Renegades of Gor (23 page)

“But you are a free woman,” I said to her.

“I beg the collar!” she said.

“Is that not an unusual request for a free woman?” I asked.

“My freedom is now a mockery,” she said. “After what you have done to me these

past two nights, how could I even thing of being free? Do you think that that

delusion can be meaningful to me any longer?”

“You have then learned something about yourself?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “I have learned that I should be branded, that I should be in a

collar!”

I smiled.

“Do not frustrate me,” she begged. “Let me be what I truly am, in all honesty!”

“The porridge water should be salted,” I said.

“Yes, Master,” she said, and crawled to the front of the tent.

“Salt it lightly,” I said. She was learning to serve.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

The days I had spent here had not been fruitless. I had muchly reconnoitered. I

had thought that perhaps I might (pg.153) have been able to ascend the walls of

Ar’s Station on one of the scaling ladders, in a morning attack, but I had soon

thought the better of it. Resistance was still such that few Cosians could reach

the parapets, and those who did were usually driven back. Whereas I supposed it

was possible that I might enter the city in this way this modality of ingress

seemed dubious at best. It was difficult to see how my projects would be

furthered if, while attempting to identify myself and explain my mission, I were

to be cut open with a boat hook. Similarly I was not interested, in the midst of

friendly overtures, in receiving a bucket of flaming oil in the face or, say,

being struck from a ladder by a roofing tile brought from the interior of the

city. I had also considered trying to enter the city through its main gate, in

the confusion, when it opened for sorties by the defenders. There had been no

sorties, however, for twenty days. That in itself was an index of the straits of

the defenders, their will and numbers. Also, it did not seem to me practical to

try and enter the city during the daylight hours from the harbor side because of

the besiegers. Similarly, during the night hours, it seemed the defenders might

be unusually alert.

I did not, of course, know any appropriate signs and countersigns. One might

well be set upon as soon as one tried to haul oneself unto a wharf. Indeed, they

probably patrolled the pilings and such in small boats. An additional problem,

at least to a swimmer, I had gathered, from talking with some of the soldiers,

were Vosk eels. These often lurk in shadowed areas, among the pilings beneath

piers. Whereas they normally feed on garbage and small fish it is not unknown

that they attack swimmers. In the last few weeks, too, given the fighting at the

rafts, and in the harbor, predictably, river sharks, usually much farther to the

west, had made their appearance.

My second plan, or the second portion of my plan, involved the women from the

Crooked Tarn. Late this afternoon, as I had expected, they, in the keeping of

the sutler, Ephialtes, had arrived. I had made contact with him away from his

wagon and I had had him blindfold the women, with the exception of Liadne, the

first girl, and the only slave among them, before I inspected them. Liadne, who

was delighted with her name, showed them off to me, proudly. (pg.154) She had

done a good job with them, in only three days. The free women knelt very

straight, their bellies sucked in, their shoulders back, their breasts thrust

forward. Too, they knelt back on their heels, their knees spread, as those of

slaves. They were all there, Lady Temione, Lady Amina, the Vennan, Lady Elene,

from Tyros, and Ladies Klio, Rimice and Liomache, all from Cos. All of them had,

or had desired, to exploit men. now they knelt before me, not knowing who it was

before whom they knelt. I regarded them. Once they had been haughty, proud free

women. They now knelt within the fringes of a military camp, frightened,

confused, chained, blindfolded, shave-headed prisoners. They did not know in

whose power they were, or what their fate might be. I had plans for them, or

some of them. They, or some of them, would learn soon enough what these might

be.

I watched Phoebe pour some meal into the boiling, salted water.

Temione and Klio had had marks on their bodies. Perhaps they had dared to be

initially recalcitrant, at least to some small degree. Perhaps, incredibly

enough, they had even had some reservations, free women, to being handled and

treated as slaves, being stripped, and chained behind a wagon, for example, or

to having to obey promptly and perfectly the orders of a slave, Liadne, who had

been put over them, as first girl, kneeling before her, addressing her as

Mistress, and such. Perhaps, free women, they had dared, at least initially to

think that they might be above such things. They had learned differently. Too,

their treatment might, in some trivial ways, perhaps smooth, or make a bit less

traumatic, the transition to bondage, which was a likely, as well as suitable,

disposition for them. To be sure, there is probably no fully adequate way for

one to anticipate, or prepare for, psychologically, the actual transition to

bondage, even if one eagerly seeks it, even if one welcomes it joyously, for

with it comes a new and profoundly different understanding of one’s self and

nature; by it, you see, a categorical and radical transformation of one’s

realities is effected; in it one realizes, suddenly, that one is now no longer

what one was before, that one is now something absolutely different, that one is

now no longer a free person, but a property, subject to buying and selling, an

animal, a slave.

(pg.155) Phoebe knelt near the fire, back on her heels. Occasionally she would

kneel, up, off her heels, and stir the porridge.

“Keep you back straight,” I told her.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

Her body was slim, her hair was long, bound behind the back of her head with the

black cord.

Others about, too, were cooking.

She still wore the garmenture so much like the curla and chatka, the cord at her

belly and the long, single strip of cloth, the latter passing over the cord from

the outside to the inside in front, and then up, and over it again in the back,

moving from the inside to the outside, the whole then, above the cord, pulled up

and adjusted, snugly.

She stirred the porridge.

The bottoms of her feet were dark with dirt.

There was a scuffling sound outside and, looking up, we saw a stumbling woman,

naked, a rope on her neck, her hands tied behind her, being dragged among the

tents. She cast us one wild, desperate glance, and then was dragged past.

Phoebe knelt even straighter.

“I think it is a good thing that I kept you covered in my absence yesterday and

today,” I said.

“Master?” she asked.

“Do you know why I did so?” I asked.

“That I may learn discipline?” she said. “That I may learn that I am truly your

servant, and what it is to be the servant of a man such as you? And that I may

learn to be a good servant?”

“Such things,” I said, “but there is, too, another reason.”

“What is that?” she asked.

“That it is more likely that you will be here when I get back,” I said.

“I would not run away,” she said.

“I was not thinking of that,” I said.

“I do not want to run away,” she said, “but, too, I would be afraid to run

away.”

“But you are a free woman,” I said. “It is not as though you were a slave.”

“But if you caught me,” she said, “you would punish me, would you not, and

terribly?”

(pg156) “Yes,” I said. “But still it would not be as though you were a slave.”

She shuddered. “If I were a slave,” she said, “if I were to be branded and

collared, I would not even dare to think of running away.”

I nodded. Gorean, she was not unacquainted with the severities typically

inflicted upon wayward slaves, slaves foolish enough to attempt escape. Too,

escape, in effect, is impossible for the Gorean slave girl. The lay, the

culture, and such, are not set up to permit it.

“But why then?” she asked.

“That it would be less likely that you would be stolen,” I said.

“Really?” she asked, pleased.

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you really think a man might want to steal me?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said.

“Would you?” she asked.

“I might consider it,” I said. “I think you would look well on all fours,

bringing me a whip in your teeth.”

“Phoebe has gathered, the last two nights,” she said, shyly, “that she may not

be without attractions to master?”

“Perhaps,” I said.

“Even though I am a free woman?” she asked.

“Most slaves begin as such,” I said.

“I want to live for a master,” she said, suddenly, looking at me, “and to give

him pleasure. I want it to be the meaning of my existence!”

“I see, free woman,” I said.

“’Free woman’!” she said. “I am free in name only! You know that in my heart I

am a slave!”

“True,” I said.

“I want a master to be everything to me,” she said, “even if he scarcely notices

me, or cares if I exist.”

“I see,” I said.

“But you have not imbonded me!” she chided.

“No,” I said.

“If I were stolen,” she said, “I wager that that oversight would soon be

remedied.”

(pg.157) “Probably,” I said. “Particularly if it were done by a professional

slaver.”

She hummed a little tune.

“Surely you fear the whip,” I said, “and the hazards of the collar?”

“The whip is good for us,” she said. “Perhaps it is hard for you to understand

that, as you are not a woman. It makes our womanhood a hundred times more

meaningful. The essential point here is not being whipped, of course, which

hurts, but being subject to the whip, and being truly subject to it. You see the

distinction, I am sure. We know that men are by nature sovereign over us. That

comprehension requires no greater insight. Accordingly, men must then either

fulfill their nature, or deny it, and in denying their nature, deny us ours, for

ours is the complement to theirs. Accordingly we despise men who surrender their

natural sovereignty. Surely we would not be so stupid, would not be such

weaklings and fools as to do that, if we were men. It would be too valuable and

glorious a thing to give up. Its surrender would be a tragedy. But we are not

men! We are women, and want, truly, with everything in our hearts and bellies,

to be women, and we cannot be women truly if men are not truly men! Lay down the

whip, and we will attack you, and undermine you, and use your own laws,

institutes and rhetorics to destroy you, inch by inch. Lift it, and we will lick

your feet in gratitude. Own us, dominate us! Enslave us, properly, so that we

may love you as women are meant to love, wholly and irreservedly, totally,

without a thought for ourselves!” She looked at me, tears in her eyes. “Is it so

wrong to want to be ourselves?”

“But there are hazards in slavery,” I said.

“I accept them,” she said, “and would try to please my master.”

“You would be well advised to do so,” I said.

“I know,” she smiled.

“Attend to the porridge,” I said.

She removed it from the fire and covered it, to let it stand for a bit. She then

set out two bowls, with spoons, and two trenchers, for some bread.

She served, deferentially.

I considered her flanks, and breasts. They were excellent.

(pg.158) Although her garmenture was assuredly scanty, she was more extensively

clothed than many of the women in the camp. There were men here.

She spooned the porridge into the bowls and set the bread, wedges, from a round,

flat loaf, on the trenchers, and knelt back. She would wait, of course, until I

had taken the first bite.

Considering the size of the besieging force there were not as many women in the

camp as might have been expected. I hoped this would work in my favor. The

paucity of women, relatively, rent slaves even bringing a copper tarsk a night,

had largely to do with the coming and going of the slave wagons, which tended to

carry off most of the captures, apprehended refugees, women who had fled from

Ar’s Station for food, giving themselves into bondage for a crust of bread, and

such, to a dozen or so scattered markets, markets such as Ven, Besnit, Port

Olni, and Harfax.

I bit into the bread and Phoebe then, too, began to eat, taking a small spoonful

of the porridge.

It had become dark now.

We could hear the pleasure cries of a woman a few tents away.

“Do you think she is free?” asked Phoebe.

“Probably,” I said. “There are not too many slaves in the camp now.”

“What do you think he is doing to her?” she asked.

“Mastering her,” I said.

“Do you think she is tied?” she asked.

“Probably,” I said.

She looked down, shuddering, blushing. The intensification of sexual pleasure,

both physically and psychologically, by the application of selected restraints

is well known.

“The women I have seen in this camp,” she said, “do not appear to be

overdressed.”

“They are prisoners of strong men,” I said. She listened to the girl’s cried.