John Norman - Marauders of Gor

The second reason is presumably simple. It is merely that the female slave, abandoned, responsive, owned constantly at her master's beck and call, ready constantly for his least pleasure, is frequently used. Female slaves are sometimes used, when the master's time permits, three and four, or more, times a day. It is not unusual to give an entire day to sport with a female slave, something unthinkable with a free woman.

The slave girl, of course, has no rights. She may be used for hours. What counts is not her will, but her master's. Frequent use of the female slave, I suspect keeps her body honed to submissive perfection. Whatever be the reasons, a common female slave, and one of no unusual heat for a slave, will be carried through a series of multiple yieldings, dozens, before the average free woman can be warmed. Then, when the master wishes, scorning perhaps her helplessness in his arms, despising perhaps, to her misery, her vulnerability to him, he takes ruthlessly, perhaps contemptuously, his delight with her.

As a note, it might be added, that the slave female, in her master's arms, must, if he so commands, under the threat of the whip or death, vocalize her sensations, then ventilating and reinforcing, multiplying, deepening, and increasing and intensifying them. Thus, cruelly, she is forced to help arouse herself and contribute to her own pleasures, and consequently, of course, those of the master. This command, sometimes, implicit, sometimes a matter of the master's policy with his girl or girls, under which she is placed, to vocalize her pleasures, and abundantly, as well as, in her abandon, nudity, and beauty, manifest them physically, guides, accurately and surely, the master in the detailed exploitation of her weaknesses, in his depredations practiced on her body. She must betray herself. Do not blame her. No choice is given her. She is an instrument of passion on which he plays, delighting himself with the music of her expressions, her movements, her cries, even the wild, unrestrainable odors of her collared slave body. She is forced to contribute to her own sexual subjugation. Do not blame her. No choice is given her.

Following the rest of the girls, carrying the last of my gear, came Leah, who stood, small, beside me. Ottar then, and Gorm, and the other men of the Forkbeard boarded the craft. Thyri, who had boarded earlier, stood near the bench of Wulfstan, where, already, he gripped an oar. Near the mast, chained to it by the neck, eyes down, knelt Telima.

Moorings were cast off. Poles thrust the Hilda from the wharf. Gorm held the tiller, mounted at the stern on the starboard side. The seamen brought their shields inboard, stowed their gear beneath their benches, grasped their oars. Slowly the tarnhead prow of the Forkbeard's sleek craft turned toward the sweep of Thassa. The oars dipped slowly. The great red and white striped sail fell, opening, snapping, from the spar of needlewood. I turned back to the wharf.

The Forkbeard and I raised our hands, in salute, to the men there. We saw Svein Blue Tooth, the tooth of the Hunjer whale, stained blue, on its chain about his neck. He lifted his hand. Near him, kneeling beside her master, behind the line of his heels, was Bera, one of his girls. I saw, too, Bjarni, of Thorstein Camp, who lifted his spear to me, and beside him, too, the young man, his friend, he, too, lifting his hand, whom I had, it now seemed long ago, championed at the dueling field. There were many men there, armed, and wenches, too.

One of the seamen lifted the "golden girl," her crossed ankles in the fetter, that she might see. Then he threw her back to the deck, where, on her stomach, and elbows, head down, hair falling to the deck, she lay.

I saw Telima, standing by the mast, to which she was chained by the neck. I looked at her, harshly. Immediately she knelt, eyes down.

In my pouch there was a sapphire from distant Schendi. There, too, heavy and spiraled, was a ring of gold, which I had taken from the arm of the Kur I had slain. In the distance, as the ship moved to sea, the wind in its sail, oar dipping, I saw the bleak, white heights of the Torvaldsberg.

Hrolf, from the East, had agreed to return the war arrow to the Torvaldsberg.

We had given it to him. When he had left the ruins of the hall of Svein Blue Tooth I had run after him, and, a pasang from the camp, had stopped him. "What is your true name?" I had inquired.

He had looked at me, and smiled. It was strange what he said. "My name," he said, "is Torvald." Then he had turned away, I watched him return to the mountain. I thought of the stabilization serums. "My name is Torvald," he had said. Then he had turned away.

"Ho!" cried Ivar Forkbeard, striking me on the back, clasping me about the shoulders. "It is a good wind!" Then he turned away, to his duties on the ship.

I walked between the benches, to the prow, and, standing on the high decking, at the stem, put one arm about the prow and looked out to sea. Leah heeled me there. I turned to face her. I could see the lovely curves of the interior cleavage of her breasts, revealed in the parting of the rough slave tunic. I looked at the collar, her eyes. I pulled the tunic down from her shoulders, to her waist.

"It is your girl's hope that she pleases you," she said.

"Slip from the tunic," I told her. She untied the binding fiber, belting the tunic, and thrust it over her hips, to her ankles, and then stepped from it.

"To my feet," I told her.

"Yes, Master," she whispered. She lay on her side, her head on her arm. She did not look up at me.

I turned again to look out to sea.

I thought of many things, of Ar, of Marlenus, of Talena, with whom I was not pleased. When I had been crippled she had derided me; she had expressed contempt, pride; she had then held herself too good for me. I had had her returned to Ar. I wondered if, somehow, somewhere, we might once again encounter one another. Did we do so I thought now she might find me different.

I pondered trying chain luck in Ar. I wondered how she might feel, the gag hood drawn over her head from behind, locked shut behind her neck, stripped, thrown on her back over the saddle of a tarn, bound, swept away, with a beating of wings, into total bondage. Publius, my kitchen master, I speculated, might find use for such a wench in his kitchens; after she had much pleased me, I would see that she was assigned to Publius. I had little doubt that the daughter, or she who had once been the daughter, of Marlenus of Ar, properly instructed by the switch, would make an excellent addition to the slaves of the kitchen. Perhaps, before I chose my wench for the night, one of her duties might be to scrub the tiles of my chamber. I recalled how, in the forests, long ago, I had sought her. It had been my intention to repledge the companionship, and to become great on Gor, to raise high the chair of Bosk, climbing in riches and power to the heights of the planet, to become even, perhaps, in time, a world's Ubar.

Incredibly, perhaps, the values, wealth and power, which had driven me in the forest, when I had sought Talena, no longer seemed of much interest to me. The sky now seemed more important to me, and the sea, and the ship beneath my feet. No longer did I dream of becoming a Ubar. In the north I found I had changed. What had driven me in the forests seemed now paltry, irrelevant to the true needs, the concerns, of man. I had been blinded by the values of civilization. Everything that I had been taught had been false. I had suspected this when I had stood on the heights of the Torvaldsberg, on a windswept rock, looking upon the land beneath, white and bleak, and beautiful. Even Kurii, on it height, stunned, had stopped to gaze. I had learned much in the north.

I looked again to sea, and to the sky. There were now white clouds in it. Somewhere, beyond the fourth ring, mixed in the belt of asteroids, intruding within the perimeters refused to them by Priest-Kings, were the patient, orbiting steel worlds. This I had from Samos. They were nearer now. Somewhere, above that placid sky with its swift, white clouds, closer now, were Kurii. I remembered the huge head, mounted upon the stake.