Norman, John - Gor 10 - Tribesmen of Gor.txt

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by Tribesmen of Gor [lit]


  other forms of training which have rather different manifest objectives. An

  obvious example is the stimulation-chamber training, which is overtly, concerned

  with honing a physical and psychological responsiveness to surface sensation,

  this responsiveness, however, is reflected in the entire attitude, and

  expressions, of the girl. One does not, so to speak, train the girl to “look

  vital”; rather one makes her vital; she then, perhaps without even understanding

  it, or thinking about it, looks vital.

  The girl knelt before the desk of the slave master. I sat to one side, in a

  curule chair. She knelt obediently, beautifully, as a pleasure slave. She was in

  the presence of free men. I saw her eyes briefly close, relishing the feel of

  the stone floor, as she knelt back on her heels, on her knees and the tops of

  her toes; I saw her body straighten itself, exposing itself, drinking in the

  atmosphere of the room. Her eyes were very much alive, very blue. She looked

  irritated.

  “What about such things,” I asked the slave master, “as giving pleasure to men.”

  “We have shown her some simple things,” he said, “about all she is now capable

  of.”

  “Have you taught her to dance?” I asked.

  “She is not yet ready to dance,” said the slave master.

  I looked at the girl, to detect how much of the conversation, in Gorean, she

  understood. Her grasp was imperfect. “Stand, Girl,” I said to her in Gorean.

  Gracefully she stood. I observed her.

  “Bracelets!” I said in Gorean, harshly.

  The girl snapped to position, hands behind the small of her back, head lifted,

  chin up, turned to the left. In such a posture she may be conveniently put in

  bracelets, and leashed.

  “Kneel,” I told her. Again she knelt, in the position of the pleasure slave.

  To one side, her arms folded, the quirt in her hand, in leather strips and

  halter, with collar and ring, with high-laced sandals, stood the large female

  slave, who had originally conducted the girl from the room, and had brought her

  back today. She smiled.

  I pointed to the stones at my feet. “Crawl,” I said, in Gorean.

  The girl slipped to her belly, and, as a slave girl, crawled to my feet. She put

  her lips to my foot; I felt her hair over it. “Return,” I told her. On her

  belly, head down, she returned to where she had knelt.

  “Kneel,” I said.

  Again she knelt in the position of the pleasure slave. Her eyes wire angry.

  Excellent, I thought to myself.

  “She has been diligent?” I asked the slave master.

  “Yes,” he said.

  I smiled. The girl had fallen into the rebellion of compliance. To avoid the

  deprivation of food, the whip, she obeyed perfectly, but outwardly. She was

  trying to retain an island in which she would be her own mistress. She thought

  she was deceiving us. I did not see that it was mine to do, but doubtless, in

  time, her master, when he wished, would shatter her, taking this island from

  her, making her completely a slave. For now, I thought I would let her think she

  was fooling us. Later, when a master wished, he would, when it pleased him, to

  her horror, break her totally to his will.

  I had little doubt that the lovely Alyena would one day, in the arms of a strong

  man, for whom I was saving her; become a true slave, adoringly and vulnerably

  the property of her master.

  I glanced to the large female slave, with the quirt, standing near the silver

  curtain.

  “Why are you not in slave silk?” I asked her.

  Her eyes flashed. Her hand clenched on the quirt.

  “She is useful in the pens,” said the slave master. “She terrorizes feminine

  girls.”

  I turned to Alyena. “What do you think,” I asked, in English, “of the female

  slave?”

  “I fear her,” whispered small, lovely Alyena.

  “Why,” I asked.

  “She is so strong, so hard,” said Alyena.

  “What you fear in her.” I said, “is masculinity, but it is not a true

  masculinity; it is fraudulent.” I looked down at her. “The masculinity you must

  learn to fear,” I told her, “is the masculinity of men.”

  “She is a match for any man,” said Alyena. Her eyes shone with pride.

  I turned to the slave master. “Fetch a male slave,” I said.

  One was brought. He was not a large fellow. He was however, an inch or so taller

  than the female slave.

  “You certify to me,” said I to the slave master, “that this man is neither

  clumsy nor stupid, nor drunk, nor an instructor in combat intent upon increasing

  the confidence of his pupils.”

  “It is so certified,” he smiled. “He is used in cleaning the pens. He is a

  drover who falsified the quality-markings on spice crates.”

  I placed a copper tarn disk on the desk of the slave master. “Fight,” I said to

  the slaves.

  “Fight,” said the slave master.

  The man looked puzzled. With a cry of rage, shrill and vicious, the female slave

  leapt toward him, slashing him across the face with the quirt. She struck him

  twice before he, angry, took the quirt from her and threw it aside.

  “Do not anger me,” he told her.

  He turned and caught her kick on his left thigh. She leapt at him, fingers like

  claws, to tear out his eyes. He seized her wrists. He turned her about. She

  could not move. Then, with considerable force, as she cried out with misery, he

  flung her, the length of her body, belly front, against the stone wall. He then

  stepped back, jerked her ankles from under her and flung her to the stones, and

  knelt across her back. She wept and struck the stones with her fists. Then her

  halter was removed and her hands pulled behind her and bound with it. He

  discarded her belt and the strips of leather. He removed her sandals. With one

  of the long, straplike laces, he crossed and bound her ankles. Then, angrily, he

  turned her collar, hurting her, with its ring, to the back. With the other

  straplike lace, run through the ring and tied to the binding on her ankles, he

  jerked her ankles up, high, fastening them there. Then he crouched over her and

  she lay bound at his feet. He turned her head, looking over her right shoulder,

  so that it faced him; he crouched so that she could not move; his right ankle

  was against her left cheek. He poised his thumbs, held downward, over her eyes.

  “I am a woman at your mercy,” she wept. “Please, Master, do not hurt me!”

  He looked to the slave master. The slave master came to where the woman lay. He

  looked down at her. He called two slaves from behind the silver curtain. They

  looked down at the woman. Then the slave master said, “Put her in slave silk,

  and give her to male slaves.”

  She was freed of the cord binding her ankles to her collar ring.

  She was jerked to her feet, and held there; she could not stand by herself for

  her feet were still crossed and bound. “Who are the masters,” asked the slave

  master of her.

  The woman, hair before her face, held upright by men, looked at Alyena. The

  woman trembled. “Men,” she whispered. “Men are the masters.” Alyena’s face

  turned white.

 
The woman was carried from the room, to the pens. For a silver tarsk I purchased

  the male slave, and freed him. “Stand,” I said to Alyena, who was trembling.

  I put the walking chains on her, which I had purchased a few days ago in the

  bazaar.

  I looked down into her eyes. “Who are the masters?” I asked.

  She looked up at me, angrily. Then she said, “Men--men are the masters.”

  I then left the office of the slave master of Tor, followed by the slave girl.

  On the back of the kaiila, on the road to the Oasis of Nine Wells, drowsily, I

  listened to the kaiila bells.

  It was in the late afternoon. We would stop in an Ahn or two for camp.

  Fires would be lit. The kaiila would be put in circles, ten animals to the

  circle, and fodder, by kaiila boys, would be thrown into the center of the

  circle.

  The tents would be pitched. The opening of the Tahari tent usually faces the

  east, that the morning sun may warm it. Gor, like the Earth, rotates to the

  east. The nights require, often, a heavy djellaba or an extra blanket. Many

  nomads build a small kaiila-dung fire in the tent, to smolder during the night,

  to warm their feet. I needed not do this, of course, for at my feet slept the

  former Miss Priscilla Blake-Allen, the girl, Alyena.

  At night the kaiila are hobbled. The slave girls, too, are hobbled. With the

  kaiila a simple figure-eight twist of kaiilahair rope, above the spreading paws,

  below the knees, is sufficient. A girl, of course, is chained. When finished

  with her, I would cross Alyena’s ankles and, with the walking chain, suitably

  shortened, chain them together. That way she could not stand. I would then throw

  her brief djellaba against the desert cold, and order her to a position of

  sleep. On the mat, toward morning, she would pull the hood over her face, fold

  her arms and pull up her legs, knees bent; the djellaba came far up her thighs;

  I would watch her sleeping, sometime, for she was quite beautiful. Once she

  opened her eyes. “Master,” she said. “Sleep, Slave,” I told her. “Yes, Master,”

  she said. In the morning I would unchain her early that she might, like the

  other slave girls in camp, be about her duties. Once she stole a date. I did not

  whip her. I chained her, arms over her head, back against the trunk, to a

  flahdah tree. I permitted nomad children to discomfit her. They are fiendish

  little beggars. They tickled her with the lanceolate leaves of the tree. They

  put honey about her, to attract the tiny black sand flies, which infest such

  water holes in the spring. When we would break camp, I would lift her to the

  kurdah, placing her within.

  I became aware of the pounding of kaiila pads on the dry surface. Suddenly I was

  alert, awake.

  I spun the kaiila, and stood in the stirrups.

  A man was riding by, the length of the caravan, one of the points. “Riders!” he

  cried. “Riders!”

  I could see them now, more than a hundred of them,

  sweeping toward us over the crest of one of the hills, to my left, the west.

  Their burnooses whipped behind them as they mounted the crest of the hill and,

  the animals half sliding, descended the other side, approaching us. Guards from

  our caravan were hastening outward to meet them. I stood in the stirrups. I saw

  no one approaching from other directions. There might be, of course, such

  delayed charges. Reassured I was to see points riding out about the caravan,

  outriders, to guard against such surprise. I saw Farouk, merchant and caravan

  master, ride by, burnoose swirling behind him, lance in hand. With him were six

  men. I saw drovers, holding the reins of their beasts, shading their eyes,

  looking over the dust to the west. One of the kinsmen of Farouk went to the

  kurdahs of slave girls, hobble chains at his saddle pommel; he would rein in

  before a kurdah, throw the girl the hobble and order her, “Shackle yourself”; he

  would wait the moment it took for the girl to snap the small ring about her

  right wrist and, behind her body, the larger one about her left ankle; the rings

  are separated by about six inches of chain; they are not sleeping hobbles, which

  confine only the ankles; then he would rush to the next kurdah, fling a hobble

  to the next girl, and repeat his command. I rode down the caravan until I came

  to Alyena’s kurdah. She thrust her head out, veiled, her fists holding apart the

  rep-cloth curtain.

  “What is going on?” she cried.

  “Be silent,” I told her. She looked frightened.

  “Stay within the kurdah, Slave,” I warned her. “And do not peer out.”

  “Yes, Master,” she said.

  I turned the kaiila, loosened the scimitar in the sheath.

  “They are Aretai!” cried a man.

  I thrust the scimitar back, deep, in the sheath.

  I saw, some hundred yards from the caravan, the riders reined up. With them I

  saw Farouk, conversing with their captain. The caravan guards, on nervous,

  prancing kaiila, were behind him. Lances were high, butts in the stirrup sheath,

  like needles against the hills.

  I rode my kaiila out a few steps, toward the men, then returned it to the

  caravan.

  “They are Aretai,” said one of the drovers. The caravan, I knew, was bound for

  the Oasis of Nine Wells. It was held by Suleiman, master of a thousand lances.

  He was high pasha of the Aretai.

  Several of the newcomers fanned out to flank the caravan, at large intervals. A

  cluster of them rode toward its head, another cluster toward its rear. Some

  twenty of them, with Farouk, and certain guards, began to work their way down

  the caravan, beast by beast, checking the drovers and kaiila tenders.

  “What are they doing?” I asked a nearby drover.

  “They are looking for Kavars,” he said.

  “What will they do with them if they find them?” I asked.

  “Kill them,” said the man.

  I watched the men, on their kaiila, accompanied by Farouk, the caravan master,

  moving, man by man, towards us.

  “They are the men of Suleiman,” said the drover, standing nearby, the rein of

  his kaiila in his hand. “They have come to give us escort to the Oasis of Nine

  Wells.”

  Closer came the men, stopping, starting, moving from one man to the next, down

  the long line. They were led by a captain, with a red-bordered burnoose. Several

  of them held their scimitars, unsheathed, across the leather of their saddles.

  “You are not a Kavar, are you?” asked the drover.

  “No,” I said.

  The riders were before us.

  The drover threw back the hood of his burnoose, and pulled down the veil about

  his face. Beneath the burnoose he wore a skullcap. The rep-cloth veil was red;

  it had been soaked in a primitive dye, mixed from water and the mashed roots of

  the telekint; when he perspired, it had run; his face was stained. He thrust

  back the sleeve of his trail shirt.

  The captain looked at me. “Sleeve,” he said. I thrust back the sleeve of my

  shirt, revealing my left forearm. It did not bear the blue scimitar, tattooed on

  the forearm of a Kavar boy at puberty.

  “He is not Kavar,” said Farouk. He made as though to urge his mount further down

  the line
.

  The captain did not turn his mount. He continued to look at me. “Who are you?”

  he asked.

  “I am not a Kavar,” I told him.

  “He calls himself Hakim, of Tor,” said Farouk.

  “Near the north gate of Tor,” said the captain, “there is a well. What is its

  name?”

  “There is no well near the north gate of Tor,” I told him.

  “What is the name of the well near the stalls of the saddlemakers?” asked the

  captain.

  “The well of the fourth passage hand,” I told him. Water, more than a century

  ago, had been struck there, during the fourth passage hand, in the third year of

  the Administrator Shiraz, then Bey of Tor.

  I was pleased that I had spent some days in Tor, before engaging in the lessons

  of the scimitar, learning the city. It is not wise to assume an identity which

  one cannot cognitively substantiate.

  “Your accent,” said the captain, “is not of Tor.

  “I was not always of Tor,” I told him. “Originally I was from the north.”

  “He is a Kavar spy,” said one of the lieutenants, at the side of the captain.

  “Why are you bound for the Oasis of Nine Wells?” asked the captain.

  “I have gems to sell Suleiman, your master,” said I, “for bricks of pressed

  dates.”

  “Let us kill him,” urged the lieutenant.

  “Is this your kurdah?” asked the captain, gesturing to the kurdah on the nearby

  kaiila.

  “Yes,” I said.

  In making their examination of the caravan they had, with their scimitars,

  opened the curtains of the kurdahs, for there might have been Kavars concealed

  therein. They had found, however, only girls, slaves, their right wrists and

  left ankles locked in five-link slave hobbles.

  “What is in it?” he asked.

  “Only a slave girl,” I told him.

  He pressed his kaiila to the kurdah, and, with the tip of his scimitar, prepared

  to lift back the curtain to his right.

  My scimitar, blade to blade, blocked his.

  The men tensed. Fists clenched on the hilts of scimitars.

  Lances were lowered.

  “Perhaps you conceal within a Kavar?” asked the captain.

  With my own scimitar tip I brushed back the curtain. In the kurdah, kneeling,

  frightened, naked save for collar and veil, the girl shrank back.

  “Thigh,” said the captain.

  The girl turned her left thigh to him, showing her brand. “It is only a slave

 

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