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 apprise 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.
We looked across the yard.
The dwelling within, which fronted on the yard, was a two-story building of dark, fitted stone. Its portal was sturdy, not unusual in a Gorean house, and was reached by a high, narrow flight of stairs, this leading to a broad landing. In this arrangement defenders have a secure footing, given the breadth of the landing, but unwelcome guests, in the absence of ladders, must face the difficulty of negotiating an unpleasant approach, that afforded by steep, narrow stairs. There were no windows on our side of the house, that fronting the yard. This was unusual, given the yard. On the other hand most Gorean dwellings do not have windows on the street side. Apparently one was not to be permitted to see into the dwelling even from the yard, which, one supposed, would normally be private to the dwelling.
Five of Hassan's men ascended the stairs and reached the landing, which was not defended.
Two carried axes and began to attack the door.
In a few moments the door was shattered, and, axes discarded, the five men, blades drawn, entered the building.
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.
It was not pleasant to look at their eyes. Their jaws glistened with salivation.
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 verandahs.
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 remember 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.
He then took a collar from one of his men. It was not an ornate or expensive collar. It was a common collar, one such as any slave might wear.
I do not think she realized clearly, positioned as she was, what he was going to do. Perhaps she expected merely to be leashed. Then, suddenly, she wore a slave collar.
She stumbled suddenly at the wall, almost striking it, and then had her feet under her.
"No!" she screamed. "No!"
She spun about, facing Hassan, who had now withdrawn a few feet.
"No!" she screamed, crouching there. "No! No!" She tore and jerked at the collar, frenziedly. She even tried, irrationally, to thrust it up, over her head, but it stuck, of course, tightly, far back, under her chin.
She ran toward Hassan, and, hysterically, sobbing, struck upon him with her small fists. He let her do this for a moment or two, until she, looking up at him, realized how absurd and futile it was; then he took her by the upper arms, turned her about, and flung her back, yards back to the wall. Stumbling, she struck forcibly against it, and then slipped to its foot. She turned then, on all fours, to regard Hassan. He removed the whip from his belt.
I could hardly believe what I was seeing. It was almost as though I, too, on all fours, was at the foot of the wall. I could see many differences between us, but, still, the resemblances, in hair and eye color, in general coloring, in figure, in size and weight, and so on, were so close as to be almost frightening. We could easily have been taken for sisters, and perhaps even fraternal twins.
"No!" she cried.
Then the lash fell upon her. She was struck to her belly on the stones, by the wall. There was disbelief in her eyes, blood at her back.
"Do you object?" he asked. "Many times, surely, you have ordered the whip upon the back of others."
She lay on the stones, gasping and shuddering.
Then he struck her twice more, summary blows, instructive blows. They were swift and perfunctory but I think she learned much from them. It seemed she was trying to press herself down into the flagstones. Her fingernails had scratched at them. Hassan replaced the whip at his belt. He pulled her up by the upper arms and placed her against the wall, facing it. He jerked her hands behind her. There were two decisive, metallic snaps. She was fastened in slave bracelets. He then took her by the upper arms and conducted her, half carrying her, to the table in the yard.
"What are you going to do?" she cried.
Then she was flung on her belly half over the table.
"I am a virgin!" she cried. Then she was no longer a virgin. As she still lay half across the table, shuddering, half in shock, a leather collar, with a ring and attached leash, was buckled about her throat, over the snugly fitting steel collar. She was then pulled from the table and, stumbling, with faltering steps, terrified, was drawn by Hassan between the snarling sleen.
He stopped, just within the rui
ned gate to the yard. He took up the slack in her leash until, it looped in his hand, and with a turn or two about his fist, he held her by it not six inches from him.
She was naked, braceleted, collared and leashed. Eager, restless sleen who had not yet been distracted from her scent with the exact command word, and meat, were only feet away.
Hassan looked deeply into her eyes, as a master might look into the eyes of a slave.
"Who are you?" she begged.
"I am Hassan, of Kasra," he said, "called by some, Hassan, the Slave Hunter."
"No!" she wept.
"I am he," said Hassan.
"I am in the power of Hassan, the Slave Hunter," she said, fearfully, disbelievingly.
"Yes," he said.
I feared she might faint.
"What are you going to do with me?" she asked.
"I am going to take you to my lodgings in Ar," he said, "but we will make a stop first, on the way. Then, helpless, in a golden sack, you are to be taken to Argentum."
Then he held her weight by the leash, and lowered her, gently, to the ground. She had fainted. He bent down and scooped her up and, flinging the leash back, put her over his shoulder, her head behind him. He then, with his men and the sleen, took his leave of the place. I assumed she would soon awaken, on his shoulder. When she did so she would find herself being carried as a slave.
Kajira of Gor Page 39
