Raiders of Gor (18 page)

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