Prize of Gor (65 page)

About dawn she reached the shore and lost consciousness amongst the reeds.

She felt her ankles held widely apart. “No, Masters, please, no,” she had said.

Her ankles were released, and she quickly moved back, away, literally into the water, drew her legs together, smoothed down her tunic, and half sat, half knelt, the palms of her hands partly supporting her body, frightened, regarding the two young men, little more than boys, who had found her.

Though she was not a runaway, she had the fear of a caught slave.

“She is pretty,” said one of the boys.

“She is filthy,” said the other.

“Let us take her back to the village and chain her with the village slaves,” said the first.

“I am already owned!” said Ellen, quickly. “I am not a runaway. My master is Portus Canio, of Ar. We were in flight. There was an accident.”

“We found you,” insisted the first lad.

“Thank you for finding me,” said Ellen. “I seek news of my master, and his party, that I may be returned to him.”

“Let us not take her back to the village,” said the first. “Let us keep her for ourselves.”

“Surely I am too old for you, youthful Masters,” said Ellen, quickly.

“You are not much older than we,” said one of the lads.

Ellen supposed that that was true, but two or three years, in a female, made quite a difference. These were young males, little more than youngsters, who could scarcely grow beards, whereas she, perhaps no more than two or three years older, as she now was, was prime block material.

“It would be hard to keep her just for ourselves, as our secret,” said the first lad. “We could keep her in the forest, chained to a tree, or in our hideout cave, but sooner or later someone would suspect, or find her. If we take her back to the village, they will take her away from us.”

“Then we must sell her,” said the second. “And keep the money for ourselves.”

“Please, Masters,” said Ellen. “Help me find my master. Return me to him. Doubtless he will reward you.”

“And where is your master?” asked the second.

“I do not know,” said Ellen.

“You are a runaway,” said the first.

“No!” cried Ellen.

“Be grateful if we do not hamstring you,” said the second.

Ellen regarded him with horror.

“You are a slave girl, are you not?” asked the first.

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen.

“Should you not be kneeling,” asked the first, “as you are before free men?”

Quickly Ellen knelt. She kept her knees closely together. She did not wish to be used by boys. Yet she knew that either of them could easily overcome her lesser, her slight, female’s strength. They would not know that she was not a tower slave.

But the older of the two lads splashed toward her and, with the back of his hand, lashed out and struck her across the mouth, causing her to half rise, stumble, and then fall back, some feet, to her side, in the deeper water.

“You are too pretty for that sort of slave,” he snarled. “I have been to the fairs. I have seen them dancing in the booths, I have seen them on their leashes. Do you think I do not know a slut slave when I see her?”

Quickly Ellen recovered her balance, turned, and knelt before them in the water, muchly where she had fallen, her knees widely spread.

The water there, say, some three or four yards from shore, was some eight to ten inches deep. It moved about her and between her thighs. It felt chilly and gritty. Under the water she felt the mud, slippery and cold, beneath her toes and knees. A breeze came over the water. It moved her hair just a little, she felt it on her arm, and it rustled beyond her, through the reeds.

She did not wish to be again struck.

Her cheek still stung.

Had they a switch or whip she did not doubt but what they would use it on her.

She was, after all, a slave.

She was miserable, and felt helpless.

She was sure she could not placate them, or appeal to them, or use her vulnerability and beauty to protect herself, as she might have with a fully grown male.

They were boys.

What did they know of men and the women in their collars?

The older lad motioned that she should come closer, and then cautioned her to approach no more closely.

The water now, where she knelt, was no more than two or three inches in depth.

She could now feel, in the mud, sand, and pebbles, beneath her knees.

She was perhaps four or five feet from shore.

“Pull up your tunic,” said the first lad, angrily. “On your back. Split your legs!”

“Please, no, Masters!” said Ellen.

She then went to her back in the muddy water. She felt it cold, in her hair. Her head was down, given the slope of the shore.

“She is filthy,” said the youngest of the lads.

“I like to see them spread like that,” said the older lad.

“Please, do not use me, Masters,” begged Ellen, supine, obedient, in the shallow water, it lapping about her. “I am not yours! You do not have my master’s permission! You do not own me!”

“No one will know,” said the second lad.

“The condition of my body will betray your use of me,” cried Ellen.

“You can always be drowned in the lake,” said the second lad.

“Then you will have no money for me!” cried Ellen.

The two lads looked at one another and grinned, and Ellen, the naive, gullible butt of their rude humor, their rustic joke, reddened.

“What a stupid slave you are,” said the second lad.

Ellen moaned. She, indeed, felt foolish and stupid. As though Gorean males, of whatever age, would waste so lovely and useful a property as a female slave! Better to have her a thousand times, and then, when one tired of her, give her to another.

One of the lads then, the older, wading toward her, touched her, and she drew back, quickly.

The slave girl cannot control her sensitivities.

She is helpless.

She belongs to men.

He touched her again, and she twisted suddenly about, and turned her head wildly to the side. She felt muddy water in her mouth.

“See?” said the older lad to the younger.

“I see,” said the younger lad.

“Keep your hands on your tunic,” said the older lad. And Ellen clutched the hems of the tunic tightly, the tunic up, about her waist.

He touched her again, and she cried out, softly, unwillingly, uncontrollably.

“See?” said the older lad to the younger.

“Yes,” said the younger again, interested.

“Oh!” cried Ellen.

“This is a good slave,” said the older lad.

“Yes,” said the younger.

“See,” said the older, “she is ready.”

“No!” cried Ellen.

“Good,” said the younger.

“Please do not use me, Masters!” Ellen begged.

The older of the two lads grinned.

“Sell me for coins!” said Ellen.

“Why should we not have coins
and
your use?” inquired the older lad.

“Please, no, Masters!” cried Ellen.

“Are you a virgin slave?” asked the younger.

“Think carefully before you respond,” said the older.

“No, Masters,” said Ellen. “I am not a virgin slave.”

“That can be told from the way you move, slave,” said the older lad. “No virgin slave moves like that, or not until later.”

The older lad now knelt beside her, in the shallow water. His right hand was then on her left leg, above the knee.

The younger lad, standing in the water, was near him.

“I think we will enjoy you, pretty slut,” said the older lad.

“Yes,” said the younger.

“Beware!” cried Ellen, suddenly. “I belong to Cos! I am a property of the empire of Cos!”

The two lads exchanged sudden glances, clearly of concern.

“Yes,” cried Ellen. “Yes! Yes! Beware, Masters! I belong to Cos!”

“Liar,” said the first lad.

“See my collar, the tag!” cried Ellen.

“You said you belonged to some fellow of Ar,” said the older lad.

“Ar is far away,” said the second.

“I did, but I have been confiscated. Beware, young Masters, I am now the property of Cos!”

“You can read,” said the younger to the older.

“A little,” said the older. He turned the collar tag and looked at it.

“What does it say?” asked the younger.

“Something —’in the name of Cos’,” said the older.

“‘Confiscated’,” said Ellen.

“Can you read?” asked the older lad.

“No,” admitted Ellen.

“How do you know it says that?” he asked.

“I heard it read,” said Ellen.

“We do not want the village burned,” said the younger of the two.

“Get a rope from the boat,” said the older lad. He then, angrily, his hand in her hair, drew the slave to her feet, and conducted her, bent over, her head at his right hip, in leading position, onto the shore. There he knelt her, in the sand, facing away from him. Then he said to her, “On your belly, slave girl, and cross your wrists behind you.”

The slave obeyed instantly, unquestioningly, as slaves must.

She heard the younger lad now splashing through the reeds. In a short time he returned and her hands were bound behind her back. The rope was long enough to serve as well as a leash, and, moments after she had been ordered to her feet, some yard or so of it, rising from her confined wrists, had been looped and knotted about her throat, its free end then, some five feet or so in length, serving as a leash. Ellen knew that sometimes even desiderated slaves, before a submission ceremony, were put on a simple camp rope and led about, that they would better understand their condition and status, that of a domestic animal, but in her case the rope was not symbolic in nature, but effected a simple utility, constituting a device for keeping and controlling a girl. Ellen, bound, was led on her leash, stumbling, wading, through the reeds. A bit later she was placed in a small, flat-bottomed boat, on her belly, under a tarpaulin. In the boat were two wide, shallow, wooden buckets, each half filled with wet, glistening leeches, taken from the water, often from the stems of water plants, such as rence.

Before being put on her belly in the boat, Ellen’s face, she on her knees, was almost thrust into these two buckets, one after the other, filled with twisting, inching, churning leeches, that she might see them. She shrank back, as she could, in terror.

These creatures are utilized in some manner by the caste of physicians, not for indiscriminate bleeding as once on Earth, but for certain allied chemical and decoagulant purposes. Such creatures may also be used, of course, for less benign purposes, for torture, the extraction of information, punishment and, in the extreme, executions. The “leech death” is not a pleasant one. These creatures are not to be confused with the leech plant, which supplements its photosynthetic activities with striking, snakelike, at passing objects. It has paired, curved, hollow, fanglike thorns, associated with a pulsating, podlike bladder. The leech plant can draw a considerable amount of blood in a short time. They tend to grow in thick patches. There is not a great deal of danger from such plants provided one can remove oneself from their vicinity. They are not poisonous. Sometimes one literally uproots the plant in one’s escape, so tenacious is the clasp of the thorns. It is different, of course, if one loses one’s footing amongst them, or is thrown, naked, bound, amongst them. They are normally cleared away from areas of human habitation, from the sides of roads and such.

Ellen was then put to her belly in the bottom of the boat, hands tied behind her, the rope on her neck, under the tarpaulin.

“You are not to utter a sound,” said the older lad, “not the least sound, or we will put you on your back, and put a stick between your teeth and tie it there, so that you cannot close your teeth, and then bind leeches in your mouth.”

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen, terrified.

“There is a Cosian retinue some ten pasangs to the west,” said the older lad, working the back oar. “Their foragers came to the village yesterday, from the west. We will intercept the retinue, or find its camp. With a lantern we can follow the tracks of the verr they took. We will hide her until dusk in the forest, in our cave. We will both return to the village. Toward dusk we will take a wagon, pick her up, and take her to the camp. We can be back before morning, and no one will know, and we will have coins.”

Ellen, under the tarpaulin, remained absolutely silent.

And things had proceeded, in large part, as the young man had speculated.

Once, out on the lake, they had apparently been hailed by another boat, doubtless from their village, which must be close. “Did you make a good catch?” called a voice, that of a man, from across the water.

“Yes,” called back the older lad. “We have made a good catch!”

Ellen, under the tarpaulin, remained absolutely silent.

The boat was rowed, or maneuvered, with its back oar, to a different point on the shore, and, when the area had been sufficiently reconnoitered by the two lads, she was lifted from the boat, and led into the trees. She was taken to a small cave, and was thrust within. Some light filtered in through the opening. The leash rope was then removed from her throat and taken down to her ankles, which were crossed, and bound. With another piece of rope she was trussed further, several loops put about her legs, above the knees, some loops about her belly, holding her bound hands more closely behind her, and various loops about her arms and upper body. She was well aware, as she had been as long ago as her training, that her body, that of a female, lent itself beautifully to the trussings of captors, because of the flare of her hips, the narrowness of her waist, and the swelling delights of her bosom, ropes, for example, going nicely, tightly, above her bosom and under her armpits, and beneath her bosom and about her waist. It seemed a body that might have been designed for bonds. She wondered, idly, if such bodies might have been selected for, so different from those of most primate females, in dozens of millennia of prehuman, and, later, Paleolithic tribal warfare, in which females, as well as hunting grounds, would be the spoils of war. In such small things, and others far more profound, but connected with ownership, capture, work, servitude, love and breeding, she thought, were women evolved, evolved to serve and please men. It is not so strange then, she thought, that women desire masters, that they long to love and serve, to give themselves to the master, that in their hearts they want and seek masters. Those who did not were perhaps discarded, or left unmated. On the other hand, those females who knelt, even with a braided leather rope on their neck, and found their fulfillment in submission, servitude and love, in belonging to the stronger, to victors, to masters, would be those treasured, those sought, those bought and sold, those mated, those replicating their genes. I have been bred to be as I am, she thought, from the prairies, the forests, the caves, I and my sisters.