by John Norman
I had hoped, of course, somehow, ideally, to be able to enter Ar's Station on tarnback. As I had feared, however, this had not been possible. Even my garb as a courier had not permitted me access to the airspace over Ar's Station. I had been immediately pursued and fired upon by flights of Cosian tarnsmen. I had made the attempt in the afternoon and again in the evening of the first day I had arrived in the vicinity of Ar's Station. Had it not been for the strength of the bird and my start I might have been downed over the city. I had escaped the second time only with considerable difficulty, by taking my way over the citadel and harbor, past the chained rafts closing the harbor, and across the Vosk itself, eluding my pursuers only after a long run, under the cover of darkness.
In these attempts I had, of course, not taken Phoebe. I had no wish to risk a quarrel's penetrating that beauty, which properly refined and improved, would, in my opinion, not have shamed even the central block of the Curulean. Too, her weight, slight as it was, might have made the difference between falling to pursuers and eluding them.
I had, accordingly, before these excursions, sat her down, closely, before a small tree, her legs on either side of it. I had then tied a rope on her left ankle, looped the rope about another tree, a yard or so away, and brought it back, to tie about her right ankle. I did this is such a way, adjusting the length of the rope, that though her legs were forced to be rather extended, they were also permitted to flex enough for comfort. I then pushed her belly against the bark and braceleted her arms about the tree. The extension of her legs, of course, was such that she could not reach the ropes on her ankles with her braceleted hands. It also, of course, made it impossible for her to rise to her feet. I had sat her down there, and she would remain there, sitting, and as I had placed her. The location of the tree was close enough to the road that she might, if I had not returned by morning, call out, attracting attention to herself, thus saving herself, even if, at the same time, making it almost certain that soon thereafter her thigh would know the fiery kiss of slave iron, and her neck the clasp of a master's collar.
She built up the fire.
I watched her.
She unfolded and adjusted a single-bar cooking rack, placing it over the fire. From this she suspended a kettle of water. The single bar, which may be loosened in its rings, and has a handle, may also function as a spit. "And what did you do today?" I asked.
"I knelt in a body hood," she said.
"It was only a sack," I said.
"It served," she said.
The sack I had drawn over her was an improvised body hood. There are several varieties of body hoods on Gor, which is not surprising in a society in which slavery, and particularly female slavery, is an essential ingredient. Most body hoods are made of leather or layers of stout canvas. I have seen at least one in which two layers of canvas were sewn about a lining of linked chain. They may be fastened by means of such devices as cords, straps and laces. They may be tied shut or locked shut.
The prisoner is entered into some body hoods from the back, her legs being placed through openings in the lower portion of the hood, the hood then being pulled up and, from the back, lacked shut. Most of these hoods do not have openings for the arms, but some do. In most hoods the arms are confined within the hood, either free within the hood itself or bound or braceleted within it. Some hoods are open at the bottom, and fastened on the prisoner by means of thongs or straps, often looped about the thighs. Others are constructed in such a way that they may be opened at the bottom, for the master's convenience. Sometimes the hood is thrust up and fastened about the prisoner's waist. The typical hood provides hand and arm security with the advantages of the blindfold. Most body hoods, unlike many common slave hoods, do not have provisions for an internal gag. The prisoner, of course, may be gagged before being hooded. The body hood, like the slave hood, tends to keep a female docile. This may be a particular advantage early in her training, when she may not yet fully understand her new nature and its meaning. Another advantage of the body hood is that it is intriguing and attractive on a woman, baring her legs but usually, unless the arms are also intriguingly bared, concealing the rest of her, this sort of thing exciting male interest, and yet in virtue of the predominant concealment afforded, making her seizure less likely than if she lying about more exposed in common hoods.
Slavers, in moving their wares through the streets, sometimes place them in body hoods. To be sure, it is more common to throw a cloak or sheet, which might be of various lengths, over their heads, this usually being fastened on them by means of a cord or strap looped once or twice about the neck and fastened under the chin. In many cities free women object to the marching of naked slaves through the streets. Still, even though the girls may be covered with cloaks or sheets, the men will usually come to watch, and call out to them, and jeer, and such. It is understood, of course, that the girls, beneath those cloaks or sheets, are slave naked. It is sometimes very trying, though also perhaps very instructive, for a new slave, perhaps a woman of a conquered city, to be marched thusly through the streets, stung with pebbles, pinched and slapped, subjected to the most intimate forms of raillery, jocosity and abuse. "Do you object?" I asked.
"No," she said, suddenly, quickly. Then she put herself on her belly, on the dirt floor of the small tent, before me. She lifted her head, looking up at me. "When," she asked, "may I use the word "Master' truly to you, in all honesty?" "But you are a free woman," I said to her.
"I beg the collar!" she said.
"Is that not an unusual request for a free woman?" I asked.
"My freedom is now a mockery," she said. "After what you have done to me these past two nights, how could I even thing of being free? Do you think that that delusion can be meaningful to me any longer?"
"You have then learned something about yourself?" I said.
"Yes," she said. "I have learned that I should be branded, that I should be in a collar!"
I smiled.
"Do not frustrate me," she begged. "Let me be what I truly am, in all honesty!" "The porridge water should be salted," I said.
"Yes, Master," she said, and crawled to the front of the tent.
"Salt it lightly," I said. She was learning to serve.
"Yes, Master," she said.
The days I had spent here had not been fruitless. I had muchly reconnoitered. I had thought that perhaps I might have been able to ascend the walls of Ar's Station on one of the scaling ladders, in a morning attack, but I had soon thought the better of it. Resistance was still such that few Cosians could reach the parapets, and those who did were usually driven back. Whereas I supposed it was possible that I might enter the city in this way this modality of ingress seemed dubious at best. It was difficult to see how my projects would be furthered if, while attempting to identify myself and explain my mission, I were to be cut open with a boat hook. Similarly I was not interested, in the midst of friendly overtures, in receiving a bucket of flaming oil in the face or, say, being struck from a ladder by a roofing tile brought from the interior of the city. I had also considered trying to enter the city through its main gate, in the confusion, when it opened for sorties by the defenders. There had been no sorties, however, for twenty days. That in itself was an index of the straits of the defenders, their will and numbers. Also, it did not seem to me practical to try and enter the city during the daylight hours from the harbor side because of the besiegers. Similarly, during the night hours, it seemed the defenders might be unusually alert.
I did not, of course, know any appropriate signs and countersigns. One might well be set upon as soon as one tried to haul oneself unto a wharf. Indeed, they probably patrolled the pilings and such in small boats. An additional problem, at least to a swimmer, I had gathered, from talking with some of the soldiers, were Vosk eels. These often lurk in shadowed areas, among the pilings beneath piers. Whereas they normally feed on garbage and small fish it is not unknown that they attack swimmers. In the last few weeks, too, given the fighting at the rafts, and in
the harbor, predictably, river sharks, usually much farther to the west, had made their appearance.
My second plan, or the second portion of my plan, involved the women from the Crooked Tarn. Late this afternoon, as I had expected, they, in the keeping of the sutler, Ephialtes, had arrived. I had made contact with him away from his wagon and I had had him blindfold the women, with the exception of Liadne, the first girl, and the only slave among them, before I inspected them. Liadne, who was delighted with her name, showed them off to me, proudly. She had done a good job with them, in only three days. The free women knelt very straight, their bellies sucked in, their shoulders back, their breasts thrust forward. Too, they knelt back on their heels, their knees spread, as those of slaves. They were all there, Lady Temione, Lady Amina, the Vennan, Lady Elene, from Tyros, and Ladies Klio, Rimice and Liomache, all from Cos. All of them had, or had desired, to exploit men. now they knelt before me, not knowing who it was before whom they knelt. I regarded them. Once they had been haughty, proud free women. They now knelt within the fringes of a military camp, frightened, confused, chained, blindfolded, shave-headed prisoners. They did not know in whose power they were, or what their fate might be. I had plans for them, or some of them. They, or some of them, would learn soon enough what these might be.
I watched Phoebe pour some meal into the boiling, salted water.
Temione and Klio had had marks on their bodies. Perhaps they had dared to be initially recalcitrant, at least to some small degree. Perhaps, incredibly enough, they had even had some reservations, free women, to being handled and treated as slaves, being stripped, and chained behind a wagon, for example, or to having to obey promptly and perfectly the orders of a slave, Liadne, who had been put over them, as first girl, kneeling before her, addressing her as Mistress, and such. Perhaps, free women, they had dared, at least initially to think that they might be above such things. They had learned differently. Too, their treatment might, in some trivial ways, perhaps smooth, or make a bit less traumatic, the transition to bondage, which was a likely, as well as suitable, disposition for them. To be sure, there is probably no fully adequate way for one to anticipate, or prepare for, psychologically, the actual transition to bondage, even if one eagerly seeks it, even if one welcomes it joyously, for with it comes a new and profoundly different understanding of one's self and nature; by it, you see, a categorical and radical transformation of one's realities is effected; in it one realizes, suddenly, that one is now no longer what one was before, that one is now something absolutely different, that one is now no longer a free person, but a property, subject to buying and selling, an animal, a slave. Phoebe knelt near the fire, back on her heels. Occasionally she would kneel, up, off her heels, and stir the porridge.
"Keep you back straight," I told her.
"Yes, Master," she said.
Her body was slim, her hair was long, bound behind the back of her head with the black cord.
Others about, too, were cooking.
She still wore the garmenture so much like the curla and chatka, the cord at her belly and the long, single strip of cloth, the latter passing over the cord from the outside to the inside in front, and then up, and over it again in the back, moving from the inside to the outside, the whole then, above the cord, pulled up and adjusted, snugly.
She stirred the porridge.
The bottoms of her feet were dark with dirt.
There was a scuffling sound outside and, looking up, we saw a stumbling woman, naked, a rope on her neck, her hands tied behind her, being dragged among the tents. She cast us one wild, desperate glance, and then was dragged past. Phoebe knelt even straighter.
"I think it is a good thing that I kept you covered in my absence yesterday and today," I said.
"Master?" she asked.
"Do you know why I did so?" I asked.
"That I may learn discipline?" she said. "That I may learn that I am truly your servant, and what it is to be the servant of a man such as you? And that I may learn to be a good servant?"
"Such things," I said, "but there is, too, another reason."
"What is that?" she asked.
"That it is more likely that you will be here when I get back," I said. "I would not run away," she said.
"I was not thinking of that," I said.
"I do not want to run away," she said, "but, too, I would be afraid to run away."
"But you are a free woman," I said. "It is not as though you were a slave." "But if you caught me," she said, "you would punish me, would you not, and terribly?" "Yes," I said. "But still it would not be as though you were a slave." She shuddered. "If I were a slave," she said, "if I were to be branded and collared, I would not even dare to think of running away."
I nodded. Gorean, she was not unacquainted with the severities typically inflicted upon wayward slaves, slaves foolish enough to attempt escape. Too, escape, in effect, is impossible for the Gorean slave girl. The lay, the culture, and such, are not set up to permit it.
"But why then?" she asked.
"That it would be less likely that you would be stolen," I said.
"Really?" she asked, pleased.
"Yes," I said.
"Do you really think a man might want to steal me?" she asked.
"Of course," I said.
"Would you?" she asked.
"I might consider it," I said. "I think you would look well on all fours, bringing me a whip in your teeth."
"Phoebe has gathered, the last two nights," she said, shyly, "that she may not be without attractions to master?"
"Perhaps," I said.
"Even though I am a free woman?" she asked.
"Most slaves begin as such," I said.
"I want to live for a master," she said, suddenly, looking at me, "and to give him pleasure. I want it to be the meaning of my existence!"
"I see, free woman," I said.
"'Free woman'!" she said. "I am free in name only! You know that in my heart I am a slave!"
"True," I said.
"I want a master to be everything to me," she said, "even if he scarcely notices me, or cares if I exist."
"I see," I said.
"But you have not imbonded me!" she chided.
"No," I said.
"If I were stolen," she said, "I wager that that oversight would soon be remedied." "Probably," I said. "Particularly if it were done by a professional slaver."
She hummed a little tune.
"Surely you fear the whip," I said, "and the hazards of the collar?" "The whip is good for us," she said. "Perhaps it is hard for you to understand that, as you are not a woman. It makes our womanhood a hundred times more meaningful. The essential point here is not being whipped, of course, which hurts, but being subject to the whip, and being truly subject to it. You see the distinction, I am sure. We know that men are by nature sovereign over us. That comprehension requires no greater insight. Accordingly, men must then either fulfill their nature, or deny it, and in denying their nature, deny us ours, for ours is the complement to theirs. Accordingly we despise men who surrender their natural sovereignty. Surely we would not be so stupid, would not be such weaklings and fools as to do that, if we were men. It would be too valuable and glorious a thing to give up. Its surrender would be a tragedy. But we are not men! We are women, and want, truly, with everything in our hearts and bellies, to be women, and we cannot be women truly if men are not truly men! Lay down the whip, and we will attack you, and undermine you, and use your own laws, institutes and rhetorics to destroy you, inch by inch. Lift it, and we will lick your feet in gratitude. Own us, dominate us! Enslave us, properly, so that we may love you as women are meant to love, wholly and irreservedly, totally, without a thought for ourselves!" She looked at me, tears in her eyes. "Is it so wrong to want to be ourselves?"
"But there are hazards in slavery," I said.
"I accept them," she said, "and would try to please my master." "You would be well advised to do so," I said.
"I know," she smiled.
> "Attend to the porridge," I said.
She removed it from the fire and covered it, to let it stand for a bit. She then set out two bowls, with spoons, and two trenchers, for some bread.
She served, deferentially.
I considered her flanks, and breasts. They were excellent. Although her garmenture was assuredly scanty, she was more extensively clothed than many of the women in the camp. There were men here.
She spooned the porridge into the bowls and set the bread, wedges, from a round, flat loaf, on the trenchers, and knelt back. She would wait, of course, until I had taken the first bite.
Considering the size of the besieging force there were not as many women in the camp as might have been expected. I hoped this would work in my favor. The paucity of women, relatively, rent slaves even bringing a copper tarsk a night, had largely to do with the coming and going of the slave wagons, which tended to carry off most of the captures, apprehended refugees, women who had fled from Ar's Station for food, giving themselves into bondage for a crust of bread, and such, to a dozen or so scattered markets, markets such as Ven, Besnit, Port Olni, and Harfax.
I bit into the bread and Phoebe then, too, began to eat, taking a small spoonful of the porridge.
It had become dark now.
We could hear the pleasure cries of a woman a few tents away.
"Do you think she is free?" asked Phoebe.
"Probably," I said. "There are not too many slaves in the camp now." "What do you think he is doing to her?" she asked.
"Mastering her," I said.
"Do you think she is tied?" she asked.
"Probably," I said.
She looked down, shuddering, blushing. The intensification of sexual pleasure, both physically and psychologically, by the application of selected restraints is well known.
"The women I have seen in this camp," she said, "do not appear to be overdressed."
"They are prisoners of strong men," I said. She listened to the girl's cried. "She is passionate," said Phoebe.