“I do not know,” I said.
“But surely you men conjecture about such matters,” she said.
“I would suppose you might be beautiful,” I said. “There seem the suggestions of the lineaments of a beautiful woman, particularly as you have belted and arranged them, beneath your garments.”
“I like pretty clothes,” she said, “and I wear them well.”
“Doubtless you would be even more beautiful in the rag of a slave, or naked in a collar,” I said.
“Bold fellow,” she said. But I could see she was pleased. All women are curious to know how beautiful they might be as slaves. This is because all of them, in their heart, are slaves.
She regarded me for a time, not speaking. I knelt there, knees spread. She seemed in no hurry to disclose her will with respect to me. Her eyes roved me, glistening.
“Are you not curious to know why you were brought to my tent?” she asked.
“Mistress has not yet explained it to me,” I said. My heart began to race. I feared she would now announce to me that she knew my true identity, that she was going to put me to her pleasure, and rape me, and then turn me over, a woman’s catch, to the Sardar. It did not seem appropriate to me to attack her, and perhaps kill her. She might be an agent of Priest-Kings. So, too, for all I knew, might be her men. I recalled the fellow in the booth, he in whom I had left his own knife, in the piazza at Port Kar.
“But surely you can guess,” she said.
“Perhaps,” I said.
“Spread your knees more widely,” she said, coldly.
I did so.
“Now perhaps you can guess,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“You seem relieved,” she said, puzzled.
I shrugged. I was indeed relieved. She had again only been toying with me. It seemed clear to me now, as it had before, that she did not know who I was. The man in the booth, I recalled, had tried to kill me. Thus, if she had truly known my identity, she might, by now, have had me killed. That would have been easy enough to have done while I was drugged. Too, the nature of my capture did not suggest anything special about me. I had merely been one of fifteen brought into her chains.
“There is something else,” she said.
“Oh?” I asked.
“I am interested in being assessed,” she said.
“Assessed?” I asked.
“Yes, objectively,” she said. “I have been curious about it for a long time. The richness of your garments in the piazza, the weight of your purse, suggests to me that you might have had experience in such matters, that you had the means to be intimately familiar with the doings in markets, and so on.”
I was silent.
“Let me remind you,” she said, “that it is you who kneel before me, with your knees spread like a meaningless collar tart, an appropriately embonded girl!”
“I understand,” I said.
Her hand went to the pins at the left side of her veil.
“I think you will find me extraordinarily beautiful,” she said, “perhaps even slave beautiful.”
“Perhaps,” I said.
She unpinned her veil at the left side, and let it fall, and brushed back the silken hood of her tent robe, shaking her head, freeing a cascade of long, dark hair. She looked at me, amused. “I see that you find me beautiful,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
She stood. “Are you familiar with the duties of a silk slave?” she asked. As she spoke, she began to casually disrobe.
“I am a free man,” I said.
“But you have some conception of their duties, do you not?” she inquired.
“Yes,” I said.
“Such duties, and others,” she said, “will be yours.”
“I understand,” I said.
I caught my breath. She stepped from her robes, softly dropped, as though from a pool of silk at her feet.
“Well?” she asked.
She was stunningly beautiful. She would bring a high price in a slave market. She then reclined, on cushions, and strewn silks. These were near the back of the small inner sanctum, near the white hangings forming its rear wall. She regarded me, amusement in her eyes. She leaned on one elbow.
“Well?” she asked.
“You are quite beautiful,” I said.
“Do you think I would sell easily?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Oh?” she asked.
“Your price would be much too high,” I said. “Most men would not be able to afford you.”
“But if I were put at a reasonable price,” she said.
“Then, doubtless,” I said, “you would be snapped up immediately.”
“You do regard me then,” she said, “objectively, as being quite beautiful?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Even slave beautiful?” she asked.
“Your beauty,” said I, “at least in its external lineaments might well be the envy of many slaves, and if it were to become itself a slave’s beauty, with the inward transformations bondage effects in a woman, the results of removing inhibitory structures and liberating her depth nature, it might, in time, in my opinion, attain at least the minimum standards of being slave beautiful.”
“Then only a slave can be slave beautiful?” she asked.
“I would not wish to make it a matter of meanings,” I said, “but, empirically, it does seem to be pretty much a matter of the condition, a function of its fulfillments, and such.”
“Free women are more beautiful than slaves,” she said.
“That is false,” I said. “Furthermore, every woman, in her heart, knows it is false. Any beauty a free woman has, for example, is enhanced a thousandfold when she becomes a slave.”
“I hate slaves!” she said.
“That is because you are not one of them,” I said. “You envy them.”
“Beware,” she said. “I am a free woman!”
“I know,” I said.
“And you are totally in my power,” she said.
“I understand,” I said.
“Approach me, on all fours,” she said. “Perhaps I will forgive you, if you are skillful.”
I approached her.
“You see me more closely now,” she said. “Have you assessed free women before?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Assess me,” she said.
“As a free woman?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “That is what I am.”
“You are an incredibly beautiful free woman,” I said.
“Your body obviously agrees with you,” she said.
“Indeed,” I admitted.
“And free women,” she said, “are a thousand times, and more, above a mere slave.”
“Yes,” I said. “There is no comparison. A free woman is inordinately precious. She is a thousand times, and more, above a mere slave.”
“Your status here,” she said, “is that of a servant, a total servant, until I have you enslaved.”
“I understand,” I said.
“I think it will be amusing to apply a free man to the duties of a silk slave.”
“Doubtless,” I said.
“Indeed, I may dally somewhat, as it pleases me, or not, in the matter of your enslavement.”
I said nothing.
“And perhaps, if I find you quite good, after you are enslaved, with your fellows, I might not even sell you at the Fair of En’Kara. I might keep you—as a silk slave.”
I did not speak.
“You will touch me if, and only as, and exactly as, I direct,” she said. “I am total Mistress. I shall obtain considerable gratification from you, and you will obtain gratification, if any, only as it pleases me.”
“I understand,” I said.
“To the silks, my brawny, helpless servant,” she said. She then put her small hands in my hair. She drew me to her. “Please me,” she said.
I then began to address myself to her pleasures.
I immersed myself
in the exciting, intimate, marvelous, powerful odors of the aroused female.
“Oh, Brinlar,” she gasped, suddenly, “you are an excellent servant!”
I took her wrists in my hands and pulled them from my hair, and held them to her sides, meanwhile alternately forcibly and aggressively, and delicately and tenderly, continuing my service.
Her wrists were helpless in my grip. She pressed herself piteously against me.
She began to moan and squirm.
Suddenly she said, “I am helpless! I am being held, helplessly!”
“Forgive me, Mistress,” I said, unhanding her, as though my grip upon her might have been an inadvertence.
She seized me again by the hair, drawing me closely to her.
“Oh, Brinlar,” she whispered. “Yes, Brinlar! It is marvelous, Brinlar! Do not stop! Yes, Brinlar! Yes!”
In such a manner can one subdue a female, turning her into a moaning toy, a plaything, a sobbing possession, a mere object, beside herself, yours, vulnerable, defenseless, powerless, one fully at your mercy, one totally dependent upon you, one totally helpless with pleasure.
It lacked only that she was a slave.
“Yes, Brinlar,” she whispered. “Yes! Yes!”
I did not think it was necessary to remind her that I was not really according her the polite courtesies and gentle dignities appropriate to the pleasures of the free woman, but was, in effect, of my own will, by my own decision, subjecting her to attentions more commonly reserved for the embonded female, the woman who has no choice but to submit to a lengthy and authoritative ravishing, one which well teaches her the meaning of her collar, and what it is to be in the hands of a man, and as he wants her.
“Oh, Brinlar!” she whispered.
Her responses were such that it was difficult to conjecture what her experiences might have been had she truly been a slave, and had she known herself helplessly in my power, and had she known that she must yield totally and without reservation in the last fiber of her very being.
“Brinlar!” she cried, surging against me. “Yes, Brinlar!”
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Yanina!” she cried. “Lady Yanina!”
“Of what city?” I asked.
“Brundisium!” she cried. “Brundisium!”
4
Flaminius
“Drink, Mistress?” I asked.
“Yes, Brinlar,” she said. She lifted the veil delicately, almost flirtatiously, drinking behind it. She looked at the man across from her.
“Drink, Master?” I asked.
“No,” he said. I then withdrew a yard or two and knelt in the grass, holding the vessel of light Ka-la-na. I wore a tunic of white silk.
She dabbed at her lips with a napkin, under the veil, and then let the veil fall again into place.
“This is a pleasant spot,” she had said earlier. “Spread the cloth here, Brinlar, and lay out the things from the basket.”
“Yes, Mistress,” I had said.
We could see the Sardar Mountains in the distance. I had been her servant for some three days. After the first night she had not commanded me to her intimate service. I think that first night had terribly unsettled her. She had apparently not understood that she could have such feelings. At times she had seemed almost taken out of herself. At times, clearly, she had responded uncontrollably, reflexively, at my mercy, almost as might have a slave. This sort of behavior was inappropriate in her, inexcusably so, she doubtless deemed, as she was a free woman. Roundly had I been scolded for my part in matters. Yet with mixed feelings, it was, I think, that she chastised me. I pretended, of course, to ignorance and innocence, and a perhaps overzealous desire to please. In any event she clearly now feared her feelings. She had not dared to again order me to her pleasure. I think she was now afraid of herself in a man’s arms, and what she might become. Too, I think she clearly understood that what I had done to her might, as a matter of fact, have been done to her by almost any man.
“That is he, now, Brinlar,” she had said earlier.
“Yes, Mistress,” I had said, shading my eyes.
A rider, mounted on a high tharlarion, flanked by two footmen, had been approaching.
I had little doubt this had to do with her business in the vicinity of the Sardar.
“I must make my identification,” said the fellow to her. “Lower your veil.”
She unpinned the veil.
“Lady Yanina,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. I gathered they knew one another.
“You may replace the veil,” he said to her.
“It does not much matter, does it,” she asked, “as in the course of our work you have, of necessity, several times, seen me face-stripped?”
“Do as you please,” he said.
I saw that she repinned the veil. She was extremely modest. She was not a slave. She was a free woman.
The fellow, clad in dark garments, with a cape spread behind him, sitting cross-legged at the edge of the cloth, she kneeling across from him, turned to look at me. I lowered my head.
“I do not care to speak before him,” he said. His two footmen were in the background, a few yards away, where the tharlarion was tethered. Two of Lady Yanina’s men, from her camp, were also nearby. They were withdrawn several yards to the rear, behind us, as his men were behind him. They were sitting cross-legged in the grass, playing stones.
“Do not mind him,” she said. “He is only a servant.”
“What sort of servant?” he asked.
“A common sort of menial,” she said. “I use him for various things. He waits upon me, he combs my hair, he tidies up the tent.”
“I see,” he said.
“Does it bother you that I have such a servant?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “Of course not.”
“You have girls who tend you hand and foot,” she said.
“I would rather not speak before him,” he said.
“Several times,” she said, “we have spoken openly before your slaves.”
“That is different,” he said. “They are only slaves.”
“Would you feel more comfortable if I put him in a collar?” she asked. “It is my intention to do that.”
“I despise such servants,” he said.
“I shall withdraw, Mistress,” I said, making as though to rise.
“Stay, Brinlar,” she said, imperiously, coldly.
“Yes, Mistress,” I said. I smiled inwardly. My trick had worked. I had been reasonably confident that she would choose to exert her authority in this fashion. She was obviously in some sort of competitive relationship with the male. There was a tautness, a tension, between them. She seemed jealous of him and his power. She was very defensive about her status in his eyes. I conjectured that they were theoretically on the same level, or nearly on the same level, perhaps reporting to the same superior, or superiors, presumably Priest-Kings. If it were acceptable to discuss sensitive matters before his slaves, women like herself, but reduced to a status as negligible as that of furniture or animals, then surely it should be similarly acceptable to discuss such matters before a male, she must have reasoned, one who shared his sex, but was now to her only as total servant. Clearly, of course, she did not understand the differences between men and women. They are not the same. No more fundamental mistake can be made. Too, in making his identification, he had had her face-stripped. This is not a small thing from the point of view of a Gorean woman. I saw that it was important to her to pretend to be his equal. From his point of view, of course, she was only a woman. He must have often conjectured, like any strong man, what she would have looked like at his feet, stripped and in chains. If any roughnesses remained in their relationship after that, they could always be smoothed out with the whip.
“You have brought the materials?” he asked. I was relieved. I saw that he did not choose to contest these matters with her. They were beneath his dignity. She was only a female.
“They are in my te
nt,” she said, airily. “I did not bring them to this meeting, of course. I wished to make certain of the contact first.”
“Of course,” he said. I wondered what the “materials” were. He seemed to have spoken somewhat guardedly. I assumed that was because of my presence.
“I have them ready for delivery whenever and wherever you wish,” she said.
In tidying up her tent, I had taken the opportunity to examine, in so far as I could, its contents. Certain of the trunks were kept locked. In one of those, I supposed, lay the “materials” in question. I did not know the location of the keys to these trunks. I supposed most were locked in one of the trunks, and the key, say, to that trunk, or trunks, was carried about her person, probably concealed in her robes. I could not investigate these matters in detail at night as at night I was hooded and chained to a stake just within the entrance to her tent. In this way she kept me near her. Also, in this way, I did not have to be put with the other captives. It was feared they might harm me in their resentment or anger, given the nature and lightness of my duties.
“I think it was a mistake to have routed them through Port Kar,” he said.
This speculation had to do, I supposed, with possible recent misgivings on the part of Priest-Kings pertaining to the loyalty of Samos.
“Not at all,” she said. “Dour Babinius held passage with me. I had to deliver him to Port Kar, that he might there, in accord with his sealed orders, conduct his affairs.”
She had told me earlier that she had had business in Port Kar. That, I supposed, had been the business. While there, of course, she had taken advantage of carnival to expeditiously accomplish her captures, among which I, like a fool, must be counted.
“Do you know the nature of those orders?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“I do,” he said.
“Oh,” she said, irritatedly. I gathered he must stand somewhat higher than she in some hierarchy of power.
“He was to have made a strike in Port Kar,” he said.
“His target?” she asked.
“An admiral,” he said, “one called ‘Bosk.’”
“I have heard of him,” she said.
“He failed,” he said.
“Oh,” she said, surprised.
“He was found in one of the purple booths, in his heart his own knife.”
Players of Gor Page 13