by John Norman
I smiled inwardly. To me, of course, the slave before me was the most beautiful woman on all Gor. I was sufficiently objective, of course, to recognize that in the common appraisals of slave flesh, and its gradings, and in the prices commonly commanded by such flesh in the markets, she would count as only being somewhat above average. That would doubtless be hard for her to accept, but it was true. On the other hand, that she, who was, after all, exquisite, was subjected to such casual negligence in the streets was largely of my doing. I had sent men ahead of her, requesting that she be spurned and ignored, that as a favor to Jason of Victoria, dozens of men, my friends and fellow citizens of Victoria, good-naturedly cooperated in this ruse. In the streets it was the merry jest of the day.
“No one wanted me,” she said. “And I grew ever more desperate. I knelt before men. I licked at their feet. I bit at their tunics. I groveled before them on my belly, begging them to consent to touch me. But for my troubles I was only ignored, or kicked and thrust aside. Then I would feel the leash stinging against the back of my legs and my keeper would order me up, and ahead, to try harder, warning me of the displeasure of my master, should I return with an empty coin box. I grew ever more frantic. Ahn passed. Dusk came. No men would touch me. Then it grew dark. Still no man would touch me. They would not even strip me, under a street lamp, to see if I might be of interest to them. Then it was time to be returned to the house. I began to fear for my very life.”
I continued to regard her. The slave was to be permitted to continue speaking.
“Then,” she said, “late at night, on the Street of the Writhing Slave, I encountered one whom I had once known on Earth, one once called Jason Marshall. The irony of it! I scorned him. I held him in contempt. I despised him as a weakling from Earth, so different from the masters of women, from men such as you, my Master, but now I must needs try to please him, and as a slave and Coin Girl! I opened my tunic to him. I knelt before him. I bit at his tunic. I licked and kissed, piteously and submissively, at his feet and legs. I begged him to be interested in me. I pleaded. I groveled. I did all that I could before him, as a piteous and lascivious slave, one begging his least touch, one helplessly his, should he but pay his coin, only a girl at his feet, one begging to be had, one supplicating her rape on the stones of the street. He, however, of course, a true man of Earth, extending me much respect, and according me courtesy and gentleness, declined to rescue me from my plight. I was to be returned to a stern Gorean master as a failed slave. But even he seemed soon to understand the consequences to a girl of that. He then was ready to place, in effect, as a gift, a coin in my box. My keeper, of course, would have none of that. There must be no payment without services rendered. Further, it was made clear to him, and to me, that my body would be physically examined for the explicit signs of his victory. He must then have me, truly. To this he reluctantly consented.”
She put her head down. I did not hurry her. I listened to the sound of the torches in the hall. Then, with a small sound of bells, those on her close-fitting collar, she lifted her head.
“I expected to be handled as though by a weakling of Earth,” she said. “But I was not,” she said. “Instead I found myself in the arms of a man of Gor, for that was what he had become. Too, though he knew that I had once been of Earth, he did not handle me as a woman of Earth, with respect and dignity, as I expected, but rather as what I now am, a Gorean slut, an imbonded, rightless slave. I could not believe it.” She put her head down. She shuddered. “I was used with the full authority of the Gorean master,” she said.
Again I did not hurry her. Two or three Ehn passed, I think, before she again lifted her head. She was trembling. There were tears in her eyes. “You see, my Master,” she said, “I had loved him, even on Earth, but, too, I had despised him, for he was too weak to satisfy my needs. On Gor, too, he had never had me, even though we had shared a domicile. I had never permitted it.” She straightened her back, smiling. “How amusing that must sound to you. ‘I had not permitted it.’ I, a natural slave, recognized by any slaver as such, had not permitted my rape! But remember, Master, that I was not then legally imbonded. How confused, and quaint and tragic, is a natural slave who has not yet been put in her collar!”
She paused and then, again, after a time, began to speak. “Later,” she said, “courting slavery, for which I yearned in my heart, I went to the tavern of Hibron in Victoria, called the Pirate’s Chain. I fell in there with one called Kliomenes, who was a lieutenant to the pirate Policrates. He got me drunk. Then, my senses reeling, I found myself, to the laughter of men and slaves, as I tried futilely to resist, being stripped and bound. I was carried to his galley. I was thrown to its deck, near the foot of the steps leading up to the height of the stem castle. My feet were tied to one ring and my neck to another. I lay there, cold and helpless, sick, exposed to their rude examinations. I could not even roll from where they had seen fit to put me. The oars were put outboard. I was taken to the holding of Policrates. There I was made a slave. There, at last, I was put in a proper collar.”
“When the holding of Policrates fell, his goods were divided among the victors. In the distribution of the goods I came to your house. It seems that at least a portion of your income is derived from the earnings of Coin Girls. In any event yesterday, I found myself put into the streets, under a keeper’s watch, to earn coins for you, my Master. It was there that I met he whom I had loved and despised, Jason of Victoria. Consider my feelings, Master. He had never had me, and now he must have me! Too, I was completely at his mercy as an exposed slave. I loved him. I was prepared to yield to him, as a woman of Earth. I was certain of his tenderness, his gentleness, his solicitude. But what did I discover! What was done to me! Conceive of my feelings! He handled and treated me as a slave girl, one who might be any slave!” She put down her head, her face in her hands, weeping.
“Six times he had me,” she wept, “six times, and he was merciless with me, casual and merciless! Then, when he was finished with me, he sent me from him, banishing me from his sight, our dealings done, the coins in the box on my neck.” She wiped her eyes, and then put her hands, palms down, on her thighs. Still she did not lift her head. I listened to the crackle of the torches.
“I could not believe what had occurred,” she said. “I had thought that I might be everything to him, and that he would be grateful for my least smile, but I discovered that I was nothing to him, and that he took merely for granted the most intimate services that I could conceive of delivering to him, they being no more than his due from a rented girl. Then, as though I might be a total stranger, he sent me from him.” She threw back her head, and sobbed. Then she again put her head down.
“Forgive me my feelings and emotions, my Master,” she whispered, “but there is more in this than you can know. There is in this more than you have been told. But how can I, a slave, stripped and helpless before you, conceal these truths? Doubtless my very body speaks them.” There was much in what she suggested. It is extremely difficult for a woman naked and kneeling before a man to lie. Body-language cues make this almost impossible. “Let me therefore explicitly speak these truths,” she said, “and hope that thereby my life may be preserved.”
I took the whip from where it hung by its handle loop on the arm of the curule chair and placed it, its blades folded back against its handle, across my lap.
She raised her head, looking at the whip. She trembled. “Must I speak?” she asked.
She saw my grip tighten on the whip.
“Of course I must speak!” she said. “Forgive me, Master.” She looked down. “I submitted to him,” she whispered, suddenly. “I submitted to Jason of Victoria. I yielded to him. I could not help myself!”
I smiled and she, looking up, saw me smile. She feared then that I might have misunderstood her. “No, my Master,” she said, “I do not mean merely that I submitted to him as must any slave to any man to whom her master gives or rents her.” She saw that I still smiled. “No, my Master,” she whis
pered, “I do not mean either merely that he induced in me the spasm submissions of the bond girl, or that he enforced upon me the fullness of the humiliating, ecstatic slave orgasms, so far beyond anything attainable by the free woman, to which any free man may subject the slave in his arms. No, rather I mean something quite different. I mean that I yielded to him as I had never before yielded to any man, save yourself, my Master. As I had yielded to you, so, too, did he make me yield to him.”
I stood up, as though angry. With the whip I gestured her to her belly on the soft, deeply piled carpet. She trembled, lying transversely on the carpeting near the edge of the dais, before the curule chair, her hands beside her head, her fingers clutching at the piling. “He conquered me, fully, and as a slave,” she said. “I confess it!” I examined her form dispassionately, and found it not displeasing. I then, with deft touches of the whip, indicated that she should turn to her back and lie in a certain position. With the sound of slave bells she did so. She then lay on her back, before me. Her body and left leg lay on the dais. Her right leg, and her right arm and hand, were on the broad stair, leading to the height of the dais. Her hands were below her hips, both that to her left, and right, which was on the stair. The palms of both hands were turned upwards, exposed to me.
“Yes,” she wept, “he conquered me! Forgive me, Master! I am only a female, and a weak slave!”
I examined her beauty. It was that of a slave. It was ravishing. ‘How fortunate is this fellow, Jason of Victoria,’ I thought to myself, smiling inwardly, ‘to have conquered himself such a prize.’ Some men conquer themselves. Others conquer women.
“I love you, Master,” she said. “I love you. I love you!” She lifted her belled wrists, her small hands, supplicatingly, piteously extended to me. “Forgive me, my Master,” she said. “Do not kill me. I do not wish to die. Let me placate you! Let me placate you!”
Things had preceded precisely as I had planned. Given sufficient time, and the obligation to speak, through natural associations and continuities she had confessed her love for Jason of Victoria to me. Let her now be terrified of the wrath of her Gorean master.
I cast aside the whip and, with two hands, seizing her by the waist, I lifted her a foot from the dais; she was bent backwards in my hands, her head and feet down. “Forgive me, my Master!” she begged. Then I threw her back upon the dais. She pulled her legs up, frightened, and turned to the side.
“Please do not kill me, Master,” she begged. I then, with two hands, seized her ankles and threw them widely apart, with a jangle of slave bells. I then ruthlessly had her. Later, I had her again, more methodically, her head hanging down, over the dais, on the broad stair leading to its height. Then, later, I pulled her supine to the height of the dais, and, not hurrying, spending much time looking into her eyes, and studying her expressions, had her before the curule chair.
I then, at last, with a cry of angry pleasure, withdrew from her, and stood up. I looked down upon her. There had been little sound save that of our breathing and of her bells. “I hope that I have pleased my Master,” she said, frightened. As though angry I strode to the frame within which hung the small gong. With the fur-wrapped striking surface of the wand, removed from its rack, I smote the gong, once, smartly, decisively.
Swiftly, in a matter of moments, Lola ran into the room. The slave whom I had so richly used knelt, frightened, confused, on the height of the dais. “Quickly, Slave,” commanded Lola, “come stand before me, at the foot of the dais, your head down.” Swiftly the girl obeyed, trembling. Lola had brought with her the objects which I had specified in my instructions to her, issued even before the slave had been ordered to report to the cosmetics room.
The first object was the key to the slave’s bells and collar. Lola removed the bells from her left ankle, putting them on the rug. “What is wrong, Master?” inquired the dark-haired slave. Lola then removed the bells from her right ankle, placing them, too, on the rug.
“I am sorry if I have displeased you, Master,” said the dark-haired girl, frightened. Lola then removed the bells from the girl’s left wrist. “Forgive me, Master,” wept the girl. “I will try to be a better slave!” The bells, then, were removed from her right wrist. “Please, Master,” wept the girl. “Please!” The key was then inserted into the small, heavy lock on the back of the girl’s collar. “Please, my Master,” begged the girl, “have mercy on me!”
Then the collar was removed from her, and placed with the belled anklets, and wristlets, on the rug. The beautiful slave, not daring to raise her head, shuddered visibly. It can be an extremely frightening thing for a slave girl to be between collars. What is to be done to her?
I then took the second object which Lola had brought into the room, an eighteen-inch length of Gorean binding fiber. Such fiber does not slip. It is designed for the binding of slaves and prisoners. The girl winced as I bound her wrists tightly behind her. I then took from Lola the third object which she had brought into the room. The slave regarded it with horror. It was a slave hood, with a gag attachment, common in many such hoods. “Do not kill me, Master!” begged the slave. “Please do not kill me!”
I thrust the thick, curled wadding of the gag deeply into her mouth. In her mouth it expanded. Then, using the cord and eyelets, I laced the two ends of the broad, flat binding surface, to which, in the front and the center, the wadding was attached, tightly together behind the back of her neck. She moaned. She was well gagged. She looked at me, wildly. It was a fitting gag for a slave, I thought. Then I took the attached hood and pulled it up and over her head, and then jerked it down, that her head be fully covered. Then, using its strap and loops, I tied the hood in place, securely shut, under her chin.
I then regarded her. The slave was well bound and hooded. I then removed the mask which I had worn, and thrust it in my pouch. I then threw her to my shoulder, her head over my back. She moaned. I then left the house of my friend. I was grateful for its use. The girl on my shoulder would know nothing of our destination. For all she knew she was being taken to a butcher shop, there to be dismembered for sleen feed. Such may be done to a girl, if it be the will of her master.
The former Miss Henderson, who had been so excruciatingly troublesome and so tantalizingly beautiful, was now over my shoulder, hooded and bound, my slave. Lola would follow, in an Ahn. I was well pleased.
Chapter 19 - I WILL PLAN A PARTY; A SLAVE IS TO BE INCLUDED IN THE ENTERTAINMENT
In the Gorean streets I attracted little attention. It is not that unusual, in such streets, for a man to carry a naked slave, bound and hooded, over his shoulder. To be sure, such girls are often tied in a slave sack. The children that we passed in the streets, playing at marbles or stone toss, scarcely glanced up. Two children, however, one boy and one girl, did run and strike the slave. She started, and squirmed, on my shoulder under the blows.
I did not admonish the children. First, it was nothing to me that they had struck her, for she was a slave. Secondly, they were free persons, and free persons on Gor may do much what they please. It is slaves who must be careful of their behavior, lest free persons find it displeasing. The boy who had struck her, I believe, had been in a fit of ill temper. I think he had just lost at stone toss.
The girl, on the other hand, I think, had had far different motivations. She had not been involved in the game, but had only been watching it. Yet she had struck the slave by far the cruelest blow. Already she had learned, as a free woman, that female slaves are to be despised and beaten. The hatred of the free woman on Gor for the female slave is an interesting phenomenon. There are probably many reasons for this.
Among them, however, would seem to be a jealousy of the female slave’s desirability and beauty, a resentment of the interest of free men in imbonded women, and an envy of the slave girl’s psychological and biological fulfillments, and emotional freedom and joy. Something of the same hatred and contempt tends to be felt by masculine women on Earth towards feminine women. Perhaps they hate what they are not, and p
erhaps cannot be. The Gorean slave girl, incidentally, can be terrorized by the mere thought that she might be sold to a free woman. I glanced at the girl who had struck the slave. She was comely. I wondered if she might one day fall slave. If so, she, too, in her turn, would surely learn to fear free women.
I took a circuitous route to my house, with many twistings and turnings. The slave, in the darkness of the hood, bound and helpless, would have no idea of where she was being taken. This was the same house which we had earlier occupied together, when I had mistakenly permitted the slave the dignity and status of the free woman. I was fond of the house, as it was fit for my needs, and, indeed, I had made it more fit, by certain additions, for my pleasure, and for the work and holding of a slave. Too, I now owned this house, having purchased it with a few gold pieces, a small portion of my share of the spoils, taken from the holding of Policrates. Riches, too, there had been to distribute, of course, not merely females.
Indeed, as Goreans went, I was now a rich man. I could have afforded a hundred girls of the sort I now carried on my shoulder. But I wanted only this one. This one, alone, I had decided, would be ample to my needs. This slave, whom I recollected from Earth, long ago, was my selection.
The house, with its walled garden to the side, is set back, and on a small hill, into which it is partially built. I approached the house from the side, climbing the hill from the side, rather than frontally. Too, of course, I did not use the steps, which might have been counted. On the stone landing, before the heavy portal of the house, I stopped. I felt her squirm in terror on my shoulder. She knew we had arrived somewhere. But where? She knew only that we had climbed to a height.
I slid her from my shoulder into my hands and, turning her, took her by the back of the neck and the left thigh and lifted her high over my head. I held her that way for a moment. She moaned piteously, helpless and trembling. Was she to be cast from this height into a pit of sleen or perhaps into the cold waters of the Vosk? Then I lowered her again to my shoulder, her head this time forward. I could feel her shuddering in relief. Slowly I began to lower her, head first. Sensing her orientation she tried, desperately, to press her gagged mouth, beneath its binding and the leather of the hood, against my body, piteously attempting to please me.