by John Norman
"I love it when you are strong with me," said Peggy. She lay beside me, on her elbow, the chain dangling from her collar.
"You are a woman," I said.
"I despise weak men," she said. "I respect only men who will treat me as a woman, and do with me what they please. I know I am a woman. I want to be treated as one. How can I take my place in the order of nature if men will not treat me as they wish? That is what I want, to be treated, even with insolence, as men wish. Only then can I know them as my master, and yield to them in my fullness."
"Before," I said, "you wished to be taken with gentleness."
"And you did so," she said. "That was then my mood, and I am grateful that you deigned to respect it."
"Sometimes I might not," I said.
"I know, Master," she said. "And then later," she said, "when your appetites grew again upon you, you took me as a mere slave, with brutality."
"You yielded well," I said.
"I could not help myself, Master," she said.
She then lay beside me, and began to kiss at my arm. She took my arm in her two hands, kissing it. "You are strong," she whispered.
I did not respond.
"Master," she whispered.
"Yes," I said.
"Have Peggy again. Peggy begs it."
"Perhaps," I said. "Perhaps not."
She whimpered, and put her head against my arm.
I supposed that it was not surprising that women reduced to bondage, collared and branded, denied by the strictures of their condition the mockeries of male imitation, and finding the impediments to the manifestation of their deepest and most secret nature removed, should gradually find themselves more and more at the mercy of their needs.
I found this amusing, perhaps because I had come from Earth. How humiliating for an Earth girl, in particular, I thought, to discover that she now had, ignited within her, deep, feminine needs, for the satisfaction of which she found herself dependent on masters. This aspect of the sexuality of the female slave, her need as well as her responsiveness, would also be found astonishing by the men of Earth, accustomed only to the suppressed dispositions and conditioned inertnesses of the women with which he is familiar. It is not unusual for a slave girl to kneel, head down, before even a hated master, and beg his touch. Slavers, not unoften, deprive a female slave of a man's touch for two or three days before her sale. She then, almost invariably, brings a higher price. Her need, manifested in her piteous display of herself, in her physical attitudes, her gestures and expressions, is evident and often arousing, to the buyers. How many women of Earth, I wondered, strip themselves slowly before a man and then kneel before him, and kiss his feet, and then, looking up, beg him for his touch. Perhaps only those who are slave girls.
"You are chained," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
I took Peggy's chain in my hand and jerked it, lightly but firmly. She felt the chain, then, pull at the snug collar and jerk it against the back of her neck.
"You are truly chained," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Why are you chained?" I asked.
"It pleased Master to chain me," she said. She kissed me. "Please, Master," she said, "have your chained slave."
"Perhaps," I said. "Perhaps not."
She sobbed in frustration, and continued to kiss me.
Even with girls used to slavery, who have well learned their collars, of course, the chain never loses its meaning. Masters commonly use it, even with experienced girls. It never loses its effect.
"Please, Master," she sobbed.
"Be silent," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said, sobbing.
Sometimes a slave girl must be struck away from one's feet. Sometimes she must be chained to one side, to a wall or in a corner.
I laughed.
"Master?" she asked.
I then took her in my arms and threw her, roughly, beneath me.
She cried out with pleasure.
* * * *
"What is that sound?" I asked.
"You make a slave very happy, Master," she said, snuggled beside me.
"Do you not hear it?" I asked.
"I hear conversation, the clink of goblets from the floor of the tavern," she said.
"Sandals!" I suddenly snapped.
A Gorean command need not be repeated. Peggy, startled, wild-eyed, rose to her knees and seized my sandals. I stood up, bending over in the low alcove. I pulled on my tunic. She thrust the sandals to her lips, kissing them. "Master?" she asked. She placed the sandals on my feet, thonging them tightly. I buckled my belt, with its dependent pouch. I slung the sword belt, with its attached scabbard, with its sheathed steel, over my left shoulder. "Master?" asked Peggy.
"Can you not hear it?" I asked.
She finished tying the sandals. As she knotted each she kissed the knot, and then, when finished with both, put her head to my feet in a graceful gesture of submission. Tying his sandals, and often thusly, is a small, homely service often performed by the slave girl for her master. Then she looked up at me, puzzled.
"Now," I said, "cannot you hear it?"
"The conversation has stopped on the floor of the tavern," she said, frightened. "It is quiet there."
"Listen," I said.
"I hear it!" she said. "What is it?"
"It is an alarm bar," I said. "It is coming from the wharves."
"What does it mean?" she asked.
I began to unbuckle the leather curtains of the alcove, swiftly. "I do not know," I said.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"To the wharves," I said.
"Do not go!" she said.
I threw back the curtains. I looked back at her. She knelt frightened, on the furs, the chain on her neck. "Do not go!" she begged.
I turned about and made my way rapidly through the tables. I heard her sob and jerk at the chain in frustration but it, of course, held her, perfectly. The men among whom I strode had not risen to their feet. None met my eyes. None volunteered to accompany me.
"Do not go," advised Tasdron.
I did not answer him, but left the tavern and then, running, made my way toward the wharves.
What Occurred in the Vicinity of the Tavern of Tasdron
22
What Occurred at the Wharves;
What Occurred in the Vicinity of the Tavern of Tasdron
"Stand back, lest you be hurt!" cried a man.
I was seized by two men, citizens, and dragged back into the encircling crowd. I was bleeding. My tunic was cut. The sword of the pirate, in a drunken swing, had grazed my chest. Other citizens, with ship poles, of the sort used on Gorean galleys in casting off and thrusting from the wharves, pressed back the crowd. I felt the side of the pole against my belly. I was jostled by the crowd. The pirate turned away, laughing.
"Where are the guardsmen of Port Cos?" I asked. "Where are the guardsmen of Ar's Station?" There were several guardsmen, from each of these towns, in Victoria.
There was smoke in the air. Five warehouses, and some ancillary buildings were afire.
"They maintain their posts," said a man, grimly. "They protect their own headquarters."
"Victoria is not their concern," said another, bitterly.
I watched the pirates, perhaps some fifty or sixty of them, unchallenged, moving between warehouses and the wharves, where two pirate galleys were moored. Some townsfolk, at swordpoint, were loading goods onto the galleys. Some of the pirates bore torches.
"The tribute will be paid by morning," said one of the men near me.
I saw several of the pirates with bottles of paga, swilling from them, as they strutted about, sometimes pausing to cut into a bale of goods or overturn a barrel, kicking it open, permitting its contents to run out, over the boards.
The alarm bar continued to ring futilely. The pirates made no effort to stop the desperate fellow who, meaninglessly, continued to strike it.
"We outnumber them fifty to one," I said. "Let me
rush upon them. Let us stop them!"
"They are the masters in Victoria," said a man. "Do nothing rash."
I heard a woman scream and saw her, thrown over the shoulder of a laughing pirate, a brawny fellow, being carried to one of the galleys.
"What will be done with her?" whispered a woman, near me, terrified.
"If she is beautiful," said a man near us, "perhaps she will be kept to serve in the stronghold of Policrates. If she is not, perhaps her throat will be cut."
The woman gasped, her hand at her veil.
The pirate threw the woman to his feet near the nearest galley and there stripped her and handed her to a comrade who stood on board the galley. He put her on the outside of the railing, facing outwards, with the small of her back tightly against it, her arms hooked over it, and behind it, as with the others. He then, with a length of binding fiber, running tight across her belly, fastened her wrists together, as he had similarly those of the others. All were well displayed. Too, the exposition of captures in this way tends to discourage retaliatory missile fire from the scene of the pillaging.
The woman was comely. I did not think she would have her throat cut. Lusty men have better uses to which to put such women. I did think, however, that they would soon, all the captures, be marked and put in collars.
"If I were you," said the man near the woman in the crowd, "I would draw back in the crowd and hide. Then I would flee."
"But I am free," she said.
"So, too, were they," said the man, angrily, gesturing to the bound woman at the railing of the pirate galley.
She shrank back, suddenly frightened.
I saw Kliomenes, some seventy yards away, directing his men and the enforced laborers, citizens of Victoria, loading the galleys.
"You there, Female," called a pirate, his eye roaming the crowd, "step forth!"
The men holding the ship's pole, frightened, lowered it.
"Step forth!" said the pirate.
The woman shook her head, pressing back against the men.
"Unhood her, face-strip her," ordered the pirate.
"Protect me, save me, please," she begged.
Her hood was thrust back. Her veil was torn away. She was lovely. The price she would bring would be good. I wondered why such a woman would come to the wharves in a time of such danger. Surely she must have understood the peril to which she would be exposing herself.
"Step forth, Beauty," said the pirate.
Numbly, she approached him. I made to move, but two men restrained me.
Swiftly, before us all, in the light of the flames, was the woman stripped by the pirate's blade.
"Lie down," said he.
She hesitated, and looked at him in anguish. "Or do you wish to be slit like a larma?" he asked. His sword jabbed into the sweet roundedness of her belly.
Swiftly, then, she lay at his feet, her back on the harsh, tarred boards.
The pirate then looked at us, and laughed. "Here, at my feet, supine, stripped, is a free woman of Victoria. Do any of you dispute her with me?" Two men restrained me. No others moved.
"Kneel," he ordered the woman. She did so.
He then placed the point of his blade against her fair throat.
Numbly, slowly, lifting her arms, the blade between her arms, her fingers trembling, she tied the bondage knot in her own hair. She looked at him. "Please, spare me, Master," she said.
For a long moment or two the point of the blade remained at her throat, as the pirate considered the girl's plea. I saw his eye roam her now-embonded curves.
He laughed. He thrust his blade back in its sheath. She almost fainted with relief.
"On your feet!" he said. "Run to the nearest galley! Beg to be displayed there, as the loot you are!"
"Yes, Master!" she cried and, leaping up, fled toward the galley, a commanded slave.
"We do what we wish with Victoria," said the pirate. "Do any of you gainsay me?" None spoke. He then laughed again, and, turning about, went back toward the galleys.
I watched the new slave being bound at the railing, with the others.
"I say she wanted the collar," said a man.
"They all do," said another.
They did not know, of course, a woman such as Miss Beverly Henderson.
She could not be a slave.
But what, I asked myself, if she were, in her secret heart, as Alison, in Ar, and Peggy, in Victoria, both themselves surely slaves, had claimed, a true slave? If she were she had made a great fool of me, in pretending to be free, in being often displeasing, in daring to sell Lola, in attempting to betray me to the guardsmen of Port Cos, in disparaging me in the tavern of Hibron. What if she were a slave? Could she be truly a slave? The very thought almost made me wish to cry out with fury and pleasure. If she were a slave I would find this out. And then, somehow, against all obstacles, I would make her mine, mine own. I would own her, nor would I be gentle with the slave. She owed me much. Yes, I vowed, if she were a slave, I would have her in my collar! And she would soon then well know herself a slave! I would treat her, the desirable little slut, and slave, with a ruthlessness and a power that would become legendary in Victoria!
I then could no longer deny it. I wanted Miss Beverly Henderson—and in the fullest and most perfect way a man could want a woman—as a slave! I wanted her to be mine, to be owned by me, to be my actual property, socially, culturally, legally, to be mine completely, mine to command, mine to do with as I pleased, mine to buy and sell, to give away, if I chose. This was not Earth, with its negativities, confusions, refusals, entanglements and hypocrisies! This was not Earth. This world was no stranger to the glories and honesties of human nature. This was not Earth. This was a different world, a brighter, fresher world, a healthier, more vigorous, more virile, more natural world. This was Gor, Gor! Here the equations of dominance and submission were not denied. Here ancient winds blew uncurtailed. Here lambs did not legislate for lions. On a world such as this, a natural world, a woman such as Miss Beverly Henderson might well be found on her knees in a man's collar. I recalled her from Earth, from the university, from the restaurant. How unnatural she then seemed in such purlieus.
Perhaps she belonged on Gor, stripped and collared.
I thought of her.
Could it be, I wondered, that she might be a slave, truly?
And, if so, what ought, in the claimant justice of biology and truth, to be her disposition?
But, of course, she, of Earth, could not be a slave!
Not she!
I recalled her.
How unhappy she had been on Earth!
How absurd and piteous had been her attempts to conform to imposed stereotypes so heinously alien to her nature. How zealously earnest she had been to dress in certain ways and behave in certain ways, to deny her beauty and its meaning, how desperately she had tried to live up to ideological strictures foreign to her needs; how pathetically she had dutifully repeated slogans; how sincerely she had tried to believe lies; how blindly she had tried to convince herself that axiological toxins were salubrious nourishment, how dutifully she had attempted to subscribe to the views of others, with self-serving agendas, not herself. How she had feared to listen to her blood, and her heart. How powerful are the forces of socialization! How rare the individual who has the intelligence and strength to examine inflicted orthodoxies! How few can detect the subtle encompassing walls, let alone break or scale them. The shaping of heads and the bindings of feet, such gross interferences with nature, are common knowledge; but the shapings and bindings of minds, even more hideous, seems seldom detected.
I recalled her.
She had gone about her business, and studies, and such, on Earth, trying so seriously to conform to political and social pressures, fearing not to, being anxious to dress as required, to think as required, to feel as required, trying fearfully to please others who regarded her softness and femininity as a reproach, or threat, others who despised her.
But even those garments, and those a
ttitudes, however desperately presented, or brandished, could not conceal the woman of her.
I had not seen her, despite her best efforts, as a neuterized embodiment of a prescribed ideology. Who could have done so? Perhaps that was why she had been so looked down upon, and scorned, by gross, dogmatic peers. I had seen her as I wanted to see her, as she was, not as she wished to be seen, not as she pretended she was. I had seen her, despite all, as a young, attractive woman, a beautiful, desirable young female, the sort to be enfolded naked, lovingly, helplessly, in a man's arms.