Prize of Gor

by John Norman

  “You are a slave,” he said. “I do not need a reason.”

  She moaned with misery, and fought the bonds, but dared not rise from her knees. It was true. As a slave she could be beaten at the master’s pleasure, for any reason, or for no reason.

  She cast about, wildly, in her mind, for some way to allay his anger, to put him from his purpose, to avoid the punishment which, in her heart, she knew she deserved, and only too well.

  Then a desperate thought came to her.

  She looked over her shoulder, and smiled, as prettily, as innocently, as, under the circumstances, she could. “Have I been inadvertently troublesome in some way, Master?” she asked. She asked this, lightly, dismissively, even flippantly. Too, she asked this as though quizzically, as though she might be genuinely puzzled to find herself on her knees, bound at the pole, or rail, as she was. “If so, it is my hope that Master will forgive me.” In this way she sought to reduce, or trivialize, any possible imperfections in her service. In this way she hoped to put Selius Arconious off his guard, and divert his wrath.

  “She is a clever slave,” said Fel Doron.

  “Yes,” said Portus Canio. “But I do not think that her cleverness will do her much good.”

  She was not much pleased to hear the comments of her master’s fellows. She had thought herself subtle. But they spoke as if her subtlety, on which she was congratulating herself, was naught but the patent trick of an ignorant, foolish slave, indeed, a trick, in its obviousness, transparency and shallowness, insulting to the master. Did she think he was so simple, a fool?

  But theirs were not the hands on the butt of a stern, corrective device.

  “Have I been troublesome, Master?” she pressed, again.

  “Occasionally,” said Selius Arconious.

  “Forgive me, Master,” she said.

  “Have no fear,” said he. “I will take it out of you.”

  “Master?” she asked.

  It was as though he was prepared to let her believe that he might have been so naive as to have accepted her own self-regarding, trivializing assessment of her infractions, which was, of course, absurd, as she now grasped, but was yet at the same time making quite clear to her something that she should have known, that no omissions, evasions, laxities, imperfections, or infractions whatsoever, even the tiniest and most trivial, were acceptable in one such as she, a slave girl.

  She was thus summarily defeated by her master, casually, and on her own grounds of contest.

  Her heart sank for she realized then she was not at the feet of an Earth man. She was at the feet of a Gorean.

  Such tend not to be tolerant of even trivial, and inadvertent, imperfections of service. Once this sort of thing is understood, interestingly, it is remarkable how scrupulous a slave can be concerning even the smallest details of her service, her glances, her kneelings, her serving of dishes, her kissings of sandals, and such.

  And she well understood, to her misery, that her own imperfections of service, extending even to actual infractions, far exceeded matters inadvertent and trivial.

  She must try again!

  “Master is kind!” she suddenly cried, lightly. “After the dance in the festival camp, when I was to be given fifteen lashes, ten for not having declared, however honestly, a proficiency in slave dance, and five for having spoken without permission, Master purchased the strokes, each for a tarsk-bit, and saved me the beating! How grateful I am to Master for his generosity, his thoughtfulness, his kindness! He would not have me beaten. And surely I have nothing to fear from him now!”

  “Ah, yes,” said Selius Arconious. “The festival camp, outside Brundisium.”

  “Yes, Master!” cried the slave, hopefully.

  “It amused me,” said Selius Arconious, recollectively, “to see you dance as a slave, the slave you are. And well did you writhe, bond-slut.”

  “Thank you, Master,” said Ellen, uncertainly.

  “You do not know the effect you can have on men, petty, tormenting creature!” said he, suddenly, angrily. “To see your ankle, the turn of a calf, the sweetness of an arm, the softness of a small shoulder, the turning of a wrist, the delicacy of a hand, the provocative call of your love cradle, the joy of your waist, made for a slave chain, your swelling bosom, its delights, the whiteness of your encircled throat, the beauty of your face, the bright glance of your eyes, the trembling softness of your embonded lips! You could drive a man mad with passion and desire! It is for women like you that collars are made! What man, seeing you, would not want to own you!”

  “Oh, Master!” cried Ellen. “And I am your slave!”

  “And I will not be yours!” he said, angrily.

  “Master?” she asked.

  “Do you not know, truly, why I purchased those strokes?” he asked. “Do you think I would let another whip you? No! I will have you under my whip! Under my whip! You are mine to whip!”

  She cast about again, frantically, for a new tactic, a new strategy, a new avenue of escape.

  “You do not even care for me, Master!” cried Ellen. She must challenge his affections, appeal to his pity, confuse him, take him off balance, force him to acknowledge his undoubted feelings for her. Surely that would stay his hand! She was certain he had such feelings, for he had permitted her, certainly, in the past few days, to get away with much slackness of service and deference, to behave in ways that are simply not permitted to slaves, and certainly not to those with strong masters. This, it seemed, would be her last effort to turn him from what she feared might be, but yet trusted would not be, his purpose. This stratagem, she was sure, would succeed.

  “You are correct,” he said.

  “Master!” she cried.

  “Who cares for a slave?” snarled Selius Arconious.

  “Master!” protested Ellen.

  “One lusts for slaves, one wants them, madly,” said he. “One chains and collars them, one uses them, one puts them as one wishes, in whatever postures or attitudes, one ropes and thongs them, one leads them about on leashes, one forces them to serve, fearfully, abjectly, licking and kissing, kneeling, crawling, begging to please! Such inspire in men the mightiest of conquering passions! There is no triumph which compares with the ownership of a woman! With a slave at one’s feet, one’s head brushes the stars!”

  “It is so, too, for a woman, Master!” wept Ellen. “That is our place! That is our place in nature! We long to be in our place in nature! We belong at your feet! We beg our collars! We lift and kiss our chains in gratitude! We ask only to kneel, to be used, and to serve!”

  “But do not speak of caring!” cried Selius Arconious.

  “I speak of it, Master!” cried Ellen.

  “No!” he cried, angrily.

  “I think you care for me, Master!” wept Ellen. “You care! You care for me! I am sure you care for me, Master! You must care! You must care, Master!”

  “No!” he cried, in fury.

  “Yes, yes, Master!” she wept.

  “Whether I care for you or not,” said he, “I own you!”

  “Yes, Master!” breathed Ellen.

  “And I am going to make you a slave amongst slaves,” he said. “I am going to master you as few slaves are mastered. I am going to master you, wholly, Earth slut, every hair of your head, every inch of you!”

  “Be kind!” she begged.

  “You will know yourself owned,” he said.

  “Do not whip me, Master!” begged Ellen.

  “Do you realize the will power that has been required for me, day and night, not to seize you, again and again, and put you to slave service? Do you understand what it is to lie in the darkness, with you at my thigh, and not grasp you by the hair as a master a slave, to warn you that your taking is upon you, not force you, in all your embonded loveliness and helplessness, to serve my fiercest pleasures, not seize you in my arms and possess you, yes, possess you, have you, you beautiful, tormenting collared slut, with all the authority, the violence and passion which it is your lot to endure
as slave and my right to inflict as master?”

  “I love you, Master!” cried the slave. “But you never touched me, Master! Take me! Take me now! Take your slave! But you did not touch me, Master, why? Why?”

  “It was a test, slave girl,” said he, “and you failed it miserably!”

  “How a test, Master?”

  “I thought I would give you some laxity, to see if you could handle it, to see what you were really like. And I found out! You are nasty, small, petty and vain!”

  “No, Master!” cried the slave.

  “You tried to manipulate me, with sorry feminine tricks,” he said.

  “No, Master!” she wept. But well did she recall, to her misery, a thousand omissions, slights and provocations. She recalled how she had challenged him to prove himself her master, to sell or give her to another, who might provide the master to her slave, to place her into the possession of one who was a man.

  “Even today,” he said, angrily, “you did not ask permission to remain at the road, but announced that you would do so. Do you know the penalty for such insolence? You dallied in returning to the camp, until the work was largely done. Do you know the penalty for such truancy? You did not kneel when entering our presence! Do you know the penalty for such disrespect? You deserve to be left in the forest for sleen! On the road, itself, earlier, you ran beside a slave and discomfited her, and risked calling the attention of armed men to yourself. You are fortunate that the discipline of the guards was such that you were not thonged, tethered to a pommel, and taken along for an evening’s raping.”

  “She tossed her head at me, insolently,” said Ellen. “She was haughty!”

  “Surely that is a small thing,” said Portus Canio, “a squabble amongst slave girls, nothing with which masters need concern themselves.”

  “So, too, it seems to me,” said Fel Doron.

  “Yes, Masters! Thank you, Masters!” said Ellen.

  “That leaves, of course, many other shortcomings,” said Portus Canio.

  “True,” said Fel Doron.

  Tears burst from the eyes of the slave. She was helplessly tethered, tied for whipping.

  “Surely you care for me, Master!” she cried.

  “You are petty, small and nasty!” he said. “You deserve only the whip and chain.”

  “I want the whip and chain,” she cried out, suddenly, startling herself. She wept. “Without it how can I know that I am female and yours?” she whispered.

  A bit of wind moved through the leaves, overhead. She felt it on her back, too, where her hair had been thrown forward, before her body.

  Suddenly, in terror, she realized the meaning of that.

  Nothing, no matter how trivial, would be interposed between her back and the whip.

  “But I want love, as well!” she cried.

  He laughed, sardonically, skeptically.

  “It is true!” she cried. “And I love you! Yes, I do! I love you, Master! I love you, Master! Surely you love me, too, if only a little?”

  “No,” said he, angrily, “but I lust for you, and you will be well taught what that means at the foot of my couch!”

  “Surely you care for me, if only a little, Master!” she said.

  “No,” said he, angrily.

  “Oh, no, no, Master!” wept Ellen.

  “Strive to be worthy of being cared for,” said Portus Canio. “Many men will feel a fondness for a kaiila or a pet sleen, so why not for a slave? Let yourself strive with all your might, with all your intelligence, with all your zeal and diligence, with all your helplessness and vulnerability, with all your service and beauty, for the least touch, for a gentle word, a kind glance.”

  “Prepare to be whipped, slave girl,” said Selius Arconious.

  “Do not whip me, Master!” begged Ellen.

  “Are you in a collar?” asked Selius Arconious.

  “Yes, Master!”

  “Is it a slave collar?”

  “Yes, Master!”

  “Then you are a slave?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “Whose collar is it?”

  “Yours, Master!”

  “Then whose slave are you?”

  “Yours, Master!”

  “Prepare to be whipped,” said he.

  “Wait, Master!” she cried.

  The lash did not fall.

  “Recall that I am from Earth, Master!” she wept. “That is a different culture from yours. The women of Earth, certainly most of them, are not accustomed to being slaves. They would not even understand what it is to be a slave!”

  “Every woman,” said Selius Arconious, “understands what it would be, to be a slave.”

  “I am other than your Gorean women!” cried Ellen. “I am more delicate, more sensitive, finer! Your culture is primitive, a culture in which such a thing as the beating of a slave may be accepted, but I am not of that culture. In deference to my background, my upbringing, my education, my refinement, such things should not be done to me! They are not for me! I am above them! I should not be subjected to such things. They are inappropriate for me! Your culture is barbaric. You are barbarians! I am not a barbarian! I am civilized! I am a civilized woman!”

  “‘Girl,’” corrected Selius Arconious.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  “It is you who are the barbarian,” said Portus Canio, matter-of-factly.

  “It is true, Master,” acknowledged Ellen, “that Gorean is not my native tongue.”

  “Thus,” said Portus Canio, “you are a barbarian.”

  “Yes, Master,” said Ellen, twisting in the ropes, “in that sense.”

  The usual criterion on Gor for a barbarian is one who does not speak Gorean, or, perhaps better, whose original language is not Gorean. Ellen, for example, who is now fluent in Gorean, continues to be thought of as a “barbarian.”

  “In more than that sense,” said Portus Canio.

  “Yes, Master,” granted Ellen. Ellen knew that those brought to Gor from Earth were accounted barbarians in a sense stronger than one merely linguistic, one having to do with a remote and commonly little-understood point of origin. Many Goreans, incidentally, assume that “Earth” is a remote locale or land on their own world.

  “You speak of yourself as civilized,” said Portus Canio, “say, in contradistinction, from Goreans?”

  “Yes,” said Ellen, a little uncertainly.

  It is hard to participate in such a conversation when one is on one’s knees, bound naked at a pole, and has a whip somewhere behind one.

  “Your world is civilized?” asked Portus Canio.

  “Yes, Master,” said Ellen.

  “On the trail, from time to time,” said Portus Canio, “Mirus and I whiled away many a pleasant Ahn in conversation.”

  “Yes, Master?” said Ellen, apprehensively.

  “You recall Mirus?” he asked.

  “Certainly, Master,” said Ellen, “— Master Mirus.”

  Ellen was now much on her guard. Had it been a trap? A slave girl does not address a free person by their name, but will use the expressions ‘Master’ or ‘Mistress’, or, sometimes, if referring to one’s owner, ‘my Master’ or ‘my Mistress.’ Similarly, in referring to a free person, one would commonly use expressions such as ‘Master Publius’, ‘Mistress Publia’, and so on. If asked, say, her master, the slave might respond, ‘My master is Selius Arconious, of Ar’, or such.

  “I am not at all certain that your world is civilized,” said Portus Canio.

  “Master?”

  “I gather you do have mighty machines, and such.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “But there are, as I understand it, no Home Stones on your world.”

  “No, Master, or I would suppose not.”

  “How then can it be civilized?”

  Ellen was silent.

  “Mirus spoke to me of monstrosities of indiscriminate death, contrived by the clever and mindless, of crowdings, of manipulations, of hatreds, pollutions, diseases and
famines. He spoke of the ruination of lakes and forests, of the extinction of life forms, of a world being poisoned. He spoke to me of a world in which brothers might kill brothers, or friends friends, were a particle of power or profit to be gained, a world in which nature is scarred, wounded and betrayed, a world in which human beings do not know one another, nor do they care to do so, a world in which fidelity is scorned and honor mocked.”

  Ellen was silent.

  “Our world,” said Portus Canio, “is a green world, a fresh, clean, honest world. It has its terrors, but it is a beautiful world, and a natural world. I do not think it is inferior to yours.”

  “No, Master,” said Ellen.

  “I do not think I would care to live on your world,” he said.

  “No, Master,” said Ellen.

  “Do you dare to call your world civilized?” he asked.

  “No, Master,” whispered Ellen.

  “Your world is in many ways a thousand times more primitive than ours,” he said, “and Gor, in many ways, is a thousand times more civilized than yours, than the unnatural moral barbarism which engendered your likes.”

  “Yes, Master,” whispered Ellen.

  “And you, a smug, haughty product of that world, dare to speak of yourself as civilized! You are only another barbarian, a true barbarian. I wonder if such as you are worthy of being brought to our world, even as slaves.”

  “Forgive me, Master,” wept Ellen.

  “So,” said Selius Arconious, angrily, “you are other than Gorean women? More delicate, more sensitive, finer!”

  “Forgive me, Master!” wept Ellen.

  “Weaker? Nastier? Pettier? More selfish?”

  “Master?”

  “A meaningless, vain, pretentious, worthless slut of Earth!” he said.

  Ellen’s small hands twisted in the ropes.

  “You are unworthy to tie the sandals of a Gorean woman,” said Selius Arconious.

  “Yes, Master,” wept Ellen.

  “But,” said he, “you are well-curved.”

  “Master?”

  “I do not object,” said he, “that slavers bring such as you to our world.”

  “Thank you, Master.”

  “I think we can find a use for you on Gor.”

  “It is my hope to be pleasing to my master,” said Ellen.