John Norman - Rogue of Gor

“Master,” she said, dancing before me.

I regarded her, through narrowly lidded eyes.

Then she sank to her knees and, on her knees, leaning backwards, danced before me as a kneeling slave.

The music swirled to its climax and, as it ended, she straightened her body and then, from her knees, lowered herself to her right hip and, extending her right arm to me, lay before me, submitted, her head to the floor.

There was Gorean applause in the room, the striking of the right palm on the left shoulder.

I rose to my feet and placed two copper tarsks on the table.

I went to the girl and, with the side of my foot, kicked her. “Get to the alcove,” I told her.

“Yes Master,” she said, and scrambled up, hurrying with a rustle of jewelry and bells to a leather-curtained alcove.

There was more Gorean applause as I followed her and, turning, from the inside, drew shut the curtains of the alcove. When I had them buckled shut from the inside I turned to face the girl.

She knelt in the position of the pleasure slave, back in the alcove, on the scarlet furs, in the light of the small lamp. I looked about. There were some chains in the alcove, and a coil of rope, and a whip.

“If Master desires special equipment,” she said, “it will be provided by Busebius.”

“There is more than enough here to tame you,” I said.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“You are Alison?” I asked.

“In his use of me Master may name me as he pleases,” she said.

“You are Alison?” I asked.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“It is an Earth-girl name,” I said.

“Please do not be cruel to me on account of it,” she said.

“Are you from Earth?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Was Alison your original name?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, “only now Gorean masters have put it on me, by their will, as a mere slave name.”

“How did you come to Gor?” I asked.

“I do not know,” she said. “I retired one night and awakened later, how much later I do not know, naked, in a dungeon, chained with other girls.”

“All slaves?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, “though we did not know it at the time, we were all slaves.”

“True slaves?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, “true slaves.”

“It is a pretty name,” I said.

“Thank you, Master,” she said.

“Too,” I said, “it is a superb name for a female slave.”

“Yes, Master,” she said. “Thank you, Master.”

I regarded her. “You appear to be a slave,” I said.

“I am a slave, Master,” she said.

“The men of Gor,” I said, “say that the woman of Earth are natural slaves. Is it true?”

“Yes, Master,” she said. “I, and the other girls on my chain, swiftly learned that we were natural slaves.”

“How was this information received by them?” I asked.

“Generally at first with chagrin and shame,” she said, “then with helpless resignation, objective recognition and sober acceptance, and then with a liberating and unspeakable joy.”

“Are you a natural slave?” I asked her.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

I regarded her.

“Try me,” she said. “Judge for yourself.”

“But you are of Earth,” I said.

“Does it dismay you,” she asked, “that I, a woman of Earth, should be a natural slave?”

“Get on your back,” I said.

“Yes, Master,” she said. She unlooped the strings of jewelry from her body, putting them to one side.

“No,” I said, “leave the armlets, the pearl drop at your forehead.”

“Yes, Master,” she said, and lay down.

“What do you want to do?” I asked her.

“Please my master,” she smiled.

“It is a slave’s answer,” I said.

“It is my answer,” she said, “and I mean it, and am proud of it.”

“On your stomach,” I told her.

Uneasily she turned to her stomach. She then lay tense in the furs. “Master has removed the whip from the wall,” she said. “Am I to be whipped?” I caressed the side of her body, gently, with the coils of the whip. She shuddered. “You have a slave’s fear,” I said. Then I replaced the whip on the wall. I then touched her body and she squirmed in the fur, clutching at it with her small fingers. “Yes,” I said, “you have a slave’s reflexes.”

“On your back,” I then ordered her, sharply.

Swiftly she turned to her back, and looked up at me, frightened.

I took the rope from the side of the alcove and, folding it so as to make four strands, looped it several times about her throat and knotted it. I thus made a heavy rope collar for her, knotted under her chin, with heavy guide strands. I then jerked her to her knees before me, her chin pulled up by the knot so that she must look at me.

“I am prepared to believe that you are, as you claim, a natural slave,” I said. “Do you know the penalty for a slave who lies?”

“Whatever the Master wishes,” she whispered, terrified, looking up at me.

“Do you know one called Oneander of Ar?” I asked.

“He is a merchant,” she whispered.

“Do you know him?” I asked.

“He comes upon occasion to the Belled Collar,” she whispered. “Please be kind to me, Master!”

I jerked the heavy rope and she cried out in misery.

“Do you know him?” I asked.

“I have served him,” she wept.

“Do you know him!” I said.

“Yes, yes!” she wept, half pulled from her knees. “He uses me as it pleases him, as an abject and total slave.”

I looked down at her, fiercely.

“Busebius has me on retainer to him,” she said, “that he may use me when he wish. Sometimes I am sent to his house!”

“Where is he?” I said. “Where!”

“Lara!” she cried. “Lara!” This was a town in the Salerian Confederation, at the confluence of the Vosk and Olni. It was no wonder Oneander made no public fact of his most recent itinerary.

I threw the girl from me to the furs.

Sometimes a man speaks freely to a slave. Oneander had, perhaps in his drink and pleasures, confided his intentions to the slave in his arms.

“I was not to tell,” she wept.

Perhaps she, a foolish Earth girl, had asked him, and he had not been in the mood to beat her. Perhaps he was proud of his plan to undertake such a bold venture in troubled times. I did not know. Ar, of course, was not at war technically with the Salerian Confederation. Similarly at that time hostilities with confederation cities had been limited to skirmishes with Vonda. His act, thus, though perhaps one of dubious propriety, and accordingly not one he would care to publicize in the streets, of Ar, was neither treasonous nor illegal. It did, however, Lara being a member of the Salerian Confederation, suggest some economic desperation. Being denied the markets of Vonda, and perhaps of Port Olni and Ti, it was natural, I supposed, for Oneander to turn to Lara.

“I was not to tell,” wept the girl.

I pulled her up to her knees and threw her against the wall. I took the heavy guide strands of the rope on her neck and passed them through a slave ring on the wall and pulled them tight, pulling her against the wall. Then, with the guide strands, which had been passed through the ring, I tied her wrists closely together under her chin. She was thus tied on her knees, her belly against the wall, fastened extremely closely by her neck and wrists, and some two inches of rope, to the ring.

“I was not to tell!” she wept.

“Did Busebius, your true Master, order you not to tell?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“Why then do you weep and tremble so at the ring?” I asked.

“Oneander did not wish me to tell,” she said.

“But I wished you to tell, didn’t I?” I asked.