Raiders of Gor (6 page)

steel and flint, the sparks falling into some dried petals of the rence. a small

flame was kindled into which she thrust a bit of rence stem, like a match. The

bit of stem took the fire and with it she lit a tiny lamp, also sitting in a

shallow copper bowl, which burned tharlarion oil. She set the lamp to one side.

Her few belongings were in the tiny hut. There was a bundle of clothing and a

small box for odds and ends. There were two throwing sticks near the wall, where

her sleeping mat, of woven rence, was rolled. There was another bowl and a cup

or two, and two or three gourds. Some utensils were in the bowl, a wooden

stirring stick and a wooden ladle, both carved from rence root. The rence knife,

with which I had cut rence, she had left in the packet in her rence craft. There

were also, in one corner, some coils of marsh vine.

“Tomorrow is Festival,” she said.

She looked at me. I could see the side of her face and her hair, and the outline

of the left side of her body in the light of the tiny lamp.

She put her hands behind the back of her head to untie the purple fillet of

re-cloth.

We knelt facing one another, but inches apart.

“Touch me and you will die,” she said. She laughed.

She disengaged the fillet and shook her hair free. It fell about her shoulders.

“I am going to put you up at stake at festival,” she said. “You will be a prize

for girls -- Pretty Slave.”

My fists clenched.

“Turn,” she said, sharply.

I did so, and she laughed.

“Cross your wrists,” she ordered.

I did so, and with one of the coils of marsh vine, she lashed my wrists

together, tightly, with the strong hands of a rence girl.

“There, Pretty Slave,” she said. And there she said, “Turn,” and I did so, and

faced her.

“My,” she said, “you are a pretty, pretty slave. It will be a lucky girl who

wins you at festival.”

I said nothing.

“Is Pretty Slave hungry?” she asked, solicitously.

I would not respond.

She laughed and reached into the wallet at her side and drew forth two handsful

of rence paste and thrust them in my mouth. She herself nibbled on a rence cake,

watching me, and tehn on some dried fish wich she drew also from the wallet.

Then she took a long draught of water from a yellow, curved gourd, and then,

thrusting the neck of the gourd into my mouth, gave me a swallow, then drawing

it away again and laughing, but then giving it to me again, that I might drink.

When I had drunk, she put the plug, carved from gourd stem, back in the gourd,

and replaced it in the corner.

“It is time for sleep,” she said. “Pretty Slave must sleep, for tomorrow he will

have many things to do. He will be very busy.”

She indicated that I should lie on my left side, facing her.

Then, with another coil of marsh vine, she tied my ankles together.

She unrolled her sleeping mat.

She looked at me, and laughed.

Then, as I lay there, bound, she unlaced her tunic, opening it. Her beauty, and

it was considerable, was now but ill concealed.

Again she looked on me, and, to may amazement, insolently, with a liquid motion,

slipped the tunic off, over head.

She sat of the mat and regarded me.

She had undressed herself before me as casually as though I had been an animal.

“I see,” said she, “that you must again be punished.”

Involuntarily, instinctively, I tried to withdraw but, bound, I could not.

She struck me with savagery, four times.

Inwardly I screamed with agony.

Then, sitting on the mat, forgetting me, she turned to the repair of a small

sack, woven of rence, which had hung in the corner of the hut. She used thin

strips of rence, breaking them and biting them, weaving them in and out. She

worked carefully, attentively.

I had been a warrior of Ko-ro-ba.

Then on an island of rence in the delta of the Vosk I had learned myself, that I

was, in the core of myself, ignoble and craven, worthless and fearing, only

coward.

I had been a warrior of Ko-ro-ba.

Now I was only a girl’s slave.

“May I speak?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, not looking up.

“Mistress has not honored me,” said I, “even by telling me her name. May I not

know the name of my mistress?”

“Telima,” she said, finishing the work in which she had been engaged. SHen hung

the sack again in the corner, putting the scraps and strips of rence left over

from her work at the foot of her sleeping mat. Then, kneeling on the mat, she

bent to the small lamp in its copper bowl on the flooring of the hut. Before she

blew it out she said, “My name is Telima. The name of your mistress is Telima.”

Then she blew it out.

We lay in the darkness for a long time.

Then I heard her roll over to me. I could sense her lying near me, on her

elbows, looking down a me.

Her hair brushed me.

Then I cried out, involuntarily.

“I wil not hurt Pretty Slave,” she said.

“Please,” said I, “do not speak so to me.”

“Be silent,” said she, “Pretty Slave.”

Then she touched me again.

“Ah,” said she, “it seems a slave finds his mistress beautiful.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Ah,” chided she, “it seems a slave has not yet learned his lesson.”

“Please,” I said, “do not strike me again.”

“Perhaps,” said she, “a slave should again be punished.”

“Please,” I said, “do not strike me again.”

“Do you find me truely beautiful?” she asked. She had one finger inside my

collar of marsh vine, idly playing with the side of my neck.

“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes.”

“Know you not,” asked she, with sudden insolence and coldness, “that I am a free

woman?”

I said nothing.

“Dare you aspire to a free woman?” she demanded.

“No,” I said.

“Dare you aspire to your mistress, Slave!” she demanded.

“No,” I said, “No!”

“Why not?” she demanded.

“I am a slave,” I said. “Only a slave.”

“That is true,” she said. “You are only a slave.”

Then, suddenly, holding my head in her hands, she pressed her lips savagely down

on mine.

I tried to twist my head away, but could not.

Then she drew back her head, and, in the darkness I could sense her, and her

lips, but an inch from my own.

Beams and timbers of misery and wanting clashed within me. It was she who had

fastened coils of march vine about my neck, and knotted them, putting me in the

the collar of a slave. It was she who had placed her arms about my neck at dawn,

on the shore of the rence island. It was she who had beaten me. It was she whom

I must obey, she for whom I had cut rence, she who had fed me as one feeds an

animal. It was she who had last night, and this night, bound me as a slave. It

was she who had tortured me with her beauty, tormenting and tantalizing me, with

a cruelty all the keener for its being so offhand and casual. I found myself

fearing her, and desperately wanting her, though knowing her immerasurably above

me. I feared that she might hurt me, in was true, but the hurts I feared most

were those of her insolence and contempt, those that more degraded me than bonds

and blows. And I wanted her, for she was beautiful, and vital, maddening,

ravishing. But she was free, and I was only slave. She could move as she wished.

I lay bound.

I wore besides my bonds only a collar of marsh vine. She wore her swiftness, and

her freedom, and an armlet of gold.

But most perhaps, incredible as it might seem, I feared that if I asked for a

kindness, even a word or a gesture, it would be refused. Alone and slave, beaten

and degraded, I found myself desperately in need of something, be in almost

nothing, to indicate that I was a man, a human being, something that might, to

some extent or degree, be worthy of respect or understanding. I thik that if

she, this proud woman, before whom I felt myself nothing, she my mistress, if

she had but cared to speak a word of simple kindness to me I might have cried

out with gladness, willingly serving her in all things she asked. But if I

should but beg a kindness, humbly, I feared it might be refused, that she might

reject me in this as she had in other things, my manhood and my humanity. And

fused with this, excruciating in the pain of it, was my desire for her, the

crying out of my blood that she so, and deliberately, aroused.

In the darkness I sensed her, and her lips, but an inch from my own.

She had not deigned to move.

To my horror, timidly, fearing and hesitant, I felt my lips lift then to those

of my beautiful mistress, and, i the darkness, touch them.

“Slave,” said she, with contempt.

I put my head back to the woven rence that formed the floor of the hut.

“Yes,” I said, “I am a slave.”

“Whose?” she queried.

“Telima’s,” I said.

“I am your slave,” I said.

She laughed. “Tomorrow,” she said, “I will put you up at stake, to be a prize

for girls.”

I said nothing.

“Say I am pleased,” she said.

“Please!” I said.

“Say it,” she said.

“I am pleased,” I said.

“Say now,” said she, “I am a pretty slave.”

My wrists and ankles fought the marsh vine.

She laughed. “Do not stuggle,” she said. “Also,” she added, “there is not point.

Telima ties well.”

It was true.

“Say it,” said she.

“I cannot,” I begged.

“Say it,” said she.

“I -- I am a pretty slave,” I said.

I threw back my head and cried out with misery.

I heard her soft laugh. In the darkness I could see the outline of her head,

could feel her hair on my shoulder. Her lips, still, were but an inch from mine.

“I will now teach you the fate of a pretty slave,” she said.

Suddenly, her hands in my hair, she thrust her lips savagely down on mine and,

to my horror, my lips met hers, but could not withstand them and I felt her head

forcing mine down and I felt her feeth cut into my lips and I tastes blood, my

own, in my mouth, and then, insolently, her tongue thrust into my mouth,

possessively, forcing mine, as it would, from its path, and then, after some

Ehn, withdrawing her tongue, she bit me, as I cried out in pain, diagonally

across the mouth and lips, that, on the morrow, when I stood at stake in

festival, the marks of my mistress’s teeth, evidence of her conquest of me,

would be visible in my body.

I was shattered.

I had been given the kiss of the Mistress to the male slave.

“You will move as I direct,” she said.

In the darkness, shattered, bound, mouth swollen, I heard her in horror.

Then she mounted me, and used me for her pleasure.

5
     
Festival

“I think I shall win you,” said a lithe, dark-haired girl, holding my chin and

pushing up my head, that she might better see my face. She was dark-eyed, and

slender, and vital. Her legs were marvelous, accentuated by the incredibly brief

tunic of the rence girl.

“I shall win him,” said another girl, a tall, blond girl, gray-eyed, who carried

a coil of marsh vine in her right hand.

Another girl, dark-haired, carrying a folded net over her left shoulder, said,

“No, he will be mine.”

“No, mine!” said yet another.

“Mine!” cried yet another, and another.

They gathered about me, examining me, walking about me, regarding me as one

might an animal, or slave.

“Teeth,” said the first girl, the lithe, dark-haired girl.

I opened my mouth that she might examine my teeth. Others looked as well.

Then she felt of my muscles, and thighs, and slapped my side two or three times.

“Sturdy,” said one of the girls.

“But much used,” said another.

She laughed, with others. They referred to my mouth. On the right side it was

black, and cut, and swollen. Diagonally it wore the marks of the teeth of

Telima.

“Yes,” said the first girl, laughing, “much used.”

“But good for all that!” laughed another.

“Yes,” said the first girl, “good for all that.” She stepped back and regarded

me. “Yes,” she said to the others, “all things considered, this is a good slave,

a quite good slave.”

They laughed.

Then the lithe girl stepped close to me.

I stood with an oar pole at my back, bound to it for their inspection. The pole,

thrust deep in the rence of the island, stood in a clearing near the shore of

the island. My wrists were bound behind the pole with marsh vine. My ankles were

also fastened to the pole. Two other coils of marsh vine bound my stomach and

neck to the pole. On my head my Mistress, Telima, had placed a woven garland of

rence flowers.

The lithe, dark-haired girl, standing close to me, traced a pattern on my left

shoulder, idly. It was the first letter of the Gorean expression for slave.

She looked up at me. “Would you like to be my slave?” she asked. “Would you like

to serve me?”

I said nothing.

“I might even be kind to you,” said the girl.

I looked away.

She laughed.

Then the other girls, too, came close to me, each to taunt me, with whether or

not I would not rather serve them.

“Clear away there,” called a man’s voice. It was Ho-Hak.

“It is time for contests,” called another voice, which I recognized as that of