day consists of twenty Ahn; the Gorean Ahn, or hour, of forty Ehn, or minutes;
the Ehn consists of eighty Ihn, or seconds. An Ihn is slightly less than an
Earth second.
The glass was inverted.
She looked at it. “You can never make me do this,” she said, “Tarl.”
She watched the sand slip through the glass. She turned to face me. “I’m pleased
that I betrayed Priest-Kings. I’m pleased that I served Kurii I’m pleased that I
identified you for Ibn Saran. I’m pleased that I testified against you at Nine
Wells! Do you understand? Pleased!”
A quarter of the sand had slipped through the glass.
“You did not free me in Lydius. You kept me a slave!” she cried petulantly.
The sand had now slipped half through the glass. She looked about, from face to
face, finding in them no sign of emotion, and then again she faced me.
“Of course I smiled at Nine Wells,” she cried. “I wanted you sent to Klima! I
wanted you sent there! Vengeance was sweet! Only you escaped! Of course I mocked
you from the window of the kasbah of Ibn Saran! There would be no women at
Klima! Of course in insolence I hurled you a bit of perfumed silk, to torment
you in the march and, later, at Klima. Of course I lightly blew you a kiss of
farewell, delighted in my triumph over you! Of course! Of course! Yes, yes, I
mocked you when you were helpless! It gave me much pleasure to do so!”
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 the 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 ple
asing,” 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
Norman, John - Gor 10 - Tribesmen of Gor.txt Page 48