John Norman - Gor 12

by Beasts Of Gor(Lit)

The sun was high and bright, and I had fed well, and had rigged a backpack, in which I had placed supplies and my things, when I again climbed the steps to the whipping platform.

  The girl was unconscious. I slapped her awake.

  "I am leaving now," I told her.

  She looked at me, dully. I looked away from her, out over the tundra, the loneliness, the blackened remains of the scattered logs which had been the wall, the ruined buildings. I would fire the hail, too, before I left. There is a bleakness to the north which, in its harsh way, can be very beautiful. It was chilly: A dust of snow had fallen in the night. I saw a group of five tabuk, stragglers, cross the line that had been the wall. They would follow the herd north. They would be unaware that there had ever been an impediment to their journey. I watched them pick their way through burned logs and, in their characteristic gait, turn northward. One stopped to nuzzle at the turf, pushing back snow with its nose, to bite at moss.

  "Are you going to leave me here, to die?" she asked.

  I cut her down, and cut the bonds on her wrists and ankles. She sank to the wood of the platform. It was coated with crystals of snow. She clutched the furs there to her. I had yesterday cut them from her.

  I then descended the steps of the platform. In a few moments I had set fire to the hall.

  As I stood before the burning edifice I turned once to look at the platform. She knelt there, small, the furs clutched to her.

  She was an enemy.

  I turned away, northward. I, too, would follow the herd.

  I did not look back.

  Toward noon I stopped to make a camp. I ate dried meat. I watched the small figure some two hundred yards behind me slowly approach.

  When she was some three or four yards from me she stopped. I regarded her.

  She knelt. "Please," she said.

  I threw some meat to the snow before her and, eagerly, she ate it.

  The beauty was ravenous. "Please," she begged, "give me more."

  "Crawl to me on your belly in the snow," I told her.

  "Never," she said.

  I continued to eat.

  Then I reached down to where her head, as I sat cross-legged, lay in the snow by my knee. She was on her belly. "Please," she begged. "Please."

  I thrust meat in her mouth. Gratefully she ate it. In time she looked up at me. "You made me crawl to you on my belly," she said, resentfully.

  I stood up. I must be on my way.

  "I never thought I would meet a man so strong," she said. She shuddered. I thought it must be from cold.

  "The tarn?" she asked.

  "It was weak," I said. "I freed it."

  "You are going north," she said.

  "I have business in the north," I said.

  "You will go afoot?" she asked.

  "Yes," I said.

  "You will have little chance to survive," she said.

  "I will live on the herd," I said. "The only danger, as I see it, will be the winter."

  In such times even groups of the red hunters sometimes perished.

  "Do not follow me further," I said.

  "I cannot live alone in the north," she said. "I would surely fail to reach the south safely."

  I thought her assessment of the situation accurate.

  "Panther Girls," I said, "such as, here and there, frequent the northern forests, might survive."

  "I am not a Panther Girl," she said.

  I looked at her kneeling in the snow at my feet, her small, trim figure, her soft, sweet exquisite curves, her delicately beautiful throat and face, the pleading blue eyes, the lush wealth of auburn hair loose behind her naked shoulders.

  "That is true," I said. I looked upon her. Her body, so helpless and exquisitely feminine, seemed made for rapacious seizure at the hands of a rude master. Her face, vulnerable and delicate, would be easy to read. Tears might swiftly be brought to her eyes by a word, or fear to those lovely features, by as little as an imperial gesture. I considered whether it would be worth while teaching her the collar.

  "I am an Earth girl," she said.

  I nodded. She knew nothing of woodcraft or of survival. She was alone on a harsh world.

  "You are an enemy," I told her.

  "Do not leave me," she begged. She swallowed hard. "Without a man to feed and protect me," she said, "I will die."

  I recalled how she had responded when, before I had won ray freedom, I had informed her that the red hunters might starve, if the tabuk were not permitted to continue their northward migration.

  "It is not my concern," she had said.

  "Please," she said, looking up at me.

  "It is not my concern," I said.

  "Oh, no!" she wept. "Please!"

  "Do not attempt to follow me," I said. "If you persist, I shall bind you, hand and foot, and leave you in the snow."

  "I am pretty," she said. "I know that I am pretty." She looked up at me, tears in her eyes. "Might not men be persuaded," she asked, "to let me live?"

  I smiled, recalling what once I had suggested to her.

  "Please," she begged.

  "You do not know of what you speak," I laughed. "You are only an ignorant Earth girl."

  "Teach me," she begged.

  She put her arms to her sides and lifted her body before me.

  "What a salacious tart you are," I said.

  Tears formed in her eyes.

  I considered to myself how she might look in a snatch of slave silk and a steel collar, one bearing a master's name. The prospect was not completely displeasing.

  "Assume attitudes and postures," I said to her. "Try to interest me."

  With a cry of misery she tried then to provoke my interest. She was clumsy but I learned, incontrovertibly, that which I had wished to determine. She who performed so desperately before me was a natural slave. I had thought this the first instant I had laid eyes on her. It was now confirmed beyond doubt. The insight, sensitivity, taste and lust of the Kur agents who had recruited her was surely to be commended.

  "It is enough." I told her.

  She lay at my feet in the snow, terrified.

  "What do you feel like?" I asked.

  "It is a strange feeling," she said. "I have never felt it before."

  "It is the feeling of being a woman," I said.

  She reached out to touch my ankle. "Please," she said, "take me with you."

  I bent to her and began to tie together her ankles. "No!" she said. "Please! Please!"

  Her ankles were tied.

  "No!" she said.

  "I do not wish the inconvenience in the north," I said, "of bothering with a free woman."

  I knotted her hands behind her back.

  "I do not ask to come with you as a free woman!" she cried.

  "Oh?" I asked.

  "No!" she said.

  "Do you know the meaning of your words, foolish girl?" I asked.

  "Yes," she wept.

  "You would dare to be a slave?" I asked.

  "Yes," she whispered. I wondered at her words. Did she not know the hopelessness, the completeness, of being a slave girl on Gor? If she did not, she would learn.

  I rose to my feet.

  She struggled to her knees, her ankles crossed and bound, her hands tied behind her. "I beg to be a slave," she wept.

  I looked down upon her.

  "I know," she said, "that with a man of your strength I could never be anything but a slave."

  "To any Gorean male," I said.

  "Yes, yes," she said.

  I freed her ankles of the bonds and freed her hands, but then retied her hands before her body. I knelt her before me, knees wide, back on her heels, arms lifted and raised, her head down, between her bound arms.

  "Are you familiar with any of the rituals of enslavement?" I asked.

  "I, Sidney Anderson, of Earth," she said, "submit myself to Tarl Cabot, of Gor, as a slave, completely, his to do with as he pleases."

  I saw that she had been curious as to what it would be like to be a slave.
She had inquired into this matter. It was an excellent sign.

  She was then a beautiful, little exquisite brute at my feet, a slave animal.

  I took a length of binding fiber and knotted it, with capture knots, about her throat. It was her collar. Too, the capture knots, those of a warrior, would serve to identify her as mine in the north.

  She looked up at me, frightened, a slave.

  "Kiss my feet," I told her.

  She bent her head to my feet and, through the fur of my boots, I felt her lips press against them. She then, timidly, tears in her eyes, lifted her head.

  I put my hands in her hair. She must regard me. "You are Arlene," I told her.

  She shook with emotion.

  "Lift your wrists," I said.

  She did so.

  I freed her of the binding fiber on her wrists, and returned it to my pack.

  "I have never had a girl's name before," she said.

  "You are now only a girl," I told her.

  "Yes," she whispered.

  "Yes, what?" I asked.

  "Yes," she whispered, "-Master."

  I then threw her to her back in the snow, that I might begin to teach her the meaning of her collar.

  12

  I Tent With Imnak At The Gathering Of The People; I Advance Arlene A Bit In Her Training

  "Put them on, Slave Girl," said Thimble, not pleasantly.

  "Yes, Mistress," said Arlene. In the hide tent she slipped into the brief fur panties worn by the women of the north. She had been forced to sew them herself, under the direction of Thimble and Thistle. At the left hip they bore the sign of the looped binding fiber, sewn in them with red-dyed sinew, which identified them as the garment of one who was an owned beast.

  Imnak and I sat across from one another, both cross-legged. He dropped a tiny bone to the fur mat between us.

  Each player, in turn, drops a bone, one of several in his supply. The bone Imnak had dropped was carved in the shape of a small tabuk. Each of the bones is carved to resemble an animal, such as an arctic gant, a northern bosk, a lart, a tabuk or sleen, and so on. The bone which remains upright is the winner. If both bones do not remain upright there is no winner on that throw. Similarly, if both bones should remain upright, they are dropped again. A bone which does not remain upright, if its opposing bone does remain upright, is placed in the stock of him whose bone remained upright. The game is finished when one of the two players is cleaned out of bones.

  "Pull on the stockings," said Thimble to Arlene. Arlene did so. The stockings were of lart fur. Each, in its side, wore the sign of the looped binding fiber. "Now," said Thimble, "the boots." In cold weather a layer of grass, for warmth, for insulation, changed daily, is placed in the bottom of the boots, between the inside sole of the boot and the foot of the stocking. Arlene now, of course, did not bother with this. The best harvests of grass for use in this way occur, naturally at the foot of the bird cliffs. Arlene drew on the high boots. They reached to her crotch. It was a hot crotch, as I had determined, a superb crotch for a slave girl. The fur trim at their top touched the panties. She was stripped from the waist up. Many of the women of the red hunters, too, went about so, inside and outside the tents, in the warmer weather. They of course, being free, did not have leather, like Arlene, or bondage strings, like Thimble and Thistle, at their throats. Similarly, their garments did not bear the slave marks of the looped binding fiber. Such marks, of course, were not necessary, in the north, for determining what Thimble, and Thistle and Arlene were. Even the leather or bondage strings at their throats were not necessary for that purpose. Their white skins alone, as they were females, identified them as slave beasts.

  The tiny tabuk which Imnak had dropped remained standing upright.

  I took my eyes from Arlene. What a lovely catch she had been!

  I had not yet bothered to teach her complete slavery. I was in no hurry. Let her retain for a time a shred of her pride and dignity. I could always rip it from her when I wished, or when she herself should beg me to take it from her.

  "Try on the shirt, Slave Girl," said Thimble.

  Arlene drew on the hide shirt. At the left shoulder, prominently, it bore the sign of the looped binding fiber. I glanced at her and she straightened her body, but then tossed her head and looked away, as though disdaining to take cognizance of my appraisal. The shirt fell nicely from her breasts, standing as she was. She was exquisitely figured. She stood as few Earth girls would have dared to, displaying her beauty, though she appeared to be completely disinterested in any such objective. I smiled to myself. She was discovering her sexuality. She looked at me, and then, quickly, looked away. I wondered if she knew she was being brought along slowly as a slave. Sometimes I read in her eyes a look that said, "I can resist you," and, at other times, a look that said, "I begin to sense and fear what you might do to me. Please be kind, Master." Once she had said to me, angrily, "You are dallying with me, aren't you, Master?" "Perhaps," I had told her. "Perhaps, Slave Girl."

  I dropped the tiny carved tabuk I held. It, too, remained upright.

  Imnak picked up his tiny carved tabuk and held it over the fur mat.

  Arlene made a small noise. I sensed that she was angry that I no longer looked upon her.

  Was she not sufficiently beautiful? She had a girl's vanity. Did she not yet know she was a slave, and that she might account herself fortunate should a free man so much as glance in her direction?

  "Try on the first parka," said Thimble.

  Arlene slipped it on, over the head, as such garments, like northern garments generally, are donned.

  "Hood," said Thimble.

  Arlene lifted the hood and placed it properly.

  "Do I please you, Master?" asked Arlene. She wished attention.

  I looked up. Her face was very beautiful, rimmed in the lart fur trimming the hood.

  "It is very nice," I said.

  "Thank you, Master," she said, acidly.

  "Put on the second parka and its hood," said Thimble. Arlene complied. Both the parkas bore, at their left shoulder, the design of looped binding fiber, identifying them as the garments of slaves.

  "Master?" asked Arlene.

  "Excellent," I said. `The garments are superb, and you are very beautiful in them."

  She flushed. "Thank you, Master," she said. Then she said, acidly, "A girl is pleased if her master is pleased."

  "It is well," I said, soberly. She trembled, momentarily.

  "Take them off," said Thimble, "all of them, everything, except the leather on your throat."

  "Yes, Mistress," said Arlene.

  Arlene stripped herself, to the leather collar, in Imnak's hide tent. Thimble and Thisile were also naked. All were girls, only slave beasts in the tent of their masters.

  I dropped the tiny carved tabuk which was mine, that which was my piece in the game. It did not land upright.

  "I have won," said Imnak.

  "What are you gambling about?" asked Arlene. She was folding her garments.

  "Put away the garments," I said, "drop to all fours, and come here."

  Arlene put the folded garments to one side in the tent, and, in fury, on her hands and knees, crawled to where we had played.

  I put my hand in her hair and pulled her to her stomach. "Here she is," I told Imnak.

  "Master!" she cried.

  Imnak took her and turned her over, pulling her on her back across his legs.

  "Master!" cried Arlene.

  "Imnak has won your use, until he chooses to leave the tent," I told her. "Obey him as though he were your own master."

  "Please, no!" she cried.

  "Obey him," I said, sternly, "as though he were your own master."

  "Yes, Master," she said, miserably.

  Imnak then dragged her to the side of the hide tent.

  Perhaps I was struck most by the absence of trees.

  Some five days after I had acquired the slave girl, Arlene, following the herd of Tancred, generally climbing, I came to the
edge of Ax Glacier. There I found the camp of Imnak, and Thimble and Thistle.

  "I have been waiting for you," had said Imnak. "I thought you would come."