by John Norman
I rose to my feet.
I did not think I would again look into the blood of a sleen. I would look rather into the eyes of men.
I wiped the blood from my hands on my thighs.
I turned and looked at the naked girl on the furs, half tangled in her chain, it running about her ankle and leg, looped, and lifting to the ring on the heavy collar. She shrank back, her hand before her mouth.
“Bertram of Lydius approached a guardsman,” said Publius, “who suspected nothing, Bertram of Lydius being guest in the house. He struck him unconscious. With a rope and hook he descended the delta wall.”
“The tharlarion will have him,” said a man.
“No,” I said. “There would be a boat waiting.”
“Ho cannot have gotten far,” said Thurnock.
“There will be a tarn in the city,” I said. “Do not pursue him.”
I regarded the circle of men about. “Return to your rest,” I said.
They moved from the room.
“The beast?” asked Clitus.
“Leave it,” I said. “And leave me now.”
Then I and the slave were alone. I closed the door. I slid shut the bolts, and turned to face her.
She looked very small and frightened, chained on my couch.
“So, my dear,” I said, “you labor still in the service of Kurii.”
“No, Master,” she cried, “no!”
“Who tended my chamber afore this morning?’ I asked.
“It was I, Master,” she said. It is common to let the girl who is to spend the night at your feet tend your chamber the preceding day. She scrubs and cleans it, and tidies it. It is not a full day’s work and she has hours in it in which she has little to do but wait for the master. She readies herself. She plans. She anticipates. When the master arrives, and she kneels before him, she is eager and anxious, vulnerable and stimulated, well ready both physically and psychologically for the mastery to which she will have no choice but to be joyfully subjected. Even the performance of small servile tasks, such as the polishing of his tarn boats, which she must perform, plays its role in her preparation for the night. The performance of such small tasks teaches her, incontrovertibly, in the depths of her beauty, that she truly belongs to him, and that he is truly her master. She is then well ready when he gestures her to the furs to perform for him exquisitely the most delicious and intimate of her assigned tasks, her most important tasks, those of the helpless love slave.
“Kneel on the tiles,” I told her.
She slipped from the couch and knelt on the tiles before me. She knelt in the blood of the sleen.
“Position,” I said.
Swiftly she assumed the position of the pleasure slave. She knelt back on her heels, her knees wide, her hands on her thighs, her back straight, her head up. She was terrified. I looked down at her.
I crouched before her, and took her by the arms. I was covered with the blood of the sleen. “Master?” she asked. I put her to her back on the tiles in the sleen’s blood. I held her so she could not move, and entered her. “Master?” she asked, frightened. I began to caress her from within, deeply, with my manhood. The warm closeness of her body, so beautiful, so helpless, that of an owned slave, clasped me. She began to respond to me, frightened.
“You labor still for Kurii,” I said.
“No, Master,” she wept, “no!”
I felt her spasmodically squirm beneath me. “Nor she wept. Her haunches shuddered.
“Yes,” I said.
“No,” she said, “no, Master!”
“The beast must have been put upon my scent,” I said.
“I am innocent!” she said. Then she writhed beneath me. “Please do not make me yield to you this way, Master,” she wept. “Oh,” she cried. “Oh!”
“Speak,” I told her.
She closed her eyes. “Have mercy!” she begged.
“Speak.” I told her.
“I was taking the tunics to the tubs,” she said. “I would have put them in with the others!” She half reared up beneath me, struggling, her eyes open and wild. She was strong for a girl, but girls are weak. I thrust her back down, shoulders and hair into the blood. Her head was back. She writhed, impaled and held. How weak she was. How futile were her struggles.
“There is no escape,” I told her. “You are mine.
“I know,” she said. “I know.”
“Speak further,” I said.
“Oh,” she cried. “Oh!” Then she wept, “Please, Master, do not make me yield this way!”
“Speak further,” I said.
“I was tricked,” she cried. “Bertram of Lydius, in the halls, followed me. I thought little of it. I thought only he wanted to see my body move in the livery of the house, that he only followed me as a man will upon occasion follow a slave girl, idly, for the pleasure in seeing her.”
“And this flattered you, did it not, you slut?” I asked.
“Yes, Master,” she said. “I am a slave girl.”
“Go on,” I said.
“Please, Master,” she wept, clutching me. “Oh, oh!” she cried.
“Go on,” I said.
“Yes,” she cried, angrily. “I was pleased! He was handsome, and strong, and Gorean, and I was a female slave. I thought he might ask for my use, and that it would be granted him by you in Gorean courtesy!”
It was true. Had a guest expressed interest in Vella, Elizabeth, a former secretary from Earth, one of my slaves, I would surely have given her to him for his night’s pleasure. And if he were not fully pleased, I would have had her whipped in the morning.
“He spoke to me,” she said. “so I turned and knelt before him, the tunics clutched in my arms. ‘You are pretty,’ he said to me. This pleased me.” Slave girls relish compliments. Indeed, there is a Gorean saying to the effect that any woman who relishes a compliment is in her heart a slave girl. She wants to please. Most Gorean men would not think twice about collaring a girl who responds, smiling, to compliments. It is regarded as right to enslave a natural slave. Most masters, incidentally, make a girl they own earn her compliments. She must struggle to be worthy of complimenting. She so struggles. Gorean compliments are generally meaningful, for they tend to be given only when deserved, and sometimes not then. A girl desires to please her master. When she is complimented she knows she has pleased him. This makes her happy, not simply because then she knows she is less likely to be punished, but because she, in her heart, being a woman, truly desires to please one who is her complete master. “‘Do you know me?’ he asked,” she said. “‘Yes, Master,’ I said, ‘you are Bertram of Lydius. guest in the house of my Master.’ ‘Your master has been kind to me,’ said he. ‘I would make him a gift to show my appreciation. It would be unfit-ring for me to accept his hospitality without in some small way expressing the esteem in which I hold him and my gratitude for his generosity.’ ‘How may I aid you, Master?’ I asked. ‘In Lydius,’ said he, ‘we encounter often the furs of snow sleen, fresh and handsome and warm. Too, we have there cunning tailors who can design garments with golden threads and secret pockets. I would make a gift of such a garment, a short coat or jacket, suitable for use in the tarn saddle, for your master.’”
“Few,” I said, “in Port Kar think of me as a tarnsman. I did not so speak myself to Bertram of Lydius in our conversations.”
“I did not think, Master,” she said.
“Did you not think such a gift strange for a merchant and mariner?”
“Forgive a girl, Master,” she said. “But surely there are those in Port Kar who know you a tarnsman, and the gift seems appropriate for one to proffer who is of Lydius in the north.”
“The true Bertram of Lydius would not be likely to know me a tarnsman,” I said.
“He was not then what he seemed,” she whispered.
“I do not think so,” I said. “I think he was an agent of Kurii.”
I thrust into her, savagely. She cried out, looking at me. She was hot with sweat. The colla
r was on her throat.
“I think we have here, too,” I said, holding her, “another agent of Kurii.”
“No,” she said, “no!” Then I began to make her respond to me.
“Oh,” she wept. “Oh. Oh!”
“He wanted my tunic,” I told her, “to take its measurements, that the jacket of the fur of the snow sleen might be well made.”
“Yes,” she wept. “Yes! But only for moments! Only for moments!”
“Fool,” I said to her.
“I was tricked,” she wept.
“You were tricked, or you are a Kur agent,” I said.
“I am not a Kur agent,” she wept. She tried to rise up, but I held her down, her small shoulders down to the tiles in the blood. She could not begin to be a match for my strength.
“Even if you are a Kur agent,” I said, softly, “‘know, small beauty, that you are first my slave girl.”
I looked down into her eyes.
“Yes, Master,” she said. She twisted miserably, her head to one side. “He had the garment for only moments,” she said.
“Was it always in your sight,” I asked.
“No,” she said. “He ordered me to remain in the hall, to wait for him.”
I laughed.
“He had it for only moments it seemed,” she said.
“Enough time,” I said, “to press it between the bars of the sleen cage and whisper to the beast the signal for the hunt.”
“Yes!” she wept.
Then I thrust again and again into her, in the strong, increasingly intense rhythms of a savage master until the collared she of her, once that of a civilized girl, screamed and shuddered, and then lay mine, without dignity or pride, shattered, only a yielded, barbarian slave, in my arms.
I stood up, and she lay at my feet collared, in the sleen’s blood.
I reached to the great ax of Torvaldsland. I stood over her, looking down at her, the ax grasped in my hands.
She looked up at me. One knee was lifted. She shook her head. She took the collar in her hands and pulled it out from her neck a bit, lifting it toward me.
“Do not strike me, Master,” she said. “I am yours.”
I looked at the collar and chain. She looked up at me, frightened. She was well secured.
My grip tightened on the ax.
She put her hands to the side, helplessly, and, frightened, lifted her body, supplicatingly, to me.
“Please do not strike me, Master,” she said. “I am your slave.”
I lowered the ax, holding it across my body with both hands. I looked down at her, angrily.
She lowered her body, and lay quietly in the blood, frightened. She placed the backs of her hands on the tiles, so that the palms were up, facing me, at her sides. The palms of a woman’s hands are soft and vulnerable. She exposed them to me.
I did not lift the ax.
“I know little of sleen,” she said. “I had thought It a sleen trained to hunt tabuk, in the company of archers, little more than an animal trained to turn and drive tabuk, and retrieve them.”
“It is thus that the animal was presented to us,” I said. That was true. Yet surely, in the light of such a request, one for a garment, a sleen in the house, her suspicions should have been aroused.
“He wanted a garment,” I said.
“I did not think,” she said.
“Nor did you speak to me of this thing,” I said.
“He warned me not to speak to you,” she said, “for the gift was to come as a surprise.”
I laughed, looking at the sleen.
She put her head to one side, in shame. She turned then again to look at me. “He had it for only a few moments,” she said.
‘The cage could be opened later, and was,” I said. “The hunt then began, through the halls of the house, in the silence and darkness.”
She closed her eyes in misery, and then opened them again, looking at me.
I heard the ship’s bell, in the great hail, striking. I heard footsteps in the hall outside.
“It is morning,” I said.
Thurnock appeared at the door to my chamber. “Word has come,” said he, “from the house of Samos. He would speak with you.”
“Prepare the longboat,” I said. We would make our way through the canals to his house.
“Yes, Captain,” he said, and turned and left.
I put aside the ax. With water, poured into a bowl, and fur, I cleaned myself. I donned a fresh tunic. I tied my own sandals.
The girl did not speak.
I slung a sword over my left shoulder, an admiral’s blade.
“You did not let me tie your sandals,” she said.
I fetched the key to the collar, and went to her, and opened the collar.
“You have duties to attend to,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said. On her knees she suddenly grasped my legs, weeping, looking up at me. “Forgive me, Master,” she cried. “I was tricked! I was tricked!”
“It is morning in Port Kar,” I said.
She put down her head to my feet. She kissed my feet. She then looked up at me. “If I do not please you this day, Master,” she said, “impale me.”
“I will,” I told her. Then I turned and left her.
2. The Message Of The Scytale; I Converse With Samos
“The arrogance of Kurii may yet prove their undoing,” said Samos.
He sat, cross-legged, behind the low table. On It were hot bread, yellow and fresh, hot black wine, steaming, with its sugars, slices of roast bosk, the scrambled eggs of vulos, pastries with creams and custards.
“It is too easy,” I said. I did not speak clearly with my mouth full.
“It is a sport for them,” he said, “this war.” He looked at me, grimly. “As it seems to be for some men.”
“Perhaps to some,” I said, “those who are soldiers, but surely not to Kurii in general. I understand their commitment in these matters to be serious and one involving their deep concern.”
“Would that all men were as serious,” said Samos.
I grinned, and washed down the eggs with a swig of hot black wine, prepared from the beans grown upon the slopes of the Thentis mountains. This black wine is quite expensive. Men have been slain on Gor for attempting to smuggle the beans out of the Thentian territories.
“Kurii were ready once,” said I, “or some party of them, to destroy Gor, to clear the path to Earth, a world they would surely favor less. Willingness to perform such an act, I wager, fits in not well with the notion of vain, proud beasts.”
“Strange that you should speak of vain, proud beasts,” said Samos.
“I do not understand,” I said.
“I suppose not,” said Samos. He then drank from his cup, containing the black wine. I did not press him to elucidate his meaning. He seemed amused.
“I think the Kurii are too clever, too shrewd, too determined,” said I, “to be taken at their face value in this matter. Such an act, to deliver such a message, would be little better than a taunt, a gambit, intended to misdirect our attention.”
“But can we take this risk?” he asked.
“Perhaps not,” I said. With a Turian eating prong, used in the house of Samos, I speared a slice of meat, and then threaded it on the single tine.
Samos took from his robes a long, silken ribbon, of the sort with which a slave girl might bind back her hair. It seemed covered with meaningless marks. He gestured to a guardsman. “Bring in the girl,” he said.
A blond girl, angry, in brief slave livery, was ushered into the room.
We were in Samos’ great hall, where I had banqueted many times. It was the hall in which was to be found the great map mosaic, inlaid in the floor.
She did not seem a slave. That amused me.
“She speaks a barbarous tongue,” said Samos.
“Why have you dressed me like this?” she demanded. She spoke in English.
“I can understand her,” I said.
“That is perhaps no
t an accident,” said Samos.
“Perhaps not,” I said.
“Can none of you fools speak English?” she asked.
“I can communicate with her, if you wish,” I told Samos.
He nodded.
“I speak English,” I informed her, speaking in that intricate, beautiful tongue.
She seemed startled. Then she cried out, angrily, pulling downward at the edges of the livery in which she had been placed, as though that would hide more of her legs, which were lovely. “I do not care to be dressed like this,” she said. She pulled away, angrily, from the guard, and stood before us. “I have not even been given shoes,” she said. “And what is the meaning of this?” she demanded, pulling at a plain ring of iron which had been hammered about her throat. Her throat was slender, and white, and lovely.
Samos handed the hair ribbon to a guardsman, gesturing to the girl. “Put it on,” he said to her, in Gorean.
I repeated his command, in English.
“When am I to be permitted to leave?” she asked.
Seeing the eyes of Samos she angrily took the ribbon, and winding it about her head, fastened back her hair. She blushed, angrily, hotly, knowing that, as she lifted her hands gracefully to her hair, she raised the lovely line of her breasts, little concealed in the thin livery. Then she stood before us, angrily, the ribbon in her hair.
“Thus it was she came to us,” said Samos, “save that she was clad in inexplicable, barbarous garments.” He gestured to a guardsman, who fetched and spilled open a bundle of garments on the edge of the table. I saw that there were pants of some bluish, denim-type material, and a flannel, long-sleeved shirt. There was also a white, light shirt, short-sleeved. Had I not realized them to have been hers, I would have assumed them the clothing of an Earth male. They were male-imitation clothing.
The girl tried to step forward but the shafts of two spears, wielded by her flanking guardsmen, barred her way.
There was also a pair of shoes, plain, brown and low, with darker-brown laces. They were cut on a masculine line, but were too small for a man. I looked at her feet. They were small and feminine. Her breasts, too, and hips, suggested that she was a female, and a rather lovely one. Slave livery makes it difficult for a girl to conceal her sex.