broken by numerous, narrow, crooked streets, was a function of the radius from
its wells. An advantage of this municipal organization, of course, though it is
scarcely a matter of intentional design, is that the water is in the most
protected portion of the city, its center. Tor’s water, I might mention, was
ample to her needs. Though I saw few of them, she boasted many shaded gardens.
Water for these gardens, by contract with slave masters, was carried by chains
of male slaves and emptied into house cisterns, whence, later, by house slaves,
it would be taken in cans and sprinkled carefully, foot by foot, throughout the
garden.
I was now in the lower part of the city.
“Water!” I heard. “Water!”
Behind me, turning, I saw the water carrier, he from whom I had purchased a cup
of water earlier.
A woman, veiled, passed me. She held a baby inside her cloak, nursing it.
I continued down the sloping street, toward the bazaar and market,
I had arrived in Tor four days ago, after first taking tarn to Kasra. There I
had sold the bird, for I did not wish to be conspicuous in Tor, as would surely
as a tarnsman. From Kasra I had taken a dhow upriver on the Lower Fayeen, until
I reached the village of Kurtzal, which lies north, overland, from Tor. Goods
which are to be transported from Tor to Kasra sometimes are first taken overland
to Kurtzal, and thence west on the river. Kurtzal is little more than a loading
and shipping point. In Kasra, descending upon my tarn, I had been a warrior. A
mercenary tarnsman. As a portion of my assumed disguise, uncollared, lashed on
her back across my saddle, had been the body of a naked girl. She was blond. She
was barbarian. She could not even speak Gorean. I was congratulated on my catch.
I visited one of the metal workers, to purchase a collar for my prize. None,
Samos and I suspected, would regard one with such a wench, so clumsy, so
untaught, so obviously new to slavery, as being upon the business of
Priest-Kings. She was simply a caught girl, picked up by a tarnsman with ease,
simply to be used for a time and then discarded for a few tarn disks. “I took
her from a slaver’s camp,” I told the metal worker. “I see her brand is fresh,”
said the metal worker. It was true. She had not been branded in Teletus.
Sometimes a girl is not branded until she is first sold. There are various
brands. Sometimes it pleases the master to decide with which the girl will be
marked. Within an hour, however, of her arrival at the house of Samos, the girl
had been sent to the branding chamber. The standard Kajira mark, as was the
house policy, was put upon her.
Masters, incidentally, seldom brand their own slaves. To brand a girl well
demands a sure hand, and, usually, experience. In training a man to use the iron
slavers always give him poorer women at first, sometimes having him mark them
more than once, until he becomes proficient. Usually by the fifteenth or the
twentieth woman, the man is capable of marking them deeply, precisely and
cleanly. It is important for the girl’s thigh to be held immobile: sometimes it
is held by more than one man; sometimes it is bound to a wagon wheel; sometimes,
in the house of slavers, a heavy, vise equipped, metal branding rack is used.
The girls are usually branded impersonally, perfunctorily, as cattle. Though
they feel their mark intensely physically, it is felt, interestingly, even more
intensely, more profoundly, psychologically; not unoften it, in itself,
radically transforms their self-images, their personalities; they are then only
slaves, not permitted their own wills, rightless, at the bidding of masters; the
mark is an impersonal designation; this is understood by the girls; when she is
marked she understands herself not to be marked by a given man for a given man,
to be uniquely his, but rather, so to speak, that she is marked for all men; to
all men she is a slave girl; usually, of course, only one among them, at a given
time, will be her master; the brand is impersonal; the collar is intensely
personal; the brand marks her property; the collar proclaims whose property she
is, who it is who has either taken, or paid for, her; that the brand is an
impersonal designation of an absence of status in the social structure is
perhaps another reason why masters do not often brand their own girls; the brand
relationship to the free man is institutional; the collar relationship, on the
other hand, is an intensely personal one; it is not uncommon for masters to
pride themselves on the depth with which they know their slave girls; this depth
is far greater in my opinion than that with which the average husband of Earth
knows his wife; the slave girl is not simply someone with whom the man lives;
she is very special to him; she is a treasured possession; he owns her; he wants
to know, profoundly and deeply, the background, history, the mind, the
intelligence, the appetites, the nature and the dispositions of his lovely
article of property; this knowledge, of course, puts her more at his mercy; by
making it possible for him to manipulate her feelings, exploit weaknesses, drop
asides, etc., she in the helpless condition of slavery, it gives him greater
power over her. For example, it is common for a master to force his girl to
speak at length and in detail to him of the secret sides of her nature,
explaining and elaborating on her fantasies: if she is literate, she may be
forced, naked, collared, on her knees at a small table, sometimes with her
ankles shackled, to write them out; this supplies the master, of course, with
abundant materials which may be used by him to make her further and more
helplessly his; sometimes the girl attempts to deceive the master; it is not
difficult to detect inauthenticity in such matters; she is then beaten; too, she
may at times be ordered to invent fantasies, sometimes of a certain type; these,
too, for she has invented them, are, to an astute master, instructive; these
intellectual, emotional exercises, performed by the girl under a condition of
slavery, particularly if coupled with an enforced exercise regime, posings under
male surveillance, and such, can do much to sensitize her to her collar; they
awaken her body and, of equal importance for the Gorean, though not for the
Earthling, who sees sex with the perception of a hippopotamus, as a matter of
body rubbings, her fantastic imagination and mind; she becomes curious, soon,
about the deeper implications of what she is, a mere article of her master’s
property; then, with authority, with assurance and power, to the depth and
height of her mind and imagination she is taught; the slave girl experiences a
paradox of freedom; the free woman is physically
free, but miserable, fighting to be what she is not; the slave girl, physically
in bondage, even to the collar, sometimes chains, is given no choice by men but
to be totally and precisely what she is, slave; such women, the slave girls,
interestingly, are almost always joyful and vital; they are, paradoxically, in
their feelings and emotions, liberated; they are not pinched, not
psychologically restrained; why this should be I do not know; to see
such women,
their heads high, their eyes bright, their bodies, their movements, beautiful,
as no Earth woman would dare to be, is quite pleasurable; some of them are so
insolent, so proud of their collars, that I have cuffed them to my feet to
remind them that they are only slaves.
It had been fortunate for us that the girl’s brand had been relatively fresh,
that she had been marked in the house of Samos and not on Teletus.
This made it more plausible that she was a recent prize, abducted, as I had
averred to the metal worker, from the camp of a slaver. We could, of course,
have taken another girl from the pens of Samos. This one, however, seemed ideal.
She was obviously untrained, a clumsy wench, as stupid and raw, aside from a few
rapings, as an uncooked piece of bosk meat, new to slavery. Furthermore,
ideally, she could not yet speak Gorean. She could, thus, do nothing to betray
or confound, inadvertently or otherwise, by word or glance, our plans. She knew
nothing. She was only a part of my disguise. Nonetheless it was with pleasure
that I snapped the collar, marked in the name of Hakim of Tor, as she, kneeling,
naked, looked up at me in anger, on the small, lovely throat of the former Miss
Priscilla Blake-Allen, of Earth.
But when I descended the narrow gangplank of the dhow, which I took upstream
from Kasra to the village port of Kurtzal, it was not as a tarnsman. The tarn I
had sold in Kasra, for four golden tarn disks. I wore now the rags of a drover
of kaiila. Bent over, carrying a grossly woven bag of kaiila-hair cloth, filled
with accouterments, I set foot on the cracked boards of the Kurtzal dock.
Moments later I stood inland, ankle deep in the white dust. Following me down
the gangplank, clad in a black haik, could have been only my companion, the
pitiful free woman who shared my poverty. The haik, black, covers the woman from
head to toe. At the eyes, there is a tiny bit of black lace, through which she
may see. On her feet were soft, black, nonheeled slippers, with curled toes,
they were, decorated with a line of silver thread.
Beneath the haik none needed know the woman was naked and wore a collar.
We took a salt wagon, empty, to Tor from Kurtzal.
There was another reason I had brought Miss Blake-Allen, as we may perhaps speak
of her for purposes of simplicity, to the Tahari districts. Cold, white-skinned
women are of interest to the men of the Tahari. They enjoy putting them in
servitude. They enjoy, on their submission mats, turning them into helpless,
yielding slaves. Too, blue-eyed, blond women are, statistically, rare in the
Tahari districts. Those that exist there have been imported as slaves. Given her
complexion and coloring, I thought, and Samos concurred, we could get a good
price for the wench in Tor, or in the interior, at an oasis market. We had
little doubt that the men of the Tahari would pay high for the body and person
of Miss Blake-Allen. It had entered my mind, too, that it might prove most
profitable, under certain conceivable circumstances, to exchange her for
information.
In Kasra I had learned the name, and father, of the boy who had found, in
pursuing a kaiila, the rock on which had been inscribed ‘Beware the steel
tower’. His name was Achmed, and his father’s name was Farouk, who was a Kasra
merchant. I had failed to contact them in Kasra, as I had planned, but I had
learned that they were in the region of Tor, purchasing kaiila, for a caravan to
the kasbah, or fortress, of Suleiman, of the Aretai tribe, master of a thousand
lances, Ubar of the Oasis of Nine Wells.
A merchant passed me, climbing the stones of the street. He wore a striped,
hooded, sleeved, loose robe, a djellaba. The striping was that of the Teehra, a
district southwest of Tor, bordering on the Tahari. Following him, in a black
haik, was a woman. Suddenly I was startled. As she passed me, her stride small
and measured, I heard the clink of light chain, the sound of ankle bells. She
was slave. She turned her head, briefly, to look at me; I saw her eyes, dark,
through the tiny opening in the haik, through the tiny, black-lace screen, about
an inch in height and four inches in width. Then, with a rustle of the chain,
and the tiny music of her bells, she turned swiftly, following her master.
Beneath the haik, I supposed her collared, naked. The use of a light walking
chain, tethering the ankles, meant to be worn abroad, accompanying the master,
incidentally, is not uncommon in the regions of the Tahari. A beautifully
measured gait is thought, in the Tahari, to be attractive in a woman. There is
dispute as to the desirable length of the stride, and the chain may be adjusted
accordingly. To me it seems obvious that one must experiment with the given
girl. Height and hip structure vary. I resolved to obtain such a set of chains
for Miss Blake-Allen. I was curious to see what measure of stride would best
suit the slave in her. Free women, in the Tahari, incidentally, usually, when
out of their houses, also measure their stride. Some fasten their own ankles
together with silken thongs. Some dare even the chain, though they retain its
key. Free girls, not yet companions, but of an age appropriate for the
companionship, sometimes signal their availability to possible swains by belling
their left ankles with a single “virgin bell.” The note of this bell, which is
bright and clear, is easily distinguished from those of the degrading, sensual
bells of the slave. Sometimes free girls, two or more of them, as a girlish
lark, obtain slave bells and, chaining their ankles, dress themselves in their
haiks and go about the city. Sometimes their girlish amusement does not turn out
as they expect. Sometimes they find themselves being sold in markets at obscure
eases.
There was a great shouting, and, passing through the market gate, I had turned
into the nest of market streets.
I brushed away two sellers of apricots and spices. “Come with me to the cafe of
Red Cages,” said a boy, pulling at my sleeve. They receive a copper tarsk for
each patron they bring through the arched portal of the cafe. I gave the boy a
copper tarsk, and he sped from me.
I made my way carefully through the crowds.
The vendors come early to the market, leaving their villages outside of Tor in
the morning darkness, that they may find a yard of pavement, preferably near the
market gate, to display their wares. I was jostled to one side by two men in
djellabas. My ankle stung. I had nearly stepped into a basket of plums. Not even
looking up, a woman had cried out, and, with a stick lashed out, protecting her
merchandise. “Buy melons!” called a fellow next to her, lifting one of the
yellowish, red-striped spheres toward me. A boy passed, spitting out the seeds
of a tospit. The thought of Kamchak, of the Tuchuks, passed through my mind. I
smiled. Only the rare, long- with melted cheese and nutmeg; hot Bazi tea,
sugared, and, later, Turian wine. I did not forget the slave, of course. Crusts
of bread did I throw to the boards before her. It was slave bread, rough and
coarse-grained. The beauty ate it eagerly. She had not known if she was to be
reasons, as, for example, if her measurements, which are generally carefully
kept, should minutely depart from her master’s conception of her ideal
curvatures; sometimes merely to remind her of on whom she depends, totally, for
her very life; sometimes as a training or disciplinary measure; sometimes merely
to startle or puzzle her; what has she done; she is not told; has she not been
sufficiently pleasing; she is not told; the girl, frightened, anxious, redoubles
her efforts to please in all the thousand spheres of her slavery, intellectual,
physical and imaginative; no master, it is said, who has not denied his girl
food knows her; pleasant indeed are the surprises which such a fellow, who
thought thitherto he knew his girl, upon the completion of the simple
experiment, receives: the girl’s wits are sharpened; she becomes resourceful,
helpless, desperate, attentive, inventive; “Feed me, Master,” she begs. “Feed
me!” at the conclusion of such an experiment, when she is fed, it is always,
kneeling naked, from his hand. The lesson is not soon forgotten. Few things so
impress the dominance of a male on a woman, and her dependence on him, as his
control of her food. This dominance, provided it is absolute, thrills a woman to
the core.
I had, from time to time, kept Miss Blake-Allen hungry, giving her only sparing
rations. I had not, however, by means of food, truly impressed her slavery on
her. I did not want to bring her to her belly at my feet. That pleasure I would
deny myself, that it might be reserved for her first full, true master. I wanted
to keep her, save for some refinements, a free woman of Earth, wearing a collar,
until she was sold. The delights of making her a true slave girl, completely, in
the full sense of the word, I would accord to the fellow to whom I would give or
sell her. I could imagine her, blue-eyed, fairskinned, angry, proud, rebellious
determined to be untamed, standing naked on his submission mat in his tent.
After a week I wondered what she would be like.
I turned from the market streets into a street of shops and stalls, the bazaar,
which, in Tor, is most commonly reached through the market gate.
“The Aretai will act,” I beard one man telling another.
Norman, John - Gor 10 - Tribesmen of Gor.txt Page 6