Blood Brothers of Gor

by Norman, John;

  "Yes, Master," she said.

  "Even the most loved slave," I said, "should a master be so foolish as to love a slave, remains, in the end, and do not forget it, radically, and only, a slave."

  "Yes, Master," she said.

  I kissed her again, softly.

  "You can do anything with us, can you not?" she asked. "It depends only on your will."

  "Yes," I said.

  "Do not put me out on the tether again, Master," she begged. "Keep me for only silken work. I will endeavor with all my heart to be a most perfect and pleasing slave."

  "Is this she who was once the lofty Lady Mira who speaks," I asked, "she who was once the proud free woman of Venna?"

  "Yes, Master," she said.

  "And is now naught but an abject slave?"

  "Yes, Master," she said.

  "Your will is nothing," I said. "It will be done with you, totally, as masters please."

  "Yes, Master," she said.

  "Perhaps you understand now," I said, "a little better than before, what it is to be a slave."

  "Yes, my master," she said. She laughed, ruefully.

  "What is wrong?" I asked.

  "I was thinking of when I was a free woman," she said. "How contemptuous I was of the slave girls in the cities, how I scorned them, and despised them, so helpless in their lowly, silken slaveries, and yet, now, how I envy them their slaveries!"

  I smiled.

  "What lucky, soft little things they are," she said, "being sold naked off sales blocks to the whips and chains of strong masters, with little more to worry about than the heat of the kitchens, the steaming water of the laundering tubs, the dangers, from young, prowling ruffians, of shopping in the evening! How warm and safe they are locked in their kennels at night or cuddling, in furs, chained at the foot of their masters' couches! What need have they to fear sleen and tarns! They need fear only their masters!"

  "The lot of a slave girl in the cities is not always easy," I said. "Most are owned by one master, alone, and must share his compartments with him, in complete privacy. There, as slave girls elsewhere, they are at the master's mercy, completely."

  "It is not so different in the Barrens," she said, "when one is alone with the master, when the lodge flaps are tied shut, from the inside."

  "Perhaps not," I smiled.

  "And in the cities," she said, "it is so beautiful, the towers, the bridges and sunsets, the people, the flower stalls, the market places, the smells of cooking."

  "Yes," I said, "the cities are beautiful." Some of the most beautiful cities I had seen were on Gor.

  "I lived in Ar for a year," she said. "Not far from my apartments there was a pastry shop. Marvelous smells used to come from the shop. In the evening, when the shop was closing, slave girls, in their brief tunics and collars, would come and kneel down, near the hinged opening to the open-air counter. The baker, who was a kind-hearted man, would sometimes come out and, from a flat sheet, throw them unsold pastries."

  I said nothing.

  "How amusing I found that at the time," she said. "But, too, I sometimes wondered if the pastries I bought at that shop tasted so good to me as those the girls had begged did to them. They seemed so delighted to receive one. It was so precious to them."

  I said nothing.

  "If I were a slave in Ar," she said, "and I were permitted to do so, I think I should go to that pastry shop and, in my tunic and collar, kneel there with the other girls, hoping that I, too, might receive such a pastry."

  I smiled. How beautiful she was, and how helpless, a slave.

  "In street shopping," she said, "I was always heavily veiled. The baker would not recognize me."

  "Perhaps some of the other girls were former customers as well," I said.

  "Perhaps," she smiled. "That is an interesting thought."

  "The transition between a free woman and a slave girl can occur suddenly on Gor," I said.

  "I am well aware of that, Master," she smiled. Sometimes a girl is captured in her own bed, raped and hooded, and carried to a market, all in the same night.

  "But, on the whole," she said, "how I scorned slaves, how I hated them!"

  "Oh?" I asked.

  "Do you know the slaves I hated the most, those I most despised?" she asked.

  "No," I said.

  "The pleasure slaves!" she said. "How I hated them! They were so beautiful and desirable! Sometimes I would take a whip into the streets and deliberately jostle one, and then make her lie down and whip her across the legs!"

  "The same thing, now, could be done to you," I said.

  "I know," she said.

  "Why did you hate them so?" I asked.

  "They were lucky enough to be in a collar, and not me!" she said.

  "It seems, then," I said, "that you hated them because you were jealous of them, that, in reality, you envied them."

  "Yes," she said, "I was jealous of their beauty and desirability. I envied them their happiness."

  "Did you know this as a free woman?" I asked.

  "Yes," she said, "but I do not think that I would have freely admitted it."

  "Deceit is a freedom of free women," I said.

  "But it is not a freedom permitted to slave girls, is it, Master?" she asked.

  "No," I said.

  "Every woman, in her heart," she said, "longs to kneel before a strong man, to be subject to his whip, to be owned, to be mastered, to know that she has no choice but to give him total love and service."

  "The master will not permit the girl to give him less than everything."

  "And the slave desires to give the master everything," she said, "and more."

  "Are you happy," I asked, "being a slave?"

  "Yes, Master," she said. "I have never been so happy before in my life."

  "You are now in your place in nature," I said.

  "Yes, my Master," she said. She kissed me.

  "No longer, now," I said, "do you need to envy slave girls."

  "No longer do I envy them their slavery," she said, "for now I, too, am a slave. In my bondage I am as rich and favored as they."

  "But surely," I said, "you are aware of the miseries and terrors which may occasionally characterize the lot of female slaves."

  "Of course," she said, "for we are at the mercy of our masters, in all things."

  "Yet you are not displeased to be a slave?" I asked.

  "No," she said.

  "Why?" I asked.

  "That we may, at our master's whim, be subjected to miseries or terrors, even to torture and death, if he wishes, makes clear to us that we are truly slaves, that we are truly owned, that the domination to which we are subject is truly total and absolute."

  "I see," I said.

  "We would not have it any other way," she said.

  "I see," I said.

  "But we know," she said, "that though we are in one sense fully without power, that in another sense we may do much to control the happiness and quality of our lives. We need, generally, only be absolutely obedient and fully pleasing."

  "That is generally true," I admitted.

  "Too," she said, "in bondage we find that we live our truth. How else could we be happy and fulfilled?"

  "I do not know," I said.

  "And I think it is obviously true," she said, "that men desire us, treasure us, and love us, as well as command us, in ways that a free woman can never understand or know."

  "That is a secret between masters and slaves," I smiled.

  "Perhaps," she laughed. "But I doubt that it is a well-kept secret or free women would not hate us so!"

  "Perhaps," I smiled.

  "There are risks in all conditions," she said. "Free persons, men, at least, for example, if need be, are expected to accept great hazards on behalf of their cities. That is not expected of slaves."

  "That is true," I said. Slaves, like kaiila and furniture, being properties, were not expected to participate in municipal defense. To be sure, they might be ordered to strengthen walls a
nd reinforce gates, and such.

  She put her arms about my neck, and kissed me. "Suppose you were a conqueror and found me in a burning city," she whispered. "You would not be likely to slay me, would you?"

  "No," I said.

  "You would make me yours," she said. "You would tie me to the stirrup of your kaiila. You would make me march in your plunder column."

  "You might be harnessed to a wagon, to help draw loot," I said.

  "Yes, Master," she whispered. "But I would be alive."

  "Slavery is sometimes accorded to free prisoners," I said. "This is particularly the case with free women who, when stripped, are found desirable enough for the collar." This may be done in various ways. Normally, a free woman, unceremoniously, is simply enslaved. She deserves no consideration, whatsoever. She is a female of an enemy city. Accordingly, she belongs at the feet of the conqueror, with other spoils. A warrior may secure such women with devices so simple as thumb-cuffs, like tiny, joined rings, and snap-lock, or pronged, tension-closed, nose-rings, with strands of wire, to fasten them together.

  The material for securing ten women, in such cases, fits into a corner of the warrior's pack and weighs no more than a few ounces. If the cities are long-time, hereditary enemies snap-lock, or pronged, tension-closed, earrings might be used instead of nose-rings, as a gesture of contempt, a pierced ear, or ears, on Gor, culturally, commonly, being regarded as the mark of the lowest, the most sensuous and the most despicable of slaves. To be perfectly honest, however, ear piercing for Gorean slaves is now much more common than it was a few years ago. Perhaps the time will come when the slave will be a rarity who has not felt the two thrusts of the leather-worker's needle. The growing prevalence of ear piercing probably has to do, at least significantly, with its tendency to stimulate the sexual aggression of the Gorean male. Accordingly, girls with pierced ears, "pierced-ear girls," tend to bring higher prices in the markets. Slavers, thus, prior to putting their properties on the block, are more and more inclined to have this done to them.

  Some girls, knowing how desirable this can make them, beg their master to have their ears pierced. The piercing of the ears is not only symbolic and aesthetic to the master and the slave but it can be tactually arousing, as well, playing with the earring, the girl feeling it brush the side of her cheek or neck, and so on. Sometimes, however, the free woman in a captured city is not, say, simply stripped, thrown down and tied, later to be turned over to an iron master for the searing kiss of his white-hot metal. Sometimes, rather, she, stripped, and presented before officers, is offered the choice between swift, honorable decapitation and slavery. If she chooses slavery, she may be expected to step onto a submission mat, and kneel there, head down, enter a slave pen of her own accord, or, say, fully acknowledging herself a slave, belly to an officer, kissing his feet.

  The question is sometimes put to her in somewhat the following fashion. "If you are a free woman, speak your freedom and advance, now, to the headsman's block, or, if you are truly a slave, and have only been masquerading until now as a free woman, step now, if you wish, upon the mat of submission and kneel there, in this act becoming at last, explicitly, a legal slave." She is then expected, sometimes, kneeling, to lick the feet of a soldier, who then rapes her on the mat. It is commonly regarded as an acceptable introduction for a woman to her explicit and legal slavery.

  "But what does such a woman know?" laughed Mira. "They are ignorant."

  "Perhaps one such as yourself might be set to their training," I said.

  "I would make them learn quickly," she laughed.

  "Your mood now," I said, "seems lighter."

  "Yes," she said. "Thank you, Master."

  I kissed her.

  "It is so ironical," she laughed.

  "What?" I asked.

  "How I at one time so hated slaves and now have never been so happy as when I am a slave myself!"

  "No longer do you hate them," I said.

  "No," she said, "for now I am, too, a slave."

  "And no longer do you envy them either," I said.

  "It is not necessary for me to envy them any longer that they are slaves," she said, "for that is a condition which I, too, now, helplessly share."

  "Then you no longer envy them?" I asked.

  "But I do," she laughed, "and since I so despised them and held them in such contempt before, this seems now doubly amusing!"

  "I do not understand," I said.

  "How laughable and delicious would the little collared chits find it that I, who so scorned them, am not only now, too, a slave, but a low slave, one with only a leather collar, one not even permitted clothing, a cheap, inexpensive slave, thousands of pasangs from civilization, a meaningless slave in the wild grasslands east of the Thentis mountains, one of so little worth that she may even serve as naked bait for tarns!"

  "In silk, and a golden collar, and taught the lascivious movements of pleasure slaves, you might bring a good price, even in the cities," I said.

  "Thank you, Master," she said.

  "It is the girls in the cities, I take it," I said, "those of the sorts with whom you were familiar as a free woman, that you envy."

  "Yes," she said.

  "Those girls whom you so scorned before?" I asked.

  "Yes," she said. "Now, laughably, I must look up to them, for they are higher than I."

  "It is amusing, I suppose," I said.

  "As a free woman," she said, "never did I suspect that one day I might actually aspire, from a far lower slavery, to wear such a tunic and collar and, like them, so helpless and subservient, serve in a city."

  "These things are relative," I said.

  "Now such a thing is beyond my reach," she said, "unless a master should grant it to me."

  "Yes," I said, "for you are a slave."

  "You see now," she smiled, "why it is that I envy such slaves."

  "Yes," I said. "You wish now that only such a slavery was yours."

  "Yes," she said.

  "But it is not," I said. "You are a slave in the Barrens."

  "Yes, Master," she said.

  "Tatankasa!" cried Cuwignaka. "Come quickly!"

  I leaped out of the pit.

  "There!" cried Cuwignaka, pointing upward. "One of the Kinyanpi!"

  I shaded my eyes.

  "It is not a wild tarn," said Cuwignaka. "There is something on its back."

  "Yes," I said.

  "It must be a man, bent over," said Cuwignaka.

  "But, why?" I asked.

  "He is perhaps trying to conceal that the tarn is not wild," said Cuwignaka.

  "Perhaps he is wounded," said Hci, fitting an arrow to a bow.

  "You are sure you have been seen?" I asked.

  "The captured tarn was seen," said Cuwignaka. "I am sure of it. The bird changed its direction. Too, by now, doubtless we have been seen."

  "It is circling," said Hci.

  "We cannot hide the captured tarn," said Cuwignaka.

  "Our plans are foiled. Our hopes are dashed," said Hci.

  "One of the Kinyanpi, having made this determination, having detected our presence in the tarn country," I said, "would presumably return to his camp, later to return with others."

  "Why is he still circling?" asked Cuwignaka.

  "I do not know," I said.

  "What is it, Master?" asked Mira. She had emerged, frightened, from the pit. She stood a little behind me, and to my left. I did not strike her. I had not ordered her to remain in the pit.

  "We are not sure," I said.

  "I think the bird intends to land," said Cuwignaka.

  "That is incredible," I said. "Surely one warrior of the Kinyanpi would not wish to challenge three armed men."

  "It is going to land," said Cuwignaka. "I am sure of it."

  "You are right," I said.

  "Why does the warrior not show himself?" asked Hci.

  "I can see legs," said Mira.

  "I will go a bit behind the path of the bird's approach," said Hci, exercising
the tension in the small bow he had armed. "Then when the warrior dismounts he may, if we wish, be easily slain."

  I nodded. A man's shield can protect him in only one plane of attack.

  "Why would he land?" asked Cuwignaka.

  "I do not know," I said.

  The bird soared towards us and then, several yards away, turned its wings, braking, and hovered for a moment in the air, its claws dropping, and then landed.

  We closed our eyes, briefly, against the storm of wind and dust which temporarily assaulted us.

  Mira threw her hand before her mouth and screamed. "Withdraw," I told her.

  I went forward and seized the guide-ropes of the tarn, near the beak. It shook its head. The guide-ropes, or reins, of the tarn, as the Kinyanpi fashion them, seem clearly to be based on the jaw ropes used generally in the Barrens by the red savages to control kaiila. This suggests that the Kinyanpi had probably domesticated kaiila before tarns and that their domestication of the tarn was achieved independently of white practice, as exemplified, say, by the tarnsmen of such cities as Thentis. The common guidance apparatus for tarns in most cities is an arrangement involving two major rings and six straps. The one-strap is drawn for ascent, and the four-strap for descent, for example.

  "What could have done this?" asked Cuwignaka, in awe.

  I heard Mira, a few yards behind us, throwing up in the grass.

  "I am not sure," I said.

  Hci came up to join us, from where he had been crouching down in the grass.

  "Aiii," he muttered.

  "What do you think?" asked Cuwignaka.

  "Never have I seen anything like this," said Hci. To be sure it was awesome to contemplate the forces and pressures that could have done it.

  The tarn, besides its rude bridle, wore a girth strap.

  I glanced back at Mira. She was on her hands and knees in the grass, sick.

  She was correct that she had seen legs. The knees were thrust under the girth strap. There were also thighs and a lower abdomen. There was no upper body.

  "I do not understand this," said Cuwignaka, in a whisper.

  "Only something from the medicine world could have done this," said Hci.

  I looked up, scanning the sky. Whatever had done this must still be about, somewhere.