by John Norman
I had little doubt that the lovely Alyena would one day, in the arms of a strong man, for whom I was saving her; become a true slave, adoringly and vulnerably the property of her master.
I glanced to the large female slave, with the quirt, standing near the silver curtain.
“Why are you not in slave silk?” I asked her.
Her eyes flashed. Her hand clenched on the quirt.
“She is useful in the pens,” said the slave master. “She terrorizes feminine girls.”
I turned to Alyena. “What do you think,” I asked, in English, “of the female slave?”
“I fear her,” whispered small, lovely Alyena.
“Why,” I asked.
“She is so strong, so hard,” said Alyena.
“What you fear in her.” I said, “is masculinity, but it is not a true masculinity; it is fraudulent.” I looked down at her. “The masculinity you must learn to fear,” I told her, “is the masculinity of men.”
“She is a match for any man,” said Alyena. Her eyes shone with pride.
I turned to the slave master. “Fetch a male slave,” I said.
One was brought. He was not a large fellow. He was however, an inch or so taller than the female slave.
“You certify to me,” said I to the slave master, “that this man is neither clumsy nor stupid, nor drunk, nor an instructor in combat intent upon increasing the confidence of his pupils.”
“It is so certified,” he smiled. “He is used in cleaning the pens. He is a drover who falsified the quality-markings on spice crates.”
I placed a copper tarn disk on the desk of the slave master. “Fight,” I said to the slaves.
“Fight,” said the slave master.
The man looked puzzled. With a cry of rage, shrill and vicious, the female slave leapt toward him, slashing him across the face with the quirt. She struck him twice before he, angry, took the quirt from her and threw it aside.
“Do not anger me,” he told her.
He turned and caught her kick on his left thigh. She leapt at him, fingers like claws, to tear out his eyes. He seized her wrists. He turned her about. She could not move. Then, with considerable force, as she cried out with misery, he flung her, the length of her body, belly front, against the stone wall. He then stepped back, jerked her ankles from under her and flung her to the stones, and knelt across her back. She wept and struck the stones with her fists. Then her halter was removed and her hands pulled behind her and bound with it. He discarded her belt and the strips of leather. He removed her sandals. With one of the long, straplike laces, he crossed and bound her ankles. Then, angrily, he turned her collar, hurting her, with its ring, to the back. With the other straplike lace, run through the ring and tied to the binding on her ankles, he jerked her ankles up, high, fastening them there. Then he crouched over her and she lay bound at his feet. He turned her head, looking over her right shoulder, so that it faced him; he crouched so that she could not move; his right ankle was against her left cheek. He poised his thumbs, held downward, over her eyes.
“I am a woman at your mercy,” she wept. “Please, Master, do not hurt me!”
He looked to the slave master. The slave master came to where the woman lay. He looked down at her. He called two slaves from behind the silver curtain. They looked down at the woman. Then the slave master said, “Put her in slave silk, and give her to male slaves.”
She was freed of the cord binding her ankles to her collar ring.
She was jerked to her feet, and held there; she could not stand by herself for her feet were still crossed and bound. “Who are the masters,” asked the slave master of her.
The woman, hair before her face, held upright by men, looked at Alyena. The woman trembled. “Men,” she whispered. “Men are the masters.” Alyena’s face turned white.
The woman was carried from the room, to the pens. For a silver tarsk I purchased the male slave, and freed him. “Stand,” I said to Alyena, who was trembling.
I put the walking chains on her, which I had purchased a few days ago in the bazaar.
I looked down into her eyes. “Who are the masters?” I asked.
She looked up at me, angrily. Then she said, “Men-men are the masters.”
I then left the office of the slave master of Tor, followed by the slave girl.
On the back of the kaiila, on the road to the Oasis of Nine Wells, drowsily, I listened to the kaiila bells.
It was in the late afternoon. We would stop in an Ahn or two for camp.
Fires would be lit. The kaiila would be put in circles, ten animals to the circle, and fodder, by kaiila boys, would be thrown into the center of the circle.
The tents would be pitched. The opening of the Tahari tent usually faces the east, that the morning sun may warm it. Gor, like the Earth, rotates to the east. The nights require, often, a heavy djellaba or an extra blanket. Many nomads build a small kaiila-dung fire in the tent, to smolder during the night, to warm their feet. I needed not do this, of course, for at my feet slept the former Miss Priscilla Blake-Allen, the girl, Alyena.
At night the kaiila are hobbled. The slave girls, too, are hobbled. With the kaiila a simple figure-eight twist of kaiilahair rope, above the spreading paws, below the knees, is sufficient. A girl, of course, is chained. When finished with her, I would cross Alyena’s ankles and, with the walking chain, suitably shortened, chain them together. That way she could not stand. I would then throw her brief djellaba against the desert cold, and order her to a position of sleep. On the mat, toward morning, she would pull the hood over her face, fold her arms and pull up her legs, knees bent; the djellaba came far up her thighs; I would watch her sleeping, sometime, for she was quite beautiful. Once she opened her eyes. “Master,” she said. “Sleep, Slave,” I told her. “Yes, Master,” she said. In the morning I would unchain her early that she might, like the other slave girls in camp, be about her duties. Once she stole a date. I did not whip her. I chained her, arms over her head, back against the trunk, to a flahdah tree. I permitted nomad children to discomfit her. They are fiendish little beggars. They tickled her with the lanceolate leaves of the tree. They put honey about her, to attract the tiny black sand flies, which infest such water holes in the spring. When we would break camp, I would lift her to the kurdah, placing her within.
I became aware of the pounding of kaiila pads on the dry surface. Suddenly I was alert, awake.
I spun the kaiila, and stood in the stirrups.
A man was riding by, the length of the caravan, one of the points. “Riders!” he cried. “Riders!”
I could see them now, more than a hundred of them, sweeping toward us over the crest of one of the hills, to my left, the west.
Their burnooses whipped behind them as they mounted the crest of the hill and, the animals half sliding, descended the other side, approaching us. Guards from our caravan were hastening outward to meet them. I stood in the stirrups. I saw no one approaching from other directions. There might be, of course, such delayed charges. Reassured I was to see points riding out about the caravan, outriders, to guard against such surprise. I saw Farouk, merchant and caravan master, ride by, burnoose swirling behind him, lance in hand. With him were six men. I saw drovers, holding the reins of their beasts, shading their eyes, looking over the dust to the west. One of the kinsmen of Farouk went to the kurdahs of slave girls, hobble chains at his saddle pommel; he would rein in before a kurdah, throw the girl the hobble and order her, “Shackle yourself”; he would wait the moment it took for the girl to snap the small ring about her right wrist and, behind her body, the larger one about her left ankle; the rings are separated by about six inches of chain; they are not sleeping hobbles, which confine only the ankles; then he would rush to the next kurdah, fling a hobble to the next girl, and repeat his command. I rode down the caravan until I came to Alyena’s kurdah. She thrust her head out, veiled, her fists holding apart the rep-cloth curtain.
“What is going on?” she cried.
“Be silent,” I told her. She looked frightened.
“Stay within the kurdah, Slave,” I warned her. “And do not peer out.”
“Yes, Master,” she said.
I turned the kaiila, loosened the scimitar in the sheath.
“They are Aretai!” cried a man.
I thrust the scimitar back, deep, in the sheath.
I saw, some hundred yards from the caravan, the riders reined up. With them I saw Farouk, conversing with their captain. The caravan guards, on nervous, prancing kaiila, were behind him. Lances were high, butts in the stirrup sheath, like needles against the hills.
I rode my kaiila out a few steps, toward the men, then returned it to the caravan.
“They are Aretai,” said one of the drovers. The caravan, I knew, was bound for the Oasis of Nine Wells. It was held by Suleiman, master of a thousand lances.
He was high pasha of the Aretai.
Several of the newcomers fanned out to flank the caravan, at large intervals. A cluster of them rode toward its head, another cluster toward its rear. Some twenty of them, with Farouk, and certain guards, began to work their way down the caravan, beast by beast, checking the drovers and kaiila tenders.
“What are they doing?” I asked a nearby drover.
“They are looking for Kavars,” he said.
“What will they do with them if they find them?” I asked.
“Kill them,” said the man.
I watched the men, on their kaiila, accompanied by Farouk, the caravan master, moving, man by man, towards us.
“They are the men of Suleiman,” said the drover, standing nearby, the rein of his kaiila in his hand. “They have come to give us escort to the Oasis of Nine Wells.”
Closer came the men, stopping, starting, moving from one man to the next, down the long line. They were led by a captain, with a red-bordered burnoose. Several of them held their scimitars, unsheathed, across the leather of their saddles.
“You are not a Kavar, are you?” asked the drover.
“No,” I said.
The riders were before us.
The drover threw back the hood of his burnoose, and pulled down the veil about his face. Beneath the burnoose he wore a skullcap. The rep-cloth veil was red; it had been soaked in a primitive dye, mixed from water and the mashed roots of the telekint; when he perspired, it had run; his face was stained. He thrust back the sleeve of his trail shirt.
The captain looked at me. “Sleeve,” he said. I thrust back the sleeve of my shirt, revealing my left forearm. It did not bear the blue scimitar, tattooed on the forearm of a Kavar boy at puberty.
“He is not Kavar,” said Farouk. He made as though to urge his mount further down the line.
The captain did not turn his mount. He continued to look at me. “Who are you?” he asked.
“I am not a Kavar,” I told him.
“He calls himself Hakim, of Tor,” said Farouk.
“Near the north gate of Tor,” said the captain, “there is a well. What is its name?”
“There is no well near the north gate of Tor,” I told him.
“What is the name of the well near the stalls of the saddlemakers?” asked the captain.
“The well of the fourth passage hand,” I told him. Water, more than a century ago, had been struck there, during the fourth passage hand, in the third year of the Administrator Shiraz, then Bey of Tor.
I was pleased that I had spent some days in Tor, before engaging in the lessons of the scimitar, learning the city. It is not wise to assume an identity which one cannot cognitively substantiate.
“Your accent,” said the captain, “is not of Tor.
“I was not always of Tor,” I told him. “Originally I was from the north.”
“He is a Kavar spy,” said one of the lieutenants, at the side of the captain.
“Why are you bound for the Oasis of Nine Wells?” asked the captain.
“I have gems to sell Suleiman, your master,” said I, “for bricks of pressed dates.”
“Let us kill him,” urged the lieutenant.
“Is this your kurdah?” asked the captain, gesturing to the kurdah on the nearby kaiila.
“Yes,” I said.
In making their examination of the caravan they had, with their scimitars, opened the curtains of the kurdahs, for there might have been Kavars concealed therein. They had found, however, only girls, slaves, their right wrists and left ankles locked in five-link slave hobbles.
“What is in it?” he asked.
“Only a slave girl,” I told him.
He pressed his kaiila to the kurdah, and, with the tip of his scimitar, prepared to lift back the curtain to his right.
My scimitar, blade to blade, blocked his.
The men tensed. Fists clenched on the hilts of scimitars.
Lances were lowered.
“Perhaps you conceal within a Kavar?” asked the captain.
With my own scimitar tip I brushed back the curtain. In the kurdah, kneeling, frightened, naked save for collar and veil, the girl shrank back.
“Thigh,” said the captain.
The girl turned her left thigh to him, showing her brand. “It is only a slave girl,” said the lieutenant, disappointed.
The captain smiled. He regarded the sweet, small, luscious, exposed slave curves of the girl. “But a pretty little one,” he said.
“Face-strip yourself,” I ordered her.
The girl, fingers behind the back of her head, at the golden string, lowered her veil. Her body had lifted beautifully when her hands had sought the string behind her head. I noted how she had done it. I grinned to myself. She was a slave girl and did not know it.
“Yes,” said the captain, “a pretty slave.” His eyes lingered on her unveiled mouth, then he drank in the rest of her, then the whole of her. He looked at me.
“I congratulate you on your slave,” he said.
I acknowledged his compliment, inclining and lifting my head.
“Perhaps, tonight,” he suggested, “she may dance for us.”
“She does not know how to dance,” I said. Then, to the girl, in English, I said, “You are not yet ready to dance for the pleasure of men.” She shrank back. “Of course not,” she said, in English. But I could see that, in spite of her anger, her denial, her eyes had been excited, curious. Doubtless she had, from time to time, wondered what it would be like, a collared slave girl, to dance naked in the sand, in the light of the campfire, laboring vulnerably under whip-threat to please Gorean warriors. It would be a long time, I thought, before the cool, white-skinned Alyena would beg, “Dance me! Dance me for the pleasure of men!”
“She is barbarian,” said I to the captain. “She speaks little Gorean. I told her she was not yet ready to dance for the pleasure of men.”
“A pity,” said he. In Gorean female dance the girl is expected, often, to satisfy, fully, whatever passions she succeeds in arousing in her audience. She is not permitted merely to excite, and flee away: when, at the conclusion of the swirling music, she flings herself to the floor at the mercy of free men, her dance is but half finished; she has yet to pay the price of her beauty.
“You must have her taught to dance,” said the captain.
“It is my intention,” I said.
“The whip,” said the captain. “can teach a girl many things.”
“Truly have you spoken,” I agreed.
“A pretty slave,” he said, and then turned his kaiila away, his men following, to continue his examination of the men of the caravan. As he turned his kaiila, the lieutenant, who had accompanied him, he who had asserted that I was a Kavar spy, he who had urged them to slay me, cast me a dark look. Then he, too, was with the rest, and Farouk, down the caravan line.
“It will not be necessary, Master,” said Alyena, loftily, in Gorean, “to use the whip on me, to make me dance.”
“I know,” I laughed, “Slave!”
Her fists clenched.
“Veil yourself, “I said.
; She did so.
“Remain within,” I said, “and do not peer out.”
“Yes, Master,” she said.
I saw her eyes, blue, angry, over the yellow veil, and then I, laughing, with my scimitar, brushed down the right-hand curtain of the kurdah, it dropping, concealing her within, a slave girl.
Gradually, as a girl begins to realize she is a slave, truly, in a society in which there are slaves, and in which one can truly be just that, and without an escape, a fantastic transformation takes place in her. I could already see the beginnings of this transformation in Alyena. She was already becoming excited about her collar, and her ownership by men. She was becoming curious about them.
She was becoming brazen, and shameless, as befits an article of property. She was now permitting herself thoughts and dreams that might have scandalized a free woman, but were for her, only a slave, quite appropriate. She was becoming petty, and pretty, and provocative. She was becoming sensual. She was becoming sly, clever, owned. Recently she had stooped to stealing a date. Though I had, of course, punished her for this, I was, secretly, quite pleased. It meant she was becoming a slave girl. Now I had seen her lift her body, beautifully, in removing her veil before men. I had seen her curiosity about what it would be to dance before them. She had informed me that it would not be necessary for me to use the leather on her, before she would apply herself to the lessons of the dances of slave girls. She thought herself, in herself, quite free, a slave only in name and collar, but in this she was deceiving herself. Let her keep that bit of pride, I thought, until some master takes it from her, and she, shattered, prone on the tiles, or submission mat, knows then, truly, she is only slave.
The lovely Alyena, though she did not know it, and would have refused to believe it, was coming along quite well.