John Norman - Beasts of Gor

“Release him,” said he to my captor, “that I may with blades, he, too, armed, dispatch him.”

“The silly pride of men offends me,” said she.

“Free him,” said he.

“No,” she said. “He is my prisoner. I do not wish for you to kill him.”

“It seems,” said he to me, “that you will live, if only for an Ahn longer.”

“It is you, perhaps,” said I, “whose life she thusly prolongs.”

He turned away, to look out over the railing on the platform, and out over the high wall, to the thousands of animals, like cattle, beyond.

“Can you truly do your own killing,” I asked, “or do you need, as in my house, to enlist the services of a female slave to aid you?” I recalled Vella. She had given him a jacket of mine, that he might use it to give my scent to the sleen. What a traitress she was! I had known she had once served Kurii. I had not known at that time that the pretty little slave, the former secretary on Earth, still licked their claws. She would no longer receive an opportunity to betray me. Death was too good for her. When I returned to Port Kar I would plunge her into a slavery deeper than she would believe possible.

The man, angry, did not respond to me.

“You are not Bertram of Lydius,” I said to him. “Who are you?”

“I do not speak to slaves,” he said.

My fists clenched in the manacles.

“Did you truly enlist the services of a female slave in his house?” asked my captor.

“I do not wish to speak before him,” said the man.

“Do so,” she snapped.

I saw him look at her, angrily. I read the look in his eyes. I smiled to myself. I saw that it had been to him that she, when her work was done, had been promised as a slave.

“I am waiting,” she said.

“Very well,” said he. “It is true that I enlisted the services of a lowly bond girl in his house, to obtain material from which I might give scent to the sleen.”

“She is a spy there?” she asked.

“No,” he said, “I tricked her. I used her as a mere dupe in my scheme. It was not difficult. She was only a woman.”

My captor’s eyes flashed.

“Only a slave girl,” he said.

“That’s better,” she said. Then she said, “Slave girls are so stupid.”

“Yes,” he said, “that is true.”

I was amused. I wondered if she would change her opinion as to the intelligence of slave girls when she herself wore the collar. As a matter of fact intelligence is one of the major criteria used by Gorean slavers when scouting an Earth girl for capture and abduction to the chains of Gor. The other two major criteria appear to be beauty and femininity. Intelligent, beautiful, feminine women make the best slaves. Who would want a stupid slave? Too, intelligent women can feel their slavery much more keenly than their simpler sisters. This makes it much more amusing to keep them in bondage. Too, because of their intelligence they more swiftly realize the biological rightness of their predicament, though they may fight it longer. The intelligent woman is more apt to trust her own intelligence, and intuitions and feelings than the duller woman, who is more apt to be a naive functjon of the stereotypes and images with which she has been conditioned. The more intelligent woman is quicker to realize, though more tardy to admit, that it is right for her beauty to be enslaved. Her yielding, too, to her secret realities, when she yields honestly and fully to them, is a glorious thing. At last she whispers, on her knees, to him, “I am a slave, Master.” “Go to the furs,” he says, gently. “Yes, Master,” she says, and obeys.

But many highly intelligent women have fought these battles out in their heart long before they see a chain or the steel of a collar.

They live waiting for a master. They wait for the man who will look into their eyes and see what they truly are, and into whose eyes they will look, and see that he knows their secret. When they are alone, he will say to her, softly, “Kneel, Slave.” They kneel. They are then truly a slave, his.

“Tell him your name,” she ordered the fellow on the platform.

“I do not speak to slaves,” he said.

“Obey me!” she said.

He turned and went down the stairs of the platform.

“He is called Drusus,” she said. “He is of the metal workers.”

“He is not a metal worker,” I said. “He is of the Assassins.

“No,” she said.

“I have seen him use a knife,” I said. “He did not obey you,” I observed.

She looked at me, angrily.

“Your days in authority here,” I said, “are numbered.”

“I am in command here!” she said.

“For the time,” I said. I looked out over the milling tabuk.

They were northern tabuk, massive, tawny and swift, many of them ten hands at the shoulder, a quite different animal from the small, yellow-pelted, antelopelike quadruped of the south. On the other hand, they, too, were distinguished by the single horn of the tabuk. On these animals, however, that object, in swirling ivory, was often, at its base, some two and one-hall inches in diameter, and better than a yard in length. A charging tabuk, because of the swiftness of its reflexes, is a quite dangerous animal. Usually they are killed from a distance, often from behind shields, with arrows.

My thoughts strayed to Vella, once Elizabeth Cardwell. Apparently she had not knowingly collaborated with Drusus, he who had called himself Bertram of Lydius. He had tricked her in the matter of the sleen. She had been his dupe. It would not then be necessary to be too hard on her. It would be sufficient, when I returned to Port Kar, merely to have her whipped for her stupidity.

I put her from my mind, for she was only slave.

“It must be difficult to place the logs of the wall,” I said, “because of the permafrost.”

“How difficult you will learn,” she said. She was still angry that her authority had been flouted in my presence.

At this latitude, even in the summer, the earth only thaws to a depth of some two feet. Beneath this depth one strikes still frozen ground. it is almost like stone. Picks and drive bars ring upon it.

The construction of the wall was, in its way, a considerable engineering feat. That it had been accomplished by men, with simple tools, said much for the determination of the Kurii, and the rigors imposed upon its laborers by their guardsmen.

“You will see who is in authority here,” she said, angrily. I felt the line on my neck jerk tight. I accompanied her down the stairs of the platform.

“Guards!” she called. Some four guardsmen came to her, running.

“Bring Drums to me,” she said, “if necessary in chains.”

They hurried from her. In a few moments they returned, he who called himself Drusus with them.

She pointed arrogantly to the ground at her feet. “Kneel,” she said to him.

Angrily he knelt.

“Tell him your name,” she said to him.

The man looked up at me, in fury. “I am Drusus,” he said.

“Attend now to your duties, Drusus,” she said.

He got to his feet and left. I saw that she was truly in authority. If her tenure of authority were to be soon terminated there was as yet no sign of it. She looked at me, and tossed her head arrogantly. She was supreme among these men.

“It was Drusus who identified you for me,” she said.

“I see,” I said.

“Three prisoners have been captured,” said a man, coming up to her.

“Bring them before me,” she said.

The three prisoners, their hands bound behind their backs, were brought forward. One was a man, the other two were girls, slave girls. The man was on an individual neck tether, in the hand of a guard. The girls were on a common tether, the throat of each tied at a different end of a long strap; it served as their common leash, a guard grasping it in the center. The man was the red hunter I had seen at the fair. He no longer possessed his bow or other accouterments. The two girls were the slaves he had purchased at the fair, the Earth girls, one blond, the other dark-haired, who had worn the torn red pullover. He was dressed as he had been at the flit, in trousers and boots of fur, but bare-chested. The two girls now, however, wore fur wrapped on their feet, tied with hide string, and brief fur tunics. The hair of each was tied behind her head with a red string. Under the tether on the throat of each there was tied an intricately knotted set of four leather strings. In such a way the red hunters identify their animals. The owner of the beast may be determined from the knetting of the strings.