Authors: John Norman
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #General, #Fantasy, #Adventure, #Erotica, #Gor (Imaginary Place), #Outer Space, #Slaves
absolute master.
I looked up into the eyes of Rask of Treve. He looked down upon me.
“How is it that I care for you?” he asked.
(pg. 344) “I love you,” I whispered. “I love you, Master.”
“I despise you,” he said.
I smiled at him, tears in my eyes.
“And yet,” he said, “from the first time I saw you, in the pens of Ko-ro-ba, I
could not forget you, but must have you as mine.”
“I am yours,” I whispered, “I am yours, Master. Utterly. Unconditionally yours.
Your slave. Your helpless slave!”
“From the time I saw you,” said he, “I knew that to me you could not be simply
as other slaves.”
I clutched him.
He looked down at me, troubled. He touched my head gently, moving back hair from
the right side of my face. “Can it be,” he asked, “that I, Rask of Treve, care
for a mere slave?”
“I love you, Master,” I cried, “I love you! I love you!”
He did not let me press my lips to his. He looked down upon me, smiling. “Were
you curious,” he asked, “why before I never let you serve the men, when the
other girls did so.”
I smiled up at him. “Yes,” I said, “I am curious.”
“I was saving you for myself,” he said.
I laughed.
“I kept you as long as I could,” he said, “but when you danced, then I knew I
must have you.”
I kissed him, and kissed him, weeping.
His hands were suddenly hard on my arms, and he forced me back. He grinned. “You
danced your insolence,” he said. “You danced your pride, your defiance, your
contempt and scorn.” He looked down at me.
I looked up at him. “I am not now insolent,” I said, “Master.” I smiled, tears
in my eyes. “I am not now proud. I am not now defiant. I am not now
contemptuous, nor scornful.” I reached up, and he permitted me to kiss him,
gently. I lay back. “I have been humbled, well humbled, Master,” I smiled.
“What are you now?’ he asked.
“Only your slave,” I whispered, looking up at him, “only your humbled, helpless
slave, Master.”
(pg. 345) He laughed.
I smiled.
“I have heard,” he said, “that there is an insolent female slave in camp, a
proud, unconquered girl.”
I shook my head. “No longer, Master,” I said.
“Did she escape?” he asked.
“No, Master,” I smiled, “she did not escape.”
“Her name was El-in-or,” he said.
“She did not escape,” I said.
He smiled.
“No female slave escapes Rask of Treve,” I said.
“That is true,” he said, the beast. But it was true.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“That same El-in-or,” I said.
“She did not escape?” he said.
“No.” I said. I laughed to myself. I had indeed not escaped.
“Whose slave is El-in-or?” he asked.
“Rask of Treve’s,” I said.
“Does she love?’ he asked.
“Yes,” I said, “she loves.” I tried to lift myself, to touch his lips with mine,
but he would not permit me. “She loves desperately and completely,” I whispered.
“Whom?” he asked.
I lay my head back, regarding him. I put my head to one side. “May I speak?’ I
asked.
“Yes,” he said, toying with his finger on my shoulder.
“But must I speak the truth?” I asked.
“Or you will be lashed, and put in the slave box,” he said.
I was startled. Yet I knew, suddenly, that, if I lied, he would indeed whip me,
and quite possibly place me again in the hated slave box. He was a Gorean
master. I was at his mercy. I wondered if I could have felt so much his, so
completely surrendered, if he had not possessed this complete power over my life
and body. I belonged to him. But I did not want him to whip me, or put me in the
slave box. I wanted only, desperately to please him. And I knew I must, for I
was his slave.
(pg. 346) The absolute truth must be spoken to a Gorean master. It is forbidden
to a girl to hide her feelings.
I looked up at him.
“It is well known to Rask of Treve,” I smiled, “whom it is that the slave girl,
El-in-or, loves.”
“Speak it,” he said.
“She loves her master,” I said. “She loves Rask of Treve.”
“I am he,” he said.
“It is you whom she loves,” I said.
“And who are you?’ he asked, his finger idly at my hip.
“She!” I cried, suddenly, laughing, with pleasure.
He kissed my throat.
“Has she been conquered?” he asked.
“Yes!” I said. “Yes!” I held him.
“Conquer me!” I wept. “Again conquer me!”
* * *
There were sounds of the early morning in the camp. It was now light. Far off, I
could hear Ute summoning her girls. A tarn cried in the compound. I heard the
sounds of pans. Some fires were being lit.
“In your dance, before you fell before me in the sand,” said Rask of Treve, “I
thought I detected in your dance something other than contempt and scorn.”
“Yes,” I said. I kissed him.
I knew then what I had not understood before, what, for brief moments in the
firelight, on the sand before his warriors and their slaves, my body had danced
to him, my need, my desire for him, my readiness and my desperate plea for his
touch.
For those moments, briefly mingled with the dancing of my pride, my insolence,
my contempt and scorn, I had, not fully aware, yet sensing fear what I did, in
the dance of a slave girl, piteously begged for the love of my master.
He had seen fit to touch me, and had summoned me to his tent.
We heard the sounds of the camp.
My left ankle wore the heavy chain. We lay together on the grassy knoll. I held
him to me, my cheek at his waist.
(pg. 347) His hand lay gently on the right side of my head.
“It is time for you to be about your work, Slave,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” I whispered.
From his pouch he took forth a key and sprang open the heavy manacle that had
clasped, so perfectly confining it, my left ankle.
He put his cloak about my shoulders. “Go to the shed,” he said, “and get a work
tunic.”
I was being dismissed.
I threw the cloak to the grass and knelt at his feet, as though chained. I
looked up at him. He was now standing on his feet, and he looked down at me,
tenderly.
“I am chained at your feet,” I said. It was a saying of a Gorean slave, to
express her feelings.
“Yes,” he said, gently.
“I love you!” I cried. I thrust my head to his feet. I suddenly began to weep.
“Do not sell me!” I begged. “Do not sell me! Keep me for yourself! Keep me
forever for yourself!” I could not bear the thought of being separated from him.
It would have been the torture of the tearing of my heart from my body. The very
thought caused in me excruciating suffering. I looked up agonized. I understood
then as I had not before what could be the cruelty, the tragedy, of being a
female slave. What if I had not pleased him sufficiently? “I will please you
more!” I wept. “More! I will give you everything! Everything! Keep me! Do not
sell me! I love you! I love you!” I lifted my wrists to him, as though they wore
slave bracelets. I smiled through my tears. “You see,” I whispered, “I am
chained at your feet.”
“Does the proud El-in-or beg to be kept as my slave?” he smiled.
“Yes,” I said, “she begs.”
“To your work!” he laughed.
I leaped to my feet. He seized me in his arms, and, on the summit of the knoll,
held me long, lovingly, in his arms. I looked up, into his eyes. “I love you,
Master,” I whispered. Then I laughed, and cried out. He, his body tightening,
startling again mighty with strength, astonishing me, delighting (pg. 348) me,
lifted me from my feet and lowered me, gently, to the grass, covering me with
his cloak. Again he forced me to weep with pleasure.
When I leaped up, laughing, shaking my head and hair, he again offered to place
his cloak about my shoulders, that my body might be covered when I went to the
shed for the work slaves.
It was much honor that he did me, a mere female slave. How the girls would have
cried out with envy to see me, secure in such a cloak, and that, too, of the
mighty Rask of Treve!
But I did not wish to wear it. Did I so, it would not have been well concealed
that he, my master, had touched with gentleness, and care, a girl who wore a
collar. What would his men think? And I wore penalty brands. Surely a girl such
as I, after being brutally used, should have been casually dismissed, or beaten
and spurned. No, let it not be revealed that he, my master, the mighty Rask of
Treve, had been tender with a slave, particularly such a low and miserable slave
as I.
I laughed and hurled the cloak back to him. “A steel-collar girl,” I said,
“should not have so fine a cloak!”
He laughed. “And one with pierced ears!” he said.
“Yes,” I laughed, “and one with pierced ears!”
I turned about and sped down the hill to the shed for female work slaves. I was
ravenously hungry. I had little doubt that Ute would have saved me a roll from
the feeding pan. I loved her! She would also, however, have a full roster of
work for me to perform this day. She played no favorites. I was one of her
girls. She would treat me no differently than the others. I loved her! And I
loved, too, my master.
I turned. He was watching me, from the hill. I smiled, and waved to him. He
lifted his hand. I turned again, and ran toward the work shed.
Before I appeared before the shed, I stopped and, secretly, pressed my
fingertips to my lips and then to the lettering on my collar, which proclaimed
me the slave of a Gorean warrior. I loved him! I laughed. You could read his
(pg. 349) name, that of my master, on my collar. It was Rask of Treve.
I was not displeased that I had been chained under the moons of Gor. I hurried
to the shed.
“I have saved a roll for you,” said Ute.
“Thank you, Ute,’ I said.
“Eat it quickly,” she said.” You have much work to do today.”
“Yes, Ute,” I cried, kissing her. “I will! I will!”
17
Port Kar
(pg. 350) The past few years had been the most happy and beautiful of my life.
“Hands to the rear. Cross your wrists,” said the man.
I did so.
I felt the straps through the heavy wicker. My wrists were pulled back, tight
against the wicker, and bound there. I shared the tarn basket, my knees drawn
up, with five other girls. We were naked. Our ankles were tied together at the
center of the basket.
“They will be in Ar by nightfall,” said the man.
My head fell forward on my breast.
Yet I had few regrets, for in the past weeks I had been happy, and I had been
alive.
I would never forget the face, nor the touch, of Rask of Treve, nor the long
walks, and the speakings, and touchings beyond the palisade.
“Will they be sold in the Curulean?’ asked a nearby warrior.
“Yes,” said the man.
Two of the girls, bound helplessly in the basket, squealed with pleasure.
In the beginning, following my total conquer by Rask of Treve, I had been
summoned night after night to his tent. I had served him in a delicious variety
of ways, to our mutual pleasure, for I had been well trained. I had feared only
that my imagination might fall short of the invention of new and exciting ways
to please him. Sometimes to my fury, he had tried to put me from him, and had
summoned other women to his tent, but often he would (pg. 351) send them away
again, and it would be I, El-in-or, who would again be commanded to the tent of
scarlet canvas, red-silk lined, on its eight poles.
“Did master summon me?” I would ask.
“El-in-or,” he would say, opening his arms, and I would run to him.
And then he no longer summoned other women to his tent. Then it was only
El-in-or, whom he summoned. And then I, to the anger of some of the other girls,
was the acknowledged favorite of Rask of Treve, his preferred slave.
A heavy, long strap thrust through the wicker, behind me and to the left. It was
passed several times about my throat and then drawn through the wicker behind me
and to my right. I felt my throat jerked back against the wicker by the strap.
The same strap, passing in and out of the wicker, similarly fastened the other
girls in place.
Inge and Rena were not in the basket with me. They had been given to the
huntsmen, Raf and Pron. In the fashion of Gorean huntsmen, both girls had then
been freed and give a head start of four Ahn, that they might escape, if it were
in their power. After four Ahn, Raf and Pron, running lightly, carrying snare
rope, left the camp. The next morning they had returned, leading Inge and Rena.
The thighs of both girls had been bloodied. Their wrists were bound behind their
backs with snare rope. Their slave leashes, too, were formed of a loop of snare
rope.
“I see you have caught two pretty birds,” had laughed Rask of Treve.
About the throats of the girls were locked new collars, again of inflexible
steel, but now those of huntsmen, vine engraved and bearing the names of their
masters.
No scribe it seemed would own Inge, but she would belong to a brutal and
powerful huntsman, the handsome Raf of Treve’ and Rena’s captain of Tyros, he
who had contracted for her capture, must now surely be disappointed, and his
gold lost, for his lovely prize had been taken by another, at whose feet she