John Norman: Players of Gor

"Whip," I said, to a man, the fellow who had earlier disciplined the foolish slave who had permitted herself, without permission, to display merriment over the plight of a free woman.

The whip was placed in my hand.

"Master?" asked the girl, apprehensively.

"I do not believe you were given permission to stop dancing earlier," I said.

"No, Master," she said.

"As you are a stupid girl and new to your condition, your punishment, this time, will be light. Three lashes."

"Three!" she sobbed.

"Do not expect masters to be so lenient with your stupidity in the future," I said.

"No, Master," she wept.

Then, doubtless for the firs time in her life, she who had been the proud free woman, the Lady Rowena of Lydius, naked, and on her belly on the tiles, felt, like the common girl she now was, the slave ship of Gor.

"Stand," I told her. "Back straight, belly in, breasts out. Lift your hands to your shoulders, flex your knees."

"I have been whipped," she said, disbelievingly.

"See the difference?" said a man to another at his table. "How she stands?"

"Yes," said the other.

I touched her here and there, with the whip, deftly, correcting a line, or the tension of a curve.

She shrank back from the touch of the whip. She now knew what it could to do to her. She had felt it. After a girl has once felt the whip the mere sight of it is usually enough to bring her immediately into line. "What hangs upon the wall?" a master might ask. "The slave whip, Master," she responds. "How may I be more pleasing?"

I handed the whip back to the fellow who had had it, and returned to my place at the table of Samos.

He signaled the musicians, and they began, again, to play.

I gave my attention to the board. It was my move. I did not bother, then, to glance at the former Lady Rowena of Lydius. She was a mere slave, dancing for masters. Doubtless, too, as the evening wore on, other girls, too, perhaps Tula, and Susan, and Linda, would be ordered to the floor, to dance before strong men, then perhaps, each in her turn, one by one, to be dragged to the tables.

I moved my Ubara's Rider of the High Tharlarion to Ubara's Scribe Three. This, supporting the center, would also open a file, developing the Ubara's Builder. The Gorean dancer is expected, usually, to satisfy the passions she arouses. "It is your move," I said to Samos. I gathered, from the cries of pleasure, from the clapping of hands, the striking of hands on shoulders, that the new slave might be proving not unacceptable. "How is she doing?" I asked. "I do not think it will be necessary, at least immediately, to throw her to sleen," said Samos. He was regarding the dancer. "It is your move," I said. Samos put his chin on his fists and examined the board. I lifted my head and looked across the room.

I saw that it was a slave who danced before the men. She gyrated but inches from a burly oarsman, then leaped back, eluding his drunken grasp. She moved between the tables, a slave, an owned woman. Then she was kneeling beside a man, kissing and caressing him, and then, as though it were involuntary, as though her hands were tied behind her and she was being pulled back, away from him, by a rope, she retreated from him. In a moment she was showering another man with her hair and kisses. Then she offered a man wine, holding the goblet, pressing it against her belly, swaying sensuously before him. She was then again in the center of the tiles, among the tables. She made as if to speak, and then, suddenly, stopped, as though startled. Then she took a wad of her long, golden hair and, swiftly balling it, thrust it, as though insolently, in her mouth. She then looked at the men reproachfully. It was as though a man, perhaps not desiring to hear her speak, had gagged her with her own hair. There was laughter. She drew the hair from her mouth, drawing some if it, in loosening it, deeply back betw4een her teeth, with her head back, as though she might have been in the constraint of a gag strap, all this to the music, and then her hair was free, and, with a movement of her head and movements of her hands, beautifully, she draped and spread it about her. It seemed then she withdrew modestly, frightened, behind the hair, drawing it like a cloak or sheet about her, as though by means of this piteous device she might hope desperately to conceal at least some minimal particle of her beauty from the rude scrutiny of masters. But it was not to be permitted.

To a swirl of music, taking her hair to the sides, holding it, parting it, with clenched fists thrust behind her, twisting, her body thrust forward, her beauty was suddenly, it seemed as though by command, or by the action of another, brazenly bared. "Good!" said more than one man. There was a striking of shoulders in Gorean applause. Even some of the slave girls cried out with pleasure. The girl had done it well. Then she was again dancing among the tables. her movements gave much pleasure. She entertained well. If Samos had known she would prove this good he might have put her in bells or a chain. I doubted that some of the things she had done, in all their abundance and richness, had been merely thought up on the spur of the moment. I suspected that many times in here dreams and fantasies she had danced thus before men, as a slave. Then, lo, one night in Port Kar she found herself truly a slave, and so dancing, and for her life.

As the music neared its climax she returned before our table, dancing desperately and pleadingly. It was there that was to be found her master.

She lowered herself to the floor and there, on her knees, and her sides, and her belly and back, continued her dance.

Men cried out with pleasure.

Floor movements are among the most stimulatory aspects of slave dance.

I regarded her. She was not bad. She was, of course, not trained. A connoisseur of slave dance, I suppose, might have pointed out errors in the pointing of a toe, the extension of a limb, the use of a hand, not well framing the body, not subtly inviting the viewer's eye inward, and so on, but, on the whole, she was definitely not bad. Given her lack of training, a lack which could, of course, be easily remedied, she was not bad, really. Much of what she did, I suppose, is instinctual in a woman. Too, of course, she was dancing for her life.

She writhed well, an utterly helpless, begging slave.

Then the music was finished and she was before us, kneeling, her head down, in submission to Samos. She lifted her head to regard Samos, her master. She searched his face fearfully, for the least sign of her fate. It was he who would decide whether she would live or die.

"It is my hope, Master," she said, "that in time I might not prove totally unacceptable as a slave."

"You may approach," said Samos.

She did not dare to rise to her feet. She crawled, head down, on her hands and knees, to the edge of the table. There, near the table, she put her head down and kissed the tiles. Then, rising up a little and approaching further, still on her hands and knees, she turned her head, delicately, and kissed the edge of the table, her lips touching partly the surface of the table, partly its side.

"Do you beg to live?" he asked.

"Yes, I beg to live, my Master," she said.

"On what terms?" he asked.

"Your terms, Master," she said, "only as a total slave."

"Kneel," said Samos.

She knelt, back on her heels.

Some of the men of Samos had now gathered about, near the table.

"For the moment, at least," said Samos, "you will not be thrown to sleen."

"Thank you, Master!" she cried. "Thank you, my Master!"

Samos then nodded to one of the men standing about, the burly oarsman from whom earlier, eluding him, she had danced away.

He took her wrists and tied them together, with her own hair, before her body, leaving a length of the hair for a leading tether.