Tribesmen of Gor

by Norman, John;

  The feet of the women had been bound in leather. They stood ankle deep in the sand. A little later, before the march would begin, shortly now, they would have sheets thrown over them, which sheets would cover them to the calves. The sheet is held in place with a piece of cord, looped twice about the neck and tied snugly. In this fashion the eyes of the slave are protected from the glare, and her body from the sun. This is inferior, of course, to moving a woman in a sheltered slave wagon or in a kurdah.

  The sheets, of course, had not yet been placed.

  The girls stood straight, proud under the gaze of a warrior. “Tal, Master,” said many of them, as I rode slowly by. “Buy me in Tor, Master,” called another. One girl, in the fourth group, pressed out from the others, her left wrist behind her, held by the chain. She pressed her face against the left forequarter of my kaiila and, turning, looked up at me, her face tear-stained. It was Tafa. I recalled her from the dungeon in what had been the kasbah of Ibn Saran, the morning before I had begun the march to Klima. She was a good wench. I had also made use of her a few times in the greater kasbah, after our victory, before the organization of the march to Tor. She writhed well in chains. She longed to be a love slave. I wished her good fortune in her sale. Might she come, sooner or later, into the bracelets of a good master. I moved the kaiila on. Zina, who had been taken with Tafa in a caravan raid by Hassan, the bandit, had not been at the two kasbahs in the desert. We did not know to whom she had been sold. We did not know at whose feet she knelt.

  Toward the beginning of the fourth group I saw another girl I remembered. She turned away, trying to hide her face. I stopped the kaiila. Sensing that I had stopped, she fell to her knees and faced me, her head down. “Forgive me, Master,” she whispered. “Look at me, Slave Girl,” I told her. She looked up, frightened. It was Zaya, the red-haired girl, who had served sugars with the black wine in the palace of Suleiman Pasha. She had testified against me at Nine Wells.

  “Do you recall,” I asked, “who it was who struck Suleiman Pasha?”

  To be sure, I had asked her this question before, more than once, and had asked it, too, more than once, of another.

  While I had pleasured myself with another woman, Tafa, I had occasionally had two slaves summoned that they might, bangled, and collared, and otherwise nude, attend on us, with black wine, sugars, fruits, nuts, and various sweets.

  “Hamid!” she wept. “Hamid, lieutenant to Shakar, captain of the Aretai!”

  Zaya had been one of those slaves.

  “Your memory has improved,” I congratulated her. From my saddlebags I threw her a candy.

  “Are you not angry with me, Master?” she asked. “No,” I said. She thrust the candy in her mouth. I moved the kaiila on.

  Hamid was not chained with the male prisoners. He had been taken to a remote Aretai oasis. There, in this exile, he would be a slave.

  In the second group from the front I passed two women I had earlier met, Lana, the tall girl, who had been the seraglio mistress in the kasbah of Tarna, and the other girl, who had served with her, in charge of the oils of the bath. They stood proudly, as chained slave girls. Their utility in the seraglio terminated by myself and Hassan, Tarna had, in fury, sent them to the lowest levels of her kasbah, to serve there as wench sport for her soldiers. Little did they know but their proud mistress, whom they had never seen, had recently, as they had, now, too, a rightless slave girl, served men, she herself richly yielding rude soldiers delicious wench sport.

  “Tal, Master,” they said to me.

  “Tal, Slave Girls,” I said to them.

  I moved the kaiila on. The male slaves of the seraglio had been freed. They were to be given money and safe conduct to Tor. They, though afoot, joined the march. One exception had Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars, made. “That one,” he had said, sitting in court, in the audience chamber of what had been the kasbah of Ibn Saran, indicating the silken fellow who had worn the ruby necklace, who had tried to betray us to the guards of Tarna, “that one sell in Tor—sell him to a woman.” The fellow had been dragged away. He was with the male slaves toward the rear of the column; he alone among them was not stripped; he wore his seraglio silk, the ruby necklace; they did not look pleasantly upon him.

  At the first group of fifty girls, nude, waiting in wrist coffle, I stopped. She was the twenty-third girl from the first girl on the line.

  Her left wrist behind her, held by the chain to her sisters in bondage, she stepped forth. She put her head to my stirrup, not looking up. I felt her press her lips deeply, fervently, to my boot.

  She looked up then, tears in her eyes.

  “My thanks,” she whispered, “Master.”

  “You are in the first group, twenty-third girl,” I said. “I hear among the men that you are quite good.”

  “A girl is grateful,” she said, “if men should find her pleasing.”

  I made as though to ride from her. Her small right hand was at the stirrup. Her left hand was behind her, locked in its bracelet.

  “I am not the same as a man,” she said, looking up.

  “Obviously,” I said, looking on her stripped slave beauty.

  “I am different,” she said. She looked up. “I love being different,” she whispered.

  I nodded.

  “I love men,” she said. “They are so strong, so magnificent. I love being commanded by them. I love obeying them. I love knowing that if I displease them in the slightest, I will be whipped or slain. I had not known such feelings were possible.”

  I regarded the girl in her rapture. How thrilled she was to discover the deliciousness of her own domination by men. Women desire male domination. Not receiving it they become petty, frustrated, competitive, hostile, and vicious, a function of this basic need having failed to be satisfied. The institution of female slavery in a society provides a vehicle for the expression and satisfaction of this basic need. The slave girl, of course, is completely and totally at the mercy of men. She is the most dominated of women. Further, her domination is supported by her civilization; it is legally binding and culturally sanctioned; it is complete; she sees it in the eyes of all who look upon her; it is complete; she is slave.

  “I love being a slave,” said the girl, looking up at me.

  “Kneel,” I told her.

  “Yes, Master,” she said. She knelt. I lifted the single rein of the kaiila. I set my heels to touch its flanks, to move ahead in the line of march.

  “Master,” said the girl.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “May I speak?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Will I be sold in Tor,” she asked.

  “Yes,” I told her. “You will be sold nude in Tor, from a slave block.”

  “To whom will I be sold?” she asked.

  “A master,” I said. Then I kicked the kaiila in the flanks and moved ahead. The leather at the pommel of my saddle grew taut as I pulled with me, stumbling, the girl I had tethered there. Behind me, kneeling in the sand, in wrist coffle, fastened to others, on each side of her, I left a nameless slave beauty, who once had been Tarna.

  It would be time enough in Tor, for her to have a name. She would receive it from her master. It would be whatever he wished. It is useful for a slave to have a name. It makes it easier to summon and command her.

  I looked at the girl tethered to my saddle. Of all the slave girls about, save one in a white kurdah, near the head of the march, she was the only one who was clothed. Her neck was encircled by a band of steel, the slave collar. It was no longer that of Ibn Saran; it wore the name of Hakim of Tor. That was who the girl belonged to. Tight leather bound her wrists; her tether led to my saddle. The garment she wore was incredibly brief, a rag; it was of brown rep-cloth, stained with grease and dirt; I had found it in the kitchens of Ibn Saran; it had been used in the cleaning of pans; I had ripped it at the neck; I had torn it, lengthily, on the left side, to reveal the marvelous curve from her left breast to her left hip; let men look upon her beauty;
it would be as public as I cared to make it, for she was my slave.

  After she had falsely testified against me at Nine Wells, she had smiled, slyly, in triumph, pleased with her work, pleased that I would be sent to the brine pits of Klima; I had escaped from Nine Wells, but, recaptured, was enchained, destined for Klima; I well recalled her elation, her contempt, her scorn, as she had looked down upon me, helpless in the chain; she had flung me a token, something by which to remember her, a bit of slave silk, redolent with slave perfume; she had blown me a kiss, smiling, before being ordered back to her barred alcove by the slave master who at that time was supervising her.

  I would not forget pretty Vella. Now I owned her. She had begged me to forgive her, as though a word from me would make all things right. When she had been flung to the feet of Hakim of Tor, she had looked up, in terror, then joy, seeing then who was Hakim of Tor, the master to whom I had consigned her, myself.

  “Do not rise, Slave Girl,” I told her.

  “Am I forgiven, Tarl?” she had begged. “Am I forgiven?”

  “Fetch the whip,” I told her.

  I saw T’Zshal, who was riding past, leading his thousand lances. He reined in, and his men behind him.

  “We are returning to Klima,” he said.

  “But you have kaiila,” I said.

  “We are slaves of the salt, slaves of the desert,” he said. “We return to Klima.”

  “The Salt Ubar is gone,” I said.

  “We will negotiate with local pashas and regulate the desert, and discuss the prices of the varieties of salt,” said T’Zshal.

  “The price of salt will soon rise,” I suggested.

  “It is not impossible,” said T’Zshal.

  I wondered if it were wise to have armed the men of Klima and put them in the saddles of kaiila. They were not typical men. There was none there who had not survived the march to Klima.

  “Should you ever need aid,” said T’Zshal, “send word to Klima. The slaves of the salt will ride.”

  “My thanks,” I said. They would be fierce allies. They were desperate and mighty men. Each there had made the march to Klima. “Things, now,” I said, “I conjecture, will change at Klima.” I recalled that Hassan had warned me against taking a bit of silk, perfumed, into Klima. I had hidden it in the crusts. “Men would kill you for it,” he had said.

  T’Zshal looked about himself. Slave girls, in coffle, shrank back.

  “We will need taverns, cafes, at Klima,” he said. “The men have been too long without recreation.”

  “With the control of much salt,” I said, “you may have much what you wish.”

  “We shall confederate the salt districts,” said T’Zshal.

  “You are indeed ambitious,” I said. T’Zshal, I saw, was a leader. Haroun, sitting in court, in what had been the audience room of the kasbah of Ibn Saran, had invited T’Zshal, and his lances, to join his service. T’Zshal, and the others, had refused. “We will return to Klima,” said he, “Master.” T’Zshal, I knew, would serve under no man. “I would rather be first at Klima than second in Tor,” he had said. He was a slave, true, but of no man, only of the salt, and the desert.

  “I wish you well,” said T’Zshal.

  “I wish you well,” I said.

  His kaiila, with a scattering of sand, sped from me. He was followed by a thousand riders.

  I rode, slowly, toward the head of the columns, across the desert between the two kasbahs.

  Some two hundred yards from the head of the column, I passed the small Abdul, who had been a water carrier in Tor, and an agent of Ibn Saran. It was not impossible, through his work with Ibn Saran, that he knew matters of importance pertaining to the wars of Priest-Kings and Kurii. Two chains ran to his metal collar, on opposite sides, leading, respectively, to the stirrup of a mounted rider on each side of him. His hands were manacled to a loop of chain about his waist. He did not raise his head. He feared to look me in the face. “Let him be sent to Tor,” I had suggested. “I will have agents of Samos, of Port Kar, sent to that city.” “It will be done,” had said Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars. The agents of Samos have interesting techniques of interrogation. I had no doubt that they would learn all that small Abdul had to tell them. After that, no longer of use to the agents of Priest-Kings, he could be sold south, into the Tahari.

  Some hundred yards from the head of the column, I passed a large white kurdah, on a large, black kaiila. I did not brush aside the curtain. It did not contain a girl I owned. It contained a slave girl, an exquisitely feminine girl, blond-haired and blue-eyed; she was richly veiled and bejeweled; it was said she was the preferred slave of the great Haroun himself, high Pasha of the Kavars; it was said her name was Alyena; she was of high station; she wore silks, and veils, and jewels; but the collar on her throat was of steel.

  In what had been the kasbah of Ibn Saran she had been thrown naked to the foot of the dais on which, cross-legged, sat the great Haroun himself. She had not dared to raise her head. “I will keep this slave,” he had said. She had been dragged away, weeping. “I am the slave of Hassan,” she had wept. “I love only him!” That night, sent to his quarters, she had knelt before her veiled master.

  “Do you love another, Girl?” he had asked, sternly.

  “Yes,” she said, “Master. Forgive me. Slay me, if you must.”

  “And who is he?” asked her veiled master.

  “Hassan,” she wept. “Hassan, the bandit.”

  “A most splendid fellow,” said her master.

  The girl looked up, startled. His veil was about his shoulders.

  “Hassan!” she wept. “Hassan!” She threw herself to his feet, covering them with the kisses of a slave girl.

  When she looked up, he commanded her to the couch. She ran eagerly to it, tearing the slave silks with which she had been adorned from her body, and knelt upon it, small, her head down, awaiting her master. He joined her, discarding his robes. Then he seized her by the hair and pulled her head up and flung her on her back to the depth of the luscious silk, and then, with the cruel exploitativeness of the Tahari master, he claimed her—as his own.

  Toward morning he reminded her that she must be whipped three times. First, she had called out his name at Red Rock, among the flames, during the raid of Tarna’s men; secondly, she had fled from his riders, to return to Red Rock, to seek him out, when she had been captured; third, she had, that very evening, upon discovering who might be her master, cried out his name, “Hassan! Hassan!”

  “Whip me, Master,” she said, lying in his arms. “I love you.”

  “Am I forgiven, Tarl?” Vella had begged. “Am I forgiven?”

  “Fetch the whip,” I had told her.

  She looked at me, dumbfounded. Women of Earth are always forgiven. They are never punished, no matter what they do. They, of course, are not slave girls. They lack the legalities, and the collar.

  “You cannot be serious,” she said.

  “Did I not speak of this to you when I first bound you as a slave girl?” I asked. I referred to our conversation in her quarters, when I had first surprised and captured her, making her mine.

  “I asked when you would whip me,” she said, numbly. “You responded, when it was to your convenience.” She looked at me, miserably.

  “It is now convenient,” I told her.

  She sprang wildly to her feet. “I hate you!” she cried. “I hate you!”

  Her small fists were clenched. She was, wild with rage, quite beautiful in the brief, stained rag I had given her to wear.

  “I hate you!” she cried. “I hate all of you!” she cried, turning to look at the many warriors in the great room. “I hate men!” she cried. She was barefoot on the tiles. She was the only woman in the room, and she was slave. “I hate all men!” she cried. “I hate them! I hate them!” She spun to face me. “And I hate Priest-Kings, too!” she cried. “I hate you all!”

  No one responded to her, but gazed impassively upon her.

  “I betrayed
Priest-Kings!” she cried. “Yes! I served Kurii! Yes! And I am glad I did, glad! Yes, glad! Glad! Glad!” Her eyes blazed. “Punish me!” she demanded.

  “You are not to be punished because you betrayed Priest-Kings,” I told her.

  “You left me in a paga tavern in Lydius,” she cried out, “a chained paga slave!”

  “You chose to flee the Sardar,” I told her. “It was a brave act. It did not turn out well for you. You fell slave. On Gor, as not on Earth, a girl bears the consequences of her actions.”

  “You could have purchased me!” she cried.

  “Yes,” I said, “you were within my means.”

  “But you did not do so!” she cried.

  “It did seem convenient to me, at that time,” I said, “to purchase you, to keep you as a slave.”

  “As a slave!” she cried. “You should have freed me!”

  “As I recall,” I said, “you begged to be freed.”

  “Yes!” she cried.

  The men in the room looked at one another.

  “I had not known, until that time,” I said, “that you were, in the belly of you, a true slave girl.”

  She looked at me, angrily. She turned red.

  On Gor it is said that only a true slave begs to be freed. That act, incontrovertibly, on Gor, more deeply than a brand and a collar, marks the individual as a true slave. Who but such a true slave would beg to be freed? Such individuals, of course, are never freed, but, commonly, their nature now being made undeniably clear, are put under heavier restraints and treated more harshly. When Talena, the daughter of Marlenus of Ar, Ubar of Ar, had, in a missive to him, begged her freedom, he had, on his sword and on the medallion of Ar, sworn against her the oath of disownment. As a consequence, she was no longer of high birth, no longer his daughter. I had had Samos free her and transmit her to Ar. There she lived, free but of no status; she was no longer recognized, in the sight of its Home Stone, as a citizen of Ar; she had not even the collar of a slave girl for her identity; she was kept sequestered by Marlenus in the central cylinder, that his shame not be publicly displayed upon the high bridges of the city.