Marauders of Gor (30 page)

           
"I do not approve of the platform," said the free woman, coldly.

           
Forkbeard did not respond to her, but regarded her with great deference.

           
"These females," she said, indicating the Forkbeard's girls, who knelt at her feet, their heads to the turf, "could be better employed on your farm, dunging fields and making butter."

           
The free woman was a tall woman, large. She wore a great cape of fur, of white sea-sleen, thrown back to reveal the whiteness of her arms. Her kirtle was of the finest wool of Ar, dyed scarlet, with black trimmings. She wore two brooches, both carved of the horn of kailiauk, mounted in gold. At her waist she wore a jewelled scabbard, protruding from which I saw the ornamented, twisted blade of a Turian dagger; free women in Torvaldsland commonly carry a knife; at her belt, too, hung her scissors, and a ring of many keys, indicating that her hall contained many chests or doors;
 
her hair was worn high, wrapped about a comb, matching the brooches, of the horn of kailiauk; the fact that her hair was worn dressed indicated that she stood in companionship; the number of keys, together with the scissors, indicated that she was mistress of a great house. She had gray eyes; her hair was dark; her face was cold, and harsh.

           
"But I am of Ax Glacier," said the Forkbeard. In Ax Glacier country, of course, there were no farms, and there were no verr or bosk, there being insufficient grazing. Accordingly there would be little field dunging to be done, there being no fields in the first place and no dung in the second; too, due to the absence of verr or bosk, butter would be in scarce supply.

           
The free woman, I could see, was not much pleased with the Forkbeard's response.

           
"Thorgeir, is it not?" she asked.

           
"Thorgeir of Ax Glacier," said the Forkbeard, bowing.

           
"And what," asked she. "would one of Ax Glacier need with all these miserable slaves?" She indicated the kneeling girls of Forkbeard.

           
"In Ax Glacier country," said the Forkbeard, with great seriousness, "the night is six months long."

           
"I see," smiled the woman. Then she said, "You have won talmits, have you not, Thorgeir of Ax Glacier?"
 

           
"Six," said he, "Lady."

           
"Before you claim them," she said, "I would recommend that you recall your true name."

           
He bowed.

           
Her recommendation did not much please me.

           
She lifted the hem of her kirtle of scarlet wool about the ankles of her black shoes and turned away. She looked back, briefly, once. She indicated the kneeling slaves. "Kirtle their shame," she said. Then strode away, followed by several men-at-arms.

           
"Kirtle your shame!" cried the Forkbeard.

           
His girls, quickly, frightened, tears in their eyes, drew about them as well as they could their kirtles. They covered, as well as they could, their bodies, having been shamed by the free woman. It is a common practice of free women, for some reason, to attempt to make female slave ashamed of her body.

           
"Who was that?" I asked.

           
"Bera," said he, "companion of Svein Blue Tooth."

           
My heart sank.

           
"He should put her in a collar," said the Forkbeard. I was scandalized at the very thought.

           
"She needs the whip," he said. Then he looked at his girls. "What have you done?" he asked. "Drop your kirtles, and hitch them up!"

           
Laughing, once more proud of their bodies, the girls of the Forkbeard insolently slung their kirtles low on their hips, and hitched them high over their calves, even half way up their delightful thighs.

           
Then, we again continued on our way, leaving the place of the platform, the place of Gunnhild's triumph, where she had received a pastry, and where her master, the Forkbeard, had made a silver tarn disk on her beauty. She gave the other girls crumbs of the pastry and permitted Dagmar, who was to be sold off, to lick frosting from her fingers.

           
In the bond-maid shed there was a rustle of chain, as the girls looked up.

           
Light filtered into the shed from windows cut high in the wall on our right. The girls at, or knelt or laid on straw along on our right. The shed is some two hundred feet long, about ten feet wide, and eight feet in height.

           
An officer of Svein Blue Tooth, assisted by two thralls, quickly assessed Dagmar, stripping her, feeling her body, the firmness of her breasts, looking in
 
her mouth.

           
"A tarn disk of silver," he said.

           
Dagmar had, two months ago, stolen a piece of cheese from Pretty Ankles; she had been beaten for that, at the post; fastened there by Ottar and switched by Pretty Ankles, until Pretty Ankles had tired of switching her, too; she had not been found sufficiently pleasing by several of the Forkbeard's oarsmen; she was, accordingly, to be sold off, as an inferior girl.

           
"Done," said the Forkbeard.

           
Dagmar was sold.

           
There were some one hundred bond-maids for sale in the shed. They all wore collars of the north, with the projecting iron ring. They were fastened by a single chain, but it was not itself run through the projecting loop on their collars; rather, a heavy padlock, passing through a link of the chain and the projecting loop, secured them; in this way the chain, when a girl is taken from the chain, or added to it, need not be drawn through any of the loops; the girls may thus, with convenience, be spaced on the chain, removed from it, and added to it.

           
The Forkbeard was given the tarn disk, which he placed in his wallet. It had been taken from a sack slung about the right wall. There, from one of several small wooden boxes projecting an intervals from the wall, he took an opened padlock. He then walked across the shed, still holding Dagmar by the arm, and threw her to her knees. He then lifted the chain and, by means of the padlock, passing it through the loop on her collar and a link in the chain, secured her.

           
The Forkbeard, meanwhile, was looking at the bond-maids.

           
They were, of course, stripped for the view of buyers.

           
Behind the Forkbeard were myself, his men, those bond-maids who had accompanied us, and the thrall, Tarsk, who had been bought along, should the Forkbeard have made any heavy purchases.

           
"My Jarl," said Thyri.

           
"Yes," said the Forkbeard.

           
"Should this thrall," she asked, indicating Tarsk, once Wulfstan of Kassau, "be permitted to look upon the beauty of the bond-maids?"

           
"What do you mean?" asked Ivar Forkbeard.

           
"He is, after all," said thyri, "only a thrall."

           
I wondered that she would deny the young man this pleasure. I recalled that she had said she hated him. I, personally, had no objection tohis presence in the shed. Thralls, I expected, had few pleasures. It might have been more than a year since he had been permitted a female.

           
The young man looked upon the proud Thyri with great bitterness.

           
She lifted her head, and laughed.

           
"I think," said Ivar
 
Forkbeard, "that I will send him back to the tent."

           
"Excellent," she said. She smiled at the thrall.

           
"Chain!" said the Forkbeard. One of his men took from over his shoulder a looped chain. At each end it terminated in a manacle. It had been held, looped, by these manacles being locked into one another. He removed it from his shoulder and opened the manacles. The chain itself was about a yard long. He handed it to the Forkbeard.

           
The young man would go chained to the tent.

           
"Wrist," said the Forkbeard.

           
The young man extended his wrists. Thyri watched, delighted.

           
The Forkbeard closed the manacle about the young man's left wrist.

           
Thyri laughed.

           
Then the Forkbeard took Thyri's right wrist and closed it in the other fetter.

           
"My Jarl!" she cried.

           
"She is yours until morning," the Forkbeard told the young thrall. "Use her behind the tent."

           
"My thanks, my Jarl!" he cried.

           
"My Jarl!" wept Thyri.

           
Tarsk seized the length of chain in his right fist, about a foot from her fetter. He jerked it. The fetter was large on her wrist, but she could not slip it. She was held. She looked at him with horror. "Hurry, Bond-maid!" he cried. He turned about, dragging her by the right wrist, and, almost running, pulled her, stumbling, crying out, after him.

           
The Forkbeard, and I, and his men, laughed. We had not been much pleased at the insolence of the bond-maid with respect to the young thrall; once, we recalled, her taunting of him had almost cost him his life; I had intervened, and he had only been whipped instead; I had little doubt that Wulfstan of Kassau, the thrall, Tarsk, had many scores to settle with the pretty little she-sleen, once a fine young lady of Kassau; too, I recalled, she had once refused his suit, he supposedly not being good enough for her. "I hope," said the Forkbeard, "he will not make her scream all night behind the tent. I wish to obtain a good night's rest."

           
"It would be a shame," said I, "to interfere with his pleasure."

           
"If necessary," said the Forkbeard, "I will simply have him gag her with her own kirtle."

           
"Excellent," I said.

           
The Forkbeard then turned his attention to the chained female slaves in the shed.

           
Some extended their bodies to him; some turned, to display themselves, provocatively; for he was obviously a desirable master; but others affected not to notice him; though I noticed that their bodies were held beautifully as he passed, particularly should he pause to regard them; other girls, perhaps newer to their collars, shrank back against the boards, trying to cover themselves; some regarded him with tears in their eyes; some with fear; some with open hostility; others with sullen resentment; all knew that he might, like any man, own them, completely.

           
To my surprise, he stopped before a dark-haired girl who sat with her legs drawn up, her arms about them, her ankles crossed; her cheek was aid across her knees; she seemed startled that the Forkbeard stopped before her; she looked up at him, frightened, and then put her face down again, across her knees, but now her eyes were frightened, and every inch of her seemed tense.

           
She looked up at him, but then could not meet his eyes. She seemed a shy, introverted girl, one who might, before her capture, have been much alone.

           
The she had been caught by slavers.

           
"I would make a poor slave, my Jarl," she whispered.

           
"What do you know of this girl?" asked the Forkbeard of the officer of Svein Blue Tooth, who was accompanying him.
 

           
"She peaks little and, as she can, when not chained, as in the exercise pen, she keeps to herself."

           
The Forkbeard reached his hand toward her knee, but, she watching, terrified, did not touch it, and then withdrew it.

           
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, then opened them. She had feared to be touched.

           
Where as fear inhibits sexual performance in a male, rendering it impossible, because neutralizing aggression, essential to male power, fear in a woman, some fear, not terror, can, interestingly, improve her responsiveness, perhaps by facilitating her abject submission, which can then lead to multiple orgasms. This is another reason, incidentally, why Goreans favor the enslavement of desirable women; the slave girl knows that she must please her master, and that she will be punished, and perhaps harshly if she does not; this maked her not only desperate to please the brute who fondles her, but also produces in her a genuine fear of him; this fear on her part enhances her receptivity and responsiveness; also, of course, since fear stimulates aggression, which is intimately connected with male sexuality, her fear, which she is unable to help, to her master's amusement, deepens and augments the very predation in which she finds herself as quarry; and if she should not be afraid, it is no great matter; any woman, if the master wishes, can be taught fear.