Witness of Gor coc-26

by John Norman

  It might be noted, In passing, that when a woman has been embonded she is then understood as, and taken as, unmitigated, a slave. That is what she then is. For example, let us suppose that several women of a given city, say, A, are now slaves in a given city, say, B. Let us then further suppose that these women are recovered, so to speak, in a raid perhaps, or perhaps in war, perhaps in B’s having fallen. The women will not now be freed. They will be kept as slaves, for that is what they now are. Did they not permit themselves to be captured? Well, then, let them remain in bondage! That is where they belong, and should be! And furthermore, given the irritations and embarrassments involved, they are likely to be considered the lowest of slaves, and treated with great severity and harshness. What a mistake it was that they had been permitted to be free, ever! Usually they are only too eager to be sold from their former city, and serve gratefully in a less hostile, less bitter, less rancorous environment, where they will be simply accepted as the slaves they now are. Similarly, if a fellow captures a woman and carries her out of the city, and enslaves her, he may return with her to the city, she is now his unquestioned slave.

  Let us now return to our captured free woman before the “committee of peers.” Let us suppose, as willusually be the case, that she is adjudged satisfactory, if only minimally so, as will be made clear to her, to wear a collar in her captor’s city. The tarnsman then, and his companions, those who failed to draw the inning lot in the hunting game, are feasted, with their officers, at the table of the very ubar or administrator himself. This is a great honor. The feast is served, of course, by slave girls. One of the, a rather new slave girl, is, as you may suppose, permitted no clothing. She wears only her collar. At the height of the feast she is put through her paces, between the tables. She is then returned to her serving, but you may imagine the difference now in her serving, as she now comprehends what she had to do, and how she is now seen. She will also, later, be expected to dance. She hesitates? The whip cracks. She dances. And after this she is again returned to her serving, simply as might be another dancer, no more and no less. And again, as you may well imagine, there is again a difference, one anew, in her serving, for she has now been forced to dance, a nude slave, subject to the whip, before masters. She touches her collar. She cannot removed it. She now has some sense as to what it means.

  After the feast the tarnsman takes her home in his bracelets. She takes her place at his slave ring. The chain is locked on her. She looks up at him. She is his. She serves.

  Some free women seek the collar, having come to understand that only in it can they find their fulfillment and happiness, and, paradoxically, at last, strangely perhaps, their most profound freedom.

  Sometimes, in a foreign city, a free woman will elude her guards and thrust her way into the precincts of a paga tavern, precincts within which free women are seldom, if ever, found. She picks out a man, perhaps one she has noted earlier, and perhaps even followed, and finds irresistible, and kneels before his low table, unwinding her veils and parting her robes. He considers her. Is she acceptable, is she of interest? Would he have any objection to owning her? Tears form in her eyes. Her eyes plead. She offers him her most precious gift, herself. Will he accept it? “Collar!” he calls to the proprietor. One is brought. He locks it on the neck of the supplicant and conducts her to one of the alcoves, often dragging her, bent over, by the hair, that she may have some understanding as to how her life has now changed. In the alcove then, within moments of the closing of the collar, her training, to her joy, has begun.

  The free woman knelt very straight. She craned her neck. “I can see very little from my knees,” she said.

  ‘You are as a slave,” I said. “No one cares whether you can see very much or not.”

  This was the first time the free woman had been this modestly garbed, such as it was, on one of our jaunts above. I had usually managed to gratify myself by having her slave-garbed in a way far more revealing than I was. I had enjoyed doing this to her, as she was a free woman, and I only a slave. But, instead of being distressed by this, she had always seemed to welcome it. The scantier and more revealing the garb in which I placed her the more she seemed to love it. I did not understand her. But then the notion of being “modestly garbed” I surely a relative one. On Earth, the garb in which we found ourselves, its brevity, its neckline, its lack of a nether closure, and such, would presumably have been regarded as scandalous, particularly in busy, public places. Indeed, even in certain Gorean cities, it might have counted as such. But it was not so here. Men in this city, whatever city it was, whereas they might have regarded our tunics as “appealing,” would certainly not have regarded them as scandalous; if anything, for this city, they might have seemed a bit decorous; indeed, many men in this city, I had noted, seemed to enjoy displaying their slaves with a particularly exotic brazenness, often to the mere belly string and slave strip. The girl dare not object, for she is a slave. She knows that it will be done with her as the Master pleases. Too, I had seen more than one nude slave on her leash; that, however, is rare, and is usually done as a punishment. Sometimes, however, after an enemy city has fallen, her women, now enslaved, are denied clothing for some six months, at the end of that time they are inordinately grateful, should the least of tunics be cast to them; supposedly we are not permitted modesty, but we are, of course, sensitive to such things. Indeed, one of the most effective controls our masters have over us is with respect to our clothing, its nature, and, of course, even if we are to be permitted any. In some cities, as I understand it, the state involves itself in such matters; for example, in some cities it is a matter of public ordinance that slave tunics may not be longer than a certain amount; this ordincance is presumably motivated not only by a desire to draw a clear distinction between the free woman and the slave, but to distract the attention of the roving tarnsman, the slavery, the commercial girl jobber, and such, from the glorious free woman, directing it to the meaningless slave, whose charms are more easily discerned.

  Whatever be the case here, it is a mater of fact that “slave strikes” more frequently target slaves than free woman.

  I know this now, but idd not realize it at the time. Indeed, I was shortly to be apprised of an exception to this rule, though, at the time, I did not understand that it was an exeption.

  And, in its way, I suppose the exception, as it is said, “proved the rule.” In any event, in contrast to the rule, its anomalous character drew a great deal of attention to the very rule it violated.

  Or would, for those who understood such things.

  I knew so little of this world!

  When I did understand it I became aware, more seriously than hitherto, of the nature of the men in this city-of their skill, ferocity and pride, and their sense of honor.

  The men of Gor, our masters, tend to take honor very seriously.

  I would learn more of this later.

  The slave, incidentally, wants to be owned by a man of honor. We want to be proud of mour masters. Too, we are safer with such a man. The man of honor, of course, and perhaps in part because of his sense of honor, holds us in uncompromising, perfect bondage. But that is what we want, for we are slaves.

  This, the generally preferred targeting of slaves in raids, and such, I would suppose, has less to do with ordinances, and such, as other things, such as the relative inaccessibility of free women. But I would like to think, too, that it is primarily because we are far more attractive than free women.

  If free women are really beautiful, why would they not be already in collars?

  To be sure, most slaves were once free women. I would have to grant that. On Earth, I myself, though a natural and rightful slave, had been legally free. That changed, of course, once I had arrived on this world. I did have to admit, however, that my charge, the free woman, the Lady Constanzia of Besnit, was an extraordinarily beautiful female. She would be a prize for any chain. And she was free, of course. But the nets and ropes of the hunters, I note, most frequently close on
the muchly exposed, startled bodies of kajirae, and I would like to think that the reason for this is simple, that we are just, statistically, much more desirable, much better catches. Oh, I suppose there is some pleasure for a brute in unwrapping a free woman, so to speak, like a present, the suspense, the anticipation, and such, hoping to be pleasantly surprised, and so on, but what if he isn’t? Then what? Perhaps he can get a few coins on her, as a laundress, or perhaps he might sell her to a woman as a serving slave. But they usually like pretty women as serving slaves.

  A word might be devoted to that.

  Taste is doubtless involved, as the pretty woman dresses up the compartments of the free woman, much as does exquisite furniture, attractive appointments, and such. But I think, too, free women enjoy ruling women who are superior to themselves in beauty. In the wars between free women and slave girls woe to the slave girl who is the serving slave of the free woman! On such a woman the free woman may to her heart’s content indulge her vanity, her arrogance, and her pettiness, and may inflict on her her animosity, and, indeed, her hatred, and her frustration, ventilating these things abundantly and richly, and with impunity, upon the unfortunate, innocent one who is taken as standing proxy for her kind, that kind of which the free woman is so resentful and jealous, a kind of much greater interest and attractiveness to men, the female slave. The serving slave of a free woman is often lashed mercilessly if she so much as looks at a man. Some claim that the keeping of pretty serving slaves by a free woman is to guard against their own abduction. Should a tarnsman, say, with slave noose in hand, invade their quarters he may choose the slave over the mistress. To be sure, if he prefers the slave he is certain to do so, and she is such that she will rush eagerly to his bracelets, joyful in her femininity and collar to now have the opportunity to serve her natural master, a male. But obviously, if the fellow is interested, he will take both. If he takes one, he will bind her belly up over his saddle, usually that she may be casually and conveniently caressed in flight, that she may be writhing in helpless, raging heat by the time he reaches his camp. If he takes two he will simply chain them one on each side of the saddle, to the booty rings, and thus have a balanced load.

  If this is done they may be bound in the camp and aroused at his leisure. In the case of taking both the mistress and the slave, the slave, of course, having been longer in the collar, will be “first girl” over her erstwhile mistress. Naturally this is a situation to which she, switch in hand, does not object.

  But let us suppose, say, that the tarnsman, the beast, is not satisfied with the “present” he has purloined, it now, unwrapped and examined, having been found wanting.

  So let her be a laundress, a field slave, a factory slave, chained to her loom.

  But perhaps she could become beautiful in bondage. What then? And there are many modalities of female beauty. And women are very pretty in collars. And as they lose their inhibitions, and such. But there is no comparison, in my view, at least, between the slave girl and the current free woman. We are better, infinitely better! At the very least the free woman, once she is in a collar, and finds out what it is all about, will be much improved; she will soon be a thousand times, and more, better than she was when she was only another smug, vain, haughty, nuisance.

  The collar is good for us, you see.

  So the slave girl is infinitely better than the free woman.

  On the other hand, I must grand that the “free woman,” once she is no longer free, once she becomes a slave, and learns her collar-once she is no longer free-and has now become a slave girl-will have her value-on the block, and in the kitchen, and in the furs.

  That is undeniable.

  But then of course she is a slave girl.

  In any event, the Lady Constanzia and I were similarly attired.

  Yes, I thought, she was beautiful.

  And how right that collar looked on her neck!

  How she had looked at it in the mirror, and adjusted it, this morning-so carefully, so admiringly-with such approving vanity!

  She loved it, the pretty little bitch!

  To be sure, we were very much the same height. She was perhaps a quarter of an inch or so taller than I. I had little doubt that many men, seeing us, took us for a matched set.

  We were similar in hair and eye color, and were similarly figured.

  I also doubted now that anyone, even a slaver, would have suspected that the Lady Constanzia was not a slave, without ascertaining, of course, that she lacked the brand. She had something now, you see, of the eagerness, the vitality, the interest, the curiosity, the awakened nature, the readiness to live and experience, of a slave.

  Certainly there could be little doubt about our charms.

  I was a little apprehensive about matters, of course, for it seemed that the pit master had realized what I was doing with the free woman, using her, at least from my own point of view, to take out my little vengeances on my superiors, free women. It was for that reason, I suspect, that he had decided, today, what we would both wear.

  I pulled the edges of the slits at the side of the brief skirt a little more closely together, but, of course, as soon as I released them, they parted again.

  My flanks were well displayed.

  It was not that I minded this so much in itself, for I am not altogether unaware of my own possible charms, and, as a slave, doubtless a vain one, was not above displaying them, and even flaunting them upon occasion, shamelessly and joyously, as that I was somewhat irritated that the distinction between us, she and I, was no longer clearly marked. To be sure, it was she who was in the bracelets, and not I, and it was I who held the leash, and not she. That, I supposed, should be more than enough.

  “Do you see him?” she asked, anxiously.

  “No,” I said, not even looking about. I wanted to get to the docking area. Already the tarns, one by one, were alighting.

  “Am I overdressed?” she asked, anxiously.

  “No,” I said.

  “Do you think the tunic is pretty?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Do you think he will like me like this?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. She was exquisitely fetching. The tunics are designed to set off the charms of a slave. And this tunic, to be sure, left little to the imagination.

  “I hope so,” she worried.

  “In a slave collar,” I said, “any woman might as well be naked.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  The collar, of course, speaks of the vulnerability of the slave. It makes clear her helplessness, her availability. In this sense, in seeing a woman in a slave collar, it is much like seeing her naked, or, if you prefer, potentially naked.

  “I can see little from my knees!” she protested, looking up at me.