Prize of Gor coc-27

by John Norman

  No, no, no, she thought. I must not think such things! Gor is different. Different! It is not Earth. It is a different place. It is rude, and primitive, uncompromising, frightening, natural and merciless, fierce. And it is on that world, Gor, not Earth, this fearful, severe, biologically honest world, so far from Earth, that I find myself a slave!

  I cannot be a slave, she thought, wildly.

  How brutal and rapid he was with me, she thought. With what casual, thoughtless contempt I was used!

  Does he think I am a slave?

  But, of course, I am a slave!

  And how true that is, and how he has shown it to me! If I did not understand my brand before, that lovely, so-meaningful, incisive mark burned into my body, that mark which I cannot remove, which proclaims to all who see it what I am, I understand it now!

  I am a slave, and no more than a slave.

  Where was his gentleness, his tenderness, his sensitivity?

  Surely he could not know my crimes against men on my own world, how I foolishly, deluded by the madness of propaganda, attempted to abet their destruction?

  Doubtless I have much to pay for!

  I wonder if the men of Earth will one day make the women of Earth pay similarly for their crimes.

  But I have changed! I beg to be treated well, my masters!

  Then she smiled bitterly to herself.

  One might as well ask gentleness, tenderness, sensitivity of beasts, of leopards and lions, of alien, aggressive, different, mighty life forms, life forms, she thought, compared to which we are insignificant, even negligible, valued only for casual utilities. To men such as these, the mighty, untamed, unreduced men of Gor, what can women be but prey and quarry? What can we be before such men but intimidated, dominated slaves, but eager, yielding, responsive, supplicatory slaves? Such men are true men, men as nature intended them to be, and before them, accordingly, what can a female be but a true woman, as nature intended her to be, a begging, aroused, loving slave?

  But I want masters to care for me, if only a little.

  I will try to serve them well!

  Then she shuddered, thinking of the power of men over her.

  I am completely dependent upon them, she thought, as theirs, as a domestic animal, literally dependent on them for everything. How wondrously strange that makes me feel. It is they, not I, who will decide if I am to be fed or not. It is they who will decide if I will be given a bowl of gruel or a crust of bread. It is they who will decide whether or not I will be given a sip of water, a bit of straw on which to sleep, a blanket to clutch about myself against the cold, a soiled rag with which to cover myself, if even they see fit to permit me clothing. I am dependent upon them — even for my collar and chains!

  No longer am I independent, she thought. I am now dependent, totally dependent, on men, on masters, in all ways.

  I am theirs, she sobbed.

  She pulled against the bracelets a little.

  There is no one to save me on this world, she thought. There is nowhere to go. There is nowhere to run. This is a natural world. I was always such as to be fittingly embonded, but only here, on this frightening, strange, beautiful world, has that propriety been attended to.

  I do not know what to feel, or how to feel, she thought. I am frightened. I am terrified. I am owned.

  Mirus, Mirus, she thought, I am a helpless slave. Mirus, Mirus, she thought, now your vengeance on me is complete!

  There was suddenly a titanic snapping in the air yards away, and it seemed that a mighty wind exploded in the area, scattering and whirling dust and straw. At the same time there was a loud, piercing, raucous, wild, annunciatory scream.

  “A tarn!” she thought. “Birds!” she thought. “Tarns! This is a place of tarns!”

  She cried out in misery and, naked, hooded, wrists braceleted behind her, chained by the neck, scrambled to the far corner of the stall, bruising herself, and tried to burrow down in the straw, trembling, trying to hide there, trying not to move.

  Chapter 18

  INTRIGUE

  “Ellen,” said Selius Arconious, chewing on a straw, leaning against the jamb of the great portal, leading to the platform outside, “remove your tunic, to the floor, slave paces.”

  “Yes, Master!” said Ellen, delightedly.

  She put down her basket, heavy with layers of meat, and quickly, laughing, slipped the brief brown tunic over her head, it was all she wore save her slave collar, and went immediately to the floor, and, half kneeling, half lying, the palms of her hands on the floor, looked up at Arconious, expectantly, eager, a slave, awaiting his commands. Sometimes the slave is instructed, even commanded, to the snapping of a whip, but at other times she is permitted to display herself, as it moves her to do so. The ingenuity of the human female in such matters is well known. Most important is that she knows herself a property, and an attractive one. Then she enthusiastically and provocatively displays, with skills that might be the envy of a dancer, sometimes with seeming shyness, timidity, reluctance or fear, the well-curved, delectable merchandise which is herself. She presents herself, as goods, to her best advantage. It is in her best interest, of course, to be as beautiful and stimulating as she can. She desires, in her wonderful vanity, to be so, as all hormonally sufficient women desire to be attractive to men, though some might fear this feeling and be terrified to recognize its obvious, deeper meaning, but, even if she did not, she is subject to discipline. There is always the whip, the switch, the discipline of food, the discipline of blindfolds, gags, ropes and chains. When the slave is commanded, the slave obeys. There is nothing unusual, untoward or surprising in this. She is a slave.

  “Master?” inquired Ellen, expectantly, looking up, delighted. Selius Arconious was an assistant to the tarnmaster. He was young and handsome, and no stranger to the handling of lovely slaves.

  More than once she had writhed moaning, crying out, gasping, begging, in slave rapture in his arms.

  “What is going on here?” called a gruff voice, that of a large, bearded man in a brown tunic, with wristlets, and a tarn goad dangling from his belt. “Dress, slut,” said Portus Canio, tarnmaster of the Tower of Corridon.

  “Yes, Master!” said Ellen quickly, and scrambled to her feet. In an instant she had pulled the tiny tunic over her head, and pulled it down at the hems, as though this might conceal a thread’s width, or more, of her muchly bared thighs. She was barefoot. “Surely you have duties, slut,” said Portus Canio.

  “Yes, my Master,” said Ellen, and, crouching down, for one must move carefully in so brief a garment as a slave tunic, picked up the basket of meat. It was heavy.

  On Ellen’s throat was a light, inexpensive, engraved, metal collar. It was locked on her, fastened behind the back of the neck. The legend of the collar read “I am Ellen, the slave of Portus Canio.” To be sure, the reader familiar with Gorean conventions might have noted that Ellen, in her understandable unease, having been discovered, though through no obvious fault of her own, in what might seem a dalliance, or a laxity in her duties, had responded to Canio with the phrase ‘my Master’. The slave addresses all free men as “Master” and all free women as “Mistress.” The phrase ‘my Master,’ when used, is commonly addressed to one’s personal master, one’s owner. Similarly, if the slave is owned by a woman, the phrase ‘my Mistress’ is commonly addressed only to the slave’s actual mistress. To be sure, the slave commonly refers to her owner as she refers to free men and free women in general, namely, simply as “Master” or “Mistress.”

  “What is your name?” had asked Portus Canio, some weeks ago, when Ellen, freed of the hood, had knelt, head to the floor, still chained by the neck, still back-braceleted, before him in the stall.

  “Whatever Master pleases,” she had replied. That was the judicious response, as a slave has no name in her own right, but may be named as the Master wishes.

  “What have you been called?” Portus Canio had inquired.

  “‘Ellen,’” she had responded.

&nbs
p; “A barbarian name,” he had said. “And a pretty name, a name suitable for a pretty little barbarian slave girl.”

  Ellen dared not speak.

  “Very well then, you are “Ellen,” he said. “What is your name?”

  “‘Ellen’, Master,” had said Ellen, now named, named again, as a sleen, or kaiila, might be named.

  “Lift your head,” he said. The slave obeyed, and found a whip before her lips. Obediently, unbidden, she licked and kissed the whip, for some moments, deferentially, submissively, timidly, lovingly, until it was withdrawn.

  “You will be fed and watered,” he said. “And then you will be instructed in your duties.”

  “Yes, Master,” she said. “Thank you, Master.”

  The pans would be put on the floor, and she, neck chained, and back-braceleted, must put down her head to feed, to drink.

  She looked after Portus Canio, doubtless her master, whose name she would learn only later, and from others.

  She trembled. She had, of course, kissed the whip before, and had even been trained to do so, but this time, oddly, it seemed momentously significant to her. She had knelt before a mighty man and licked and kissed his whip. The symbolism of this act, she on her knees before him, naked and helpless, chained, back-braceleted, suddenly overwhelmed her. Never before, it seemed, had she felt so radically, vulnerably, rawly female. They are the masters, she thought. We are, fittingly, their slaves.

  “Ho!” said Portus Canio, turning and glaring at young Selius Arconious. “Are there not harnesses to repair?”

  “To be sure, Portus,” grinned Selius.

  “You do not earn your copper tarsks by amusing yourself with slave girls!”

  Selius grinned.

  “See if she is sent to your blankets soon,” said Portus.

  Ellen, lifting the basket of meat, smiled at the discomfort of young Selius. Surely he, a mere assistant, should be more circumspect with his employer’s properties. In the last weeks she had become muchly aware of her increasing charms, though they were, of course, collared and owned. She was not insensitive to the tumult, the distress, that a smile, a glance over the shoulder, the movement of a well-turned ankle, might produce in a young man, particularly in one who did not own her. The slave girl, you see, is not without her powers.

  “It matters not,” said Selius. “There are hundreds better in the paga taverns!”

  Ellen, who had lingered, did not care to hear this.

  “The paga taverns are being emptied,” said Portus, “the best girls being shipped to Cos and Tyros, to Brundisium, and elsewhere.”

  Selius shrugged.

  “If you were not one of the best tarnsters in Ar,” said Portus, “I would throw you from the platform.”

  Selius laughed. “I have harnesses to repair,” he said.

  Portus then turned about and left the area, going to adjacent rooms.

  Selius Arconious, as we recall, at the time of his accosting a young slave, had been in the vicinity of the great portal, that leading outward to the long, curving platform, outside, ledgelike, about the cylinder or tower, with its several perches. Within the portal was the “tarncot,” so to speak, of Portus Canio, which was, in effect, for the most part, a large, lofty, barnlike area, certainly that within the great portal. To the left, as one might look outward from the great portal, barred and gated, was the general housing for tarns, with its perches and roosting areas, hooks for meat, reservoirs for water, and such. There were also, in the vicinity, similarly provisioned, some individual cages. Occasionally a tarn must be isolated, particularly a male tarn, from its fellows. Such individual cages, too, are often used with new birds, in their training, in accustoming them to saddling and harnessing, and such. They are also valuable given the occasional necessity of tending ill or wounded birds. The area directly within the great portal, a large area, as one might suppose, served for the departure and entry of tarns. In this area also, against the walls, were various stalls, slave stalls, in one of which Ellen commonly slept, now usually unchained, when not ordered to her master’s slave ring, that in which she had been originally placed, hooded, chained and back-braceleted, and a variety of storage areas. Too, to one side there were many stacked tarn baskets. The enterprise of Portus in the Corridon Tower was, so to speak, a livery stable and transportation outlet. The tarns were largely draft tarns, large, relatively slow birds, controlled either from a saddle or, by reins, from the tarn basket, slung below the bird. Birds and baskets could be rented, or purchased, and drivers, or tarnsters, hired. There were also, these accessible from the larger area, some hallways, and a number of ancillary rooms, a kitchen, a pantry, living quarters, a workroom, sometimes used, the office of Portus Canio, and so on.

  On the second day of her service in the establishment, before she had been permitted clothing, Ellen had screamed and fled from one of the birds, when it had turned its head, sharply, to view her. She had run madly away, in panic, blindly, but struck into Portus, before whom, in terror, she had knelt. “Do not have me with tarns, Master!” she begged. “I fear them so!” Saying nothing he had dragged her to her feet, she half bent over, his hand in her hair, twisted there, painfully, cruelly, and she then, bent over, thus controlled, this being a common slave leading position, was hurried stumbling out onto the platform, to its very edge, where she, to her horror, teetering on that perilous brink, steadied only by the cruel hand in her hair, could look down, down, and see the street, some four hundred feet below, the pavement.

  “Do you think you can fly, little vulo?” he inquired.

  “No, Master!” she screamed.

  “Shall I hurl you to the street?” he asked.

  “Please, no, Master!” she screamed. “Do not kill me, Master! Forgive me, Master! Please forgive me! Please, Master, show me mercy!”

  He drew her back a yard from the edge and released her. Unable to stand she sank to her knees in terror and grasped his leg, as much to reassure herself, by clinging to this support, as to a stanchion, of some modicum of safety, as in supplication.

  “Whom do you fear more,” he asked, “tarns, or men?”

  “Men, Master!” she wept. “I am a slave! I fear men more!”

  “Your duties, little vulo,” said he, “do not, and will not, involve you in great danger, or at least not from tarns. That is not my intention. I would not risk a woman, even a slave, with such beasts. They would seem too tempting, too delicious, a morsel. Still, in empty cages, or in sparsely occupied cages, while a man stands watch, with a goad, you will have ample opportunity, during long hours, to prove your value as a work slave, removing masses of soiled straw, shoveling excrement, scraping and scrubbing floors, supplying and spreading bundles of fresh, dry straw, carrying water for the reservoirs, replenishing salt stones, climbing the wall railings to hang meat on the feeding hooks, and such.”

  Ellen looked up at him, fearfully.

  “Of course,” said he, “you will have other duties, as well, cooking, cleaning, mending, sewing, laundering, and such.”

  “Yes, Master,” she said. She was grateful to have been shown the rudiments of such matters in her training. She had been switched more than once for her lack of skill in such matters. She had known little of these homely domestic tasks while a female on Earth. Indeed, she had taken a certain pride in her ineptness in such matters, an ineptness which had seemed appropriate to her for one of her education, interests and station. Such tasks were surely below a female intellectual, which she had then been. Then, in training, under the switch, crying out in pain, weeping under the frequent smartness of the strokes, she had struggled to master them. Needless to say, these are skills routinely expected of a slave, any slave, even one whose price is largely indexed to her passion and beauty.

  “Oh, too,” he had said, “there are other duties, as well.”

  “Master?” she asked.

  He glanced at her knees, as she knelt before him, and quickly, blushing, she spread them, and then, as he continued to look, she spread t
hem more widely, and then as widely as she could.

  In this place, she then understood, she would never be allowed to forget that she was first and foremost what Mirus had decided she would be, a pleasure slave.

  He then turned away.

  “Master,” she called plaintively after him, “may I speak?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I still fear tarns!” she said.

  “We all fear tarns,” he said, and he then left the platform, re-entering the lofty barnlike area.

  She closed her knees and went to all fours and crawled after him, not daring to trust her legs, not daring to try to stand.

  On the fourth day of her slavery in this place she was knelt down and collared. Portus read the collar to her, before putting it on her, as she was illiterate. That had been established even before she had been purchased from the shelf of Targo. It said, as we recall, “I am Ellen, the slave of Portus Canio.” It pleased her, somehow, to be naked and collared. The nakedness suggested her vulnerability and, very much, her femaleness. The collar gave her a sense of belonging, a sense of security; too, it was, in its way, a proclamation of her value; it testified that men wanted her, that she had been found fair enough to collar, that she was desired as a female, that she had been found worth enslaving; too, it made it clear, to her and others, that certain issues of her life had been settled for her, that she was already “spoken for,” so to speak, that others need not think of her, that she was already owned. In its way, the collar has some of the symbolic aspects of the marriage ring, except, of course, that that ring is a symbol worn by a free woman who is the putative equal of a man, whereas the collar is worn by a slave, and, aside from such things as its identificatory purposes, important in Merchant Law, is a symbol of the natural woman, the woman who is categorically owned by a man, her master.