Prize of Gor (40 page)

“You are wearing it,” he said.

“Master!” she protested.

She had hoped that he might respond in such a way as to give away the joke of her master. If he should inform her as to its location, or even, inadvertently, by a word, or a facial movement, suggest that it was somewhere in the vicinity, that would surely show that it was the intent of Mirus to return her to it.

“What is wrong with you?” he asked.

“When am I to be returned to my master, Mirus of Ar!” she said.

“Mirus of Ar is not your master,” he said. “I am your master.”

“No!” she cried.

“I bought you last night for ten copper tarsks,” he said. “I hope to sell you for fifteen.”

“No,” she cried. “No!”

The other girls on the shelf looked at her, puzzled.

“He would not sell me!” she cried.

“It is not clear to me,” said Targo, “why he would have you in the first place.”

“I have not been sold!” she cried. “He would not sell me!”

“I own you,” said Targo.

“No, no!” she said. “No!”

“If you could read, I would show you the papers,” said Targo. “They are all in order, with the proper endorsements, and such.”

She tried to lift the heavy collar on her throat, but, of course, it was stopped almost instantly, pressing upward against her chin. She pulled at it, and then, again and again, jerked at the collar ring, wildly.

“You are making a scene,” said Targo, disapprovingly.

“Mirus of Ar is my master!” she cried. “Return me to my master! I want to be returned to my master!”

She tried to thrust the shackle from her left ankle, but could not, of course, do so. She succeeded only in abrading the ankle. Then she pulled wildly at the chain, jerking it again and again against the ring.

Men paused to stare at the hysterical slave.

“He would not sell me! He would not sell me!” she cried, jerking at the chain. “He would not sell me!”

“Be silent,” said Targo. “Do you want people to think you have been stolen? Stolen slaves are not publicly vended, not in the city of their theft.”

“Return me to my master!” she cried, putting herself to her belly, pleading, in second obeisance position, before Targo.

“Barzak!” called Targo.

But Barzak had already emerged from the building and, in his hand, he carried the five-stranded, broad-bladed Gorean slave whip, designed for use on females, to punish terribly but not to mark, or permanently mark, thus perhaps reducing the value of the errant, punished slave.

“Master, please!” begged the slave.

“Whip her,” said Targo, turning away.

“Turn about,” said Barzak. “Grasp the ring.”

“No, please!” she said. But she had turned about and grasped the ring, the ring to which the ankle chain of the girl who had been to her left was chained. The girl who was chained to the ring, who had been to her left, drew back, as far as the chain on her ankle would permit. Ellen saw fear in her eyes.

This fear exhibited by her sister slave frightened Ellen even more.

“Please do not have me beaten, Master!” she called out to Targo, over her shoulder, lying on her belly, on the cement, grasping the ring, but he had left the shelf.

“I will be good, Master! I will be good, Master!” she cried, but he, as we have seen, was gone.

Then she cried out, in disbelief, and in pain.

She could not believe the shocking fire with which, after but one stroke, she was enveloped.

Surely it could not hurt as much as it did!

She could not stand it!

It was impossible to bear!

He must desist!

She would do anything, not to be struck again!

She gasped for breath, she could scarcely speak.

“No, please!” she begged. “I am too young to be beaten, I am only a girl!”

She heard one of the slaves laugh, and then again the lash fell.

This time it terribly enlarged the pain she had felt, and intensified it, as her skin had been already enflamed and sensitized.

“No more, no more, Master!” she begged. “I will do anything!”

“You must do anything anyway,” said Barzak, lifting his arm again.

“Yes, Master! Yes, Master!” she cried.

Then the lash fell again.

Tears burst from her eyes, she sobbed, her small fingers went white, grasping the ring so tightly.

After the next stroke she shrieked for mercy.

After the next two strokes she could only sob and clutch the ring, begging in her heart that there would be no more, no more!

The beating was actually a light one, as such things go. She received only six strokes, and the blows, while sharp, had not been heavy, surely not delivered with the full weight of a man’s arm. A woman is almost never beaten with the full measure of a man’s strength. There would be little point to that, and it would be brutal. She is, after all, small and beautiful, and only a female. The point of a beating is not to hurt her but to improve her.

These considerations were nothing that Ellen understood at the time, and even if she had understood them, there was nothing in them, of course, to lessen the actual, miserable, fierce burning of the lash.

“Well?” asked Barzak.

“Master?” sobbed Ellen, a mass of flaming, stinging stripes at his feet, from the back of her neck, just below the collar, to the back of her knees.

“Thank him, thank him!” hissed the girl chained to the ring which Ellen grasped so tightly.

“Thank you, Master,” whispered Ellen.

“For what?” demanded Barzak.

“Thank you for beating me, Master,” whispered Ellen, through her tears.

“Speak up,” he said. “Perhaps your chain sisters cannot hear you.”

“Thank you for beating me, Master!” said Ellen.

“And did you deserve the beating?”

“Yes, Master!”

“And are you now more aware of what it is to be a slave?”

“Yes, Master!”

“And you are now going to try to be a good slave, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Master!”

He then left the shelf.

Ellen then lay there, on her stomach, by the ring, still grasping it, sobbing, in misery, her body rich with bright, burning stripes, a whipped slave.

She did not know how long she lay there, but the sun had descended behind the building across the way, and she could sob no more.

It seemed she could barely lift her head, the collar seemed so heavy on her. She moved her foot a little, and heard the chain she wore move a bit on the cement.

“Buy me, Master!” called a girl from the shelf, behind her as she lay, to the left of the shelf, if one were looking outward from it, the side of the shelf farthest from the door of the tenement.

Perhaps a handsome man had paused by the shelf.

Doubtless the woman would do anything to be off the shelf, to be out of the weighty collar.

She wondered if she herself could so beg. Never, she thought, never.

What a shameless tart, she thought.

I could never beg like that.

Where am I, Ellen wondered. What am I doing here? What has become of me?

She lifted her head, dully.

“Who is Targo?” asked Ellen of the girl chained to the ring she still held. “What place is this? Where am I?”

The girl looked about but neither Targo nor Barzak were near the shelf, and the crowd, smaller now in the late afternoon, had its own concerns. Little attention was being bestowed upon the shelf. Naked slave girls are not that rare in a Gorean city. In many public places there are slave rings, to which one may chain one’s girls. To be sure, most girls chained at such rings, perhaps by their metal leashes, would be clothed, most often tunicked. The concern of the girl chained to the ring which Ellen still grasped was not unwarranted. Conversation is seldom encouraged among slave girls in public places. It is sometimes regarded as unseemly, and is sometimes, by free persons, deemed actually annoying. Slave girls, of course, are seldom reticent creatures. They, the most extraordinarily feminine of their gender, with their lively minds, their unusual quickness and high intelligence, as is well known, love to talk. It is hard to stop them sometimes, they love so to talk. Often masters charge them with prattling endlessly, mindlessly and interminably. But that charge, I think, is unfair. Certainly there are many things of interest, and worth talking about, or at least very pleasant to talk about, and delightful to talk about, other than problems of agriculture and engineering. And do not men speak among themselves, too? Are they really so different? Certainly slave girls delight in conversation. They love to talk to one another, and to their masters, until perhaps silenced. There are few slave girls, joined together, perhaps met at the fountain, or in marketing, or at the tubs, or such places, who do not relish a lengthy, lively, competitive, sparkling chat, and often the longer the better. To be sure, our conversations are not always such that men might approve of them. Perhaps we relish gossip, and fashion, and the sharing of secrets, more than men. I do not know. Is it true, as sworn by Lila, that the Lady Celestina, the free companion of Publius Major, as though inadvertently, drew back her robe, revealing an ankle to his handsome young secretary, Torbo? What will be the recommended length for slave tunics in the Fall? And how will they be cut? One could always beg the master for the latest style, for surely he would not wish the garmenture of his slave to reflect negatively on his taste or resources. Too, in what new ways might we more please our masters? Might we not be pleasantly surprised by his response, if we were sometimes to kiss his body, pressing our soft lips upon him humbly, intimately, fervently, tenderly, beseechingly, through the cascade of our loosened hair?

What a precious and glorious honor, what a coveted privilege, for a slave, to be permitted to serve her master!

“Targo is a minor slaver, of little account,” said the girl. “Once, perhaps, he was well off, but not now. He claims to have once, albeit unwittingly, sold the very tatrix of Tharna. The Cosians have robbed him of girls, some say his best, claimedly for taxes, time and time again. He must guard every tarsk-bit, as an urt its last sa-tarna seed. Targo is poor. He is nearly destitute. He is nothing.”

“But he is the master?” said Ellen.

“Yes,” said the girl. “As the master he is all, as the master he is everything.”

“In his own hovel, even the peddler is a Ubar,” said a girl from the right.

“If he has a Home Stone,” said another.

“Yes,” said the first girl.

“Does Targo, I mean, the master, have a Home Stone?” asked Ellen.

“We do not know, little she-urt,” said one of the girls. “He has not permitted us to rummage through his pack.”

“You are a barbarian, as it seems,” said the girl to whom Ellen had addressed her first queries.

“Yes Mistress,” said Ellen.

“I do not like barbarians,” she said.

“Forgive me, Mistress,” said Ellen.

“Men do,” said one of the girls.

“Some men,” said another.

“Yes,” said another.

“As you are a barbarian, and thus stupid, and ignorant,” said the first girl, “I will inform you that you are in the city of Ar.”

Ellen had thought that likely, but she did not know if she, during her period of unconsciousness, might have been moved to another, perhaps similar city. Certainly what she could see from the shelf, the market before her, the square, seemed dusty, crowded and squalid, nothing like that marvelous panorama she had glimpsed from the roof of the house, that tall, cylinderlike structure.

“Ar is the largest, most populous city in the northern latitudes,” said the girl. “But due to the disappearance of her Ubar, Marlenus of Ar, and diplomatic treachery, she has succumbed to a coalition of enemy forces, largely those of Cos and Tyros. She is supposedly now ruled by Talena, the daughter of Marlenus of Ar, a puppet Ubara in the keeping of Cos and Tyros. There is some pretense that the city is free, but in fact it is not. The true ruler is, I suppose, the military governor, Myron,
polemarkos
of Temos, commander of the occupational forces, or perhaps actually distant Lurius of Jad, Ubar of Cos. Where you are, specifically, in the city of Ar is in one of her most crowded and poorest districts, the district of Metellus, and in the Kettle Market, within walking distance of the Peasants’ Gate.”

“The Kettle Market?”

“Obviously much else is sold here as well,” she said.

“Yes, Mistress,” said Ellen.

She had seen that there were dozens of stalls in the square, most lining the fronts of buildings, stalls displaying an incredible variety of goods.

There were, of course, the pans, pots, utensils, lamps, pails, and such, which, on shelves and dangling from poles, she supposed might have suggested the name of the market, but there were also stalls, as well, specializing in many other forms of goods, for example, stalls of fruits and vegetables, and produce of various sorts, and sausages and dried meats, and stalls of tunics, cloaks, robes, veils, scarves, and simple cloth, and of leatherwork, belts and wallets, and such, and of footwear, oils, instruments of the bath, cosmetics and perfumes, and mats and coarse rugs, and such. She saw no stall that seemed to specialize in silk, or gold, or silver, or precious stones, or in weaponry, even simple cutlery. It impressed her as a crowded, dirty, low market, presumably frequented primarily by the poor, or by those of the lower castes, individuals who must carefully guard even their smallest coins.

“For example, slave girls,” said the girl.

“Yes, Mistress.”

Ellen looked to the left and right, on the surface of the shelf. There were seven girls there, including herself, each, as she, stripped and in a heavy collar, chained by the left ankle to a ring. Yes, slave girls, too, were for sale in this market, and she was such a girl. She, too, here, was for sale, up for sale in this cheap, miserable market, in this terrible place.

How amused must be he who had been her master, for, after her beating, she scarcely dared to use his name in her thoughts, to know that she was here. Perhaps he would lift a glass of ka-la-na and proclaim a toast, offering it to her, chuckling, laughing, relishing his triumph over her, what he had done to her, offering it to her, to his absent, discarded slave. Perhaps he would permit Tutina, though too a slave, to join in the toast.