Authors: John Norman
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #General, #Fantasy, #Adventure, #Historical, #Erotica, #Thrillers, #Gor (Imaginary Place), #Cabot; Tarl (Fictitious Character)
had been my Mistress, as mere Kettle Slave.
“Master?” she asked.
“Make a feast,” I said, “Kettle Slave.”
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“Thurnock,” cried I, “secure the slaves.”
“Yes, my Captain,” he boomed.
Midice stood up, timidly. Her had was before her mouth. “What are you going to
do, Master?” she asked.
“We are taking you out,” I cried, “to be marked and collared!”
The three girls looked at one another in fear.
Already Turnock was putting them in a coffle, blinding the right wrist of each.
Before we set out we broke open the great bottle of paga, and Thurnock, Clitus
and I clashed goblets and emptied them of their swirling fires. Then we forced
each of the girls, choking and sputtering, to themselves upturn a goblet,
swilling down as best they could the firey draught. I recall Midice standing
there in her silk, teh leather on her wrists, shaking, coughing, paga on her
mouth, looking at me with fear.
“And then,” I cried, “we will return and make a feast!”
Thurnock, Clitus and I once more clashed and emptied goblets, and then, leading
Midice, first in the coffle, by the lead end of the binding fiber, I stumbled
through the door, finding my way down the stairs, with the others, hunting for a
smithy.
My memories are confused of the night, but we did find a smithy, and we had the
girls marked, and purchased collars for the, lock collars, which we had suitably
engraved. Ula’s collar read I AM THE PROPERTY OF CLITUS; Thurnock has his
slave’s engraved THURA, SLAVE OF THURNOCK; I had two collars engraved, one for
Midice and one for Telima; both read simply I BELONG TO BOSK.
I remember Midice, who had already been branded, standing with her badk to me
and my standing behind her, quite close, with the collar, and placing it about
her throat, then, decisively, closing it.
Holding her thus I kissed her on the throat.
She turned to face me, tears in her eyes, fingering the gleaming band of steel.
She had been branded, and doubtless her thigh still stund from the fire of the
iron. She knew herself then animal and slave, and so marked.
Now, about her throat, she wore as well the graceful badge of servitude.
There were tears in her eyes as she extended her arms to me, and I took her into
my arms and lifted her from her feet, turning and carrying her back to our
quarters. As we walked, Thurnock following, carrying Thura, and Clitus then, Ula
weeping in his arms, Midice put her head against my left shoulder, and I felt
her tears through my tunic.
“It seems,” said I, “Midice, I have won you.”
“Yes,” she said, “you have won me. I am your slave.”
I threw back my head and laughed.
She had taunted me at the pole, Now she was my slave.
The girl wept.
That night, the girls in our arms, we feasted, lifting many cups of paga.
Clitus, after returning to our quarters, had left and returned with four
musicians, bleary-eyed, routed from their mats well past the Twentieth Hour,
but, lured by the jingling of a pair of silver tarsks, ready to play for us,
past the dawn if need be. We soon had them drunk as well and though it did not
improve their playing, I was pleased to see them join with us in our
festivities, helping us to make our feast. Clitus, too, had brought two bottles
of Ka-la-na wine, a string of eels, cheese of the Verr, and a sack of red olives
from the groves of Tyros.
We greeted him with cheers.
Telima had prepared a roast tarsk, stuffed with suls and peppers from Tor.
There were great quantities of the yellow Sa-Tarna bread, in its rounded,
six-part loaves.
We were served by the Kettle Slave, Telima. She poured paga for the men, and
Ka-la-na for the women. She tore the bread for us, broke the cheese, ribboned
the eels and cut the tarsk. She hurried from one to the other, and the musicians
as well, scarcely serving one before being summoned to another. The girls
commanded her as well as the men. She was only Kettle Salve and thus, they were
of a higher sort than she. Further, I gathered, on the islands, Telima, with her
beauty, her skills and arrogance, had not bee popular, and it pleased them no
little that she should be, in effect, slave for them as well as their masters.
I sat cross-legged at the low table, quaffing paga, my left arm about the
shoulders of Midice, who, kneeling, snuggled against me.
Once, as Telima served me, I caught her wrist. She looked at me.
“How is it,” I asked, “that a Kettled Slave has an armlet of gold?”
Midice lifted her head and kissed me on the neck, “Give Midice the armlet,” she
wheedled.
Tears appeared in the eyes of Telima.
“Perhaps later,” I told Midice, “if you well please me.”
She kissed me. “I will well please you, Master,” she said. Then she threw a look
of contempt at Telima. “Give me wine,” said she, “Slave.”
As Midice kissed me again, lingeringly, holding my head in her hands, Telima,
tears in her eyes, filled her cup.
Across the table I saw Ula, eyes timid, lift her lips to Clitus. He did not
refuse her, and they began to kiss, and touch. Thurnock then seized Thura,
pressing his lips upon hers. Helpless in his great arms she struggled, but then,
as I laughed, she cried out as though in misery and began to yield to him, and
then, moments later, her lips eagerly were seeking his.
“Master,” said Midice, looking at me, eyes bright.
“Do you recall,” I asked pleasantly, looking down into her eyes, “how some days
ago you taunted me when I was bound at the pole?”
“Master?” she asked, her eyes timid.
“Have you forgotten,” I asked, “how you danced before me?”
She drew back. “Please, Master,” she whispered, her eyes terrified.
I turned to the musicians. “Do you know,” I asked, “the Love Dance of the Newly
Collared Slave Girl?”
“Port Kar’s?” asked the leader of the musicians.
“Yes,” I said.
“Of course,” said he.
I had purchased more than marking and collars at the smithy.
“On your feet,” boomed Turnock to Thura, and she leaped frightened to her feet,
standing ankle deep in the thick pile rug.
At the gesture from Clitus, Ula, too, leaped to her feet.
I put ankle rings on Midice, and then slave bracelets. And tore from her the bit
of silk she wore. She looked at me with terror.
I lifted her to her feet, and stood before her.
“Play,” I told the musicians.
The Love Dance of the Newly Collared Slave Girl has many variations, in the
different cities of Gor, but the common theme is that the girl dances her joy
that she will soon lie in the arms of a strong master.
The musicians began to play, and to the clapping and cries of Turnock and
Clitus, Thura and Ula danced before them.
“Dance,” said I to Midice.
In terror the dark-haired girl, lithe, tears in her eyes, she so marvelously
legged, lifted her wrists.
Now again Midice danced, her ankles in delicious proximity and wrists lifted
again together back to back above her head, palms out. But this time her ankles
were not as though chained, nore her wrists as though braceleted; rather they
were truly chained and braceleted; she wore the linked ankle rings, the
three-linked slave bracelets of a Gorean master; and I did not thing she would
now conclude her dance by spitting upon me and whirling away.
She trembled. “Find me pleasing,” she begged.
“Don not afflict her so,” said Telima to me.
“Go to the kitchen,” said I, “Kettle Slave.”
Telima turned and, in the stained tunic of re-cloth, left the room, as she had
been commanded.
The music grew more wild.
“Where now,” I demanded of Midice, “is your insolence, your contempt!”
“Be kind!” she cried. “Be kind to Midice!”
The music grwe even more wild.
And then Ula, bolding before Clitus, tore from her own body teh silk she wore
and danced, her arms extended to him.
He leaped to his feet and carried her from the room.
I laughed.
Then Thura, to my amazement, though a rence girl, dancing, revealed herself
similarly to the great Thurnock, he only of the peasants, and he, with a great
laugh, swept her from her feet and carried her from the room.
“Do I dance for life?” begged Midice.
I drew the Gorean blade. “Yes,” I said, “you do.”
And she danced superbly for me, every fiber of her beautiful body straining to
please me, her eyes, each instant, pleading, trying to read in mine her fate. At
last, when she could dance no more, she fell at my feet, and put her head to my
sandals.
“Find me pleasing,” she begged. “Find me pleasing, my Master!”
I had had my sport.
I sheathed the blade.
“Light the lamp of love,” I said.
She looked up at me, gratefully, but saw then my eyes. Her test was not yet
done.
Trembling she fumbled with the flint and steel, to strike sparks into the moss
bowl, whence by means of a Ka-la-na shaving the lamp might be lit.
I myself thre down, in one cornver, near a slave ring, the Furs of Love.
The musicians, one by one, each with a silver tarsk, stole from the room.
An Ahn later, perhaps a bit more than an Ahn before dawn, the oil in the lamp of
love had burned low.
Midice lay against me, in my arms. She looked up at me, and whispered, “Did
Midice do well? Is Master pleased with Midice?”
“Yes,” I said, wearily, looking at the ceiling. “I am pleased with Midice.”
I felt empty.
For a long time then we did not speak.
Then she said, “You are well pleased with Midice, are you not?”
“Yes,” I said, “ I am well pleased.”
“Midice is first girl, is she not?”
“Yes,” I said, “Midice is first girl.”
Micide looked at me, and whispered. “Telima is only Kettle Slave. Why should she
have an armlet of gold?”
I looked at her. Then, wearily, I rose to my feet. I drew on my tunic, and
looked down at Midice, who lay there with her legs drawn up, looking at me. I
could see the glow of the dim lamp on her collar.
I buckled about me the Gorean blade, with its belt and scabbard.
I went into the kitchen.
There I found Telima sitting against the wall, her knees drawn up, her head
down. She raised her head and looked at me. I could see her barely in the light
of the coals of the cooking fore, now a flat, reticulated pattern of red and
black.
I slipped the golden armlet from her arm.
There were tears in her eyes, but she did not protest.
I unknotted the binding fiber about her throat, and took from my pouch her
collar.
I showed it to her.
In the dim light she read the engraving. “I belong to Bosk,” she said.
“I did not know you could read,” I said. Midice, Thura, Ula were all, as is
common with rence girls, illiterate.
Telima looked down.
I snapped the collar about her throat.
She looked up at me. “It is a long time since I have worn a steel collar,” she
said.
I wondered how she had, whether in her escapte or afterwards in the islands,
removed her first collar. Ho-Hak, I recalled, still wore the heavy collar of the
galley slave. The rencers had no had the tools to remove it. Telima, a clever
girl, had probably discovered and stolen the key to her collar. Ho-Hak’s collar
had been riveted about his throat.
“Telima,” said I, thinking of Ho-Hak, “why was Ho-Hak so moved, when together we
spoke of the boy Eechius?”
She said nothing.
“He would know him, of course,” said I, “from the island.”
“He was his father,” said Telima.
“Oh,” I said.
I looked down at the golden armlet I held in my hand. I put it on the floor and
then, with the pair of slave bracelets I had removed from Midice, following her
dance, I secured Telima to the kitchen’s slave ring, fastened in its floor. I
braceleted the left wrist first, passed the chain throught the ring, and then
braceleted the right wrist. I then picked up the golden armlet, and again
regarded it.
“It is strange,” I said, “that a rence girl should have a golden armlet.”
Telima said nothing.
“Rest,” said I, “Kettle Slave, for tomorrow you will doubtless have much to do.”
At the door of the kitchen I turned again to face her. For a long time, not
speaking, we looked at one another. Then she asked, “--Is Master pleased?”
I did not respond.
In the other room I tossed the golden armlet to Midice, who caught it and
slipped it on her arm with a squeal of delight, holding up her arm, showing the
armlet.
“Do not chain me,” she wheedled.
But, with the ankle rings, taken from her following the dance, I secured her. I
put one ring about the slave ring near which she had served me, and the other
ring about her left ankle.
“Sleep, Midice,” I said, covering her with the love furs.
“Master?” she asked.
“Rest,” I said, “Sleep.”
“I have pleased you?” she asked.
“Yes,” I told her, “you have pleased me.” Then I touched her head, moving back
some of the dark hair. “Now sleep,” said I, “now sleep, lovely Midice.”
She snuggled down in the love furs.
I left the room, going down the stairs.
I found myself alone in the darkness. It was about an Ahn, I conjectured, before