by John Norman
Interestingly, once branded and in the collar, and knowing themselves helpless and under suitable male discipline, it is said they become joyful and content. It is almost as if they had adopted their mode of life and slave-like costumes because, in some part of themselves, perhaps some deep, hidden part, they were begging men to take them and make them slaves. They thought they hated men but they were, in fact, only begging to be put at their feet.
“Hold, Slave!” called a voice. “Do not look back! To the wall! Not so close! Back further! Now lean forward, putting the palms of your hands against the wall. Spread your feet, widely. More widely!”
Swiftly, frightened, I complied. Then I felt his foot kick my feet yet farther apart.
I was helpless, leaning against the wall, my feet, very widely, terribly, uncomfortably, apart. My own weight held my hands against the wall. If I were to remove a hand from the wall I would fall against it; from such a position, so awkward and helpless, it is difficult to regain one’s balance quickly and smoothly. In such a position one is much at the mercy of the one behind one.
“Oh!” I said.
He swiftly determined that I was unarmed. To be sure, this is not a difficult determination to make when one is in a slave tunic.
“Oh!” I cried.
“You are not wearing the iron belt,” he said.
“No, Master,” I said.
“You may kneel,” he said.
I struggled to the wall, and then turned and knelt before him. He was a guardsman.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Tiffany,” I said, “of Feast Slaves, of the Enterprises of Aemilianus, the Plaza of Tarns.”
I dared not lie to him. He could check my collar. I carried my identification about with me. It was locked on my neck.
He crouched down before me and took my wrists in his right hand, holding them together. He then, with his left hand, pulled my head back. He checked the collar. I had not thought he would have done so. I was now especially pleased I had not tried to lie to him. Had I done so I suspected I would immediately, on such suspicious grounds, after a summary beating, have been braceleted and leashed.
He rose to his feet.
“You are a long way from the Plaza of Tarns,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” I said.
“What are you doing here, alone?” he asked, not unkindly.
“Walking, Master,” I said.
“You are not in the iron belt,” he said.
“No, Master,” I said.
“You are far north on Emerald,” he said. “You are not now on Hermadius or the avenue of the Central Cylinder.”
“No, Master,” I said.
“I advise you to stay away from the lesser-known streets in this area,” he said. “I would stay on Emerald or return south. These are not strolling areas for pretty slave girls, particularly for those not in the belt.”
“Yes, Master,” I said. “Thank you, Master.”
He then turned about and left me. I rose to my feet. He had been very kind to me, considering that I was a slave. Tomorrow, of course, if certain pick-up orders were issued, he would doubtless recall that a slave named Tiffany, with short blond hair and blue eyes, had been encountered in this area.
I looked down one of the side streets. Some of these streets, like many streets in Gorean cities, did not even have regular names. One finds one’s way about by knowing the area or inquiring for directions from those who do. Some streets are known informally by descriptions such as “the street where the leather worker Vaskon has his shop”, “the street where the poet, Tesias, wrote such and such a poem”, “the street where you can find the house of the general, Hasdron”, “the street of the tarsk fountain,” and so on.
Irritatingly enough, the same street is sometimes known by different names to different people. It is fairly common, for example, for a given street to be commonly known by one name at one end of it and another name at the other end of it, and perhaps by even another name or two, or three, along its length. For example, at one end people might think of it as the street where Vaskon, the leather worker, has his shop, and at the other end people will think of it as the street where Milo the Baker has his pastry shop. Sometimes incidents seem to give names to streets as well, such as “Fire Street”,
“Flood Street”, “the street of the Six Raped Slaves”, and so on.
There seems to be a natural development, in many cases, from an unnamed but familiar street, to a street which is usually thought of under a given description, to a street which finally receives a name in a fairly ordinary sense. For example, “the street where the Initiates have their temple” is not unlikely to become “Temple Street”, “the street where you can find the brewery” may well become “Brewery Street,” and so on. For example, one would expect, eventually, that the streets where Tesias wrote such and such a poem, or set of poems, such as, say, the Oracles of the Talender, will become more simply something like “Tesias Street” or even, as Tesias himself might have preferred, “Talender Street.”
Street signs in Gorean cities, where they exist, incidentally, are not mounted on poles. They are commonly painted a few feet above the ground, on buildings at corners. Many buildings at intersections in Ar, incidentally, particularly where the streets are narrow, have rounded corners. This is to enable fire wagons speeding through the streets to make faster turns.
Frightened by the guardsman’s warning, and not wishing to retrace my steps on Emerald I turned to my left, to take a side street to the Wall Road, which I assumed would be safe. Surely the Wall Road, which followed the interior circuit of Ar’s walls, was only some four or five blocks west. But I could not reach it directly. I took one street into another, and then another, and the streets seemed to be becoming narrower and more dingy.
It was hot in the afternoon now and there were few people abroad on them. In a few Ehn I became confused, and suddenly came to realize that I was lost. I did not know the streets by name in this area and even had I been able to read the signs, there were none written here on the corners of the buildings. I was no longer fully certain even, with the shadows, the narrowness of the streets, their many turnings, of my general orientation. I could not even, because of the twistings of the streets, walk in a given straight direction. I saw a youth lounging against a wall. I put my head up and walked past him.
After a few yards I looked back. He was watching me, but he had not moved. I hurried on. I made the only turn I could, right, at the end of the street.
In a few moments, I rejoiced. I could see the wall, beyond the end of the street. This street, too, was wider than the others. It was bright and hot. It seemed deserted. Happily I hurried forward.
“Greetings, Pretty Slave,” he said.
He was in front of me. I stopped, suddenly. He must have come somehow, between or through the buildings. He must have known the way I would have to come.
“Do not kneel,” he said.
He took me by the arm.
“Master?” I said.
He held me by the arm. He looked up and down the street. It was empty.
He then began to conduct me, holding me by the arm, toward an alley.
“Do not make any noise,” he said, “or I will slit you like a larma.”
He took me into the alley, and, in a few moments, we came to a recessed place, between two buildings. He took me into this place and there pushed me back against a wall at one end of it. I could see the alley behind him. I felt the brick wall at my back. He was standing very close to me. He was much larger than I. He read my collar. “A feast slave, eh?” he said, much pleased.
“Oh!” I said, softly.
“And not belted,” he grinned.
He then turned me about and pushed me against the wall. I felt my hands jerked behind my back and casually looped with cord. Then the loops grew snug. Then the knot was jerked tight, quite tight. I was helpless. I gathered that I was not the first girl he had brought to this place.
“Turn
around,” he said. “Face me.”
I did so. I could feel one end of the cord dangling from my wrists brush against the back of my ankles. I knew the meaning of this. He did not intend to be soon done with me.
“You may now kneel,” he said.
I did so, bound before him.
“Please me,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” I said. I bent down. I would begin at his feet.
Later I lay on my side in the recessed place off the alley. My ankles were pulled up behind me and tied to my wrists. He was sitting nearby, resting back against a wall.
“Please, Master,” I said. “Let me go.”
He crawled over to me and untied my ankles.
“Thank you, Master,” I said.
Then he thrust them apart.
“Oh!” I cried. Then my tunic was thrust up to my waist. He looked down at me.
“Master?” I said.
“Say, ‘I am an expensive feast slave,’ ” he said.
“I am an expensive feast slave,” I said. I supposed it was true. I would probably bring at least a silver tarsk in most markets. I was comely, and was now trained.
“‘But I beg on my back, with my legs spread, for your use,’” he said.
“But I beg on my back, with my legs spread, for your use,” I said.
“Again,” he said, “with more feeling.”
“I am an expensive feast slave,” I said, “but I beg on my back, with my legs spread, for your use.”
“Very well,” he said. Then he had me.
After he was finished he turned me to my belly and untied my hands.
“You may thank me,” he said.
“Thank you, Master,” I said.
He then slipped away. By the time I rose unsteadily to my feet and stumbled from the recessed place into the alley he was nowhere in sight. He had taken the cord with him. Perhaps he thought it was lucky. Perhaps he thought he might have further use for it, if another slave, alone, unwary, undefended, might stray across his path.
I left the alley. I smoothed down my tunic. He had not even removed it.
It was now in the late afternoon. I saw the wall, over some buildings, in the distance. I began to walk slowly toward it. I must have been preoccupied. My first awareness of the nearness of the sleen was that wild, hissing, excited squeal not more than a hundred yards behind me. It was the kind of noise they sometimes make when eager upon a scent but are being restrained. They wish to lunge ahead but are not permitted to do so. It serves, to signal their keepers of the strength of the scent, and perhaps to some extent ventilates their frustration and expresses their excitement.
“There she is!” I heard someone cry.
I swiftly looked about and saw the two sleen, each with its two keepers, and Hassan and his men, and the others with him, and, following them, perhaps some one or two hundred of the citizens of Ar, both men and women.
I fled before them.
“Loose the sleen!” I heard someone say.
If the sleen were unleashed they would doubtless be upon me in a matter of Ihn. I ran wildly down the street. I looked about. The sleen had not been unleashed, at least as yet. Had they been I would have knelt down and covered my face with my hands. I would not have wanted to see them leaping towards me, eyes blazing, fangs bared, jaws sopped with salivation, to seize me. I stumbled on, down the street, before the animals, before the hunters, before the eager crowd. I saw one or two men on the street back against the buildings. They did not wish to be in my vicinity, it seemed, if the sleen should close with me.
I continued, wildly, to run. The sleen and the hunters, efficiently, patiently, must have been trailing me for Ahn. Too, they must have switched trails, picking up my fresher trail. For example, if they were following my trail of two days ago, where I had come west on Venaticus instead of Clive, they would not have been in this area. This was my first time in this part of the city. Accordingly, they must have switched trails, probably in the vicinity of the Plaza of Tarns. It is natural for a sleen placed on a scent to follow its strongest traces.
I heard the crowd crying out with eagerness. They, or many of them, some perhaps leaving the group and others joining it, had been long on the hunt. Now it seemed they eagerly anticipated its conclusion.
I sobbed, and fled ahead of them. None ventured to stop me in my flight.
I heard the sleen squealing behind me.
Soon I began to gasp and stumble. I fell, and leaped up, and ran again.
I ran blindly, terrified, gasping. It seemed I had spent the day in flight, in terror. Then I had been caught and bound as what I was, a slave, and forced to give pleasure. Then I had been forced to beg on my back, with my legs spread, for my raping which then, insolently, had been administered to me. I had even had to thank the rapist for his attentions to me. Now, again, sleen behind me, I ran.
“No!” I cried, suddenly. “No!”
Before me was a wall, with a high wooden gate. It must surround the courtyard of some private house. Buildings hemmed me in. There was no way through or around the buildings. There was no opening here to the Wall Road, which must, judging from the proximity of the wall, be only forty or fifty yards behind the building.
I turned wildly about.
Escape was cut off.
I sank miserably to my knees beside the gate, sobbing. I covered my eyes with my hands. I did not want to see the sleen.
I heard the squealing of the sleen, and shouts of the crowd, the chain leashes on the beasts’ collars, the scratching of the beasts’ claws on the paving, the shouts of men, and was conscious of bodies swirling about me. I shrieked as the snout of one of the sleen thrust snuffling against me, and then it turned away.
“What are you doing here, Tiffany?” asked Claudia. Crystal and Tupa were with her. “I thought you did not want to follow the hunt.”
“You should not have run,” said Crystal. “Some of those in the crowd thought you were the quarry.”
“That was stupid of you, Tiffany,” said Tupa. “Suppose the sleen had been excited and struck at you.”
I looked about, bewildered, stupefied. Men were breaking the gate at the dwelling. I saw it splinter in. The beasts with the hunters, and others, the crowd, entered the yard.
“Come along!” cried Claudia. “Hurry!”
Shaking, scarcely able to stand, I followed Claudia, and Crystal and Tupa, into the yard.
“Back!” shouted Hassan to the crowd. “Move back!”
The crowd, some two hundred of us, perhaps, pressed back around the interior walls of the yard.
Five of Hassan’s men struck down the door of the dwelling and, blades drawn, entered.
The sleen now, arrested in their hunt, crouching down, tails lashing, their chain leashes firmly grasped by their keepers, lay on the flagstones of the courtyard, waiting.
The door of the dwelling hung awry on its hinges. Within, two brackets, on one side, the right, had been literally broken away from the wall.
In the yard, here and there, were patterned areas of grass, and plantings. There was, too, a table there, with two benches. The inhabitants of the dwelling, thus, if they wished, might, without bringing their garments into contact with the ground, eat here on warm evenings. In some places, low platforms of polished wood, often roofed, serve a similar purpose. In more sumptuous houses such dining may take place on porticoes or verandas.
We looked at the empty threshold.
Hassan’s whip was now on his belt. It was hooked there, on the whip ring, the coils secured in the snap strap.
He looked at me. I did not think he even recognized me. I had been only Tiffany, a naked slave, a girl from whom, one evening, he had taken some pleasure. He had devastated me, overcoming and totally vanquishing me, making me more henceforth, from those moments, a slave than I had ever dreamed a woman could be. He had changed me, teaching me my true womanhood, ruining me forever for freedom. He looked away.
He had done much to me.
He did not rememb
er me.
We suddenly heard the clash of steel from within the house. Then, a moment later, there was a crashing of glass.
Then, once more, everything was quiet.
We watched the empty threshold, the door hung awry on its hinges.
In a few moments the figure of a woman, in robes and veils, pushed from behind, appeared in the threshold.
The sleen, squealing, lunged forward. The woman threw her hands before her face, and tried to turn back, to run into the building. The crowd shouted. The beasts’ keepers struggled, with their hands in half gloves, to hold the chains attached to those wide, studded collars.
The woman was not permitted to re-enter the building. Rather she was thrust, half stumbling, down the stairs, to the yard. Behind her, in the threshold, stood men of Hassan.
She stood, half crouching, terrified, at the foot of the stairs. The chains on the collars of the sleen were taut.
Hassan moved swiftly between the animals and took the woman by the arm and flung her against the wall of the house. Quickly he positioned her, the palms of her hands against the house, her feet far back and very widely, very uncomfortably, spread. It was the same position the guardsman had placed me in earlier. Then, while she stood helplessly in this position, Hassan’s knife stripped her, veils and all, as naked as a slave. He even cut the thongs of her sandals, and pulled them away from her.
He stepped back for a moment to regard her, braced helplessly, leaning forward, against the wall, his naked, barefoot captive. Then he brushed her hair forward, in front of her shoulders. The hair color, I noted, was very similar to mine. She, on the other hand, had long, beautiful hair. She had not been shorn.