The day begins early, before dawn, when Melina loosens the padlocks on our cage.
We climb out and kneel before her, our heads to her feet. She holds the switch over us. She is our mistress.
Verr are to be milked, the eggs of vulos gathered, and the sleen must be watered and fed, and their cages cleaned.
In the middle of the morning we return to the hut of Thurnus, where pans of slave gruel have been put out for us, beneath the hut. This gruel must be eaten, and the pans licked clean. In the manner of peasant slave girls we kneel or lie upon our bellies and may not use our hands.
After our meal the true work of our day begins. There is water to be carried, wood to be gathered and fields to be tended. Many and various, and long, are the tasks of a peasant village. Upon slave girls do most of these tasks devolve. We must do them or die. Sometimes the boys surprise us in the fields and tie us together and rape us. It does not matter, for we are only slave girls.
It seemed every bone in my body ached.
Ten days ago Thurnus had used me for plowing. He did not own bosk. Girls are cheaper than bosk.
It was the first time I had felt a whip.
I had been hitched with the other girls, and, together, sweating, we had labored naked in the traces under our master's whip. Slowly, leaning forward, our feet digging into the earth, we had pitted our strength against the restraining band of the harness, and, slowly, the great blade had begun to move through the deep soil, turning it for our master. After a few yards I thought I might die. Who would know if I did not put my full strength upon the trace? It was then that I first felt the whip. It was not the five-bladed slave whip, invented for the full and perfect punishment of an erring slave girl, but only a light, one-bladed bosk whip, little more than a switch of leather, a mere incitement and encouragement to better performance on the part of a slacking plow beast, but it struck my back like a hot snake and a rifle shot. I could not believe what it felt like. It was the first time I had ever been struck with a whip.
"Come, Dina, pull harder," said Thurnus.
"Yes, Master!" I cried, hurling myself against the trace. He had not been angry. My back felt as though it had been lashed with a hot cable.
I could not believe the pain of the whip. I could not even conjecture what it would be to feel a true slave whip on my body. Yet I knew a girl could be subjected to a full and lengthy lashing by the true slave whip for so small a thing as having failed in some way that she might not even understand to be completely pleasing to a master. Indeed, she could be subjected to such a lashing for no other reason than that it pleased the master to do so. I had now, for the first time, the former Judy Thornton, felt a whip. I groaned in misery. I now had a new insight into the condition of my slavery. I would do anything, eagerly, the masters wanted.
But in less than an hour I had collapsed in the traces, unconscious.
I dimly remember Thurnus's hand on the back of my neck and Sandal Thong's saying, "Do not kill her, Thurnus. Can you not see she is only a pretty slave, that she is only for the pleasure of men and not for the fields?"
"We can pull the plow without her, Master," said Turnip.
"We have done it many times before," said Radish.
"Do not break her neck, Master," pleaded Verr Tail.
Thurnus's hand left the back of my neck.
I remember him tying my hands behind my back, and tying my ankles together, and leaving me in a furrow. I then again lost consciousness. That night Thurnus carried me, bound, over his shoulder, back to the village, and threw me down between the pilings of his hut. "What is wrong?" asked Melina. "This one is a weakling," said Thurnus. "I will kill her for you," said Melina. She drew from her coarse robes a short knife. I rose on one elbow, naked and bound, helpless in the dirt at her feet. I regarded her with horror. She approached me with the knife. "Please, no, Mistress!" I wept. "Go into the house, Woman," said Thurnus, angrily. "You are the weakling, Thurnus," snapped Melina. She then put away the knife, and stood up.
"It was a mistake to have followed you," she said.
He looked at her without speaking.
"You could have been a caste leader for a district," she said. "Instead I am only the companion of a village leader. I could have companioned a district leader. You stink of the sleen you train and the girls you own."
There were slaves present, and yet she so spoke.
"You are a weakling and a fool, Thurnus," she said. "I despise you."
"Go into the house, Woman," he said. Angrily Melina turned and climbed the steps into the hut. At the top of the steps she turned. "You do not have much longer to give orders in Tabuk's Ford, Thurnus," she said. Then she disappeared into the hut.
"Untie Dina," said Thurnus, "and take her to the cage."
"Yes, Master," said his girls.
"Poor little Dina," said Thurnus, looking down at me, as the ropes were removed from my small limbs. "You make a very poor she-bosk," he said. Then he grinned. Then he turned away.
I struck angrily down at the ground with the hoe. Of course I made a poor she-bosk! It was not my fault I was not a female bosk, like so many of the lasses of peasant stock. Marla and Chanda and Donna and Slave Beads would have been no better! And I did not think Lehna or Eta would have been much better either! How I would have loved to have seen Maria try to pull the plow! She would have done no better than I! Angrily I hoed the suls. I was healthy and vital, but I was not large, not strong. I could not help that. It was not my fault. I was small, and slight and weak. I could not help that. It was not my fault! I was perhaps beautiful, but beauty availed nothing when one felt the weight of the plow at one's back and knew that behind you the master was lifting his whip. Thurnus was disappointed in my weakness.
I chopped down angrily at the ground with the hoe. It was hard for me even to carry water to the fields, struggling under the great wooden yoke over my shoulders, with its attached buckets. Sometimes I fell, spilling the water. And I was slow. The other girls, who were my friends, did parts of my heavier work and I, in turn, did much of the lighter work which was theirs. Yet I did not like this for it was harder on them. I wanted to do my share. It was only that I was weak, that I was not a good peasant's girl.
Sometimes in the fields I hated Clitus Vitellius. It was he who had left me in a peasant village! He had made me love him, conquering me to the last cell of my body, and had then, laughing, given me to a peasant. He knew the sort of girl I was, delicate and sensitive, slight and beautiful, from Earth, and then he had, to his amusement, put me to harsh, weighty slavery in a peasant village, giving me to Thurnus. I struck down at the aids. How I hated Clitus Vitellius!
I looked up again. The cart of Tup Ladletender, the itinerant peddler, was now much farther down the road, on the dirt road leading to the great road, formed of blocks of stone, leading to Ar.
I was thought little of in the village, though my cage sisters were kind to me.
I was not big enough or strong enough to be a good peasant's girl.
I hated peasants. What idiots they were! There were better things to do with a beautiful slave girl than hitch her to a plow!
"The village is not a good place for you, Dina," Turnip had once said to me. "You are a city slave. You should be at a man's feet, in the secrecy of his compartments, collared and chained, curled and purring like a content she-sleen."
"Perhaps," I said.
"I would curl and purr at the feet of Thurnus," had said the large Sandal Thong. We had all laughed. But she had not been joking. It seemed strange to me to think of the large Sandal Thong wanting to submit to the domination of a man. Yet she, too, I reminded myself, was a woman.
Because of my slightness of strength Thurnus had had me help him often with the sleen. Some of the animals I grew to know. But, on the whole, I feared the sleen, and they, sensing this, were unusually vicious with me.
"Are you good for nothing?" had asked Thurnus in exasperation. I had backed away from him, in the sand of the training pit where we had b
een working. The sun bad been hot, and the sand was hot. It had not rained in several days. The Sa-Tarna was in danger of drought.
Thurnus took me by the arms and shook me. "You are good for nothing," he said, angrily.
I had shuddered in his touch.
"What is wrong?" he asked.
I averted my eyes, shamed. "Forgive me, Master," I said, "but I have not been touched by a man for several days, and I am slave."
"Ah," he said.
I turned my eyes to him. I looked up at him. He was very large. "Perhaps Master would care to rape his slave?" I said.
"Does the slave beg slave rape?" he asked.
"Yes, Master!" I said suddenly, clutching him. "Yes! Yes!" I could not control myself.
He flung me back in the sand, thrusting up the tunic over my breasts. I lay at the foot of a slave cage. He seized me, and I reached hack for the bars of the slave cage, and, holding them, cried out. I twisted and squirmed with the pleasure of his having me. Once I cried out with misery, for I saw Melina watching, from behind the wooden wall. "It is the Mistress, Master," I said. He laughed. "I do what I please with my slave girls," he said. "Let her watch, should she please to do so. Let her find excellent instruction in the behaviors of a hot slave." But Melina, angrily, had left. I then again yielded to the pleasures of him, moaning to the master a slave girl's gratitude. He had deigned to touch me. When he had done with me I knelt at his feet, whimpering. I kissed his feet. "Thank you, Master," I said.
He laughed, and lifted me up, and looked at me, and then, in great humor, flung me to the sand at his feet, from where I looked up at him. "I see, Dina," he laughed, "that you are good for something after all."
I looked down, shyly. "Thank you, Master," I said.
It was now late afternoon.
The cart of Tup Ladletender was now disappearing in the distance, a bit of dust rising behind its wheels.
He had done slave assessment on me this morning.
It was this morning that I had first discovered that I was a whore. But I suppose that every slave girl must be at least a whore, and a marvelous one.
He had not had me, but I had, in his assessment, tried to present myself to him well.
I wondered if I would see him again.
It had begun this way.
"Remain behind, Dina," had said Melina, companion of Thurnus. The other girls had left the village to carry water. Thurnus himself was gone. He would not return until late. He was visiting another village, to buy vulos.
I was frightened of Melina. She was Mistress. Too, once she had prepared to kill me, on the day when I had failed in the plowing. Too, she had seen me in the arms of Thurnus. Yet, she had not of late threatened me. And, I supposed, she was fully aware that Thurnus used all his girls. Radish was used more than I. Surely Melina knew this. Only Sandal Thong was seldom raped.
"Yes, Mistress," I said, apprehensively.
I knew Melina did not like me, but I did not think she hated me more than the other girls. I was certainly not Thurnus's favorite. He preferred larger, wider hipped, larger breasted women than I, more of the sort that Melina might have been at one time, before, in her freedom, she had gone slack and fat.
"Come over here, pretty little bird," had said Melina, gesturing to me. She stood among the pilings of the hut, in the shade. I, the Earth-girl slave, obeyed her. I went to her and, for she was free and I slave, knelt deferentially before her, my head down.
"Remove your tunic, Dina," she said.
"Yes, Mistress," I said. I slipped the short woolen tunic over my head. I was now naked.
"Go to this piling," she said, indicating one of the pilings, "and kneel there, facing it."
I did so.
"Closer," she said. "Put your knees on either side of it,and put your belly against it."
"Yes, Mistress," I said.
"Do you like our village?" she asked.
"Oh, yes, Mistress!" I said.
"Put your arms around the piling," she said, "and cross your wrists, palms up."
I complied.
"Are you happy here?" she asked.
"Oh, yes, Mistress!" I said.
"Would you like to leave our village?" she asked.
"Oh, no, Mistress!" I said. Then I added, hastily, "Unless it be Mistress's will!"
She removed a bit of cord from her robes. I felt my wrists lashed together on the other side of the piling. They were tied very tightly.
"Will that hold you?" she asked.
"Yes, Mistress," I said.
She stepped back from me. She looked at me, and then she went up the stairs into her hut, and, soon, returned, with a coil of rope. She tied one end of the rope on my rope collar and then, leaving me about a foot of slack, tied the rope about the piling, at the level of my neck. The rest of the rope, depending from the piling, she let fall to the dirt.
I looked up at her.
"You are a pretty one," she said.
Because of the rope on my neck I could not stand at the piling.
"Quite pretty," she said.
"Thank you, Mistress," I said.
I was secured, naked, on my knees, at the piling. I was her prisoner.
"A peddler," she said, "is in the village."
I knew this. His name was Tup Ladletender. Radish had told me this. I had seen his arrival. He drew a handcart. It had long handles, and two large wheels. In the cart were many shelves and racks, on which there was a rich miscellany of cheap goods, and pegs and loops, from which hung many utensils, pans and tools. Drawers in the side of the wagon contained, too, mysteries of goods, such as threads, cloths, scissors, thimbles, buttons and patches, brushes and combs, sugars, herbs, spices, packets of salt, and philtres of medicine. No one knew what all might be contained in that unusual cart.
"I am going to fetch him," said Melina, "to take a look at you."
At the piling, my heart leaped. Melina was going to sell me off, I thought, while Thurnus was out of the village.
"Present yourself to him well, you little slut," warned Melina, "or I will switch you to within an inch of your life."
"I will, Mistress!" I promised. Indeed I would! When might come another chance to escape the slavery of the village? I would do anything to escape peasant slavery! Present myself well? Indeed! I would be a wonder to him of obedient, sensuous female flesh! Then suddenly I was afraid. What sort of man was he? Different modalities of wench excite different men. I wanted to be exactly what he wanted. I was desperate to be exactly what he wanted. But what would he want? What a whore you are, I thought to myself. My wrists squirmed in the bonds in which Melina had fastened me. I did not know what he would want! Would he want a quiet, timid girl, one to throw to his feet and abuse? Would he want a lascivious wench, begging to reach him with her tongue? Would he want an angry, defiant girl, to be brought to her knees in docility and surrender? Or would he want, perhaps, a cold girl, haughty, icy with contempt, to be turned into a writhing slave, screaming piteously for his touch? I did not know. One thing I knew was that I would be presented beautifully, physically, to him. Melina had seen to that. She was a clever, shrewd woman. A girl is most beautiful when she is naked, save perhaps for a collar or chain. And I was tied kneeling, in submission position. And my knees were thrust apart by the piling, about which my hands were tied, against which my belly was thrust. This would suggest, perhaps only subconsciously, my vulnerability, my penetration, and the massiveness and irresistibility of masculine power, to which I, a slave girl, must helplessly submit. Too, my hands, tied as they were, contributed to the carefully calculated effect. When I raised them, tied as I was, the softness of their palms was brought against and about the piling, in an intimate clasp. The piling, thus, would be embraced, and held beautifully. Lastly, there was a rope on my neck, long, a tether. This might easily suggest, again perhaps only on a subconscious level, that I might be removed from the post, have my hands tied behind my back, and be led away, like a tethered tabuk doe, to the master's pleasure. Such a rope might easi
ly be looped on the back of a wagon, and I would follow, naked, barefoot, behind the wagon, in the dust. Melina was clever.
"This is the slave," said Melina.
Startled, suddenly frightened, I clutched the post. It was an involuntary reaction. But, tied as I was, I could not have helped but seize it beautifully. I then realized Melina had wanted to startle me, from the direction from which she had approached, and the suddenness of her assertion. The man had seen the reaction of a beautiful, startled slave girl, bound at a post. It had been completely natural. Melina had intended that it would be.
I decided that I would be an Earth-girl slave, the desirability of whose flesh was being assessed, tied in a peasant village. I did not know what else to do, and that is what I was. On this world I was a beautiful barbarian and alien, from a world quite different, one which had not prepared me for their world. Perhaps Gorean men might find it of interest to own, and tame and train me. Earth girls, I had heard from Eta, made superb slaves. I supposed it was true.
John Norman - Counter Earth11 Page 28
