl. The others were treated, for the time,

  more as panther girls. She was treated more as a common wench, who might have

  been any slave girl.

  The panther girls, in Marlenus’ camp, though they were kept chained, were

  permitted to wear the skins of panthers.

  Verna had stood before him, waiting to be given the skins of panthers. Instead,

  she had been thrown slave silk.

  “Put it on,” had said Marlenus.

  She had done so.

  I noted, and I do not doubt but that it was detected, too, by Marlenus, that her

  body, as she drew the brief, exotic, degrading silk about her, subtly and

  mistakably, was shaken by an involuntary tremor of sensuality. Then she was

  again Verna. I suppose it was the first time her body had felt silk. I have

  often wondered at the excitement generated in women by the simple feel of silk

  on their bodies. I gather that it is a sensuous experience. Surely it would be

  difficult for a woman to wear silk and not, by that much more, be aware of her

  womanhood. But perhaps Verna’s response was not simply to silk. Indeed, that

  would hardly account for the totality of her involuntary response, her body’s

  betrayal. It was not ordinary silk Marlenus had thrown to her. It was not

  ordinary silk which she then, for the first time, felt on her body. It was the

  softest and finest of diaphanous silks, clinging and betraying. It had been

  milled to reveal a woman most exquisitely and beautifully to a master. It was

  brief, exotic, humiliating, degrading. It was, of course, slave silk. I wondered

  if Verna had ever dreamed of herself in such silk. She now stood before

  Marlenus, so clad. She tried to stand as a panther girl, but he had laughed at

  her. Her girls too, had jeered her. She turned away, and fled to the wall of the

  stockade, weeping.

  It seemed important to Marlenus to separate her girls from her.

  That was perhaps part of his plan. That was perhaps one reason for putting her

  in slave silk. Another reason, of course, was that it pleased him, her master,

  to see her so.

  Once, she so clad, her hands braceleted before her, her arm held by a guard, she

  was led past her girls, in their skins, chained by one of the stockade walls.

  “Pretty slave!’ they had jeered at her.

  She had tried to kick at them and fall upon them but her guard, controlling her

  easily, for she was only a woman, dragged her away. The girls had jeered after

  her.

  She was taken to the kitchen tent, where she was given lessons, as a slave girl,

  in the preparation and serving of food. She would also, of course, be taught how

  to sew, and to wash and iron clothing. When Marlenus took his meals in his tent,

  or wished refreshments or win, Verna, the new girl, served him

  “Have you used her yet?” I asked Marlenus.

  The girl poured us our wine. One may speak freely before slaves.

  “That is enough,” said Marlenus, and the girl withdrew to one side, to wait

  until she must serve again.

  Marlenus turned and looked at her. “No,” he said. “She is a raw girl, ignorant.”

  Verna, from where she knelt, looked at him, angrily, holding the two-handled

  wine vessel. At her throat was his collar, in her thigh, burned, his brand, on

  her body, his silk. She looked away.

  “If you will observe,” said Marlenus, who had studied thousands of women, “she

  seems ready, even marvelous, but yet there is a subtle unreadiness, a subtle

  stiffness in her body. Note the shoulders, the wrists, the diaphragm.”

  The girl’s fists clenched on the twin handles of the wine vessel.

  “Remove you clothing, and stand,” said Marlenus.

  The slave did so.

  “You see?” asked Marlenus.

  I studied her. The girl looked away. She was incredibly beauti
ful. Yet there did

  seem something subtly different about her, something which separated her

  softness, proud and vulnerable in the tent of her master, from the incomparable,

  delicious yielded softness, eager, tender, at times pleading, of a girl such as

  Cara.

  Perhaps it was partly a stiffness in the shoulders. Perhaps it was something

  about the wrists. The backs of her hands faced us. The normal fall of a girl’s

  hands places her palms at her thighs.

  “Place your palms on your thighs,” said Marlenus.

  “Beast,” she hissed. She did so. She felt her brand.

  I also noted a tenseness about her diaphragm, doubtless that which Marlenus had

  wished to indicate. It was tight, not vital and expectant.

  “Turn about,” said Marlenus. She did so. I noted the exquisite curvatures of

  her.

  “She is beautiful,” I said. Her fists were clenched.

  “Yes,” said Marlenus. “But note how she stands.”

  “I see,” I said.

  It was indeed interesting. She stood very proudly, very angrily. Her head was

  high, her fists were clenched. Her weight was equally on the balls of her feet.

  I could see the hamstrings, the beautiful, resilient tendons behind her knees,

  now like tight, proud cords, holding her erect.

  “Disregard,” said Marlenus, “the obvious things, her pride, her anger, the

  clenched fists.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I tired to imagine how Cara might have stood, had she been in the place of

  Verna.

  She would have turned quietly, obediently, gracefully. She would have known that

  she, a slave, was arousing free men, masters, and this would have excited her,

  and this excitement would have been revealed in her body.

  She would not know what their next command would be. And this waiting, not

  facing us, would have been revealed beautifully in her body.

  Commonly the slave girl, when not facing her master, if she is right handed, as

  are most girls, will have her weight on the ball of her left food. Her left leg

  will be slightly, subtly, flexed, and her right leg will be substantially

  flexed. Her head will be turned slightly to the right, as though she would look

  over her right shoulder. Her hamstrings will not be tight. They will be merely

  beautifully resilient, heady to turn her eagerly, at his command, to face him.

  We observed Verna.

  “You see,” said Marlenus.

  “Yes,” I said.