John Norman - Beasts of Gor

“But do you understand the meaning of it?” I asked Arlene.

Suddenly Arlene shuddered, and looked at the chain. She held it in her small hands. It, locked on her body, would confine her obdurately, making her helplessly the rightless slave of a master. Every organism has its place in nature. That of woman is at the foot of man.

“I love being a woman, Master,” she said. She held the chain against her bared beauty.

“Now lick and kiss the chain, Slave,” I said.

“Yes, Master,” she whispered.

She bent her head to the chain and, delicately, sobbing with emotion, licked and kissed at the metal. Her tears fell among the links.

I locked the sirik on Audrey. She looked at me, desperately.

“Later,” I said.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“Go to the sled, Slave,” I said.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

They, still in sirik, would be fastened in fur sacks and tied on sleds. Later, after the first ice camp had been constructed, they would be freed from sirik, and used in the huts. Later, given garments, they would trek, In neck coffle, beside the sleds.

I took the chains from Arlene, pulling them from her, and, with five snaps, locked them roughly on her body.

I smelled the womanhood of her. She looked at me. “Later,” I said. “Go to the sled, Slave.”

“Yes, Master,” she mid, moaning.

Men about me were enacting similar ceremonies of enslavement with other imbonded wenches. Ram, I saw, took none. He was satisfied with lovely Tina, who had been the Lady Tina of Lydius. Drusus, I saw, had put a pair of beauties in sirik. He sent them to the sled on which he had been alotted space for his belongings, including two slave girls.

I threw another sirik to the floor before me.

Barbara, the blond Earth girl, knelt before me. “I am a slave,” she said. “I beg your chains.”

“Pick them up,” I said.

She did so, and kissed them. I locked them on her.

“Goto the sled,” I said.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

I threw another sirik to the floor before me.

Constance, the Gorean slave, blond and lovely, knelt before me. “I am a slave,” she said. “I beg your chaim.”

“Pick them up,” I said.

She did so, and kissed them.

I locked them on her.

“Go to the sled,” I said.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

I threw the fifth of the six sets of chains which I held on my shoulder to the floor.

Belinda, whom I had used in the corridor, hurried to me, kneeling before me.

She was joyful. I would permit her, at least for the time, at my feet.

Soon, in sirik, she made her way toward my sled.

I threw the last sirik to the tiles before me.

The graceful and aristocratic girl, she who had been the Lady Rosa, came and knelt before me. “I am a slave,” she said. “I beg your chains.”

“Pick them up,” I said.

She did so, and, looking at me, pressed them to her lips, Then she put her head down and, delicately, licked and kissed them.

I locked the collar on her neck, and the two wrist rings, one after the other, on her small wrists. I then took the chain between her legs and, crouching behind her, snapped the two ankle rings shut on her fair ankles. I then stood up and stood before her. I looked down at her, my hands on my hips. “Whose slave are you?” I asked. “Yours, Master,” she said. “Go to the sled. Slave,” I said. “Yes, Master,” she said.

“We must hurry,” said Imnak. “In two Ahn this place will be no more.”

Outside the room which had been used for slave selection by the victors, I took a dart-firing weapon from one of the red hunters.

“Where are you going?” asked Imnak.

“To the chamber of Zarendargar,” I said. I slipped one of the darts into the weapon’s breech, and let the bolt spring shut.

“Why?” he asked.

I shrugged. “In the disruption consequent upon this place’s destruction,” I said, “his death would be hideous.”

I went to the chamber of Zarendargar, the weapon in hand. Imnak followed.

At the chamber of Zarendargar I pressed open the portal with my foot and lifted the weapon, to fire at the figure which would be recumbent upon the blood-soaked, furred dais.

I was startled. I leaped into the room. Weapon in hand I scanned the room, the walls, the high poles threaded over my head.

I shook.

Zarendargar was gone.

“I will have the rooms and halls searched!” cried Imnak. He hurried away, out of the room.

I walked slowly to the stained, furred dais. I had placed on it a glass of paga before I had left the room. I saw, against a steel wall, the shattered remnants of such a glass. But on the dais there was another glass, it, too, filled with paga.

I laughed loudly.

I bent and picked up the second glass. I lifted it to the empty room, in both a toast and a salute.

Then I downed the paga. Then I threw the glass against the steel wall, where it shattered, and fell, its fragments showering downward, mingling with those of the other glass.

I turned about and left the room. Outside Imnak was trying to organize a search of the complex.

“There is no time,” I said.

“But the beast,” he said.

“There is no time,” I said. “We must make away.”

“Yes,” said he, “Tarl, who hunts with me.” He hurried away, calling to the red hunters.

The snow sleen were already harnessed.

I paused there, alone, at the portal of the chamber of Zarendargar, Half-Ear, war general of the Kurii. I looked within, once, at the blood-stained dais, and the steel wall, at the foot of which, mingled, lay the fragmenti of two glasses.

Then quickly I turned about and strode from the area. The trek must be initiated.

“Look!” cried Imnak.

I turned the sled about Others, too, turned about, the long sleds, like clouds, on the bleak ice.

Many of those with us cried out in wonder and alarm.

Behind us, in the winter sky, looming, streaming hundreds of pasangs upward into the sky, shimmering and flickering, extended vast, subtle curtains of chromatic lights, yellows, and pinks and reds.

“It is not the season,” said a hunter.

Then men cried out with awe. Some women screamed. Children hid their faces.

For an instant, in that lofty, panoramic display, there had appeared, only for an instant, etched in light, the gigantic head of a Kur. One ear, the left, had been half torn from its head. The lips drew back, exhibiting the Kur’s fearful sign of pleasure. Then the fearsome head was gone.

We then saw, I, and the others, and the People, on the pack ice more than an Ahn’s trek from the complex, a blast of light which, in the darkness of the polar night, made us cry out with pain, half blinded.

For a terrible instant it had seemed as bright as day, with a brightness that most of the People, in their northern regions, had never known, a brightness that might have struck the white sands of the blazing Tahari or the green jungles of the rain forests of the eastern Cartius.

Then the lights in the sky were gone and the polar night had returned, save for a long, shimmering volume of yellowish smoke that reared from the distant ice.

“Lie down!” I cried to those standing about me. “Behind the sleds!”

The shock wave of the blast, in some seconds, struck us. It drove ice and pelting, granular snow before it. It tore at our furs. I held the sled, bracing it against the blast. Arlene cried out with terror as the sled twisted and half-tipped. She, like others of her kind, women, slaves, and slaves to be, was absolutely helpless. She was confined in two fur sacks, one placed within the other, the layer of warm air between them acting as insulation. She could not escape from the two sacks, and they were tied on the sled. Within the sacks she was naked, and in sirik. There was no danger that women such as she would escape on the ice. The sleen harnessed to the sled squealed with fury, scratching, thrown from its feet, twisted and tangled in the traces. We were in the blast of air for only some seven seconds. And then it passed as quickly as it had come.