Captive of Gor (25 page)

justifiably so. I rolled again to my other side, shutting my eyes. But there was

little beauty in the pens, with their heavy blocks of stone and stout bars, and

straw, and the smells. I then fell asleep, pleased that I was exciting,

forgetting even the nose ring. As I feel asleep I thought that Ute and Inge were

busying themselves in the cage, cleaning it.

Ute was such a sweet, stupid little thing. And Inge, too.

But, as it turned out, they did not clean the cage that night.

* * *

“Awaken, Slaves!”

I felt a sharp pain in my nose, excruciating.

I was instantly awake. I heard Lana cry out with pain. I jerked my head and felt

another sharp pain.

“Keep your hands at your sides,” commanded Ute.

Lana and I had been thonged together by the nose rings. In our sleep it had been

done. A thong had been passed through the two rings and then knotted. The

knotted, double thong that fastened us together was only about a foot long. (pg.

172) Lana and I faced one another. Ute’s small fist was securely fastened on the

thong.

Lana tried to reach the thong. Ute twisted it. Lana squeaked with pain. I, too,

cried out, for the same thong bound me. Then Lana, tears in her eyes, had her

hands down at her sides, obediently. I did, too. We dared not move.

“Ute!” I protested.

She twisted the thong, and I cried out in misery.

“Be silent, Slave,” said Ute, pleasantly enough.

I was silent, and so, too, was Lana.

Ute jerked us to our feet and we wept with pain. Our hands, our clenched fists,

remained at our sides.

“Place your hands behind your backs,” recommended Ute. Lana and I looked at one

another.

Ute gave the thong a twist.

We cried out and did as we were told.

Inge then came forward with two small thongs, probably wheedled from a guard.

I felt my wrists tied behind my back. Then Lana’s wrists were similarly secured.

“Kneel, Slaves,” said Ute.

Lana and I looked at one another in fury. Her fist never left the thong. “You

may call the guard,” she said, “for brushes and water, and fresh straw.”

“Never!” said Lana.

There was a sharp twist on the thong.

“I’ll call him,” I cried. “Please! Please!”

“Which one of you chooses to work first?” asked Ute.

Lana looked at me. “Let El-in-or,” she said.

“Let Lana,” I said.

“El-in-or will work first,’ said Ute.

The guard brought fresh straw, and water in a leather bucket, and a heavily

bristled brush.

My hands were unbound and, on my hands and knees, I began to gather the soiled,

stinking straw.

“Be careful!” cried Lana. It had hurt me, too.

(pg. 173) Lana was left bound, and we were left thonged by the nose rings. It

was clumsy work.

I cleaned one half of the cage, taking out the used straw and scrubbing the

plating. Ute would not let me shirk. I had to scrub my section of the plating

twice. My knees hurt. At last my half of the cage was clean and I spread fresh

straw there. Then I was rebound and Lana was unbound, and set to her work,

cleaning the other half of the cage. On my hands and knees, wrists tied behind

my back, my nose ring linked to Lana’s by the thong, I followed her about, as

she had me. At last her work was done. She, too, was forced to scrub her portion

of the cage twice. Her wrists were then rebound. Ute then took us to the bars at

the front of the cage and, unknotting the thong, passed it around two of the

bars and reknotted it, over one of the crossbars, about two and a half feet

above the floor plating. She then left us there.

“Ute,” I begged, “please let us go.”

“Please,” wheedled Lana.

We squirmed, but were secured.

On the outside of the bars, slave girls, and guards, passed by, on their way to

the morning feeding. They laughed at us. It was well known in the pens that we

had shirked the cleaning of our cage. I was humiliated. Even Lana, then, did not

seem so lofty and clever, kneeling bound by the bars, for the inspection of all,

thonged to them by a nose ring.

When the cage was unlocked, Ute and Inge went to breakfast. Lana and I remained

behind.

When Ute and Inge returned Lana and I had had enough of this misery.

“Lana will work,” promised Lana.

“If you do not,” warned Ute, “next time it will not go so easily with you.”

Lana nodded. She was strong, but she knew that in a slave cage, one is at the

mercy of one’s cage mates. Ute and Inge had demonstrated their power.

“And you, El-in-or?” inquired Ute, pleasantly.

I hated Ute!

“El-in-or, too, will work,” I said.

(pg. 174) “Good,” said Ute. Then she kissed Lana and myself. “Let us now release

these slaves,” she said to Inge. Ute and Inge freed us.

“It is time to leave for the private pens, for morning training,” said the

guard, passing by.

Lana and I got to our feet and looked at Ute and Inge. We would not again shirk

our work.

* * *

One day slipped into another in the pens of Ko-ro-ba. Four days after we had had

ours ears pierced the leather worker returned to the pens and removed the tiny

threaded rods with the disks from our ears. Behind remained the tiny, almost

invisible punctures in our ear lobes, ready for whatever jewelry a master might

decide to fix in them. The nose rings would not be removed until the day before

our departure from the pens. We were pierced-eared girls, among the most

exciting of slaves.

Day followed day, and round followed round of feedings, exercisings and training

periods. One day seemed much like another, save that our lessons increased in

length and complexity. I found it necessary now to apply my full attention and

intelligence to master the increasingly subtle and intricate skills of a female

slave. The slave mistress would switch me, and the others, when we failed. I

noted the change and the improvement in the other girls. We were learning, we

were increasing our skills. Even Inge! I watched her, in the training sand,

dancing to hide drums, naked, in slave bracelets and jeweled dancing collar. She

did not then appear to be of the blue-robed, studious scribes. She was only a

naked, dancing slave girl, exciting, writhing in the sand, her body throbbing to

the beat of a man’s pleasure drums. I wondered if a scribe would buy her. I

supposed if one did, she would pretend to be a shy girl, once of the scribes

herself. But what if he should command her to perform? Would he not be

astonished to find what he had purchased, a girl suddenly forced to reveal

herself as a wild slave, exquisitely trained to please the senses of a master? I

now saw Inge as a rival. But I resolved to best her. I could be even a more

superb slave that she! Ute, of course, was incredible, (pg. 175) superb. She

would doubtless bring a high price. But I thought that I would bring a higher.

It also interested me, even astonished me, to see the fervor and skill brought

to her training by the refined Lady Rena of Lydius. She knew that she had

already, in effect, been purchased, but she did not know who her master might

be. Since her ears had been pierced she was terrified that she might not please

him. She trained with almost piteous ardor. She had been a free woman; she was

now a female slave, the ease of whose life and whose fortunes would now depend

entirely on her capacity to be pleasing to those who might capture or purchase

her, those who would own her. Lana and I, incidentally, were, by general

admission, and the indications of our instructor, the finest of the slaves of

our lot. Try as I would I could never best her. I hated her. But though I was

not as good as Lana, I had little reason to be ashamed of my advances in the

arts of the female slave. I was almost flawlessly superb. I would bring a high

price. I was proud. In acknowledgment of my skills, perhaps Lana began to take

me into her confidence, and though I hated her, I became her friend. We spent

more time together, and I talked less with stupid Ute and skinny Inge. Lana and

I were the best, the very best!

I was much pleased.

Subconsciously now, from day to day, my body began to reveal me truly as a slave

girl. I was no longer even aware of it. There are dozens of subtle movements,

tiny things, almost discernible, but which one notices, almost without noticing,

about the movements of a slave girl, things which, cumulatively, distinguish,

and very obviously, her movements from those of a free woman.

I now no longer moved as a free woman, even a beautiful one, of Earth. I now

moved, and naturally, as what I was, uninhibited and shameless, taunting,

catlike, insolent, a Gorean slave girl.

Once, when I got to my feet in the cage and walked across the straw, Inge, who

was kneeling nearby, said, unexpectedly, suddenly, “You are a slave, El-in-or!”

I leaped at her and slapped her. Tears sprang to her eyes. “Slave!’ she

screamed. (pg. 176) I seized her by the hair and kicked her. Then, scratching

and cursing, we began to roll and fight in the straw. Lana laughed. “Do not

quarrel!” suddenly it felt like the top of my head was being yanked off and I

heard Inge scream with pain.

A guard was now in the cage and had each of us, separated, bend over, held by

the hair.

Inge and I then did not move so much as a muscle.

I was suddenly afraid that I would be beaten. I had been beaten only once, when

first enslaved by Lana, with straps, at the side of the slave wagon. Never had a

man beaten me. I was terrified of having the full five-strap Gorean slave lash,

wielded with the full strength of a man, used on me. I was too sensitive to

pain. The other girls, common girls, might be beaten, but not I. It would hurt

me too much. They could not understand how it would feel to me, how much it

would hurt!

“She started it!” I cried out.

“She slapped me!” cried Inge. Inge was frightened, too. She was only of the

scribes, and, too, feared the lash. Bur she would not have felt it as cruelly as

I would have, for she was more common than I, less sensitive, less delicate.

“She started it!” I cried. “She slapped me first!”

Ute gasped.

“Don’t beat me,” I wept. “She started it! She slapped me first!”

“Liar!” screamed Inge.

“Liar!” I screamed at her.

Ute was looking at me with disappointment. Lana was laughing.

“The guard outside,” said Lana. “He saw!”

Held by the hair, bend over, my heart sank. I was a slave girl who had been

caught in a lie. I trembled.

But neither I, nor Inge, was beaten.

The guard grinned.

It had not surprised him, as it apparently had Ute, that I was a lying slave

girl. He had, apparently, to my irritation, (pg. 177) not expected anything else

of me. I realized that how I was regarded in the pens.

I was angry.

Our hands were tied behind our backs. The guard, then, pulling me by the hair,

dragged me to one side of the cage, and took my hair and knotted it about one of

the crossbars of the cage, about a foot above my head. He then took Inge to the

opposite side of the cage, put her standing against the walls of the bars there,

facing me, and similarly fastened her in place. She winced.

The guard than left the cage, locking the gate behind him. “Sleep well, Slaves,”

he said.

Lana rolled luxuriously on the straw. “Good-night, Master,” she called.

“Good-night, Wench,” said he.

He looked at Ute. Ute lay down on the straw. “Good-night, Master,” she

whispered.

He nodded. Then he looked at me. “Good-night, Master,” I said.

When he looked at Inge, she, too, responded so.

Then he left.

Some hours later, some hours before dawn, Inge looked at me, hatred in her eyes.

“You are a liar, El-in-or,” she said.

“You are a fool,” I said.

The next morning, when the guard unbound our hair from the crossbars, Inge and I

collapsed to the steel plating that floored our cage. In our misery we scarcely

noticed that he had unbound our wrists. I lay in the straw, my face pressed into

it, feeling the obdurate steel beneath it.

Then, after some time, I crawled to Inge. “I am sorry,” I said, “Inge.”

Inge looked at me, her eyes hard. Her body, too, was in pain, from the miseries

of the night.

“Forgive me, Inge,” I asked.

Inge looked away.

“El-in-or is sorry, Inge,” said Ute.

(pg. 178) I was grateful to Ute.

Inge did not look upon me.

“El-in-or was weak,” said Ute. “She was afraid.”

“El-in-or is a liar,” said Inge. Then she looked at me, directly, with hatred.

“El-in-or is a slave,” said Inge.

“We are all slaves,” said Ute.

Inge put her head down on her knees.

Tears came to my eyes. Ute put her arms about me. “Do not weep, El-in-or,” she

said.

I pulled away from Ute, suddenly angry. Ute went to her own portion of the cage.

What Inge had said was true. I was a slave.

I rolled over on my back in the straw and stared at the ceiling, more steel

plating, the flooring of the cage in the tier above us.

But, unlike Inge, I was a superb, and exciting, slave!

I heard the sandals of the guard approaching, outside, on the grating before the