by John Norman
Rask of Treve did not bother to unchain me, but used me as I was, eager and moaning, beneath the moons of Gor.
* * * *
Rask of Treve held my head in his two hands.
It was near dawn.
We lay on the summit of the grassy knoll, wrapped in his cloak. Sensing his permission, I again touched my lips timidly to his. I was turned suddenly, helplessly, on my back, and again, clutching him, tears of pleasure in my eyes, yielded to the joy of him.
We were silent together.
There was dew on the grass, and the cloak in which we lay wrapped was wet on the outside. The light of the beginning of the morning was tender, sparkling on the stalks of the grass, giving the hill of my domination a sweet, soft sheen. I still wore on my left ankle the heavy chain. Elinor Brinton, of Park Avenue, once of Earth, once rich, once spoiled, and cruel and selfish, now only a conquered Gorean slave girl, lay intimately, lovingly, in the arms of her absolute master.
I looked up into the eyes of Rask of Treve. He looked down upon me.
"How is it that I care for you?" he asked.
"I love you," I whispered. "I love you, Master!"
"I despise you," he said.
I smiled at him, tears in my eyes.
"And yet," he said, "from the first time I saw you, in the pens of Ko-ro-ba, I could not forget you, but must have you as mine."
"I am yours," I whispered, "I am yours, Master. Utterly. Unconditionally yours. Your slave. Your helpless slave!"
"From the first time I saw you," said he, "I knew that to me you could not be simply as other slaves."
I clutched him.
He looked down at me, troubled. He touched my head gently, moving back hair from the right side of my face. "Can it be," he asked, "that I, Rask of Treve, care for a mere slave?"
"I love you, Master," I cried, "I love you, I love you!"
He did not let me press my lips to his. He looked down upon me, smiling. "Were you curious," he asked, "why before I never let you serve the men, when the other girls did so."
I smiled up at him. "Yes," I said, "I am curious."
"I was saving you for myself," he said.
I laughed.
"I kept from you as long as I could," he said, "but when you danced, then I knew I must have you."
I kissed him, and kissed him, weeping.
His hands were suddenly hard on my arms, and he forced me back. He grinned. "You danced your insolence," he said. "You danced your pride, your defiance, your contempt and scorn." He looked down at me.
I looked up at him. "I am not now insolent," I said, "Master." I smiled, tears in my eyes. "I am not now proud. I am not now defiant. I am not now contemptuous, nor scornful." I reached up, and he permitted me to kiss him, gently. I lay back. "I have been humbled, well humbled, Master," I smiled.
"What are you now?" he asked.
"Only your slave," I whispered, looking up at him, "only your humbled, helpless slave, Master."
He laughed.
I smiled.
"I have heard," he said, "that there is an insolent female slave in camp, a proud, unconquered girl."
I shook my head. "No longer, Master," I said.
"Did she escape?" he asked.
"No, Master," I smiled, "she did not escape."
"Her name was El-in-or," he said.
"She did not escape," I said.
He smiled.
"No female slave escapes Rask of Treve," I said.
"That is true," he said, the beast. But it was true.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"That same El-in-or," I smiled.
"She did not escape," he said.
"No," I said. I laughed to myself. I had indeed not escaped.
"Whose slave is El-in-or?" he asked.
"Rask of Treve's," I said.
"Does she love?" he asked.
"Yes," I said, "she loves." I tried to lift myself, to touch his lips with mine, but he would not permit me. "She loves desperately and completely," I whispered.
"Whom?" he asked.
I lay my head back, regarding him. I put my head to one side. "Must I speak?" I asked.
"Yes," he said, toying with his finger on my shoulder.
"But must I speak the truth?" I asked.
"Or you will be lashed, and put in the slave box," he said.
I was startled. Yet I knew, suddenly, that, if I lied, he would indeed whip me, and quite possibly place me again in the hated slave box. He was a Gorean master. I was at his mercy. I wondered if I could have felt so much his, so completely surrendered, if he had not possessed this complete power over my life and body. I belonged to him. But I did not want him to whip me, or put me in the slave box. I wanted only, desperately, to please him. And I knew I must, for I was his slave.
The absolute truth must be spoken to a Gorean master.
It is forbidden to a girl to hide her feelings.
I looked up at him.
"It is well known to Rask of Treve," I smiled, "whom it is that the slave girl, El-in-or, loves."
"Speak it," he said.
"She loves her master," I said. "She loves Rask of Treve."
"I am he," he said.
"It is you whom she loves," I said.
"And who are you?" he asked, his finger idly at my hip.
"She!" I cried, suddenly, laughing, with pleasure.
He kissed my throat.
"Has she been conquered?" he asked.
"Yes!" I said. "Yes!" I held him.
He pressed his mouth to my body.
"Conquer me!" I wept. "Again conquer me!"
* * * *
There were the sounds of the early morning in the camp. It was now light. Far off, I could hear Ute summoning her girls. A tarn cried in the compound. I heard the sounds of pans. Some fires were being lit.
"In your dance, before you fell before me in the sand," said Rask of Treve, "I thought I detected in your dance something other than contempt and scorn."
"Yes," I said. I kissed him.
I knew then what I had not understood before, what, for brief moments in the firelight, on the sand before his warriors and their slaves, my body had danced to him, my need, my desire for him, my readiness and my desperate plea for his touch.
For those moments, briefly mingled with the dancing of my pride, my insolence, my contempt and scorn, I had, not fully aware, yet sensing with fear what I did, in the dance of a slave girl, piteously begged for the love of my master.
He had seen fit to touch me, and had summoned me to his tent.
We heard the sounds of the camp.
My left ankle wore the heavy chain. We lay together on the grassy knoll. I held him to me, my cheek at his waist.
His hand lay gently on the right side of my head.
"It is time for you to be about your work, Slave," he said.
"Yes, Master," I whispered.
From his pouch he took forth a key and sprang open the heavy manacle that had clasped, so perfectly confining it, my left ankle.
He put his cloak about my shoulders. "Go to the shed," he said, "and get a work tunic."
I was being dismissed.
I threw the cloak to the grass and knelt at his feet, as though chained. I looked up at him. He was now standing on his feet, and he looked down at me, tenderly.
"I am chained at your feet," I said. It was a saying of a Gorean slave girl, to express her feelings.
"Yes," he said, gently.
"I love you!" I cried. I thrust my head to his feet. I suddenly began to weep. "Do not sell me!" I begged. "Do not sell me! Keep me for yourself! Keep me forever for yourself!" I could not bear the thought of being separated from him. It would have been the torture of the tearing of my heart from my body. The very thought caused in me excruciating suffering. I looked up agonized. I understood then as I had not before what could be the cruelty, the tragedy, of being a female slave. What if I had not pleased him sufficiently? "I will please you more!" I wept. "More! I will give you everythi
ng! Everything! Keep me! Do not sell me! I love you! I love you!" I lifted my wrists to him, as though they wore slave bracelets. I smiled through my tears. "You see," I whispered, "I am chained at your feet."
"Does the proud El-in-or beg to be kept as my slave?" he smiled.
"Yes," I said, "she begs."
"To your work!" he laughed.
I leaped to my feet. He seized me in his arms, and, on the summit of the knoll, held me long, lovingly, in his arms. I looked up, into his eyes. "I love you, Master," I whispered. Then I laughed, and cried out. He, his body tightening, startlingly again mighty with strength, astonishing me, delighting me, lifted me from my feet and lowered me, gently, to the grass, covering me with his cloak. Again he forced me to weep with pleasure.
When I leaped up, laughing, shaking my head and hair, he again offered to place his cloak about my shoulders, that my body might be covered when I went to the shed for the work slaves.
It was much honor that he did me, a mere female slave. How the girls would have cried out with envy to see me, secure in such a cloak, and that, too, of the mighty Rask of Treve!
But I did not wish to wear it. Did I so, it would not have been well concealed that he, my master, had touched with gentleness, and care, a girl who wore a collar. What would his men think? And I wore penalty brands. Surely a girl such as I, after being brutally used, should have been casually dismissed, or beaten and spurned. No, let it not be revealed that he, my master, the mighty Rask of Treve, had been tender with a slave, particularly such a low and miserable slave as I.
I laughed and hurled the cloak back to him. "A steel-collar girl," I said, "should not have so fine a cloak!"
He laughed. "And one with pierced ears!" he said.
"Yes," I laughed, "and one with pierced ears!"
I turned about and sped down the hill to the shed for female work slaves. I was ravenously hungry. I had little doubt that Ute would have saved me a roll from the feeding pan. I loved her! She would also, however, have a full roster of work for me to perform this day. She played no favorites. I was one of her girls. She would treat me no differently than the others. I loved her! And I loved, too, my master.
I turned. He was watching me, from the hill. I smiled, and waved to him. He lifted his hand. I turned again, and ran toward the work shed.
Before I appeared before the shed, I stopped and, secretly, pressed my fingertips to my lips and then to the lettering on my collar, which proclaimed me the slave of a Gorean warrior. I loved him! I laughed. You could read his name, that of my master, on my collar. It was Rask of Treve!
I was not displeased that I had been chained under the moons of Gor. I hurried to the shed.
"I have saved a roll for you," said Ute.
"Thank you, Ute," I said.
"Eat it quickly," she said. "You have much work to do today."
"Yes, Ute," I cried, kissing her, "I will! I will!"
17
Port Kar
The past few weeks had been the most happy and beautiful of my life.
"Hands to the rear. Cross your wrists," said the man.
I did so.
I felt the straps through the heavy wicker. My wrists were pulled back, tight against the wicker, and bound there. I shared the tarn basket, my knees drawn up, with five other girls. We were naked. Our ankles were tied together at the center of the basket.
"They will be in Ar by nightfall," said the man.
My head fell forward on my breast.
Yet I had few regrets, for in the past weeks I had been happy, and I had been alive.
I would never forget the face, nor the touch, of Rask of Treve, nor the long walks, and the speakings, and touchings, beyond the palisade.
"Will they be sold in the Curulean?" asked a nearby warrior.
"Yes," said the man.
Two of the girls, bound helplessly in the basket, squealed with pleasure.
In the beginning, following my total conquest by Rask of Treve, I had been summoned night after night to his tent. I had served him in a delicious variety of ways, to our mutual pleasure, for I had been well trained. I had feared only that my imagination might fall short of the invention of new and exciting ways to please him. Sometimes, to my fury, he had tried to put me from him, and had summoned other women to his tent, but often he would send them away again, and it would be I, El-in-or, who would again be summoned to the tent of scarlet canvas, red-silk lined, on its eight poles.
"Did master summon me?" I would ask.
"El-in-or," he would say, opening his arms, and I would run to him.
And then he no longer summoned other women to his tent. Then it was only I, El-in-or, whom he summoned. And then I, to the anger of some of the other girls, was the acknowledged favorite of Rask of Treve, only an Earth girl, but his preferred slave.
A heavy, long strap thrust through the wicker, behind me and to the left. It was passed several times about my throat and then drawn through the wicker behind me and to my right. I felt my throat jerked back against the wicker by the strap. The same strap, passing in and out of the wicker, similarly fastened the other girls in place.
Inge and Rena were not in the basket with me. They had been given to the huntsmen, Raf and Pron. In the fashion of Gorean huntsmen, both girls had then been freed and given a head start of four Ahn, that they might escape, if it were in their power. After four Ahn, Raf and Pron, running lightly, carrying snare rope, left the camp. The next morning they had returned, leading Inge and Rena. The thighs of both girls had been bloodied. Their wrists were bound behind their backs with snare rope. Their slave leashes, too, were formed of a loop of snare rope.
"I see you have caught two pretty birds," had laughed Rask of Treve.
About the throats of the girls were locked new collars, again of inflexible steel, but now those of huntsmen, vine engraved and bearing the names of their masters.
No scribe it seemed would own Inge, but she would belong to a brutal and powerful huntsman, the handsome Raf of Treve; and Rena's captain of Tyros, he who had contracted for her capture, must now surely be disappointed, and his gold lost, for his lovely prize has been taken by another, at whose feet she kneels joyfully, the handsome and splendid Pron, skilled huntsman of lofty Treve. The next day they left the camp, taking their girls with them. We kissed one another good-bye. "I love you, El-in-or," had said Inge. "I love you, too, Inge," I had wept. "I love you, El-in-or," had said Rena. "I, too, love you," I had said. "I wish you all well."
They then, in the brief green tunics of the slaves of huntsmen, shouldered their burdens and followed their masters through the double gate of the palisade. Their lives would be hard, but I did not think them dismayed, nor unhappy. The huntsman lives a free and open life, as wild and swift, and secret, as the beasts he hunts, and his slaves, whom he insists on accompanying him, must, too, learn the ways of the forests, the flowers and the animals, the leaves and wind. I do not know where Raf and Pron may now be, but I know them well served by two wenches, the slave girl, Inge, and the slave girl, Rena, who were well trained in the pens of Ko-ro-ba, and who love them.
I looked up.
The heavy lid of wicker was now being placed on the tarn basket. Immediately, on the body of the girl across from me, there was a reticulated pattern of shadows.
I could not free myself.
The lid was tied down.
The man who would fly the tarn then went to the kitchen shed, to have his lunch.
I had sought to please Rask of Treve in many ways, and found, to my astonishment, that I was eager to do so, and took great pleasure in doing so. I wanted to be many women to him, and yet the same, always El-in-or. A man is a strange beast I think, for he both desires one woman and many women, and perhaps most he desires one woman who will be to him many women, others, delicious others, and yet always, too, herself. I became many women to Rask of Treve, fresh females, yet again El-in-or. Sometimes I would be a new girl, frightened, young, much fearing him, as Techne might have been; sometimes I
would be as though of the scribes, much as Inge might have been, refined, dismayed at her fate; sometimes as a fine lady, of wealth and position, of high caste, as Rena had been, who now must find herself to be humbled as a mere, rightless, collared wench; and sometimes I would be a lonely slave, or a drunken slave, or a defiant girl, determined to resist, or a cruel red-silk slave, determined herself to conquer, but, in the end, finding herself his conquest, and in all this, always, his El-in-or.
But, too, sometimes Rask of Treve, after touching me, would hold me, and kiss me, for long hours. I did not truly understand him in these hours, but in his arms lay content and fulfilled. And then one night, when the fires were low, for no reason I clearly understood, I begged that I might be permitted to know him. "Speak to me of yourself," he said. I told him of my childhood, my girlhood, and my parents, and the pet my mother had poisoned, and of New York, and my world, and my capture, and my life before it had begun, before he had seen me naked in the cell of the Koroban pens. And, too, in various nights, he had spoken to me of himself, and of the death of his parents, and of his training as a boy in Treve, and his learning of the ways of tarns and of the steel of weapons. He had cared for flowers, but had not dared to reveal this. It seemed so strange, he, such a man, caring for flowers. I kissed him. But I feared, that he had told me this. I do not think there was another to whom he had ever spoken this small and delicate thing.
We had begun to take long walks beyond the palisade, hand in hand. We had much spoken, and much loved, and much spoken. It was almost as though I might not have been only another slave, merely another girl in his collar.
It was then that I had begun to fear that he would sell me.
I wanted to be special to him, for I loved him so deeply, so helplessly, but I feared, too, to become so.
I do not think he feared El-in-or, for she was only a slave at his bidding.
I think, rather, he feared himself, and unusual emotions, strange, unaccustomed emotions, frightening him, which might have begun to well within him.
I scarcely dared whisper to myself what might be the nature of those emotions.
I think he feared he might begin to care for a girl, who was only a slave.