by John Norman
Ellen was lying on the shelf, her eyes closed against the sun, when suddenly, almost at her side, there was a loud, swift, scuffling noise and there was suddenly something large, extremely large, and alive, at least fifteen or twenty feet long, and weighing easily several hundred pounds, on the shelf beside her, something which had just arrived, scratching and twisting about, on its surface. It was almost over her. At the same time there was a powerful, feral odor, and she felt the heat of living breath on her body. She opened her eyes and screamed, and Jill, too, who was very close, screamed, and scrambled back to the length of her ankle chain. Ellen, as she was chained, had no such option at her disposal. She heard, not really understanding them for a moment or two, so wild and frightened were her own responses, similar sounds of fear and dismay from Lydia, Cichek and Emris.
“Quiet, quiet, quiet!” called Targo, trying to settle his stock. “Greetings, Torquatus,” he called.
The beast, which was long, powerful, agile, muscular and sinuous, was darkly, heavily furred, brownish with black bars. Its curious serpentine head, viperlike, moved back and forth. Its tongue, licking outward, then withdrawing, was reddish. It was fanged, these, in two rows, being white and sharp. Its tail twitched, lashing back and forth, though not seemingly in anger, rather in excitement. Its entire body seemed curious, quick, vibrantly alive. It had a heavy leather collar. It thrust its large snout against Ellen’s body, and under her arms, and between her thighs, and she screamed and twisted, and Targo told her to be quiet, and it licked her body, as though tasting her, and then drew its tongue back into the mouth, and then it moved about on the shelf, making its way over and about Ellen, sensing each of the occupants on the shelf, who were almost frozen with fear.
“Greetings, Targo,” said a bearded fellow in a rough tunic. “Back, Varcus,” he called. “Back, boy. Down, boy. Heel, boy.”
The gigantic, sinuous creature twisted about on the shelf and, its forelegs first, and then its two pairs of hind legs, following, returned to the ground, in front of the shelf. Turning to the side, twisting in the chains, trembling, Ellen could not see it any longer. She surmised it must be in the vicinity of the bearded fellow.
The beast’s fur had been glossy and oily, and some of this oil had adhered to her body, and, for a moment, she had felt her right thigh in a mighty, almost prehensile grip, within the menacing softness of which she had sensed curved, knifelike hardnesses, like short, sheathed scimitars. She could still feel the roughnesses from the beast’s swift, inquisitive investigations of her body, the forcible thrustings of its snout about her, its coldness, the rapid, exploratory movements of the hot, moist, rasplike tongue on her breasts and belly.
“Have you business for me today, dear Targo?” inquired the fellow.
“Alas, no!” cried Targo. “These little beauties, which you might examine, if you are interested, are transient stock, and accordingly it would hardly pay for me to avail myself in these instances of your invaluable services, which it is my invariable practice, at least upon occasion, to commend to all enthusiastically. Indeed, I hope to dispose of these lovely creatures by evening. Note, too, that I am not without precautions. Their little necks are well weighted and such collars would certainly be immediately noted anywhere. Too, they are stripped, which does not encourage straying. Too, they are not likely to stray, as they are well shackled, in accord with sound merchant practice. Too, of course, they are all highly intelligent and know, with the possible exception of the lovely little thing chained supine before you, whom I call to your attention, who may be uninformed, that they are truly in their collars, so to speak, that for such as they, lovely things all, there is no escape. They know that the world, if nothing else, will see to that. Accordingly, at the moment, I do not think it would be economically justifiable for me, a poor man, one on the brink of destitution, to avail myself of your services.”
“Perhaps if you have a more expensive girl, sometime,” suggested the fellow in the rough tunic.
“All of my girls are expensive,” said Targo. “It is only that I, poor business man that I am, generous creature and unwary humanitarian, let them slip from my grasp at bargain prices.”
The fellow in the rough tunic, Torquatus, we may suppose, lifted his hand to Targo in salute, and left the vicinity of the shelf.
He was accompanied doubtless by Varcus, the beast which had leaped to the surface of the shelf. To be sure, it was not easy for Ellen to ascertain this, given her encumbrances.
“What has occurred?” asked Ellen. “Please. I do not understand.”
“Have you never seen a sleen before?” inquired Jill, who had, it seemed, now regained her composure.
“Please, Mistress,” said Ellen. “I do not understand things, the beast, the man, what was said!”
But Jill turned away.
“It is a sleen,” said Lydia. “Beware of them. They are extremely dangerous. The man is doubtless a huntsman, or a renter of sleen, used for tracking. There are many varieties of training for such beasts. A common form of training is to associate a name with a scent, and then, if one wishes, to associate the name with one or more commands. In your case, if one wanted the sleen to take a scent print of you, your name, or some code name, would be associated with your scent. That name, or code name, could then be used in conjunction with another command to set the beast on your trail. They are wondrous trackers and can follow a scent several days old, even through a city. The common commands are the “kill” command and the “herd” command. Given the “kill” command the sleen pursues and kills, and eats, the quarry. Given the “herd” command, the beasts drive the quarry to a predetermined destination.”
“What if one resists being driven?” asked Ellen.
“Then the sleen reverts to the “kill” command,” said Lydia. “The quarry, if recalcitrant, is killed and eaten, almost at the first sign of resistance.”
Ellen trembled.
“Sometimes a slave is driven for miles,” said Lydia, “until, exhausted, her feet bleeding, she finds herself before a cage, into which she must hurry, crawling, closing the gate, which locks, behind her.”
Ellen lay back in the chains, and closed her eyes, in misery.
She now understood her slavery in a new dimension.
“To be sure,” said Lydia, “sometimes the sleen is leashed, and men accompany it. In this way they come upon the quarry while the sleen is still within their control. At this point a “desist” command may be uttered, which command is known, of course, only to the beast and the huntsman, or huntsmen, at which point the sleen will, or should, abandon the hunt.”
“‘Should’?” asked Ellen.
“Sleen are temperamental,” said Lydia. “One cannot always count upon them. They may, for example, have had a long, frustrating hunt and desire an elating, compensatory victory of blood and feasting; or they may just be ravenously hungry. Too, much depends on the beast and its relationship to its master. Some sleen are incredibly loyal to the master, and will die for them. Others seem to regard the master as little more than a partner in the hunt, almost as though he were another sleen, albeit an unusual one, with whom a prize might be contested.”
“What does the master do if the sleen refuses to abandon the hunt?” asked Ellen.
“The safest thing to do is unleash the animal,” said Lydia. “One might try to kill it, of course. A sword, or ax, blow at the spinal column, just below the back of the head, is the easiest way to do this, given that one has the leash in hand.”
“That would be dangerous, would it not?” asked Ellen.
“Very dangerous,” said Lydia. “A wounded sleen is not a pleasant thing to have in one’s vicinity. There are stories of sleen whose head is half severed from the body finishing the hunt, and dying across the body of the quarry, snarling defiance at the master. Too, sometimes the master is first killed by the beast, who has doubtless seen him as a surprising and unwelcome impediment to its hunt. Such sleen then normally revert to the wild. They tend to be e
xtremely dangerous, possibly because they are familiar with the ways of men and have tasted human flesh.”
“And must they then be hunted with other sleen?” asked Ellen.
“No sleen will hunt another sleen,” said Lydia.
“She is stupid,” said Jill.
“Yes,” said Cichek.
“But then,” said Ellen, “would it not be advisable, if possible, to wrap oneself in the pelt of a sleen, or such, to elude them?”
“See,” said Lydia, “she is only ignorant, not stupid.”
“She is still stupid,” said Jill. “Anyone knows that that mixture of scents disturbs and infuriates sleen and hastens their hunt.”
“She would have no way of knowing that,” said Lydia.
“How then,” asked Ellen, somewhat emboldened, “are such sleen hunted?”
“Sometimes by great encirclements,” said Lydia, “but as the sleen is commonly nocturnal in the wild and can burrow quickly that is seldom effective. The usual method is to stake out a verr or slave girl, at night, and then, when the sleen comes to feed, concealed hunters attempt to kill it, usually with the quarrels of crossbows, sometimes with long arrows, the arrows of the great bow, the peasant bow. If the hunters are successful, they regard themselves as fortunate.”
“The hunters are fortunate!” said Ellen.
“Well, the verr or slave girl, as well, of course,” said Lydia.
“Do not fear,” said Emris. “You give every sign of one who is going to wriggle well, and so you would not be likely to be staked out unless you displeased your master.”
“Let that be an additional motivation to squirm well in the furs, barbarian,” said Cichek.
“Please do not use such words of me,” said Ellen.
“‘Barbarian’?” said Cichek.
“No,” said Ellen, “vulgar words like ‘squirming well’.”
Cichek laughed.
“Do you not think a master, in a bit of time, can make you kick and squeal, and gasp, and jump, and moan, and beg?”
“Certainly not!” said Ellen.
“Why not?”
“I am not that sort of woman,” said Ellen.
“Your curves suggest you are.”
“I will not be so reduced, so humiliated!”
“Remember that in your chains.”
“I am different from you!” wept Ellen.
“Yes, who knows, you might be hotter and more helpless in your collar.”
“Even more a slave!”
“No, no!” said Ellen.
“We have seen you on the shelf.”
“Are you unaware of how your body has moved?”
“I am ladylike, cold, inert!”
“The lash will take that from you.”
“No, no, no!”
“Then you will be disposed of.”
“‘Disposed of’?”
“Certainly, what good is a cold slave?”
“See how she is frightened.”
“No!”
“See the fear in the little slut!”
“Surely you have some sense of what men can do to you, and what you will become.”
“I see she has.”
“No!” cried Ellen.
“You will probably bring a decent price off a slave block.”
“No, no, no!” whimpered Ellen.
“Within a month,” speculated Emris, “you will wriggle and squirm like a born slave.”
“No!” cried Ellen.
But she wondered if she were not, in some sense, a born slave. Indeed, often, in her most secret thoughts, she had understood herself as exactly that, a born slave. Sometimes this insight frightened her, at other times it humbled, and elated and exhilarated, her. How else could one explain her desire for a master?
“We are women,” said Lydia. “We are all born slaves.”
The girls were then silent, and it was late in the afternoon.
In the heat, after a few Ehn, Ellen fell asleep in her chains. She wished, just before falling asleep, pulling a little at her bonds, that Targo had given her a blanket, or a mat. The cement was so hard.
She awakened once, or seemed to awaken, filled with the thought of her bondage, that on this world she, now again young and beautiful, was a slave. Her youth and beauty had been returned to her. Surely that must be a cause for rejoicing. But why, she asked herself, had that been done? What was the motive of the masters, and their allies, the physicians, with their serums? Was this an act of selfless benevolence? Scarcely. She thought of many other women, too, whose youth and beauty had been returned to them. She had suspected that there were many in the house. Surely this was a joyful boon. But for what purpose had it been granted to them? Surely not meaninglessly, or gratuitously. Surely not with no interest, value or recompense in mind. Obviously, she thought, because it makes us more appealing as female slaves. It will improve our value in the markets. It has been done for their purposes, not ours. This has been done to us because this is the way men want us. So then, she wondered, would it be better to grow old, and flat, and withered, and tired, and die on Earth, free in some sense, or was it better to be young and beautiful, and healthy and eager, and richly and vitally alive, even though one might be put in a collar and have a mark burned into one’s thigh? Let each, she thought, find their own answer to such a question. Although Ellen at that time had profound ambivalences concerning her condition, which was bond, she did not regret the return of her youth and beauty, or that she had been brought to Gor. Too, as she had always considered herself, on one level or another, as she now recognized, the appropriate and natural slave of men, she was not resistant to the fact that her longed-for destiny had been, even though it were by the decision of others, and without her consent, imposed upon her. Better the freedom of slavery on Gor, she thought, than the slavery of freedom on Earth.
To be sure, these thoughts were like mists about her, and she was weary, and half asleep.
That she was chained as she was, and that she now understood something of the nature of sleen, and their possible roles in Gorean society, had helped her to further appreciate and understand her slavery. It had considerably deepened it. She understood better now than she had, how helpless, how utterly vulnerable she was. She better understood now that she and her sort truly belonged to men, that she and her sort were their property, the property of the masters. She understood herself now better than she ever had before, that she was completely in the control of men, totally in their power. It was not she who was dominant, it was they. They were dominant over her, completely and perfectly dominant over her.
This stirred her, and excited her profoundly.
She moaned softly, trying to understand sudden, warm, disturbing feelings welling up within her. Unfamiliar behavioral impulses began to overwhelm her. She knew, of course, that she must kneel before men and perform obeisance, and such things, but now, more than ever before, such things seemed not only fitting to her, but called for. Far beyond this she now felt a strong desire, literally a strong desire, to perform slave behaviors before males. She now wanted to kneel before them and be before them as their slave. In no way could she be more feminine, more female, more herself. She was a true female, fully, vulnerably and deeply. She wanted to submit, she wanted to serve, she wanted to please.
Then she was again frightened, and almost awakened, fully.
Then, again, in the heat, in her chains, on the hardness of the shelf, she fell asleep.
She awakened suddenly, to a hand placed firmly, forcibly, over her mouth, preventing her from crying out.
Doubtless the man who had placed his hand over her mouth did so because she was asleep and he did not want her to awaken with a cry of fear. In this sense he was doubtless trying to be kind to her.
Gorean warriors, tarnsmen and such, are not infrequently concerned with the abduction of women from enemy cities. It is not unusual, either in the history of Gor or of Earth, to have the women of the enemy serving one as one’s slaves. I do not doubt t
hat there is something of a sporting cast to this sort of thing, as well, not that the warriors and such mind being served by lovely slaves for whom they do not have to pay. One is reminded of rivalries among various tribes of American Indians, who seemed to enjoy nothing more than running off with one another’s horses whenever possible.
In the abduction of a woman one has the wadding ready. When she awakes and naturally, reflexively, opens her mouth to scream the wadding is thrust into the oral orifice. This stifles the scream. The binding is then applied, being forced back, between the teeth, and fastened, usually once around the neck and tied in front, which is easier, this securing the wadding in place. She may then be turned to her stomach and, her hands pulled behind her and her ankles crossed, bound hand and foot.
On the other hand, although the fellow’s intention was doubtless sensible, and harmless enough, and even benign, the effect of his action on the slave in question was profound. She looked up at him, over his hand, her eyes wild with fear. “Steady, kajira,” said he, gently. The effect of a gag on a woman is interesting. It is perhaps even more profound than that of a blindfold. A woman’s tongue, like her beauty, is, I suppose, at least from the point of view of a man, one of her most delightful, perilous weapons. And it is certainly true that when he deprives her of this weapon, by gag-silencing her, that she is commonly reduced to tearful, frustrated consternation. She is deprived of what may be her most successful weapon, both of offense and defense. In any event, gagging a woman commonly alarms her and induces in her feelings of utter vulnerability and helplessness. Accordingly, the gag, particularly if she is a free woman, often makes her more timid, more tentative, more docile and compliant. An ideal combination, of course, at least for certain purposes, is to combine the gag with the blindfold.
“I am not going to hurt you, little kajira,” he said, and removed his hand from Ellen’s mouth.
She looked up at him. She could still feel the firm, heavy pressure about her mouth where he had placed his hand.