by John Norman
"Please, Master!" she cried.
With a tiny, almost imperceptible movement, the tiniest motion of their short legs, the four tharlarion, almost ringing the girl, seemed to drift again toward her, like half-submerged, meaningless logs, save for the methodicality of their convergence. There would then be a sudden lunge, and the snapping of the great jaws, the fighting for the prey.
"Master!" cried Tende.
Kisu, suddenly, reached out and, seizing the girl by the bound wrists, she screaming, wrenched her bodily in a shower of water across the thwart of the canoe.
At the same time, sensing the sudden movement of the prey, the four tharlarion, lashing the water with their tails, cut toward her. Two of them struck toward the stern of the canoe. Another uttered an explosive cry, half grunt, half bellow, which, in rage and frustration, sounded across the marsh. The fourth, jaws distended, more than a yard in width, attacked the side of the canoe. I beat it back with the paddle.
The canoe began to tip backward as another tharlarion clambered, half out of the water, onto its stern. Kisu thrust at it with his paddle. It bit the paddle in two. The girls, clinging to the thwarts, screamed. Ayari moved toward the bow of the canoe, half standing, to try to balance the weight. With the splintered handle of the paddle Kisu jabbed at the tharlarion. It slipped back off the stern. The canoe struck with a crash in the water, nearly capsizing. Another tharlarion struck at the side of the canoe with its snout. I heard wood crack, but not break. It turned, to use its tail. Another tharlarion slipped beneath the canoe.
"Move the canoe!" cried Kisu. "Do not let them under it!"
I thrust at the water with the paddle, and then, as the tharlarion began to surface under the slender vessel, pushed down at it. The canoe slipped off its back, and righted itself. Ayari, seizing one of the paddles, and I, then moved the canoe forward.
The tharlarion were quick to follow, snapping and bellowing. Kisu, with the splintered paddle handle, thrust back one of them.
Then I saw a handful of dried fish fly into the maw of one of the beasts. Ayari, his paddle discarded, was reaching into the cylindrical basket of dried fish, torn open, which had been among the supplies of the canoe. He hurled more fish to another tharlarion, which, with a snapping, popping noise, clamped shut its jaws on the salty provender. He similarly threw fish to the other two beasts.
"Hand me another paddle," I said to the first girl in the canoe. She was crouching, trembling, head down, in the bottom of the canoe.
"Perform, Slave," I said.
"Yes, Master," she whispered. She handed the paddle back to the blond-haired barbarian who, half in shock, numb, held it back to me. She looked at me, frightened, and then looked away. I think she knew that she again belonged to me. I pulled the paddle from her hands and passed it back to Kisu, who took it calmly. Kisu and I then began to propel the canoe eastward. Tende, wrists bound beneath her body, lay shuddering between Kisu and myself, in the bottom of the canoe. Ayari then threw bits of fish into the water, where the tharlarion must swim to them, to obtain them. He threw successive tidbits further and further away, behind the canoe. Then he scattered several scraps of fish at one time, in an arc behind the tharlarion. Kisu and I continued to propel the canoe from the vicinity. The tharlarion, distracted and feeding, did not follow.
After a quarter of an Ahn Kisu laid aside his paddle. He put Tende to her back, crouching beside her. He untied her hands.
She looked up at him.
"It is right, is it not," he asked, "to enslave a rightful and natural slave?"
"Yes, Master," she said.
He then, gently, removed her clothing.
"You are beautiful," he said.
"A girl is pleased, if Master is pleased," she said.
"It is too bad you are only a slave," he said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
I then removed the white shells and cord from the throat and left ankle of the blond-haired barbarian, and snapped the two cords in half. I then retied shells on her throat and left ankle. The two remaining pieces of cord, with their shells, I gave to Kisu. He then tied them on the throat and left ankle of Tende.
"You have ornamented me as a slave, Master," said Tende.
"It is fitting, Slave," said Kisu.
"Yes, Master," she said.
She then saw her clothing, with the exception of a silken strip, a foot in width and some five feet in length, ripped from an undergarment, dropped overboard into the marsh. Kisu carefully folded the silken strip into small squares and slipped it between his waist and his loincloth's twisted-cloth belt. It could serve her as a brief, wrap-around skirt, similar to those of the other girls, if he later saw fit to clothe her.
"Your slave lies naked before you, Master," said Tende.
"I have always desired you, Tende," he said.
She lifted her arms to him.
"You are a slave, aren't you, Tende?" he asked.
"Yes, Master," she said. She put her arms down. She looked up at him.
"I wanted you, Tende," said he, "bitterly, for years, in anguish, and you can never know how I wanted you, truly wanted you, wanted to possess you, to have you mine, mine completely—wanted to own you."
"I knew this," whispered Tende. "Could I not see it in your looks, not sense it in words unspoken? Do you think a woman cannot sense the might, the lust, of a man?"
He looked down upon her, supine before him.
"I knew you wanted me," she said. "It frightened me. It thrilled me."
"And, lovely Tende," said he, "did you think you could conceal your slavery from me?
"Yes!" she said. "From you, and from all the world!"
"And from yourself?"
"No," she said. "I could not conceal it from myself."
"Nor from me," said he, bitterly. "I could see it in your movements, in your glances, in the carefully concealed words behind your words. Do you think I do not know a slave girl when I see her?"
"Be kind," she begged.
"Do you think your haughty demeanor, your proud words, your lofty glances, concealed from me, or from any man, what you were?"
"Please," she protested.
"Beneath your robes," said he, "I could smell the slave in you."
"I hated you!" she said. "I knew you sensed my secret, and I knew that you sensed yourself—yourself—yourself my—"
"What?" he demanded.
"—my rightful Master!" she sobbed.
"As I am," he said.
"It is true," she wept. "More true than you know."
"Speak," he snarled.
"Since I was a little girl," she said, "I wanted to be your slave. But I never thought you would be strong enough to make me your slave."
"In Ukungu," he said, "it was not possible." He looked down at her, his hands hard on her arms. "Here," he said, "it is possible."
"Here," she said, "it is reality." Then she winced, for his hands, in his desire, tightened more upon her arms. "Oh," she said, "you're hurting me."
"Be silent, Slave," he said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
He looked at her, fiercely. She could not meet his eyes. I think she had not known before that a man could so desire her. She had not before been a slave.
"I name you 'Tende'," he said.
"Yes, Master," she said, now wearing that name like a collar, it having been put upon her as a slave name.
"To whom do you belong?" he asked.
"You, Master," she said.
"Do you think you will have an easy slavery with me?" he asked.
"No, Master," she said.
"You are right," he said. "Your slavery will be a full slavery."
"I desire no other," she said, turning her head to face him. I could smell the heat of her. "Are you now going to claim me, as your slave?" she asked. They seemed oblivious of the others in the canoe. Yet had they not been, it would have made no difference, for the girl was only a slave.
"I claim you, Tende," said he, "as my slave."
"
Are you going to take the rights of the Master?" she asked.
"When, and as I please," he said.
"Yes, Master," she said. "Oh!" she said, forced back, down, roughly, in the canoe.
"I claim you, Tende, daughter of my hated enemy, Aibu," he said, "as my slave, and now, for the first time, I assert over you the full and uncompromising rights of my mastery."
"Yes, Master," she said. "Yes, Master!"
Ayari and I, and the two bare-breasted, lovely white slaves, property girls, each of us now with a paddle, not speaking, propelled the long canoe quietly eastward.
25
We Reach the Sill;
I am not Pleased with a Slave
"Look," said Ayari, in the bow of the long canoe, pointing forward.
"At last," said Kisu, in the stern, resting his paddle.
The two white slaves, kneeling one behind the other, before me, lifted their paddles from the water, laying them across the sides of our narrow vessel.
Behind me, directly, before Kisu, Tende withdrew her paddle, too, from the water. Kisu kept her in the canoe immediately before him. He wanted her within his reach. She knew herself constantly under his scrutiny. She dared not shirk, no more than the other slaves, in the heavy work set her. More than once Kisu had struck her across the shoulders with his broad-bladed, ornately carved paddle when she, weary, arms aching, had faltered in the rhythm of the stroke.
We had come to the sill, that place where the marsh gives way to the waters of Ngao.
Kisu and I slipped into the water and, wading, slipping in the mud, thrust and hauled the canoe forward.
Then the marsh reeds parted and I saw, before us, sparkling in the sun, broad and shining, the waters of Lake Ngao.
"How beautiful it is," breathed the blond-haired barbarian, in English.
It had taken us fifteen days to reach the sill.
We had lived by spear fishing, and drinking the fresh water of the marsh.
The sun shone on the wide, placid waters.
Shaba, I recalled, had been the first of civilized men, or outlanders, to have seen this sight.
"It is beautiful," I thought to myself. Unfortunate, I thought, that the first civilized person to have seen this sight had been the treacherous Shaba.
"Ukungu," said Kisu, "lies to the northeast, on the coast." Ukungu was a country of coast villages, speaking the same or similar dialects. It was now claimed as a part of the expanding empire of Bila Huruma.
"You are no longer welcome there," I said to Kisu.
"True," said he.
"Is it your intention to return," I asked, "in an attempt to foment rebellion?"
"That is not a portion of my current plan," he said.
"What is your current plan?" I asked.
"I shall speak to you of it later," he said.
"I am seeking one called Shaba," I said, "one with whom I have business to conclude. My task takes me to the Ua."
"I, too," smiled Kisu, "am on my way to the Ua River."
"That is a part of your plan?" I asked.
"Yes," he said, "it is a part of my plan."
"I myself," I said, "may perhaps find it necessary to enter upon the Ua River itself."
"I, too, may find that necessary," he said.
"The country of the Ua, I suspect," I said, "is a perilous country."
"I am counting on that," said Kisu.
"Is that, too," I asked, "in accord with the plan you guard so secretively?"
"It is," grinned Kisu.
"Are you familiar with the Ua?" I asked.
"No," said Kisu. "I have never seen it."
I steadied the canoe. It floated free now, fully, at the outer edge of the Ngao waters.
"Let us be on our way," I said.
Kisu, the water now again to his thighs, reached into the canoe. He took a narrow, short length of leather and bound Tende's wrists, tightly, behind her body. He then, similarly, crossing them and lashing them together, secured the girl's ankles.
"Why does my Master bind me?" she asked, kneeling helplessly in the canoe.
"I do not expect to see canoes of Ukungu," said Kisu, "but if we do, you will, thus bound, perhaps not be tempted to leap into the water and swim to safety."
"Yes, Master," she said, putting her head down.
"These other slaves, too," I said, "might be tempted to seek an easier slavery within the collar of the empire."
"Let us then discourage them, too, from foolish thoughts of escape," said Kisu.
I then bound the other two girls as Kisu had bound Tende. We then, with two long lengths of leather, fastened them, all three, together, one strap putting them in throat coffle, the other in left-ankle coffle.
"Do not tie me with white slaves, Master," begged Tende, but Kisu laughed at her and it was done to her.
Kisu and I re-entered the canoe and took up our paddles. We then set forth, paddling calmly, on the broad, shining waters of Ngao.
We paid no attention to Tende, who was weeping with the degradation which had been inflicted upon her.
She had been tied with white slaves.
She was no more than they.
The proud daughter of Aibu, high chief of the Ukungu district, was now well learning that she was a slave, and only a slave.
* * * *
"You there," I said, "crawl to my arms."
I lay in the canoe, on one elbow, under the moons of Gor, the canoe like a tiny bit of wood in the vastness of the shimmering lake.
"Yes, Master," she said.
The blond-haired barbarian, her body pale in the light of the moons, carefully, moved toward me. I heard the shells about her neck click softly together.
"Nestle," I told her.
"Yes, Master," she said. She nestled obediently in the crook of my left arm.
We had kept the girls in high-security ties only for the first two days upon Ngao. Then we had been far out on the lake, much farther away from the shores than any canoe would be likely to travel. After the first two days we had, for another two days, kept them merely in left-ankle and throat coffle. On the fifth day they were merely in throat coffle. On the sixth day we had relieved them of even that bond.
"Kiss me," I said.
She did so. And then she lay with her head on my left shoulder.
"You are frightened," I said. She had lost much ground since Schendi. "Do you not remember the beautiful girl you saw in the mirror, in Schendi?" I asked.
"She was a slave," whispered the girl.
"Of course," I said.
"I fear her," she said.
"She is the slave beauty within you," I said. "Indeed, she is the true you, glimpsed but for an instant, your true self, seen but for a moment, begging to be freed."
"I dare not free her," she said. "She is too beautiful, and sensuous."
"You do not dare to be what you are?" I asked.
"No," she said. "If that is what I am, I dare not be it."
"Why?" I asked.
"It is too beautiful, and sensuous, and helpless, and yielding."
"And yet, in your heart," I said, "you ache to be it."
"No," she said, "no."
I said nothing.
"I am in conflict," she said, miserably.
"Resolve the conflict," I told her. "Free the slave within you, she who is suppressed, your true self."
"No, no," she said, pressing her cheek against my shoulder. I felt tears.
"You will never achieve happiness," I told her, "until you have acknowledged her."
"No," she whispered.
"She must be freed," I said, "that lovely girl, the slave, yearning for a collar within you, your truest and deepest self."
"I dare not free her," she said.
"Is honesty so terrible?" I asked.
"A woman must have dignity," she said.
"Are self-deceit, and lies, and hypocrisy, so noble?" I inquired.
"I dare not free the slave," she said.
"Why not?" I asked.
"
I fear that I may be she," she whispered.
"You are she," I said.
"No, no," she whispered.
"Yes," I said.
"I am not a Gorean girl," she said.
"The women of Earth, collared and broken to the whip," I said, "make superb slaves."
"Oh," she said, as I touched her.
"You are dry and tight," I told her.
"Forgive me, Master," she said, bitterly.
"You are not now on Earth," I told her. "Here no one will chide you for being lovely and sensuous. Here you need not feel guilty for being loving and feminine."
"I am not a Gorean slut," she said.
"Do you think that I am patient?" I asked.
"If Master wishes to use his girl, please do so," she said, "and then let me crawl back to my place."
I took her head between my hands.
"Please, you're hurting me," she said.
"Do you think that I am patient?" I asked.
"I am ready to obey, Master," she said, tensely, frightened.
"Do you think that I am patient?" I asked holding her.
"I do not know, Master," she whispered, strained.
"There is a time to be patient, and a time not to be patient," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Beware," I said, "of the time when I decide not to be patient."
"Yes, Master," she said.
I released her.
She lay on her side in the canoe, her body tense, beside me. "Do you want me now, Master?" she asked, frightened.
"No," I told her. "Return to your place."
"Yes, Master," she said. She crawled back to her place.
I lay on my back, looking up at the stars, and the moons.
I heard her fingernails dig at the wood of the canoe. She had been a rejected slave.
26
We Enter upon the Ua;
We Hear Drums
The blond-haired barbarian dipped her paddle into the water, and drew it backwards. "Is the lake endless?" she asked.
"No," I said.
We had been twenty days upon the lake, living by fishing, drinking its water.
I could see brownish stains in the lake. I could smell flowers. Somehow, the mouth of the Ua must lie ahead.
"Do you carry slaves into danger?" asked the blond-haired barbarian.