"Yes, Master."
I regarded her.
"Master?" she asked.
"I am thinking that since we do not own you that perhaps it might be fitting if your discipline were decided by your master, the noble Appanius."
"Please, no, Master!" she said.
"It would be easy enough," I said, "to strip you and tie your hands behind your back, and then write upon your body some brief but suitable message."
She seemed to pale beneath her burns.
"The left breast, as you know," I said, "is the usual place for such messages." This is, one supposes, because most masters are right-handed.
"Please do not inform my master, Appanius!" she wept.
"You seem to fear him," I said.
"Yes!" she wept.
"It is good for a girl to fear her master," I said.
"You do not understand!" she said. "I have already it seems muchly displeased him. Already I have been shorn and put in the fields! If I gave him further cause for displeasure I do not know what he would do with me!"
"You might be whipped?" I said.
"He might have me thrown to the eels in his pool!" she said.
"Have no fear," I said, "you have been helpful and cooperative, and I have obtained much of value from our conversation, more doubtless than you understand. Similarly, as this is the first time we have met, at least formally, I am inclined, somewhat against my better judgment, to be initially lenient. It might be pointed out, for example, that you did not know the sort of men we were. Perhaps some men ignore lies in a slave, pretending not to notice them, or, mistakenly, graciously accept them as trivial, as merely a girl's peccadilloes. But we are not such men. We are not patient with such things. Even had you lied about something as small as a candy or pastry we would not have accepted it. We approve of, and expect, truth from a slave. In short, had you known the sort of men we are, it is my speculation that you would not have lied to us."
"No, Master," she said.
"But, as I have suggested, I am inclined to be lenient, in this first offense."
"Thank you, Master," she said.
"Also, of course," I said, "we are not your master, and it seems that serious or grievous disciplines should be the prerogative of the master. These prerogatives we do not desire to usurp."
"No, Master!" she said.
"Accordingly," I said, "your discipline is to be light."
"Thank you, Master!" she said.
I then lashed her head back and forth, first with the palm of my right hand, and then its back. Then, with the last backhand stroke, I struck her from her knees, to her side, and she was lying on her side, twisted, her palms down in the white dust. She looked back at me, disbelievingly, startled, tears in her eyes, over her right shoulder.
"Position," I said.
She crawled back to where she had knelt, and resumed her former position, her head bowed.
I walked about her and then crouched before her.
I put my hand under her chin and lifted it. Her face was red from the cuffing. There were tears on her cheeks. Her lip was swollen. There was some blood at the side of her face. I removed my hand, and let her once again lower her head.
"Oh!" she said.
"You have a good belly," I said.
"Ai," she said, softly.
"And an excellent figure," I said.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, softly, helplessly.
I removed my left hand from the small of her back, where I had held it, that she might not draw back more than I would permit. "And you have at least the glimmerings of slave vitality," I said.
She moaned.
"You are not going to lie to us again, are you?" I asked.
"No, Master!" she sobbed.
I then rose to my feet and stepped back a little.
She squirmed a little. "May I speak?" she begged.
"Yes," I said.
"That was light discipline?" she asked.
"Yes," I said, "naught but a mere cuffing."
Normally, or course, one cuffs with a single blow. She had, however, lied. Even so, I had, of course, pulled the strokes. One does not wish to injure the slave, only punish her. Had I struck her heavily, with the force easily summonable by a strong man, I might have broken her neck.
"I am sorry, if I have displeased Masters," she said.
I did not speak.
"But Masters are wrong in one thing," she said.
"What is that?" I asked.
"I have in me more than the glimmerings of slave vitality," she said.
"It seems so to you now," I said, "but in some months, when you are truly helpless under the lash of your needs, and you understand the prison in which they have placed you, you will better understand my words."
"Even so!" she wept.
Her eyes pleaded with me.
"You may break position," I said.
She flung herself to her belly before me, and pressed her lips to my feet. "Please," she said. "Please!"
"You grovel as a slave," I said.
"I am no longer a free woman," she said. "I no longer have to pretend. I no longer have to lie."
I looked down at her, pondering her needs. Her lips were soft on my feet, timid, petitioning.
"I am now half naked and in a collar!" she sobbed. "I am at your mercy. Take pity on me!"
"You wish to placate masters?" I asked.
"If I have displeased them, yes!" she said.
"You would like to escape further punishment?" I said.
"Surely it is understandable that a girl such as myself, one so helpless, one in bondage, would seek to avert the wrath of men, that she would seek by her curves, her service and love to soften the hearts of masters."
Yes, I thought, that is understandable. Slave girls are, when all is said and done, in spite of their beauty, so vulnerable, so owned, so ultimately helpless.
"Please, Master," she said.
"You wheedle and beg well," I said.
She looked up at me.
"Doubtless you learned that in your first days as a slave, in the house of Appanius, perhaps desiring to be fed."
"I am begging!" she said.
I looked down at her.
"Surely master understands for what I am begging," she said.
"Oh?" I said.
"Command me to strip," she wept. "There is shade on the other side of the tank. The dust is cool there. You do not need a blanket or a wrap. Put me in the dust itself!"
I did not speak.
"If you wish," she said, "I shall serve you here, in the hot dust, in the glare of the sun."
"A begging slave," I commented to Marcus.
"Yes," he said.
"Please," she said.
"Kneel over here," I said. I indicated a position near the yoke and the buckets, near the tank. Quickly she rose up and went and knelt where I had indicated. I then lifted up the yoke, which, as I have mentioned, was thrice drilled, once in the center, and once near each end. At these points leather thongs were wound in and around the yoke.
"Master?" she asked.
I put the yoke across her shoulders.
"Master!" she said.
I loosened the thongs at the center of the yoke and then, by means of them, looped about her neck and tied, fastened the yoke on her. I then used the thongs on her right to fasten her right hand to the yoke there, and then, to her left, similarly served her left hand. I then stepped back to regard her, fastened in the yoke, her hands widely separated.
"As you may recall," I said, "you incurred discipline twice, once for lying, for which you were cuffed, a preposterously light discipline considering the offense, and secondly for not responding instantly and acceptably to a question which you had been asked."
"Forgive me," she said.
"It is your business to answer questions, with exactness, and with the fullness desired," I said, "not to evade them, not to comment on such matters as their supposed negligible importance, not to remark as to their propriety or appropriateness, s
uch things."
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Your needs are apparently on you," I said.
"Yes, Master!" she said, delightedly. "But I am helpless!" She moved her head about a little, turning it a little from side to side, her neck within the loops of the thongs; too, she moved her hands a little, futilely, they held back against the wood, by the thonged wrists.
"Surely you are aware that a woman may be used in a yoke," I said.
"Yes, Master!" she said.
Indeed, it is quite pleasant to use a woman in a yoke. Too, a girl is sometimes given to field slaves that way, cords attached sometimes to the ends of the yoke, that she may be pulled about, turned this way and that, and, in general, moved about and controlled as the slaves wish, until they weary of the sport and choose to have their way with her. I gathered, however, that this had not been done, at least as yet, with the lovely slave before us. She had, apparently, been tied to a stake for the men once or twice. The usual procedure, of course, is simply to put the girl in the common kennel after dark, where she is utilized, serving muchly, sometimes being handed about, from man to man.
"But that is not our intention," I said.
"Master?" she said.
I put one of the vessels of water on the yoke. She had to bend down, that its weight was on the ground. Then I put the other vessel, too, on the yoke.
She squirmed in the yoke, she sobbed.
"What is to be my second discipline?" she asked.
"Stand," I said.
With difficulty she stood. She could hardly stand upright. She wavered a little.
"Am I not to serve?" she asked.
"No," I said.
She looked at me in misery.
"That is the second discipline," I said.
She closed her eyes, and tears forced themselves between those clenched eyelids.
"I am not a free woman!" she said. "I am a slave. I need your touch!"
"It is the second discipline," I said.
"Please, please!" she wept.
"You are dismissed," I informed her.
"Please, Master!" she wept.
"Turn about, and be about your labors," said I, "field slave."
She moved then a little from the vicinity of the tank, a few steps. The weight was considerable for her. She staggered once or twice. She turned, to regard us, pathetically.
"Away, field slave!" I said, with a gesture.
"Yes, Master," she sobbed, and turned away. We watched her moving slowly away, staggering at times, across the fields.
"How could you do that to her?" asked Marcus.
"Cuff her?" I asked, puzzled.
"Of course not," he said. "That was nothing."
"She thought it something," I said.
"She was let off easily," he said.
"True," I said.
"Doubtless she will in time, in trembling gratitude, realize how easily she was let off."
"Even as easily as she was let off," I said, "I do not think she will soon again consider lying to a free man."
"Probably not," he said.
I took saddle.
"What would you have done?" I asked.
"I would have put her under the belt," he said.
"And had it been Phoebe?"
"Phoebe knows better," he said.
"But if it had been her?"
"A number of disciplines," he said, "over successive days."
"What did you mean then," I asked, " 'how could you do that to her?'"
"Sending her packing," he said, "rather than putting her to use."
"Should you speak that way," I asked, "of the former free woman, Lavinia of Ar?"
"Be serious," he said.
"Was it not merciful?" I asked.
"Certainly not," he said.
"As a discipline?" I asked.
"No," he said.
"Speak," I said.
"You dominated her, making her feel her womanhood, and its relationship to the male," he said, "and then, her belly ready, aching, vulnerably aflame, helplessly stirred, you sent her packing."
"What would you have done?" I asked.
"Nothing so heartless, so cruel," he said.
"You are speaking of the second discipline," I said.
"Of course," he said.
"What, then?" I asked.
"I would have whipped her," he said. "Then I would have flung her to the ground, thrust her about, let her feel the side of my foot, such things, and then, when I wished, I would have knelt her, her head to the ground, and used her."
"In such fashion?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
"I see," I said.
"Slaves understand such things," he said.
"Of course," I said.
"And I do not think she would have been likely to commit the same error again."
"Probably not," I said.
"No," he said. "I do not think so."
"You grant, however," I said, "that my discipline is also likely to be effective?"
"I would think so," he said. "But I think mine might have been measured more perfectly to the slave, her needs and her act."
"You would have subjected her to use discipline?"
"Of course," he said.
"But we do not own her," I said.
"It does not matter," he said.
"True," I said.
Use discipline is within the prerogatives of a free person.
"You think my discipline was too severe?" I said.
"Yes," he said.
"I know a place," I said, "where such would commonly not be thought to be discipline at all but an escape from one."
"That is hard to believe," he said.
"A place in which it is culturally acceptable for the most basic needs of females to be denied, frustrated and ignored."
"Do not jest about matters of such gravity," he said.
"There are complex ideologies involved," I said, "the purport of which is that nature and biology are mistaken, and the ideologies, whatever they happen to be, for there are several of them, even if contrived and inconsistent, are correct."
"Such a mad place cannot exist," he said.
"Perhaps not," I said.
"Surely you grant that your discipline, denying her slave use, was severe."
"She is a slave," I said. "Anything could be done with her."
"By her master," he said. "Not just anyone."
"True," I said. One did not have the right, for example, to kill or maim the slave of another, any more than any other domestic animal which might belong to someone else. In this sense the slave is accorded some protection from free persons who do not own her in virtue of certain general considerations of property law. The power of the master over the slave, on the other hand, is absolute. He can do whatever he wishes with her. She belongs to him, completely.
"You do grant then," he said, "that your treatment of her was severe?"
"But intentionally so," I said, grimly, looking after the girl, now small in the distance.
"Unnecessarily severe?" he asked.
"No," I said. "Aptly severe."
"I do not understand," he said.
"It was measured perfectly to her, and her act, and my plans."
"Your plans?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "That is the difference between your measurements and mine."
"I do not understand," he said.
"I wish her to understand what can be done to her," I said.
"You speak as though you intend to own her," he said.
"I do intend to own her," I said.
"Oh?" asked Marcus.
"Yes," I said. "She will figure in my plans."
"I see," he said, softly.
"She is a field slave," I said. "I would suppose that Appanius, who does not seem enamored of her, will let her go for a pittance, perhaps no more than a handful of copper tarsks."
"That is a curvaceous female to acquire for a few copper tarsks," he said.
"You noticed?" I said.
He laughed.
"There she is," I said, pointing.
"Yes," he said.
Her figure was now tiny, far away. She had stopped at the crest of a small hill, and was kneeling there, wearily, apparently to rest, her head down. The vessels of water were on the ground.
"I am touched by your concern, or reservations, pertaining to the severity of my discipline for her, denying her slave use," I said.
He shrugged.
"Perhaps it is motivated by your well-known kindness toward animals," I said.
"Perhaps," he said.
"But I wonder, too, if your concern might not have been self-regarding in some respect, motivated at least in part by a certain disappointment that you were, in accordance with my decision, denied an opportunity to search out, locate and exploit the vulnerable pleasures of the slave?"
"Perhaps," he laughed.
"She is struggling to rise," I said. The small figure was trying to get her legs under her, and rise in the yoke, lifting the vessels. One does this by crouching and lifting up, trying to do most of the work with the legs.
"The weight is really too much for her," he said. "She is not large enough and strong enough for such labors."
"But those are the labors to which she has nonetheless been set by her master, Appanius, and the whip masters in the fields."
"She does not belong in the fields," he said, "she belongs in bangles and a scrap of silk, if that, in a house."
"Much must she have offended Appanius," I said.
"Apparently," he said.
"She is on her feet now," I said. She stood, unsteadily, the vessels swinging on the yoke ends.
"Yes," he said.
"Did you think she was pretty?" I asked.
"Very much so," he said, "even in her present wretched condition, shorn, roughened and burned."
"Look!" I said.
"I see," he said.
The girl, at the crest of the hill, had thrown her head back, to the sky. We could not hear her, of course, but she must have cried out, or sobbed, with misery and frustration. Her shoulders shook. Her small arms moved, at the yoke, pulling. But she could not, of course, free them, fastened as they were in place, by her wrists, widely separated, at opposite ends of the yoke, thonged back against the wood.
"Her needs are still much upon her," said Marcus.
"Apparently," I said.
Then she staggered down the other side of the small hill, and disappeared from sight. The sun was now well behind us.
"Surely she would make an exciting, squirming armful of slave," I said.
Magicians of Gor Page 43
