Beasts of Gor coc-12

by John Norman

  I returned to where the girl lay in the grass. She was on her stomach. Her hands had dug into the dirt. She sensed I stood near her. I stood a bit behind her and to her left.

  “Am I a slave?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You can do anything with me you want?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Her head was to one side. There were tears on her cheek.

  “What are you going to do with me, Master?” she asked.

  “Whatever pleases me,” I said.

  “I ordered my men to kill you,” she said. “Are you going to slay me for that?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “That was the act of the Lady Constance. She no longer exists.”

  “A slave girl is now in her place,” whispered the girl.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “It seems I have escaped easily,” she said.

  “Not really,” I said. “It is only that now you are subject to new risks and penalties, those of a slave girl.”

  She clutched the grass. She knew well of what I spoke.

  “You may now be slain for as little as an irritable word, or for being in the least displeasing. Indeed, you may be slain upon the mere whim of a master, should it please him.”

  She sobbed.

  “Do you understand?” I asked.

  “Yes, Master,” she said. Then she looked up at me. “Are you a kind master?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “I do not know how to be a slave,” she said.

  “Men will teach you,” I said.

  “I will try to learn swiftly,” she said.

  “That is wise,” I said.

  “My life will depend on it?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said. I grinned. Gorean men are not patient with their girls.

  “This morning,” she said, “I was free.”

  “You are now a slave,” I said.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  I looked up at the late afternoon skies. The tarn had not yet returned. Yet I was not displeased.

  I looked down at the girl. “Go to my things,” I said. “Spread furs upon the grass.”

  “I am a virgin,” she said.

  “You are white-silk,” I said.

  “Please do not use that vulgar expression of me,” she begged.

  “Do not fear,” I said. “It will soon be inappropriate.”

  “Show me mercy,” she begged.

  “Spread the furs,” I said.

  “Please,” she begged.

  “I have no slave whip at hand,” I said, “but I trust my belt will serve.”

  She leaped to her feet. “I will spread the furs, Master,” she said.

  “Then lie on them on your belly,” I said.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  She spread the furs on the grass by the tree, and then lay on them, on her belly.

  “Throw your hair forward and over your head,” I said.

  She did so. The collar was now clearly visible on her neck. I stood behind her, and dropped my accouterments to the side.

  “Why did you make me a slave?” she whispered.

  “It pleased me,” I said.

  I crouched beside her and took her by the right arm and hair, and turned her to her back on the furs. She was delicately beautiful. She would ravish well.

  “In Torvaldsland,” I said, “it is said the woman of Kassau make superb slaves.” I looked at her. “Is it true?” I asked.

  “I do not know, Master,” she said frightened.

  “How marvelously beautiful you are,” I said.

  “Please be kind to me, Master,” she begged.

  “I have not had a woman in four days,” I told her. Then she cried out.

  The three moons were high.

  The night was chilly. I felt her kissing softly at my thigh.

  “Is it true,” she asked, “what they say in Torvaldsland, that the women of Kassau make superb slaves?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I never knew that I could feel this way,” she said. “It is so different, so total, so helpless.”

  I touched her head.

  “It is only the feelings of a slave girl,” I said.

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  I lay on my back, looking upward.

  “Please, Master,” she whispered, “subject me again to slave rape.”

  “Earn your rape,” I told her.

  “Yes, Master,” she said, kissing me.

  “Stop,” I said.

  “Master?” she asked.

  “Be quiet,” I said. I was listening. I rolled from her side and crouched in the furs. I was now certain that I heard it. I slipped my tunic over my head and looped the scabbard at my left shoulder. She crouched in the furs naked, beside me.

  I drew the blade.

  I could see him coming now, running over the fields, stumbling.

  He was a large man, exhausted. At his hips he wore a rag. An iron collar, with broken chain, was at his neck.

  He came near us and then stopped, suddenly. He stood unsteadily. “Are you with them?” he asked.

  “With whom?” I asked.

  “The hunters,” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “A traveler, and a slave girl,” I said. She shrank hack in the furs, pulling them about her throat.

  “You are of the warriors?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You will not kill me, nor hold me for them?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Have you seen them?” he asked.

  “A girl, and four guardsmen?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Earlier today,” I said. “You are then the sport slave?” I said.

  “Yes,” said he, “purchased from the pens at Lydius, for a girl’s hunting.”

  I recalled the dark-eyed, dark-haired girl, vital and trim in her carefully tailored hunting costume, with the tunic and hose, the boots, cape and feathered cap. It was an attractive outfit.

  “You have done well to elude them this long,” I said. “Would you care for food?”

  “Please,” said he.

  I threw him meat and he sat down, cross-legged. Seldom had I seen a man so tear at food.

  “Would you care for paga?” I asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “I see that it is your intention to survive,” I said.

  “That is my intention,” he said.

  “Your chances,” I said, “are slim.”

  “I now have food,” he said.

  “You are a courageous fellow,” I said.

  “Did they have sleen?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “They were, it seems, making it truly a sport.”

  “Those well-armed and mounted can afford nobility,” he said.

  “You sound bitter,” I said.

  “If they do not find me tonight,” he said, “they will return with sleen in the morning.”

  “That,” I said, “would be the end.” The sleen can follow a track better than a larl or a Kur. It is tireless and tenacious, and merciless.

  “I have one chance,” he said.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “They had formed a hunting line,” said he, “the girl in the center. It was in her path that I left a bit of rag, and did not deign thenceforward to conceal my trail. She should have come upon the bait by now.”

  “She will summon her guardsmen,” I said, “and you will be finished.”

  “I assess her vanity differently,” he said. “It is her sport, not theirs. She will pull away from her guardsmen to be first to the quarry.”

  “They will pursue,” I said.

  “Of course,” he said.

  “You will have little time,” I said.

  “True,” he said.

  “Do you think that you, afoot, will be able to elude a mounted archer, be she even female?�
� I asked.

  “I think so,” he said.

  “There is little cover,” I said. I looked at the fields.

  “There is enough,” he said. Then he rose to his feet and wiped his hands on his thighs. Then he walked over to the pond several yards away. He lay down on his belly and drank from the water.

  “Yes,” I said. ‘There is cover. He is a clever fellow.”

  The man left tracks by the side of the pond, and then waded into the chill water. He broke off a reed and then waded deeper into the water.

  I felt the girl beside me touch me, timidly. “May I labor now to earn my rape, Master?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  I smiled to myself. The slave fires, which lurk in any woman, had been particularly easy to arouse in this girl. I recalled that the men of Torvaldsland regarded the women of Kassau as superb slaves. I saw now the justice of this assessment. Gorean girls, however, who are aware of the cultural implications of their collar, and its meaning, usually spend little time, once it is helplessly locked on their throats, in fighting their womanhood. They must bend, or die. In bending, in submission, in total, will-less submission to a master, they find themselves free for the first time from the chains of egoism, liberated from the grasping pursuits of the self, readied for the surrenders of love.

  “Disgusting!” said the free woman, on the tharlarion, in the hunting costume.

  I rolled over, looking up. The blond girl by my side, the slave, cried out with misery, and dared not meet the eyes of her free sister.

  “Greetings,” I said.

  “Do not permit me to interfere with your pleasures,” she said cooly.

  The slave girl whimpered and put down her head. How shamed she was before the freedom and grandeur of the free woman.

  “Have you found your sport slave yet?” I inquired.

  “No,” she said. “But he is quite near.”

  “I have not been paying much attention,” I said.

  “You have been otherwise engaged.” she, said loftily. I wondered at the hatred which free women seem to bear to their imbonded sisters. This hatred, incidentally, is almost never directed at the master, but almost always at the slave. Do they envy the slaves their collar?

  “That is true,” I admitted.

  “It is fortunate I am here,” said the free woman. “You might need my protection.”

  “You think there is a dangerous fellow lurking about?” I asked.

  “I am sure of it,” she said.

  “We shall be on our guard,” I said.

  “I will take him soon,” she said. “He is not far.” She wheeled the tharlarion away. “Return to the pleasures of your slut,” she said.

  “But we must be on our guard,” I called.

  “There is little need,” she said. “I will take the fellow within minutes.”

  I turned to the girl beside me, who was crying.

  “Are you shamed?” I asked her.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Good,” I said.

  She looked at me.

  “You are a slave,” I said.

  “Yes, Master,” she said, her head down.

  “Watch,” I said. She lifted her head.

  The free woman was at the edge of the pond. She did not dismount. Her bow was ready. In an instant it might clear the saddle to either side. From the saddle she studied the tracks in the moonlight. She moved the tharlarion into the water. Doubtless she thought the pond had been waded, to obscure tracks, which would emerge on the other side. Had she been a more experienced hunter she would have circled the pond to determine this for certain.

  The blond girl beside me kissed me. “What does she know of being a woman?” she asked.

  “Very little,” I said. “But perhaps by tomorrow at noon she will know more.”

  “I do not understand, Master,” said the girl.

  “Watch,” I said.

  The girl, astride the tharlarion, moved deeper into the pond.

  “She is an arrogant girl, is she not, Master?” asked the slave.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Suddenly emerging from the water at the very side of the tharlarion there was the large, fierce figure of a man. His hand closed on the girl’s left arm and dragged her swiftly, forcibly from the saddle, she crying Out, startled, dashing her shoulder and headfirst into the water at his side. He thrust her under the surface following her under.

  “She knew too little of men even to fear them,” I said.

  In a moment the figure of the man reared up shaking his head to clear his eyes of water. The girl’s knife was in his right hand; his left hand held her head, grasped by the hair, beneath the surface. He looked about. He jerked her head up from the water and she gasped and sputtered. When she could scream he thrust her head again beneath the surface. The tharlarion moved about, water at the stirrup, shifting, tossing its head about. Then its reins hung in the water. It was a small, hunting tharlarion, controlled by bit and bridle. The large upright tharlarion, or war tharlarion, are guided by voice commands and the blows of spears. The man put the knife in his teeth and, fiercely, smote the tharlarion. It grunted and, splashing, fled from the water, running in its birdlike gait across the fields. The man again pulled up the girl from the water. She spit water into the pond, and vomited, and coughed. The man then tore the belt from her and fastened her hands behind her back. He thrust the knife he had held in his teeth in his belt. He broke off a tube of reed. The girl looked at him, frightened. In the distance I could see the four guardsmen, moving swiftly, trying to catch up with the girl who had broken away from them in the rash vanity of her hunt, desiring to be first upon the prize. She had apparently broken the hunting line without informing them. Perhaps, too, her tharlarion was swifter than theirs. It bore less weight. I saw the man take the tube of reed he had broken off and thrust it in her mouth; then the knife he carried, hers, lay across her throat; I saw her eyes, wild, in the moonlight, and then he, another bit of reed in his mouth, pulled her quietly below the surface.

  In a few moments the four guardsmen, distraught, reined up beside my furs.

  I looked up from the collared slave in my arms.

  “Tal,” said their leader.

  “Tal,” I said.

  “Have you see aught of the Lady Tina of Lydius?” inquired one of the men.

  “The huntress?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “She was here, inquiring about a sport slave,” I said.

  “Where did she go?” asked one of the men.

  “Have you not taken the sport slave yet?” I asked. “It is late.”

  “Have you see the Lady Tina?” asked the leader of the men.

  “Yes,” I said, “earlier.”

  “Where did she go?” asked the leader.

  “Are there tracks?” I asked.

  “Here,” said one of the men, “here, see here. There are tracks.”

  They followed the tracks to the side of the pond. Had they crossed the pond they might, in the breadth of their passage, have struck the submerged couple. These men, however, apparently more skilled than the girl, first circled the pond to discover emergent tracks. They found these, of course, almost immediately, those of the running tharlarion. In their haste, and in their desire to overtake their lovely charge, they sped into the night. It was not even clear to me that they, in their concern with the tracks of the tharlarion, observed the tracks of the man leading to the pond. Too, as I determined later, his tracks had been, for the most part, obscured by the tracks of the beast of his lovely huntress. Some of the more obvious ones, too, I had erased with a branch.

  I assumed the couple might be chilled upon emerging from the water and so I took the liberty of building a fire. The wood was gathered by my slave, whom I named Constance.

  In time I saw the man’s head lift slowly, almost imperceptibly, from the pond.. He reconnoitered, and then, dragging the girl with him, her wrists bound behind her back, approached the fire.

&nb
sp; “You had better get out of those wet clothes,” I told the girl.

  She looked at me with horror.

  “Don’t,” she begged her captor.

  She squirmed, held, as he cut the tunic and cape from her, and then she was thrown on her belly on the grass and the wet hose and boots were drawn from her. He then knelt across her body and freed her hands. With the knife he slit the belt into narrow strips, improvising binding fiber. He then retied her hands behind her back and, crouching beside her, crossed and bound her ankles. She struggled to her knees. She faced us.

  “I am the Lady Tina of Lydius,” she said. “Free me!”

  We looked at her.

  “I am the Lady Tina of Lydius,” she said. “I demand to be immediately freed.”

  I thought she would look well dancing naked in a paga tavern before men.

  “Free me!” she cried.

  I had once owned a slave named Tina, who also had been from Lydius. It is not that uncommon a name. The Tina whom I had known was now free, an esteemed member of the caste of thieves in Port Kar, one of the most skillful in the city. She was doing well for herself.

  I looked at this Tina. She was obviously too beautiful to free. She would be kept as a slave for men.

  “You have won,” she said to the slave. “I acknowledge that in the generosity of my freedom. Release me now and I shall petition that you not be slain.”

  “In the morning,” he said, “they will bring sleen.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Will you discuss the matter with them?” he asked.

  “Perhaps they will be leashed,” she said.

  The man laughed. “Do you think me a fool?” he asked. “They will be run free from the kennels. Do you think they want me alive?”

  “I own you,” she said to the man. “Free me!” I recalled that he had been purchased from the pens of Lydius for her sport. Apparently she had stood the purchase price. Her arrogance, and airs, suggested that she might well have done so.