by John Norman
"Sleen, panthers, women," said the guard.
"Oh," I said.
"He hunts for a week or two," said the guard, "and then returns to Ar." He pushed me ahead with the flat of his foot. I had been dallying. "The duties of a Ubar," said he, "are pressing, and Marlenus looks forward to his hunting." "I see," I said.
"When he is finished he sends his catch back by caravan," he said.
"Oh," I said. We walked on.
"Is he after anything in particular?" I asked.
"Yes," said the guard, "Verna, an outlaw girl."
I stopped.
"Do not turn around," he said.
I was irritated. I knew him, and he liked me, but he was my captor. He had not given me permission to face him. In his shirt, I pulled at the slave bracelets, tied against my belly with the binding fiber.
"It was Verna and her band who captured me," I said.
"It is said she is beautiful," said the guard. "Is it true?"
"Ask," I said, "the men at the camp, whom she captured and bound, when she stole me."
His fist was in my hair, bending my head back. "Yes," I said, "she is beautiful. She is very beautiful!"
He released me.
"Marlenus will capture her," he said, "and send her in a cage to Ar." "Oh?" I asked, archly.
"Yes," he said, from behind me. I felt his hands on my shoulders.
I was not displeased that Marlenus was hunting Verna, and her girls. I hoped that he would capture her, and them, and strip them, and put the blazing iron to their bodies, and lock them in collars, and whip them, and make them slave girls!
"Any woman," he said.
"I am white silk," I whispered. I pulled against his hands, and he released me. I hurried on.
I continued to walk ahead of him, in his shirt, my wrists confined before my body.
"Stop," he said.
I did.
He came behind me and, lifting the shirt some inches, tucked it into the binding fiber that was knotted about my waist. He wanted to see more of my legs.
"Continue," he said. He pressed me forward again with the flat of his foot. I stumbled forward, and was now again walking before him.
"Posture," he said.
And so I walked well, as he wished, before him.
From time to time, as we walked, he gave me food from his pouch, which he shoved into my mouth.
In the late afternoon, we rested for an Ahn. Then, at his command, I rose to my feet, and we continued on our journey to Laura, I preceding him, as before. I was acutely conscious of his watching me. I could not turn to look, of course, but I knew that every movement of my body was his to see.
"I shall be interested to see," he said, "how you train as a pleasure slave in Ko-ro-ba."
"You find me pleasing, do you not?" I asked. Then I was sorry I had asked. "You have interesting possibilities as a female slave," he said. "I find myself curious to taste you."
I hurried on. "We must hurry," I said. "We must join the wagons!
"White-silk, She-sleen," he said. "Wait until you are red silk!"
I hurried ahead.
Actually I was not displeased. When, that night, after taking a barge across the Laurius, loaded with lumber, we found Targo's encampment, I was happy. Ute and Inge were there and the other girls I knew. Even Lana. Targo was pleased that I had been returned to his chain. That night, stripped in the slave wagon, lying on the canvas, my ankles chained to the ankle bar, fed, I slept soundly, happily.
We were on our way to the city of Ko-ro-ba, where we would receive training, and from thence we would journey in a southeastern direction toward the great city of Ar.
* * *
"What are you thinking, El-in-or?" asked Ute. I lay on my belly, in the straw, in the cage in Ko-ro-ba, poling with a bit of straw at the steel plating.
"Nothing," I said.
I wondered of the man in the hut and the beast. They would not have been able to follow my trail after the rain. They would probably not suppose I could have been returned to Targo. Indeed, Targo had left Laura before I could have reached the city. I supposed that the man and the beast would look for me, if at all, in the vicinity of Laura, or northward, or even in the forest. I supposed they would regard it as likely that I had never escaped the forest. They would regard it as likely that I had fallen to beasts, perhaps, or perhaps had died of exposure.
I was safe.
A slave girl in a pen in Ko-ro-ba.
I had no hope now of returning to Earth. I knew now that on this world I would wear a collar and serve a master.
Further, I had now come to see myself as a slave girl. The panther girls in the forest, and the man in the hut, had taught me that I was slave. I now knew that even on Earth, even when I had been rich, even when I had dwelled in Park Avenue, when I had owned the Maserati, my body had been that of a slave girl, the body of a wench who, from the Gorean point of view, was fit only, and rightly so, for silk, and the whip. I had been found out. The Goreans had found me out, and would treat me accordingly. They have a way with such women. I struck the steel plating in fury, with my small fist. They bring them to heel, teach them to obey, and to serve, and deliciously. I wished that I was on Earth again, where slave girls might go free, live luxuriously, pamper themselves, and even, should it please them, command the weak men of Earth. I heard the step of a guard outside. I knew several of them by their step. It was one of whom I was frightened. I pretended to be asleep in the straw. When he had passed I rolled again to my belly and put my chin on the back of my hands, their palms resting on the plating. I would be a clever slave, a beautiful slave, and exciting one. I was a slave. I would be a superb one. I would use my intelligence and my beauty to make my life on Gor an easy one. I had learned a great deal in my training. I was eager to learn more. Already my body moved as that of a slave girl, and unconsciously, naturally! I smiled. I would bring a high price on the block. I glanced over at Inge. Poor sticklike Inge! What man would want her? And Ute was so little and stupid. Even Lana seemed dull to me. But I was superb. I recalled the man in the hut had said that the indications were that I would make a fantastic pleasure slave for a master. My brow wrinkled and my lip curled. I was irritated. It was I who would conquer. I remembered the panther girls, dancing under the moons of Gor, and how they had writhed helplessly beneath those wild moons. I despised them for their weakness. I did not have such weaknesses. I was a slave, but I did not have such weaknesses. Inside I was cold and hard, and hated men. I would conquer them.
And so I mused, an illiterate barbarian slave girl in a Ko-ro-ba slave pen.
* * *
Some four days before we were to depart Ko-ro-ba for Ar, the news swept like tarns through the pens.
"Verna the outlaw girl!" we heard the cry. "She had been taken by Marlenus of Ar."
I rushed to the bars of the cage, thrilled. I wept with joy. How I hated that proud woman, and her band! Let them be slaves! Let them be slaves!" "Poor Verna," said Ute.
Inge was silent.
"Let he be a slave!" I cried. "Like us!" I whirled to face them on the straw, my back against the bars. "Let her be a slave like us!" I cried.
Ute and Inge watched me.
I turned about again, grasping the bars, filled with a sense of triumph, with vindictive victory. Let Verna kneel to men, and fear the whip!"
"Poor Verna," said Ute. "Marlenus will tame her," I said. "In his pleasure gardens he will have her feeding from his hand."
"I hope she will be impaled," said Lana.
I did not hope that. But I hoped she would be put in slave rouge, and silk, and bells! Let her know slavery! How I hated the proud Verna! How pleased I was that she, as I, had fallen prey to me!
I looked about the cage, flushed, furious. I shook the bars. I stamped on the plating beneath the straw with my heel. I cried out with rage and picked up straw and flung it about the cage. I had been captured, and must be a slave girl!
"Pleas, El-in-or, cried Ute. "Do not behave so."
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sp; "Let Verna be a slave!" I screamed down the long hall between the cages. I wept, holding the bars. "Let her know what it is to be a slave," I whispered. A guard looked at me, curiously.
I shrieked with misery and ran across the cage, flinging myself into its back wall, pounding on it, and then I sunk to my knees by the wall and, in rage and frustration, weeping and screaming, pounded on the steel plating of the floor." "Weep, El-in-or," said Ute. "Weep."
I lay on the floor, naked in the straw, a helpless slave girl, the property of men, who must do as they commanded her, and wept, and wept.
I mention two other bits of news, which, from the outside world of laughter and daylight, filtered into the straw-strewn, barred pens.
Haakon of Skjern, from whom Targo had purchased his hundred northern beauties, now concluding their training, was in Ko-ro-ba.
This news, for no reason I clearly understood, rendered Targo apprehensive. The other news dealt with the bold raids of Task of Treve.
All Ko-ro-ba seemed aflame with fury.
Four caravans had fallen spoils to the fierce, swiftly striking tarnsmen of Treve. And his men had fired dozens of fields, destroying Sa-Tarna grains. The smoke of two of these fields had been visible even from the high bridges of Ko-ro-ba herself.
Ko-ro-ban tarnsmen flew at all hours, in the high sun, in the cold morning, at dusk, even when the beacon fires burned upon the lofty walls, flew patterned sorties, and irregular sorties, but never did they find the elusive, marauding band of the terrible Rask of Treve.
I mused to myself.
I had some reason to know that name. Rask of Treve, Targo, and others, had even more reason. It had been he, Rask of Treve, who had raided Targo's slave caravan, before, in the fields northwest of Ko-ro-ba, on the route to Laura, a wandering, strangely clad, barbarian girl had been enslaved, whose name was El-in-or. Indeed, it was because of Rask of Treve that Targo, who became that El-in-or's master, had lost most of his women and wagons, and all of his bosk. It was because of him that El-in-or, the barbarian girl, with the other girls, had been harnessed to his one remaining, partially burnt wagon, and had been forced, and under the switch, to draw it, as draft animals. Targo, as I knew, had fled into a Ka-la-na thicket with his men, saving his gold and nineteen of his girls, Inge, Ute and Lana among them. Rask of Treve, as a raider true to the codes of Treve, that hidden coign of tarnsmen, that remote, secret, mountainous city of the vast, scarlet Voltai range, had not, in these circumstances, much pushed pursuit. In the shadows of the forest the crossbow quarrel can swiftly touch, and slay. The element of the tarnsman is not the green glades, and the branches; it is the clouds, the saddle and the sky; his steed is the tarn, his field of battle, strewn with light and wind, higher than mountains, deeper than the sea, is the very sky itself. Such men do not care to venture creeping into the shadows of forests, pursuing scattered game. Victorious, they roar with laughter and, hauling on the one-straps of their tarn harness, take flight. There is always other gold, and other women. And, the Priest-Kings willing, a coin that is lost today, or a woman, may, at a later time, in a more convenient place, be found, and more! A woman, who escapes your collar this afternoon may, by nightfall, find herself chained at your feet. If the coin is to be yours, argue such men, it will be; and if the woman is destined, some night, on this or another, in your tent, on your rugs, by the light of your fire, to feel your chains locked on her body, she will. Flee though she might, that fate will be hers, and she, on the rugs spread over the sand, will be yours.
There was little known of Rask of Treve.
Indeed, there was little known even of the city of Treve. It lay somewhere among the lofty, vast terrains of the rugged Voltai, perhaps as much a fortress, a lair, of outlaw tarnsmen as a city. It was said to be accessible only by tarnback. No woman, it was said, could be brought to the city, save as a hooded, stripped slave girl, bound across the saddle of a tarn. Indeed, even merchants and ambassadors were permitted to approach the city only under conduct, and then only when hooded and in bonds, as though none not of Treve might approach her save as slaves or captive supplicants. The location of the city, it was said, was known only to her own. Even girls brought to Treve as slaves, obedient within her harsh walls, looking up, seeing her rushing, swift skies, did not know wherein lay the city in which they served. And even should they be dispatched to the walls, perhaps upon some servile errand, they could see, for looming, remote pasangs about them, only the wild, bleak crags of the scarlet Voltai, and the sickening drop below them, the sheer fall from the walls and the cliffs below to the valley, some pasangs beneath. They would know only that they were slaves in this place but would not know where this place in which they were slaves might be. It was said no woman had ever escaped from Treve.
And little more seemed known of Rask of Treve than of his remote and mysterious city.
It was said that he was young, audacious and ruthless, that he was powerful, and brutal and bold, that he was resourceful, brilliant, elusive, a master of disguises and subterfuges. It was said that a woman might not even know when she was in the presence of Rask of Treve, being casually examined, to see whether or not she was later to be acquired by him.
It was said that he was a fierce, long-haired man, a tarnsman, a warrior. It was said that he was one of the master swords of Gor.
It was said, too, that he was incredibly handsome, and merciless to women. Men feared his sword.
Women feared the steel of his slave collars.
Women, it was said, had special reason to fear Rask of Treve. It was said he had a gargantuan contempt, and appetite, for them. It was said that when he used a woman, he then branded her, with his name, as though she, once used, no matter to whom she might afterwards be given or sold, could truly belong only to him. It was also said that he would use a woman only once, claiming that he had, he, Rask of Treve, in once using her, emptied her, exhausted her, taken from her all she had to give, and that, thus, she could no longer be of interest to him. No man on Gor, it was said, could so humble, or diminish, a woman as Rask of Treve. And yet, it was said, there were few women on Gor, strangely enough to the fury of their own men, or guardians, who were not willing to be used, and branded and spurned by Rask of Treve, that young, audacious, ruthless warrior, only that they might helplessly know his touch.
Rask of Treve, it was said, had never purchased a woman. he would capture, and take by force, those that pleased him. Rask of Treve, it was said, like many Goreans warriors, preferred free women, enjoying the delicious agonies of his prey, as he reduced them to the utterness of the surrendered female slave. On the other hand, if is should please him, it was said he could take a girl who was already slave and make her more a slave than a slave.
I was later furious with myself that I had wept in the cell.
Of course I was a slave girl!
I had been taught that!
I knew it well!
But I would be a superb one! Sometimes, I thought angrily of girls on Earth, many of them, who, too, were slave girls, but who had not learned this, and who, presumably, would never do so. I thought of them, dressing for men, trying to please them, though not much caring for them, to advance themselves in powers and luxuries, using their bodies and minds, their smiles, and glances and words, and touches, clumsily perhaps, not having been trained, to obtain their desires of foolish, starved men. These were girls, not caring for men, who employ the needs of men, without penalty, intelligently to their own profit. Smile at a man of Earth and he will be grateful; pretend to be willing to please a man of Earth and he will do anything for you. You may then use them, such needful weaklings, to rise in the million strata of your intricate society, to climb, to ingratiate and insinuate yourself swiftly, expertly, into the high, warm, comfortable, luxurious places in your busy, impersonal, complex, loveless, anxious world. You will make them pay well for your favors. I held the bars. How different it was on Gor. Such an exploitative, indifferent girl, on Gor, might be simply carried off, and enslaved. Of such
women the Goreans enjoy making slaves. She would find her favors were not hers to dispense, at her own pleasure and to her own profit, but his to command, as he was pleased to do so. Gorean men were not so easily fooled as the men of Earth. Gorean men do not choose to be dominated, but to dominate, to be the master. I wished, sometimes, that such girls, of Earth, might find themselves naked, branded, helpless in a Gorean slave cage, forced to be the slave girls they unknowingly were. I was taught. They were not. I was angry. But they were free. And I was caged. They, though as slave as I, had escaped; I had not; I had been captured, and, by, Gorean men, would be forced to pay my price! I had no hope of freedom. I was furious. I had hope only that, though on this world, I could use my inclinations and training, those of a slave girl, to win myself an easy life. That I did not think would be difficult to do, for a girl as clever and beautiful as I. My training, I suspected, as well as my intelligence, would make me more than a match for any man, even the strangely attractive, powerful men of Gor.
Our training continued.
Once, there was a visitor to the pens, a tall stranger, partially hooded, who wore the robes of blue and yellow silk, those of the Slavers. He had, over his left eye, a strip of leather, which was wound around his head. He was shown through our section of the pens by Targo.
"This is Soron, of Ar," said Targo, stopping before our cage. Then he said, "El-in-or."
I was apprehensive. I did not wish to be sold until we reached Ar. I wished to be sold from the great block of the Curulean Auction House. It was in that place that there were to be found the highest placed, richest buyers of Gor. It was my hope to become the preferred pleasure slave of a wealthy master, and to reside in one of the high towers of Ar, Gor's largest and most luxurious city, and to have silks and jewels wherewith to deck myself, and no work to do, saving perhaps pleasing my master or guests to whom he might, if he pleased, give me for the evening.
"El-in-or!" snapped Targo.
I went to the bars, and knelt before them. "Buy me, Master," I said. "Does this girl know how to present herself?" asked the man.