John Norman - Counter Earth11

by Slave Girl Of Gor(Lit)

  "Do not fear," said he, "we will find a way to while away the time."

  "How am I to be taken from the city?" she asked.

  "Bound, naked, belly up," said he, "across the saddle of a tarn."

  "Scarcely the way to transport a free woman," she said.

  "By nightfall," said he, "you will be fit cargo for such mode of transport."

  She shuddered.

  "Go to the vanity," he said, "and kneel before it." She did this. He then, crouching behind her, crossed her ankles and, with the long, loose end of the leash, tied them together. The leash then ran from her throat back to her ankles. Her hands were free.

  "Apply cosmetics and scents," said he. "You are to be absolutely beautiful," he said.

  She reached, miserably, for the tiny boxes and brushes.

  "Go into the outer room," he said to me. "Among my things you will find an iron. Prepare a brazier and heat the iron. You will find there, too, earrings and a saddle needle. Bring them."

  "Yes, Master," I said.

  It was in the late afternoon that I, holding its handles with quilted cloths, slid the brazier into the chamber of the couch and bath. I had not done this earlier in order that the room not be made uncomfortably hot.

  "How beautiful you are, Elicia," I said, startled. She sat at the foot of the couch, her knees drawn up and together, on furs thrown to the tiles from its surface. She no longer wore the leash. Her ankles were tied and her hands were tied behind her. She was made up beautifully for her branding. Her left ankle, I noted, on a chain of some five feet in length, was fastened to the slave ring at the couch's foot. On many nights I had slept there chained. It had been Bosk's decision that she would be branded at the slave ring of her own couch.

  "Judy," she wept, "what is he going to do?"

  "He is going to brand you," I said.

  "No!" she said.

  "You were not forced to come to Gor," I said.

  She struggled in the bonds. Bosk of Port Kar, with the quilted cloth, drew forth the iron, and thrust it back. It would soon be ready.

  "You are a beast and a barbarian!" she cried to him, drawing back. Then she could move no further back against the stone couch. She could draw her feet up no further.

  He took her and threw her to her right side, wedging her in the corner formed by the tiles and the foot of the stone couch. With the leash he tied her thighs tightly together, leaving between the tight, confining leather strips an open space, a small, lovely territory, for the passage of the iron. He gestured that I slide the brazier near to him, and I did so. He indicated that I should give him the quilted cloth with which he might seize the iron, and I did so.

  "Help me, Judy!" wept Elicia.

  "You were not forced to come to Gor, Elicia," I told her. She lay on her right side, bound, thrust against the foot of the couch. Wadded furs helped to hold her in place. Her thighs had been tied for the iron. Bosk's weight, too, pressed upon her. She shut her eyes.

  I looked outside, at the clouds, the blue sky of the late afternoon. It was sunny. The towers were beautiful. I saw some small birds in flight.

  I closed my eyes when she screamed. I listened to the iron, patient, performing its identificatory work. I smelled the branding. Bosk did not hurry. He did his work upon her well.

  I again opened my eyes. The sky was lovely and blue outside of the window. More birds flew by.

  I heard the girl sobbing. There was a new slave girl on Gor.

  I looked upon her. She looked at me, tears in her eyes. She had been marked incontrovertibly, and well.

  "I am a slave," she said.

  "Yes," I said.

  "Remove the brazier and iron," said Bosk of Port Kar. "Set the iron to cool."

  "Yes, Master," I said.

  With the quilted cloths I took the brazier from the room, and the iron, too. Outside, in the outer room, I put the iron aside, on the tiles, near his belongings. It would cool.

  When I returned to the chamber of the bath and couch he had sat the new slave up, against the couch. He, with a saddle needle, was piercing her left ear lobe. I saw the needle run through and a tiny spot of blood. He had already pierced her right ear lobe. Then he took the earrings I had brought, golden loops, an inch in diameter, and fastened them in her ears. He then gave me the saddle needle to clean and replace in his gear, which I did.

  When again I returned to the chamber of the bath and couch he had freed her of her bonds, with the exception of the chain on her left ankle, which fastened her to the slave ring at the foot of the couch.

  She lay on the deep furs at the foot of the couch, chained by the ankle, branded, in earrings.

  She looked up at me.

  "Greetings, Slave," I said.

  "Greetings, Mistress," she said.

  "Bring wine," said Bosk of Port Kar to me. "I will be served by the slave."

  "Yes, Master," I said. I fetched wine, and placed it on the tiles, within reach of the girl.

  "Does she not even know how to kneel?" he asked.

  Quickly I instructed the girl in the position of the pleasure slave, kneeling, back on heels, back straight, head high, hands on thighs, knees wide.

  "What shall we call her?" he asked me.

  "Whatever Master wishes," I said.

  He saw the discarded collar, inscribed "I am Judy. Return me to the Lady Elicia of Ar, of Six Towers."

  He opened the collar. He approached her. "Perhaps," said he, "we shall call you `Judy.'"

  She shook with misery. "Please," she begged, "Master." Flow offended and miserable she would be, the proud, for-mer Elicia Nevins, to be forced to wear my name, I of whom she had been so contemptuous.

  "What think you?" asked the free man of me, grinning.

  "I think, Master," I said, "that the name is not truly fitting for this slave, given her nature and appearance."

  There is often a fittingness sought between name and slave. It did seem to me that `Judy' was not the proper name for the newly enslaved beauty who knelt before us. It was not merely my desire that she not be given a name which I had formerly worn when free.

  "True," said Bosk of Port Kar, commending me on my view of the matter.

  The girl breathed more easily.

  "Bring from my belongings the open slave collar there to be found," said Bosk of Port Kar to me.

  "Yes, Master," I said, and hurried to comply. From his belongings I fetched the collar.

  He took the collar from me. It was simple, and steel, straightforward and secure.

  "Read it," said he to her.

  "I am the slave Elicia," she read. "I belong to Bosk of Port Kar."

  She looked at him with horror. She would wear her own name as a slave name.

  "Submit," he said.

  She looked at me, wildly, piteously. I aided her. I showed her how to kneel back on her heels, her arms extended to him, wrists crossed, her head down, between her arms. "Say, `I submit,'" I said. "I submit," she said. He bound her wrists, tightly, before her body. "Look up," I told her. She looked up. He collared her. I was very pleased to see her in the collar of Bosk of Port Kar.

  Bosk then left the room, I heard him, too, leave the outer room. I heard him outside, moving to the roof. Doubtless he, a warrior, was checking the avenue of his egress. I did not know if the tarn would be waiting on the roof, or would be summoned from the roof, by tam whistle.

  I looked at the new slave girl. She knelt, miserable, collared, branded, her wrists bound before her body, on the thick furs at the foot of the couch.

  She looked at the surface of the couch. She would not dare to ascend to it, unless ordered there by a master. Her place, unless commanded otherwise, was at the foot of the couch, at the slave ring. I, a slave, had spent nights at that slave ring, at the foot of my mistress's couch. Now, she who had been Elicia Nevins of Earth, who had been my mistress, knelt there, no more than a lowly slave herself.

  She looked at me, disbelievingly. "We are both slave girls," she said.

  "Yes," I said.r />
  "I have been branded," she said. "My ears are pierced. I wear a collar!"

  "That is true, Elicia," I said. I had used her slave name. She understood this.

  I looked at her. "Your collar is very becoming," I said.

  "Is it?" she asked.

  "Yes," I said.

  "It is a common collar," she said.

  "It is still very beautiful on you," I said.

  "Truly?" she asked.

  "Yes," I said.

  "Is it more beautiful because it is locked?" she asked.

  "Yes," I said. I did not doubt but what that was true. That the collar was locked did not simply mean that she could not remove it, a fact which played its important role in guaranteeing slave recognition and identification, but, perhaps even more importantly, was momentous in its significance of bondage. A brand might be concealed by clothing, even the brief garb commonly allotted a female slave, but the collar, consistently and openly, proclaimed her girl property. The collar, stressing her vulnerability as a slave, is sexually exciting to the girl who wears it, and to the men who look upon it. Perhaps that is why free women do not wear collars. The steel on her lovely throat, lost beneath her hair, glinting beneath it, contrasting so with her delicious softness, is sexually and aesthetically maddening. No girl is so beautiful, I suspect, as she who wears a Gorean slave collar.

  Elicia looked at herself in the mirror across the room. She lifted her head, and turned it to one side. "It is not unattractive," she said.

  "No," I said. "It is extremely exciting and attractive."

  She looked at me, frightened. "What will men think?" she asked.

  `That you are a slave," I said. I shrugged.

  She shook with fear. Then again, she regarded herself in the mirror, turning.

  "Is my brand pretty?" she asked.

  "Why do you ask?" I asked.

  "I was only curious," she said.

  "Oh," I said.

  "Is it?" she asked.

  "You were a student of anthropology," I said. "You can look upon the institution of slavery dispassionately and objectively, as an interesting cultural phenomenon, characterizing certain civilizations."

  "I am a slave!" she cried. "Do you not understand what that means!" She struggled with the bonds on her wrists.

  "I understand very well what it means," I assured her. I thought of Clitus Vitellius. "Where is your coolness?" I inquired. "Where is your objectivity?"

  "I am owned," she said.

  "Yes," I said.

  "I did not know it could feel like this," she said. She looked at me, wide-eyed. "It is indescribable," she said.

  "You are now experiencing a cultural institution from within," I said. "So, too, one who is a master experiences it from within."

  She shuddered as she thought how a master must look upon her, with what desire and power.

  "In the past," I said, "you have had some verbal acquaintance with cultural institutions. Now, perhaps for the first time, you have some inkling of what it is to understand one."

  She looked at me with fear.

  "Do not be afraid, Elicia," I said. "You need only leam how to please men immensely." I laughed.

  "I do not even like men!" she cried.

  "It does not matter," I said. "The earrings are pretty," I said.

  She rose to her feet, the chain on her ankle, and fumed her head back and forth.

  "They are pretty," she said.

  "Yes," I said.

  "I never wore earrings," she said, "for they were too feminine."

  "You are very feminine, Elicia," I said to her. "You should not have fought your femininity."

  She looked angrily at me.

  "Your days of fighting your femininity are at an end," I told her. "Men will not permit it. They will force you to yield to your femininity."

  "To be feminine is to be less than a man!" she said.

  "Whatever it is," I said, "it is what you are."

  "Is it what I am?" she asked.

  "Yes," I said.

  "Judy," she said.

  I did not answer her.

  "Mistress," she begged.

  "Yes," I said.

  "Is my brand pretty?"

  I laughed. "Yes," I said. "It is deep and clean, and it marks you well."

  "The beast put the iron well to my body," she said, angrily. I could also detect a bit of pride in her voice.

  "Yes," I said, "he did indeed."

  "I wonder if I am the first woman he has ever branded," she said.

  "He is a warrior," I said.

  "Oh," she said, subdued. Then again she regarded the brand. "It is deep and clean," she said, "and it marks my body well as that of a slave, but Mistress, is it pretty, is it attractive?"

  "What do you think?" I asked.

  She looked at me in anguish. Then she said, "I think it is beautiful."

  "I do, too," I said. "It is a perfectly beautiful brand. Many girls will envy you such a lovely brand."

  She looked at me, gratefully. The brand with which she had been marked was the common slave brand for the Gorean female; incised deeply in her thigh, about an inch and a half in height and a half inch in width, was the initial letter, in cursive script, lovely, of the expression `Kajira,' the most common expression in Gorean for a female slave. It was indeed a most beautiful brand. More than half of the branded beauties of Gor, I conjecture, wear that brand.

  "Look into the mirror," I said. She did so.

  "What do you see?" I asked.

  "A slave," she said. She smiled, shyly, lowering her head. It seemed an uncharacteristic gesture for she who had been Elicia Nevins. I smiled.

  "But a slave who has much to learn," I said.

  She looked at me, questioningly.

  "Do you not hear the step of your master, descending the stairs outside the compartments?" I asked.

  She listened. "Yes," she said.

  "You will learn to listen for that step," I told her.

  She looked at me, frightened.

  "Is that how you will receive your master," I asked, "standing, like a free woman?"

  Swiftly she knelt, in the position of the pleasure slave. "I do not know how to please men," she wept.

  "You will be taught," I assured her. "Lift your head a little higher." She did so.

  I looked upon her.

  I do not know why it is, but the condition of slavery makes a woman very beautiful. It removes inhibitions to the manifestation of her femininity and her deepest needs.

  Bosk entered the room. He stopped for a moment, almost startled, then grinned. He saw a slave knelt at the foot of the couch.

  "All is in readiness," he said to us. "I shall gag and saddle-bind the slave at midnight," he said, looking at Elicia. "Then," said he, "I will take flight from Ar."

  "Master must be wary of the patrols," I said.

  "I have counted from the roof," he said. "They are not randomizing their flights."

  "I see, Master," I said. Bosk was thorough. He left little to chance. Yet there would be risk. Yet I feared little for him. I did not think I would care to pursue him on tarnback, were I a mounted guardsman of Ar.

  He looked down at Elicia. She knelt in the position of the pleasure slave. Her wrists were bound before her body. Her left ankle was chained to the slave ring. "A lovely slave," he said.

  "It is not yet midnight, Master," she said.

  He untied her wrists. "Serve me wine, Slave," he said. I gasped.

  She lifted the vessel of wine I had earlier brought and filled the goblet.

  "No," I whispered to her, and then instructed her how to serve him.

  "Wine, Master?" she asked.

  "Yes, Slave," he said.

  Then she knelt before him, back on her heels, head down, lifting the goblet to him, proffering it to the master with both hands.

  He took the goblet from her and, regarding her, drank. I could see he was well pleased with his new acquisition, the lovely beauty, Elicia.

  "Bring a pan, and pour
wine into it," said he to me, "and give it to the animal."

  "Yes, Master," I said.