Mercenaries of Gor

by Norman, John;

  Consider that young lady there, whom you have noticed. Do you not sense that she is needful? Is she not sweetly slung? How would she look in slave silk?

  Will a numbered transportation anklet be set aside for her? Who knows? Perhaps it has already been done?

  “Oh!” said a bound girl, being brought to the group.

  “Oh!” said Boabissia, at the same time. She had turned about, from watching the disciplining of the neck-chained girl, and struck against the new girl. “Clumsy slave!” cried Boabissia, angrily. Twice then, angrily, she struck the new girl with the sides of her small fists. The new girl was, by the soldier in whose custody she was, thrust rudely to the pavement before Boabissia, his hand in her hair, forcing her head down to Boabissia’s sandals. “Beg forgiveness!” he said.

  “Forgive me! Forgive me!” wept the new girl.

  “‘Forgive me,’ what?” asked the soldier, tightening his grip in her hair.

  “Forgive me, Mistress!” wept the new girl, her head down, her back bent forward, her small hands twisting helplessly in the cords that held them behind her back.

  “Clumsy slave!” scolded Boabissia.

  “Forgive me, Mistress,” wept the girl. As far as I could see the new girl was not a slave. She was, at least, neither branded nor collared. On the other hand, doubtless she was destined to soon receive those lovely adornments proclamatory of the uncompromising condition of Gorean bondage, those adornments which so enhance the beauty of a woman, those adornments significatory that all the institutional niceties pertinent to her bondage have been properly and legally completed. Accordingly, the fellow was doubtless being quite merciful, and helpful, to the female. He was preparing her, in a small way, not for what would be her role in her new life, but for what in her new life would be her total and uncompromising actuality.

  “Kiss her feet,” said the soldier.

  Obediently the frightened girl kissed Boabissia’s feet, desperately, fervently.

  “Clumsy slave,” said Boabissia, angrily.

  “Please forgive me, Mistress,” wept the girl.

  The soldier drew up her head and bent her backwards, before Boabissia. “Shall I kill her for you?” he asked. I saw the girl had a number, like the others, written on the upper portion of her left breast. I gathered that he had been sent to pick her up, and to mark her with that number. It had doubtless to do, as speculated earlier, with records.

  “No,” said Boabissia. “That will not be necessary.”

  The soldier pulled the girl up straight, and released her hair. She remained kneeling before us, her head down. “Thank you, Mistress,” she whispered.

  “Sir,” said the soldier, suddenly straightening his body.

  “Lift your head and throw your hair behind your back, girl,” said the officer, newly arrived, come up from the side, with a backing board and sheaf of papers. “Put your head back as far as it will go.” Immediately the girl complied. The officer then, there being no impediments now to his vision, checked the number on her left breast. He then referred to his papers, turning some over. “Name, female?” he asked the girl.

  She began to shudder.

  “Speak up, quickly, while you still have one,” he said.

  The soldier kicked her.

  “Euphrosyne, Lady of Torcadino,” she gasped.

  “Family, and caste?” he inquired.

  “Daughter of the matron Aglaia, Lady of Torcadino,” she said, “of the Myrtos lineage, she high in the trade of spices, Confirmation Treasurer of the Spice Council of Torcadino, she of the Merchants.”

  “Ah, yes,” said the officer. “I believe your mother is already on the chain.”

  The girl looked about, wildly. Doubtless she would have covered her breasts, and nakedness, if she could have. What a foolish gesture in one who was soon to be a slave.

  “I do not know if you will see her again, or not,” he said, “except perhaps at a distance. Too, fraternization may not be permitted between slaves.”

  “I am not a slave,” she moaned.

  “—Now,” he said, “—for a moment or two more you may think of yourself as Euphrosyne, as your mother was hitherto permitted for a time to think of herself as Aglaia. In a time, of course, you may receive new names. ‘Euphrosyne’ is a name a bit too fine, I think, for a slave. You will probably soon become something else, perhaps a ‘Puta’ or a ‘Sita.’” In the meantime, you are, for our purposes, and for your own purposes, 437. That is your capture name, and you will think of yourself only as that. You may not inquire as to the former names of others nor reveal to them, even if they should ask, your own. Similarly, you may not make inquiries pertaining to such things as their families, stations and castes, nor reveal to others, even if asked, any such information pertaining to yourself. You are merely, and simply, the captive 437. Your mother, incidentally, is 261. You are now to think of her, as she is now to think of herself, as only that. She was more important than you, and thus has an earlier number.” 437, of course, was the number written on the girl’s left breast. As her number was 437 and there were only some one hundred or one hundred and fifty or so females in the chain, near the wall, I assumed there was probably one or more collection points elsewhere, perhaps nearer the Semnium, the Council Hall. On the other hand perhaps there were merely more females to come in. The numbers, it seemed, rather certainly, were prearranged numbers, and not merely numbers indicating the order of capture. The officer, for example, already had had her number on his list, probably with her name. In this fashion, the girls being added to the chain as captured, this chain, or any others, might have diverse numbers upon it. I had gathered, for example, from what the officer had said, that the girl’s mother, number 261 on the list, was somewhere in this very chain, which would have been unlikely if its prisoners were being added to it in a strict numerical sequence. A strict numerical order, if desired, of course, could always be set up later, at the leisure of the captors. In the meantime, it seemed clearly that it was the list which was crucial.

  The officer looked down at the girl. “You may bring your head forward,” he said.

  Gratefully, she did so.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Euphrosyne, Lady of Torcadino,” she sobbed.

  He looked at her, reprovingly.

  “437!” she said quickly.

  “Anything else?” he inquired.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No!”

  “Do you beg to be added to the chain?” he asked.

  She regarded him, startled.

  The blade slipped swiftly, freely, from its sheath, and its point was at her bosom.

  “Yes,” she said, quickly. “Yes!”

  “Who begs?” he asked.

  “437 begs!” she wept.

  “Begin to call free men Master,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, “Master!”

  “Do you beg, 437, however unworthy you may be for such an honor, to be put on a slave chain?”

  “Yes, yes!”

  He continued to regard her.

  “437 begs to be put on a slave chain,” she wept, “however unworthy she may be for such an honor!”

  I feared he would thrust the blade through her.

  “Master!” she added. “Master! Master!”

  “Very well,” he said.

  He returned the blade to its sheath.

  The soldier then pulled her to her feet by the hair and thrust her before him, toward the chain. In a moment she was on the chain, kneeling, her throat snugly enclosed in a side-loop of the same chain, it fastened shut on her by a padlock.

  “Do you expect to find all the women on your seizure lists?” I asked the officer.

  “Most of them,” he said. “Doubtless some will elude us, at least for a time.”

  “Many,” said Mincon, “will be apprehended at the gates. They will not know they were on the lists. They will then be stripped, bound, marked with their number and brought to a collection point.”

  “
After tomorrow, too,” said the officer, “unauthorized civilians will not be permitted within the walls. The penalty for the unauthorized male will be swift and honorable execution, that for the unauthorized female being fed to sleen, or, if she is comely enough, and zealous enough to please, perhaps bondage.”

  “There is little point in trying to hide in the city,” said Mincon. “Eventually all the houses will be searched. Too, when they are hungry enough they will creep out at night to seek food. They may then, sooner or later, with the aid of tracking sleen, be taken.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “With the nature of Torcadino,” said the officer, “the walls, and our control of the city, it is highly likely, sooner or later, that we will have every one of the women on our list.”

  I nodded. The listed females, under the particular circumstances currently prevailing in Torcadino, had little chance of escape. To be sure, many were not yet female slaves.

  This was their one advantage, albeit under the circumstances one which did not appear likely to shift the scales much in their favor.

  To be sure, it did mean that there lay at their disposal some actual practical chance of escape, however slim that chance might be.

  In that they could rejoice.

  They were not slaves.

  Things would be much different were they slaves.

  That was their good fortune, that they were not slaves.

  Were they slaves things would be much different.

  As suggested earlier, for all practical purposes, for the Gorean female slave, properly identified, branded and collared, there is no escape. If she escapes from one master, which is exceedingly unlikely, she will doubtless soon find herself in the chains of another, and one who is perhaps worse. Certainly the new master will know that she is an escaped slave and will be likely to treat her with great harshness and keep her under the strictest of confinements. He will probably make certain, as well, that sleen have her scent. Too, the penalties for running away can be severe, in the second case generally involving being fed to sleen or being hamstrung, to be used perhaps thereafter as a begging slave.

  The Gorean female slave is a slave, and will remain a slave unless freed. And there is a Gorean saying that only a fool frees a slave girl.

  Let some, then, of the beauties of Torcadino rejoice that they were not yet in collars.

  Still I doubted that many, if any, would escape.

  One might point out, in passing, that not only for all practical purposes is escape impossible for a Gorean female slave, but, interestingly, few desire it. I wonder if that is hard for you to understand. The secret to happiness is doubtless illusive, but for the human female at least it does not require freedom. Indeed, happiness for a human female often involves the willing surrender of freedom in order to achieve things which are of greater value and importance to her. For example, she desires to belong, and the fullness of belonging is to be literally owned; she desires to be treasured, and to be a treasure one must be a possession; she desires to be wanted, and there is no mistaking the wanting of her, when she is so wanted that she is forcefully and categorically claimed, even as a slave; and she wants to serve, and how can one more fully serve than in the condition of servitude itself; and she wants to please, and as a slave she is free to do so, and must do so; and she wants to love, and love is the meaning and destiny of the female slave; it is that for which she lives; and she wants the man to be strong with her, audacious, powerful, and commanding, and thus she longs for a master. Freedom is precious, but so, too, is love, and happiness. And who are we to gainsay them to a woman if she finds them in the collar? What is important to human happiness for the human female is not liberty in itself, but the freedom to be herself, and as she wants to be. And this she can find, together with her sexuality, in the chains of a slave. What is important for happiness is doing what one wishes, and being as one wishes, and, ideally, having this doing and being supported by, and accepted by, and approved by, others. This is the case, of course, in a natural society, one which accepts and acclaims nature, rather than denounces her and, with ill effects, attempts to thwart her. The Gorean slave girl is a lovely, recognized, accepted aspect of Gorean life. But let her dread and avoid, as she can, free women.

  I briefly considered free women.

  One feels sometimes sorry for free women, with their confusions, their unhappiness, the meaninglessness, the shallowness, of their forlorn psychological habitations, the lonely, empty corridors of their lives, their boredom, their hostilities.

  It can be difficult, at first, to accept that one is as one is, rather than as one is told one should be.

  But self-alienation is an unlikely route to bliss.

  Many are the wounds inflicted on the free woman from the serrated edges of imposed images. And many purposes foreign to her, however condign to others, are served by such images.

  There is no single virtue.

  The woman does not exist outside of herself, as a facade, empty within, fabricated according to the specifications of manipulators and self-serving strangers, interested in her only to the extent of adding the minim of her tiny weight to the progress of their dismal engines.

  Let her look within herself; it is only there that she can find herself.

  I thought again of free women.

  Free women, of course, often fear the collar, as they may fear the insistent whisperings of their deepest nature. They may fight it, and their chains. But men take them in hand and they discover what it is to be subject to the whip, to be auctioned, and owned.

  In the collar they find a world more real than they knew in their robes and veils.

  And they learn themselves, be it at a master’s feet.

  “What is to be done with these women?” I asked the officer.

  “Most of them will be sold in lots to contractors,” he said.

  “Like much of the other loot?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “The general contracts, for pickups of loot, projected quantities, and such, were let weeks ago.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  I noted one of the soldiers. He moved about, here and there within the chain lines, among the women. Occasionally he would put his whip before the lips of one of them. She would then kiss it.

  “But some of these females are quite beautiful,” I said. “For example, 437 is extremely lovely.”

  “Her mother, 261, is also quite lovely,” he said. “Certain of these women, of course, the better ones, like the more expensive loot, will not go to the contractors, but will be kept for distribution, the less beautiful ones to the troops, the more beautiful ones to the officers.”

  I nodded. These arrangements were typical.

  “I have already made notations with respect to several of them,” he said, indicating his papers, “including 437 and 261. In advance, of course, when one enters them upon the lists as free women, and one has seen them, if at all, only in the robes of concealment, one does not know which are the most beautiful.”

  “Such determinations now, of course,” I said, “may be easily made.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  I regarded the women.

  They had belonged to significant portions of the political and mercantile aristocracy of Torcadino.

  They had been of the faction of Cos.

  Orders had been prepared on them.

  It had been decided, yes, doubtless weeks ago, or even months ago, that they would find themselves as they now were, perhaps even on this very morning.

  I saw the soldier hold the whip before 437. She bent forward and kissed it.

  “Come along,” said Mincon. “We must go to the Semnium.”

  We then followed him, Hurtha and I, and Boabissia, the hempen leashes of Tula and Feiqa in the grasp of Hurtha.

  14

  The Semnium;

  The Outer Office

  “These are new bodies, fresh bodies,” I said.

  “Of course,” said Mincon.

  We were a
t the foot of the low, broad steps of the Semnium, the hall of the high council, which building, it seemed, might now serve as the headquarters of the new masters of Torcadino. These steps extended before the building, for the entire length of its portico.

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  There were some two to three hundred new bodies hung now from tarred ropes along the Avenue of Adminius, in the vicinity of the Semnium.

  “Collaborators, traitors, men who were of the party of Cos, betrayers of the alliance with Ar, and such,” said Mincon.

  “As those earlier were similarly adherents of Ar?” I asked.

  “Perhaps,” said Mincon.

  “Some of those here,” I said, regarding the lines of bodies dangling in the tarred halters, “are perhaps the same as those who had been active in bringing about the downfall of those who hung here formerly.”

  “Of course,” said Mincon.

  “The winds have shifted in Torcadino,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Mincon.

  “It seems your captain is in the pay of Ar,” I said.

  “Of that you may judge yourself,” he said, “shortly.”

  “I?” I asked.