changed his garments. He no longer wore the white of the high Pasha of the
Kavars but simpler garments, those which might have befitted Hassan, the outlaw
of the Tahari.
“Lift your head Beauty,” said I, gently putting the point of the scimitar
beneath her chin, lifting it.
She looked at Hassan, incredibly beautiful, her cheeks stained with tears.
“This is Tarna,” I said.
“So beautiful?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“The capture is yours,” said Hassan. “Put a rope on her neck.
Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars, and Suleiman, high Pasha of the Aretai, are
eager to see her.”
I smiled. From within my sash I found a length of prisoner rope. It was coarse
rope.
“Doubtless,” said Hassan, “Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars, and Suleiman, high
Pasha of the Aretai, will pay a high reward to the man who brings Tarna before
them.”
“Doubtless,” I said.
“I have heard them crying out for her,” said Hassan.
I knotted the rope about the beauty’s neck. She was mine.
Hassan looked down upon the stripped, tethered beauty.
“I do not want to die,” she suddenly cried. “I do not want to die!”
She put her head down, in her hands. She wept.
“The punishment for breaking a well,” said Hassan, “is not light.”
Tarna, shuddering, wept, her head to the floor, my rope on her neck.
“Come, Female,” I said. I jerked her head up, by the rope. “We must go to see
the Pashas.”
“Is there no escape?” she wept.
“There is no escape for you,” I said. “You have been taken.”
“Yes,” she said, numbly, “I have been taken.”
“Are you thinking, Hassan,” I asked, “what I am? That there might be one hope
for her life?”
“Perhaps,” grinned Hassan.
“What?” cried Tama. “What!”
“No,” I said. “It is too horrifying.”
“What!” she cried.
“Forget it,” I said.
“Forget it,” agreed Hassan. “You would never approve. You are too proud, too
noble and fine.”
I jerked on the rope, as though to draw Tarna to her feet, in order to lead her
to the presence of the Pashas.
“What!” she cried.
“Better torture and impalement on the walls of the kasbah at Nine Wells,” said
Hassan.
“What?” wept Tarna.
“It is too horrifying, too terrible, too utterly degrading, too sensual,” I
said.
“What?” wept the tethered beauty. “Oh, what?”
“On the lower levels,” said Hassan, “I understand that slave girls are kept.”
“Yes,” said Tarna “for the pleasures of my men.”
“You no longer have men,” I reminded her.
“I see!” cried Tarna. “I might be slipped among them!”
“It is a chance,” admitted Hassan.
“But I am not branded!” wept Tarna.
“That can be arranged,” said Hassan.
She looked at him with horror. “But then,” she said, “I would truly be a slave.”
“I knew you would not approve,” said Hassan.
I jerked at the rope on the beauty’s neck. Her chin was pulled up. The knot was
under her jaw on the right, turning her head to the left. “No,” she said. “No!”
We looked at her.
“Make Me a slave,” she whispered. “Please! Please!”
“There will be much risk,” said Hassan. “If Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars,
should hear of this, he might skin me alive.”
“Please!” wept Tama.
“It will not be easy,” I said.
“Please, Please!” she wept.
“How should we go about this?” I asked.
“One thing,” said Hassan, “prisoner rope is not appropriate. She must be put on
a wrist tether.”
“I see little problem in this,” I said.
“A more serious problem,” be said, “will occur in leading her through the
halls.”
“I can walk with my head down, as a slave,” said Tarna.
“Most female slaves,” said Hassan, “walk very proudly. They are proud of their
slavery, and their mastery by men, They have learned their womanhood. It has
been taught to them. In their way, though imbonded, totally, I suppose they are
the truest and freest of women. They are closest, perhaps, to the essentials of
the female, those of subservience to the masculine will, obedience, service and
pleasure. In being most themselves, utter slave, they are most free. This is
paradoxical, to be sure. Most girls, verbally, will object to slavery, but this
half-hearted, pouting, ineffectual rhetoric is belied by the joy of their
behavior. No girl who has not been a slave can understand the joy of it, the
profundity and freedom. The objections of girls to slavery, I have noted, are
usually not objections to the institution which, in the sweet heat of their
bodies, they love dearly, and fear only to lose, but to a given master. Given
the proper master they are quite content, in the proper collar a woman is serene
and joyful.”
“Are slave girls truly proud?” asked Tama.
“Most,” said Hassan. “You may think only of have dominated, or seraglio
mistresses, presiding over weaklings. But have you seen girls, truly, before
men?”
“In a cafe, once,” she said, “I saw a girl dance before men. She was scandalous!
And the girls, too, who served in the cafe! Shameful! Scandalous!”
“Speak with care,” said Hassan, “Girl, for someday you, too, may so dance and
serve.”
Tarna turned white.
“Did the girls seem proud?” asked Hassan.
“Yes,” said Tarna, sullenly. “But why should they have been proud?”
“They were proud of their bodies, their feelings, their desirability,” said
Hassan, “and proud, too, of their masters, who had the will and power to put
them in a collar and keep them there, because it pleased him to do so.”
“How strong such men must be,” whispered Tarna.
“Too,” said Hassan, “undeniable females, secure in their sexuality, it was
difficult not for them to be proud. Too, joy can make girls proud.”
“But why, why,” wept Tarna, “should they be proud?”
Hassan shrugged. “Because they knew themselves to be the most perfect and
profound of women,” he said. “That is why they are proud.” Hassan laughed.
“Sometimes,” he said, “girls grow so proud it is necessary to whip them, to
remind them that they are only slaves.”
“I can walk proudly,” said Tarna. “Lead me through the halls.” She rose to her
feet, and stood before us.
“There is a difference,” laughed Hassan, “between the pride of a free woman and
the pride of the slave girl, The pride of a free woman is the pride of a woman
who feels herself to be the equal of a man. The pride of the slave girl is the
pride of the girl who knows that no other woman is the equal of herself.”
Tarna suddenly shuddered, inadvertently, with pleasure. I could see that this
insight had thrilled her to the quick.
“You are no longer competing with men,” said Hassan. “You are now something
different.”
; “Yes, yes!” suddenly whispered Tarna. “I see! I am different! I am not the
same!” She looked at us. “Suddenly. “ she said, “for the first time I love the
thought of not being the same. “
“It is a start,” said Hassan.
“Do you think she is fit to be led through the halls?” I asked. I could hear men
shouting outside. There was singing, the sounds of carousing.
“She cannot yet walk like, or truly seem a slave girl,” said Hassan, “for she is
not yet a slave girl, but if little attention is paid, we may have a chance.” He
turned to the captive. “How do you look upon men, Wench?” he asked. “How do you
meet their eyes?”
Tarna gazed upon him.
Hassan moaned. “We shall lose our heads,” he said.
I dragged Tarna by the rope to her vast couch, and flung her to the yellow
cushions. At the head of the couch I tied the rope which was knotted on her
neck. She could not rise more than a foot from the cushions. She twisted on the
cushions, turning to look at me. “What are you going to do with me?” she asked,
horrified.
Hassan grinned. “She is your capture,” he said. “First capture rights are
yours.”
Tarna cried out with misery.
In a short time, we led Tarna through the balls of the kasbah. We had taken the
prisoner rope from her neck, to conceal the fact that she was a free prisoner. I
led her by a wrist tether, her wrists crossed and bound, and the tether running
to my hand. Sometimes I pulled her abruptly, making her stumble, or run or fall.
I did this for three reasons; it concealed her awkwardness; I was in a hurry;
and it pleased me. The wrist tether was from the cords holding the hangings in
her room. The cords were not such that they could be easily identified.
“Are these cords such that they are unique to your quarters?” I had asked her.
“No,” she had said. “No.” I had then bound her with them.
“Is she not much too clean?” asked Hassan.
I looked at the bound girl. “Yes,” I said. Then I said to the girl, “Down, down
on the floor, on your belly and back, roll.”
She looked at us angrily, but then complied. When she stood again before us,
Hassan took soot from one of the tharlarion-oil lamps and rubbed it, here and
there, on her body. He then took some tharlarion-oil and, as she shuddered,
poured and rubbed it on her left shoulder.
“Of great danger to us now,” said Hassan, “is her lack of a brand.”
“Unless you have an iron with you,” I said, “there is not much helping that at
the moment.”
Still the problem was serious. Girls are branded prominently, usually on the
left or right thigh. The brand on a slave girl is not something for which, when
the wench is stripped, one must hunt. If it were noted, in our journey to the
lower levels, that the woman we led was unmarked, it would be assumed that she
was free. This would excite curiosity, and would be sure to be later recalled.
Tarna, of course, would be unmarked. Indeed, she would be likely to be the only
unmarked female in the kasbah.
I tore down one of the hangings, a yellow one, and ripped a narrow strip from
it. I wound this about the girl’s thighs, low, to reveal her navel. It is called
the slave belly. On Gor it is only slave girls who expose, their navels. But the
cloth would cover the area, on either hip, which be the likely site of the
incised slave mark.
“It might be better,” said Hassan, studying the beauty, “if she were completely
stripped.”
“Not without a brand,” I said.
“You are right,” said Hassan. “We cannot risk it.”
“Let them assume,” I suggested, “that we are leading her to someone to whom we
are giving her, and that we wish to tear off her last veil, to her horror, only
before her new master.”
“Excellent,” said Hassan. “It is at least plausible.”
“It will have to do,” I said.
“Please,” said Tarna. “Lift the cloth to cover my navel.”
I thrust the cloth down, another inch on her hips. She shook with anger, but was
silent. She did not much approve either when Hassan cleaned his hands on the
cloth about her hips. This dirtied the cloth, making it more fitting to be worn
about the hips of a slave; too, of course, it removed the soot from his hands,
from the tharlarion-oil lamp.
As we had led her through carousing soldiers, many of them reached for the girl,
whom they assumed, as we had intended, was slave. “Oh,” she cried. “Oh!” She
found herself much caressed, with the rude familiarity with which a slave girl
is handled.
“Hurry, Slave,” I barked at her. She did not even know enough to say, “Yes,
Master.” I did not lead her gently. At last, to my relief, we reached the door
leading to the lower levels.
“Did you see them look at me?” she asked. “Is this what it is to be a slave
girl?”
We did not respond to her. Hassan threw back the heavy door. I removed the bonds
from the girl, and threw them aside. I took her by the arm and, Hassan preceding
us, I conducted her down the curving, narrow, worn stairs, deep below the
kasbah.
We had brought her safely through the halls. This pleased me.
I have little doubt that our success in this matter was largely to be attributed
to what Tarna, stripped and roped back by the neck, had learned on her own
couch. There is a great deal of difference in the way that various sorts of
women relate to men and look upon them. These differences tend often to be
functions of what their experiences have been with men. For example, do they
regard themselves as the equals of men, or their superiors? Or, have they been
taught, forcibly and clearly, that they are not the dominant organism? Have they
been put, helpless, beneath the Will of a male? Have they learned their
delicious vulnerability, that they are the male’s victim and prey, his pleasure
and delight? And have they learned, to their helpless horror and joy, the
fantastic things he can do to their body?
“How do you look upon men, Wench?” Hassan had asked. “How do you meet their
eyes?” he had asked.
And Tarna had gazed upon him.
He had moaned. “We shall lose our heads,” he had said.
I had then dragged her by the neck to her own couch, that swift instruction be
administered to her.
She had thousands of pasangs to go, but we had made a start with her, enough to
get her through the halls.
I had seen her react as we had dragged her through the soldiers. She was not
then the Tarna of old. She was a woman who had been taught what men could do
with her.
I heard singing, shouting, from below, too. We descended four levels, until we
reached the bottom level. Tarna looked sick.
“The smell,” she said. A drunken soldier, carrying a bottle, brushed against us.
I let her throw up, twice, in the hall. Then I pushed her ahead of me, holding
her by the arm, stumbling through the straw and slime down the corridor. She
cried out, miserably, as an urt scurried past, brushing her ankle. We looked
through one cell door, swung open
. It led into a large, long, narrow room.
Against the far wall, chained by the neck, on straw, were more than a hundred
slave girls. Soldiers, many drunken, sported with them. Some, holding the slaves
in their left arm, forced wine from bottles down their throats. Some of the
girls squirmed, eagerly, their hands on the bottles. Others, at the end of their
chain and collar, on their knees, held out their hands. “Wine, Master, please!”
they cried. They did not bargain, as might have a desperate free woman,
“Anything for a sip of wine, Noble Sir!” for they were slave girls. Anything
could, and would, be demanded of them, and for nothing. They were slave.
“How horrid men are,” moaned Tarna.
“Speak with care,” warned Hassan, “for soon, as much as any slut at the wall,
you will belong to them.”
Tarna threw back her head, and moaned.
“It is here,” said Hassan. He moved back the heavy iron door and we entered the
room. I looked about, at the chains and devices. Tarna shrank back. She could
not run, for my hand was on her arm. She seemed faint. I steadied her. It was
dark in the room, except for a small tharlarion-oil lamp on a chain in one
corner, and a brazier, glowing, near the branding rack. Hassan stirred the coals
in the brazier. In a large kasbah irons are kept always hot. The slaves know
this.
I ripped the bit of cloth away from her hips and threw her against the rack. I
swung shut the two heavy bands and with the two twist handles, tightened them on
her thigh. She turned; trying to pound at the metal that held her. I took her
wrists and pulled them forward, to the two posts, some six inches apart, part of
the branding rack, putting them in the snap bracelets, which dangled there, one
from each post. These are simple mechanisms. It is quite easy to open and shut
them, and it may be done with a snap of the finger, one for each bracelet. As
the bracelets are situated, some inches apart, of course, and as the snap is on
each bracelet itself, at the wrist, the girl herself cannot get her finger, of
either hand, on the mechanism. Others may open them easily; she, on the other
hand, is perfectly held. I took again the twist handles. I turned them extremely
tightly. “Oh, oh,” she cried. She pulled futilely at the snap bracelets. Then I
again turned the twist handles. “Please!” she cried. “Be quiet,” I told her. She
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