Guardsman of Gor

by John Norman

  Let us suppose that the Gorean youth buys his first girl. Before this, of course, he may have used house slaves or the girls in the paga taverns. Indeed, in gangs of roaming youths, he may have caught and raped slave girls on errands in his own city. Some young men regard this as an interesting sport. If a magistrate should chance upon them in some alley he will commonly say, "Thigh," to them, and they will turn the girl, so that he may see if she is branded or not. If she is branded, he will commonly continue on his rounds. The unauthorized rape of slave girls, without the permission of their masters, is officially frowned on in most cities, but, too, it is as often winked at.

  There are thought to be two major advantages to the custom of permitting, and, sometimes, of even encouraging, the practice. First, it provides a way of satisfying the sexual needs of young men who may not yet own their own girls, and, secondly, it is thought to provide a useful protection for free women. Free women, incidentally, are almost never raped on Gor, unless it be perhaps a preparatory lesson preceding their total enslavement.

  There seem to be two major reasons why free women are seldom raped on Gor. First, it is thought that they, being free, are to be accorded the highest respect, and, secondly, slave females are regarded as being much more desirable. There is little difficulty, commonly, incidentally, in distinguishing between the free woman and the slave. The garment of the slave is usually brief, distinctive and sexually exciting; it is designed to show her to men; the garments of the free woman, on the other hand, are commonly multitudinous, concealing and cumbersome; they are designed to protect her modesty, and hide her from the eyes of men.

  In many cities it is a capital offense for the slave girl to don such garments. They are not for her. She is only a slave. Similarly, free women will almost never touch the garment of a slave. They would be scandalized to do so. Such garments are just too sexually exciting. On the other hand, there have been cases when a free woman, boldly, has donned such a garment and dared to walk in the streets and upon the bridges, masquerading as a mere slave upon an errand for her master. She will not be recognized for, commonly, when she goes out, she is veiled.

  On the streets, now, of course, she will be taken for only another slave. She revels in this new-found freedom; she exults in the bold appraisals to which she now finds herself subjected, those which free men may fittingly bestow upon a slave; she inclines her head submissively as she passes free men; should they stop her, perhaps to question her, or inquire after directions, she falls to her knees before them; then, later, aroused, excited, trembling, breathless, she returns to her home and enters her compartment, perhaps there to throw herself on her couch, to bite and tear at the coverlets, sobbing with unrelieved passion.

  The excursions of such women, commonly, grow more bold. Perhaps they take to walking the high bridges, under the Gorean moons. Perhaps they fall to the noose of a passing tarnsman. Perhaps they attract the attention of a visiting slaver. His men receive their orders. She is brought to him and subjected to rude assessments. If she is found sufficiently comely she is gagged and hooded, and slave iron is locked upon her body. When his caravan leaves the city she is carried away with it, another girl, another piece of merchandise, in chains, bound for a distant market, and a master.

  One of the most interesting examples of such a case occurred in Venna some years ago, in the vicinity of the Stadium of Tharlarion, where tharlarion races are held. Several young men captured for their sex sport what they took to be a slave girl, and thrust her, gagged, her hands bound behind her, into the corner of one of the giant tharlarion stables behind the stadium. They discovered only after her thorough and lengthy raping that they had been lavishing their predatory attentions not upon a slave but upon a young and beautiful free female who had been masquerading as a slave. Obviously the case was complex. The decision of the judge was generally regarded as judicious. The young men were banished from the city. Outside the gate, lying in the dust of the road leading from Venna, bound hand and foot, was the girl. She was clad in the rag of a slave. The young men were seen leaving the vicinity of the city leading the girl behind them, her hands bound behind her, on a neck-rope.

  Suffice it to say, in one way or another, the Gorean male finds his sexual satisfaction. Now let us suppose, again, that he has now bought his first girl. This girl will generally mean much more to him, of course, than one who might be bought for him by, say, his parents. Every young man wishes to buy a girl who will appeal, personally, to him. Mothers, in particular, can be nuisances in such respects. The young man will wish to buy a helplessly passionate, hot-eyed slut whom he can whip-train, on her belly, kissing at his feet, to his every disposition and pleasure, and the mother will wish to buy him a "sensible girl." It is sometimes difficult for the Gorean mother, as for the Earth mother, to realize that their little boys have at last become men.

  The young Gorean male, we shall suppose, now brings his girl home. This is now his own domicile, of course. There he is totally alone with her. There he puts his collar on her. She will wear it. It marks her as his. She looks up at him. She is at his feet. Let us suppose he gives her a few initial rapings, if only to get the feel of her body. He then orders her about, to cook for him and to serve him. Now, having had her, and having had her serve him, and owning her, fully, he can begin to get to know her. The same girl whom he bought as a mere piece of slave meat from a sales block, for his pleasure, we shall suppose, when brought home, and put in a collar at his feet, turns out to be a highly intelligent, sophisticated, vulnerable and delicate organism.

  In short we shall suppose that he discovers that he has purchased, as is often the case, not a mere slave, but a treasure. And she belongs to him! What a fortune, and joy, to own such a woman! He will want to watch her, to observe her least movements, to know her smallest thoughts. He will want to talk with her, and listen to her, and know her with a depth and fullness far beyond anything that might be accorded to a mere contractual partner. She is not merely a person who is living with him. She belongs to him, literally, and he prizes her. But he will take care to be strict with her. He will keep her in his collar; at night he may chain her at the foot of his couch. Her least insolence she knows may be rewarded with exact, swift punishment, such as the whip or close chains, nudity in the streets or public rental, or the deprivation of food. She understands clearly, and unmistakably, who is the master and who is the slave. She is happy.

  How different are the relationships of the men of Earth with women. On Gor I see, on the whole, contentment and love; on the Earth I see, on the whole, discontentment and misery. Who shall say which is best? Perhaps discontentment and misery are superior to contentment and love. Who knows? Goreans, however, we might note, whatever be the truth in these matters, have chosen contentment, and love. Let each choose, perhaps, that which is best for him.

  "I shall, therefore, unless warned to silence, continue to speak," she said. She smiled wryly, and lifted her belled wrists from her thighs. "But I did not think, in the room of cosmetics, that I would be summoned before you, merely that you might hear me speak." She returned her hands, palms down, to her thighs. She lowered her head. "I thought that you might have other interests in me." She lifted her head. "I am ready for love, and with the abject helplessness of a slave," she said. "Will you not touch me, or caress me?"

  I said nothing. But it pleased me mightily to know that the slave, the former Miss Henderson, was aroused before me. I remembered her, again, from the restaurant, so long ago, in the candlelight, in the svelte, off-the-shoulder, white-sheath dress, so chic and lovely, carrying the tiny, silver-beaded purse. She now knelt before me, a slave girl on Gor.

  "Alas!" said the girl. "What a poor slave I must be! I have been made-up for love, and I have been scented and belled, and my master does not deign to so much as touch me. I trust that I am not fully displeasing to him."

  I regarded the girl. In the restaurant her wrists and ankles had not been adorned. Here they wore heavy circlets of sensuous bells. In the
restaurant she had worn golden pumps, with a golden wisp of straps. Here she was barefoot, as is befitting for a female slave.

  "What does it mean, my Master," she suddenly cried, "that you have not used me? Does it mean that I am not pleasing to you? Does it mean that you are only playing with me, and are saving me for another? Please do not let that be, my Master!" Then she put her head down, fearfully. "Forgive my outburst, my Master," she begged. "I am only a girl, and a slave." Then, again, she looked up. "You are not angry with me," she said. "Thank you, my Master." She tossed her head, the gesture, almost, of a free woman. "Doubtless you have had other women beg to grovel before you," she said. "Doubtless I am not the first. I wonder if you Masters scorn us for our needs. Scorn us if you must. We cannot help ourselves. We are slaves!"

  I continued, of course, to remain silent.

  "Not once have I seen your face, my Master," she said. "Either, as at the feast of Policrates, or now, you have been masked, or, in your chambers, in the holding of Policrates, when you forced me to so thoroughly and intimately serve you, I must do so in the darkness of the blindfold. You know me well, for you have stripped me not only of my clothing, but of my inmost thoughts. And yet, of you, I know nothing. I do not know your name. I do not know your face. I have never even heard your voice. Not once have you even spoken to your slave. But I know that curiosity is not becoming in a Kajira. Forgive me, my Master."

  I did not speak.

  "If you wish," she said, "put me under your whip. You may then see if I writhe well."

  I said nothing.

  "It is my hope," she said, "that you will not have me chained in the basement again tonight. That you have let me appear before you indicates that perhaps I may now be permitted a kennel on an upper floor. It is cold in the basement, and dark there. And it is hard to find the bits of food on the floor. Too, there are urts there. And I scream in the darkness, frightened, hearing them. They take the food, often before I can find it. I am afraid to sleep there, so cold and chained. Sometimes, too, the urts run across my legs, or nibble at them. I scream then, and I am frightened. Please, my Master, if it pleases you, may I have a blanket and a kennel. As I am the most miserable and lowest of your slaves, let it be, if it pleases you, the smallest and meanest of your kennels. I do not care. Only I beg a kennel. Forgive me, Master, if I am presumptuous. I want only to be pleasing to you."

  I gave her no response, by voice, or expression or gesture. She would, thus, not know where it was that I would choose for her to spend the night.

  "I shall wait to see, of course," she said, "what will be my Master's pleasure."

  I fingered the slave whip, thoughtfully, hung by its handle loop on the arm of the curule chair.

  "Forgive me, if I have displeased you, Master," she said, nervously. She eyed the whip. At my least whim she knew it could be used upon her. No woman who has felt the whip, even so much as a single lash, scorns it. It is a most useful disciplinary device for women.

  She put her head down, swiftly, to the deep piling of the carpet, her hands beside her head. "Yesterday," she said, "sent forth from the house as a Coin Girl, I made six tarsk bits for you, my Master. I hope that you are pleased." She lifted her head. "Perhaps that is why you have let me be admitted to your presence this evening," she said. I snapped my fingers, and indicated to her that she should resume the position of the pleasure slave which she did, immediately and beautifully. "Perhaps you may like to hear me speak of the matter," she said.

  I smiled.

  "I take it that your attitude is favorable, and that I may speak on this subject," she said. "I shall proceed to do so, fully cognizant that the lovely slave who serves as my keeper in this house has doubtless already made you a full report."

  I nodded. It was true.

  I gestured that the girl should continue.

  "Yesterday afternoon," she said, "locked in the chain collar of a Coin Girl, with the bell and coin box, on the leash of my keeper, I was conducted forth from the house. I thought that I was incredibly beautiful, and must be repeatedly raped. I learned swiftly, as men passed me, that I must be only a common girl. This brutal intelligence dismayed me. It seemed that I, who had been so vain of my beauty, must now learn to strive to please men."

  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 embonded, 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 embonded. 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.