Mercenaries of Gor

by Norman, John;

  “Enter,” said the woman. “Enter the Tunnels.” She was sitting on a stool outside.

  I lowered my head and entered through the small iron door, and began to descend a dimly lighted ramp to the interior. At the foot of the ramp there was another woman.

  “It is a tarsk bit,” she said.

  I put a tarsk bit into the copper bowl on the small table near her. To the woman’s right was a barred gate. It was now open. Such gates are common in such establishments. They are generally open when the business is open, and closed when the business is closed. On the other side of the threshold hung a heavy curtain of red velvet.

  The Tunnels was one of the slave brothels of Ludmilla, for whose establishments the street, the Alley of the Slave Brothels of Ludmilla, is named. She does not own all the brothels on the street, incidentally, nor the best of them, in my opinion, nor even the majority of them. It is only that several of them, five, to be exact, are owned by her, whereas no other entrepreneur owns more than two, this accounting apparently for the derivation of the name. Her brothels, if it is of interest are the Chains of Gold, supposedly her best, costing at any rate a copper tarsk for admission, and, all cheap tarsk-bit brothels, the Silken Cords, the Scarlet Whip, the Slave Racks, and the Tunnels. On this street, too, of course, among many other sorts of establishments, such as shops and stalls, and smaller residences, are several insulae, among them the insula of Achiates.

  I moved to the curtain and brushed it aside.

  “Welcome,” said a woman. “Welcome to the Tunnels.”

  I stepped within, permitting the curtain to fall back behind me.

  “Come this way,” she said.

  She was a large, strong woman, rather straight in body and coarse in feature. She was clad in brief leather. It was suggestive of that of a warrior. She wore armlets and bracelets. She carried a whip. Such is useful in keeping the slaves in line.

  “This way,” she said.

  I followed her, threading my way amongst the small tables, and the mats, and the slave rings and clutching, moving, intertwined bodies, to a small table. I heard gasping, and a small cry of pain, and then a small cry of submission, and the movement of a chain on tiles. The room was crowded, but not too crowded. I heard conversation. Some musicians were playing in the half darkness. Some of these brothels are really not that much different from certain paga taverns. There, too, of course, girls go with the drinks, though dancers are commonly extra. The table was in the second row, or so, from the front of the room, where there was something of an open space. The musicians were on the right side of this, as I faced them. It was not easy to see at first. The room was illuminated, insofar as it was, with a soft, flickering, reddish light, the result of the flames of tiny tharlarion-oil lamps set in narrow red-glass enclosures on certain of the tables. In such a light, of course, interesting colorations, subtle, soft, constantly changing reddish hues, ranging, depending on the color of the glass and the mix of the lights, from dark, rose-colored pinks to creamy crimsons, are imparted to the flesh of white-skinned slaves. Too, there were many dark places and shadows. Some men are fond of privacy in such a place.

  “Is this satisfactory?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said, sitting down, cross-legged, behind the small table.

  “Oh!” said a woman, near me, half rearing up on a mat, and I saw her eyes, startled, for an instant, and that she was blond, and that her flesh appeared interesting in the light, and then she, the chain on her neck fastening her to the slave ring near the mat, was thrust back on the mat. “Oh, yes!” she cried. “Yes, Master!”

  “Are you he called Tarl, of Port Kar?” asked the woman who had conducted me to my place.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I was told to watch for such a person,” she said.

  “Who told you?” I asked. I had come to the Tunnels in response to a message, delivered to me by Achiates, the owner of the insula in which Hurtha and I were rooming. He had, it seemed, if he were telling the truth, and I had no particular reason to doubt it, found the message thrust under his door.

  She looked about. “I do not see him here now,” she said. “Are you this Tarl of Port Kar?”

  “I am called Bosk,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said. This information did not seem to make much difference to her, one way or the other. I watched her. She did not, as far as I could tell, glance at any particular person, nor in any particular direction. I detected nothing unusual. I did not think, in any case, she would be more than the conveyor of a message.

  I looked about. Various folks had entered after us. They, too, in their turns, were being seated. There were two or three hostesses, clad and accoutered similarly to mine.

  One fellow was carrying a large sack over his shoulder. Even in the dim light certain curvatures seemed suggested within the sack. Too, there was a squirming within it which suggested that its occupant was bound. He was speaking to one of the hostesses.

  “What is that?” I asked my hostess.

  “It is a joke,” she said. “He has captured a free female. We will strip her and put her back in one of the tunnel alcoves. Her wrists will be braceleted behind her, chained to a slave ring. She will be unable to speak, being perfectly gagged. She will be left there in the darkness, helpless.”

  “But she might be used,” I said.

  “It is not impossible,” she said. “It is a matter of chance. Access to her will be as unrestricted as that to a slave.”

  “Do you approve of such things?” I asked.

  “If she is a feminine female,” she said, “of course. Such belong to men.”

  “It is a splendid joke,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “What is done with them later?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “We just put them out naked in the back, in the morning. If they have been used, however, we tie their hands behind their back and, on a cord about their waist, suspend a punched tarsk bit on their belly.”

  “That there will be no doubt as to what has befallen her?”

  “Yes.”

  “And perhaps that the coin will seem a comment on her worth.”

  “Yes,” said the woman.

  As the reader may have gathered, the tarsk bit is a coin of little value. Indeed, in most Gorean cities, as far as I know, it is the least-valuable coin in common circulation. That is certainly the case in Ar, in Ko-ro-ba, in Brundisium, in Venna, in Harfax and so on.

  “Why would someone do this sort of thing to a free woman?” I asked.

  “Perhaps they found her displeasing in some way,” she said, “and thought it might do her a bit of good, to discover something about what it is to be a female.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “There she goes,” said the woman. “She is being taken into one of the tunnel alcoves now.” There are small exits from the larger room, on the other side of the open space, that lead to various tunnels, off of which may be found cells and alcoves. From such tunnels the establishment, of course, derives its name.

  “Yes,” I said. We watched the fellow crouch down and enter one of the small openings, the sack now, with its helpless, squirming occupant, dragging behind him. One cannot, on the whole, stand upright in the tunnels. Sometimes one must actually crawl.

  The musicians had now stopped playing.

  “Are you interested in free females?” she asked.

  “Not particularly,” I said.

  “Let us show you one,” she said. “Esne,” she called. “Bring Lady Labiena.”

  In a few moments one of the hostesses had emerged from a side door leading a lovely woman, barefoot, in a wrap-around tunic, on a neck chain. She was brought to my table where, unbidden, she knelt.

  “She is attractive, is she not?” asked my hostess.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “She is a captive free woman,” said my hostess. “We are keeping her for a friend.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “Open your tunic,” sai
d my hostess.

  The woman parted her tunic, and held it to the sides.

  “She is pretty, isn’t she?” asked my hostess.

  “Yes,” I said. “Widen your knees,” I told the woman.

  She did so, continuing to hold her tunic open.

  “Are you sure she is free?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said my hostess.

  I regarded the woman. “It seems she might as well be a slave,” I said.

  The woman threw me a look of gratitude.

  “No, she is free,” said my hostess, “though now, to be sure, she doubtless has some notion of what a slave’s life might be like.”

  “One can have no adequate notion of that,” I said, “until one has been truly enslaved.”

  “True,” said my hostess.

  “What is your life like here?” I asked the woman.

  “I wear a neck chain,” she said.

  “I see,” I said.

  “You may lower your hands, but do not close your tunic,” said my hostess.

  “In what manner does she serve here, in this house?” I asked. To be sure she was barefoot, and was naked but for a tunic, and had a chain on her neck. These things suggested some answers to my question.

  “Much as a slave, but with little of their skill,” said my hostess.

  “They will not tell me their secrets,” said the woman.

  “They have been ordered not to do so,” said my hostess, “our orders countermanding any which she might give them.”

  “But they are pleased not to tell me!” she wept.

  “Of course,” said my hostess. “They are slaves, and you are merely free. Too, the secrets of slaves are perhaps best kept between themselves and their masters.”

  “We will not even give her training,” said the hostess who had brought her in.

  “That has cost me many beatings,” said the free woman.

  “Why not train her?” I asked.

  “Training would be inappropriate for her, as she is a free woman,” said my hostess. “Too, it might scandalize and horrify her. We would certainly not want that. Too, it is not likely that it would even be fully meaningful to her, as she is free, and would thus not be able to understand it as it is meant to be understood, in the helpless depths of an owned belly.”

  “Is she being held for ransom?” I asked.

  “No,” said my hostess. “But that was your hope, in the beginning, was it not, Lady Labiena?”

  “No,” said the woman, putting her head down.

  “But when it was learned that she had been so foolish as to have permitted herself to be captured,” said my hostess, “she was cast off by her family, and sworn from the Home Stone.”

  I doubted that she had been foolish, so perhaps she had been, on some level, reckless or careless, perhaps reluctant to take certain precautions, had perhaps, as the saying is, “courted the collar.”

  I wondered who had captured her, and why he had not enslaved her or sold her.

  I wondered if she knew who had captured her.

  Why was she here, truly?

  What was she doing here, truly?

  “My life as a free person was unsatisfactory to me,” said the woman.

  “Watch your tongue, prisoner,” said the female holding her neck chain.

  “It seems now,” I said, “that you are neither fully a free person nor a slave.”

  “It amuses them,” she said, “to keep me as a free person in their power, for their customers.”

  “Occasionally such women are available in these places,” I said.

  “You do not know what I have done here,” she said, looking up, “what I have been made to do!”

  “I can speculate,” I assured her.

  “But much of what she has done here,” said the woman holding her neck chain, “has been simply servile. For example, we enjoy having her naked, on all fours, on a chain, scrubbing floors.”

  “But surely she has been put upon occasion to the uses of your customers,” I said.

  “Of course,” said the woman holding the neck chain, “have you not, Lady Labiena?”

  “Yes,” said the kneeling woman, her knees wide, her tunic parted.

  I regarded her.

  “But I have learned things here,” she said, “that I never dreamed of as a free woman. I have been able to sense here the ecstasies of bondage, the ecstasies of a life obligatorily sensual, a life under strict discipline, a life where I must obey, a life where I will, and must, surrender myself totally and, subject to penalties, and even death, if I am displeasing, live thenceforth solely for service and love.”

  “You sing the joys of a love slave, surely,” I said, “not the woes of a woman who must crawl beneath the whip of a hated master.”

  In Gorean parlance this is more than a simple metaphor. Sometimes the whip is held low, horizontally, level with the floor, and the slave, on all fours, or on her belly, given the elevation of the whip, must crawl beneath it. It is an obvious submission behavior. Too, its symbolism is obvious: female beneath the whip. Often the whip is allowed to brush her back. It does her good to feel it. It reminds her that it may be used upon her.

  I personally favor having the female kneel and kiss the whip. This is also an obvious submission behavior, and has its obvious symbolism. The kneeling is lovely, and meaningful, and the kissing of the whip indicates reverence for the institution in which she is implicated, in a generic sense, and for the authority of the particular male whose whip it is, and expresses the slave’s gratitude for the domination to which she is subjected, and her gratitude to the male for keeping her, and for deigning to own and master her.

  Sometimes in her first kissing of the whip the female, whether of Earth or Gor, finds herself succumbing to an overwhelming psychological transformation. The floodgates of emotion and need are flung open. She has the sense, sometimes tenderly and gently, sometimes tremblingly, sometimes shaking, with sobs and tears, that she has at last come home to herself, that she has at last discovered herself, that she is now, for the first time in her life, fully free, though she is helpless, though she is kneeling, though she is naked, though she is perhaps thonged or chained, the sense that she is at last fully free. She has the sense then that she is where she wants to be, and as she wants to be, at a man’s feet, as his slave.

  To be sure, this can sometimes be traumatic.

  Doubtless many Earth girls brought to Gor are confused and terrified when first forced to kneel naked before a man in a slaver’s house and kiss the whip, part of readying them for the markets. But even they have doubtless some sense of its meaning and gather from this act some sense of how they are now viewed, and what, on this remarkable world, they shall soon be.

  But they soon learn their collars.

  They sell well on Gor.

  It is said they make superb slaves. Their native world denied them their womanhood. Their new world, to which they have been brought as little more than cattle, requires it of them.

  “Do you not think a love slave crawls fearfully beneath the whip of her master?” she asked.

  “Of course, she does,” I said. “She is a slave, like any other slave, and is accordingly to be treated as one. Indeed, it is especially important to keep such a slave under a full discipline, for she is such a treasure that there is sometimes a temptation to let her off too easily. This tendency must be guarded against. It can undermine the lovely exactitudes of the master/slave relationship. Accordingly, if she should become lax or imperfect in her service, in even a tiny way, or if she should prove at some time to be less than fully pleasing, in any way, perhaps only in a slight way, perhaps detectable only by her master, let her be punished, and well, as much, or more, than any other slave.”

  The woman lowered her eyes, unwilling to meet mine. She shuddered.

  “The love slave is still a slave, of course,” I said, “and, as any slave, must fear the whip. She, too, as any other slave, must be concerned to be fully pleasing.”

  “Ye
s,” said the woman.

  “Indeed,” I said, “she is perhaps more a slave than any other.”

  The woman kept her head down.

  “Do you understand?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Lift your head.”

  She lifted her head. Her eyes were moist.

  “Do you understand?” I asked.

  “Yes,” whispered the woman. “Yes!”

  “—For she is held in her bondage by the strongest of all bonds, that of love.”

  “Yes!” she said.

  “It is stronger than the chain on your neck,” I said.

  “I know,” she said.

  “It must then be very strong,” laughed the woman who held her chain. She gave it a tug, jerking it against the side of the woman’s neck.

  “It is,” I said.

  “They give me to anyone here,” said the woman. “Some are hideous, some smell, in the fetid breath of some I almost choke and die, and yet I must serve them, unquestioningly, although a free woman, according to whatever their dictates and whims.”

  I regarded the woman.

  “I want a private master,” she said. “I want my own master.”

  “It is a natural desire on the part of a female,” I said.

  Then she looked up, suddenly, piteously, at the woman who was holding her neck chain. “I want a collar,” she said to her. “You know that. I have begged for it. Why will you not give me a collar? You have made me, in effect, a slave. Now I am good for nothing else. I have learned too much! Why deny me the mark, the collar? Why do you so shame me? Put me in a collar, that what I now know I am may be proclaimed to the world! I want to be sold! I want to find a master! I am ready to serve, and fully!”