Prize of Gor

by John Norman

  But, too, of course, consider the feelings of the woman who understands herself, perhaps suddenly, perhaps unexpectedly, the focus of such desire, the object of such lust, the sought quarry of such a relentless, determined hunter. What of her feelings, discovering herself to be so ferociously and inordinately desired? She discovers herself, perhaps with inadequate warning, to be such that she is fiercely and uncompromisingly wanted, wanted as a slave is wanted, wanted even to the humiliation of the collar. In her terror might she not, too, be flattered, excited, shaken, even exalted, even exhilarated, to the core, to understand this new astonishing dimension of her desirability? Perhaps she is a free woman, and has had some warning of these things, and flees, and hides. But she knows she will be sought, tenaciously, perhaps even with sleen. Will her hunter be satisfied with anything less than to lead her back to his camp, naked, back-braceleted, and leashed, and, now, of course, collared? What woman does not hope to inspire such lust? What woman does not wish to be so beautiful that she could inspire such tempestuous, raging desire? What a certification this is of her value, what a testimony to the excitements of her femaleness, to the seizable glory of her delicious, vulnerable femininity, to be so wanted, wanted as a slave is often wanted, as a slave is commonly wanted.

  But let us examine these matters not in the context of bondage, where they are so dramatically intensified and heightened, so much so as to be almost indescribably and unrecognizably different from the cooler latitudes of more routine and tepid desires, but rather examine them in the more sober and cooler climes of calculation and prudence.

  Even a free woman, wrapped in her robes and veils, can experience enveloping, disturbing, penetrant sensations at understanding that she is wanted by a man, wanted as a woman is wanted by a man. Amongst these sensations may be tremors of fear, a sense of uneasiness, suffusions of warmth, and an awareness of weakness, knowing that her strength is not the strength of a man. Certainly any woman might wonder what it might be to have a given man’s chain on her neck. One thing must be clearly understood. When a man wants a woman as a man wants a woman he wants to have her, literally, to have her totally, to possess her, to own her, to have her, to speak openly, as his slave. He may not admit this but that is what he wants. To be sure, one cannot have a free woman as a slave, as she is a free woman. On the other hand one can have a slave as a slave, without cant or hypocrisy. And they are for sale. But even the free woman, assuming she is not unutterably stupid, realizes the man who truly wants her, as a man wants a woman, wants her wholly, namely, as a slave. It is her project then, one supposes, to frustrate this desire and make certain he does not have her as he wants, as his slave. To be sure, in this way she defrauds both herself and her companion. In denying him, she denies herself, and her womanhood, as well. This problem does not arise with the female slave. She knows she will be possessed as, and used as, a slave. She is, after all, a slave. Too, she does not want the half-way, or quarter-way, possession of the free woman. The free woman may insist upon dilution, curtailments, abridgements, and compromises, but the slave may not; as a chattel, she will be possessed, ruled, and used as the slave she is; her master will have not some fraction from her, as he might from a free woman, granted to him in her benevolence, but all from her, as she is a slave; she is, accordingly, given no choice but to yield all, but then, in her heart, this is what she wishes, to have no choice but to yield all.

  Had she feared or resented men? Had she delighted in frustrating or tormenting men? Had she scorned men? Had she attempted to use them for her purposes? Had she attempted to twist their needs and use these needs, like knives, against them? In any event, the maneuverings, the fencings, the negotiations, the teasings, the bargainings, the games, are at an end.

  She now kneels before a man, naked, in bonds.

  The war is now over for her, a war which she felt required to wage but in her heart longed to lose, a war she waged that she might be defeated; she knows that her independence is gone, irrecoverably, and she is pleased; she knows that she has been subdued and conquered, as she wished; she has fallen to her enemy, and rejoices. She wishes to be handled, and used, and commanded, as a strong man handles, uses, and commands a woman, not with the sensitivity and timidity, the restraint and tentativeness, the civility and politesse, the caution and delicacy, with which a free man addresses his attentions to a free woman. And have not strong men always made slaves of their female prisoners? Is this not what she has hoped for? Were her provocations not intended, though she may have scarcely understood this at the time, to bring her to this very fate? Conquered, she, as other fair antagonists, awaits her brand and collar, and the sales platform. So then she is sold, probably publicly. In her chains, she senses, and gratefully, the appropriateness, the fittingness, the rightfulness, of what has been done to her. The shifts, the jockeyings, the byways, the plottings, the vyings, the contentions, the strife, the contests and tournaments, are at an end. She feels the weight of the chains on her small limbs; how wary she must now be of men, and how she must now strive to please them! She? Please men? Yes, certainly, and for fear now not only of the whip, but for her very life. She does not even know who bought her, for the light was not on the tiers, with their observers and bidders, but upon the block, where she was well exhibited, illuminated for the buyers.

  What will it be to be a slave, she asks herself. Why was I chosen, and not another?

  Is there something special about me?

  Has someone sensed my inner truth? Who, I wonder, so perceptively, recognized me, who saw that I was a slave?

  She then finds fulfillment, and contentment, at the foot of her master’s couch. She walks well on his leash, back-braceleted, as he shows her off, on the streets. She kisses the chain with which he fastens her to a public slave ring, where she must wait for him. She writhes in her bonds, knowing herself owned and deliciously helpless. She kneels in her small cage and grasps the bars, and squirms in heat, as the anticipatory little animal she is. Perhaps she will be permitted, at a snapping of fingers, to crawl to the master, bringing him the whip in her teeth. She hopes it will not be used upon her. Surely she can better please him otherwise.

  The human female longs for the fullest satisfaction of her nature and needs, and nature has dictated its conditions, those under which, and only under which, this satisfaction can be obtained, conditions which, articulated, refined and enhanced in a civilized context, are institutionalized as the relation between a slave and her master.

  A last remark might be in order here which is part of the woman’s sense that she is wanted, wanted in that special way, in the way that a man wants a woman. Part of that sense is that the woman, whether slave or free, becomes much aware of her own body and its sensations, and, interestingly, becomes much aware of, and experiences, her own nudity. Even the free woman, fully clothed, has a sudden sense of her body, naked, within her encumbering robes. And if the free woman can have such a sensation one may well understand, I trust, the radical accentuation of such sensations on the part of a slave, who is purchasable, and who is commonly much exhibited to begin with, often shielded by no more than the single, thin, flimsy layer of a brief rep-cloth tunic. Too, if the slave should be standing, her hands chained over her head, nude on a sales shelf, or be nude, half kneeling, half lying, chained on a heavy, wooden platform, or such, it is easy to see how she might feel, finding herself the object of a male’s scrutiny. Do you not think she is not then muchly aware of her body, and its nudity, even were it, say, within the confines of a tunic? Do you think she is not then suddenly aware of the pull of the tunic on a breast, the whispering touch of a hem on her thigh? The slave is often aware that she is wanted, and as a man wants a woman. This could take place many times a day. Certainly this occurs frequently enough in the plazas and on the streets, in the markets and parks, in the promenades, and such. Certainly one of the common pleasures of a Gorean male is observing a female slave, and speculating what it would be to have her. And the slave, for her part, finds this ve
ry pleasurable, particularly if she is secure in her master’s collar, if those about are likely to share a Home Stone with him, and such. What woman’s belly would not be warmed, recognizing that she is attractive, and that men would like to have her? And, of course, she knows that if she were to be had, and this muchly pleases her, that she would be well had, had then not as a free woman is had, but had as a slave is had, for that is how men want a woman, to have her as a slave is had.

  “Look,” said Fel Doron, “the tarns are aloft.”

  The men then, shading their eyes, observed the tarns. Speaking as though one might be on Earth, and ignoring the complexities of the Gorean compass, which points always to the Sardar, each of the four tarns, each with its suspended basket, went to a different quadrant, one to the north, the others to the east, south and west. At these points they alighted.

  “They are doubtless discharging some men,” said Portus Canio. “In time, giving those afoot time to approach us, they will rise again, and attack from the air.”

  “They should wait for darkness,” said the spokesman.

  “No,” said Portus Canio. “They might then lose some of us.”

  “Masters!” said Ellen. “It may be I whom they want. That is possible! It is said Tersius Major is with them! He may want me! Many times in the tarn loft have his eyes greedily roved me! A slave is not unaware of such things! If this should be true, if it is I whom they want, give me to them!”

  “Vain slave,” said Selius Arconious.

  “Master!” wept the slave.

  “Do not flatter yourself, property-slut,” said Selius Arconious.

  “Please, Master!” she begged.

  “Do not forget you are worthless collar-meat,” he said.

  “Master!” she protested.

  “Yes!” he said, angrily.

  “They may want me,” said Ellen, determinedly. “It is possible! Surely I am valuable. Men bid silver upon me, silver!”

  “You are worth no more than a handful of tarsk-bits,” said Selius Arconious.

  “If it should be I whom they want,” said Ellen, “give me to them! Save yourselves!”

  “They are not thinking slave,” said Selius Arconious. “They are thinking vengeance, and gold.”

  “Master!” protested the slave.

  “You are not important,” said the spokesman. “You have served your purpose.”

  Ellen looked up at him, startled.

  “How is that?” asked Mirus.

  “Surely you did not think we followed these barbarians through the grasslands with nothing more in mind than the disposing of an inquisitive slave,” said the spokesman.

  “You were to aid me in her recovery,” said Mirus.

  “Do not be naive,” said the spokesman. “She is to lead us to the tarnster, who is to lead us to the gold. She may then be disposed of later. She has seen too much.”

  Ellen sobbed, kneeling bound at their feet.

  The spokesman then regarded Portus Canio. “We want the gold, tarn keeper,” said he. “We have our own purposes, for which it would prove useful.”

  “I am sure of that,” said Portus Canio. “But none here now knows where it is.”

  “And it seems,” said Selius Arconious, “that as you may have followed us with such in mind, so, too, with such in mind, have the Cosians followed you.”

  “Masters!” said Ellen. “Even if they have not come for me, perhaps you may, at least, arrange a truce, and then use me in your negotiations! Perhaps you can bargain with me! Try to buy your safety with me, and perhaps with the tharlarion and wagon! Save yourselves.”

  “Are you so fond of Tersius Major?” inquired Selius Arconious.

  “No!” she said.

  “Do not think you can so easily escape my collar,” said Selius Arconious.

  “Master?” she asked.

  “Do you allow your women to speak without permission?” asked the spokesman of Selius Arconious.

  “Please, Masters!” sobbed Ellen. “Let me speak!”

  “Spread your knees,” snapped Selius Arconious.

  Ellen instantly obeyed.

  “Please, Masters!” she begged.

  Selius Arconious regarded her, not pleasantly.

  “Untie my hands,” she begged. “Take the rope from my neck! Let me run! Perhaps they will be distracted, and you may make away!”

  But Selius Arconious was paying her no attention. He was rather scanning the grasslands about.

  “My ankles are not bound,” said Ellen. “Let me run as I am!”

  “You would run directly into the arms of a Cosian,” said Fel Doron, “and then your ankles would indeed be bound, surely with the leash rope. You would be left in the grass until later, when they remembered you.”

  “If they remembered you,” said a man.

  “And, if they did not,” said another man, “you would lie in the grass, crying out for help, with no one to hear, helpless in your ropes, knowing that in three days you would die of thirst.”

  “No,” said another man, one of Portus’s fellows, “she would be eaten by wild sleen. I have seen their spoor.”

  “I do not think they would forget her,” said Portus Canio.

  “And then,” said Fel Doron, “you would find yourself put as the slave you are to their diverse services and pleasures.”

  “Yes, Master,” whispered Ellen.

  “If you run,” said Selius Arconious, “as soon as you are caught, by whomsoever catches you, I or another, you will be treated as a runaway, and will be subjected to the sanctions appropriately levied against a runaway girl.”

  “I do not think, in any event, I would break into a run in the vicinity of sleen,” said Portus Canio.

  Ellen shuddered. Such a behavior, she realized, might startle the sleen, and activate the hunting response.

  “Tie the slut’s leash to the wagon,” said Selius Arconious, irritably.

  Ellen looked at Selius Arconious, tears in her eyes. How he hated her!

  Fel Doron drew Ellen, on her knees, to the vicinity of the left, rear wheel of the wagon, thrust her under the wagon, and then tied her leash about the rear axle. She then knelt there, miserable, in the shadows beneath the wagon bed, bound, roped in place. She, slave, it would be done to her, and appropriately, as men wished.

  “The tarns are aflight,” said Portus Canio.

  “The Cosians must be close now,” said Fel Doron, straightening up.

  “See the swing of the baskets,” said Selius Arconious. “I doubt that there are more than three men in a basket, two archers and a strapmaster.”

  “Some fifteen or twenty on the ground then,” said the spokesman.

  “We do not know,” said Portus.

  “Archers?”

  “I hope not many,” said Fel Doron.

  “The soldiers will be Cosian regulars,” said Portus Canio. “We are not going to meet them blade for blade.”

  “If they think their feast is set,” said the spokesman lifting his weapon, “they have not calculated wisely.”

  He then left.

  “We may yet owe our lives to our enemies,” said Portus Canio.

  Mirus, too, turned away.

  “I think not,” said Selius Arconious. “A business disrupted may be easily resumed.”

  “Consider the beasts,” said Fel Doron. Kardok, hunched down, large-eyed, was viewing them.

  The spokesman, bent over, was counseling his men. What he said could not be heard at the wagon.

  “Master!” wept Ellen, from her place beneath the wagon.

  “Be silent!” he said.

  She put her head down, frightened, and was silent. When she lifted her head again, Selius Arconious was gone. Tears ran down her cheeks.

  Somehow the men had fanned out, separated, perhaps prone in the grass. She could see the tharlarion of Mirus grazing a few yards away.

  She heard two shots, and a cry of surprise, and pain. There was then another pair of shots, this time from behind her. She lay on
her belly, putting her cheek to the grass, frightened.

  When she lifted her head a little, she saw the bootlike sandals of a Cosian soldier not ten feet away. There was another shot and he suddenly slipped to the earth, his knees giving way.

  She heard a cry from somewhere to the east.

  A great smooth, sweeping, soaring shadow momentarily darkened the grass and she knew a tarn with its basket had passed, its archers doubtless looking for targets. It would not have been more than fifty feet above her.

  She suddenly heard the fierce scratching of a tharlarion’s paws in the turf and she saw Mirus, low in the saddle, racing toward her. He was at the side of the wagon in a moment, fiercely pulling up the saddle tharlarion, rearing, its head jerked back, and he leapt from the saddle, almost at her side. There was a knife in his hand.

  She shrank back, and he seized the neck rope, tied about the axle, and slashed it apart. He then dragged her from under the wagon by a bound arm, to the tharlarion. He had a foot in the stirrup, and drew himself up with his left hand, retaining his grasp on the slave with his right hand, hauling her upward with him. An arrow she sensed sped past, like a whisper in the wind.

  The tharlarion reared and squealed.

  She was then half across the saddle, twisted, on her side, before him. She tried to squirm free and then it seemed her head exploded with pain. His hand was so twisted in her hair she feared great gouts of it would be torn free. Tears burst from her eyes.

  “Do not struggle,” said he, “slave girl!”

  Then he had her well across the saddle, on her belly, and she, wedged between the pommel and his body, was helpless.

  “If I cannot have you,” he said, “no one shall!”

  “No, please, Master!” she cried.

  “The word suits you well, slut, and always did!” he laughed.

  She sobbed wildly. The world seemed to spin as the tharlarion turned and leaped.

  “You look well on a leash,” he said, fiercely, “on a rope leash, leashed like the bitch you are!”

  She was conscious in the swirl of a helmet before him, but the tharlarion, forced forward, struck into the man and he fell away, reeling backward.