Plunder of Gor (20 page)

Despite the exalted status of free women, who are equal to men in the holding of a Home Stone, can hold money and property in their own right, may found, organize, and manage businesses, may occupy positions of importance and authority, even to the occupancy of thrones, and who may enter into relationships, or discontinue them, much as they please, the Free Companionship requiring an annual renewal, Gor is essentially a man's world. It is men who carry spears and maintain walls; it is men who encounter the violence of the enemy; it is men who stand, armed and resolute, between the Home Stone and its desecration or destruction; it is men, the masters, who will decide what respect and privileges will be accorded women. They behave so because they are men, and they have never seen fit to relinquish their nature as men, their blood, their natural dominance. Gorean men, for whatever reason, wisely or not, have never chosen to enter into arrangements whereby they might be humiliated, dishonored, reduced, and destroyed. They will not do so. I did not object. I was pleased. A woman, I did not wish to relate to lesser men.

The back of my thighs stung, for a long time.

The day was hot.

I knew that I, a slave, would be kept in a collar. Moreover, an insight I had suppressed on my former world, given its nature, I had come to realize that I belonged in one, and could only be happy in one.

I wanted a master, and yet, too, I feared belonging to one.

I was owned by the miller, of course, as the other girls, but he had never touched me, and had scarcely regarded me. Perhaps, I supposed, he pleasured himself with the “silk girls,” those who went about on the cart with the miller's men, attending to their deliveries.

I was miserable, leaning forward, thrusting at the pole.

What could I do?

How vulnerable, how helpless, is the slave!

If I were to improve my lot on this world, I reasoned, I, a slave, had little to hope for from free women. My hope was men. Surely I might, as a free woman might not, and a slave might, be able to influence my situation. I shook the manacles on my wrists in anger. I, despite my beauty and intelligence, my Earth origin, was chained with others, barbarians, to a mill pole.

“Keep thrusting, barbarian,” snapped the first girl.

“Yes, Mistress!” I exclaimed. I did not wish to be again switched. She had called me a barbarian! How dared she? But then I thought of the world from which I had come. Was it not, in its way, a barbarian world, stupid, inconsistent, crowded, polluted, thoughtless, greedy, hate-filled, afflicted with envies, resentments, and jealousies, dismal, pathological?

Perhaps it was I, indeed, who, from such a world, was suitably viewed as the barbarian.

I slumped at the pole, suddenly, suspended by my chained wrists.

“Mistress!” cried the girl to my left, alarmed. “The barbarian is ill, she is stricken, she has fainted!” Instantly my chain sisters stopped turning the mill.

I lay, seemingly unconscious in my chains.

The flute girl desisted, and, I gather, leapt from her platform, to rush to my side.

“Poor thing!” said the girl to my left.

“Is she dead?” asked one of those chained behind me.

“I do not think so,” said the flute girl, concerned, the flute left behind on the platform.

“What is going on here?” asked one of the miller's men, hurrying to us.

“The barbarian,” said the flute girl. “She has collapsed.”

“Is she dead?” he asked.

“No,” said the flute girl. “I saw her eyelids flutter, weakly.”

This small signal, I conjectured, might hearten those about, generating some hope that I might recover.

“Poor kajira,” said a girl.

“We might all so collapse,” said another girl.

Things were going well, it seemed.

“No more work today,” said the miller's man. “Hold her up, that her weight not be on the manacles. Her wrists might be abraded.”

I was supported then by the girl to my left.

“Poor barbarian,” said another girl.

I smiled, weakly.

“How brave she is,” said a girl.

“Yes,” said another.

“She is too small, and weak, for this work,” said another girl.

“She is not so small or weak,” said another girl.

“No more than we,” said another.

I did not care much for these two comments.

“If she recovers,” said another, “sell her, and find her a gentler, sweeter collar.”

I understood what she meant, but collars are much the same. To be sure, some collars are more ornate than others, enameled, even jeweled, and such. And some collars were unpleasant, point collars, punishment collars, and such. Turian collars, I was told, were rounded, and so on.

“Continue to support her,” said the miller's man. “I will fetch water, and the key to her manacles.”

I was then aware that he had hurried away.

Things, I surmised, were going well.

I opened my eyes, and, to my uneasiness, found myself looking up, into the eyes of the first girl.

“Release her,” she snapped to the girl to my left, who was holding me, which command was instantly obeyed. I then gasped, as though in pain, and, momentarily, hung again in the manacles, my body partly on the ground, my wrists up, a foot or so from the pole. Then, as though with great effort, my head down, I struggled to a kneeling position, and knelt behind and below the pole, my wrists raised, on either side of my head, held in the manacles.

“How brave she is,” marveled one of my chain sisters.

“Yes,” said another, “and she only a barbarian, as well.”

“Fraud! Slackard! Inferior actress!” said the first girl.

I fear my eyes opened widely then, in alarm.

“Have mercy on her, noble Mistress,” said the flute girl. “Can you not see she is spent? Pity her, lest she perish at the pole!”

“If she perishes at the pole,” said the first girl, “it will be my doing!”

The switch then rained down upon my back, and legs, and neck, and I scrambled to my feet, sobbing, seizing the pole.

“Please stop, Mistress!” I begged.

But the switch continued to strike, and I clutched the pole in misery.

“Faker, faker!” said the first girl, and then she desisted in her work. Her arm, I supposed, was sore or weary.

I was shuddering at the pole.

“What occurs?” said the miller's man, returning to the mill, a bota in hand, presumably filled with water.

“Little, Master,” said the first girl. “This slacking slave does not even know how to faint.”

“She is on her feet,” observed the miller's man.

“And eager to work, Master!” said the first girl.

“I was tricked?” said the miller's man.

“It may be so,” said the first girl.

“I was tricked!” he said.

“It may be so, Master,” said the first girl.

“I do not care to be tricked,” he said.

“Many were tricked, Master,” she said.

“But not you,” he said.

“I know such slaves,” she said.

“She has been punished?” he asked.

“I conjecture well enough,” said the first girl.

I, clinging to the pole, sobbed, my protesting body raging with pain.

“You will work to dusk,” said the miller's man, “and then an extra Ahn.” Then he turned to the flute girl. “To your station,” he said.

She hurried to her platform, and, a moment later, we heard the flute emit its first notes.

“Pick up the tempo,” said the miller's man.

We thrust our weights against the poles.

“Just wait until we get you tonight,” said the girl to my left.

“Yes,” said a girl behind me.

“Stinking barbarian,” said another.

“Be silent,” said the first girl.

I lay, chained, in the slave kennel, on my belly.

The first girl was at my side, rubbing ointment into my back, slowly, with firm, circular motions. A small tharlarion-oil lamp was beside her.

“You are a very stupid slave,” she said.

“Yes, Mistress,” I said.

“Doubtless you thought you were clever,” she said.

“It seems I was not,” I said.

“It seems,” she said, “that the attentions I accorded you were not the only attentions to which you were subjected.”

“No, Mistress,” I said.

Before we were chained in the kennel I had been well belabored by several of my pole mates.

Slaves often participate in keeping their own order, punishing malefactors.

“That is enough,” said the first girl, putting aside the ointment, and wiping her hands.

“Thank you, Mistress,” I said. “Mistress is kind.”

“I think they are going to let you go,” she said.

“Mistress?” I said, frightened.

“Do not be afraid,” she said, “not for eels, not for sleen feed. A normal sell, a common sell, somewhere in the city.”

“I am to be sold?” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“Why?” I asked.

“They think it may be dangerous to keep you,” she said.

“Why?” I asked.

“There were inquiries,” she said.

“‘Inquiries'?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Do you know a man named Kurik, Kurik of Victoria?”

“Yes,” I said. “He was my first master.”

“You are to be sold tomorrow,” she said.

Chapter Twelve

A slave expects to be bought and sold. She is an article of merchandise. I had now come to think of myself as such, it is a strange sense, and realize I was such. My freedom was gone. I had now become a slave. What a total, radical, cataclysmic transformation this wreaks in one's being, in one's self, in one's heart, and understanding. A free woman, I suspect, as she is free, cannot begin to understand the nature and world of the slave. It is a different nature and world. Certainly I, in my freedom, considering such things, had had no comprehension of the collar, and what it would be to wear it. It is a different world, different, profound, and deep, being owned, being vendible. Perhaps the free woman might have some intellectual sense of such matters, verbal, abstract, remote, superficial, or such, or thinks she does, but, I assure you, that intellectual comprehension is quite other than the realization of the reality, that one is, indeed, a slave. It is one thing to hear of the whip, and another to be struck with it; it is one thing to think of chains, and another to have them locked on one's limbs; it is one thing to consider a sale, or even to view one, and another to feel the sawdust beneath your bared feet and hear the bids shouted down from the tiers. What free woman, wise and noble in her freedom, can grasp the consciousness, the fears, the hopes, the helplessnesses, the vulnerabilities, the terrors, the despairs, the desires, the feelings, the joys, the passions, the wholeness, the identity, of the slave? Suppose a woman has been free; then she is a slave. An enormous change then, profound and transformative, takes place in her, in the entirety of her, intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically. She is no longer the same. She is now what she is, a slave, only a slave. I had been free on Earth; now I was a slave, only that. This transformation had now taken place in me. I was a slave. And yet, though I had no voice in the matter, and was helpless to qualify or alter my condition, I had experienced, paradoxically, a sense of rightness, of appropriateness, and freedom. Denied freedom, I was free. At a man's feet, his belonging, chained, I knew a liberation far beyond any I had felt as a free woman. I could now be what I was, and wanted to be, myself, a slave.

Chapter Thirteen

I, kneeling, with the thick, wooden blade, scraped the grease from the pan. I would then, with white, scouring sand, clean its surface, rinse it with scented water, and dry it with a woolen towel. It was the first of six such pans, placed near me, in a line. I was one of four kitchen slaves, in the house of Lysander, of Market of Semris, he of the caste of Builders. Tyrant of Market of Semris. Common governance on Gor is in terms of Administrators or Ubars. Administrators, in the high cities, are usually appointed by the Council of Castes; to which body, in theory, they are responsible. Ubars are usually generals or war leaders, originally acclaimed by, and empowered by, popular support, most often in periods of crisis. In a sense, I suppose they, too, are tyrants, as there is no legal limit placed on their tenure in office nor are there any obvious provisions for removing them from office, short of, I suppose, assassinations or uprisings. To be sure, they commonly have the support of the people. They select their own successors, often by legally adopting a favored individual. Almost invariably a Ubar is a member of the caste of Warriors. Their power remains in place then, in a sense, not only because of popular support and contentment, but, as well, by means of the backing of the military. I have spoken of Lysander as a tyrant, though he referred to himself, genially, as an Administrator, a humble servant of the people. He was, in effect, a strong man, of considerable economic power, who, by means of a coalition of personal supporters, mercenaries, and the military, controlled the city. I speak of a “tyrant” in the sense that there was no legal limit of a tenure in office involved nor any familiar, established, legal mechanism for removing from office. In a sense the tyrant is, for most practical purposes, a Ubar. To be sure, he does not bear that title. The word ‘tyrant', I should mention, carries in itself no negative sense. Many “tyrants” are effective governors and enjoy popular support. The word in Gorean is ‘
tyrannos
', and some tyrants do not eschew the word. “Hurry,” said the kitchen master. “Yes, Master,” I said, and bent more vigorously to my task. He was swift with the switch. I was not his favorite. I had often felt it. My hands were reddened, and rough. My hair was tied back, behind my head, with a cord. I and the other girls wore kitchen tunics, brown, brief, ragged, stained. We were low slaves, and were not permitted in the front rooms of the large house. But this bondage was lighter than many in which I had found myself, since my sale in Victoria.

I now cast the scouring sand onto the cooking surface of the pan and reached for the thick, damp, rubbing cloth by means of which it might be put to its purpose. I held the pan firmly down on the flat stone, that it might not slip.

It is not pleasant to be a kitchen slave, a field slave, a mill slave, and such.

I, as other slaves, longed for a private master. What slave would not? Imagine being caressed by a private master, and being in his arms, being his alone. How welcome his collar! How grateful would one be for his chains! Too, one would hope to be the single slave of such a master. Most Goreans, of course, can afford but a single slave, and seldom more than two.

It was interesting to me, from Earth, that there seemed to be little, if any, resentment on Gor for the fact that a rich man might have a thousand slaves and a poor man but one, if that. Indeed, the poor man seems most likely to admire the rich fellow, and wish that he, too, had such good fortune. Indeed, the poor man seems pleased that someone has a thousand slaves, better that than no one, and is inclined to wish that he, too, was so well off. He has never been convinced that the thousand slaves were stolen from him by the rich man, particularly as he never had a thousand slaves to steal. Too, he may share a Home Stone with the rich man, which means he is more likely to view the rich man as a fellow and compatriot than a thief and enemy. Too, the rich man often supports public spectacles and events, such as song dramas, readings, kaissa competitions, civic banquets, and such. Indeed, in harbor cities, rich men, doubtless to their annoyance, are often expected to underwrite the repair of docks, the construction of galleys, and so on.

And so I, scouring the pan, let my thoughts roam about, as might clouds in a clear sky.

How marvelous to be the one slave of one master, particularly if he should be a kind, understanding master, a good master, sensible and thoughtful, who, nonetheless, with his whip, knows how to keep a girl on her knees.

A female slave is never to be allowed to forget that she is a slave. Indeed, she may occasionally be whipped, merely to remind her that she is a slave, only a slave.

“Finish more quickly,” said the kitchen master.

“Yes, Master,” I said, hastily.

I wondered how long this bondage would last, how long I would serve here, in this house. This may seem an odd thing to wonder about, but, in actuality, it was not.

I see I must explain.

I had been sold in Victoria, from the wharf market, and later, following being ferried across the Vosk and transported in one of four slave wagons south, ankles chained, with five others, to a central bar in the wagon bed, had been again sold, in Torcadino, as a work slave to a mill. From that bondage I had been again sold, to me inexplicably, the first of several sales that saw me vended, usually after only a few weeks, sometimes a few days, out of one city or town, or even village, to another.

I did not understand this.

Had this something to do with me?

Was I somehow different?

If so, how, in what way?

Once, when I was laboring in a field, sickle in hand, with others, harvesting sa-tarna, a great shadow, as of a cloud, raced across the golden grain. I looked up. I heard girls scream, and I saw a sight that I would never forget, what had to be my first tarn, one of the enormous saddlebirds of Gor. Masters with us, peasants, who would bind the sheaves we cut and brought to them, looked up, shading their eyes. “Is it wild?” I asked the girl nearest me. “No,” she said, trembling. “It has passed,” said another girl. “No,” said another. “It is turning!” said another. I saw two of the peasants seize up their bows, large things, at hand even in the field. Many men could not draw such a bow. Arrows were put to the string. The tarn was now no more than fifty feet or so above the grain, approaching rapidly. “Down!” cried a master, “into the grain!” I and the others quickly crouched down, well concealed, for ripened sa-tarna, with its golden, nodding heads, can grow to the chest of a tall man. But then the thing had passed. I had glimpsed the rider, helmeted, seemingly small on his mighty mount. Then the apparition was no more than a dot in the distance, and then it had disappeared. Arrows were removed from the string. We returned to work. Four days later I was sold, in Rarir.

This sort of thing, in my case, had not been unusual.

Oddly, at least to me, I had been not only frequently sold, as I have indicated, but was never sold within the same locale, within the same city, or such, as one would normally expect. I understood nothing of this. If a master tired of me, or needed a stronger girl for heavier labors, for I served commonly as a work slave, why should he not simply hood me and take me to some convenient local market, to be disposed of there? Why did he always solicit a traveling slaver, a passing dealer, the master of a caravan on the brink of departure? The prices I brought, for the most part, were typical, and realistic, and once, thrilling me, most of a silver tarsk, but then, many times, afterward, often to my chagrin or confusion, I would be sold for a pittance, sometimes for little more than being given away. Why must I be so cheaply discarded? Surely masters would not welcome taking a loss on their buy. Indeed, some were merchants, and Goreans, generally, are careful with their coins, often jealously, extremely so. What a worthless, miserable slave, I must be, I sometimes thought. And then I would be purchased for a decent price. Why, I wondered, am I not longer kept, more wanted, for certainly my flanks, as I tried to remain still, standing or lying, had been stroked more than once with interest, in one venue or another. Surely I had noted desire in the eyes of more than one master. But perhaps, I thought, I am not so beautiful, nor so desirable, as I, in my vanity, had conjectured. Yet I did not see myself as that different from others in the same cage, in the same cell, in the same tent, on the same shelf. I had questioned other slaves, but they could make no more of it than I. Sometimes, they had simply turned away from me, uneasily.

Masters vary.

But they are all masters.

In the past few months, since my sale in Victoria, I think the major change that had taken place in me, which muchly transformed me, was the kindling of my slave fires. They had been kindled by masters, as they wished, I given nothing to say about it. Periodically they would rage, and I would become, sometimes to the amusement of masters, cruelly needful, even beggingly so. What can so humble a woman as needing attention so desperately that she must beg for it, and hope that her petitions, often lodged at a master's feet, will be favorably received? How different this seemed from Earth where I, and others, had been sought, and might acquiesce or not, with a kiss or not, as it pleased us, to the importunities of males. But here, on Gor, at least for slaves, whose slave fires raged, the situation was much the reverse. I had sometimes felt ashamed, crawling to a master on my belly, begging for his touch, until I recalled I was a slave. How helpless we were on Gor! How much here, on Gor, were we at the mercy of men, our masters! How cool and superior to us were the exalted, refined, proud, serene, aloof free women! How they despised us for our needs! But did they not know we were collared? Would they be different, stripped and chained, their slave fires lit, fiercely burning, at a master's feet?

Why should the masters sometimes smile at me, lying before them, on the tiles, my body scarlet, lifted, my eyes piteous?

Why should they find this amusing, when it was they who had made me so? I had had no choice. But this is commonly done with slaves. It improves our price. Men prefer needful slaves.

I had changed much, of course, in many other ways, as well, over the months since Victoria. A girl learns her collar. She becomes more and more a slave. And this, doubtless, in no way I clearly understood, was manifested in my demeanor, my expressions, my movements. Slaves obviously move differently, carry themselves differently, feel differently, speak differently, act differently, from free women. The slave is graceful, deferent, softly spoken, unobtrusive. She is the most female of all women, the most helplessly feminine of all women; she is owned; she is to please. Too, bondage, as is well known, puts a woman at peace with herself. She has come home to her own heart. Too, certainly some of my pricings suggested a discernible increase in my value, however slight or negligible. Yet, despite my understanding of the appropriateness of, and, I confess, my happiness in, my collaring, I remained troubled, and far from content. There is no doubt that the frequency of my sales, which disturbed me, muchly impaired my ease.

It seemed, sometimes, masters wished themselves free of me, and soon. I could not understand this. My body was tanned, and my hair longer. Diet and exercise had shaped me to the interests of men. My Gorean was becoming fluent. I looked well in a tunic. In one sale, I had sold for most of a silver tarsk. I could not help myself, kicking and gasping, on the mat, in the furs. Nor did I wish to help myself. Often I had tied the bondage knot in my hair, and knelt to lick the ankles of a master, or of one of his men.

So my thoughts roved about.

One longs for the master of one's dreams.

If only one could buy such, but it is we who are bought!

The pan, well scoured, I now rinsed with scented water. The senses of Goreans seem much alive, even in small things, and they are likely to employ color, sound, and scent even where there is no practical purpose to be served in doing so. But, then, what is a practical purpose? Is the pursuit of beauty, or pleasure, a practical purpose? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But then, I suppose, there are ends that might be well served even if there was no practical purpose in doing so. Why not? One supposes that a scent in a pan of water, the tone of a flute, the color of a simple thing, like that of a spoon handle or the door of a shed, may serve an end that is very real, if not practical. One has no objection. Indeed, one wonders if some things might be demeaned, and less lovely, and less worthy of regard, had they such a purpose.

I dried the second of the five pans with the towel.

I reached for the third pan.

“Is there a slave in the kitchen whose name is ‘Phyllis'?” asked a voice, from somewhere behind me, at the portal to the kitchen.

I stiffened with apprehension.

I was alarmed.

What had I done?

I had tried to be a good slave. I was docile, and obedient, as most slaves. It is wise to be so. We do not wish to be punished.

Let free women speculate on how clever and pert, how sprightly, they might be in the collar, how impudent, even insolent, but they are not in the collar. Such latitude is permitted by some masters, even encouraged, but it is a lenience that the slave is not well advised to abuse. Surely she must understand that it is a permitted lenience, allowed perhaps because the master finds it interesting or charming, but that it is a lenience that might be easily replaced, at his will, with a sterner measure of discipline. The leash may be lengthened, or shortened. It is up to the master. Surely she understands she may at any time be brought again, quickly enough, to her knees. It is easy to break a woman to the will of masters. I knew myself, though once of Earth, to be broken to the will of masters. I did not wish it otherwise.

“Yes,” responded the kitchen master.

I feared I had been displeasing, in no way I understood. In the sa-tarna field, I had once helped myself to a dipper of water from the field bucket and I had been foot switched, put to my belly, my legs held up by two slaves, the switch applied to the soles of my bare feet until I wept with pain and begged for mercy. I had not even understood that I should have first requested permission to perform so simple an act. And many masters do not require such a permission. I should have asked first, of course, for masters differ. If I had been more beautiful, perhaps I would not have been switched, at all. I had seen other girls help themselves. Perhaps it had to do with my being a barbarian. In any event, any slave knows it is possible to be inadvertently displeasing, and come to rue the indiscretion, no matter how innocent it might have been.