Blood Brothers of Gor (57 page)

"I am not pleased," I said.

"Forgive me, Master!" she begged.

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Cuwignaka and Hci stood by while the slave was beaten. Then I cast aside the coiled ropes, to a place among my other things. She lay now at my feet, on her belly, shuddering and sobbing, clutching at the grass.

"Now," I said, "get up and put out our food."

"Yes, Master," she said, struggling to her feet.

"And tonight," I said, "after we have eater, and when we are sitting about, you will serve each of us in turn, and for as many rounds as we wish."

"Yes, Master," she said.

"And furthermore," I said, "you will do so with absolute obedience and in complete silence."

"Yes, Master," she said.

"It will be a pleasant evening," said Cuwignaka.

"Yes," said Hci, "but there is another whom I would rather have in my thongs."

"I think I knw who she is," laughed Cuwignaka.

"And is there not one," asked Hci, "whom you, my friend, Cuwignaka, would rather have licking your feet in terror?"

"Perhpas," smiled Cuwignaka.

"The pit is slow work, Tatankasa, Mitakola," said Hci. "Even with good fortune we cannot snare enough tarns by winter to combat the Kinyanpi."

"Using the pit, I hope to catch only two or three," I said.

"That will not be enough," said Hci.

"Not in themselves," I admitted.

"Ah!" said Hci. "But that will be very difficult and dangerous."

"I do not see another way," I said. "Do you?"

"No," said Hci.

"Are you with us?" I asked.

"Of course," he said.

We then went and sat down where Mira, on leaves, had set forth our food.

We chewed the cold pemmican. We would not make a fire in this place.

From time to time, chewing, we cast a glance at Mira. She knelt to one side, her head down.

She was very beautiful. It was difficult not to anticipate the pleasures we would later recieve from her.

I threw her a piece of pemmican.

The three moons, visible through the brances, had risen.

I looked again at Mira.

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She lifted her head, chewing, and our eyes met. Then she looked down, again, shyly, smiling.

She was a common slave, who, tonight, would serve us as a slave in common.

Chapter 39

THE FEATHER

"It is exhausted, but it is still dangerous!" I cried. I held one end of the rope about the flopping bird's neck, keeping it taut, and Hci, on the other side, held the other. "Be careful," I called to Cuwignaka.

Speaking soothingly, he approached the bird.

We were in the vicinity of the tarn pit. This was the second tarn we had caught. The first one we had caught yesterday.

Cuwignaka suddenly leaped forward and locked his arms about the bird's beak. He was almost thrown loose as the bird shook his head. Holding the beak with one arm, then, he whipped rope about it and, in moments, had tied it closed. In a few moments we had secured its wings and then, working together, Hci and I, bound its legs together.

I took the boggling rope from its right ankle, that which had fastened it to the hobbling log. It shuddered, lying on its side. "It is ready for the travois," I said.

I then turned about and went back to the tarn pit. Its roof was gone, torn away and scattered when the concealed hobbling log had been jerked upward though it.

I looked down into the pit. The girl lay on her stomach, her hands over her head, shuddering and sobbing below me.

"Are you all right?" I asked. I had not bothered, this time, to bind her.

"Did I not please you last night?" she sobbed.

"Yes," I said, puzzled.

"but you put me out on the tether," she said.

"Of course," I said.

Her body trembled, uncontrollably.

"It is over now," I told her. "We have it."

She sobbed, hysterically. I did not think she could control the movements of her body. "You did not do badly," I assured her.

She whimpered, shuddering.

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"Why are you so upset?" I asked.

She sobbed, hysterically, shuddering. To be sure, it had been a close thing.

I slipped into the pit beside her and took her in my arms. "It is over now," I reassured her. "It is all right now."

She looked at me, her eyes wide, frightened. "What you can make us do," she gasped. I stroked her head, gently. I had once seen a similar hysteria in an urt hunter's girl, in Port Kar. She had barely missed being taken by a giant urt in the canals. But the spear thrust of the hunter had been unerring and turned the urt at the last instant and the second thrust had finished it off. Girls in Port Kar will do almost anything to keep the rope off their neck and keep out of the canals. To be sure it is normally only low girls or girls who may have displeased a master in some respect who are used for such work.

"Last night," she said, "did I not please you well?"

"Yes," I said, "you did, and tonight you will please us again, and in the same way."

She moaned.

"You did not do badly today," I reassured her, "truly. For example, tonight it will not be necesary to beat you again, with coiled ropes. That should please you."

"Yes, Master," she said.

"Indeed," I said, "you did not do badly, at all. Perhaps I will ahve one, or both, of your ears notched, as our friends, the red savages do, with prize kaiila, trained for the hunt or war, that you may be recongnized as a valuable, trained tarn-bait girl."

She pressed herself against me, sobbing.

"It is a joke," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

I saw that she was not in a mood to appreciate such humor. I myself, however, for what it is worth, had not thought that it was bad at all.

"Do you, and the others, not care for me?" she asked.

"You are only a slave," I reminded her.

"Of course, Master!" she said. "How foolish of me, to think that one might care, in the least, for one who is only a slave!"

"You are only a property," I told her, "and worthless, except that you might have some small monetary value."

"Yes, Master," she said.

I did not see any reason to tell her that slaves are the most

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tresured, despised and loved of all women. Being Gorean she knew this.

"But cannot a master," she asked, "sometimes feel some small affetion for a property, even, say, for a pet sleen?"

"Perhaps," I said, "but that would not mean, then, that the sleen was other than a sleen."

"No, Master," she said.

"or the slave other than a slave," I said.

"No, Master," she said.

I kissed her, gently.

"You do feel some tenderness for me," she said. "I am a woman. I can tell!"

"Perhaps it will be necessary, after all, tonight, to whip you," I said.

"No, Master," she said. "Please, no!"

"Do not expect affection," I said. "Expect, rather, Slave, only to serve your master with total perfection."

"Yes, Master," she said.

"And even if a master, some master, sometime, should be moved to feel some tenderness, or a bit of affection, doubtlessly foolishly, toward you, remember that it changes nothing, that you remain only what you are, a slave."

"Yes, Master," she said.

"Even the most loved slave," I said, "should a master be so foolish as to love a slave, remains, in the end, and do not forget it, radically, and only a slave."

"Yes, Master," she said.

I kissed her again, softly.

"You can do anything with us, can't you?" she asked. "It depends only on your will."

"Yes," I said.

"Do not put me out of the tether again, Master," she begged. "Keep me for only silken work. I will endeavor with all my heart to be a most perfect and pleasing slave."

"Is this she who was once the lofty Lady Mira who speaks," I asked, "she who was once the proud free woman of Venna?"

"Yes, Master," she said.

"And is now naught but an abject slave?"

"Yes, Master," she said.

"Your will is nothing," I said. "It will be done with you, totaly, as masters please."

"Yes, Master," she said.

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"Perhaps you understand now," I said, "a little better than before, what it is to be a slave."

"Yes, my master," she said. She laughed, ruefully.

"What is wrong?" I asked.

"I was thinking of when I was a free woman," she said. "How contemptuous I was of the slave girls in the cities, how I scorned them, and despised them, so helpless in their lowly, silken slaveries, and yet, now, how I envy them their slaveries!"

I smiled.

"What lucky, soft little thngs they are," she said, "being sold naked off sales blocks to the whips and chains of strong masters, with little more to worry about than the heat of the kitchens, the steaming water of the laudering tubs, the dangers, from young, prowling ruffians, of shopping in the evening! How warm and safe they are locked in their kennels at night or cuddling, in furs, chained at the foot of their masters' couches! What need have they to fear sleen and tarns! They need fear only thier masters!"

"The lot of a slave girl in the cities is not always easy," I said. "Most are owned by one master, alone, and must share his compartments with him, in complete privacy. There, as slave girls elsewhere, they are at the master's mercy, completely."

"It is not so different in the Barrens," she said, "when one is alone with the master, when the lodge flaps are tied shut, from the inside."

"Perhaps not," I smiled.

"And in the cities," she said, "it is so beautiful, the towers, the bridges and sunsets, the people, the flower stalls, the market places, the smells of cooking."

"Yes," I said, "the cities are beautiful." Some of the most beautiful cities I had seen were on Gor.

"I lived in Ar for a year," she said. "Not far from my apartments there was a pastry shop. Marvelous smells used to come from the shop. In the evening, when the shop was closing, slave girls, in their brief tunics and collars, would come and kneel down, near the hinged opening to the open-air counter. The baker, who was a kind-hearted man, would sometimes come out and, from a flat sheet, throw them unsold pastries.

I said nothing.

How amusing I found that at the time," she said. "But too, I sometimes wondered if the pastries I bought at that

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shop tasted so good to me as those the girls had begged did to them. They seemed so delighted to receive one. It was so precious to them."

I said nothing.

"If I were a slave in Ar," she said, "and I were permitted to do so, I think I shold go to that pastry shop and, in my tunic and collar, knel there with the other girls, hoping that I, too, might receive such a pastry."

I smiled. How beautiful she was, and how helpless, a slave.

"In street shopping," she said, "I was always heavily veiled. The backer would not recongnize me."

"Perhaps some of the other girls were former customers as well," I said.

"Perhaps," she smiled. "That is an interesting thought."

"The transition between a free woman and a slave girl can occur suddenly on Gor," I said.

"I am well aware of that, Master," she smiled. Somtimes a girl is captured in her own bed, raped and hooded, and carried to a market, all in the same night.

"But, on the whole," she said, "how I scorned slaves, how I hated them!"

"Oh?" I asked.

"Do you know the slaves I hated the most, those I most despised?" she asked.

"No," I said.

"The pleasure slaves!" she said. "How I hated them! They were so beautiful and desirable! Sometimes I would take a whip into the streets and deliberately jostle one, and then make her lie down and whip her across the legs!"

"The same thing, now, could be done to you," I said.

"I know," she said.