John Norman: Slave Girl Of Gor

He pointed to me. He spoke. The bearded man again spoke harshly, waving his arm, ordering the newcomer away. The newcomer laughed. The bearded man said something, gesturing to me. The tone of his voice was disparaging. I felt angry. The newcomer looked more closely at me. He spoke to me, calling across the grass. The word he spoke I had heard before. The other man had said it to me after I had been beaten, when he had prodded me with the spear, before I had again knelt, though then struck and beaten, before the men, shortly before the dagger had been put to my throat. Tossing my head I knelt, the chain dangling from my collar before my body, to the grass. I knelt back on my heels, my back very straight, my hands on my thighs, my head high, looking straight ahead. I thrust my shoulders back, my breasts forward. I did not neglect the placement of my knees; I opened them as widely as I could, as I knew the men wanted. I knelt before them again in that most elegant and helpless position in which men may place a woman, that position I was later to learn was that of the Gorean pleasure slave.

The newcomer now spoke decisively. The bearded man and the other retorted angrily. The newcomer, as I saw out of the corner of my eye, was pointing to me. He was grinning. I trembled and shuddered. He was demanding me! He was telling them to give me to him! The bold beast! How I hated him, and how pleased I was! The men laughed. I was frightened. They were two, and he one! He should flee! He should run for his life! I knelt, chained.

"Kajira canjellne!" said the newcomer. Though he indicated me peremptorily with his spear, it was at the two other men that he looked. He did not now take his eyes from them.

The bearded man looked angry. "Kajira canjellne," he acknowledged. "Kajira canjellne," said the other man, too, soberly.

The newcomer then moved back a few paces. He crouched down. He picked up a stalk of grass, and began to chew on it.

The bearded man approached me. From within his tunic he drew forth two lengths of slender, braided black leather, each about eighteen inches long. He crouched behind me. He jerked my wrists behind my back, crossed them, and bound them, tightly. He then crossed my ankles, and, too, bound them, tightly as well. I could feel the braided leather, deep in my wrists and ankles. I winced, helpless. Then, holding me by the hair with his left hand, from behind, I felt a heavy key, which he must have removed from his tunic, thrust deeply into the large collar lock, below my left ear. The heavy collar, with its lock, pushed into the left side of my neck. The key turned. I heard the bolt click back. It made a heavy sound. It must have been a thick, heavy bolt. He dropped the key to the grass and, with both hands, jerking it, opened the collar. He dropped it, with the depending chain, to the grass. I was freed of the collar! I looked at the collar. It was the first time I had seen it. As I had surmised, it matched the chain. It was heavy, circular, of black iron, hinged, efficient, practical, frightening. It bore a staple and stout loop. One link of the chain was fastened about the loop. The loop was circular, and about two and one half inches in width.

I was free of the collar! But I was bound helplessly. I pulled futilely at my bonds.

The bearded man lifted me lightly in his arms. My weight was as if nothing to him. He faced the stranger, who still crouched a few yards away.

"Kajira canjellne?" asked the bearded man. It was as though he were giving the stranger an opportunity to withdraw. Perhaps a mistake had been made. Perhaps there had been a misunderstanding?

The stranger, crouching in the grass, his shield beside him, the butt of the spear in the grass, the weapon upright, its point against the sky, nodded. There had been no mistake. "Kajira canjellne," he said, simply.

The other man angrily went to a place in the grass, to one side. There, angrily, with the blade of his spear, he traced and dug a circle in the earth. It was some ten feet in diameter. The bearded man then threw me over his shoulder, and carried me to the circle. I was hurled to its center. I lay on my side, bound.

The men spoke together, as though clarifying arrangements. They did not speak long.

I struggled to my knees. I knelt in the circle.

The stranger, now, stood. He donned his helmet. He slipped his shield on his arm, adjusting straps. He slid the short blade at his left hip some inches from the sheath, and slipped it back in, lifting and dropping it in the sheath. It was loose. He took his spear in his right hand. It had a long, heavy shaft, some two inches in width, some seven feet in length; the head of the weapon, including its socket and penetrating rivets, was some twenty inches in length; the killing edges of the blade began about two inches from the bottom of the socket, which reinforced the blade, tapering with the blade, double-edged, to within eight inches of its point; the blade was bronze; it was broad at the bottom, tapering to its point; given the stoutness of the weapon, the lesser gravity of this world, and the strength of the man who wielded it, I suspected it would have considerable penetrating power; I doubted that the shields they carried, though stout, could turn its full stroke, if taken frontally; I had little doubt such a weapon might thrust a quarter of its length through the body of a man, and perhaps half its length or more through the slighter, softer body of a mere girl; I looked upon the spear; it was so mighty; I feared it.

The two men who were my captors conferred briefly among themselves. He who was not the bearded man then stepped forward, his shield on his arm, his spear in hand. He stood separated from the stranger by some forty feet.

I observed them. They stood, not moving, each clad in scarlet, each helmeted, each similarly armed. They stood in the grass. Neither looked at me. I was forgotten. I knelt in the circle. I tried to free myself. I could not. I knelt in the circle.

The wind moved the grass. The clouds shifted in the blue sky.

For a long thee, neither man moved. Then, suddenly, the stranger, laughing, lifted his spear and struck its butt into the ground. "Kajira canjellne!" he laughed.

I could not believe it. He seemed elated. He was pleased with the prospect of war. How terrible he was! How proud, how magnificent he seemed! I thought I knew then, with horror, the nature of men.

"Kajira canjellne!" said the other man.

Warily they began to circle one another.

I waited, kneeling, frightened, nude and bound, in the circle. I watched the men warily circling one another. I pulled at my bonds. I was helpless.

Suddenly, as though by common accord, each crying out, each uttering a savage cry, they hurled themselves at one another.

It was the ritual of the spear casting.

The spear of him who was one of my captors seemed to leap upward and away, caroming from the oblique, lifted surface of the stranger's shield. The spear, caroming from the shield, flew more than a hundred feet away, dropping in the grass, where it stood fixed, remote and useless, the butt of its shaft pointing to the sky. The stranger's spear had penetrated the shield of he who was one of my captors, and the stranger, bracing the shaft between his arm and body, had lifted his opponent's shield and turned, throwing it and his opponent, who had not the time to slip from the shield straps, to the ground at his feet. The stranger's blade, now, loosed from its sheath, under the opponent's helmet, lay at his throat.

But the stranger did not strike. He severed the shield straps of the opponent's shield, freeing his arm from them. He stepped back. He cast his own shield aside, into the grass.

He stood waiting, blade drawn.

The other man got his legs under him and leaped to his feet. He was enraged. The blade in his sheath leaped forth. He charged the other, the stranger, and swiftly did the two engage.