by John Norman
There was only a quarter of the sand remaining. She looked at it, miserably.
She turned to me again. “I was cruel and petty, Tarl,” she said. “Forgive me!”
The sand was almost slipped from the glass.
“I am a woman of Earth,” she cried. “Of Earth!” Such women, of course, were never punished, no matter what they did. They were always forgiven. “Forgive me, Tarl!” she cried. “Forgive me!”
But she was a Gorean slave girl.
“Never will I fetch the whip!” she cried.
Then, crying out with misery, frightened, a moment before the sand slipped from the glass, she turned toward the whip.
“In the fashion of the Tahari,” I told her.
She moaned, and fell to her hands and knees. The men, impassively, watched her go to the whip and pick it up, in her teeth.
“Put the whip down,” I told her.
She put the whip down, dropping it from her teeth. She looked at me, joyfully.
“Kneel,” I told her. She did so, puzzled. “Strip,” I told her, “without rising to your feet.” She did so, angrily, slipping the tiny, torn rag over her head and putting it to one side. She shook her hair; she straightened her body. A murmur of appreciation coursed through the men in the room. Then one, in Gorean fashion, struck his left shoulder, and then the others. She knelt, straight, while men applauded the beauty of her. How proud she was! How fantastically beautiful are women! And I owned her.
“Tie your garment about your right ankle,” I told her. She did this, sitting, and then, again, knelt.
“Now pick up the whip again,” I said, “in your teeth.” She did so.
She did not wear a collar. I had had that of Ibn Saran removed. I would put her in one of mine later. She was naked except that about her right ankle was tied a rag, and, strangely perhaps, about her left wrist was knotted a bit of bleached slave silk.
She looked at me, the whip in her teeth.
“Now go to your former slave alcove to be beaten,” I told her.
She left the room, a slave girl on her way to discipline.
I turned to one of the men nearby. “Be as her caller and guard,” I said to him.
He nodded, and, bending down, picked up a strap which lay nearby. “I shall come presently,” I told him. He acknowledged this. He left the room, following the girl.
A guard is not used in such cases to prevent the escape of the girl, for, in such a situation, in a house or kasbah, there is no escape for her. He serves to protect her, interestingly, from other slave girls. The strap or coiled rope be carries is used less often to hasten, in a humiliating fashion, a girl who might otherwise dally on the way to discipline, though it may serve this purpose, than it is to drive other girls from her. Such a strap or rope, of course, can sting hotly through slave silk. She is very vulnerable, you see, the girl who is to be punished, on the way to discipline. She is naked; she is not permitted to rise; she may not even speak, for the whip must be held between her teeth; to drop it is twenty extra lashes. Resentments, jealousies, petty feuds, enemities, are common among female slaves. Particularly is there jealousy and hatred for the most beautiful slaves, or for the highest slaves. Such a girl, on her way to discipline, is a delight to those who hate and envy her, and who would be only too pleased to take this opportunity to jeer and abuse her, sometimes cruelly and physically. Although many girls in the kasbah were chained here and there for the pleasures of men’ most were freed of impediments, that they might fetch and serve, and be seized when and wherever the men might want them. These, in the halls, would constitute a genuine danger to Vella, who, a high slave, had been the object of much envy. How pleased they would be to see proud Vella crawling in the halls to her discipline. The second reason a man accompanies the girl is to be the caller. He performs what is spoken of sometimes as the whip song, though it is not a song, but rather a series of calls or announcements.
These summon other girls to witness one of their sisters on the way to discipline. “Here is a girl who has not been fully pleasing,” cries the man.
“Look upon her. She is going to discipline. She was not completely pleasing. See her! Come, witness a girl who has not been fully pleasing!” These cries bring the other girls, with their burdens, and such, to watch the progress through the halls of the girl who is to be punished. Soon a derisive, moving gauntlet is formed, through which, constantly, the miserable, whip-bearing girl crawls. She is spat upon, and struck, with hands and straps, and kicked, and much abused, but, of course, only within those limits set by the caller and guard. This sort of thing is thought desirable in the Tahari, in encouraging the whipbearing girl to be more dutiful in the future, and the girls of the gauntlet to resolve, too, to be more dutiful, that it not be they, next, at the mercy of their enemies and rivals, who carries the whip. The actual whipping in the Tahari, incidentally, is usually a matter between the girl and the master, or he and his men. Other girls are seldom permitted to watch one of their sisters being whipped. All they know, when the doors close, is that she will be whipped.
I found the girl kneeling before the small iron gate of her former slave alcove.
The guard, having accompanied her to the quarters for female slaves, which were now empty, the girls being elsewhere, serving men, had left her there. We were alone in the large, beautiful, tiled, pillared room. She looked at me. I took the whip from her teeth and thrust it in my sash.
“Remove the rag from your right ankle,” I told her. She did this, and put it to one side.
She had come through the corridors from the audience chamber on her hands and knees, carrying the whip, head down, in her teeth, between two lines, moving with her, of slave girls, girls running, when she had crawled by them, to be again at the head of the line, to have again their lashing stroke, their cry or jeer.
I threw her a towel that she might wipe her body and long, swirling dark hair, cleaning it. She did so, gratefully. I saw that she had been much struck and abused. The girls had had much sport with her as she had crawled, helpless, to her discipline. Vella was obviously the object of much hostility among the other slave girls. She was apparently much resented and hated. Vella was too beautiful, I supposed, to be popular with women. The very beauty, which made her prized among men, would make her an object of hostility and loathing among women. A beauty like Vella on Gor bad little choice but to relate to men, and, of course, she a slave, on their terms. Too, she had been a high slave, much above the other girls, now fallen far below them, now a fit object for their abuse and scorn, to be tempered only to the degree to which they were willing to feel the flash of the guard’s strap through their silk. She looked at me, tears in her eyes.
“Tarl?” she asked.
She moved toward me, and slipped to her feet, encircling my body with her small arms. About her left wrist, knotted, was the bleached silk from Klima. She put her head against my shoulder, and then lifted it, softly kissing me. She was a very delicious and beautiful naked slave. “I love you, Tarl,” she said.
“Give me your left wrist,” I said.
She extended her left wrist to me. I removed from it the silk from Klima. I put it in my sash.
“I did not realize until now your plan,” she said, “to pretend to make me your slave, to fool the others.” She looked about. “We are alone.” she smiled.
I opened the small square gate in the alcove, set in the bars, some ten inches from the floor. The opening is about eighteen inches square.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
I would use a standard Tahari tie.
“Tarl?” she asked.
The door is opened that the girl’s beauty not he hurt against the closed bars of the tiny gate.
“Oh!” she cried. I thrust her, holding her by her arms from behind, on her knees, belly tight, against the flat iron piece over which the door swings, in closing. Her knees were thus through the bars, on the inside of the cell. With a length of binding fiber, about her knees and behind and over th
e bars I secured her in position. She could not fall backwards. I then took her wrists up, one at a time, she, startled, not resisting, and tied them, on the outside, each to a separate bar, on either side of the small iron gate. “Tarl!” she said. She can grasp the bar with her small hand.
I regarded her.
“Tarl,” she said, “you need not carry your plan so far. We shall not be surprised. Girls will not be permitted to return here until the earliest hours of the morning. We shall not be surprised. It is not necessary to fasten me like this, so helplessly.”
I said nothing. How foolish I thought her. But she was, of course, a woman of Earth.
“Enough of this joke,” she said, irritably. “Release me, now! Now!”
But she did not find herself released.
“Tarl,” she said. The right side of her face was pressed against the flat iron bar, some two inches high, at the top of the opening, against which the gate, when closed, rests. “Do you realize what you have done?”
“What?” I asked.
“You have put me in Tahari whipping position,” she said.
“Oh?” I said.
“It is degrading,” she said. “Release me, immediately!” She squirmed. She was helpless, warrior-tied. “Immediately!” she said. “Immediately!”
But she was not released.
I took the whip from my sash.
“You will not truly strike me with the whip, will you?” she asked. She spoke to me, her head turned, over her left shoulder. “I am a woman of Earth,” she said.
“You cannot treat me like a mere Gorean slave girl. You know you cannot do it!”
I opened the whip, letting the broad, soft leather fall loose.
“We are alone here,” she said. “None will know whether you strike me or not. You need not strike me. You may simply say that you did. I shall, in the deception, corroborate your story. The charade that you would keep me as a slave need not now be prolonged.” She tried to turn her head, to look at me. But she could not see me. “Surely you have no intention of making we a true slave, for you are only of Earth,” she laughed. “Only of Earth!” Then she said, “Release me, now! I demand it! You are only of Earth! Only of Earth! I simply demand to be released, Tarl! Now! Now!”
I said nothing.
She did not find herself released.
“None will know if you do not whip me,” she said.
“I will know,” I told her. “And one other, too, will know.”
“Who?” she asked.
“The pretty little she-animal and slave, Vella,” I said.
Her fists clenched in the bindings.
“You may call me Elizabeth,” she said.
“Who is she?” I asked.
“Oh, Tarl,” she scolded.
I smiled. Did she not know there was no Elizabeth unless a master chose to call her by that name?
She spoke more confidently now. “I am a woman of Earth,” she said. “It is not necessary to beat a woman of Earth to teach her a lesson, should that be perhaps, amusing and preposterous though it is, what is in your mind. She, Tarl, is not an animal who must be whipped. She is a person. She is not a mere Gorean girl, a simple, vital, half-animal thing. She is a person! A true person! I have learned my lesson, Tarl. I am truly sorry. I was cruel and petty. I know! I am sorry. I have learned my lesson. It will not be necessary to beat me.” She smiled. “Untie me, Tarl,” she said. “Untie me now.”
I stepped to the bars.
“Thank you, Tarl,” she said. But I did not untie her. I held the bit of bleached slave silk, removed from my sash, over her nose and mouth. She could breathe easily through it, and speak through it. But she could not breathe or speak without feeling it, without inhaling and taking into her very body the faint, lingering traces of slave perfume, hers, which yet clung to it. Suddenly her voice, her lips moving beneath the silk, became less certain. “I am not a Gorean girl,” she said, “fit for physical discipline. I am not one of those animals who understands only the whip.”
I replaced the bit of silk in my sash. I stepped back.
“I am a woman of Earth!” she cried. Her small hands, wrists warrior-tied to the bars, clenched the bars in terror. She turned her head again, desperately, trying to look at me. She could not see me. “Tarl!” she cried. “Tarl?”
I swung back the whip.
“You will not punish me as a Gorean slave girl!” she cried.
“You have not been pleasing,” I said.
After the fourth stroke she screamed out, weeping, “I have been punished! Stop!
Stop! A girl has been punished! Stop!” After the sixth stroke she cried out, “Please stop, I beg of you, Master!”
Twenty strokes did I give the slave girl. Then I untied her from the bars. She fell to the tiles before me, reaching for my ankles, pressing her lips, hot and wet, to my boots, her tears hot on the leather. “What are you?” I asked. “A Gorean slave girl at the feet of her master,” she said.
“I have not begun to punish you,’’ I told her. She looked at me with fear, and wonder. I tied her small garment, which I picked up from the floor, about her neck, and her hands behind her back. I strode through the halls, she, stumbling, running, following me. Outside, I untied her, and then retied her, belly up, head down, over the saddle of a kaiila, and took her to the nearby kasbah, which had once been that of Tarna. There I took her down to the fourth level, the lowest level, and, throwing the tiny garment into a cell, whence it would be retrieved later, I took her to the branding chamber, threw her into the device, and locked it on her thigh. Hassan was there and the iron was already hot. It was the same iron with which he had, the night before, marked the proud Tarna.
It had been cleaned, with a solvent. One iron, properly cared for, can mark thousands of women. “No, Master,” she said, “please!” “Do you wish to mark her?” asked Hassan. “Yes,” I said. I would place the mark on her left thigh, above that of the four bosk horns. It would be the common Gorean female slave mark, fitting for a low girl, such as she, one who had not been fully pleasing.
I held up the iron, white hot, for the girl’s inspection.
“You will soon be branded, Girl.” I told her.
“Don’t brand me!” she cried. “Please don’t brand me!” She wept.
Hassan regarded her with interest.
“We are now ready,” I told her.
She looked at me, then at the glowing, white-hot marking surface of the iron.
She watched it with horror, as it approached her.
I held it poised at her thigh.
“Don’t!” she cried. “Don’t!”
“You are now to be branded, Slave Girl,” I told her. “No,” she screamed. Then I branded her. For five long Ihn I held the iron, pressing it in. I watched it sink in her thigh, smoking and crackling and hissing. It was a larger brand than that of the four bosk horns; I made sure it marked her more deeply. We three, Hassan, I and the girl, smelled the marked, burned slave flesh of her. Then, swiftly, cleanly, I withdrew it. Her head was back. She was screaming and weeping. “A perfect brand,” said Hassan, looking on. “Perfect!” I was pleased.
Such a brand would be envied by other girls. It would improve the sleek little animal’s value.
I removed the locking device, and spun loose the twist handles, releasing her thigh. I freed her of the snap bracelets. I carried her, naked, branded, weeping, to the small cell where I had thrown her tiny garment, to be retrieved later. I put her down on the straw. Her throat was bare, for I had had, the preceding night, the collar of Ibn Saran removed from her throat.
“Assume the posture of female submission,” I told her. She did so, kneeling back on her heels, her arms extended, wrists crossed, her head between them, down.
She was weeping.
“Repeat after me,” I told her, “‘I, once Miss Elizabeth Cardwell, of the planet Earth-’ “ “I, once Miss Elizabeth Cardwell of the planet Earth-” she said.
“ ‘-herewith submit myself, completel
y and totally, in all things-’“ “-herewith submit myself, completely and totally, in all things-” she said.
“-to he who is now known here as Hakim of Tor-”‘
“-to he who is now known here as Hakim of Tor-” she said.
“ ‘-his girl, his slave, an article of his property, his to do with as he pleases-’ “ “-his girl, his slave, an article of his property, his to do with as he pleases,” she said.
Hassan handed me the collar. It was inscribed ‘I am the property of Hakim of Tor’. I showed it to the girl. She could not read Taharic script. I read it to her. I put it about her neck. I snapped it shut.
“ ‘I am yours, Master,’ “ I said to the girl.
She ‘looked up at me, tears in her eyes, her neck in my locked collar. “I am yours, Master,” she said.
“Congratulations on your slave!” said Hassan. `She is lovely meat. Now I must attend to my own slave.” He laughed, and left.
The girl sank to the straw, and looked up at me. Her eyes were soft with tears.
She whispered. “I am yours now, Tarl,” she said.
“You own me. You truly own me.”
“What is your name?” I asked.
“What ever master wishes,” she whispered.
“I will call you ‘Vella’,” I said.
“I am Vella,” she said, her head down. After a time she lifted her head. “May I call you Tarl?” she asked.
“Only if given permission,” I told her. This was normal Gorean slave custom.
Generally, of course, such permission is not even asked, and, if asked, would be denied. Sometimes a girl is whipped for even daring to ask this permission.
“A girl asks permission to call her Master by his name,” she said.
“It is denied,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said. I would not permit the slave girl to speak my name. It is not fitting that the name of the master be soiled by being touched by the lips of a slave girl.
I looked at her in the straw. “You were displeasing,” I told her.
“A girl has been punished by her master,” she said.
I took the chain and collar in the cell, and locked it on her throat, over her close-fitting steel collar, that identifying her as mine. She was, thus, chained to the wall.