Slave Girl of Gor (59 page)

Quickly I joined them.

I knelt with them, in a line of some seven or eight girls. We called forth the praises of our respective establishments. But when the men had disembarked, carrying their sea bags and weapons, none had stopped to stand before me.

I rose to my feet, looking about. Some officers, with a few members of the crew, remained on the ship. I turned away.

A sailor passed me. He carried a long bag on his shoulder, tied shut. I saw the bag move. It carried, I conjectured, a bound woman. From the lineaments of the bag, over his shoulder, I gathered she was naked. I wondered if she were slave or free. He boarded one of the numerous ships at the many wharves, going below decks.

Two men passed me, pushing a cart of furs of sea sleen. I could smell spices in a bale near me.

A man walked by carrying a long pole, from which dangled dozens of the eels of Cos.

It was now past noon, and I had not yet conducted a patron to the Chatka and Curla. Soon it would be time for me to report back.

Though I now wore no chains on the wharves I was still, of course, in a sense chained in my bondage. I was clad as a slave girl, and wore a belled collar, which identified my master, and a belled ankle ring; too, I was branded. Masters take little risk with their girls when they send them to the wharves. They are as slave on the wharves as behind the barred gates. If I did not report back promptly, when due, I would be beaten. I was full slave.

It was now past noon. I was growing apprehensive. I had not yet found a guest for the tables of Aurelion. Girls are not sent to the wharves for the delights of smelling the fresh sea air. They are sent forth half naked in their collars to bring back paying customers.

I parted my silk a bit and ran to kneel before a sailor. I looked up at him. "Own me at the Chatka and Curla, Master," I said. He spurned me from him with his foot, forcing me back to the hot planks of the wharf. I ran to kneel before another. "I am Yata," I said. "Please own me at the Chatka and Curla, Master," I begged.

He, with the back of his hand, struck me from his path, hurling me by the force of the blow to my shoulder on the boards. I tasted blood in my mouth. I knelt on the hot, calked boards, angrily. He had gone. It had not been necessary to strike me.

I rose to my feet and again looked about. The large, yellow shield on the high pole in the harbor had already been hoisted and fallen, and, near it, the fire of white smoke had been lit. When the shield reaches the top of the pole in the harbor and is permitted to fall it is the tenth hour, the Gorean noon. At the same time the white-smoke fire is lit. At the twentieth hour, the Gorean midnight, a beacon is lit. These things serve to synchronize chronometers in the port, and serve to regulate schedules and the utilization of the tide tables.

I was beginning to feel desperate.

Toward me a couple was moving, a bearded sailor and a red-haired paga girl. I saw by her silk she was from the Cords of Tharna, an establishment competitive with the Chatka and Curla.

I knelt boldly in their path, and looked up at the sailor, "Yata can please you more," I said.

"He is mine!" said the red-haired girl, holding the sailor's arm.

"I am his, should he be pleased to have me," I said. I smiled at the sailor. "Please, Master," I said.

He looked from one of us to the other. I saw we both pleased him. He grinned. "Fight," he said.

With a scream of rage the red-haired girl leaped upon me, clawing and biting, throwing me back to the boards. She was larger and stronger than I.

She could not well get her hands in my hair for, as yet, it was too short. I tore at her hair, rolling with her on the boards, and got my fingers in it but she, with the heels of her two hands, struck back my head. I felt her scratch for my eyes. I screamed as her teeth bit me in the arm. I was then terrified, and tried to defend myself, as she struck me. She crouched beside me, striking down at me with her fists. I rolled over, covering my head. She leaped up. I turned, She kicked at me. I felt her foot strike me in the stomach. I could not breathe. I gasped wildly for air. She threw herself over me and held my head down, locking her right arm about it; she held her legs about my body, preventing me from using my arms; with her left hand she shoved up, as she could, the collar at my throat; to my horror I felt her teeth, pushing aside the bells, trying to seize my throat; then her teeth were on my throat; then her head was pulled back and away, suddenly, from me; the sailor had her by the hair, kneeling, twisted back; she fought to look at me, held. "La Kajira, Mistress!" I wept. "I am a slave girl, Mistress!" She had clearly won. I was her inferior. I shrank back, fighting for air.

"He is mine!" she hissed.

I put my head down, in defeat.

Then she cried out in pain, as she was flung by the hair to his feet.

"You are mine," he said.

"I am yours," she whispered, terrified.

Then he took her by the hair and dragged her to her feet and left, she bent over, held by the hair, running, stumbling, beside him. To me she had been formidable, but to him she was only a wench for his pleasure.

I rose to my feet, shaken. I rearranged my silk. It had not been torn.

I looked after the sailor and the red-haired girl, stumbling beside him, held by the hair. I saw he would use her well, very well. This pleased me.

A male slave, his wrists chained, separated by some eighteen inches of linked metal, pushing a wharf cart passed me. He looked upon me. I was furious! I ran to him, in rage, and slapped him. "Do not look upon me!" I cried in rage. "I am not for the likes of you! You are a slave! A slave!" He pulled back his head, angrily. "Slave!" I screamed. "Slave!" I spun about. I saw one who must be his master, a merchant. I was red with fury. I ran to the merchant and knelt before him. I pointed to the male slave. "He looked upon me!" I cried. "He looked upon me!" "Have you permission to speak?" he asked. "May a girl speak?" I asked, frightened. "Yes," he said. Emboldened then, I pointed again to the male slave. "He dared to look upon me," I said. I knew that male slaves were carefully supervised. I knew it could be quite unpleasant for one of them to be caught looking upon a slave girl. To be caught looking upon a free woman could mean death for them. "He looked upon me," I said, pointing to the male slave. Surely he would be, at the least, whipped for his indiscretion. The beauty of slave girls was for free men, not for the slave likes of such as he.

"You are too good for him?" asked the merchant.

"Yes," I said. I then realized this was not the proper thing to say. But I had said it.

"You are both animals," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"But you are a female," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"And he," he said, "though slave is yet male."

"Yes, Master," I whispered.

"And is not the male animal the master of the female animal?" he asked.

"Yes, Master," I said. I knew that male dominance was pervasive among mammals, and that it was universal among primates. It can be frustrated only by an extensive and complex conditioning program, one adequate, over a period of years, to distort the order of nature.

"Do you find this slave of interest?" asked the master of the male slave.

He shrugged. "She is small," he said.

I looked at him, frightened.

"But she is not without interest," he conceded.

"Do you think you can catch her?" asked the master.

"Of course," said the male slave.

I rose to my feet, frightened. I began to back away.

"She is yours," said the master.

I turned to run. He caught me before a large box, and flung me, face forward, against it. When I recoiled back from the hot wood the chain on his wrists had looped about me, and I was his, held to him by the chain about his wrists.

"It is long since I have had a wench," he said.

He dragged me along beside him, the chain looped about my body, cutting into my waist over the left hip.

"Be merciful to a slave, Master," I begged.

Behind some boxes, on the boards of the wharf, he threw me down, under him.

"Please be kind to a slave, Master," I begged.

He laughed.

The master did not hurry him, but, I think, attended to other matters.

The wharf cart had been empty.

When the slave left me I had yielded to him, as though he might have been a free man. I was much shamed.

I lay behind the boxes and looked up at the blue sky. I was miserable. I had been used by a slave. But, too, I was frightened. It was surely past the time when I should have returned to the Chatka and Curla. I did not want to be whipped!

Slowly, painfully, my legs stiff, I climbed to my feet. I rearranged the bit of silk I wore.

I stepped out from behind the boxes. I must hurry back to the Chatka and Curla.

I stopped, startled. Then I shrank back beside the large boxes. He was far off, but I was certain. I began to breathe rapidly. My heart began to pound.

It could not be, but it was.

I did not know what to do. At first I felt, unrestrainable, overwhelming me, an incredible flood of love and elation. I felt the incredible love and joy, the elation, possible only to a slave girl.

He was approaching from down the wharf, carrying a sea bag, in the guise of a sailor.

I wanted to run toward him, crying out, the length of the wharf, and throw myself to his feet, weeping, covering them with kisses.

Then I was frightened that I had made a mistake. It could not be true.

But I watched. I grew more and more sure, and then I was certain. He stopped to buy a cake from a vendor on the wharf. It was he!

It was my master, Clitus Vitellius of Ar!

"Oh, Master," I wanted to cry out, "I love you! I love you, Master!"

Then I saw him glance at a paga girl who posed, turning before him, and spoke to him.

Suddenly I hated her and him!

He dismissed the girl, but I had seen him look upon her, as a warrior, a master.

I hated them both!

It had been Clitus Vitellius of Ar who had first enslaved me. He had marked me with the hot iron, marking my very flesh, branding me a slave girl. He had made me serve him! He had made me love him, and had then; when it pleased him, his sport done, thrown me aside, giving me to peasants!

A bold plan, relentless and terrible, formed in my mind. I breathed deeply, in cold fury, resolved.

He would find that a slave girl's vengeance is not a light thing.

I straightened myself. I parted the silk, lasciviously. I lifted my head, with the small sounds of the bells on the collar.

He was coming toward me now, eating on the bit of cake he had purchased.

I saw he carried no weapons. This pleased me.

I ran toward him, with short steps, and knelt before him. I kissed his feet. At his feet I felt suddenly a wave of love for him, the helpless weakness of a slave girl overcome at her master's feet, but then I caught myself, and every bit of me became cold, and calculating and sensuous. I held the calves of his legs in my hands, and looked up at him.

"Dina," he said.

"My master calls me Yata," I said, "Master."

"Then you are Yata," he smiled.

"Yes, I am Yata," I said. I looked up at him, smiling.

"Are you as innocent and as clumsy as before?" he asked.

"No, Master," I said, putting my head down, beginning to kiss him on the side of the leg, deeply, puffing, sucking, at the hair a tiny bit.

"I see not," he said, laughing.

I looked up. "I have been taught how to please men," I said.

"Of course," he said, "you are a slave girl."

"Yes, Master," I said.

"Are you good?" he asked.

"Some masters have not been fully displeased," I said.

"Do you think you could please me?" he asked.

My heart leaped. I applied myself as subtly and marvelously as I could, touching his leg variously, bringing my mouth slowly, biting and loving, to the side of his knee. "No, Master," I whispered. "Yata could never please a great warrior like you."

He looked about. "Say only 'sailor,'" he said. "Here I am not a Captain of Ar, he Clitus Vitellius, but only a seafarer, a simple oarsman from Tyros, one called Tij Rejar."

I looked up at him. "As master wishes," I said. Then I again applied myself to his legs.

"Master will not cuff me from him, will he?" I begged.

"Clever slut," he said.

He lifted my head and brushed back the kerchief on my head. I reddened.

"I was some weeks ago slave cargo," I said, my head down.

"And pretty slave cargo indeed," he said.

"I am pleased, if Master is pleased," I said. I held his legs, my cheek against his thigh. I wanted to cry out that I loved him, but then I checked myself, remembering my project. I knelt at his feet only to bring him low. I did not think it would be difficult if I could get him to the Chatka and Curla.