Norman, John - Gor 09 - Marauders of Gor.txt
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days, it is my understanding, there might have been decided, however, a
generation ago, by one of the rare meetings of the high council of rune-priests,
attended by the high rune-priests of each district, that thralls should no
longer be sacrificed; this was not defended, however, on grounds of the advance
of civilization, or such, but rather on the grounds that thralls, like urts and
tiny six-toed tharlarion, were not objects worthy of sacrifice; there had been a
famine and many thralls had been sacrificed; in spite of this the famine had not
abated for more than four growing seasons; this period, too, incidentally, was
noted for the large number of raids to the south, often involving entire fleets
from Torvaldsland; it had been further speculated that the gods had no need of
thralls, or, if they did, they might supply this need themselves, or make this
need known through suitable signs; no signs, however, luckily for thralls, were
forthcoming; this was taken as a vindication of the judgement of the high
council of rune-priests; after the council, the status of rune-priests had risen
in Torvaldsland; this may also have had something to do with the fact that the
famine, finally, after four seasons, abated; the status of the thrall,
correspondingly, however, such as it was, declined; he was now regarded as much
in the same category with the urts that one clubs in the Sa-Tarna sheds, or are
pursued by small pet sleen, kept there for that purpose, or with the tiny,
six-toed rock tharlarion of southern Torvaldsland, favored for their legs and
tails, which are speared by children. If the thrall had been nothing in
Torvaldsland before, he was now less than nothing; his status was now, in
effect, that of the southern, male work slave, found often in the quarries and
mines, and, chained, on the great farms. He, a despised animal, must obey
instantly and perfectly, or be subject to immediate slaughter. The Forkbeard had
bought one thrall with him, the young man, Tarsk, who, even now, followed in the
retinue of the Forkbeard; it was thought that if the Forkbeard should purchase a
crate of sleen fur or a chest of bog iron the young man, on his shoulders, might
then bear it back to our tent, pitched among other tents, at the thing; bog
iron, incidentally, is inferior to the iron of the south; the steel and iron of
the weapons of the men of Torvaldsland, interestingly, is almost uniformly of
southern origin; the iron extracted from bog ore is extensively used, however,
for agricultural implements. In the crowd, too, I saw some merchants, though few
of them, in their white and gold. I saw, too, four slavers, perfumed, in their
robes of blue and yellow silk, come north to buy women. I saw, by the cut of
their robes, they were from distant Turia. Forkbeard's girls shrank away from
them. They feared the perfumed, silken slavery of the south; in the south the
yoke of slavery is much heavier on a girl's neck; her bondage is much more
abject; she is often little more than a pleasure plaything of her master; it is
common for a southern master to care more for his pet sleen than his girls. In
the north, of course, it is common for a master to care more for his ship than
his girls. I saw, too, in the crowd, a physician, in green robes, from Ar and a
scribe from Cos. These cities are not on good terms but they, civilized men,
both in the far north, conversed affably. "Send that one to the platform!" cried
out a farmer, indicating Gunnhild. "To the platform!" roared Ivar Forkbeard. He
tore away her kirtle. Soon she, barefoot, was climbing the wooden steps to the
platform. This is a wooden walkway, about five feet wide and one hundred feet
long. On the walkway, back and forth, smiling, looking one way then the other,
turning about, parade stripped bond-maids. They are not for sale, though many
are sold from the platform. The platform is instituted for the pleasure of the
free men. It is not unanalogous to the talmit competitions, though no talmit is
awarded. There are judges, usually minor Jarls and slavers. No judge,
incidentally, is female. No female is regarded as competent to judge a female's
beauty; only a man, it is said, can do that. "Smile, you she-sleen!" roared the
Forkbeard. Gunhild smiled, and walked. No free woman, of course, would even
think of entering such a contest. All who walk on such a platform are slave
girls. At last only Gunnhild and the "silk girl", she who had worn earrings,
walked on the platform. And it was Gunnhild who was thrown the pastry, to the
delight of the crowds, shouting, pounding their spear blades on their wooden
shields. "Who owns her?" called the chief judge. "I do!" called the Forkbeard.
He was given a silver tarn disk as prize. Many were the bids on Gunnhild,
shouted from the crowd, but the Forkbeard waved such offers aside. The man
laughed. Clearly he wanted the wench for his own furs. Gunnhild was very proud.
"Kirtle yourself, wench," said the Forkbeard to Gunnhild, throwing her her
kirtle. She fixed it as it had been before, low on her hips, hitched above her
calves. At the foot of the steps leading down from the platform, the Forkbeard
stopped, and bowed low. I, too, bowed. The slave girls fell to their knees,
heads down, Gunnhild with them. "How shameful!" said the free woman, sternly.
The slave girls groveled at her feet. Slave girls fear free women muchly. It is
almost as if there were some unspoken war between them, almost as if they might
be mortal enemies. In such a war, or such an enmity, of course, the slave girl
is completely at the mercy of the free person; she is only slave. One of the
great fears of a slave girl is that she will be sold to a woman. Free women
treat their female slaves with incredible hatred and cruelty. Why this is I do
not know. Some say it is because they, the free women, envy the girls their
collars and wish that they, too, were collared, and at the complete mercy of
masters. Free women view the platform with stern disapproval; on it, female
beauty is displayed for the inspection of men; this, for some reason, outrages
them; perhaps they are furious because they cannot display their own beauty, or
that they are not themselves as beautiful as women found fit, by lusty men with
discerning eyes, for slavery; it is difficult to know what the truth is in such
matters; these matters are further complicated, particularly in the north, by
the conviction among free women that free women are above such things as sex,
and that only low and loose girls, and slaves, are interested in such matters;
free women of the north regard themselves as superior to sex; many are frigid,
at least until carried off and collared; they often insist that, even when they
have faces and figures that drive men wild, that it is their mind on which he
must concentrate his attentions; some free men, to their misery, and the perhaps
surprising irritation of the female, attempt to comply with this imperative;
they are fools enough to believe what such women claim is the truth about
themselves; they should listen instead to the dreams and fantasies of women, and
recall, for their instruction, the responses of a free woman, once collared,
squirming in the chains of a bond-maid. Thes
e teach us truths which many women
dare not speak and which, by others, are denied, interestingly, with a most
psychologically revealing hysteria and vehemence. "No woman," it is said, "knows
truly what she is until she has worn the collar." Some free women apparently
fear sex because they feel it lowers the woman. This is quite correct. In few,
if any, human relationships is there perfect equality. The subtle tensions of
dominance and submission, universal in the animal world, remain ineradicably in
our blood; they may be thwarted and frustrated but, thwarted and frustrated,
they will remain. It is the nature of the male, among the mammals, to dominate,
that of the female to submit. The fact that humans have minds does not cancel
the truths of the blood, but permits their enrichment and enhancement, their
expression in physical and psychological ecstasies far beyond the reach of
simpler organisms; the female slave submits to her master in a thousand
dimensions, in each of which she is his slave, in each of which he dominates
her. "Shameful!" cried the free woman. In the lowering of the woman, of course,
a common consequence of her helplessness in the arms of a powerful male, her
surrenderings, her being forced to submit, she finds, incredibly to some
perhaps, her freedom, her ecstasy, her fulfilment, her exaltation, her joy; in
the Gorean mind this matter is simple; it is the nature of the female to submit;
accordingly, it is natural that, when she is forced to acknowledge, accept,
express and reveal this nature, that she should be almost deliriously joyful,
and thankful, to her master; she has been taught her womanhood; no longer is she
a sexless, competitive pseudoman; she is then, as she was not before, female;
she then finds herself, perhaps for the first time, clearly differentiated from
the male, and vulnerably, joyfully, complementary to him; she has, of course, no
choice in this matter; it is not permitted her; collared, she submits; I know of
no group of women as joyful, as spontaneous, as loving and vital, as healthy and
beautiful, as excited, as free in their delights and emotions, as Gorean slave
girls; it is true they must live under the will of men, and must fear them, and
the lash of their whips, but, in spite of these things, they walk with a
sensuous beauty and pride; they know themselves owned; but they wear their
collars with a shameless audacity, a joy, an insolent pride that would
scandalize and frighten the bored, depressed, frustrated women of Earth. "I do
not approve of the platform," said the free woman, coldly. Forkbeard did not
respond to her, but regarded her with great deference. "These females," she
said, indicating the Forkbeard's girls, who knelt at her feet, their heads to
the turf, "could be better employed on your farm, dunging fields and making
butter." The free woman was a tall woman, large. She wore a great cape of fur,
of white sea-sleen, thrown back to reveal the whiteness of her arms. Her kirtle
was of the finest wool of Ar, dyed scarlet, with black trimmings. She wore two
brooches, both carved of the horn of kailiauk, mounted in gold. At her waist she
wore a jewelled scabbard, protruding from which I saw the ornamented, twisted
blade of a Turian dagger; free women in Torvaldsland commonly carry a knife; at
her belt, too, hung her scissors, and a ring of many keys, indicating that her
hall contained many chests or doors; her hair was worn high, wrapped about a
comb, matching the brooches, of the horn of kailiauk; the fact that her hair was
worn dressed indicated that she stood in companionship; the number of keys,
together with the scissors, indicated that she was mistress of a great house.
She had gray eyes; her hair was dark; her face was cold, and harsh. "But I am of
Ax Glacier," said the Forkbeard. In Ax Glacier country, of course, there were no
farms, and there were no verr or bosk, there being insufficient grazing.
Accordingly there would be little field dunging to be done, there being no
fields in the first place and no dung in the second; too, due to the absence of
verr or bosk, butter would be in scarce supply. The free woman, I could see, was
not much pleased with the Forkbeard's response. "Thorgeir, is it not?" she
asked. "Thorgeir of Ax Glacier," said the Forkbeard, bowing. "And what," asked
she. "would one of Ax Glacier need with all these miserable slaves?" She
indicated the kneeling girls of Forkbeard. "In Ax Glacier country," said the
Forkbeard, with great seriousness, "the night is six months long." "I see,"
smiled the woman. Then she said, "You have won talmits, have you not, Thorgeir
of Ax Glacier?" "Six," said he, "Lady." "Before you claim them," she said, "I
would recommend that you recall your true name." He bowed. Her recommendation
did not much please me. She lifted the hem of her kirtle of scarlet wool about
the ankles of her black shoes and turned away. She looked back, briefly, once.
She indicated the kneeling slaves. "Kirtle their shame," she said. Then strode
away, followed by several men-at-arms. "Kirtle your shame!" cried the Forkbeard.
His girls, quickly, frightened, tears in their eyes, drew about them as well as
they could their kirtles. They covered, as well as they could, their bodies,
having been shamed by the free woman. It is a common practice of free women, for
some reason, to attempt to make female slave ashamed of her body. "Who was
that?" I asked. "Bera," said he, "companion of Svein Blue Tooth." My heart sank.
"He should put her in a collar," said the Forkbeard. I was scandalized at the
very thought. "She needs the whip," he said. Then he looked at his girls. "What
have you done?" he asked. "Drop your kirtles, and hitch them up!" Laughing, once
more proud of their bodies, the girls of the Forkbeard insolently slung their
kirtles low on their hips, and hitched them high over their calves, even half
way up their delightful thighs. Then, we again continued on our way, leaving the
place of the platform, the place of Gunnhild's triumph, where she had received a
pastry, and where her master, the Forkbeard, had made a silver tarn disk on her
beauty. She gave the other girls crumbs of the pastry and permitted Dagmar, who
was to be sold off, to lick frosting from her fingers. In the bond-maid shed
there was a rustle of chain, as the girls looked up. Light filtered into the
shed from windows cut high in the wall on our right. The girls at, or knelt or
laid on straw along on our right. The shed is some two hundred feet long, about
ten feet wide, and eight feet in height. An officer of Svein Blue Tooth,
assisted by two thralls, quickly assessed Dagmar, stripping her, feeling her
body, the firmness of her breasts, looking in her mouth. "A tarn disk of
silver," he said. Dagmar had, two months ago, stolen a piece of cheese from
Pretty Ankles; she had been beaten for that, at the post; fastened there by
Ottar and switched by Pretty Ankles, until Pretty Ankles had tired of switching
her, too; she had not been found sufficiently pleasing by several of the
Forkbeard's oarsmen; she was, accordingly, to be sold off, as an inferior girl.
"Done," said the Forkbeard. Dagmar was sold. There were some one hundred
bond-maids for sale in t
he shed. They all wore collars of the north, with the
projecting iron ring. They were fastened by a single chain, but it was not
itself run through the projecting loop on their collars; rather, a heavy
padlock, passing through a link of the chain and the projecting loop, secured
them; in this way the chain, when a girl is taken from the chain, or added to
it, need not be drawn through any of the loops; the girls may thus, with
convenience, be spaced on the chain, removed from it, and added to it. The
Forkbeard was given the tarn disk, which he placed in his wallet. It had been
taken from a sack slung about the right wall. There, from one of several small
wooden boxes projecting an intervals from the wall, he took an opened padlock.
He then walked across the shed, still holding Dagmar by the arm, and threw her
to her knees. He then lifted the chain and, by means of the padlock, passing it
through the loop on her collar and a link in the chain, secured her. The
Forkbeard, meanwhile, was looking at the bond-maids. They were, of course,
stripped for the view of buyers. Behind the Forkbeard were myself, his men,
those bond-maids who had accompanied us, and the thrall, Tarsk, who had been
bought along, should the Forkbeard have made any heavy purchases. "My Jarl,"
said Thyri. "Yes," said the Forkbeard. "Should this thrall," she asked,
indicating Tarsk, once Wulfstan of Kassau, "be permitted to look upon the beauty
of the bond-maids?" "What do you mean?" asked Ivar Forkbeard. "He is, after
all," said thyri, "only a thrall." I wondered that she would deny the young man
this pleasure. I recalled that she had said she hated him. I, personally, had no
objection tohis presence in the shed. Thralls, I expected, had few pleasures. It
might have been more than a year since he had been permitted a female. The young
man looked upon the proud Thyri with great bitterness. She lifted her head, and
laughed. "I think," said Ivar Forkbeard, "that I will send him back to the
tent." "Excellent," she said. She smiled at the thrall. "Chain!" said the
Forkbeard. One of his men took from over his shoulder a looped chain. At each
end it terminated in a manacle. It had been held, looped, by these manacles
being locked into one another. He removed it from his shoulder and opened the