by John Norman
“I am a simple warrior,” I said. “I have never pretended to cultivate the subtleties of diplomacy nor to comprehend the wisdoms of politics.”
“I fear,” said Lord Nishida, “that you will never sit upon the mat of the shogun nor upon the throne of the Ubar.”
“Not every man desires such things,” I said.
“I see,” said Lord Nishida. “Your business is a less ambitious, simpler one. It would be with the blade, and little more. The vocation of such as you is circumscribed narrowly, confined, so to speak, to a limited board.”
“Perhaps,” I said.
“Having to do with the kaissa of blood, the dark game.”
“If you wish,” I said.
The codes, of course, did not see things in this fashion. The board was set indeed, but amongst cities, always on a world. Its width was the width of worlds. The number and values of the pieces was uncertain, and the rules subject to convenient revision, or desuetude.
It is useful that the foe has rules. This puts him at your mercy.
Yet there was a hunt, a sport involved. All who have carried weapons are aware of this. Surely Lord Nishida was apprised of, and not unfamiliar with, scarlet allurements.
The fires of life burn brightly at the edge of death.
Few are the states which have not been born in blood.
“Lord Okimoto,” said Lord Nishida, “desires that you accept our friend, Rutilius, of Ar, in the cavalry.”
“I decline,” I said.
“It is the wish of Lord Okimoto,” said Lord Nishida.
“I do not accept him,” I said.
“Lord Okimoto is cousin to the shogun,” said Lord Nishida.
“I do not accept him,” I said.
I then drew my sword, and, smoothly, like the lifted head of an ost, so, too, did the blade of Seremides, as noiselessly as the menace of that venomous creature, leave its sheath.
“Hold!” said Lord Nishida. “He has killed six men.”
“Let him try a seventh,” I said.
“No,” said Lord Nishida, “whatever the outcome seven men are lost.”
I half sheathed my blade, watching Seremides from the side. He smiled, but did not move. He had not taken the bait. He had more in mind, I gathered, than another kill. Too, he understood the game. Lord Nishida smiled, too. He, too, understood what had occurred. Perhaps he thought that I was foolish to utilize so transparent a lure, but I had learned what I wanted. I had not expected Seremides to attack, but I had learned what I wanted, that he knew the game, that he was no fool, and that he would be extremely dangerous, patient and dangerous, not only if he were interested in me, but dangerous, too, to whoever or whatever might brook his ambition or projects. It seemed, given his rage and disappointment over the fruitlessness of our nocturnal interview, and the consequent collapse of his hope to secure a fugitive Talena, and thereby obtain both riches and a pardon, that he had had to reconcile himself to flight from known Gor and had accordingly sought both fee and refuge with the Pani. I hoped that Lords Okimoto and Nishida understood the nature of their new sword. I feared they did not.
“He is not with the cavalry,” I said.
“Very well,” said Lord Nishida. “His place then will be with the guard of Lord Okimoto.”
“He will then have the ear of Lord Okimoto,” I said.
“Yes,” said Lord Nishida.
Chapter Forty-Four
i use a slave; i walk the deck alone; the sea is beautiful; the ship proceeds apace
“Is Master troubled?” asked Cecily.
“Do not concern yourself,” I said.
“Master conceals his thoughts from his girl,” she said.
“Curiosity,” I said, “is not becoming in a kajira.”
“The slave is wholly the master’s,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “Every corpuscle, every hair, every trembling and shiver, every movement and expression, every feeling, every thought.”
“Might I not conceal a thought?” she said.
“Certainly,” I said, “as you might conceal a candy, but the thought is still his.”
“Everything in me is his,” she said.
“Everything,” I said.
“But I want to give my thoughts to my master,” she said. “I want him to know them. I want to offer them to him!”
“Then do so,” I said.
“But what if he rejects them?” she said.
“Then they are rejected,” I said.
“Of course,” she whispered. “We are slaves.”
One does not disparage a woman for her thriving in bondage, no more than one might denounce the tides, sunlight, wind, and rain, no more than one might denounce a flower for its blossoming, for the color, brightness, delicacy, and radiance of its petals.
No woman who wants a collar should be deprived of one.
Surely it is permissible for the slave to be herself.
By what authority is she to be denied this gift?
Let she who desires to submit submit.
Accept her submission.
She is then yours.
Let her beg to kiss the feet of her master, and let her rejoice, should she be given permission to do so.
Let her welcome the collar which encircles her neck, the thongs which, as she kneels with her head to the floor, lash her wrists behind her back.
On Gor such women are not castigated but coveted. They are not disparaged but sought. They adorn sales platforms as objects of value. They are bought and sold, bartered for, exchanged, traded about, and so on. Society is unwilling to do without them.
Are they not commodities of high regard, goods of high esteem?
They obey, and kneel, and serve, and kiss, and enrich a world.
They are beautiful, desirable, exquisite, and owned.
Surely the female slave is one of the loveliest and most valuable ingredients in a high culture.
Their presence, briefly and brightly tunicked, adds delight and charm to the markets, parks, and streets of a city, even to the remoter byways of rural areas.
The world is a thousand times richer and deeper for their existence.
And how pathetic and impoverished would be a puritanical and dictatorial culture, should any exist, which would permit them no place, which would deny them their most profound fulfillments.
I recalled Cecily, from when she had been fresh from Earth. How she had striven and struggled against the insistent whispers of her heart, as she had, even on Earth, for years, trying to deny her deepest needs. Yet, in a way, even on Earth, how clearly she had understood such things, even then, that she was, wanted to be, and should be a man’s property, the abject, yielding, humbled slave of a powerful male, and yet, obedient to her background, education, training, and conditioning, how desperately she had struggled against such insights and truths, how frantically she had fought against them.
Indeed, reacting against the acute ambivalences she had felt concerning her own sexuality and men, products of the war between her genetic nature and needs and the provisional idiosyncratic enculturation prescribed by her current milieu, and hysterically attempting to counter the insistent claimancies of her dreams and fantasies, she had, on Earth, habitually, as though in a compensatory vengeance for her own unhappiness and bitter frustrations, delighted herself with leading on, and tormenting, men and boys, gratifying herself by the misery she could induce in culturally confused weaklings eager to impress, placate, and please her. Her greatest pleasure seemed to be flirting with, arousing, and then frustrating males, none of whom would take her in hand, strip her, and put her to their feet, teaching her she was a female.
Then, Priest-Kings, for their own purposes, had brought her to the Prison Moon. There, in fear of her life, in the midst of a Kur raid, she had proclaimed herself slave. The slave, of course, cannot unsay such words, for she is then a slave. At that moment, whether she had understood it or not, she had become a slave. Later, on a far world, far beyond the Prison Moon, a Steel Wo
rld, as there were slavers there, and her attractions warranted this, she had been simply taken in hand, and branded and collared, routinely so, they not even understanding at that time that she was already a slave, not that that would have spared her the brand and collar, for such details are in order, and prescribed by merchant law. It had been done without thought, with indifferent and impersonal efficiency, precisely as it would have been done to any similar female in such circumstances. Indeed, had she not already been a slave, she would then, as thousands of other women, not self-proclaimed slaves, have become a slave. Branded and collared, of course, she is clearly identified, indisputably, publicly and legally, as what she is, a slave. And so what she was, from that time forth, was clearly displayed, for all to see.
She was marked and collared.
No longer would she frustrate men.
Her status and condition were now clear.
She was a female slave.
“Ohh,” she said softly, suddenly.
It is pleasant to have a slave in one’s arms.
She gasped. “You will give me no choice, will you, Master?” she said.
“No,” I said. “You are not a free woman. You are a slave. You will be done with as a master pleases.”
“I am content,” she whispered.
“Would you have it another way?” I asked.
“No, my Master,” she said. “No.”
I looked down on her. “The collar is lovely on your neck,” I said.
“It is yours,” she said.
“And so, too, is its occupant,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“Perhaps you should remove it,” I said.
“I cannot, Master,” she said. “I am a slave. It is locked on my neck.”
It was late, past the eighteenth Ahn.
The small, glass-enclosed tharlarion-oil lamp, moving with the motion of the ship, provided a dim illumination in the cabin.
“Oh,” said the slave, suddenly. “Oh!”
On a peg to the side hung the whip. I had seen to it that she had well pressed her lips to it.
“Does it amuse you to have me so in your arms?” she asked.
“How?” I asked.
“Helpless, and needful,” she said, “begging, if you wish.”
“It pleases me,” I said.
“We are so at the mercy of our masters,” she whispered.
“Men will have it so,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“I love it,” she whispered. “I love it!”
“This world,” she said, “is a man’s world.”
“There are free women,” I said.
“Even they must know,” she said, “if they are not unutterably stupid, that their privileges and freedoms are a gift of men, perhaps temporarily accorded to them, revocable at will.”
“Perhaps,” I said.
“I do not envy them their freedom,” she said.
“They may envy you your collar,” I said.
“They may not have it,” she whispered.
“Then perhaps another,” I said.
“Each of them, somewhere,” she said, “has her master.”
“Perhaps,” I said.
“Let us hope they meet,” she said.
“I suppose you are right,” I said.
“Master?” she said.
“That this world, Gor, is a man’s world,” I said.
“I would not have it otherwise,” she said.
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Because,” she said, “I am a woman.”
“And a slave,” I said.
“We are all slaves,” she said. “We all hope to meet our masters.”
“Perhaps,” I said.
“Which of us does not wish to be sold off a block,” she said, “into the arms of a master?”
“Perhaps you would like to choose the master,” I said.
“Of course!” she laughed.
“But it is you who are chosen, you who are sold,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she whispered.
I then reminded her of her vulnerability and bondage.
How pleasantly, in her collar, and how helplessly, unable to help herself, for I had denied her this option, she writhed, thrashed, and begged.
Slaves should be perfectly mastered, but not abused. They are lovely creatures to be owned and ruled, and worked, and put to the fullest of female uses, but are not to be treated with cruelty nor subjected, no more than any other animal one might own, to gratuitous pain. That is pointless, counterproductive, and irrational. The slave must strive to her utmost to be a good slave, to be pleasing, fully, to her master, but if she is honestly and sincerely, fervently and deferentially, doing her best, for what more could one ask? Relish her, and, if you wish, grant her a kind word, and, should it be your pleasure, a caress. From the body and mind of your slave extract the most exquisite and inordinate pleasures that a human male can know, the mastery of a female of his species.
Keep her in her collar, and enjoy her.
The finest of slaves knows the whip exists and that it will be used on her promptly if she is not pleasing, and that doubtless flavors the relationship, but, too, fear of the whip is much less likely to be her motivation than her desire to please her master. She is grateful to have a master, and grateful that he has seen fit to own and fulfill her.
When she had fallen asleep I covered her carefully with the blankets, arranging them about her, in the berth. I then dressed, and drew my sea cloak about me, left the cabin, ascended the stairs in the companionway, and went to the main deck, and thence to the stem castle. I stood there for a long time, watching the sea. The light of the three moons, visible together this night, shimmered on the water. I could occasionally hear the snap of the canvas of the three large, square sails, adjusting to the wind, and the creak of the yards from which they were suspended.
Our course, as I determined from the stars, would continue to take us south of Cos, and north of Tyros. Beyond these island ubarates would be some small, farther islands. It was not clear what might lie beyond those tiny islands.
Beyond them nothing was charted.
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-f6e815-8d3f-454d-0caf-4551-b5fa-eb3ad8
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Document creation date: 14.10.2012
Created using: calibre 0.9.2, Fiction Book Designer, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
John Norman
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