John Norman - Tribesmen of Gor

These summon other girls to witness one of their sisters on the way to discipline. “Here is a girl who has not been fully pleasing,” cries the man.

“Look upon her. She is going to discipline. She was not completely pleasing. See her! Come, witness a girl who has not been fully pleasing!” These cries bring the other girls, with their burdens, and such, to watch the progress through the halls of the girl who is to be punished. Soon a derisive, moving gauntlet is formed, through which, constantly, the miserable, whip-bearing girl crawls. She is spat upon, and struck, with hands and straps, and kicked, and much abused, but, of course, only within those limits set by the caller and guard. This sort of thing is thought desirable in the Tahari, in encouraging the whipbearing girl to be more dutiful in the future, and the girls of the gauntlet to resolve, too, to be more dutiful, that it not be they, next, at the mercy of their enemies and rivals, who carries the whip. The actual whipping in the Tahari, incidentally, is usually a matter between the girl and the master, or he and his men. Other girls are seldom permitted to watch one of their sisters being whipped. All they know, when the doors close, is that she will be whipped.

I found the girl kneeling before the small iron gate of her former slave alcove.

The guard, having accompanied her to the quarters for female slaves, which were now empty, the girls being elsewhere, serving men, had left her there. We were alone in the large, beautiful, tiled, pillared room. She looked at me. I took the whip from her teeth and thrust it in my sash.

“Remove the rag from your right ankle,” I told her. She did this, and put it to one side.

She had come through the corridors from the audience chamber on her hands and knees, carrying the whip, head down, in her teeth, between two lines, moving with her, of slave girls, girls running, when she had crawled by them, to be again at the head of the line, to have again their lashing stroke, their cry or jeer.

I threw her a towel that she might wipe her body and long, swirling dark hair, cleaning it. She did so, gratefully. I saw that she had been much struck and abused. The girls had had much sport with her as she had crawled, helpless, to her discipline. Vella was obviously the object of much hostility among the other slave girls. She was apparently much resented and hated. Vella was too beautiful, I supposed, to be popular with women. The very beauty, which made her prized among men, would make her an object of hostility and loathing among women. A beauty like Vella on Gor bad little choice but to relate to men, and, of course, she a slave, on their terms. Too, she had been a high slave, much above the other girls, now fallen far below them, now a fit object for their abuse and scorn, to be tempered only to the degree to which they were willing to feel the flash of the guard’s strap through their silk. She looked at me, tears in her eyes.

“Tarl?” she asked.

She moved toward me, and slipped to her feet, encircling my body with her small arms. About her left wrist, knotted, was the bleached silk from Klima. She put her head against my shoulder, and then lifted it, softly kissing me. She was a very delicious and beautiful naked slave. “I love you, Tarl,” she said.

“Give me your left wrist,” I said.

She extended her left wrist to me. I removed from it the silk from Klima. I put it in my sash.

“I did not realize until now your plan,” she said, “to pretend to make me your slave, to fool the others.” She looked about. “We are alone.” she smiled.

I opened the small square gate in the alcove, set in the bars, some ten inches from the floor. The opening is about eighteen inches square.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

I would use a standard Tahari tie.

“Tarl?” she asked.

The door is opened that the girl’s beauty not he hurt against the closed bars of the tiny gate.

“Oh!” she cried. I thrust her, holding her by her arms from behind, on her knees, belly tight, against the flat iron piece over which the door swings, in closing. Her knees were thus through the bars, on the inside of the cell. With a length of binding fiber, about her knees and behind and over the bars I secured her in position. She could not fall backwards. I then took her wrists up, one at a time, she, startled, not resisting, and tied them, on the outside, each to a separate bar, on either side of the small iron gate. “Tarl!” she said. She can grasp the bar with her small hand.

I regarded her.

“Tarl,” she said, “you need not carry your plan so far. We shall not be surprised. Girls will not be permitted to return here until the earliest hours of the morning. We shall not be surprised. It is not necessary to fasten me like this, so helplessly.”

I said nothing. How foolish I thought her. But she was, of course, a woman of Earth.

“Enough of this joke,” she said, irritably. “Release me, now! Now!”

But she did not find herself released.

“Tarl,” she said. The right side of her face was pressed against the flat iron bar, some two inches high, at the top of the opening, against which the gate, when closed, rests. “Do you realize what you have done?”

“What?” I asked.

“You have put me in Tahari whipping position,” she said.

“Oh?” I said.

“It is degrading,” she said. “Release me, immediately!” She squirmed. She was helpless, warrior-tied. “Immediately!” she said. “Immediately!”

But she was not released.

I took the whip from my sash.

“You will not truly strike me with the whip, will you?” she asked. She spoke to me, her head turned, over her left shoulder. “I am a woman of Earth,” she said.

“You cannot treat me like a mere Gorean slave girl. You know you cannot do it!”

I opened the whip, letting the broad, soft leather fall loose.

“We are alone here,” she said. “None will know whether you strike me or not. You need not strike me. You may simply say that you did. I shall, in the deception, corroborate your story. The charade that you would keep me as a slave need not now be prolonged.” She tried to turn her head, to look at me. But she could not see me. “Surely you have no intention of making we a true slave, for you are only of Earth,” she laughed. “Only of Earth!” Then she said, “Release me, now! I demand it! You are only of Earth! Only of Earth! I simply demand to be released, Tarl! Now! Now!”

I said nothing.

She did not find herself released.

“None will know if you do not whip me,” she said.

“I will know,” I told her. “And one other, too, will know.”

“Who?” she asked.

“The pretty little she-animal and slave, Vella,” I said.

Her fists clenched in the bindings.

“You may call me Elizabeth,” she said.

“Who is she?” I asked.

“Oh, Tarl,” she scolded.

I smiled. Did she not know there was no Elizabeth unless a master chose to call her by that name?

She spoke more confidently now. “I am a woman of Earth,” she said. “It is not necessary to beat a woman of Earth to teach her a lesson, should that be perhaps, amusing and preposterous though it is, what is in your mind. She, Tarl, is not an animal who must be whipped. She is a person. She is not a mere Gorean girl, a simple, vital, half-animal thing. She is a person! A true person! I have learned my lesson, Tarl. I am truly sorry. I was cruel and petty. I know! I am sorry. I have learned my lesson. It will not be necessary to beat me.” She smiled. “Untie me, Tarl,” she said. “Untie me now.”

I stepped to the bars.

“Thank you, Tarl,” she said. But I did not untie her. I held the bit of bleached slave silk, removed from my sash, over her nose and mouth. She could breathe easily through it, and speak through it. But she could not breathe or speak without feeling it, without inhaling and taking into her very body the faint, lingering traces of slave perfume, hers, which yet clung to it. Suddenly her voice, her lips moving beneath the silk, became less certain. “I am not a Gorean girl,” she said, “fit for physical discipline. I am not one of those animals who understands only the whip.”