Prize of Gor (54 page)

It had been only two weeks ago that Portus Canio, apparently satisfied with her service, perhaps even pleased, had thrown a small wad of cloth before her, as she had knelt in her stall. She did not even know what it was until after he had left, and she lifted it, and shook it out. She cried out with delight, and hugged it to her bosom, tears flowing from her eyes. “Thank you, Master! Thank you, Master!” she had cried out, hoping he could hear. It was a small, brown slave tunic.

The next morning, when freed, the chain off her neck, she had hastened to don the tiny garment and had run to Portus, seeking him out, and knelt before him, covering his feet with kisses. “Thank you, my Master. Thank you, my Master!” she had wept, again and again.

He had then made her stand, and walk about, and turn, and display herself in the tunic to himself and his three men, these being Fel Doron, Tersius Major and Selius Arconious.

Ellen complied, delightedly.

“She is actually rather pretty,” said Fel Doron, assessingly.

“She has nice legs, and a pretty ass,” said Tersius Major, speaking vulgarly.

Ellen laughed.

“I like her better without it,” said Selius Arconious.

Ellen frowned. Who did he think he was? He did not own her!

She was muchly pleased with the garment, and she could tell, from the men, that she was extremely attractive in it. She had certainly seen many slave girls in the streets in such garments. Indeed, such garments were standard slave garb. And how beautiful, how exciting, she had found them! Now she herself had such a garment! Now she could be merely another slave in the streets, proud, head up, hair flowing, not that different from others, perhaps prettier than some, doubtless less pretty than others.

With her two hands she pulled down at the hem of the garment. “Is the garment not rather short, Master?” she asked, timidly.

“It can be shorter,” said Portus Canio.

“Yes, Master,” she smiled.

“It can be taken from you,” said Portus.

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen. “I understand, Master.” This was a reference to the discipline of clothing, a reminder of her dependence in all things.

Then she knelt before them. “Thank you, Masters,” she said.

“We must to our chores,” said Portus. “Boil sa-tarna. Call us when it is ready.”

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen.

It is not unusual for slave girls denied clothing to beg piteously for a rag with which to cover themselves, at least when they dare to do so, but Ellen had not importuned Portus Canio with respect to this privilege, fearing the exasperation of his patience, fearing to be beaten. This was in part, doubtless, a function of her newness to her bondage, and an understandable desire to tread softly, to wait and learn, to test boundaries, if she dared to test them at all, with great delicacy and care. If he saw fit to give her covering for her body, she reasoned, he would; if he did not, he would not. After all, she was slave, and he master.

Ellen felt a suffusion of modesty return to her now that she had a garment. It was extremely precious to her. To be sure, it was only of rep-cloth, a cottonlike material, thin and loosely woven, open at the neck, sleeveless, and scandalously brief. Too, it was split at the hips, which bared more thigh, but allowed her to kneel with her knees widely spread, as was appropriate for her form of slavery. But as she attended to her work in the kitchen she felt that she now was, and realized that she now was, even more vulnerable than she had been before. A privilege granted may be a privilege withdrawn. The tiny garment, so precious to her, might be removed from her, at so little as a word from the master.

****

And so Ellen reached down and picked up the heavy basket of meat, which she must carry to the feeding area, a section within the housing for tarns, and set forth, piece by piece, climbing the wall railings, impaling it on the hooks, for the mighty birds, seven of them, due to return with their empty baskets within the Ahn.

Portus Canio had left but Selius Arconious was still standing in the vicinity of the great portal. Ellen was well aware, and not at all displeased, that he had his eyes on her. She was, after all, a slave.

“We must be about our chores,” she said, saucily.

“I think I will save my money and buy you,” he said.

“I hope not!” she said.

“If I owned you,” he said, “you would obey me well.”

“Of course,” she said. “All slaves must obey their masters.”

He was looking across the straw-strewn floor at an object near one wall. Ellen reddened. It was a large, smooth, glossy tarn saddle, with its straps and rings. Ellen was quite familiar with that object. In her first experience of it, however, she, in the slave hood, had not even understood what it was. Shortly after her introduction into the tarn area, she had been whipped, that to inform her that she was now in the domicile where she would be slave. Then, sobbing, she had been flung over the object, the artifact, the large saddle, on her belly, and subjected to peremptory attentions, brutally, unceremoniously ravished as the meaningless slave she was. That had been done by Portus Canio, her master, of course. There was no doubt about that. But, too, by now, she well knew the feel of his hands on her body. Now she looked at the broad, smooth, glossy, rounded surface and blushed.

Selius Arconious was regarding it, too. And it was not difficult to read his thoughts.

“Do you not have harnesses to mend,” she asked, “— Master?”

“Your face, and arms, and legs are red,” said he, “slave girl.”

Ellen blushed more, her entire exposed body, where it was not concealed with the brief tunic, reddening even more embarrassingly.

She looked at the rounded surface. She had been several times on that surface, and generally on her belly. It was a useful place to teach a slave what she was, it seemed. More embarrassingly Ellen, despite her initial dismay, her resentment, and distress, at Portus’s first use of her there, had gradually, in the vicinity of this object, and in certain other places where men had put her to their purposes, begun to be disturbed by slave heat rising within her. Whereas her conscious mind might feign resentment and humiliation at such usages her unconscious mind, the emotions of her depths, seemed insistently, irresistibly, to crave them. A frequent thought in her mind, one she often tried to banish, was “Use me as a slave! Use me as the slave I am!” How startled, and seemingly upset, she had been upon occasion when she was dragged to the saddle for use, to discover, despite her seeming resistance, her trying to hang back, her wrist tight in their grip, that she wished to be taken there. Even more startled she was when, at no more than a tiny touch, the men informed her, she over the saddle, embarrassingly on her belly, her tunic thrust up about her hips, that she was “juicing,” “oiling,” “lubricating,” that she was “slave ready.” “No, no!” she wept, but she had then begun to enjoy her uses. To her horror, later, she found her body responding, first with tiny, begging movements, and then, as she was forced to higher levels of excitement, and arousal, with brazen supplicatory liftings, with obvious, shameless petitionary presentations of her body, which the masters, unnecessarily in her view, found amusing. “Oh!” she cried. “You wriggle well, slave girl,” she was informed. Then, when permitted, clinging to a ring, eyes clenched shut, lost in her sensations, she served, twisting, grinding, bucking, begging, crying out, until, her fingers white and tight on the ring, she screamed her submission and slavehood. Mental associations are interesting, how one thing may be associated with another, how one may remember things, how one thought may suggest another, how emotions and feelings, and thoughts, may be associated with one place or another, or with one object or another. As the mere sight of the saddle had come to be arousing to Ellen, so, too, with slaves, the mere being in a place or the mere seeing or touching of an article may affect them in a profound manner, disturbing them, rendering them uneasy, rendering them helplessly, grievously needful. The sight of her chains, of a whip, the touching of her collar, the fingering of her brand, even in the absence of the master, can arouse a slave. So, too, the sight of a place she remembers, a grassy knoll, a place behind a shed, a ditch, a stall, the surface of a long, narrow wooden bench, the floor, fur-strewn, at the foot of the master’s couch, she not permitted on its surface, that privilege usually reserved for free companions, or perhaps high slaves, such things, can all affect her profoundly, can all heat her, and torment her with the longing, the yearning, of the needful slave, fearful of, but grateful for, the slave fires men have ignited in her belly. But one need not be a slave to be so affected, to feel these things. To be sure, the female slave is the most sexual, loving, vulnerable, helpless and feminine of all women, but such things are not confined to those whose lovely throats are clasped securely within the circlet of bondage. Free women, too, can feel such things. For example, the mere secret touching of a slave tunic can make a free woman sob with need. Sexuality in a woman, and I wish this were clear to all men, is an entirety, a totalistic phenomenon. It is not limited to portions of our body, or moments of our day. It is pervasive; most simply, it is we. Be severe with us, if you will, Masters, but understand what it is you own. It is all of us that you own. It is all of us, our entirety, our wholeness, which you, to our undying gratitude, have put in your collars.

“I trust that my Master, the noble Portus Canio, your employer,” said Ellen to Selius Arconious, “does not inquire of me as to your behavior, and if you have been attentive to your duties, for I, as a slave, however reluctantly, knelt down to speak the truth, would have to admit that you have been lax, and that you have a tendency to dally, quite unconscionably.”

Selius picked up a loop of harness and held it in his hands. The leather was black, and glossy, some half of an inch in thickness, and some three to four inches in width, and there were buckles attached, for its fastening on tarns. He fingered the leather, while regarding her, and, to her unease, snapped it taut in his hands. More than once he, and others, had put her in portions of such harnessings, for their uses. With all a slave’s sensuousness, and a slave’s sensitivity to surfaces and textures, she had relished its tightness, and feel, and her slave’s helplessness in such bonds, even the cut of the buckle in her flesh. Such things, like cords and chains, perhaps partly for physical reasons, but surely, too, for psychological reasons, cruelly fan the flames of a woman’s bondage. They tell her, you are slave, you are owned, you are mine, you have no choice, you will obey, you will yield, you will be punished, and terribly, if you hold anything back, you will have orgasms such that you have never dreamed of, orgasms that you have hitherto not understood were possible, you will have the orgasms of a surrendering, conquered slave.

“Well,” said Ellen, lightly, “I must be about my duties.”

She then turned away, but, after a step, stopped, looked back over her shoulder and smiled, slyly, and then, saucily, suddenly, bid Selius farewell with a toss, beneath her brief, thin tunic, of her small, well-outlined
derrière
.

“She-sleen!” he cried, taking a step toward her, but she sped away. “You do not own me!” she laughed, “and I do not think you will soon, after today, have my use either!”

“She-sleen! She-urt!” he cried.

Ellen was well pleased with herself. “Let him suffer, and stew about,” she laughed to herself. “He thinks he is so handsome, so important. He is only a tarnster, a driver! A lowly employee of my master! Let him roll and twist, and mutter angrily, in his blankets. Let him stew, and cry out, and suffer! He cannot have me! I am not for such lowly sorts! Suffer, Selius Arconious, suffer! You cannot have me!”

In the barred feeding area, the gate shut against the housing for returning tarns, Ellen put the basket of meat on the floor, and, moving about, and climbing, ascending, placed the meat, piece by piece, heavy strip by heavy strip, on the hooks in the wall. From those hooks, sometimes as they fluttered in the feeding area, feet from the floor, it would be torn by the feeding tarns. Sometimes, too, when the tarns were in the feeding area, she would throw the meat upward, between the bars to them. In such a case they tended to seize it in the air, with their beaks. If a piece fell to the floor, they would hover above it, seize it in their talons, and then crouch over it, holding it in place with a taloned foot, while tearing it to pieces with their beaks. “We all fear tarns,” Portus Canio had told her once, on the platform. Ellen did not doubt it. She knew that she was terrified of the great winged beasts. She was reluctant to approach them, even with bars between them.

While Ellen climbed and placed the meat, she wondered what it would be like, to be owned by Selius Arconious. She did not even like him, of course. She wondered if he would use the switch, or a whip, on her, if he would beat her. He might, of course. She was, after all, a slave.

She fixed another piece of meat in place.

She was a woman of Earth, and had been an intellectual, a person of stature and importance. How was it then, she wondered, given her obvious excellence and quality, her obvious value, that she had not been purchased by a rich man, someone important, a statesman, a general or a great merchant, surely by some significant personage in Ar. Surely she should serve in a mansion or palace, or a great cylinder, in rich quarters. Did they truly not know her worth, what she deserved? How was it then that she had been purchased by a tarnmaster, a fellow not even of high caste? She wondered what he had paid for her. Then she realized that these matters of Earth were of no interest here, on this world. Here she was a young barbarian, naive, poorly trained and illiterate. What could she expect, here? She had not even been the best meat on Targo’s shelf. Surely she had not been the first sold. Indeed, it seemed that he had, at times, almost despaired of disposing of her. She wondered what she had gone for. Mirus had let her go, it seemed, for a mere ten copper tarsks, such as might be paid for a worthless girl. To be sure, Mirus, as part of his vengeance and amusement, had doubtless wanted her sold so, as a worthless slut. Then she realized that her value on this world was not a function of her value elsewhere, under different conditions. Here she had been sold simply for what she now was, as that and nothing else, as raw female. This, doubtless, was what she was worth, in herself. It occurred to her that she had perhaps been fortunate, given her unimportance and her lack of value here, to have been purchased by a tarnkeeper. She might have been purchased by a peasant, slept chained in a hovel, and, harnessed, struggled to plow his fields.