Prize of Gor (74 page)

It was very dark here.

She suddenly realized she was not clear as to her location. On the other hand, she was not totally disoriented as she could see the fires of the camp behind her and, in the distance, the lights of Brundisium, among them some of the beacon fires on her walls. But where along those vast walls was the stockade of the sutlers?

She crouched down in the dirt, and wept.

Then she heard a howl, which she surmised must emanate from one of the beasts she muchly feared.

That is my direction, she thought.

She hoped fervently that Louise, sent out before her, had now returned successfully, having finished up the entire matter.

She heard some men approaching. One of them carried a lantern. She wiped tears from her eyes. She shrank back in the shadows.

Crouching down she watched the men pass. They did not see her in the darkness.

One of the men she saw, this startling her, was Mirus!

She crept after them, using the wavering light of the lantern to follow them, it casting strange shadows on the tents and earth.

Thusly she might the more safely find her way, she reassured herself. To her surprise, but pleasure, she saw that their path led very much in the direction she desired to go. In any event, though she did not admit this to herself, she would have risked much, merely to follow Mirus.

And so she crept after them, a young, naked slave.

In one or another of the tents there was a lit lamp, its light visible through the silk or canvas. At such places she tried to stay in the shadows, and then, in a moment, once more follow the swaying lantern, a tiny, glowing dot before her.

Occasionally a lantern was slung from a pole, a pool of light at its base. At such places she must most particularly endeavor to avoid detection.

On her hands and knees, crawling, she heard a woman’s voice, from within a tent. Something in the voice, in its helplessness, its piteousness, in its gasps, its intonations, suggested that the woman might be struggling futilely, weakly, pulling against bonds. “Please, Master, I love you!” Ellen heard. “Permit me to yield! I cannot stand it! I fear I will die! Oh, oh. Please do not bring me again and again to this point, so, cruelly, without permitting me to yield! Just one more touch, Master! Please, another touch, just the tiniest touch! It is all I need! I am your slave! Do not be so cruel! Show me mercy! You have conquered me a thousand times! I am hopelessly and abjectly yours! I love you, Master! I beg to be permitted to yield!”

Men, the arrogant, masterful beasts, thought Ellen, biting her lip, grinding her fingernails into the palms of her hands. How vulnerable we are! How they make us theirs! They play us like czehars, drawing what music they will from our bodies! How arrogantly, how imperiously they master us, their slaves! And Ellen envied the slave within the tent. Would that I were in her bonds, thought Ellen. I, too, would weep with passion, and beg to yield, and if my master, in his mercy, saw fit to grant me the caress of permission, I would weep with ecstasy, his, and beg to please, again and again.

Will he not be kind to her? Does he not know she is only a slave?

There was then a soft, rapturous, prolonged, grateful, inarticulate cry from within the tent, partly muffled, for the master had perhaps placed his hand firmly over the mouth of the slave, that she might not disturb the camp. In a moment his hand must have been removed from her lips, for Ellen heard, “Thank you, thank you, beloved Master! I love you, Master! I love you, Master!”

Kind master, beloved master, thought Ellen.

Ellen sought to control herself. She must not cry out!

Tears burst from her eyes as she clenched her fists, in her own frustration, in the throes of her own starved needs.

She must not cry out!

I am a slave thought Ellen. I want a master! I want a master!

Then Ellen looked up, suddenly, frightened.

Where was the lantern? Where the men? Quickly she looked about, and hurried in the direction it had last been moving.

“Where, where?” she cried out to herself.

She rushed into the darkness.

She fell.

Where is Mirus, who was my master, she asked herself. No, no, I must get to the sutlers, she told herself. I have an errand. I must hurry. Oh, where has he gone? Where is Mirus?

She rose again to her feet, and continued on, and then, after a few moments, stopped, suddenly. She heard men somewhere before her. She went to her hands and knees and approached, cautiously.

Putting out her hand she touched the side of something which seemed to be a great, stout box. She recoiled in terror. It was surely one of the crates which had held one of the large, shaggy, half-seen beasts which had so terrified her earlier. But there was no sound from within the crate. Perhaps the beast was asleep. As silently as she could, she crawled forward a little. A tiny creaking noise to her right startled her. The gate to the crate had moved a little on its hinges. She felt she might die with fear. She put out her hand a little and touched the gate. It was ajar. She moved it a little. A heavy, beastlike, musky odor came from the box, but she could detect no sign of life within it. There was no evidence whatsoever of a presence within the container, no suggestion of movement, no sound of respiration from large, savage lungs. She felt sick. The crate, she was sure, was empty.

“It is time,” she heard, the voice of one of the men a few yards away. It was as though he were addressing something.

Suddenly she saw the lantern once more revealed, now brought forth from beneath a cloak, and lifted.

She went to her stomach, fearfully, in terror that she might be seen.

There were four men standing before one of the crates. In the light she could see that Mirus was one of them. More frightening to her was that there was now something with the men, two shambling, gigantic shapes crouching near them. She law light reflected in the eyes of one of the beasts, from the uplifted lantern. They glowed like fire for the briefest moment, and then it had turned its head away. She had no doubt these things with the men had been the denizens of the boxes. There had been five such boxes, she thought. Why had the men dared to release these things? What manner of madness had overcome them?

One of the men stood before one of the crates, and tapped it gently. There was a responding growl from within the crate. “It is time,” said the man. “Others are within the tent.”

There was a large tent near the crates, a tent Ellen had supposed might house, perhaps among others, the beasts’ masters or handlers.

The crate, like the others, was apparently secured by two hasps and staples, each with their own gigantic padlocks, better than six or seven pounds in weight and six inches in diameter, some three or four inches in thickness.

Do not let it out, thought Ellen, lying on her stomach, hiding in the darkness.

But, to Ellen’s horror, the men did not bend to undo the padlocks and release the inmate. Rather the door simply swung out, being opened from the inside. The beast emerged and stretched. As it stood on its hind legs it was some eight feet in height, and its arms must have been five feet in length. It must have weighed several hundred pounds. Then it sank down to all fours, like a rounded, furred boulder, and looked about itself. The padlocks, the stout bolts and plates, then, had been meaningless. The appearance of their stout securities had been a sham, intended to conceal a fearful truth, that the beasts had never been other than at liberty.

Ellen was sick with terror and could not move.

“Let us go inside,” said the man with the lantern. “Let us join the others.”

The four men and the three beasts turned about and went toward the large tent. One of the men, he with the lantern, held back the tent flap, looking about, and the other men, followed by the three beasts, they now on all fours, thrust through the opening. Mirus was the first to enter the tent. Ellen thought, in the light of the lantern, that she glimpsed another beast, and two other men in the tent. One of the men was standing. Then all were inside the tent.

I must flee, somewhere, somehow, thought Ellen. I must get away from here. In her terror even the thought of the errand on which she had embarked temporarily eluded her. But she found it almost impossible to move her body. She lay there, in the dirt, on her belly, hiding, scarcely able to move, trembling. At last, after a few Ehn, her senses began to clear. She knew then she must again be about her errand. Mirus seemed to be in no danger, nor the other men. Perhaps the beasts were domesticated, even pets of some sort, she told herself.

She rose unsteadily to her feet.

There had been five crates she remembered, remembering it from somewhere, vaguely from about the edge of her consciousness. She had seen four men outside the tent, and two within, and a beast within, and three beasts outside.

She suddenly sensed a heavy, musky odor behind her, and before she could scream a heavy paw, placed tightly over her mouth, drew her swiftly backward, and she was lifted from her feet, and held tightly against a gigantic, shaggy body.

She was helpless in such a grip. She could not scream. She squirmed futilely, and was carried to the tent.

Chapter 23

WHAT OCCURRED WITHIN THE TENT AND LATER OUTSIDE OF IT

Ellen was thrown to the rug within the tent, and she raised herself to her hands and knees, blinking, illuminated in the light of the lantern, it too close to her, the only light within the tent, and found herself in the midst of six men, and, with them, crouching back on their haunches, four of the darkly furred, massive, monstrous beasts. The beast who had captured her stood near her, as it seemed, half bent over. Two of the men rose, Mirus one of them.

Ellen swiftly went to the first obeisance position before Mirus, and then crawled forward a foot, her head still down, and pressed her lips fearfully to his sandals, then backed away a few inches, and kept her head down.

The monster who had seized her and brought her to the tent made some noise. It almost seemed as though Ellen could understand it. It was much as though a bear or tiger might have spoken. There seemed to be, to Ellen’s alarm, a similarity to Gorean phonemes.

“A spying slave,” said one of the men, as though translating what the beast had said.

“No, Masters!” cried Ellen. How could it be, she asked herself, that a beast might speak? She was sure the utterance of the beast had been intelligible in some sense. There had been an articulation within those noises, a subtlety and clarity which was quite unlike, though reminding one of, the snarling, the growling, of an animal.

“Let us see her,” said one of the men.

Ellen felt the gigantic, clawed paw of the beast grasp her hair and her head was pulled up and back violently, painfully.

“A pretty one,” said one of the men.

“Rather plain,” said Mirus, dryly.

Tears sprang to Ellen’s eyes.

“Position,” said another of the men.

Ellen, the beast having released her hair, went to position, kneeling, knees wide, back straight, head up, hands on thighs.

“A pleasure slave,” said one of the men.

“Obviously,” said another.

Ellen wondered if she should have kept her knees closely together, before Mirus, but she had naturally, instantaneously, not even thinking about it, assumed the wide-kneed position.

She saw Mirus smile, and flushed.

She closed her knees.

“Knees wide, slut,” said a man.

Again she opened her knees.

“Wider!” he snapped.

She complied.

“More widely!”

Again she complied.

How vulnerable, how helpless, physically and psychologically, is a woman in such a position, that of the Gorean pleasure slave!

“What is your name?” asked a man.

“Ellen, Master.”

“Who owns you?”

“The state of Cos, Master.”

“You are a serving slave in the camp?” asked a man.

“Yes, Master.”

“Mark?” said a man.

Swiftly she rose up on her knees and turned her left thigh to the interrogator, at the same time putting her hands behind the small of her back, as though they might be braceleted there. It is one of the positions of brand display.

Mirus smiled.

Ellen flushed.

I hate him, she thought.

But she remained in the position, a common one for brand display. Her wrists, behind her back, were nearly touching. The position accentuates the breasts and, given the position of the hands, is provocatively emblematic; I think that even a male of Earth, one who, if there are any such, had never given a thought to the possibility of female slavery, or even of a particular woman, stripped, and bound hand and foot, lying on the rug at the foot of his bed, helpless, fearful and squirming, wholly at his mercy, might have some sense, seeing it, of the meaning of that position; it would certainly suggest to him, or anyone, I would suppose, female obedience, submission, servitude and bondage. Might not that sight, or vision, then, as though accompanied with a clap of thunder, change him forever, showing him a possibility which might transform him from an indoctrinated, manipulated, obsequious political puppet striving to please those who secretly hate and despise him into a male, one suddenly awakened, one attentive to distant cries, one who now hears drums long silent, one now apprised of tides, of seasons and the motion of planets, of the rights of nature?

Too, of course, obviously, the position makes it easy to bracelet the slave.

“Common kajira mark,” said a man.

“A low slave,” said a man.

“Yes,” said another.

The fellow who had asked for the brand display then made a tiny gesture and Ellen, instantly, returned to first position.

“Does she have a lot number?” asked a man.

“Yes,” said a fellow, leaning forward, “— 117.”

“A low number for such as she,” observed Mirus.

Ellen bit her tongue.

“Who sent you?” asked one of the men.

“No one, Masters,” said Ellen, frightened. “I am on an errand, to the sutlers, that more wine may be brought to my serving station.”