She is a slave.
"To be sure," I said, "they might be occasionally lashed, if only to remind them that they are slaves."
"That is kind," she said, "truly kind, but I suppose you, a mere man, may not understand how truly kind it is."
I supposed women had some understanding of how beautiful they were. Is it not enough to look in a mirror, or glance at one's image in a bowl of water, a still pool? And yet I wondered if many of them understood not only how beautiful they were, but how attractive, how desirable, how exciting, they were. Did they ever stop to consider how their beauty, their attractiveness, their desirability, their excitingness, might appear to a male? If they did surely they would find not the least mystery in the slave tunic, shackles, the collar, even the whip. Perhaps only the slave has some sense of how she truly appears to men, in all her radiant, vital, vulnerable, feminine appeal, some sense of how men truly see her, some sense of the magnetism, the lightning, the joy, the electricity of human sexuality.
"Oh," she said, delightedly, suddenly squirming, "Master is strong again!"
"Were you given permission to speak?" I said, between gritted teeth.
"No, Master," she said. "Forgive me, Master!"
"You have a pretty collar," I said.
"Thank you, Master," she whispered.
"It is a slave collar," I said.
"Yes, Master."
"You are a slave," I said.
"Yes, Master," she whispered. "Yes, Master!" Then, strangely, she began to whisper, not to me, but to herself. "Oh, little Winyela," she whispered, "what is going on with you? You are being put to use, are you not, little Winyela? Do you like it? What is he doing to you? You know these feelings, do you not? You like them, do you not? Is he concerned with you? Does it matter? Oh! Must you not resist him? But you are a slave! You are not permitted to resist him! You must abandon yourself to your feelings, your sensations! I dare not, for then I would not be mine, but his! Foolish Winyela, do you not know you are a slave? You are not yours, but another's! To whom do you belong? Of course, you belong to Canka! But now, by the will of Canka, who may do with you as he wishes, you must serve his friend, Tatankasa. If Tatankasa is not well pleased, you will doubtless be beaten. You are a pretty slave, I think, little Winyela. I am sure of that. Have you not seen the eyes of men upon you? I hope that that will please this master! We hope our prettiness will please the masters! Surely many men desire you, little Winyela. You have seen how they look at you, as though they had rawhide cords in their hands! That is nice. But Canka owns you! You are his. Do not forget it! Oh, Oh! Your little slave body is in the hands of a master, is it not? Canka, her master, has well conquered and subdued little Winyela! He is little Winyela's master. She wears his collar! Now Canka has given her to another, for his sport, and she must please him! Oh! It has begun! I love Canka! I love my collar! The sensations! I am in the arms of the man to whom Canka has assigned me, and he is doing it to me! I want it done to me! I want it! I am a slave! I want it! I want it! Ohhhh!"
* * * *
"I love my master, Canka," she said.
"I know," I said.
"I want to be fully pleasing to him."
"You had better be," I said.
"That is true," she laughed. "It is strange," she said.
"What?" I asked.
"I am Canka's slave," she said. "Yet, I love him so much that even if I were not his slave, I would want to be his slave."
"I understand," I said.
She had earlier confided to me that the first time she had seen Canka she had wanted to be his slave. I believe that to be true, and there had been no mistaking the claimatory lust in the young warrior's eyes when he had first beheld the slim slave. Had he not examined her, she exhibited, kneeling, hands behind her head, head back, in a familiar posture of slave assessment? Had he not put her to the paws of his kaiila almost immediately, thus utilizing her as the animal of his animal, and thus, in effect, declaring her to be of interest, and claiming her in virtue of the right of slave capture.
"Interesting," I said.
"I am only his enamored slave," she said.
"I know," I said.
"Do you want to know something?" she said.
"Surely," I said.
"Love," she said, "puts any woman in bondage, and the more deeply she is in love, the more deeply she is plunged into bondage."
"Perhaps," I said.
"I think it is true," she said.
"Perhaps you are right," I said. "I do not know."
"But if this is true," she said, "it would seem to follow that no woman could be truly in love who is not a female slave."
"What follows, I think," I said, "is that any woman deeply and truly in love is, in effect, a female slave."
"Imagine, then," she breathed, "the love that might be felt by an actual female slave, a woman actually owned, for her master. How helplessly she would be his!"
"Bondage," I said, "with its ownership and domination of the woman, is a soil in which it is natural for love to blossom."
"I know that that is true," she said.
"And the bondage of chains is then, not unoften, succeeded by the bondage of love."
"And think how deep is the bondage of the female slave," said the girl, "whose bondage is the bondage of both chains and love."
"Yes," I said. Her bondage was indeed the deepest bondage in which a human female could conceive of herself being placed, being only, strictly, the property of her beloved master.
"Do you know something else?" she asked.
"What?" I asked.
"You are my friend," she said.
"Beware that you are not quirted, a hundred strokes," I said.
"You are my friend," she said. "I know that it is true."
I did not bother responding to her. How preposterous was the girl's conjecture. Did she not know she was naught but a female slave?
"Can masters and slaves be friends?" she asked.
"Yes," I said. "But the girl, of course, is always to be kept in the perfection of her slavery."
"Of course," she said. "Master," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"I love Canka," she said. "But I displeased him. What if he doesn't want me any longer? What if he sells me or gives me away?"
"I do not think he will do that," I said.
"How am I to act when I return to his lodge?" she asked. "What am I to do?"
"You are a slave," I said. "Be loving, obedient and pleasing, fully."
"I shall try," she said.
I then explained to her what she might do upon her return to the lodge of Canka.
"Oh, yes," she whispered. "Yes!"
It would be important for her to convince him that she had learned something from her travails of the day.
"I smell cooking fires," she said, happily. She made as though to rise, but I thrust her, roughly, back down on the robes. "Master?" she asked.
"You are eager to return to the lodge of your master," I observed.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"But until I choose, within reason, to relinquish you," I said, "you are still to me as my slave, are you not?"
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Well," I said, "I do not choose, at this moment, to relinquish you."
"Please, Master," she wept.
"You are nude, and attractive," I said. "I am going to have you again now, and at my leisure."
"Please, Master!" she protested.
"Do you object?" I asked.
"No, Master," she said, frightened.
"And how will you yield to me?" I asked.
"With perfection," she said, "as my master ordered." She looked at me, and laughed. "You brute," she said. "You know you will make me yield with perfection, whether I wished to or not!"
"Perhaps," I said.
"Modest tarsk!" she laughed. "Oh!" she cried. "Oh! Oh!"
"It seems to be true," I said.
"Yes," she said, "yes!"
"You will, fur
ther," I said, "utter low-volume sounds, indicative of arousal."
"Yes," she said. "Yes."
This device, forcing the slave to furnish an audible analogue or correlate for her sensations, has three principal utilities. It helps to intensify the slave's responses, she responding in part to, and being in part aroused by, her own sounds of arousal. Secondly, the sounds, her helpless moans and cries, her whimpers, her sighs, her gasps, please, and can be stimulatory to, the master. Thirdly, the sounds aid him in his management and control of her. By means of them he can, in effect, map her beauty, guiding himself in his ownership of her, detecting the zones of her greatest sexual helplessness and seeing, by varying the nature of his rhythms and touches, how they can be most efficiently and brilliantly exploited, the end in view, of course, being to produce the most yielding and orgasmically helpless slave possible.
"Ohhh," she said, softly.
"And when I am finished with you," I said, "I shall rise to my feet and snap my fingers. You will then, without further ado, rise to your feet and follow me, silently, humbly and unquestioningly, heeling me, as the mere beast you are, to the lodge of your master."
"Yes, Master," she said. "Ohhh. Ohhh!"
I smiled to myself. The little beast had tricked me. I thought my vengeance on her was suitable.
"Ohh!" she cried. "Ohh! Ohhhh!"
Yes, I thought, quite suitable.
10
An Improved Slave is Returned to Her Master
We stood before the lodge of Canka.
He emerged from the lodge.
Immediately Winyela, a penitent slave, lowered herself to her knees, and then to her belly before him.
"You may kiss his feet," I said.
She began to kiss the moccasined feet of her master.
"I was displeased with her," said Canka to me.
"She knows," I said.
Canka reached down and pulled her up to her knees and then, by the hair, he bent her back, and then twisted her about.
"She does not appear to be much disciplined," he said.
"I think the discipline to which she was subjected will prove to be adequate," I said. "If it does not, it may, of course, be doubled, or trebled."
"That is true," said Canka. Winyela, then, released, was again at his feet. Imploringly, beseechingly, again on her belly, as she had been before, she continued to press her lips to his moccasins.
"Do you think she is improved?" asked Canka.
"I think so," I said.
I looked down at the girl. I had little doubt she had learned her lessons. The highly intelligent woman, incidentally, as would be expected, learns her slave lessons, and that she is a slave, much more quickly than the stupid woman. It takes some stupid women as much as two days before they learn that they are truly in a collar. If a slave continues to prove recalcitrant, of course, she gains nothing by this. She will merely be disposed of.
"It is my hope," said Canka, "that she will not repeat her earlier mistakes."
"I do not think she will," I said, "and, of course, if she is not pleasing in some way she may be swiftly brought into line."
"She is responsive to the quirt?" asked Canka.
"Yes," I said.
"And to the touch of the master?" he asked.
"Yes," I said, "and, as befits a slave, helplessly and superbly so."
"Good," he said. He then stepped back from the contrite girl, bellying to him, kissing his feet, suing for his forgiveness and mercy.
"Have you firmly resolved to improve your qualities of pleasingness to your master?" I asked.
"Yes, Master," said the girl, on her stomach.
"With your permission," I said to Canka.
"Of course," he said.
"You may now indicate your new attitude toward your master," I told her.
"Yes, Master," she said. She then rose to her hands and knees and head down, crawling, entered Canka's lodge.
He looked at me, puzzled.
In a moment she re-emerged from the lodge as she had entered it, crawling, with her head down. Grasped between her small, fine white teeth was the center of a heavy, braided, beaded-handled kaiila quirt. Canka watched, as she, unbidden, brought him the quirt. She lay it at his feet, from her teeth, and then knelt before him, her head down. Her hands were on her thighs. Her knees were widely separated. This knee position indicated that she knew herself to be a woman held in the deepest and most intimate form of slavery.
"Thus," I said, "does she display her new understanding of her condition. Thus does she indicate her new attitude towards her master."
I saw that Canka approved of what he saw, and well.
"Behold her," I said, "a humbled, submitted slave. Her name is Winyela. She is the property of the warrior, Canka, of the Isbu Kaiila."
"Look up," said Canka to the girl.
There were tears in her eyes.
"She desires to speak," I said.
"You may speak," said Canka.
"I am yours, and I love you, my master," said the girl. Then she lowered her head.
Canka reached down and picked up the kaiila quirt. Then he indicated, with the quirt, that the girl should enter the interior of the lodge. She crawled to the lodge, head down.
"I see," said Canka, "that you have returned me a better slave than the one I sent you."
I said nothing.
"I am very pleased," he said.
"That pleases me," I said.
"I did not wish to have to kill her," he said.
"I do not think that will be necessary," I said. "I think you will now find that she is a good slave, and that all is in order."
Canka grinned.
"She is within," I said. "She awaits her master."
"Thank you," said Canka, "—my friend."
"It is nothing," I said, "—my friend."
Canka then entered his lodge. A moment later I heard Winyela crying out, rapturously, doubtless locked in his arms. I had suggested the business of the kaiila quirt to her before we had left Cuwignaka's lodge. I had thought it might please Canka, and give Winyela a way to demonstrate, graphically and meaningfully, unmistakably, that she was now, knew herself to be, and desired not to be other than, the total slave of her master.
I then walked away. As I left, I heard her crying out in ecstasy and heard, too, the uncompromising, triumphant roars, unrestrained, bestial and victorious, of his ownership of her, a slave, a girl named Winyela, whom I had prepared for his lodge.
11
It is in the Time of Festivals
"Canka is extremely pleased," said Cuwignaka, coming up to me. It was the day following Winyela's disciplining and my delivery of her, suitably informed and improved, to the lodge of Canka.
"I am pleased to hear it," I said. I was fond of Canka and, too, I supposed, I should be pleased, as I was, in strict fact, his slave, and had had what amounted, as I now understood clearly, to what was a charge, or at least an invitation in the matter.
"He is permitting her a dress of soft tabuk skin," said Cuwignaka, "creamy white and soft-tanned, though, to be sure, of slave length. Too, he has given her beads and moccasins. He has braided her hair. He has painted her face, for the time of the feasts."
"Marvelous," I said. It is not unusual for a master to care for a slave's hair. Too, they will, upon occasion, groom kaiila and tie streamers and ribbons in their long manes. That he had painted her face was also impressive. Usually, among the Kaiila, it is free women who are permitted face paint, and then, commonly only at times of great festivals. This paint is commonly applied by the woman's mate.
"I have never seen Canka so happy," said Cuwignaka.
"I am pleased," I said.
"You should see Winyela," he said. "She is joyful, alluring and superb."
"Excellent," I said. I was pleased to think that I may have had a hand in her transformation. To be sure, I had done little other than to put them together as true master and true slave.
"I, myself," said Cuwignaka, "feel the ne
ed of a slave."
"Grunt would be pleased," I said, "at your least indication of interest, to strip Wasnapohdi and put her to your feet."
"That is true," said Cuwignaka.
"She is hot and beautiful," I said.
"I was thinking more of my own slave," said Cuwignaka.
"You could probably buy one cheaply from the Isanna," I said. "They have many sleek-flanked slaves in their girl herds."
"I was thinking more in terms of a red slave," said Cuwignaka.
"Doubtless you have considered the warpath," I said, "the capture of a girl, the bringing of her back, naked and bound, a tether on her neck, running her at the flank of your kaiila."
"Twice I did not take the warpath," said Cuwignaka, "because I had no quarrel with the Fleer. It would now seem somewhat hypocritical on my part, would it not, to take the warpath not to deal vengeance and destruction to the enemy, but merely for my own selfish purposes, to procure a female."
"Perhaps you are right," I said. "How do you feel about kaiila raids?"
"I see little wrong with them," said Cuwignaka. "That is not so much war as it is a sport. We raid the Fleer. They raid us. And so it goes."
"What, then," I asked, "about a girl hunt, or a girl raid?"
"Perhaps," said Cuwignaka. "That, too, is more in the nature of a sport than anything else."
I knew that red savages occasionally went on girl raids. To be sure, the kaiila raid was much more common. The exploit marking, painted on the forequarters of a kaiila for a captured kaiila, resembles an inverted 'U'. This convention has a heritage, clearly, it seems to me, which traces back to an animal other than the kaiila, an animal, indeed, indigenous not to Gor, but to a distant world, one from which came the ancestors of the red savages. It seems clearly to be related not to a pawed, but to a hoofed animal. The usual exploit marking for a captured female is also a conventional representation. It resembles a pair of parentheses enclosing a vertical line. It seems to be a stylized representation, rather brazen, I think, of delicate female intimacies. There is, incidentally, no common, often-used sign for a captured male, comparable to that for the captured female. Males of the enemy are seldom captured. They are usually killed. In the coup codes, opaque red circles on feathers usually stand for enemies slain.
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