Slave Girl of Gor (16 page)

I knew then I must escape. It would be difficult, for I was branded.

I looked up at the guard. He was not watching. I crept to the cliff wall. I examined it in the moonlight. At no point could I crawl more than a yard up its surface. I scratched my fingernails on the granite.

I turned to the wall of thorn brush. I feared it. It was high and thick.

The guard was not watching. The camp was not his concern. His concern was elsewhere, with possible approaches to the camp, the fields beyond the valleys.

I cried out with misery. I screamed, frightened. The brush sank beneath me. It would not support my weight. My right leg was deep in it, my right arm. I turned my head to the side, keeping my eyes closed. I felt the thorns. They seemed to tear at me. I was half immersed in the brush. I was caught. I dared not move. I began to weep and scream.

My master was first to my side. He was not much pleased. I immediately fell silent.

Another man came, bearing a torch, lit from the stirred ashes of the fire. Some other men arose but then, seeing it was only a slave girl, returned to their furs and tenting. Eta hurried over to me, but a curt word from my master hurried her back to her rest with dispatch.

"I'm caught, Master," I whimpered. Only too obviously had I been trying to escape.

In the torchlight he pulled my head back, by the hair, to clear it of the thorns. He did not want me blinded. I managed, suffering long scratches, to extricate my right arm. He looked at me. I was afraid he was going to leave me as I was. I could not pull my right leg back because of its position in the brush. I had no leverage, as I stood, to lift my leg out. "Please help me, Master," I begged. I had no wish to remain caught in the thorn brush until morning. It was embarrassing, and I was helpless, and it was painful. "Please, Master," I begged, "help me."

He lifted me up, in his arms, in this action freeing my leg, though it was cut and scratched. In the instant I relished being in his arms, held by him. My weight was nothing to him. I loved the feel of his strong hands on my body, holding me up, lightly, from the earth, which I, thus carried, could not touch unless he permitted it. I, naked, boldly put my head against the shoulder of his tunic. Then he had placed me on my feet.

I did not meet his eyes. I felt small before him. It had been obvious I had been trying to escape. I did not know, at that time, what might be the penalty for a girl who attempts escape and is so unfortunate as, as is nearly always the case, to be recaptured. Slave girls almost never escape. The major reason for this is the steel collar, which, obdurately encircling her neck, read, promptly identifies her master and his city. Almost no one, of course, would think of removing a collar from a girl, unless it would be to replace it with one of his own. This is because she is a slave. Girls may also be hunted down by trained sleen, tireless hunters. If a girl should elude one master, she will, customarily, soon fall to another. A successful escape, infrequent event that it is, seldom amounts, from the girl's point of view, to more than an exchange of collar and chains. Almost any man on Gor will hasten to put his collar on a loose, beautiful female. Where is she to run? What is she to do? All in all, escape is not a reality for female slaves. They are slaves. They will remain slaves. Too, they are branded, which further makes escape, for almost all practical purposes, an impossibility for them. Interestingly, ear piercing, too, can make it difficult for an escaped girl to elude detection. Ear piercing, interestingly, from an Earth point of view, is regarded by most Gorean women, slave and free, as more degrading than the brand. Slave girls native to Gor dread it terribly, perhaps because it is so visible, the piercing of their flesh being so flagrantly erotic; what man would even think of freeing them if they had pierced ears? They beg their masters not to pierce their ears. Their pleas, those of slave girls, are commonly ignored. Their ears are pierced. Afterwards, it might be mentioned, they are usually pleased with the piercing of their ears, and grow quite proud of this erotic dimension added to their beauty; not displeased are they either with the lovely adornments which their master may now order them to fix upon their body; free women, it is no secret, in many respects, envy their enslaved sisters, their beauty, their joy, their attractiveness to men; this may explain why free women are often quite cruel to slave girls; most imbonded girls fear greatly that they might be purchased by one of the dreaded free women. I have wondered sometimes if free women on Gor might not be happier if their culture permitted them to be somewhat more like the slave girls they so heartily despise. It seems a small enough thing that a free woman might be culturally permitted to have her ears pierced and, thus, be permitted earrings. Would it make so much difference? But the bonds of culture are strong. On Earth a free woman would not think of having herself branded, though it might improve her beauty; similarly, on Gor, a free woman would not consider having her ears pierced. Among slave girls, however, ear piercing, inflicted upon them by the will of their masters, is becoming widespread on Gor; one might say it is gaining considerable popularity among masters, which accounts, of course, for its growing frequency in the female slave population of the planet; it is a custom which derives, I am told, from the city of Turia, which lies in Gor's southern hemisphere, an important manufacturing and trading center.

A girl with pierced ears is, of course; either a slave or a former slave. If she is a former slave, her papers of manumission had best be in perfect order. More than one freed woman, because of pierced ears, has found herself again on the block, again reduced by strong men to the helpless state of bondage. Such a woman is usually, by intent, sold away from her city, delivered for a pittance to a foreign buyer.

My ears were not pierced, so I needed not fear that the piercing of my ears would betray me to the casual glance of a Gorean male as a slave girl. I was, however, branded. Gorean free women, no more than the free women of Earth, do not wear brands. Only slave girls, on Earth or Gor, are branded. On Earth, where slavery is practiced, commonly only troublesome girls are branded. On Gor, on the other hand, all slave girls are branded.

I did not think I could well escape with my brand. It marked me too well as a slave.

I did not speak to my master. He was, I supposed, considering my punishment, for having attempted to escape.

I did not know at that time what was commonly done to a girl who has attempted to escape, and has been recaptured. It is just as well. Much depends on the master but, commonly, the first time she is recaptured, she is treated with great lenience, as being only a foolish girl. Commonly, she is only tied and lashed. Should she attempt escape a second time, and be recaptured, she is commonly hamstrung, the tendons behind the knees being severed. Almost no girls attempt escape a second time.

I did not know at the time but even the thought of escape was a foolish one.

Many girls, even should they be so fortunate as to reach the walls of their own city, may not be admitted through its gates. Their slavery, even though no fault of their own, has deprived them of all their rights and cancelled their citizenship.

"Flee or be chained, Slave," is often said to them. They turn and run weeping from the gates.

Some girls attempt to flee to the greenwood forests of the north. In such forests, in certain territories, there roam bands of free women, the lithe, ferocious Panther Girls of Gor, but these despise and hate women not of their own fierce ilk; in particular do they revile and hold in contempt girls, beauties, who have been slaves to men; should such a girl, fleeing, enter the cool vastness of their green domain, she is commonly hunted down like a tabuk doe and cruelly captured; the forests are not for such as she; she is tethered and bound, and often lashed, then driven by switches helplessly to the shores of Thassa or the banks of the Laurius, and then sold back to men, usually for weapons or candy.

My master, with a spear and a loop of rope, under the torchlight, the torch held by one of his men, opened a passage in the thorn bush. It was some eighteen inches wide.

He pointed to the passage.

The way to flight was open.

I need only run.

I looked at my master in the moonlight. My knees felt that they might give way. I began to tremble.

The way to flight was open.

I looked with dread down the narrow corridor forced between the walls of fierce thorn brush, into the darkness beyond.

I needed only run.

The naked slave girl shook with terror before her master.

Then I knelt before him and pressed my lips to his feet, trembling. "Keep me, Master," I begged. "Keep me!" I looked up at him, clutching his knees, tears in my eyes. "Please, Master," I wept, "let me stay."

I remained kneeling, shuddering, as he turned from me and reclosed, with the spear and rope, the corridor in the thorn brush.

Then again he stood before me, looking down at me. He motioned me to my feet that I should follow him. Humbly, his girl, I followed him through the camp. The other man, too, he holding the torch followed.

We stopped before the rolled furs of one of the warriors. He blinked in the torchlight, and rose to one elbow, looking at us. My master spoke to him, briefly, no more than four or five words. I looked at the man. I knew him well from the camp. I had usually shrunk away from him. He was the least attractive man in the camp.

Why had my master brought me here?

My master said something to me, briefly, and indicated the recumbent warrior. I could not understand the precise meaning of the words addressed to me, but their import, as my heart sank, was clear. I was to please this man, and as a slave girl.

Yesterday night my master had taken my virginity, much pleasured himself with me, and forced my total surrender to him, the surrender of a completely vanquished bond girl. But should I then have inferred that I was a favored girl? That there was something special about me? No. It had been only first rights with me, naturally taken by him, the leader. It had meant nothing. I was only a girl. What had meant so much to me, what had been so momentous to me, had been meaningless to him. It had been only first rights. Doubtless he had taken first rights with countless girls, many of them more beautiful than I. I was truly for the use of all, as much1 or more, than the lovely Eta. There was nothing special about Judy Thornton. She was only a slave girl in the camp. I had not understood that. I had been confused, scandalized, outraged, miserable, when I had been put up as quarry and prize in the cruel game of the evening. I had, at last, afterwards, even cried out my rebellion, my foolish protest. I had been vain and proud. I had thought myself better than what I was. I, an Earth girl, had presumed to scold Gorean men. Then I had been hooded and thrown naked to them for their pleasure. In the course of the savage discipline inflicted upon me, late in its measures, I had, it both thrilling and horrifying me, sensed the ancient primate complementarity of male and female, that in the ancient biological sovereignties of nature, on this world reasserted, I, a female, was simply subordinate to the male. This truth, much fought and feared, long denied, accepted, burst upon me with a blaze of freedom. With hurricane force it blasted away the brittle webs and bars of falsehood. I, though helpless, hooded, in the arms of the beasts who ravished me, had experienced, exhilarated, an incredible sense of freedom, of liberation. It was not the freedom of convention I then felt but the freedom of nature, not the freedom to be what I was not, which had been prescribed to me, but the freedom rather to be what I was, which, for complex social and historical reasons, had been long denied to me; it was not the freedom of political prescription, but the freedom of nature, the freedom of a rock to fall, of a plant to grow, of a flower to bloom, the ecstatic freedom to be what one was. And I had cried out and seized the man. I, hooded, knew nothing of him but his maleness. I cried out and yielded to him. "Kajira," had said someone. How shamed I had been that I had done this. How sullenly I had lain in the camp afterwards. I had resolved to attempt escape.

In the camp, as I had lain there, I had known I was nothing special, that I was only a slave girl, that I must obey the men, and that they would do with me what they wished.

I attempted to escape. But, in a moment, foolishly, painfully, I was enmeshed in the thorn brush, helpless and caught in its cruel compass.

My master had then extricated me from my cruel prison and, with spear and rope, opened a path in the brush through which I might, did I choose, take flight.

I had wavered, and then, terrified and crushed, had knelt to him. "Keep me, Master," I had begged.

I now stood beside him, the man with the torch standing to one side. I looked down at the man in the furs, looking up at us. To me he was the least attractive man in the camp.

My master had said something to me. Its import was clear. I looked at him. His eyes were hard. I choked back sobs. I knelt beside the man in the furs, who threw back the furs.

My master stood behind me. The other man held the torch. I then, with hands and mouth, fell to kissing and touching the warrior. I pleased him as well as I could, being an ignorant girl, following his directions. At last he took me and threw me to the furs beneath him. I looked up at my master's face. I could see the side of it in the torchlight. The torchlight illuminated me. Then, suddenly, I turned my head to one side, closing my eyes, crying out. I could no longer resist the man. I then, shamed, under the very eyes of my master, yielded to the man.