"Greetings, Slave Beads," said my master.
"Greetings, Master," she said, responding to her name, as she must.
My master looked down at her, and smiled. She looked up at him, trembling. He was her master.
"Perhaps you remember, Slave Beads," said my master, "that, on an evening, some days ago, a free woman harshly and at length punished a slave girl."
"You know?" she asked.
"We observed, in scouting the camp," said he. He looked down at the kneeling girl, locked in the Sirik. "The beating was well done," said he.
"Thank you, Master," she whispered.
"The crime of the slave girl, as I recall," said my master, "was to desire the touch of a man."
Lehna stood to one side. She stood straight, as an exciting slave girl.
"Yes, Master," said Slave Beads.
"The free woman," said my master, "was doubtless well within her rights to beat the girl."
"Yes, Master!" said Slave Beads.
"But that free woman," said my master, "has since that time herself fallen slave. Indeed, she is now in this camp."
"Yes, Master," said Slave Beads.
"The slave girl whom she beat is, too, in this camp," said my master.
"Yes, Master," said Slave Beads. She trembled in the Sirik.
"Do you yourself desire the touch of a man?" asked my master.
"Oh, no! No, Master!" cried Slave Beads.
"Ah," said my master, "it seems that in this camp we have a slave girl, too, who is guilty of a crime."
"Who, Master?" asked Slave Beads.
"You," said he.
"Not I!" she cried.
"You," said he.
"What is my crime?" she asked.
"Not to desire the touch of a man," said he.
She looked at him, aghast.
"You see," said he, "in this camp it is a crime for a girl not to desire a man's touch." My master turned to one of his men. "Bring Lehna a switch," he said. He turned again to Slave Beads. "You will be well punished for your crime, Slave Girl," said he.
"I am ready, Master," said Lehna.
"Do not forget this beating," said my master. "You are to desire men. Further, it will be well for you to learn what it is to be a beaten slave girl. What you did to Lehna she will now do to you. Perhaps you will then have a richer understanding of what it was, truly, that you did to her. Perhaps you will regret that you were not a kinder mistress."
"She will regret it, Master," promised Lehna, licking her lips.
"I will now leave you to the tender mercies of Lehna," said my master. "Let us hope that, in the future, your masters and mistresses will be kinder to you than was the Lady Sabina of Fortress of Saphronicus to her slaves."
"Do not leave me with her, Master!" cried Slave Beads. "She will kill me! She will kill me!"
"It is not impossible," said my master. He turned to leave, then turned. again to face the kneeling, terrified Slave Beads. "It is my hope, too," said he, "that this beating will prove a useful initiation for you, given your antecedents and nature, into the condition of slavery." He looked at her, sternly. "Yes, Master," she said, looking up at him. "After your beating," he said, "you will be asked again if you desire the touch of men. I trust, then, your answer will be affirmative. If it is not, you will be again beaten, and again, throughout the night."
"My answer will be affirmative, Master," whispered Slave Beads.
My master then turned away from her, and so, too, did we all, leaving her with Lehna.
Later my master took Slave Beads by the hair. "Do you now desire the touch of men?" he asked. "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, Master," she wept.
She was then released from the Sirik. "Go to the men," said my master.
"Yes, Master," she said. She crawled to the men, on her hands and knees. She extended her hand to one of them, and looked up at him, with tears in her eyes. "Please touch Slave Beads, Master," she begged.
He took her by the hair and pulled her into the darkness. We did not retire that night until Slave Beads, on her knees, had begged the touch of each of my master's men. He himself was the last to grant her plea. When he had finished with her he put her again in the Sirik and threw her to the wall of the cliff. Eta went to her and, putting a rep-cloth blanket about her, held her and comforted her. "Poor slave," said Eta.
I, and the other girls, went to sleep.
"Run!" cried the man, lowering the torch.
I, and the other girls, sped, scattering, from the dirt line.
Some fifty yards from the line, in the darkness, between the straw huts, on their pilings, I stopped, and, wild, gasping, in the Ta-Teera, looked back.
Already the torch had been fixed in the ground. The slave girl who wore the rope of Thurnus on her throat as a collar leaned back against the man of my master. Her head was back on his shoulder. Her eyes were closed. His hand was tight on her body, counting the beats of her heart. He was calling the count, but I could not hear him.
I looked wildly about, and then ran further through the huts, down the long corridor between them. Then my hands were pressed against the smooth logs of the palisade surrounding the village. I pressed my body and cheek against the wood. I stepped back and, hands on the wood, looked up. The pointed tops of the palings were eight feet over my head. I turned about, my back to the logs, and looked back down the narrow dirt street. I could see the fire in the village's clearing, its light on the faces of the men about it. I saw the boys getting to their feet, eagerly.
"There is no place to hide!" wept Slave Beads, who was near me.
"We are slaves," I snapped at her. "We are meant to be caught."
I saw some of the boys spitting on their hands and wiping them on their thighs. This would improve their grip. The flesh of a girl would be less likely to slip from their hands.
More than one of them I knew wanted me. Bets had been taken on who would bring me as his slave for the night to the ring drawn about the torch, as they had, too, on the other girls. A big red-haired fellow and a smaller dark-haired fellow had bet on which of them would take Slave Beads.
I saw Chanda creeping into a hut.
Slave Beads turned away from me and fled about the interior perimeter of the palisade.
I followed her, and then darted among the huts. I almost died of fear when, suddenly, I heard, not feet from me, a bedlam of vicious snarling. I cried out, my hand before my mouth. Dozens of vicious eyes blazed at me from behind the stout bars of a sleen pen, one of several in the village. Snouts and teeth pressed at the bars. I stumbled back.
I ran again.
I did not see Marla or Eta, nor Lehna. Slave Beads, too, had fled elsewhere.
I did see a white ankle, not covered by a piece of canvas. It was Donna. "You had best cover this ankle, or you will be soon found, Slave Girl," I said, angrily, jerking the canvas over it. Donna shrank even smaller, covered by the canvas. She trembled beneath it, her head down, under her hands. She was slender, small-breasted and lovely-legged. She had dark eyes, dark hair. The name "Donna" is an Earth name, but the girl, as I had determined, was Gorean. Many Gorean names, as words in the Gorean language, apparently have an Earth origin. Her original name had been Tais. She had been a slave since the age of eight, but it had not been until she was seventeen that she had been judged fit for men, and then branded. Donna, in the beginning, had been a block name. Girls are usually sold under a name, it being easier then for the auctioneer to refer to them; too, for some reason, the intensity of the bidding often increases when a named girl is being vended; it makes, I suppose, the buying and selling much more exciting and personal; "See, Generous Buyers, the flesh of Donna! Is Donna not beautiful? Stand straight, Donna. What am I bid, Noble Buyers, for Donna?" The original Donna had perhaps been a girl brought in a chain and collar from Earth. Her name, finding favor with masters, considering it a lovely slave name, would then have been given, from time to time, to other girls, perhaps some Gorean, perhaps some, like herself, of Earth origin. Tais was too f
ine a name for a slave; accordingly the lovely seventeen-year-old Gorean girl had been sold in Ko-ro-ba under the block name of Donna, a slave name calculated to excite Gorean buyers. Many Earth-girl names, incidentally, on Gor, are regarded as slave names. Gorean males, commonly, regard the women of Earth as fit only to be their slaves. But Donna, though she had been adjudged fit for men and branded, was sold from the block in Ko-ro-ba to a visiting merchant, Kleomenes of Fortress of Saphronicus, who took her with him and gave her to his spoiled daughter, the Lady Sabina, as a woman's slave. Donna had been a virgin until she was raped in the coffle on the first night of the march by two of my master's men. She had been had from time to time since then, but Marla, Eta and, surprisingly, I, had been the most consistently abused of the girls of Clitus Vitellius. The more beautiful I had become the more often I had been raped; and the more I had been raped, the more beautiful I had become. I think that I understood the problem of Donna. She feared men. The slave girl must, surely, if she is rational, fear men, but, too, she must regard them as potentially constituting for her sources of incredible pleasure. Donna's timidity and lingering uncertainty with men, I think, was largely a function of her fear that she might not be capable of giving them pleasure. It is one thing to be thrown down and raped; it is quite another to hear the indolent command, "Please me." The responsibility for pleasure is often placed on the slender, lovely shoulders of the slave girl. It is she, then, who must labor in her bondage to be pleasing. As soon as I had understood that the quality of my life on Gor, given my brand, would depend on my ability to please men I had begged Eta to give me instruction. She had been extremely helpful, teaching me many things I might never have discovered myself. She had actually received some weeks of slave training in the pens of Ar, a tutelage to which Clitus Vitellius in disgust at her ineptness had remanded her; she had attended diligently to her lessons; when she returned to his quarters it had been clear by morning that it would not be necessary to sell her off. She had made an acceptable beginning in learning the arts of the slave girl. These arts, it might be mentioned, are intricate and diverse, and are complex and rich in many modes and dimensions. Most obviously they are domestic, sexual and psychological. Too, they are culinary, kinetic, cosmetic and artistic. Like the painter and the musician the slave girl need never stop growing in her art, which is the creation of beauty and joy for herself and her master. I had swiftly sought slave instruction; Donna had not. Perhaps I was more practical than she. Perhaps, rather, I was simply a slave and she was not. I was of Earth. The men of Gor regard the women of Earth as natural slaves. Perhaps I was a natural slave. That might be the difference between Donna and myself. Yet I suspected that if I were a natural slave so, too, were all women. Donna, I was sure, would learn her slavery. She was beautiful. She would come around. It requires only the right master to bring out the slave in any woman.
I heard a shout from the center of the camp. The hunters were now in pursuit.
"Do not be afraid, Donna," I said to her. "You will not be beaten or much beaten. You will not truly have to serve. These are only peasant boys and will not know one end of a slave girl from the other."
Then I fled from her side, through the spaces between the dark huts.
I hoped that what I had said to Donna was true. I was sure that the peasant boys, indeed, would not know much of the handling of slave girls. Doubtless they would lack the patience and skill to get all from a girl. I did not think, for example, that they would know how to force me into the slave girl's humiliating submission ecstasy. On the other hand, I regarded them. with genuine fear. They could well hurt me. I remembered their roughness and the way they had, with brutal exactness, appraised my flesh. I was so much smaller and weaker than they, and their lust would be on them. They could well be terribly brutal with me. I was to them, after all, only an animal. They might hurt me. They might throw me about among them. They might beat me with ropes if I were not pleasing to them.
I heard a young man running by. I shrank back in the shadows, crouching among the pilings of a hut.
I did not want them to catch me. I was locked within the palisade. There was no place to hide!
I heard a girl scream, far to my right. They had taken one of us. I did not know whom.
I did not want a rope put on my throat. I did not want to be dragged to the circle of the torch, a caught girl.
Two young men came by, with torches. I hid back, among the pilings.
Shortly after they had passed, the sleen in a pen, some fifty yards off, began to squeal and hiss. They ran toward the pen. Something had disturbed the sleen. Perhaps it was a girl.
Two more young men were approaching, one holding aloft a torch. Again I shrank back among the pilings, holding my breath. They passed.
I saw them stop beside a hut several yards away. The one lifted the torch. It illuminated what appeared to be a pile of canvas. They stood there, one on each side of the pile, it almost at their feet. Cruelly they stood there, not moving. Donna would know that their footsteps had approached. They had not departed. She must, surely, fearfully suspect that her position was known. Yet she did not know for certain. How miserable she must have felt, huddling beneath the canvas, how tense and terrified, how apprehensive. Cruelly they stood as they were, not moving, for almost a minute. She could hear the crackle of the torch. Did they know where she was? Were they playing with the beauty, tormenting her? Longer yet did they stand there, and then, exchanging glances, one of them, with a sudden, loud cry, pounced on the pile of canvas. Shrieking with misery Donna was lifted, by one ankle and an arm, high into the air, over the head of the boy who had seized her. He held her over his head. She struggled, held from the ground, high, helpless, her lovely limbs without leverage. "Capture!" cried the boy. "Capture!" cried another lad, coming from the direction of the sleen pen, where the sleen, shortly before, had hissed and squealed, revealing their agitation. He held Lehna before him, his left hand on her left arm, his right hand on her right wrist, forcing her right arm high, painfully, behind her back. He pushed her before him, so held. Her gown had been pulled down about her hips. She grimaced with pain, her head back.
"Please, Master!" she wept. Lehna was a larger woman than I. She was strong among us girls. Slave Beads lived in terror of her. But in the arms of a male, even a lusty boy, she was slight and helpless, small, to them only another pretty slave girl in their power. I bit my lip. Men were our masters. With the boy who had captured Lehna came four others, two with torches. The boy who had captured Donna had now thrown her, belly down, across his left shoulder. Her head hung down behind his back. His left arm, heavy, brawny, locked her in place. "Let us see your catch," said one of the newly arrived boys. "Tie her ankles," said the lad who held Donna over his shoulder. One of the other boys, who carried a ten-foot length of rope, with one end of the rope, crossed and tied together Donna's ankles, while she was still held on the shoulder of her captor. "Who is your master of the night?" inquired Lehna's captor of Lehna. He thrust her right wrist higher behind her back. "You! You, Master!" she cried. "You are my master of the night!" "Ankle leash her," said the lad who held Lehna. Another lad tied a tether on her left ankle. The ankle leash is cruel. It provides effective control of a girl. There is much that can be done with such a leash, particularly in the control of a skillful master. Most obviously, in an instant the girl may be thrown to his feet in a variety of positions, over which he exercises choice. The lad who had captured Donna, now that her ankles were tied, heaved her with a laugh over his shoulder. She landed in the dirt behind him. She broke her fall, as best she could, with her hands. The long end of the rope which bound her ankles trailed her over his shoulder. Her captor took the end of the rope from the lad who had bound her and, holding it about a foot from her fastened ankles, pulled her feet some six inches into the air. She was lying on her stomach. "There is my catch," he said. Then he said to Donna, "Roll over." She rolled onto her back, her tied feet now held about a foot off the ground by the rope. "There, my friends,"
beamed her captor, "is my catch!" "A beauty!" said one of the boys. "Yes, a beauty!" said her captor. He was proud of Donna. I did not blame him. She was indeed beautiful. Donna was a marvelous catch. "I want her!" said one of the lads. "First capture rights are mine," said the lad who had caught Donna, "but I am generous, and will share my prize with all of you!" There was hearty acclaim among the lads upon the receipt of his welcome intelligence. Donna squirmed, but was helpless on her back, her feet bound, held in the air by the captor's tether. "What of my prize?" demanded another lad, he who had caught Lehna by the sleen pen. He now held her ankle leash, and stepped back, bowing and displaying the half-stripped Lehna with an expansive gesture. She, too, I was forced to admit, was a superb prize. Such boys did not have such girls everyday. She was a warrior's belonging. "How can we tell if she is pretty?" asked one of the boys. "Thusly!" said one, tearing away the bit of gown about Lehna's hips. There was laughter. She was very beautiful. "But she is standing!" protested the first lad. "Belly or back?" asked Lehna's captor. "Both!" cried more than one lad. Expertly, with the ankle leash, the lad displayed Lehna's beauty in the luscious modes of horizontality. Some Goreans say that a woman's beauty can only be fairly judged when she lies at a man's feet. More than one of the lads cried out with pleasure and slapped his thigh. Donna then screamed as the boys turned to her. Her gown, too, was torn off. Her ankles were still tied. "To the circle of the torch!" cried a lad. "On your feet, Wench!" said the lad who had captured Lehna. She scrambled to her feet, covered with dirt. "Three have yet to be caught," said a lad. I knew one girl had been caught early; I had heard a scream some time ago; I did not know who she was; now I knew that Lehna and Donna were in the power of the pursuers; if only three remained to be caught, then one other girl, somewhere, had also been captured. I did not know who she was either. "Let us take these to the circle of the torch," said one of the lads, "and bind them securely, then hunt the others." The captors hesitated. "You can put your marks on these in charcoal," said one of the boys, indicating Donna and Lehna. "All right," said one of the captors. "Agreed!" said the other. Lehna was led away on her ankle leash, fastened on her left ankle, and by her right wrist, too, it held in the hand of one of the boys. Donna's captor, to her misery, dragged her behind him through the dirt on the tether which fastened her ankles together. I saw the group, pursuers and fair captives, helpless in their charge, disappear down the street.
John Norman - Counter Earth11 Page 22