by John Norman
“Master,” she whimpered, “I am no longer a free woman, as once I was! I can no longer pride myself on my frigidity. I can no longer base my self-respect, my self-esteem, on my sexual inertness, on my superiority to sex. I can no longer go months or years without actual sexual relief, sublimating my physical needs into petulance, negativity, irritability, nastiness, pettiness and rivalry. I now need sex. Surely you understand, Master, that I have been embonded. I am now a slave! Men have aroused me! The collar has set me aflame. Slave fires rage now in my belly. I now belong to Masters, needfully!”
He was silent.
“Use me, Master,” she whispered. “I beg to be used!”
“No,” he said, coldly.
“You have not tied me, or chained me,” she said. “You have not braceleted me, helplessly. You have not put me in slave hobbles! Perhaps I shall run away!”
“I would not advise it,” he said, and her blood ran cold.
She heard, from the side, Portus Canio turn in his sleep. Fel Doron was yards away, on watch. To another side slept Mirus and his fellow.
“Please, use me, Master!” begged Ellen.
“No,” he said.
How different it is from Earth, she thought. But on Earth the slave fires have been lit in the bellies of few women. On Earth women guard their bellies with fervor, lest they succumb to what they know lies within them, the ready tinder which might be ignited by the torch of bondage. She did not doubt, if only from her own experiences on Earth, the depth and pervasiveness, the readiness, of female sexual needs in the women of Earth. They were surely not other, physiologically, than those of their Gorean sisters. But there were surely great differences culturally and psychologically. Gor had not had centuries of inculcated denials and loathings. But sexual needs and frustrations, so much suppressed, so hysterically denied, must then express themselves in pathological transmogrifications, express themselves in a thousand disguises, conceal themselves behind the disfigurations of a thousand masks, and issue in a multitude of seemingly unrelated illnesses, miseries, petulances and hostilities! Indeed, some women were so well conditioned that they would belittle and despise the sexual needs of the normal woman, doubtless fearing such needs in themselves, and would try to make her feel guilty and ashamed, inferior and wanting, because of her actual vitality and health. Indeed, some women even pride themselves on their supposedly inert bellies and alleged superiority to sexuality. No wonder then that the human male, on Earth, often thought of the women of his species as being, however desirable, essentially sexless creatures, as being sexually minimal and torpid, as being above sex, or disinterested in it, as being, in effect, inert and frigid. But the polar wastes of so many women’s bellies are not the results of anatomical or physiological climates or impoverishments; they are rather the engineered consequences of cultural and psychological tragedies. When an Earth woman is brought to Gor, then, at least as a slave, one of the first things done to her is to enlighten her as to her own nature and that of men, so that she will understand who it is who holds the whip and whose neck it is that is encircled with the collar, and, as a part of this, the masters, callously and brutally I fear, but they are not patient men, light the slave fires in her belly. She is then, in her collar, irremediably, a needful, sexual creature. Whereas the men of Earth, like the women of Earth, are commonly starved for sex, and are, consequently, usually the most obvious or most public victims of unsatisfied sexual need, there is little parallel to this amongst Gorean males. Whereas the sexual drives of Gorean males, not undermined by, nor diminished by, pathological, sometimes even inconsistent, conditioning programs, and such, tend to be frequently insistent, urgent, powerful, and uncompromising, they usually have at their disposal the means to satisfy their needs, and with ease. Slaves may be cheaply bought, particularly in times of unrest and war. Too, there are the paga taverns and brothels. On the other hand, the sexual needs of the slave are much at the mercy of the master. Accordingly, on Gor it is usually the slave who is the beggar in these matters and not the free man. She is in the agony of her needs. Will the master satisfy her or not? Commonly she pleads, as it is up to him, not her. This is an interesting turnabout from Earth. To be sure, doubtless there are women on Earth in whose bellies slave fires have been lit, and these, as much as any Gorean slave, must kneel or belly before their masters, beg sex, and hope that he will be kind to them. Let us suppose a male is brought to Gor as a free man. Now, let us also suppose that on Earth there is a particular woman, a desirable female of interest to him, who, in a typical Earth fashion, has frustrated him and has spurned his attentions. Let us also suppose that this woman is later brought to Gor, as a slave presumably, as she is a female, either with or without his knowledge. Let us then suppose that she is collared and slave fires are lit in her belly, and that she then comes into his ownership, either by a sheer coincidence, or by design, if he has arranged or requested her abduction. You may then imagine her at his feet, beautiful and helpless, naked in her collar, begging for sex. One supposes he would find this state of affairs unobjectionable.
She then, lying at his thigh, bit her lip, and choked back a sob. Tears rushed through her lashes. She rolled angrily, in frustration, away from him, and from the blanket, damp with dew. She pressed the side of her face, sobbing, into the grass. She felt the narrow, fibrous, cool, dawn-moist, living blades against her tear-streaked cheek.
He has not bound me, he has not shackled me, she thought. Is he so arrogant, so sure of me! Perhaps I shall run away! I could show him! I could teach him not to take me for granted! Does he think I am a slave? But, alas, I am a slave! Let him awaken and find me gone! How he treats me! I do not want to be a slave! I am miserable! But where could I, a slave, run? Should I be lost in the grasslands, or be eaten by ravaging sleen? And I am tunicked, branded, collared! There is no escape for me on this world! There is no escape for the Gorean slave girl! If I were not eaten, or did not die of exposure, nor of thirst or starvation, I would be caught and acquired, if not by him, by another, like a stray kaiila. Would my collar not show me slave? And even if I could somehow get it off, might not a man simply seize my leg and examine my thigh, noting there my brand? That would not be difficult. I am clearly marked. And what if he, my master, followed and recovered me? What would then be my fate?
She felt the wet grass on the side of her cheek. She was not then on the blanket, at the thigh of her master.
I must not displease him, she thought.
She then crept back on the blanket, to lie docilely at his thigh. She kissed his thigh, penitently. “Forgive me, Master,” she whispered. She hoped she would not be beaten in the morning. He was master. She was slave. It will be done with me as my master pleases, she thought. Let me suffer agonies of need. It matters not. I am a slave. Perhaps sometime he will caress me. I hope that I shall not be beaten in the morning.
“Am I to be whipped, Master?” she asked.
“Perhaps,” he said.
“Master?”
“Go to sleep,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” she said, and pressed her lips again, softly, to his thigh.
Yes, she thought. He is my master, and he does with me as he pleases. Oh, would that he would take pity on his slave! Please caress her, Master. Please caress her, Master. She loves you.
Why does he, a powerful, virile man, not caress me, she asked herself.
Am I so distasteful to him?
Does he wish to torture me?
How fearful it is sometimes, she thought, to be a slave. We are so vulnerable, and helpless!
Sometimes I am terrified that I am in a collar.
But, too, it is unutterably beautiful to be in a collar. I want it on my neck, with all it means.
I am a slave, and that is what I want to be. I would not be otherwise. I love being a slave, she whispered to herself. I love being a slave. And I love my master.
But would that he caressed me! But even if I hated him I would want him to caress me.
I need to be
caressed.
I am a slave!
We had begun to move generally southeastward, across the grasslands. We did not encounter more sleen. Such beasts, burrowing, six-legged, sinuous, carnivorous, unless on a scent, tend to be territorial. Perhaps as early as the morning following our departure from our earlier camp, that which had been the scene of such conflict and carnage, we had traversed, and left behind, their usual hunting range. The prairie sleen is, incidentally, I have been told, much smaller than the forest sleen, which can upon occasion reach lengths of eighteen feet and weights of several hundred pounds.
The slave lay, sleepless, needful, uncaressed, at the thigh of her master.
The grasslands were muchly quiet.
The slave, in her duties, could scarcely have avoided hearing the casual conversations of masters. Soon, she gathered, Mirus and his fellow, now muchly recovered, though still unable to walk, would leave the group and make their way toward Brundisium, Mirus dragging an improvised travois, constructed of rope, a pair of poles and a tarpaulin. This device had been constructed the preceding evening, their trek having come to a small grove of dark temwood, bordering a tiny stream. In a day or two it was anticipated that worn trails might be encountered. They had already passed two small streams.
The slave’s master had not touched her. She could not have been more deprived if she had been weeks in a dealer’s house, in a cramped, readying cage, in which she might be kept until she was ready to scratch and scream with need and beg to be sent to an auction block. Portus Canio and Fel Doron scarcely looked upon her. She tried, as though inadvertently, as though not really intending to do so, to put herself before Mirus, and as a slave. But he, too, had paid her no attention. I need relief, she had shrieked to herself. How she then cursed the very thought of men, and, in particular, of honor.
On his other side, opposite the restless, discomfited slave, Selius Arconious had laid an unsheathed weapon.
“If you will not use me, Master,” she whispered, “rent me, or assign me, to another!”
“You wish to be ordered to report to another?” he asked.
She shuddered; she could easily be put in such a situation; she could be ordered to report to another, in the full sense that is meant by “reporting to another.” She could, she knew, at her master’s merest word or whim be thusly put, in the fullness of her slaveness, to another’s feet; she was branded; she was collared; she was slave.
“No, Master,” she whispered.
He seemed to be listening, intently.
“I love you, Master,” she whispered.
“As a slave loves?” he asked.
“Yes, Master,” she said. “But even if I were a free woman the love I feel for you would make me your helpless slave! But I am not free, but am a true slave, and belong in the totality of my being to my master! There can be no greater love than the love of a loving slave!”
He was silent.
“Use me,” she begged.
“No,” he said.
“Use me in any way you please, as is your right, Master! Use me with rudeness, with brutality, if you wish! Claim me with the whip, teaching me my bondage, should it be your pleasure! But see me, look at me, hear me! Let your fingers stray but idly to my hair. Let your hand but lightly touch my forehead. Cast but a glance upon me! Though I am only a slave and animal I exist! I am here! Do not be cruel! Be kind! I am yours, wholly yours! Do not ignore me!”
“Rest,” said he.
“Are you my master?” she asked, angrily.
“Yes,” he said.
“Prove to me that you are my master,” she said.
“Beware,” said he.
“If you will not use me,” she said, angrily, “sell me to one who will! Sell me to one who is a man!”
He turned then angrily, suddenly, to the slave but, at the same moment, there was a great roar splitting the silence of the camp and a dark, monstrous, violent shape leapt into the camp and Fel Doron, at the wagon, cried out, and the slave screamed, and Selius Arconious grasped for the weapon beside him and Kardok, gigantic and wild in the cold morning light, jaws slavering, eyes blazing, seized up Mirus and bent toward his throat, and Mirus, with his feet and arms, tried to fend the beast away, but he was lifted from his feet and brought, struggling, toward the distended jaws, the wet, long, curved, whitish fangs and Selius Arconious, his blade held in two hands, was hacking at the back of the beast’s neck, and then at the side of its throat, and it turned about, enraged, and put up a paw which, severed, was flung into the grass, and it turned full then upon Selius Arconious and Selius Arconious, with a cry of rage as hideous as that of the beast, thrust his blade deep into the chest of Kardok and the beast spun about wresting the blade from his hand.
Fel Doron rushed forward, Portus Canio had thrown off his blankets.
The second beast then seemed to appear from nowhere and scrambled its way on all fours, dirt spattering behind it, toward Selius Arconious and the fallen Mirus.
But at that moment it stopped, suddenly, abruptly, and lifted its hands, a great spear thrust into its body, the point and a quarter of the shaft emerging from its back.
“Bosk, Bosk of Port Kar!” cried Portus Canio.
Behind him was the warrior known as Marcus, of Ar’s Station.
Ellen could not even speak so frightened, so breathless, was she. The force of the spear thrust must have been prodigious, and its might was compounded by the charge of the beast.
He called Bosk of Port Kar, that fearful larl of a man, drew then his blade and went behind the beast, seized the fur of its head, thus holding the head, and then, with two terrible strokes of that small, wicked weapon, cut away the head.
Kardok back on its haunches, bleeding, forced the blade of Selius Arconious from his own chest, wedging it away by the hilt with one paw and the flowing stub of the other. It turned then and staggered about. Wavering, it bent down to pick up the blade, but the bootlike sandal of Bosk held it, pressed, to the grass.
Kardok, snarling, blood now bursting with air, hissing like foam, spreading about its jaws and fangs, looked about himself, from face to face.
The slave covered her face with her hands, seeing herself so regarded.
Kardok then turned about, and staggered out, into the grasslands.
Bosk of Port Kar picked up the warmed, bright, red-rich, drenched blade of Selius Arconious, and held it out to him.
Selius Arconious then followed Kardok from the camp.
“No, Master! No, Master!” cried the slave.
She would have fled after her master, but her arm was seized by the mighty hand of Bosk of Port Kar, and she, small and female, struggling, was held as helplessly as in a vise.
“Let me go! Let me go!” she screamed.
But in a matter of moments Selius Arconious returned to the camp, wading through the grass; in his right hand was a bloodied sword; in his left hand, dangling, was the massive, bleeding head of Kardok.
“Master! Master!” cried the slave, overjoyed.
“On your knees,” said Bosk of Port Kar.
Then she looked up at him from her knees. From his accent, she was certain that his origin was, like hers, Earth. She took him to have been English. Doubtless, if her surmise was correct, as to his world, and nation, of origin, he would have known her, from her accent, as easily as she knew him, known her to have been once of Earth, and doubtless it was as easy for him to conjecture her country or nation as it was for her to conjecture his. So he was an Earth man and she was an Earth woman, but here, on Gor, it was he who stood, and was perhaps even of the caste of Warriors, and she who knelt. Yes, she thought to herself. Here, on this world, it is he who stands and I who kneel! He does not in confusion, in guilty embarrassment, summon me to my feet but rather, in the order of nature, keeps me on my knees before him, where I belong!
“You deserted us, in the prairie,” said Fel Doron.
“No,” said Portus Canio. “They doubtless understood the meaning of the tarns in the sky, the s
cent of sleen. They then, under the cover of darkness, given the priorities of war, made their rendezvous, and saw to the care of the purloined gold.”
Selius Arconious cast aside the great head of Kardok.
“I love you, Master!” cried the slave, from her knees.
“Who were those outside the camp, our unseen allies?” asked Fel Doron.
“They,” said Portus Canio. “But there were but two, and thus they found it judicious, and most convenient, to do their work from without.”
“We owe you our lives,” said Portus Canio, “on more than one occasion.”
Bosk shrugged.
“It was you who brought the tabuk to the camp?” said Fel Doron.
“Yes,” said Bosk of Port Kar.
“You have drifted with us, have you not?” asked Portus Canio.
“Yes,” he said.
“Why did you not announce yourselves, after the departure of the Cosians?” asked Fel Doron.
“There were five beasts,” he said. “We located the bodies of only three. We conjectured then that two remained at large. As they had seemingly pursued you, we supposed they might not easily abandon that venture. Thus we stayed with you, unseen, that we might, if they should attack, act unexpectedly in your behalf, act with the element of surprise in our favor. But it seems you needed little assistance.”
“You saved my life,” said Mirus to Selius Arconious.
“Are we not then even?” asked Selius Arconious.
“Perfectly,” smiled Mirus, and the two men grasped hands, warmly.
“The beasts, and their allies,” said Portus Canio, addressing himself to Bosk of Port Kar and Marcus of Ar’s Station, “followed us, at least in part, it seems, to obtain and destroy this slave.”
“That was not my intent,” said Mirus.
“No,” smiled Fel Doron. “But it seems you were ready to carry her off.”
“I found her, as you have doubtless conjectured,” said Mirus, “a piece of goods of some interest, an attractive item of livestock.”
Ellen looked at him, suddenly. Impressed, thrilled, she on her knees. How Gorean he seemed now to be! He understood her now not as a person to be abducted, but as a slave, an item to be purchased or stolen, and mastered. At last he seemed to understand the meaning of the collar on her neck, truly. She felt slave fire within her, heat at his virility. She had no doubt that when he had a woman, perhaps a purchased barbarian, she recalled he had a score to settle with the women of Earth, he would now master her — fully. My love is Selius Arconious, she said to herself, but surely one could do worse than belong to one such as Mirus, he who once owned me. Fortunate will be the woman who finds herself in his chains! I rejoice in her happiness, whoever she may prove to be, she who will one day wear his collar!