by John Norman
It was unusual, she thought, that such a beast would be in the streets of a city.
“Down with the sleen of Cos!” she heard.
“Be silent!” hushed a man, a hoarse whisper.
“Would that Marlenus were within the walls!” said a man.
“Marlenus is dead,” said another.
“He has been seen in the city!” whispered a man.
“Let the traitress Talena, false Ubara, be impaled!” whispered a man.
“Who said that Marlenus has been seen in the city?” asked a man.
“I heard it said in a tavern,” said one.
“Which tavern?”
“Do not think me so much a fool as to speak it. The Cosians would seize its goods and burn it to the ground.”
“Do not speak these things!” begged a woman. “The Cosians are now our masters.”
“Seek your collar!” snarled a man.
“Sleen! Sleen!” she wept.
“Is Marlenus in the city?”
“I do not know.”
“Can he be in the city?”
“Who knows?”
“Marlenus is dead,” said a man.
“Have you obeyed the Weapons Laws?” asked a man.
“Of course,” said a man. “The Cosians have disarmed us. It is death to conceal weapons. We are civilians and must be the tame verr of the Cosians, to be milked, or sheared, or led to slaughter, as they please!”
“The Cosians are our beloved allies,” said a man. “They have disarmed us for our own safety.”
“Cosian spy!”
“No!”
“Who knows what may serve as a weapon,” said a man, “a knife from the kitchen, a pointed stick, a stone.”
“The weather,” said a man, loudly, “may change. We may have another rain.”
A silence came over the men near the shelf.
Then, “Yes, yes,” said another man, loudly.
The group broke up, and the market became again much as it had been.
Turning about Ellen saw two guardsmen sauntering by. On their helmets were yellow crests.
Then, suddenly, there was the sharp snap of a switch across her derrière and Ellen cried out in pain, and humiliation. “Keep your eyes on the wall, slave,” said Barzak.
“Yes, Master,” said Ellen, quickly, her eyes brimming with tears.
I am an animal, she thought. I am owned. I am owned!
It was late in the afternoon, in the heat of the day, when she sensed two men behind her. She did not turn about, and kept her eyes fixed on the wall before her. She noted a tiny blemish in the stone.
“Do not turn about,” said Targo.
She continued to stare ahead, at the wall. Then she was aware of something dark being lifted over her head, and then it was pulled down, over her head. It completely covered her head. She gasped. She could see nothing. Then she felt it drawn back, under her chin, with threaded straps, and fitted closely about her throat. It was then buckled behind the back of her neck. She now wore a common Gorean slave hood.
“Unchain her. Take her inside. Remove our iron,” said Targo. “Then return her to the shelf, hooded, her hands tied behind her back.”
“It will take a little time,” said Barzak, and Ellen felt him reaching over her head, to the chains which fastened her against the wall.
Within the welcome coolness of the building, Barzak faced her away from him and, with a short thong, casually, tied her hands tightly behind her back. He then, leaning her against the wall, facing away from him, lifted her foot and positioned it on the small anvil. Then, with his hammer and wedge, and with three blows, he opened the shackle on her ankle, and slipped her foot free. He then knelt her beside the anvil, her head down, across it. In order to remove the weight collar he unbuckled the hood, and thrust it up, a few inches. He did not, however, raise it enough for her to see. She shuddered, kneeling, bent over, her head laid across the anvil, as Barzak then, with his tools, opened and removed the weight collar. The ringing of the tools on the metal was loud, reverberating, terrifying, and she remained on her knees, frightened, absolutely still. One false blow of the hammer and she knew that her head or throat, with such blows, could be broken as easily as one might crush an egg underfoot.
How good it felt to have the weight collar removed!
The hood was then drawn fully down again, about her throat, and buckled shut.
Barzak then stood her up, hooded, bound, before him. She then felt herself suddenly, lightly, lifted from her feet and carried toward the entrance of the holding chamber. In a moment, still carried, helplessly hooded and bound, her head to the rear, as a slave is carried, she felt herself brought again into the sunlight, and up the few steps to the surface of the shelf, where she was knelt down, she thought near the forward edge of the shelf.
Her small wrists pulled futilely against the thongs that bound them. Her struggles, she knew, were futile, but in her consternation and fear, in the hood, she could not help herself. And in the end, of course, she knew herself as helpless as before.
She knelt there for a time, bewildered, lost in the darkness of the hood, helpless in her confusion. Suddenly it seemed to her that there was some security lost in the removal of the clumsy, heavy collar and the shackle. None of the other slaves spoke to her, perhaps because there were men about, but she did not know if that were the case or not.
Then she felt herself lifted from the shelf, presumably by Barzak, and placed on her feet, on the stones of the market place, doubtless before the shelf.
“Look, Mother,” she heard a child say.
“Come away,” said a woman’s voice.
“Master, may I speak?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Barzak.
“What is happening?” she asked. “What is going on?”
“You silly little vulo,” laughed Barzak, “you have been sold.”
On the front of the hood strap, before the throat, there was a ring, for the attachment of a leash snap. Ellen had not realized this before. But now she felt a leash catch snap about the ring. She then felt two tugs, the signal, she knew from her training, that she was to be led, imminently, that she must be ready, at the next tug, to follow docilely, an obedient domestic animal, on her tether.
“Masters!” wept Ellen. “Masters!”
“You have been sold,” said Barzak.
She heard coins shaken, as in a hand. They were perhaps what had been paid for her. “See that she serves you with the fullness of a slave’s perfection,” said Targo.
“Masters!” wept Ellen, from within the darkness of the hood.
“You are a pretty slave,” said Barzak. “Serve your masters well and you may be permitted to live.”
Ellen sobbed. She knew that, as a Gorean slave girl, she must serve her masters not only well, but, as Targo had said, with the fullness of a slave’s perfection. And slave was what she was.
Gorean masters, she knew, were not easy with their slaves.
“To whom have I been sold?” she begged. “To where am I to be taken?”
“Were you given permission to speak?” asked Barzak.
“No, Master,” sobbed Ellen.
There was a pause then, as though a signal might have been awaited, or a permission granted, by as little as the nod of a head.
Then Ellen cried out in pain, as she was struck, three times, across the back of the thighs, doubtless with Barzak’s switch.
“Forgive me, Masters!” she sobbed.
Then, suddenly, Ellen felt a tug, a firm, no-nonsense tug, on the leash, and she stumbled forward in the direction of the taut strap.
Now she was being led from the market, and through the crowded streets of lower Ar, a naked slave girl, hooded, wrists bound behind her, on a leash.
Twice was she cuffed, and once kicked, when she inadvertently brushed against someone in the streets. Twice she fell, and, again struck and kicked, bleating pleas for forgiveness, hurriedly struggled to regain her feet.
Distant now w
ere her seminars in gender studies.
And so she was led she knew not where.
I have been sold, she thought. I follow on my tether, fearfully, a purchased animal, obedient, and docile, as I must.
How faraway now was Earth!
How faraway now was her former life!
She was now on another world, one quite different from her former world.
On this world she was as any man would want her, and as men on this world would have her, a slave.
Men on this world had seen what was fit for her, and what she should be.
Accordingly, on this world, that was what she was.
I am a slave, she thought. I am a slave!
Are you satisfied now, Mirus, she thought. This is what you foresaw for me, what you wanted for me, what you decided for me, that to which you have consigned me, that I should be no more than a slave on a primitive world.
For better than an Ahn she was led through the streets, and alleys, and between buildings, sometimes with passages, many of them steep, downward and upward, and sometimes so narrow that she might strike her shoulders, first on one side, then on the other. Sometimes, on a pronounced declivity, she feared she would again fall, losing her balance, hurtling headlong downward, and, at other times, given an ascending steepness, she struggled, gasping, legs aching, to climb, the leash taut, mercilessly, impatiently, against the ring, drawing her relentlessly forward. There were many twists and turns, and even had she not been hooded, and even if she had known the city, which she did not, well might she have been similarly disoriented, similarly hopelessly confused as to her location. She was certain that she was still within the city, from the paving, and the sounds, the absence of challenges, and such, at gates.
What has become of me, she thought.
This is how a slave is led, she thought.
How fitting for me, for I am a slave!
Be amused, Mirus, she thought. You have done this to me. I wear a brand. I am identified, marked chattel.
A hand, a large, masculine hand, at the leash ring, stopped her, and she stood still. It occurred to her that she was standing well, an erect, slim slave girl. How naturally I am standing thus, she thought. I have been trained. It is now part of me. No more am I, now that I am a slave girl, permitted slovenliness of posture. How my ideological sisters would scorn me, she thought, to see me stand so beautifully, but I have no choice, for I am slave. Let them be put under the whip and they, too, would soon learn to so stand, to accept their beauty and see to it that it was well displayed, for the masters will have it so. We belong to them. We are theirs.
The leash was then dangling before her, from its ring, and she gasped, as she felt herself lifted from her feet and put lightly to a man’s shoulder, her head to the rear, again as a slave is commonly carried. She was then steadied on the shoulder with one hand and he began to move upward, climbing, surely ascending a ladder or ladderlike device. He stepped carefully, and doubtless utilized his free hand to steady them in their upward movements. When Ellen became alarmed at the height to which she was being carried, she began to count the steps, or rungs, one after the other. There were more than three hundred such steps, or rungs, after she had begun to count. She could feel wind whipping about at this height, and twice the fellow carrying her stopped in his climb when the wind was particularly fierce. She feared they might be swept from the steps or ladder. Voices from below were now far away, and, in the further ascent, they could drift up but faintly, if at all, from the streets below.
At last he had ascended to a level, some level, and, the winds whirling and blasting about them, and the leather of the hood snapping about her face, she was placed again on her feet. She was then led for several yards across this level, some sort of open, wind-blown, flat surface, and then found herself suddenly out of the wind, and, in moments, some yards within some straw-strewn, wooden-floored room, or area. Then she was put to her knees. She clenched her knees together, frightened, hoping that she might be permitted to be a tower slave. But almost instantly a heavy, bootlike sandaled foot forced her knees apart, widely, and then more widely. She then understood better the services that would be required of her in this place.
Yes, Mirus, she thought. I am to be a pleasure slave for men. But doubtless, too, a work slave. This can be no palace, no mansion, no luxurious, noble quarters, no rich man’s compartments. You had me sold as a low slave, from a common shelf, in a poor market, Mirus, she thought. You managed this thing well.
In this area, despite its openness, there was a strong odor, which she did not recognize. It must be that of some sort of living thing, or things, she thought.
A figure was then crouching before her, and she, in the hood, felt the leash removed from the leash ring, and, a moment later, the thong binding her wrists was removed. She had scarcely time to gratefully rub her wrists before she was rudely drawn by the left upper arm to her feet and taken to one side. There, as she stood, her hands were tied before her body, with a leather strap, and she heard a loop of strap strike above her, as though thrown over a beam. Then, a moment later, her bound hands were drawn upward and over her head, until she stood painfully on her toes.
“Please, no, Master!” she wept.
She then received ten lashes of the five-stranded Gorean slave whip, and she wept, and screamed, and protested, and begged, and pleaded, and turned, spinning, jerking, twisting, in the bonds, sometimes bending her knees, lifting her feet from the floor, her full weight then on the wrist tether, and then, after the tenth blow, she hung helplessly, sobbing, sagging, knees bent, on the strap, her full weight on it.
The strap was then apparently freed from the hook or ring which held it over the beam and she fell, hands still bound before her, to her knees.
She now knew that this was a place in which she would well obey, a place in which she must strive with every fiber of her being to be as pleasing as possible.
She sensed the figure before her and put out her bound hands and touched a powerful leg. She then put down her hooded head and, feeling for a foot, pressed her lips to it through the leather desperately, placatingly.
She was then dragged a few feet to the side and thrown on her belly over a smooth, rounded leather surface. It was some sort of artifact. It seemed to have rings on its side.
Then she cried out with dismay.
He was with her only moments.
He then took her to the side and threw her to a bedding of straw. There he untied her hands but, in an instant, pulled them behind her and she felt her small wrists enclosed with slim steel, slave bracelets. She then heard a rattle of chain. A heavy collar, with an attached chain, was then about her neck. This collar was locked in place.
Then, as far as she knew, sobbing in the hood, he had gone.
After a time, lying on her side, she tried the slave bracelets. They were on her perfectly, of course, the ratchet and pawl arrangement having sought unerringly the measurements of her wrists, then closing snugly, efficiently, about them. She could not slip the bracelets. They are not made to be slipped by slaves.
She lay there for a time, quietly in the straw, not moving further. She thought that the man was gone, but she did not know. What if a man were watching? She knew the effect that a naked, bound woman can have on a man, even such a woman half hidden, half buried, in a bedding of straw, such as that into which she had been cast. She lay there then, frightened, a whipped, ravished slave, trying to comprehend this change in her life, what had been done to her.
After perhaps an Ahn, she rose timidly to her knees and, as she could, hooded, explored her surroundings. The chain was fastened to a ring in the floor before her. It did not give her much play, say, some four to four and a half feet. She was on straw, certainly, and, it seemed, given low wooden walls to her left and right, in some sort of open stall.
There is the smell of animals in this place, she thought. Dampness, mustiness, acidic odors, other odors. Large animals, or many animals. This place is a barn, she thought, but it is
too high for a barn. What manner of place can this be? What animals, what beasts, what creatures, could be kept here, so high?
As she explored, with her body, legs and fingers, behind her, as she could, hooded, her small wooden-floored, straw-strewn housing, which seemed clearly to be some sort of stall, she discovered, to her joy, within the scope of her chain, which was all that was permitted her, a large, porcelainlike bowl. It had been rinsed, but, from its size, she knew it could not be for feeding or watering, but must be for wastes. Her bladder had been crying for relief, but she had feared to soil the straw, even at the end of the chain. She feared to be again beaten. Masters are not patient with careless slaves. Such bowls, or vessels, of course, serve an obvious purpose, and are common in kennels and cells. The presence of the bowl there, and the ring in the floor, with the chain and collar, suggested that this small housing, or stall, had been prepared for, and was intended for, the keeping of a slave and, presumably, given its openness, a female slave. Ellen supposed that she was not the first slave, nor would she be likely to be the last slave, to be housed in this narrow, straw-strewn space. Gratefully, she squatted over the bowl and relieved herself.
Though it had surely been with pleasure that she had discovered the bowl within the reach of her chain, and she was grateful for the relief of her distress, it was shortly thereafter that she considered the simplicity, rudeness and directness of this arrangement, adequate it seemed for a lowly slave, and considered further how she must look, hooded, chained, naked, braceleted, squatting, taking advantage of such a primitive accommodation. She wondered what her ideological sisters on Earth would have thought of that. But then, she thought, let them be on a chain on Gor! Let them be a chained, braceleted, squatting slave! Let them then preserve what they can of their vanity, dignity, and sophistication! To be sure, she had been forced to relieve herself publicly before men in her training. Such is thought useful in the training of a slave. The slave is not permitted privacy, or modesty, no more than a verr or kaiila, for she, like them, is only another domestic animal.
Then she lay again still in the straw, in the leather hood, naked, chained by the neck, her hands braceleted behind her, and sobbed.