Magicians of Gor (3 page)

female slave, in a short gray tunic. She, too, had been caught, like Phoebe, in

the path of the procession. She had knelt with her head down to the street, the

palms of her hands on the stones, making herself small, in a common position of

obeisance. The free woman looked down at her. As the girl saw she was under the

scrutiny of a free person she remained on her knees. “You sluts have nothing to

fear,” said the free woman to her, bitterly, “It is such as I who must fear.”

The girl did not answer. There was something in what the free woman had said,

though in the frenzy of a sacking, the blood of the victors racing, flames

about, and such, few occupations of a fallen city. I supposed, either free or

slave, were altogether safe. “It will only be a different collar for you,” said

the free woman. The girl looked up at her. She was a lovely slave I thought, a

red-haired one. She kept her knees tightly together before the free woman. had

she knelt before a man she would probably have had to keep them open, even if

they were brutally kicked apart, a lesson to her, to be more sensitive as to

before whom she knelt. “Only a different collar for you!” cried the free woman,

angrily. The girl winced, but dared not respond. To be (pg. 19) sure, I

suspected, all things considered, that the free woman was right. Slave girls, as

they are domestic animals, are, like other domestic animals, of obvious value to

victors. It is unlikely that they would be killed, any more than tharlarion or

kaiila. They would be simply chained together, for later distribution or sale.

Then the free woman, in fury, with her small gloved hand, lashed the face of the

slave girl, back and forth, some three or four times. She, the free woman, a

free person, might be trampled by tharlarion, or be run through, or have her

throat cut, by victors. Such things were certainly possible. On the other hand,

the free women of a conquered city, or at least the fairest among them, are

often reckoned by besiegers as counting within the yield of prospective loot.

Many is the free female in such a city who has torn away her robes before

enemies, confessed her natural slavery, disavowed her previous masquerade as a

free woman, and begged for the rightfulness of the brand and collar. This is a

scene which many free woman have enacted in their imagination. Such things

figure, too, in the dreams of woman, those doors to the secret truths of their

being. The free woman stood there, the breeze in the street, as evening

approached, ruffling the hems of her robes. The free woman put her fingers to

her throat, over the robes and veil. She looked at the slave, who did not dare

to meet her eyes.

“What is it like to be a slave?” she asked.

“Mistress?” asked the girl, frightened.

“What is it like, to be a slave?” asked the free woman, again.

“Much depends on the master, beautiful Mistress,” said the girl. The slave could

not see the face of the free woman, if course, but such locutions, “beautiful

Mistress,” and such, on the part of slave girls addressing free women, are

common. They are rather analogous to such things as “noble Master,” and so on.

They have little meaning beyond being familiar epithets of respect.

“The master” said the free woman, shuddering.

“Yes, Mistress,” said the girl.

“You must do what he says, and obey him in all things?” asked the free woman.

“Of course, Mistress!” said the girl, and leaped to her feet, scurrying away.

“You may go,” said the free woman.

“Thank you, Mistress!” said the girl, and leaped to her feet, scurrying away.

The free woman looked after the slave. Then she looked across at us, and at

Phoebe, who lowered her eyes, quickly. Then, shuddering, she turned about and

went down the street, to our left, in the direction from whence the Initiates

had come.

(pg. 21) “The people of Ar are frightened,” said Marcus.

“Yes,” I said.

We saw a fellow walk by, mumbling prayers. He was keeping track of these prayers

by means of a prayer ring. This ring, which had several tiny knobs on it, was

worn on the first finger of his right hand. He moved the ring on the finger by

means of the knobs, keeping track of the prayers that way, comes to the circular

knob, rather like a golden circle at the termination of the Initiate’s staff,

one knows one had completed one cycle of prayers. One may then stop, or begin

again.

“Where do you suppose the Initiates were bound?” I asked Marcus.

“To their temple, I suppose,” he said.

“What for?” I asked.

“For their evening services, I presume,” he said, somewhat irritably.

“I, too, would conjecture that,” I said.

“The sun gate!” he cried. “We must be there before dark!”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“Is there time?” he asked.

“I think so,” I said.

“Come!” he said. “Come quickly!”

He then, leading the way, hurried up the street. I followed him, and Phoebe

raced behind us.

2
     
The Tent

“You may turn about,” said Marcus, standing up.

Phoebe, kneeling, gasping, unclasped her hands from behind her neck, and lifted

her head from the dirt, in our small tent, outside the walls of Ar, one of

hundreds such tents, mainly for vagabonds, itinerants and refugees.

“Thank you, Master,” said Phoebe. “I am yours. I love you. I love you.”

“Stand and face me,” he said. “Keep you arms at your sides.

Marcus took a long cord, some five feet or so in length, from his pouch, and

tossed it over his shoulder.

“Am I to be bound now?” she asked.

“The air seems cleaner and fresher outside the walls,” I said.

We could hear the sounds of the camp about us.

(Pg. 21) “It is only that we do not have the stink of incense here,” smiled

Marcus.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked, Phoebe. He held in his hand, drawn forth

from his pouch, a bit of cloth.

“I am not certain,” she said, timidly, hopefully, “Master.” Her eyes lit up.

I smiled.

“It is a tunic!” she cried, delightedly.

“A slave tunic,” he said, sternly.

“Of course, Master,” she said, delightedly, “for I am a slave!”

It was a sleeveless, pullover tunic of brown rep cloth. It was generously

notched on both sides at the hem, which touch guarantees an additional baring of

its occupant’s flanks.

I saw that Phoebe wanted to reach out and seize the small garment but that she,

under discipline, kept her hands, as she had been directed, at her sides.

The cord over Marcus’ shoulder, of course, was the slave girdle, which is used

to adjust the garment on the slave. Such girdles may be tied in various ways,

usually in such ways as to enhance the occupant’s figure. Such girdles, too,

like the binding fiber with which a camisk is usually secured on a girl, may be

used to bind her.

“It is to be mine, is it not?” asked Phoebe, eagerly, expectantly, hopefully.

She would not be fully certain of this, of course. Once before, in the

neighborhood of Brundisium, far to the north and west, when she had though she

was to receive a similar garment, one which had previously been worn by another

slave, Marcus refused to permit it to her. He had burned it. She was from Cos.

“I own it,” said Marcus, “as I own you, but it is true that it was with you in

mind that I purchased it, that you might wear it when permitted, or directed.”

“May I touch it, Master?” she asked, delightedly.

“Yes,” he said.

I watched her take the tiny garment in her hands, gratefully, joyfully.

It is interesting, I thought, how much such a small thing can mean to a girl. It

was a mere slave tunic, a cheap, tiny thing, little more than a ta-teera or

camisk, and yet it delighted her, boundlessly. It was the sort of garment which

free women profess to despise, to find unspeakably shocking, unutterably

scandalous, the sort of garment which they profess to regard with horror, the

sort of garment which they seem almost ready to faint at the sight of, and yet

to Phoebe, and to others like (pg. 22) her, in bondage, it was precious, meaning

more her doubtless than the richest garments in the wardrobes of the free women.

To be sure, I suspect that free women are not always completely candid in what

they tell us about their feelings toward such garments. The same free woman,

captured, who is cast such a garment, and regarding it cries out with rage and

frustration, and dismay, and hastens to don it only when she sees the hand of

her captor tighten on his whip, is likely, in a matter of moments, to be wearing

it quite well, and with talent, moving gracefully, excitingly and provocatively

within it. Such garments, and their meaning, tend to excite women, inordinately.

Too, they are often not such strangers to such garments as they might have you

believe. Such garments, and such things, are often found among the belongings of

women in captured cities. It is presumed that many women wear them privately,

and pose in them, before mirrors, and such. Sometimes it is in the course of

such activities that they first feel the slaver’s noose upon them, they

surprised, and taken, in the privacy of their own compartments. On Gor it is

said that free women are slaves who have not been collared. In Phoebe’s case, of

course, the garment represented not only such things, confirmation of her

bondage, her subjection to a master, and such, but more importantly, at the

moment, the considerable difference between being clothed and unclothed. She, a

slave, and not entitled to clothing, any more than other animals, was, by the

generosity of her master, to be permitted a garment.

“Thank you, Master! Thank you, Master!” wept Phoebe, clutching the garment.

Marcus had, of his own thinking in the matter, purchased the garment. It was, in

my opinion, high time he had done so. Not only would Phoebe be incredibly

fetching in a slave garment, garments permitting a female in many ways to call

attention to, accentuate, display and enhance her beauty, but it would make her,

and us, less conspicuous on the streets of Ar. Also, of course, she would then

be no more susceptible than other similarly clad slaves to the pinches, and

other attentions, of passers-by in the streets.

“May I put it on?” she asked, holding the garment out.

“Yes,” said Marcus. He was beaming. I think he had forgotten that he hated the

wench, and such.

“Why have you come to Ar?” I asked Marcus.

“Surely you know,” he said.

“But that is madness,” I said.

During the siege of Ar’s Station its Home Stone had been smuggled out of the

city and secretly transported to Ar for (pg. 23) safekeeping. This was done in a

wagon owned by a fellow named Septimus Entrates. We had learned, however, after

the fall of Ar’s Station, that the official rumor circulated in the south was to

the effect that Ar’s Station had opened its gates to the Cosian expeditionary

force, this in consideration of substantial gifts of gold. Accordingly, those of

Ar’s Station were now accounted renegades in the south. This supposed treachery

of Ar’s Station was then used, naturally, to explain the failure of Ar’s might

in the north to raise the siege, it was supposed that Ar’s dilemma in the north

was then either to attack their former colony or deal with the retreating

expeditionary force. On the supposition that the latter action took priority the

might of Ar in the north entered the delta in pursuit of the Cosians, in which

shifting, trackless morass column after column was lost or decimated. The

devastation of Ar’s might in the delta was perhaps the greatest military

disaster in the planet’s history. Of over fifty thousand men who had entered the

delta it was doubted that there were more than four or five thousand survivors.

Some of these, of course, had managed to find their way back to Ar. As far as

these men knew, of course, at least on the whole, the circulating rumors were

correct, namely, that Ar’s Station had betrayed Ar, that it was still intact and

that it was now a Cosian outpost. Such things they had been told in their winter

camp, near Holmesk, south of the Vosk.

Phoebe slipped the garment over her head.

Marcus observed, intently.

Understandably enough, given these official accounts of doings in the north,

Ar’s Station and those of Ar’s Station were much despised and hated in Ar.

Happily Marcus’ accent, like most of Ar’s Station, was close enough to that of

Ar herself that he seldom attracted much attention. Too, of course, these days

in the vicinity of Ar, given the movements of Cos on the continent, and the

consequent displacements and flights of people, there were medleys of accents in

and about Ar. Not even my own accent, which was unusual on Gor, attracted much

attention.

Phoebe drew down the tunic about her thighs, and turned before Marcus, happily.

“Aii!” said Marcus.

“Does the slave please you?” inquired Phoebe, delighted. The question was

clearly rhetorical.

“It is too brief,” said Marcus.

“Nonsense,” I said.

“It is altogether too brief,” said Marcus.

“The better that my master may look upon my flanks,” said (pg. 24) Phoebe. They

were well exposed, particularly with the notching on the sides.