Swordsmen of Gor (55 page)

“Were you given permission to speak?” he inquired. There was a quiet menace in his tone, and I hoped that the slave was aware of that.

“What?” she said, uncertainly.

He leaped to her and seized her collar, and, by it, with two hands, he held her.

She regarded him, frightened. Never before had he behaved in such a fashion.

He lifted the collar, as he held it, with both hands, and it was tight under her chin, and then she was lifted rudely, stretched, standing, before him. She was then straight before him. She could not get her feet fully on the ground, but, at best, her toes. It was clear she was frightened, and quite uncomfortable. In this fashion a girl may be reminded that she wears a collar, a slave collar.

“Master?” she whispered.

He then removed his hands from the collar, and she stood before him, uncertain, frightened, and docile.

He then put his left hand in her hair, tightly, and, measuring her, carefully, deliberately, cuffed her once, and then again, once with the front of his hand, and then once with the back of his hand. Her head snapped back, and forth. Her eyes were confused, and frightened.

He then turned her about, and tied her hands together behind her back. He then turned her about, again, so that she faced him.

“Master?” she asked.

“Oh!” she gasped, turned and twisted by the force of it, and her tunic had been torn from her.

He then threw her to her knees before him, fetched a whip, and thrust it to her lips.

Instantly, terrified, she pressed her lips to it, kissing it, desperately, fervently, placatingly.

He then cast the whip aside, dragged her on her knees by the hair to a slave mat, and threw her back upon it, supine.

She looked at him, in awe, frightened. “Master!” she exclaimed.

I smiled, for I knew then that she knew she had a master.

He then put her to his pleasure.

Later, toward morning, her hands still bound behind her, she began to thrash, and beg.

I decided that it had not been a mistake to purchase her for him.

Women, I recalled, were the prize of the warrior, and his toy.

“That lovely brat still has to learn her collar,” I had said. She had known herself in a collar, of course, but perhaps she had not realized that the collar of Pertinax in which she had found herself was a true collar, a slave collar.

I heard her whimpering and moaning.

She now knew.

She was lovely.

She was no longer a brat.

She was now a slave.

There might be some consequences for Pertinax, I supposed, given the events of the night. I supposed he might find himself, now and again, perhaps sometimes inconveniently, importuned by a needful slave. But then one can always thrust them away, or cuff them from one’s thigh.

One does what one wishes, for they are only slaves.

In any event, Pertinax had now sensed what it might be, to be a woman’s master.

I had no doubt, despite what he might say, despite possibly even hysterical asseverations to the contrary, that he wanted Saru, and wanted her as what she was, and should be, a slave.

It was light when Cecily, beside me, awakened.

I felt her lips, soft, and tender, on my body.

Pertinax and Jane were asleep, Jane still bound.

“Very well,” I whispered to Cecily.

Chapter Twenty-Three

THE FEAST;

SOME LEAVE THE FEAST EARLY

“Serve him,” I called to Saru, indicating Pertinax.

She was some yards away, amongst the tables, clutching her vessel of ka-la-na.

She sparkled, having been fiercely scrubbed by reluctant slaves. She had been immersed, entirely, more than once, in a hot tub, and thrice oiled, and strigiled, and toweled. Her body, in effect, had been scoured, and her brush of blond hair, I was pleased to note, had not, in the zeal of the slaves, been pulled from her head. It was still wet. She was clothed, in a brief, pressed, white tunic. Her legs were lovely. I congratulated Thrasilicus on his selection, his choice, his taste.

The former Miss Margaret Wentworth, now Saru, was a beautiful animal, exquisitely featured and figured. She would look well on a chain, at the foot of a master’s couch. I thought she had the makings of an excellent slave. Even now I thought she could please the senses of a
shogun
, and, properly trained, might be a suitable gift for one. Too, of course, given her coloring, of skin, hair, and eyes, she would make an unusual gift, perhaps one of great value. I supposed one such as a
shogun
would suffer no dearth of collar-girls, say, women purchased in one market or another or captured from alien houses, but I supposed she would be rare, if not unique, amongst his female possessions. I speculated that she might be in some danger if she were felt as a threat by the other girls, for the attention, and favor, of the master, but this sort of thing is not unusual in the slave quarters. The slave’s best defense against discrimination and abuse, of course, is to endeavor to be so prized by the master that her sister slaves fear to attack her, steal her food, and such. A mere hint dropped by a preferred slave may bring a rival to the whipping ring, something the rival is not likely to soon forget. The favorite, incidentally, is not likely to be “first girl,” that slave placed in charge of the others in the house, but she may nonetheless exercise considerable power, and candidates for “first girl” are likely to cultivate her favor. Much depends, of course, on her remaining the preferred slave. If a new slave should usurp her place at the master’s slave ring, her life may become a misery, particularly if she is not popular with her sister slaves, is perceived as having abused her power, and so on.

Saru shook her head, pathetically, frightened.

I saw she was reluctant to approach Pertinax, which was not surprising, given certain occurrences of the preceding evening, near the stable. She was well aware of the reproach with which he now viewed her. He had done his best to make her feel shamed, inferior, and worthless. And I feared he had succeeded in this endeavor, given the lingering effects of her Earth conditioning, a conditioning in virtue of which she remained poignantly vulnerable to such assaults. How strange it is, I thought, that one should feel ashamed at being what one is, and wants to be, rather than at being what one is not, and does not wish to be. It is interesting, I thought, that there are individuals who wish to impose their values, and even their miseries, insecurities, and fears, on others. As they are constrained, fearful, and unhappy, they would have others share the suffering, bigotry, and poverty on which they congratulate themselves, as though it was some badge of honor to be narrow, intolerant, stunted, and stupid. Pertinax, it seems, had an image, an image of his own, of what Saru should be, what she should believe, how she should feel, and such. He wanted her not to be herself but to conform to some image which, really, in the full analysis, was not so much his own as one which he had been taught should be his own, one formed blindly by happenstance in a society which was, in effect, in many ways, an unfortunate, monstrous, inhumane accident. Interestingly, though he had hurt Saru deeply, one had the sense he was fighting more with himself than a slave. The knives of his hate were turned as much inward as outward. It might be noted, in passing, that it is quite unusual, and almost unknown, for a Gorean master to hurt a slave as Pertinax had injured Saru. A slave is seldom subjected to cruelty so subtle and insidious, a cruelty which would seek to deny her to herself, which would seek to impose falsehood and pretense upon her, punishing her not only for what she cannot help but for that which is most precious in her, what makes her most herself. Let the slave be what she is, in all her beauty, radiance, warmth, devotion, love, and service. Why demand that she lacerate herself on the nails of lies? How merciful, quick, and how easily done with, is a cuffing or the stroke of a switch. How dreadful, comparatively, is the administration of acids and poisons which, seeping and unseen, corrode from within, which would feed mercilessly on the heart itself.

Interestingly of course, though I was not sure how much aware of this was Pertinax, he was muchly drawn to the slave, and as a slave. He must have had some sense of this, else his hostility, his cruelty, would seem without motivation or explanation. It was almost a madness, almost as though a larl might, in the presence of food, his natural provender, fitted to his appetite by a thousand generations of hunting, seizure, and feeding, torment himself, and refuse himself not only the food he wanted, for which his hunger raged, but without which he could not live.

I was sure Pertinax wanted Saru, and as a Gorean master wants a woman, wholly, and uncompromisingly.

I suspected he had often, even on Earth, speculated on what she might look like at his feet, naked and bound, in his power.

Doubtless he, too, had considered her, even on Earth, in a collar, his collar.

What man can truly, deeply, desire a woman, wholly, fully, without contemplating her in his collar?

Too, I recalled the preceding night.

Pertinax had tasted slave.

And what man, having tasted slave, will be content with less?

I viewed Saru.

As mentioned, she was a bit away, some yards away, amongst the tables. She had her two hands on the vessel of ka-la-na. It is commonly so held.

Again I indicated Pertinax.

She, piteously, supplicatingly, shook her head, begging for mercy.

She would receive none.

I gestured that she should approach, and serve Pertinax.

She did so.

She knelt before the small table, before Pertinax. Her head was down. She did not dare to meet his eyes. “Wine, Master?” she asked.

“No,” he snarled. “Away!”

She withdrew gracefully, gratefully, still facing the table, and then turned away. “Wine!” called a fellow. “Yes, Master,” she said, and hurried to him, to kneel and fill his extended goblet.

Jane and Cecily were elsewhere, in service.

The tables had been set in the open air, and the area was lit with the glow of torches.

Four or five hundred men were at the tables.

The slaves were clothed, most tunicked, or camisked. One wore the Turian camisk, rare in the north, and two were in cleverly contrived
ta-teeras
, a form of garment which some think of as “slave rags.”

Whereas some slaves, indeed, say scullery slaves, garbage slaves, or such, may be clothed, if at all, in no more than a tiny rag, in any shred of cloth, perhaps one soiled from the soot and grease of the kitchen, to conceal their nudity, the subtler
ta-teera
is carefully tied or sewn. It is carefully wrought, artfully designed, to accomplish two objectives, first, to seem to convey the thought that the slave is a low slave, and one of little value, one worthy of no more than brief, demeaning rags, though she may in actuality be a prized, high slave, and, secondly, to well exhibit the charms of the slave, such things accomplished by the brevity and openness of the garment, as by, say, a short, uneven hem, ragged at the edges, a slit hem, showing a flash of thigh, as though inadvertently, and by, say, a rent here, a gap there, and so on. I noted the eyes of several men on the
ta-teera
-clad slaves, a master’s inspection, a Gorean male’s inspection, of which the slaves pretended to be oblivious. I had little doubt both girls would well be put to use at the feast’s end, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of dawn.

There was plenty of tabuk and tarsk, and the slaves brought it to the men on steaming platters. Wine was plentiful, and paga, too, and slaves hurried about, with vessels, and botas, to refill goblets. Hot bread with honey was on the table, on wooden trenchers.

I sat near Lord Nishida, and he had offered me a sip of a different fermented beverage, one I had once tasted on Earth, though not of so fine a quality. It was warm, in its small bowl. “It is
sake
,” I was informed. I nodded. There are rice fields on Gor, in the vicinity of Bazi, famed for its teas, but rice is not as familiar on Gor as the grain, sa-tarna. And Pani, as far as I knew, were not found in Bazi, or its environs. To be sure I supposed the rice might be Bazi rice, but I was not sure of that, not at all sure of it.

“Good,” I said.

Lord Nishida smiled. He had said nothing of the matter of Licinius, but I was sure he was well aware of what had happened, or might have happened. His
Ashigaru
, of course, had failed to find the body in the forest.

I doubted that Lord Nishida had given orders that I was to be slain after the feast, for he had shown me something surprising earlier in the day, in a tour of some of the remoter storage sheds, near the training fields.

It seemed he still had use for me, or might have use for me.

I did not know.

“Eggs,” I had said, finally, “hundreds.” I had seen them nestled in their straw-lined boxes.

Obviously they had been the eggs of tarns.

“They will not hatch,” I said. “They are without females, they lack incubators.”

“Incubators?” he asked.

“Devices, heated,” I said, “to hatch eggs.”

“Touch one,” he suggested.

I reached into one of the boxes, and placed my hand on the egg.

“It is warm,” I said.

“It is a matter of fluids,” he said. “There are two, one to keep the egg viable, another, later, to induce hatching.”

“I see,” I said.

The matter, I gathered, was in effect a chemical incubation. I supposed we owed this development to the Builders or Physicians. I supposed the Builders, some of whom concerned themselves with industrial and agricultural chemistry, might have been paid to inquire into such matters. The Physicians, I thought, would have regarded such research as beneath the dignity of their caste.

The feast was well underway.

I caught sight of Cecily, four tables away. She had a vessel of paga, on its strap, over her small shoulder.

Pertinax’s Jane bore a large wooden plate of roast suls. More than once it had been replenished at the kitchen area, the suls withdrawn from the ashes of several “long fires.” When a great deal of food is involved, particularly in the open, or in large halls, as in Torvaldsland, the fires are almost always narrow, and long, as this increases the amount of food which can be simultaneously prepared, and allows easy access to it, from both sides of the fire. Such a fire, too, it might be noted, given its length, distributes heat over a wide area. This can be important in heating a large structure, such as a hall.