John Norman - Rogue of Gor

“Do you think, truly,” asked Policrates, “that the fleet of Ragnar Voskjard, fully rigged and fitted, can be here in twenty days?”

“I see no difficulty in the matter,” I assured him.

“Good,” he said.

I looked about, at the girls among the tables. Some, but not all, wore five steel loops on their body, a rounded, narrow collar loop, and, rounded and narrow, loops on their wrists and ankles. Such loops, in a variety of ways, can provide a variety of ties. Only a bit of binding fiber, slipped behind the loops, is required. Gorean men are sometimes ingenious in the ties to which they subject slave girls. Different ties, of course, have different purposes. One may generally distinguish among such things as control ties, discipline ties and pleasure ties. These ties are not mutually exclusive, of course.

“Grapes, Master?” said a soft, feminine voice near to me.

I looked about, but I did not react. It was the free woman, or the woman who had been free, who had been ordered from the crowd on the wharves of Victoria. I recalled her having been stripped by the pirate, and his blade at her throat. She had tied the knot of bondage in her own hair. She had been ordered to run to the galley. There I had seen her bound helplessly at its railing, her back to it, exposing her beauty, with others.

“Master?” she asked. Her voice, and mien, were deferential, and totally submissive. An incredible transformation had come over her. She was now soft, and lovely, and beautiful, a woman who was, and knew herself, owned. I wanted to take her in my arms.

She lifted the tray of grapes to me, proffering it. They were Ta grapes. I smiled. Each, I noted, had been carefully peeled. Doubtless that had been the task to which she had set that afternoon. Such trivial, painstaking tasks are often useful in teaching a woman, that she is a slave. “Master?” she asked. I wanted to take her in my arms. I permitted her to feed me a grape. Then she withdrew. I watched her withdraw. She was beautiful. She wore a snatch of yellow silk.

“I see that she pleases you,” said Policrates. “You may have her this evening, in your chambers, if you wish.”

“Perhaps,” I said. I shrugged.

The whip dance continued before us.

“Fruit, Master?” asked a girl, softly, timidly, kneeling down lightly beside me. Her head was down. She was frightened. I turned, sitting, to face her. She trembled. She did not raise her head.

“She fears you,” said Policrates, “for she knows you are the courier of Ragnar Voskjard. Too, she is perhaps intimidated by my presence, and that of Kliomenes, for we are highest in this holding.”

I smiled. Such men, of course, held over her the total power of life or death.

I regarded the girl.

There were five, narrow loops of steel locked upon her fair body, one serving as collar, and the others for her wrists and ankles. In her hands she carried, held, ripe, rounded fruit. She wore, like the girl before her, tantalizing to the eye, what might constitute a master’s conception of a garment suitable for a lovely female slave, a fragment of silk which made unmistakably clear that the beauty to which it clung, and which it made little pretense to conceal, lay fully at the disposition and mercy of lusty men. Yet it was, in its way, more demure than that which had been worn by the girl before her. In particular, as it was tied snugly, it gathered her breasts, holding them together and lifting them.

“She is a new slave,” said Policrates, “and is not yet fully broken to her collar.”

Her dark hair was coiffured loosely and high upon her head. It was bound with a braided yellow cord, strong enough to hold her wrists, should she be bound with it. If the cord were jerked loose the hair would fall, unbound, to the small of her back.

“She is exquisite, isn’t she?” asked Policrates.

I put my thumb under her chin and lifted up her head. Her soft brown eyes, frightened, met mine. There was a look in them which I had seen before, I thought, in other girls, in the eyes of a slave girl as she looks into the eyes of a master. That interested me. Then she turned aside her head, though it was still held much in place by the obdurate pressure of my thumb. She did not recognize me. Her delicate lips wore lipstick, red. There was a subtle shading of blue on her upper eyelids.

“She fears that you will find her pleasing,” said Policrates, “but yet, I think, desires that you will.”

The girl trembled.

I removed my thumb from beneath her chin, and she put her head down.

Policrates regarded her.

“Little fool,” he said, “for what purpose have you come to this table?”

The girl lifted her head then and, timidly, lifted the ripe, rounded fruit which she held in her hands, Gorean peaches and plums, to me. Her eyes met mine, and then she looked down, blushing. I then understood the purpose of the gathering of her brief yellow garment at her breasts, lifting them, sweet, rounded and swelling, for the inspection and delectation of masters. In her gesture, her offering of the fruit, it was clearly understood that she was offering to me as well the lovely fruits of her service and beauty.

I took one of the peaches and bit into it, watching her. She shuddered.

“You are dismissed,” said Policrates.

“Yes, Master,” she said, frightened, and rising quickly, lightly, hurried away, barefoot on the tiles, to serve others.

I thought Miss Beverly Henderson made a lovely slave girl.

The whip dance was now approaching its climax.

“She is a pretty little thing,” I said, looking after Miss Henderson. “What do you call her?”

“Beverly,” said Policrates.

“You are cruel,” I said, smiling, “to give her an Earth-girl name.”

“She is an Earth girl,” he said, grinning.

“Oh,” I said.

“Do you like Earth girls?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“That one is raw,” he said, “but, in time, like the others, I think she will make an excellent slave.”

“Do you think she is a natural slave?” I asked.

“Undoubtedly,” he said. “I meant that she was not yet fully trained, not yet broken fully to the collar.”

“I see,” I said.

“Kliomenes fell in with her at the tavern of Hibron, the Pirate’s Chain, in Victoria,” he said. “He immediately sized her up as slave meat. Thinking herself in delightful converse with him she informed him that her name on Earth had been Beverly. Accordingly it seemed fitting that we should put that name again upon her, though now only as a slave name, by our whim.”

“Of course,” I said.

“She herself,” said Policrates, “repudiated the assistance of a fellow desiring to extricate her from her peril, mocking and dismissing him, one called Jason, of Victoria, he to whom you bear some physical resemblance.”

“I see,” I said.

“Kliomenes did not even use Tassa powder on her,” he said “He simply bound her and carried her, struggling, to his ship.” He indicated the girl, among the tables, moving about, kneeling and serving fruit. I thought her thighs and ankles, and her back, which was much exposed, were beautiful. “She now serves us well,” he said.

I turned my attention to the dancer on the floor. She lay now on her back, one knee lifted, her arms at her sides, palms down, before the brute with his whip, who towered over her. Her head, too, was turned to the side. Then she turned her head to face the brute who tyrannized her. She looked deeply into his eyes. Then, delicately, in a graceful gesture, she turned her hands, putting their backs to the floor, exposing her palms, and the soft flesh of her palms, to him, indicating her surrender, her submission, her vulnerability and her readiness.

There was applause, the striking of the left shoulder, from the tables.