I dropped to the floor of the cage.
I heard the heavy barred gate at the top, over my head, with its attached planks, flung shut. It made a harsh sound of metal and wood. Then I heard the rattle of two heavy padlocks on chains. There were two heavy metal snaps, as the door above me was fastened shut.
I looked up. I was locked within.
"Kneel," said a voice.
I knelt. There were four other girls in the cage.
"In the position of the pleasure slave," said one of them.
I complied.
"Let us see your brand," said another.
I turned to the side and drew back the tunic.
"A Dina," said another girl. There were four besides myself in the cage, Thurnus's other girls.
"Did you know," asked one, "that Dinas are suitable to be the slaves of slaves?"
"No," I said, "I did not."
"You were not given permission to cover your brand," said one, sharply.
I drew back my hand. I turned to face them, on my knees. They sat in the cage, on the straw.
"Are you a pleasure slave?" asked one, curious.
"Yes," I said.
They laughed. "Here you are a work slave," said one. "Here you will be worked hard," said another.
I straightened my back. They made me angry. I assessed them, obviously to a woman's eyes, though a man might not have noticed, one by one. It is a slight, tacit thing that women understand. I smiled. They were angry.
"Perhaps I will not be worked as hard as you think," I said.
I was clearly their superior in beauty.
"Insolent slave!" cried one. "How haughty you are, Slave Girl!" said another.
I shrugged.
"Do you think you are more beautiful than we?" asked one of them.
"Yes," I told them.
"Do you think you will please the master more than we?" asked another.
"Yes," I told them. "I am clearly more beautiful."
"She-tarsk," said one. "She-sleen!" cried another.
"You will be worked hard!" said another girl.
"We will see to that!" vowed the fourth girl.
"Do you have a comb for my hair?" I asked.
"Do not break the position of the pleasure slave," warned the largest of the girls, Sandal Thong, a long-armed, freckled giantess of a peasant wench.
"Very well," I said.
"It becomes you," said Verr Tail, a wide-shouldered, auburn-haired girl.
"Thank you," I said.
I did not wish to be caged with them. I could sense their hostility. Too, they could surely detect that I did not care for them. But we were locked in the same small cage.
"Doubtless you will soon become the master's favorite," said Turnip, a dark-haired, wide-faced girl.
"Perhaps," I said, tossing my head.
"Radish is now favorite," said Sandal Thong, indicating a blondish, thick-ankled girl at her left. I recognized her. It was she whose heartbeat had given the time count in the boys' sport of girl hunt the preceding night. Last night she had served one of the warriors of Clitus Vitellius. I recalled her pressing back against him, his hand on her heart, his calling the count. I myself had been in the arms of such men many times. They were not peasant boys.
"I was the girl of a warrior," I told them.
"You are very pretty," said Radish. I decided I did not dislike Radish.
"You were poor in the furs," said Sandal Thong. "That is why he gave you away."
"No!" I cried.
"Poor in the furs!" laughed Sandal Thong.
"Why did he give you away?" asked Verr Tail.
"I do not know," I said.
"Poor in the furs!" said Sandal Thong, pointing her finger at me.
"We have few furs in this village," laughed Turnip. "We will see how you roll in the straw!"
"If you are not good," said Verr Tail, "we will soon know. Thurnus will tell everyone whether you are good or not."
"I am good," I told them.
"Why did your master give you away?" asked Turnip.
"It amused him," I said. "He is Clitus Vitellius, a captain. He can have many girls, more beautiful than I. He made me love him, hopelessly and desperately, and then, for his amusement, discarded me. He toyed with me. He used me for the object of his sport. Then, when he had won, fully and completely, he cast me aside, ridding himself of me, giving me away."
"Did you truly love him?" asked Radish.
"Yes," I said.
"What a slave you are!" laughed Sandal Thong.
"He made me love him!" I cried defensively. Yet I knew I would have loved him, even had he not made me love him. Had I had the choice as a free woman I would have chosen to love him; but the choice had not been mine, for I had been a slave; he had overwhelmed me, forcing me to love him, consulting not my will, before I could have chosen to do so; I who had desired to kneel before him of my own free will had been commanded to his sandals as a slave girl.
"You are a fool to have loved your master," said Sandal Thong.
"I love my master," said Radish.
Sandal Thong turned about and struck Radish to the side of the cage. "Slave!" she cried.
"I cannot help it that I love my master!" said Radish.
Sandal Thong spun about, facing me. "Do not break the position of the pleasure slave!" she said.
I held position. "Are you not a slave, too?" I cried.
Sandal Thong stood up. She was a tall girl. She fingered the rope collar on her throat. She stood there in the brief slave tunic, of the wool of the Hurt. It was the only garment she had, as with the rest of us. She was a large girl, heavy-boned, tall, stronger than we, powerful when compared to us, but to a man she, too, would have been slight, at their mercy. "Yes," she said, "I can be beaten, or sold or slain. I can be given as a gift among men. They can put me in chains. They can burn me with irons. They can do with me what they wish." She looked out through the bars of the cage, at ground level. "I must kneel to them. I must be obedient. I must do what I am told." She looked down at me. "Yes," she said, "I, too, am a slave."
"We are all slaves," said Radish.
"I do not want to be a woman!" cried Sandal Thong suddenly, shaking the bars of the cage. She put her face against them, weeping.
"You weep like a woman," I said.
She spun to face me.
"Once," said I, "I did not wish to be a woman. Then I met men such as I had not dreamed could exist. They made me happy to be a woman. Never again would I have wanted to be anything else. My womanhood, though it puts me at the mercy of men, is now exquisitely precious to me. Among such men I would not trade my womanhood for anything in the world. Every girl has a master. It is only, Sandal Thong, that you have not yet met yours."
She looked at me, angrily, the bars in back of her.
"There is some man, Sandal Thong," I said, "whose sandals you would beg to untie with your teeth."
"If Thurnus would so much as look at me," she said, "I would crawl ten pasangs on my belly to lick the dust from his ankles."
"Thurnus, then," I said, "is your master."
"Yes," she said, "Thurnus is my master."
"What is your name?" asked Radish.
"Do you have a name?" had asked Thurnus of me, earlier.
"My former master, Clitus Vitellius, of Ar," I had said, "called me Dina."
"He thought so little of you?" asked Thurnus.
"Yes, Master," I said.
"It is a pretty name," he had said. "it is only that it is common."
"Yes, Master," I had said.
"I name you Dina," he said, putting the name on me, naming his animal. "Who are you?" he asked.
"Dina," I had said, "Master."
"What is your name?" asked Radish.
I smiled. "Dina," I said.
"Many girls with your brand are called Dina," said Turnip.
"I have heard that," I said.
"It is a pretty name," said Verr Tail. "Thank you," I said.
"It must be
nice to have a girl's name," said Turnip.
I did not respond.
"I am Radish," said Radish. "I am Turnip," said Turnip. "I am Verr Tail," said Verr Tail.
Sandal Thong looked at me. "I am Sandal Thong," she said.
"Tal," I said to them.
"Tal," they said to me.
"You are first in the cage?" I asked Sandal Thong.
"Yes," she said.
"It will not be necessary to kick or beat me," I said. "I will obey you."
"We are all women. We are all slaves," said Sandal Thong.
"We are all under the whip," said Turnip.
"I have been hand whipped," I said. "But I have never felt the slave whip."
"Have you been a slave long?" asked Radish.
"No," I said.
"You are very pretty to have been free," said Turnip.
"I lived far away," I said.
"Your accent marks you as barbarian," said Sandal Thong.
"Yes," I said.
"Where did you live?" asked Verr Tail.
"A place called Earth," I said.
"I have never heard of it," said Turnip.
"Is it in the north?" asked Radish.
"It is far away," I said. "Let us not speak of it." How could I speak of Earth to them? I did not want them to think me mad, or a liar. Could they believe a world might exist where men, shouting political slogans, vied with one another to surrender their dominance, hastening gleefully to their own castration? Could such a world be welcomed by any save Lesbians, and men who were not men? Truth and political convenience, I thought, do not always coincide.
"Barbarian places are so dull," said Turnip. "Have you never been chained in Ar?"
"No," I said.
"I was sold once in Ar," she said. "It is a marvelous city."
"I am pleased to hear it," I said. Clitus Vitellius, I knew, was of Ar.
"It is strange that you have never felt the slave whip," said Turnip.
I shrugged.
"Perhaps she was too pretty to whip," said Turnip.
"I think it is always the ugly girls who are whipped," said Verr Tail.
"That is not true," said Radish.
"I would suppose," I said, "that any girl, beautiful or not, if she needs a whipping, would be whipped by her master." It surprised me that I, an Earth girl, had said this. Yet, why should a girl who needs a whipping not be whipped, if she has a Gorean master?"
"Dina is right," said Radish.
"They whip us," said Sandal Thong, "when it pleases them."
Radish laughed, and slapped her thighs. "Yes," she said, "the beasts! They put us under the leather whenever it pleases them, whether we have done anything or not!"
"Men are the masters," said Turnip. "They do with us what they please."
"This is a peasant village, Dina," said Verr Tail. "If you remain long us the village, you will learn the slave whip well."
I shuddered.
"I have never even really been switched," I said. Eta had never switched me, though she had held switch rights over me, as first girl in the camp. I had been stung twice across the back of the thighs, below the short tunic, by Melina, companion of my master, Thurnus, when she had hurried me to the kennel. It was been terribly humiliating and unpleasant. It was hard to imagine what a true switching would be. I could not even conjecture what it would be to feel the flash of the slave whip on my body.
"Does the whip hurt, Sandal Thong?" I asked.
"Yes," said Sandal Thong.
"Does the whip hurt very much?" I asked.
"Yes," said Sandal Thong.
"You are strong, Sandal Thong," I said, "do you fear the whip?"
"Yes," she said.
"Do you fear the whip very much?" I asked.
"Yes," she said, "I fear the whip very much."
I shuddered. If even the large, strong Sandal Thong so feared the whip, I wondered what it would do to me.
"It is time to sleep now," said Radish.
We lay down in the straw, and were soon asleep. I awakened once, sweating. I had had a strange dream. I had dreamed I knelt naked, in a steel collar, on smooth tiles, in a beautiful room, as though in a palace. Before me had been a low table. On this table had been strands of thread and, in small cups, beads, slave beads, of various colors, red, yellow and purple, and other colors. I understood, somehow, that I must make a necklace. A slave whip had been lifted before me. "What is this?" asked a voice. "A slave whip, Master," I had said. "And what are you?" had inquired the voice. "A slave, Master," I had said. "Do you obey?" asked the voice. "Yes, Master," I had said. The whip then, roughly, had been forced against my face; it pressed against my lips, bruising them; I felt it with my teeth. "Kiss the whip Slave," said the voice. I had kissed the whip. "Who commands me?" I had asked. It had seemed as though I must ask that. Yet it was not the sort of thing a slave girl would naturally ask. Such an inquiry might be thought to border on insolence. Yet I was not taken by the wrists and thrown fiat upon the tiles and whipped. "You are commanded by Belisarius, Slave Girl," was the response. The response, somehow, seemed oddly fitting, expected. Yet I knew no Belisarius. "What is the command of Belisarius, the slave girl's master?" I had asked. "It is simple," said the voice. "Yes, Master," I had said. "Bead a necklace, Slave Girl," said the voice. "Yes, Master," I had said. Then my hands had reached toward the strands of thread on the table, and toward the cups of tiny beads. Then I had awakened. I did not understand the dream. I put out my hand. I was not on smooth tiles. My hand felt straw, and wood, and a steel bar, and the tiered dirt behind it. The dream was then gone. I lay awake, looking up at the bars and wood above me. The moons were full outside, and I rose to my feet in the straw. I was not in a palace. I was in a cage at Tabuk's Ford. I went to the side of the cage and, over the vertical, banking earth, looked out. My small hands held the bars. The roof of the cage was a few inches above my head. My fists clutched the bars. I had been Judy Thorton. I was caged! I cried out, startled. Bran Loort grinned at me. The other girls turned restlessly, but did not awaken. I shrank back from the bars. I lay down in the straw. He was looking at me. I tried to pull the short woolen tunic more over my legs.
"I am going to be first in Tabuk's Ford," whispered Bran Loort. "When I am first," he said, "Melina will give you to me."
He slipped away from the bars.
I drew up my legs. I huddled in the straw, trembling.
I chopped at the dry earth about the sul plant.
I had been twenty days slave at Tabuk's Ford.
The peasant hoe has a staff some six feet in length. Its head is iron, and heavy, some six inches at the cutting edge, tapering to four inches where it joins the stall. It is fastened to the staff by the staff's fitting through a hollow, ringlike socket at its termination. A wedge is driven into the head of the staff to expand and tighten the wood in the socket.
I was too small to use such a tool well. I did not make a good peasant's slave.
It is difficult to convey the hardship of slavery in a peasant village, particularly for a slight girl, such as I.
I stood up, straightening my back. It hurt. I shaded my eyes.
On the road from Tabuk's Ford I could see the cart of Tup Ladletender, the itinerant peddler, he between its handles, bent over, drawing it.
I looked at my hands. They were raw and blistered, and dirty. I moved my finger inside the rope collar, moving it out a bit from my neck, wiping sweat and dirt from under it. The rope scratched my neck, but I must wear it. It was token of my slavery.
John Norman - Gor 11 Page 27
