Prize of Gor

by John Norman

  Ellen, under the tarpaulin, remained absolutely silent.

  And things had proceeded, in large part, as the young man had speculated.

  Once, out on the lake, they had apparently been hailed by another boat, doubtless from their village, which must be close. “Did you make a good catch?” called a voice, that of a man, from across the water.

  “Yes,” called back the older lad. “We have made a good catch!”

  Ellen, under the tarpaulin, remained absolutely silent.

  The boat was rowed, or maneuvered, with its back oar, to a different point on the shore, and, when the area had been sufficiently reconnoitered by the two lads, she was lifted from the boat, and led into the trees. She was taken to a small cave, and was thrust within. Some light filtered in through the opening. The leash rope was then removed from her throat and taken down to her ankles, which were crossed, and bound. With another piece of rope she was trussed further, several loops put about her legs, above the knees, some loops about her belly, holding her bound hands more closely behind her, and various loops about her arms and upper body. She was well aware, as she had been as long ago as her training, that her body, that of a female, lent itself beautifully to the trussings of captors, because of the flare of her hips, the narrowness of her waist, and the swelling delights of her bosom, ropes, for example, going nicely, tightly, above her bosom and under her armpits, and beneath her bosom and about her waist. It seemed a body that might have been designed for bonds. She wondered, idly, if such bodies might have been selected for, so different from those of most primate females, in dozens of millennia of prehuman, and, later, Paleolithic tribal warfare, in which females, as well as hunting grounds, would be the spoils of war. In such small things, and others far more profound, but connected with ownership, capture, work, servitude, love and breeding, she thought, were women evolved, evolved to serve and please men. It is not so strange then, she thought, that women desire masters, that they long to love and serve, to give themselves to the master, that in their hearts they want and seek masters. Those who did not were perhaps discarded, or left unmated. On the other hand, those females who knelt, even with a braided leather rope on their neck, and found their fulfillment in submission, servitude and love, in belonging to the stronger, to victors, to masters, would be those treasured, those sought, those bought and sold, those mated, those replicating their genes. I have been bred to be as I am, she thought, from the prairies, the forests, the caves, I and my sisters.

  The boys then left Ellen sitting up, trussed in the cave. Brush was drawn across the entrance, concealing the opening. There was, however, some light in the cave, filtering through the brush at the entrance. The ropes were scratchy, but she would not move much. She squirmed, just a little, testing them. They were tight and well done. Gorean boys, she knew, especially boys in the villages, were taught to tie slaves. It was something they were supposed to know. They would use the village slaves for practice, the bonds inspected, and approved, or revised, by their fathers, or other older males. Though she was a young woman and they were little more than boys, they had tied her well. She knew herself helpless. They are males, she thought, males, by nature our rightful masters.

  As she sat, or lay, in the cave, trussed, awaiting as she must the return of her young captors, she was restless, uneasy, uncomfortable, needful. The touches of the older of the two young men had been deft. She whimpered, angrily. She was furious with her slave needs, but, too, was desperate to placate them, to obtain the ecstatic relief to be obtained from their alleviation. Bonds, too, she knew, increased female arousal. Their function, apart from their obvious practical aspects, such as security and control, was symbolic and psychological, having to do with their relationship to the dominance/submission ratios of organic life. Too, appropriate binding and chaining, she knew, increased both the frequency of, and the intensity of, female orgasms. As a slave girl she was in no doubt about this. Surely she had bucked, and wept, and squirmed, and begged, often enough in bonds. And so, in time, she rolled, and thrashed, and moaned, on the dusty floor of the cave, until, red-eyed, weary, she lay there quietly, save for an occasional small, pathetic, protestive movement, one seeming to arise from somewhere deep within her, from somewhere within her deprived, needful, tortured, begging slave belly. “You are worthless,” she said to herself. “You have a slave belly.” “Of course, you have a slave belly,” she said in response to herself, angrily. “What do you expect, little fool? You are a slave!”

  It grew darker and darker in the cave.

  Toward nightfall the two boys returned. “Masters!” said Ellen, piteously. Despite their youth, and her reluctance, and her pride, she was prepared to beg for their touch. “Be silent, slave girl,” said the older lad. “Remember the leeches.” “Yes, Master,” whispered Ellen. “You are going to be put in a sack,” said the older lad. She lifted her belly a little to them, and whimpered. “Bring the sack,” said the older lad to the younger. Ellen lifted herself again, in her bonds, and whimpered. “Do you think we wish to risk the village?” asked the older lad. “There are village slaves, many prettier than you, whom we can use.” Ellen, in her slave’s vanity, wondered if that could be true, not that there might not be slaves in the village, available to the lads, but that they might be prettier than she. Perhaps, she thought. She wondered if any of her sisters of Earth, brought as she to Gor to serve masters, served in villages, as lovely domestic beasts of peasants.

  She thought of the aristocratic, clever, beautiful, formerly rich woman “Evelyn,” whom she had served at the supper of Mirus. Doubtless she was now in a collar, now, too, no more than a branded chattel. Ellen wondered if she would be in a peasant village. She did not think so. She thought, rather, that she would be surely kept, at least for a time, by “Jeffrey,” he whom she had also served at that supper. She could imagine her at his feet, at the foot of his couch on the love furs, attached to the slave ring there, naked, cringing, not knowing if she was to be whipped or caressed, as a slave, taking the whip cast before her in her small hands and, looking up, trying to read the mood of her master, fearfully, tenderly, hopefully licking and kissing it.

  Ellen was then, bound as she was, eased, feet first, into a long, burlaplike sa-tarna sack, which was tied shut over her head. She could see to some extent through the loosely woven cloth. She was then lifted up and carried from the cave, and, some yards later, placed in the back of a wagon and covered with straw. Shortly thereafter, with a creak of wheels, the wagon moved, being drawn, judging from the sounds, by a small, draft tharlarion. Through the sack and the straw, she could detect the light of a lantern. Occasionally the wagon stopped and one of the lads would climb down from the wagon box. “This way,” she would hear. Then the lad would either lead the way, it seemed, with the lantern, or, in a bit, the wagon already again in motion, resume his position on the box.

  ****

  Toward noon, the coffle was halted, with the general halt of the march. Thankfully Ellen, and her sisters in bondage, knelt. They must kneel, knees spread, turned to the right, hands on their thighs, heads down.

  Ellen had feared she could not go another step. Her feet were sore. Her body ached. She was hot. She was covered with dust.

  She envied the slaves in the slave wagons.

  As Ellen knelt, turned to the right, the chains from her collar extended to the left and right, rather than before and behind. This is a common feeding and watering position for a coffle.

  “Lift your head,” she heard, a female voice. “Open your mouth, keep your hands on your thighs.”

  Ellen, looking up, found herself before one of the Cosian camp slaves, this one a ravishing blonde, in a brief yellow tunic, with its small vertical, rectangular gray patch, in the vicinity of the left hip, that discreet emblem indicative of state ownership. Most state slaves in the cities, Ellen had heard, wore gray tunics. This made it easy, at a glance, to distinguish between state slaves and privately owned slaves. This distinction might occasionally prove to be o
f more than simply proprietary or identificatory relevance, for example, if one wished, in short order, to commandeer state slaves, to round them up and transport them, exchange them for goods or prisoners, and so on. Accordingly, for various reasons, a uniform color, or such, for state slaves, would doubtless be institutionally judicious. In any event, it seems to be the common practice. The color gray was probably chosen because it seems unpretentious, conservative, subdued, and sober, a color thus fitting for a girl who is a mere slave of the state, one lacking a private master whose collar she might wear and at whose slave ring she might kneel, and will fit in nicely enough with almost any coloration of eyes, hair, and skin color. Another theory as to the usual choice of gray for state slaves is that it is a sop cast to the sensibilities of free women, who, resenting the usual effects of female slaves on free men, wished the state to limit or reduce the attractiveness of its slaves. On the other hand, this stratagem, if stratagem it is, is almost universally acknowledged as being inefficacious. A beautiful woman in a slave tunic, whatever its color, is a beautiful woman in a slave tunic. The state slaves with the march wore, as noted, a variety of tunics, and their status was marked out simply by the small, rectangular gray patches. Ellen doubted that there were many free women with the march, who might object to this latitude accorded the state’s collar girls, saving perhaps those who might be behind the drawn curtains in the cage wagons.

  Ellen did not care to be kneeling before a woman, though, of course, often enough, she would kneel before a free woman. But this was a slave. To be sure, she was doubtless a higher slave than Ellen. She was not, for example, in a coffle. But she did not even have a talmit, the cloth headband which occasionally serves as a symbol of rank or authority amongst slaves, sometimes in pleasure gardens, usually in camps or rural areas. A cloth strap ran over the blonde’s right shoulder, to which was attached, near the left hip, but rather before her, a cloth sack, which apparently contained some form of sizable biscuits. One of these objects was thrust in Ellen’s mouth. It was large, hard and dry. It filled her mouth. “Head down, chew,” she was told. The blonde then moved to the next slave, she on Ellen’s right. “Lift your head. Open your mouth. Keep your hands on your thighs,” she heard. “Head down, chew.” Ellen, head down, not permitted to use her hands, dealt with the object as well she could, it filling her mouth, her mouth dry. She tried to tear it with her teeth. She must keep her hands on her thighs. She must not drop it. She must not lose it. She tried to swallow some of it. She began to choke. Then, her mouth still filled, she gasped and caught her breath. She engorged more of the substance, and then more of it. Some girls behind the first slave, she with the biscuits, came a second slave, with a bucket and dipper. Ellen, desperately, half choking, tried to chew and force down the last of the biscuit. It would not do to miss the water. “Lift your head, open your mouth, keep your hands on your thighs,” she heard. She looked up. The slave with the bucket and dipper had a yellow tunic, as well, with its gray patch near the hem, on the left, but she was a sleek brunet. Ellen had little doubt but what the camp slaves had been chosen for a diversity of properties, many of which had little to do with those of a simple work slave. Indeed, the girl with the bucket and dipper was a slight girl, and it would be difficult for her to manage the heavy bucket, especially when it was full, and in the heat. She seemed, rather, the sort of woman who might, in bells and diaphanous pleasure silk, serve wine in a captain’s tent. A few feet behind her was a guard, with a whip. Ellen felt the metal rim of the dipper put to her lips and she gratefully drank. Too quickly was the dipper withdrawn. “Please, Mistress, more!” begged Ellen. “You have drunk to the mark,” said the slave. “What is going on here?” asked the fellow with the whip, moving toward them. “She asked for more,” explained the girl with the bucket and dipper. “Proceed,” said the guard to the slave, and she moved to the next girl, she on Ellen’s right. He shook out the coils of his whip. “Please, no, Master!” begged Ellen. Then she groveled in the dust, weeping, curling up, drawing up her knees, trying to cover her head and face, as she was whipped. Then he continued on his way, following the slave with the water. Ellen lay in the dust, on the chain, sobbing. “Kneel,” she heard a voice say, a female voice. Ellen looked up, from her side, and saw a slave, a long-haired blonde, in a brief beige tunic, with the gray patch. She had long legs. Too, she had a talmit. Too, she carried a switch. Ellen cried out, wincing, struck twice with the switch, and scrambled up to her knees. “Split those knees, pleasure slave,” she was told. “Yes, Mistress,” said Ellen. When the talmited slave had gone Ellen lifted her head and looked after her. She might have a talmit and a switch, thought Ellen, but she, too, I can tell, is a pleasure slave. Are we not all pleasure slaves? “You may be a terror to us, and strict with us, and an authority amongst us, you with your switch, we who are coffled slave meat,” thought Ellen, “but in a man’s tent, in the shadow of his whip, you, too, female, will kneel, tremble, whimper and beg to serve!”

  Last night Ellen had been brought to the camp. The two lads from the lake, stopped by sentries, had made known their business. In the light of the lantern the straw had been parted and the sack undone, and thrust down, at first just enough to view the tag on Ellen’s collar, but then, as the interest of the sentries was apparently aroused, to her waist. “Pretty,” said the first sentry. “Yes,” said the second. “And she is goods of Cos, all right,” said the first sentry. “How do you know?” asked the second. Ellen speculated that they might be considering taking her from the boys. She did not doubt but what that could be done. “It is clear, there,” said the first sentry, indicating the metal tag wired to Ellen’s collar, that bearing the confiscation notice. “Oh,” said the second. The first, at least, it seemed, could read. To be sure, he had not seemed too pleased with what he had read. Among sentries it is common to have at least one on duty, or an officer of the guard in the vicinity, who can read, someone who can interpret letters, passes, and such, if need be. Most sentries, of course, are looking for a password, or watchword. These are changed frequently, at least once daily. “Take her forward,” said the first sentry, “and ask for the tent of the slave marshal.” “We want coins for her,” said the older of the two lads, boldly. “See the slave marshal,” said the sentry. The sack was then again drawn up, over Ellen’s head, and tied shut.

  A bit later Ellen felt herself lifted from the wagon and the straw, and placed on the ground, on her stomach. Through the burlap, lifting her head with difficulty, she could see the light of two torches, apparently one elevated on each side of the entrance to a large tent. She was rather close to the torch stand on the right, as one would face the tent. Thus the sack lay in the full light of that torch. The wagon was to one side, the tharlarion shuffling about. She lay there, in the burlaplike sack, bound, awaiting the pleasure of men. Somewhat later then she heard the boys return, apparently with another individual. “Let us see her,” she heard. The sack was undone, and she was drawn from it. “Untie her,” she heard. “Stand,” she was told. The older of the two boys steadied her for, for a moment, it was hard for her to stand. “She is filthy,” she heard. A hand, that of he whom she took to be the slave marshal, the officer in charge of slaves in the camp, a large, bearded man, lifted and held, briefly, the tag on the collar. “See, she is the property of Cos,” said the older boy. She then felt the tag released. It dropped back, against her body. “We caught her by the lake,” said the younger lad.

  “I am not a runaway,” whispered Ellen, frightened. She could barely speak before this man, so large and fierce he seemed. She did not wish to be beaten, or hamstrung, or fed to sleen. “We were aflight. There was an accident.”

  “And doubtless you were being hurried to our camp,” said the man.

  Ellen was silent.

  She became aware then that in the vicinity of the tent, where she could see behind it, and to its sides, there were many whitenesses in the darkness, whitenesses receding, seeming to become smaller, into the darkness. She could make ou
t, dimly, to the left, in the half light, the figure of a woman, risen to all fours, a chain on her neck, looking at them. She was naked. There must have been, she estimated, behind the tent and about it, some acres of slaves, chains of them, the chains doubtless secured in some fashion, perhaps fastened to heavy stakes driven deeply into the ground.

  Ellen drew back in fear, as she saw a hook knife flash in the man’s hand.

  “Steady,” said the man’s voice, soothingly. “We are just going to see what you’ve got.”

  The hook knife half cut, half tore, through the tunic, soiled, stiff with dirt, and the tunic, parted, fell to the ground.

  “We want coins for her,” said the older lad. “We did not keep her. We brought her back.”

  “You would have considered keeping the property of Cos?” asked the man.

  “Not we, of course,” said the older, hastily. “But some might have.”

  “Some less grateful to their beloved benefactors, some less loyal to the empire?” suggested the man.

  “Yes,” said the older boy.

  “That would be theft,” said the man.

  “We brought her back,” pointed out the older lad.

  “She is a young, cheap slave, and, if I am not mistaken, a barbarian,” said the man. “But be assured, in any event, that you have the gratitude of the empire of Cos.”

  “And everyone knows the generosity of Cos,” said the older lad.

  “You want a reward?” asked the man. “For merely doing your duty?”

  The lads were silent.

  The visage of the slave marshal, for that is who it was, was severe.

  “Serving Cos is reward enough,” said the older lad.

  “Wait a moment, lads,” said the man. “There may be others, less honest, less noble, less loyal than yourselves to the empire, and we would not wish them to be dissuaded from returning properties such as this to their rightful owners.”