by John Norman
"I have never been in the arms of a man such as you," she said. "I love you! I want to be your slave!"
I did not speak.
"Put me beneath your whip," she said. "Put me in your chains. Lock your collar upon my throat! Own me!"
I regarded her.
"Please buy me," she begged. "Please own me! I will try to be a good slave to you!"
I did not permit her to touch me.
Then she laughed, a tear running from beneath the blindfold. "How brazen we Earth girls are," she laughed, "how shameless, that we would beg to be purchased! How you must despise us, such lowly, desperate slaves!"
I then entered Miss Henderson and she gasped, clutching me.
I smiled. It was not unusual for a slave girl, fervently, to desire to be purchased by a given man, one before whom she knows she could kneel as a superb slave. In such a case it is natural for her to present herself as piteously and excitingly before him as possible, in order that his interest might be aroused. She, obviously, has nothing to say about her purchase. The choice is his, fully. It is he who is the buyer. This sort of thing is not unusual in slave markets, particularly on open platforms. I have seen, many times, a girl attempting to interest a given man, singled out, in the crowd, in buying her. And, not unoften, such a fellow will bid upon her, knowing well the wonders which she, purchased from her owner, is offering him. Still, in the end, it is his which is the choice. She can do no more than present herself, displaying her owner's merchandise as attractively as she can. It is he who will buy or not. He is the master.
"I love my Gorean master," breathed the girl. "Buy Beverly, please!"
I have also seen girls attempt to influence their sales in public auctions, while being exhibited naked on the block, trying to present themselves particularly to a given man, but this disposition is usually curbed by the auctioneer's whip. She is not there to be sold to the man of her choice but to the highest bidder. Indeed, in most public auctions, such actions on the part of the girl are for most practical purposes impossible. Such auctions are usually held at night, when men are off work, and can come to the biddings, under torches. The block tends to be illuminated and the house is much in darkness. The girl, naked, in the light, exhibited, can be well seen, but she herself can see few of the buyers. She is intensely aware, of course, of their presence, in the crowds, in the tiers. Their sounds, their cries, their breathing, their movements, the sweat, the smells, their interest, are clearly evident to her, almost engulfing her on the block, almost like possessive hands upon her body. She can then influence her sale, guided by the auctioneer's whip, only in such a way as to present herself as the most luscious slave meat she can, hoping thereby to improve her price, that she may be purchased by a more well-to-do master. Yet most girls are sold for prices in similar ranges and there are few men who cannot, by spending an extra coin or two, secure the slave of their choice. Often when the hand of the auctioneer has been closed a girl will not know to whom she has been sold. She may not have seen the bidder, or she may have been purchased through an agent. Sometimes it is a day or more before she learns to what chain she has been sold. In this time she does not know if she has been purchased by the man of her dreams, who will control her well, or by some harsh, cruel brute, before whom she must kneel in terror. To be sure, she will soon learn.
"Buy me, Master," begged Beverly.
I then made her respond to me, and she began to moan. "I want to be bought," she moaned.
To beg to be purchased is a slave's act. That is a saying of Goreans. I think it is true. In this, then, Miss Henderson provided further confirmation of the rightness of the collar upon her throat, that she was a natural and true slave.
"If I yield well to you, Master," wheedled Miss Henderson, "will you buy me?"
I then, savagely, struck her face, back and forth, with the palm of my hand, and then its back.
"Forgive me, Master," she cried, "I did not mean to bargain! I will yield to you fully, and perfectly, at your least command! Do not kill me, Master, please!"
There was blood on my hand, and at her mouth. Her lip was swollen.
I kissed her upon the swollen lip, and she whimpered. I tasted her blood.
"Please do not kill me, Master," she begged.
I then took her.
When I finished with her I rose up from the couch. She lay there, frightened.
"I did not mean to displease my Gorean master," she said. "I did not think. Take pity on me. I am only a slave."
I pulled her from the couch, to her knees at the slave ring.
"Permit me to placate you, Master," she begged.
I permitted her to perform intimate services for me. I then buckled the thick leather slave cuffs on her wrists. "Master?" she asked. I then thrust her right wrist through the slave ring and, with the heavy metal snaps, sewn into the cuffs, secured her there.
She heard the strands of the whip shaken out. "Please do not whip me, Master," she begged. Then she put down her head. Then I lashed her, for she had been displeasing.
I cast aside the whip and drew on my tunic, and gathered together my things.
At the door I turned, to look back at the sobbing girl. She turned her head toward me, it still secured in the blindfold. She knelt naked at the ring, fastened to it by the cuffs, and, too, by the ankle ring, still locked upon her left ankle. She wore her collar.
"I love you, Master," she said. "It is to such a man as you that I wish to belong."
I put down my things at the door. I went back to her. I pulled her out from the ring, half on her back, her hands above and behind her, twisted and helpless in the slave cuffs, held at the ring.
"Forgive me, if I was displeasing to you, Master," she begged.
I looked at her.
"I love you, my Gorean master," she said.
I then, again, took her. Spasmodically she shook and yielded, as I would not have thought it possible for a woman to do. She sobbed and shuddered in ecstasy, a had slave.
"I submit to you, Master," she wept, "totally and completely. You are my Master. I am your slave."
I withdrew from her, and stood, and looked down upon her.
"Do not leave me, Master," she begged. 'Take me with you. You have made me yours, my Gorean master. I am yours. Take me with you. Policrates, my master, would give me to you, if you should but ask!"
I picked up my things at the door. I slung them about me. I donned my mask. There was a knock on the door, and I opened it. A pirate stood there, he who had brought Beverly to me last night, who had now come to fetch me to breakfast. I must soon leave the holding of Policrates, theoretically to journey downriver to the holding of Ragnar Voskjard, that his fleet might be soon launched, that the two fleets, in fierce force, might overwhelm the garrisons of Ar's Station, and then of Port Cos, that the river, for hundreds of pasangs, would then become theirs, subject to their predations or levied tributes as they saw fit.
I nodded to the pirate, indicating my readiness to accompany him.
He looked beyond me, to the slave ring. The girl now knelt there, cuffed to the ring. He seemed startled. "Is it Beverly?" he asked. The girl, suddenly, shrank back against the stone of the couch, a slave's movement. Curious, the pirate brushed past me, going to the girl. He crouched down beside her. "It is Beverly," he said. She trembled. He put forth his hand, touching her at the shoulder. She shuddered beneath his touch, putting down her head. "What have you done to her?" he asked, grinning. "Last night she was an enslaved female. This morning she is a female slave." He put forth his hand and held her, with one hand, his fingers about her chin and throat. She shuddered. "I would say," he grinned, "that she is now more truly aware of her condition, that you have much improved her." He did not remove his hand from her throat and chin. "Were you much improved last night, Beverly?" he asked.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Policrates," he said, "told me that if you were troublesome you were to be fed to sleen."
She shuddered.
&nb
sp; "But I see that you were not troublesome," he said.
"No, Master," she said.
He removed his hand from her throat and chin, and continued to regard her. She knelt, soft and helpless, trembling, held in the leather cuffs at the slave ring.
"I see that you are much different this morning, from last night," he said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
He then, with his hand, touched her left calf, running his fingers lightly over it. She whimpered, and drew back. "Interesting," he said.
Her response had been that of a helpless, superb slave.
"What was done to you last night?" he asked.
"I was mastered," she said.
"It is obvious," he said, and rose to his feet. He turned to face me, and grinned. He jerked his thumb back toward the kneeling slave. "Policrates will be pleased," he said.
I shrugged.
When a girl has been mastered, of course, she is more fit for any man.
Miss Henderson, in the blindfold, on her knees at the ring, turned to face us, as she could.
We looked back upon her. It was a superb slave who knelt there. Miss Henderson, in the night, I saw, now clearly, remembering her from the evening before, had been brought to a new dimension in her slavery.
The pirate laughed.
The girl shrank back against the stone of the couch. The snaps on the cuffs rubbed against the slave ring.
The pirate then walked slowly towards her. She cowered back, fearing to be struck.
He stopped, standing before her.
She lifted her head to him but was, of course, unable to see him, prevented with perfection from doing so by the efficiency of the Gorean blindfold. She squirmed in the cuffs, unable to see, in a slave's fear.
The pirate stood looking at her, his hands on his hips.
Every inch of her was beautiful, and enslaved. She would now be a dream of pleasure for any man.
"Who owns you?" he asked.
"Policrates," she said.
"And more generally," he said, "who owns you?"
"Men," she said.
The pirate then turned about and rejoined me, by the door. He then went through the door, and I was to follow him. I did turn about, once, to look again upon the girl. "Master!" she cried out to me, piteously, in the darkness of the blindfold, stretching her small cuffed hands, as she could, entreatingly, toward me. "Master! Master!"
Then I went through the door and closed it behind me. "Master!" I heard her cry. "Master!"
Then I had left her behind me, merely a girl fastened at the foot of a couch, only a slave who had served one of her master's guests.
25
In the Tavern of Tasdron Men Meet in Secret
"Withdraw, Slave," said Tasdron, proprietor of the tavern of Tasdron, in Victoria, off the avenue of Lycurgus.
"Yes, Master," said Peggy, bowing her head, deferentially, and backing gracefully from the table, as a slave. She was barefoot, and wore a brief snatch of diaphanous, yellow pleasure silk. Her long blond hair was tied back with a yellow ribbon. The close-fitting steel collar was lovely on her throat. The rustle of the slave bells locked on her left ankle was subtle and sensual. She withdrew to the far side of the room and knelt there, back on her heels, knees wide, as befitted the sort of slave she was, a mere pleasure slave.
Callimachus, sitting across from me, regarded her. She put her head down, unable to meet the eyes of such a man. I saw that she trembled under his gaze. I smiled to myself. I had seen how she had looked upon him, in her serving, and when she had knelt near the table. Her eyes had been soft and moist, and tender, and vulnerable and helpless. I had sensed how she had restrained herself from lowering herself softly to her belly on the floor before him and extending her hand to him, begging his touch, and that he would make her his. But she did not wish to be slain for such insolence, she only a lowly Earth-girl slave. I had seen the look in her eyes. In her eyes had been the light of a helpless slave girl's love. I recalled that once she had told me that there was only one man on all Gor to whom she would rather belong than myself, and that he did not even know, or scarcely knew, of her existence. I had not pressed her to reveal his name. But now I had no doubt I had penetrated her secret. In her heart the embonded Earth girl was the secret love slave of Callimachus, a warrior once of Port Cos. But she dared not make her feelings known to him. She did not wish to be slain. Accordingly she could be to him little more than any other slave, only another girl, self-effacing, deferential, scarcely noticed, who served him in the establishment of her master, Tasdron of Victoria. In spite of her beauty and his frequent use of the tavern of Tasdron he had never ordered her, whip in hand, to strip and hurry to an alcove for his pleasure. In the misery of his dereliction and afflicted by the devitalizing consequences attendant upon it he had preferred the indulgences of self-pity and the delusory solaces of paga to the exultant and proud imposition of his will, as a dominant male, on the hearts and bodies of writhing female slaves. Then when he had recalled himself to the codes of his caste he had resolved to forgo the victories and the rights, and the joys and triumphs, of the mastership until certain serious, projected works had been accomplished. It was in connection with such works that we had met this night in the tavern of Tasdron.
"You understand," said Tasdron, "that it is dangerous for me even to be a party to these matters."
Callimachus looked away from the girl, kneeling, head down, by the far wall. She was only a slave.
"If men such as Kliomenes or Policrates should understand that we are met on such subjects, my tavern, at the least, would be speedily reduced to ashes."
"That is understood, Tasdron," said Callimachus. "We are sensitive to the danger that there is in this for you."
"But there is surely," said Tasdron, "much greater danger for you."
"We will accept the risks," said Callimachus.
"I, too, then," said Tasdron, "will do no less."
"Good," said Callimachus.
We spoke softly. We sat about a small table in a back room in Tasdron's tavern. Callimachus had kept the repudiation of his dereliction a secret from those in Victoria. When he went about in public it seemed his shoulders were bent, his eyes bleared, his step uncertain, his hand unsure. It was only at times like now, when with trusted men, that he sat, and carried himself, and spoke, as a warrior. Victoria knew him still as only a fallen man, one defeated, one lax in his caste codes, one inert and whining in traps of his own weaving. They knew him still, as we had decided fit for our plans, as only a self-forsaken ruin and drunkard. They needed not know that he who had fallen had now risen; that once more the codes were kept with pride; that the cords with which he had once, with such pain and skill, bound himself, he had now sundered and torn from him, like an enraged larl emerging fiercely from a net now too frail to hold him. He had recalled that he was Callimachus, of the Warriors, one entrusted with steel, one entitled to wear the scarlet of the proud caste. I did not think it likely that he would forget these things again.
"I have spoken to Glyco, Merchant of Port Cos," said Callimachus. "He will fetch Callisthenes, who is captain of the forces of Port Cos in Victoria, he in search of the topaz. He will come to this place at the twentieth Ahn."
"He must come in disguise," said Tasdron. "Spies are everywhere."
"That will be made clear to him by Glyco," said Callimachus.
I observed Peggy, the long-haired, long-legged, blond Earth-girl slave, kneeling, head down, by the far wall. Her shoulders shook with a sob. She was so near to him whom she so vulnerably and desperately loved and yet, as a slave, must remain helplessly silent.
"Have you made inquiries among those of Victoria?" asked Callimachus of Tasdron. "Is there support for our work in the town?"
"I have with circumspection made these inquiries," said Tasdron, dourly, "but I fear there is little support in this place for such dangerous labors."
"We can expect no aid, then, from Victoria?" said Callimachus.
"None," said T
asdron.
I continued to watch the girl, her head down, at the far wall. She, a female and a slave, had been banished to that place, that she might not be privy to the discourse of men and masters. Yet she was close enough to be promptly summoned, to serve instantly if aught might be required of her. Her shoulders shook with sobs. I looked away from her. She was only a slave, and slaves are nothing.
"We must arrange that Aemilianus, Captain of the forces of Ar's Station in Victoria, also attend this meeting tonight," said Callimachus.
"Surely it has not escaped your attention," smiled Tasdron, "that Cos and Ar are currently at war."
"No," said Callimachus. "Yet I think the common interest on the river of Ar's Station and Port Cos, and, indeed, of Cos and Ar themselves, should persuade them to regard our plan with care."
"Those of Port Cos and Ar's Station would sooner cut one another's throats than share wine in Victoria," said Tasdron.
"The problems of Port Cos are not identical to those of Cos," said Callimachus, "nor are those of Ar's Station identical with those of Ar."
"Ar's Station is, in effect, an outpost of Ar," said Tasdron. "It is unlike Port Cos, which is a colony, and whose ties with Cos are largely historical and cultural."
"Yet guardsmen of these two places have been for weeks in Victoria and have made no effort to seek one another out."
"Indeed," said Tasdron, thoughtfully, "they have studiously avoided one another."
"The location of their diverse headquarters are surely known, the one to the other," said Callimachus.
"That is true," said Tasdron.
"And yet neither has stormed the headquarters of the other."
"True," said Tasdron.
"Does it not then seem that they may have things on their mind more important than the indisputable differences which separate them."
"Perhaps," said Tasdron.
"I suggest," said Callimachus, "that the security of the river is of greater concern to them both than the distant wars of their allies."