John Norman - Guardsman of Gor

“I cannot,” wept the girl, “nor do I wish to, Master!”

I turned her over and examined the knots on her wrists and ankles, and then put her again on her back. “The knots are excellent,” I said. “She has been securely bound. She is a well-tied slave. She cannot free herself.”

Callimachus then cried out with joy and went to Tasdron, whom he embraced. He then came to me and seized my hand, and then embraced me, too, weeping. “My thanks,” said Callimachus. “My thanks to you both!”

In his joy he had immediately tied the slave. He had waited not a moment longer than necessary to put her in his bonds. The practical and symbolic significance of binding the woman is, I gather, clear to all. It is a joyful, meaningful way of demonstrating power over the slave, and showing that she, in effect, belongs to you. It is a thrilling, exciting act for the master who binds, and for the helpless, dominated slave, who finds herself bound. “He who ties a woman owns her,” is a Gorean saying. To be sure, strictly, a woman might find herself tied by a man who does not own her legally, but even in such a case, she will experience herself as being owned in a rather practical and significant sense, that sense, namely, in which she is completely at his mercy and under his control, that sense in which he may do with her as he pleases. Consider then the joy of binding when the master knows that he literally, and legally, owns the woman he binds; and she knows that she is the full and legal property, with no hope of escape or rescue, of the one who binds her.

Callimachus looked down at the bound slave. “From the first instant I saw you,” he said, “I wanted you as my slave.”

“And from the first instant I saw you, my Master!” cried the girl, looking up at him, “I was your slave!”

And then he reached down and seized her and, holding her by the upper arms, before him, she unable to stand, as she was bound, he began to cover her face and mouth, and throat, and breasts, with kisses.

“Oh, Master,” begged Florence, “please take me home, and use me! Please, my Master, take me home, and use me!”

“It has been a pleasant evening,” grinned Miles of Vonda, rising to his feet.

We all rose.

“I shall call you ‘Peggy,” said Callimachus to his new slave. “It is a superb name for an Earth-girl slave.”

“Yes, Master!” she said. “I am Peggy. I am Peggy!”

Tasdron signaled to the musicians, that they might now leave, and, quietly, not calling attention to themselves, they began to gather together their various instruments and other paraphernalia.

“Come, Slave. Step quickly. Off with the garment,” said Aemilianus to the voluptuous slave, who had been Shirley, whipping out the binding strap I had given him earlier.

Quickly she ran to him, stripped off the yellow gauze she had worn, turned her back to him and crossed her wrists. He then tied her wrists behind her back.

“May you get much service and joy from her,” I said.

“I shall,” he said, “if she wishes to live.”

The girl trembled, and there was much laughter about the table.

“What will you call her?” I asked.

“‘Shirley’,” said he. “That is an excellent name.”

“An Earth-girl name!” laughed Glyco, meaningfully.

“You are Shirley,” said Aemilianus to the slave.

“Yes, Master,” she said. “I am Shirley.” She trembled, her wrists helplessly confined in the loops of the binding strap.

She had been given an Earth girl name. She then realized just how perfect and complete would be the slavery to which she would be subjected in the house of Aemilianus. It would be a slavery at least analogous to that in which an Earth girl is held in a Gorean house. It was little wonder, then, that, hearing her new name, she had trembled in terror.

“Oh!” cried Lola, wincing, standing with her back to Calliodorus. He had tied her wrists behind her back.

He then turned her to face him. “Do you object, Lady Lola, of Port Cos?” he asked.

“I am not the Lady Lola, of Port Cos,” she said. “I am only your lowly slave.”

“Do not forget it,” he said, lifting her head up with his fingers and, bending down, kissing her gently on the lips.

“No, Master,” she whispered.

The last of the musicians had now filed from the house. I thought they had been superb. I would later, in a few days, send a tip for them to the tavern of Tasdron.

I glanced at the small, dark-haired slave. I expected that I would be spending the next few days muchly in the house. She, watching Calliodorus and Lola, did not realize that I had glanced upon her. That, I suspected, was just as well. Such heat and desire as might have been revealed in even so casual a glance might have frightened her. She would learn soon enough, lovely little collared beast, what it was, fully, on Gor, to be a master’s slave.

I saw that Callimachus had now removed the binding fiber from Peggy, with which he had so joyfully asserted his power over her, that he might bind her and make her helpless, and his ownership over her, that she was his to so bind and to so make helpless. She was on her knees before him, kissing at his feet and weeping. “Do you have another binding strap,” asked Callimachus, sheepishly, “something to take her home in?”

“By some odd chance, I do,” I said, grinning, and threw him such a strap. I had brought three such straps to the table, one for each of the girls who was to be awarded as a gift. In a moment Peggy was on her feet and her head was back. She winced and then laughed with joy. Her wrists had been tightly tied. She knew then that her life with Callimachus would not be easy, nor did she wish it to be. She did not want a weak man; she wanted a man strong enough to elicit, dominate and control the woman in her; Callimachus, a Gorean master, she now realized, would do so; she now realized that he would not compromise with her; she would be kept in total slavery, under the strictest of disciplines, fully owned and uncompromisingly mastered; she would serve him perfectly; she was joyful.

“Please, Master,” begged Florence, “bind me in some way.”

“Very well,” said Miles of Vonda, kindly.

Peggy, her hands tied behind her back, went to kneel before Tasdron. He had given her to Callimachus. She kissed his feet in gratitude. “Thank you, Master,” she wept, “thank you!”

“Thank you, Master,” breathed Florence to miles of Vonda. He had locked her hands behind her back, in slave bracelets. She, too, now had been bound by her master.

His desire for her, and his mastery over her, had now been, to her joy, by the steel of the confining bracelets, attested. She extended her head to him, her lips pursed, her eyes closed, to kiss him, but he seized the sides of the opening of her slave tunic, the left side in his right fist, the right side in his left fist.

“Master?” she asked, opening her eyes. The sides of her tunic were held tightly. “Master?” she asked. “Are you not a slave?” asked Miles of Vonda. “Yes, Master,” she said. Then, suddenly, laughing, Miles of Vonda jerked open the tunic and tore it down about her lovely, flaring hips. He then thrust it open and back on her hips. Its upper portions hung back, depending from the belt, still in place, about her braceleted wrists. “Yes, Master!” she said. “March me naked through the streets as your slave. I love you!”

Miles of Vonda then picked up the lyre, which she had used earlier in entertaining us. With its strap he slung the small, lovely, curved, stringed instrument about her body, the strap over her right shoulder, the instrument behind her left hip. The delicacy of the instrument, with its suggestion of refinement, gentility and civilization, contrasted nicely with the barbarity of her luscious, enslaved nudity, the shreds of her tunic and her helpless, steel-clasped wrists.