Captive of Gor (16 page)

bit of me not covered by the camisk. We had fled like screaming children. We had

fled like women! We were women! I was still terrified of the beast, even

separated from it by bars. What did they expect? I did not care for their

lesson. But I have never forgotten it. We learned it well. We were different! I

recalled how a guard had once given me his spear, and it had been so heavy, I

could throw it only a few feet. He had then taken it from me and hurled it into

a block of wood, head deep, more than a hundred feet away. He sent me to fetch

it for him and I had scarcely been able to work it free of the wood. His shield

I had barely been able to lift. On Earth I had not thought much of the strength

of men. Strength had not seemed important. It had seemed unimportant,

irrelevant. But on Gor I realized that strength was important, very important.

And that we were weaker than they, far, far, weaker, and that, on such a world,

if they chose, we were theirs. That night I had cleaned his leather and sandals,

as a slave girl, kneeling to one side, while he conversed with men. When I had

finished, I remained kneeling there, waiting for him. when he had finished he

arose and, without thanking me, put on the leather and sandals, then gestured

that I should precede him to the compound. He unlocked the barred gate and

opened it. In the threshold I turned to face him. “I, too, am a human being,” I

told him.

He smiled. “No,” he said. “You are a Kajira.” Then he turned me about and, with

a proprietary slap, sped me through the gate. He then closed the gate and locked

it.

I pressed against the bars putting my hands through, trying to touch him.

He came back to the bars and took my hands, holding me against the bars.

“When will you use me?” I asked.

“You are white silk,” he had said, and turned away.

I had moaned, leaning against the bars, lonely. I was filled with strange

sensations. The three moons were bright in the sky. I shook the bars, but I was

locked within. I (pg. 107) saw him disappear in the darkness, toward the wagons.

I held the bars, and pressed my cheek against them, and wept.

Ute, and several of the girls, I realized, were laughing at themselves and us.

It had been a splendid joke on us, the charge of an animal! What a jolly

conclusion to the mountebank’s performance. I could not laugh, but I did smile.

The girls were now waving to the mountebank and he, smiling and bowing,

acknowledged our attention and then, with his large, strange animal on its

chain, turned and left.

How precious and delightful Ute was!

Soon we were all laughing with her. Several of the girls began to sing. My sense

of pleasure returned. I raced Inge to the end of the compound and back, and beat

her. Some of the girls began to play tag, and games. Even some of the northern

girls joined with us. We had a cloth ball, stuffed with rags, and, laughing, we

threw this about. Some of the girls sat in circles, telling stories. Others

faced one another, kneeling, and, with string and their fingers, played an

intricate cat’s cradle game. Others played “Stones” where one player guesses the

number of stones held in the other’s hand. I tried cat’s cradle game but I could

not play it. I always became confused, trying to copy the intricate patterns.

How beautifully they would suddenly, in all their complexity, appear. The other

girls laughed at my clumsiness. The northern girls, incidentally, were very

skilled at this game. They could beat us all.

“It takes much practice,” said Ute.

“There is nothing much else to do in the villages,” said Lana, who refused to

try the game.

At “Stones” however, I was genuinely pleased with myself. It has two players,

who take alternate turns. Each player has the same number of “Stones,” usually

two to five per player. The “Stones” are usually pebbles or beads, but in the

cities one can buy small polished, carved boxes containing ten “stones,” the

quality of which may vary from polished ovoid stones, with swirling patterns, to

gems worth the ransom of a merchant’s daughter. The object of (pg. 108) the game

is simple, to guess the number of stones held the other’s hand or hands. One

point is scored for a correct guess, and the game is usually set for a

predetermined number of paired guesses, usually fifty. Usually your opponent

tries to outwit you, by either changing the number of stones held in his hand

or, perhaps, keeping it the same. I was quite successful at this game, and I

could beat most of the girls. I could even beat Inge, who was of the scribes. I

challenged Lana to “Stones,” bur she would not play with me. Ute, however, of

all those I played with, I could not beat. This irritated me, for Ute was

stupid. She even made mistakes in speaking her own language. She was only of the

leather workers, too! But it was hard to remain angry with Ute. I was pleased

with the afternoon. I was now Eleven Girl. I had seen the mountebank’s

performance, and I had enjoyed myself afterward.

I saw that a cart loaded with jugs of paga, arrived at the compound. It was

greeted with cheers by the guards. Tonight was a night to for celebration.

Tomorrow we would leave the compound and begin the overland journey across the

river and southeast to Ko-ro-ba, and from thence to Ar.

Targo’s wagons, now in the number of sixteen, the additional wagons and teams

purchased in Laura, were scattered about at various distances from the compound,

forming, in groups of twos and threes, small, isolated camps for the guards.

Besides the nine guards who had been with him when I was captured, he had now

eighteen additional men. They had been hired in Laura, known men, vouched for,

not drifting mercenaries. Targo, in his way, may have been a gambler, but he was

not a fool.

Ute came rushing to me, happily, and seized my arm.

“Tonight,” she laughed, “ when the food is served, you and I, and Lana, are not

to go to the food line.”

“Why not?’ I asked, in dismay. On Earth I had been a very finicky eater. On Gor,

however, I had developed a fantastic appetite. I was not at all pleased with the

prospect of losing my supper. What had we done?

Ute pointed through the bars at one of the groups of (pg. 109) wagons, some

hundred yards from the compound, toward the forests. Some five guards camped

there.

“They had asked Targo to permit us to serve them,” she said.

I flushed with pleasure. I liked to be outside the compound, and I enjoyed being

near to the men. Never before had I served so small and intimate a group.

Moreover, I knew the guards, for they had been with Targo since my capture. I

liked them.

That evening, as it was growing dark, Ute and I, and Lana, did not go to the

food line. A girl, however, was given a pan of food to give me for the new girl,

chained in the dormitory. I took this food, and a water bag, within the darkened

log enclosure.

It had been a beautiful day, and I was pleased. Moreover, I was looking forward

to the evening.

This time, when I fed the new girl, the former Lady Rena of Lydius, I permitted

her to eat at her own pace, and gave her the water bag more than once.

When she had finished she looked at me. “May I speak?” she asked.

I saw that the hood, her gag and the bonds had taught her slavery. “Yes,” I

said.

“Thank you,’ she said.

I kissed her, and then regagged her and rehooded her.

When I went outside I returned the water bag to its hook outside the door of the

dormitory, and gave the pan back to the girl who had given it to me. She was

doing kitchen work that night. She was one of the village girls. The kitchen was

an open, roofed shed abutting on the log dormitory, outside the bars. She was

gathering pans inside the compound. They she was released to go to the kitchen,

where, with some other of the northern girls, their arms immersed to the elbows

in wooden tubs of heated water, she set about washing the pans. Targo had not

had his older girls subjected to this kitchen work. We were pleased by this. It

was surely work more fit for the blond, northern girls.

(pg. 110) I knelt with Ute and Lana inside the gate, leading from the girl cage.

I was hungry, and it was now dusk.

“When do we eat? I asked Ute.

“After the masters,” said Ute, referring to the guards in the plural, “if we

please them.”

“If we please them?” I asked.

“I am always fed,” said Lana.

“Do not fear,” said Ute, laughing at me, “you are white silk!”

I looked down.

“You will please them,” Ute reassured me. “We all will. Why do you think they

asked for us?”

“Perhaps we should have eaten in the food line,” I said.

“And be beaten?” asked Lana.

“No,” I said, confused.

“A hungry girl often serves better,” said Ute. Then she laughed at me. “Do not

fear,” she said. “If they like you, they will throw you food.”

“Oh,” I said.

I was irritated. Elinor Brinton, of Park Avenue, of Earth, did not care to be

thrown food like an animal, provided she pleased her masters!

“Wenches!’ boomed a voice.

We jumped. I flushed with pleasure. We leaped to our feet. Our guards had come

for us!

The gate was unlocked.

We knelt on the grass. How pleasant it was not to be behind the bars of the girl

cage.

Three guards had come for us. I knew them, and the other two, with whom they

camped. They were among my favorites. I was excited. Sometimes, before falling

asleep, or even in my dreams, I had fancied myself in their arms. I could

imagine the pleasure of being held, helpless, in (pg. 111) their strong arms.

But beyond this I had only the white silk girl’s dim sense of the changes they

could bring about in my body, only the vague instinctual sensing, deep in my

femaleness, of the fantastic pleasures to which a slave girl may be subjected by

her master, pleasures by means of which he may, if it pleases him, totally and

completely dominate her, making her helplessly, irreservedly his, naught but a

yielded slave girl.

The men were in fine humor.

One of them pointed across the grass to the fire between the wagons.

It was more than a hundred yards off, glowing in the darkness, away from the

compound.

The men then removed their sword belts, holding the short swords and scabbards

in their left hand, the belts in their right.

“No!” laughed Ute. “No!”

Ute and Lana sprang to their feet and raced toward the fire. I was slower than

they. I was suddenly stung, smartly, with the fierce slap of a sword belt. “Oh!’

I cried, in pain, and leaped to my feet, and ran stumbling toward the fire. They

were swifter than we, of course. Ute, Lana and I ran, laughing and stumbling,

barefoot, squealing in protest, crying out in pain, through the darkness over

the grass toward the fire.

Ute reached it first, laughing, falling to her hands and knees and putting her

head down to the grass, her hair falling over the sandal of one of the two

guards waiting there. “I beg to serve you, Masters!” she gasped, laughing.

Lana was but an instant behind her and she, too, fell to her hands and knees,

head down. “I beg to serve you, Masters!” she cried.

I was stung once more and then, like Ute and Lana, I too was on my hands and

knees, head down, touching the grass. “I – I beg to serve you, Masters!” I

cried.

“Then serve!” cried one of the fellows at the fire, he whose sandal was lost in

Ute’s dark hair.

(pg 112) Suddenly there were three more sharp slaps of the sword belts and,

crying out, protesting, begging for mercy, laughing, we leapt to our feet to

busy ourselves.

* * *

Lana, Ute and I knelt in a line, facing the players. Our hands were bound behind

our backs with binding fiber.

The men, wagering, tossed us pieces of meat.

We caught them, in the firelight. A catch was two points. A piece which was

dropped was fair game for any. We fought for the dropped pieces. The retrieval

of such a piece was one point. Ute dropped a piece and Lana and I fought, each

holding to a part of the fallen prize, rolling and tearing. I struggled back to

my knees, tearing my head to one side. “Mine!” I cried, swallowing the meat,

almost choking, laughing.

“Mine!” cried Lana, gorging the other half of the meat.

“Point for each,” adjudicated one of the guards.

We were excited, and wanted to play further.

“We are weary,” said one of the guards. We saw copper disks being exchanged.

Elinor Brinton had done well for her guard. He was pleased with her. She

suffused with pleasure as he snapped his fingers for her to approach him.

She leaped to her feet and ran to him, where he shook her head roughly, and

unbound her.

“Fetch me paga,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

I went to the wagon to fetch a large bota of paga, which had been filled from

one of the large jugs.

Lana and Ute, too, went to the wagon, to fetch other botas, so commanded by

other guards.

Soon I returned to the firelight, the heavy bota of paga, on its strap, slung

over my shoulder. Ute and Lana, with theirs, behind me.