John Norman - Rogue of Gor

“Yes,” I said.

“Perhaps I might, under his whip, pulling his plow, please a peasant,” she said, “or perhaps I might keep the hut of a dock worker, preparing his food and, when he wished, warming his mat.”

“Perhaps,” I said.

“Did I please you?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you think I could please other men?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“I know that I am not as desirable as most women,” she said.

“You are desirable,” I said. “And to some men you will be inutterably desirable.”

“How kind you are to a helpless female prisoner,” she said, “one soon likely, should it please the men of Ar, to be made a slave.”

“I speak the truth,” I said.

“You are kind,” she said.

I said nothing.

“I will try to please my masters well,” she said.

“I would recommend it,” I said. She shuddered, against me.

“The men of Ar,” she said, “took my freedom from me, when they made me a prisoner. You have taken my freedom from me, when you forced me to yield as a female slave.”

“Your yielding,” I said, “was not that of a female slave, for you are not yet, truly, a female slave. Yet it was, doubtless, the fullest yielding of which you were at this time capable.”

“Can there be more?” she asked.

“You cannot, at this time,” I said, “even begin to suspect the depths, the dimensions, the wonders and marvels of slave submission.”

“What you have done to me,” she said, “is irreversible. I can never go back, now, knowing what I do, to being a proud free woman.”

I shrugged. It was nothing to me.

“And yet,” she said, sobbing, “I am too plain to be a slave.”

“You are a woman,” I told her.

“Yes,” she said, “I am a woman. I did not know before, truly, what it was to be a woman.”

“It is not being a kind of man,” I told her.

“No,” she said, “it is being a full female, in the order of nature.”

“Yes,” I said.

“A slave,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

She sobbed.

“What is wrong?” I asked.

“I want a master,” she said. “I want to be everything, and do everything, for him. I want to give him all of me, holding nothing back. I want to be nothing to him, only his owned slave, totally loving and serving him.”

“And so?” I said.

“But I am plain,” she said. “No man will want me.”

“Are you not done with her yet?” asked a rough voice.

We were startled, and looked up. There, at the edge of the straw, standing, was a large, uncouth fellow, in the garments of the Tarn Keepers. “Yes,” I said. I smiled. I sat up and took the Lady Gina’s free shackle and jerked her ankles closely together. I prepared to close the open shackle about her right ankle. Her ankles would then be chained together, as before, with about eight inches of chain separating them. The shackles were large, and of heavy iron.

“Do not reshackle her,” he said.

“Very well,” I said, and got up.

“You look like a tasty pudding,” he said to the lady Gins. She looked up at him, from the straw.

“Are you branded yet, Female?” he asked her.

Her hand went inadvertently to her left thigh. “No,” she said, “no.”

“Is she any good?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I said, “she is pretty good. And there is no telling how good she will be when she is properly enslaved and finds herself in the possession of the right master.”

“Of course,” he said. He again looked down at her. There was a startled, soft light in the eyes of the Lady Gina as she looked up at the fellow. Suddenly, to me, she seemed very soft, and very vulnerable, in the straw. It was as though a transformation, somehow, had come over her.

“She is beautiful,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, for, somehow, suddenly, perhaps with the sudden understanding and acceptance of her nature and condition, it had become true.

She gasped, and looked up at him, spoken of as beautiful. She trembled.

He then kicked her, and she cried out with pain. “Split your legs, Woman of Vonda,” he said. “You are to be had.”

“Yes, Master!” she cried out.

I watched for a moment, as she writhed in his arms. “You will look well on the block,” he told her.

“Yes, Master,” she whispered.

“Perhaps I will buy you,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she whispered. “Yes, Master!”

I left the two together, and began to thread my way through the tables, between the soldiers and merchants, and others, and the stripped, shackled women of Vonda, serving as waitresses, toward the opening in the food tent.

“Our forces have already moved north,” one man was saying. “The troops from Lara will not be here for two days,” said another. “By that time they will find here only the ashes of Vonda,” laughed another.

As I accidentally brushed against a woman of Vonda she trembled, and put down her head, and knelt swiftly. I continued past her.

“It is dangerous for merchant caravans,” a man was saying. “Many have been attacked,” said another. “It is rumored the river pirates are the worst,” said another. “They grow bold with the withdrawal of troops from Lara. They have struck even into Lara herself, then withdrawing to their galleys.”

“Perhaps this will cause the troops of Lara to return,” said another, “to protect their own holdings.”

“No,” said another, “they are committed.”

“They are to be sold in the river markets,” said someone, as I went past.

I did not understand the meaning of his remark. It did not, I gathered, pertain to the women of Vonda. It would be difficult to get them to the river markets, which lay beyond Lara, down the Vosk, and higher prices, presumably, could be obtained for them in the markets of the south. Most of them, I assumed, women of the enemy, would be sold from the slave blocks of Ar herself.

As I went through the opening of the tent I was jostled by a large man. He wore a mask. “Watch where you are going!” he said, angrily. I stepped back, but did not respond to him. I was angry. It had been he, it seemed to me, who had struck against me. Suddenly, for a moment, he stopped and looked at me, closely. It seemed as though he might have thought he knew me. Too, it seemed to me that I might, in spite of the mask, somehow have found him familiar. Then, saying nothing more, he brushed past me and entered the tent. He was alone. I could not place him. Then I left the food tent and went to the tarn cots. I hoped to be able to arrange for transportation to the vicinity of Lara. I retained five silver tarsks. This is a considerable sum. I felt reasonably certain I could find some tarnsman, perhaps from a neutral city, who might, by a suitably circuitous route, get me into the neighborhood of Lara.

Some tarns had apparently recently arrived from the west. Some of them had apparently been carrying refugees. I saw some wounded men. Here and there small groups of men huddled about, dismally. I saw no women in these groups, even slaves. Some of them wore the white and gold of merchants. Some of them wore masks. They crouched about fires.

“Who are these people?” I asked one of the fellows near the cots.

“Mostly merchants,” said he. “These are the victims of the predations of river pirates in Lara.”

“Some wear masks,” I said.

“Yet most are known to us,” said the man, “Even masked. There, not masked, is Splenius, and Zarto. You know Zarto, the iron merchant?”

“No,” I said.

“He lost his wagons of ingots,” said the man. “Beside him, masked, is Horemius. Eight stone of perfumes ware taken from him. There, farther to the left, in the brown mask, is Zadron, the dealer in silver. He lost almost everything. In the red mask is Publius, also of the silver merchants. He retains only the belt of silver on his shoulder.”