Slave Girl of Gor (9 page)

The game of Girl Catch is played variously upon Gor; it can be played as informally and simply as it was in the camp of my captor, for the pleasure of his men, or it can be a fairly serious business, closely supervised and regulated in a sophisticated manner, as it is by merchant administrators in the rings outside the perimeters of the Sardar Fairs, where the young men of various cities compete. In one form there a hundred young men and a hundred young women of one city, the women selected for their beauty, enter the ring in competition with a hundred young men and a hundred young women of another city, similarly selected. In this form no hoods are worn. The object of the male is to protect his own women and secure those of the enemy. A girl is caught, stripped, bound hand and foot, and carried to the Girl Pit of the capturing city, into which she is thrown. If she cannot free herself, she is counted as a catch. Her own men may not enter the Girl Pit of the capturing city to free her. Sometimes this game is played with the winning side determined by its catches within a time limit, sometimes, in more brutal versions, by the first city which secures the hundred women of its enemy. A male is disqualified from further participation in the contest if he is forced from the ring. Women from the victorious city who may have been captured are, of course, upon the victory of their city, freed. Women from the conquered city, on the other hand, are not; they are kept; they are turned over to the young males of the capturing city; in the game in which the first hundred captures decides victory this means there is a girl for each participating young man, usually one he himself brought bound to the Girl Pit. Accordingly, particularly in the early phases of the game, the young males often devote their acquisitive attentions to those young women of the enemy city who are the most attractive to them personally, to those they would most enjoy taking home with them at the end of the day. This sport of Girl Catch, interestingly, when matters of honor are not thought to be involved, has been used upon occasion by cities to settle boundary disputes and avert wars.

In the camp of my captor, however the rules were simple. The referee lifted his switch.

He cried out a word, which I would later learn meant "Quarry." It is the signal that the game has begun, that the girl is now available, that she is now at large for capture. At the same time that he had cried out this word he had swung the switch and struck Eta a swift, stinging blow below the small of the back, making her cry out, identifying her original position and, with a jangle of bells, starting her into motion. The men wheeled toward the sound. Eta stopped, frozen. She was crouched over, her hands tied behind her back. Whether the slender, supple disciplinary device would be used often in the game depends much on the skill of the girl player. She must, following the rules, move at least once in every five Ihn, which is a little less than five seconds. If she does not move within five inn, perhaps being frightened, or having miscounted, the referee, with the switch, swiftly and exactly identifies her position for the contestants. An instant before the five Ihn were up Eta, jangling with bells, darted off, changing her position. Some of the men cried out angrily, for she had darted, unknowingly, between two of them. The referee cautioned the men sharply. The male contestants must not identify themselves. Such an identification, in that it might affect the girl's behavior, she perhaps desiring capture by a particular male, might unfairly influence the outcome of the game. Needless to say, the girl is expected to be an excellent quarry. If she is a poor quarry and puts up a disappointing run, and is too soon captured, her wrists are tied over her head and she is lashed. It is seldom necessary to do this, of course. Girls pride themselves on their evasive skills in Girl Catch; they strive with every fiber in their small bodies to be cunning, elusive quarry, not to be easily caught; with delight do they struggle to elude the predator; with relish do they know, belled, their capture and seizure is inevitable.

Eta was skilled in the game. But so, too, were the men. Often I suspected had she been thusly hunted and the men of the camp her hunters.

Twice did the referee, with his switch, incite the beauty to motion.

At last it seemed she knew not which way to turn. The men, silent, were about her.

Blindly, hooded, she fled-into the arms of the young blond giant. With a cry of pleasure he seized her and flung her to the grass, pinned beneath him. She was caught.

The referee called out a word, which I would later learn was "Capture," and slapped the man on the shoulder. The other men stepped back. Then, to my horror, I saw Eta, still hooded and bound, in her bells, ravished in the grass.

When the young man had finished with her he stood up and unknotted the hood from his head, casting it aside. Men lifted cups to him and shouted and pounded him upon the back. He was grinning. He had won. He returned to his place. Moneys were exchanged. Eta lay on her side in the grass.

She seemed small, lying there, hooded and bound, in her bells. By all but me she was forgotten. I felt terribly sorry for my poor sister. And I envied her her ravishment.

In a few moments the referee had returned to her and, by the arms, thrown her again to her feet. She stood unsteadily, trembling, the motion of her body agitating the bells.

He again called the word I was later to learn was "Quarry," and again he put her into motion with the switch. Again the men stalked her. Second place was at stake. She did not run as well this time, but, perhaps because this time there were only four pursuers, performed on the whole commendably. In some two or three minutes she was again taken and, to my horror, was, with pleasure and ruthlessness, again subjected to the indignity of the caught female, her second captor handling her with an audacity and simple physical proprietorship scarcely inferior to that of the first. How sorry I felt for her, and how, secretly, I envied her. I watched while third place and fourth place were won. The fifth man, when he had removed his hood, was the butt of much good-humored laughing and pushing. He, losing out, had not won the right to ravish the belied beauty.

The referee removed the hood from Eta, who threw back her head, shaking her hair, drinking in the night air. Her face was flushed and broken out. It was suffused with pleasure. Oddly, she seemed shy. Her hands were freed. She sat on the grass, removing the bells from her body. She, removing bells from her right ankle, looked over at me.

I looked at her, angrily.

She smiled. She removed the last of the bells. Then she laughed, and came over and kissed me.

I did not even look at her.

Then she went to pick up the brown rag which the referee had removed from her before the start of the sport. She did not try to put the rag on but carried it in her hand, loosely, and went to lie at the feet of my captor. I remembered how she had looked at me. It was the look of a woman who knows herself incredibly desired and beautiful, who was at the mercy of men, and who, because they had wished it, had been put muchly to their pleasure.

I was angry with her. Too, I envied her. Too, she had looked upon me as though I might be a naive girl.

It was dark now.

The white-barked tree, fallen, within the camp enclosure, broken off some four feet from the ground, the trunk then inclining to the ground, was near.

I saw that Eta had finished with the meat. Two men had, by the spit, lifted the hot, impaled roast, and put it on the grass for cutting. I was pleased that supper was near.

I tended the brazier. It glowed in the darkness.

Two men came and stood over me. I looked up, startled. They pulled me up by the arms and took me to the white-barked tree. They threw me on my back, my head down, on the tree. I looked at them, wildly. My hands were tied together before my body and then pulled up and over my head. They were fastened, behind my head, out of my vision, to the tree. My body was stretched out, one leg on each side of the trunk. "What are you doing?" I cried. I felt my body being tightly roped to the tree. I squirmed, my head down, my legs up. "Stop!" I cried. Ropes were placed on my neck and belly, and on each leg, above the knees and at the ankles, and lashed tightly. "Stop," I begged. "Please stop!" I could barely move. The men stepped back: I was fastened to the tree. "Let me go!" I cried. "Please!" I whimpered. "What are you going to do?" I asked. They looked at me. I was helpless. "What are you going to do?" I whimpered.

"Oh, no!" I cried. "No, no, no, no!"

My captor had gone to the brazier and, with the leather glove, and another, too, with two hands, withdrawn the white-hot iron. I felt the heat of it, even feet away. "No!" I screamed. "No!" Two men, large men, strong, held my left thigh immobile.

I looked into the eyes of my captor. "Please, no!" I wept. "Please, no!"

Then, head down, helpless, held, I was branded a Gorean slave girl.

The marking, I suppose, took only a few seconds. That is doubtless true. Objectively I grant you the truth of that. Yet a girl who has been marked finds this obvious truth difficult to accept psychologically.

Perhaps I may be granted that those seconds, those few seconds, seem very long seconds.

For an hour it seemed I felt the iron. It touched me firmly, kissing me, then claiming me.

I screamed, and screamed. I was alone with the pain, the agony, the degradation, the relentless, hissing object, so hurting me, the men. Mercifully they let me scream. It is common to let a girl scream, a Gorean kindness, while she is being marked with a white-hot iron. Afterwards, however, once the iron is pulled out of her body, and she is fully marked, Gorean males are less likely to. accord her such consideration for her feelings. They are less likely, then, to be so indulgent with her. This makes sense. Afterwards, she is only a branded girl.

It begins swiftly, almost before you can feel it. I felt the iron touch me and almost instantaneously, crackling, flash through my outer skin and then, firmly, to my horror, enter and lodge itself fixedly in my thigh. It was literally in my body, inflexibly, burning. The pain then began to register on my consciousness. I began screaming. I could not believe what was being done to me, or how much it hurt. Not only could I feel the iron, but I could hear it, hissing and searing in the precise, beautiful wound it was relentlessly burning in my thigh. There was an odor of burning flesh, mine. I smelled burning, as of a kind of meat. It was my own body being marked. I could not move my thigh. I threw back my head and screamed. I felt the iron tight in my body, then, to my horror, pressing in even, more deeply. The marking surface of the iron, then, lay hissing, literally submerged, in my flesh. I could not move my thigh in the least. I threw my head from side to side, screaming. The marking surface of the iron is some quarter of an inch in depth. It was within my flesh. It was lodged there, submerged, hissing and burning. Taking its time, not hurrying, it marked me, cleanly and deeply. Then, swiftly, cleanly, it withdrew.

I smelled burned meat, my own. The men released my thigh. I began to choke and sob. Men regarded the mark. My captor was commended on his work. I gathered I had been well marked.

The men then left me and I continued to lie, head down, roped and helpless, on the broken, inclined trunk of the white-barked tree.

I was overwhelmed, psychologically, with what had happened to me. The pain was now less. My thigh still stung, and cruelly, but the pain seemed relatively unimportant now compared to the enormity of the comprehension that shook me to the core. I had been branded. I shuddered in the bonds. I moaned. I wept. My thigh would be sore for days, but that was unimportant, even trivial. What would remain was the mark they had placed in my flesh. That, unlike the pain, would not vanish. I would continue to wear that mark. It would, from now on, identify me as something which I had not been, or had not explicitly been, before, but now was clearly, for the eyes of all. I lay there. I knew I now was, because of the brand, deeply and profoundly different than I had been before. What could a brand mean? I shuddered. I scarcely dared conjecture the nature of a girl who wore such a mark on her body. She could be only one thing. I forced the thought from my mind. I tried to move my wrists, my head and body, my legs and ankles. I could move them very little. They were helpless in their constraints. Only animals wore brands. I lay there, helpless, miserable. I was Judy Thornton. I was an excellent student at an elite girls' college on Earth. I was the most beautiful girl in the junior class, perhaps in the whole school, unless for my rival, the lovely senior in anthropology, Elicia Nevins. I was an English major, and a poetess! How was it then that I lay bound on a strange world, and bore in my flesh a fresh brand? How Elicia Nevins would have laughed with delight could she have seen me, her lovely, saucy rival, brought so low, even to a brand. I considered Elicia. We had been catty, haughty and smug to one another, competing in our beauty, our honors and popularity. How she would laugh to see me now! I could not even, now, have looked her in the face. The brand had made me different. She did not have a brand. I did. Had she faced me then, and I been unbound, I would have lowered my eyes and head, and, in shame, knelt before her. Had a simple mark on my thigh made me so different? I suspected that it had. I shuddered. I thought of the boys with whom I had gone out on Earth, those immature young men, many of them rich and well-placed socially, whom I had accepted as escorts and dates, often for no better reason than to display my unusual popularity before the other girls in the school. What if they should see me now? Some, I supposed, would have fled in terror, had I, a branded girl, been thrown to their feet. Others, perhaps, stricken and confused, would have blubbered and stammered, looking away, covering me with their coats, speaking tumbled, incoherent, soothing words, solicitous and hypocritical. How many of them, I wondered, would do what they truly wanted, as I had little doubt Gorean men would do? How many of them, I wondered, would simply look down and see me at their feet as what I was, a branded girl? I wondered how many would look down upon me, laugh with pleasure and say, "I have always wanted you, Judy Thornton. Now I am going to have you," and then take me by the arm and throw me to their sheets? Few I suspected. Yet, now, branded, for the first time I was acutely aware of the fantastic strength and size of even such boys, not even men, not even Gorean men, compared to my own diminutive strength and stature. Such matters had not seemed important before; now they seemed extremely important. Before I had been able to put off boys with a glance, a gesture, a sharp word, but what if, now, they should see me as I now was, wearing a brand. Would they simply laugh now at my silly glance, my gesture, my protest. Would they simply laugh, and do what they wanted with me? Or, perhaps, like Gorean men, would they first discipline me, and then perform upon me what actions they chose? With the brand, I knew I was somehow deeply and profoundly different. I lay on the white-barked tree trunk, head down, weeping. The brand was on Gor legal, institutional status; that which it marks it makes an object; its victim has no rights, or appeal, within the law. Yet the most profound consequences of the brand seem to be less social than intensely individual, personal and psychological; the brand, almost instantaneously, transforms the deepest consciousness of a girl; I resolved to fight these feelings, to keep my personhood, even wearing a brand. I lay confined in bonds. I could scarcely move. But I suspected, and truly, that the mightiest bond I wore was not the strict, confining loops on my wrists or belly but the newly incised brand on my body; later, I suspected, even if coils of rope and heavy chains might be heaped upon me, or I should be confined in cells or kennels, the most complete and inescapable shackle placed upon me would nonetheless be always that delicate, feminine design, that small, lovely flower, resembling a rose, burned into the flesh of my upper left thigh.