John Norman - Gor 11 Read online

  I swallowed hard. I realized I had been only a diversion, a pawn. I felt bitter, and terrified.

  "Of what city were they?" demanded the captain of one of his wounded men.

  "I do not know," said the man.

  I had seen the men of my master removing insignia from their garments before the attack.

  "We know their direction of flight," said one of the soldiers. "If we act swiftly, we may mount satisfactory pursuit." "Let us act with dispatch," urged another, "that we may swiftly overtake them."

  The captain struck at the heavy pole of the tent with the side of his fist. The pole, though it was deeply anchored, shook in the dirt.

  "Arm the men," said he. "Issue bows, light rations. All men. Assembly in ten Ehn."

  "Yes, Captain," said a man. Men left the tent. The two wounded men were carried away.

  The captain then turned to face me. I shrank back. Some four men besides the captain remained in the tent, one of them he who held my wrist thong.

  The captain's hand fixed itself in the sheen of the last veil, the fifth veil. Beneath it my features, frightened, could be seen. It was only a token, but, when it was torn away, even the token would be gone. I would stand before men, face-stripped. It is interesting to me, how I thought of this at the time. Doubtless much depends upon context and is relative to the culture. On Earth, few women veil their face, and yet many will veil their bodies. On Earth body veiling tends to be cultural, and not face veiling. On Gor, for free women, both body veiling and face veiling are cultural, and tend to be widely practiced. I suppose, objectively, there is something more to be said for face veiling than body veiling. Bodies, though differing remarkably, one to the other, tend perhaps to be somewhat more similar than faces. Accordingly, if one should be concerned to protect one's privacy and one's feelings, and such, it seems that the face might preferably be veiled. In the face, surely, it is easier to read emotion and individuality than in a body. Should not the face then, if one is concerned with concealment and privacy, be veiled? Is the face not more personal and revealing than the body? Does it not make sense then to consider it a proper object of concealment in a free person? Is one not entitled, so to speak, to privacy in the matter of one's thoughts and feelings, sometimes so manifest in one's facial expressions? However this may be, there are congruences and dispositions which seem appropriate in given contexts. Veils seem correct, and right, with the robes of concealment. Too, seeing the lust of men to discern your features, and understanding what face veiling and unveiling means to them, tends to influence one's views of these matters. I was terrified that such men see my face. I did not want my face to be seen by them. In many Gorean cities, only a slave girl goes unveiled.

  I felt his hand tighten in the veil. Then he jerked it away. I was face-stripped, completely. I closed my eyes, with shame. I reddened. It was as though the last bit of netting, mockery of modesty though it might be, had been ripped away. My face, my feelings, my emotions, now lay bare to them. My face, though I wore robes of concealment, was as naked as that of a slave girl.

  "I wonder if you are free, my beauty," said the captain.

  My mouth, now that he had torn away the veil, was fully exposed to his. Nothing now separated his mouth, his tongue, his teeth, from mine. From his point of view I then, though I might be free, might as well have been a slave girl.

  I looked at him.

  "Release her wrist thong," said he to the soldier who held the thong. He dropped the thong, and it dangled, loosely, from my wrist.

  "A wrist thong scarcely comports with the dignity of a free woman," said the captain to me.

  He walked about me, as a man walks about a woman. I had the feeling he saw me naked beneath the robes.

  "Are you free, my beauty?" he asked. He drew his sword. I shuddered. "Are you free?" he asked. He put the sword at my left ankle, and, curiously, lifted the robes of concealment a bit. "I hope for your sake," said he, "that you are free. If you are not, I will not be much pleased."

  I felt the blade on my leg, lifting up the robes further. "Step from your slippers," he said.

  I did so, trembling.

  I felt the steel on my leg, lifting the robes yet higher. They were above my knee now.

  The three slave girls in the tent, gowned, watched with apprehension.

  The robes were lifted higher, some inches above my knee.

  "If you are free," said the captain, "you are rather pretty to be free."

  "Captain," said a voice from outside the tent, "the men are ready."

  "I shall join you momentarily," he said.

  "Yes, Captain," said the man.

  The captain then again turned his attention toward me. He was angry. He spoke softly, but menacingly. "You have made a fool of all of us," he said. "Thus, I hope that you are free." The blade moved a bit higher on the leg. I trembled. "Yet," said he, "the leg is not bad. It is a leg which is pretty enough to be the leg of a slave girl. I wonder if it is the leg of a slave girl." He lifted the robes to my hip. I felt the steel against my hip.

  The men in the tent cried out with anger. The slave girls gasped and shrank back.

  "It is as I thought," said the captain. He stepped back, but he did not sheath his sword.

  "I will give you twenty Ihn," said he, "to remove the clothing of a free woman and to fall naked on your belly before me."

  Weeping I tore away the robes, frenziedly, and, stripped, threw myself on my belly naked before him, he a Gorean male, he a master, I a slave girl.

  "Standard binding position," he said. I was prone. When a girl is prone, the standard binding position is to cross the wrists behind the back and to cross the ankles. I took this position instantaneously.

  That I did this did not cause him any pleasure. No one in the room thought anything of it. I was simply a prone slave girl who had been commanded to standard binding position. No one in the room, including myself; would have expected me to do other than comply. Lack of compliance by a slave girl to a command in the Gorean world is unthinkable. She obeys.

  The captain spoke swiftly with two of the men in the room. Then he spoke, too, to one of the slave girls, who, addressed, knelt before him. She left the tent.

  I could hear the men outside. There was some rattle of weaponry.

  The girl who, earlier, had been beaten and tied at the wagon wheel, was brought into the tent. She looked at me and went and lay, miserable, in a corner of the tent. The other girl, too, re-entered the tent.

  The captain made ready to depart from the tent, to take command of his men.

  I lay there, unbound, but in binding position. I had not moved. I did not wish to be slain.

  The captain looked down at me, and then, as though in response to an afterthought, said to one of his men, "Tie her."

  The captain's helmet was brought to him. I felt my wrists and ankles being tied. My wrists were tied with the loop of thong which had bound my right wrist previously, when I had been brought to the tent.

  The captain turned me over with his foot. Then he knelt on one knee beside me. I felt the point of his sword in my belly. "I will see you later," said he, "pretty little Kajira." I felt the point of the sword push in. I winced. "Speak," said he. "Yes, Master," I wept.

  "A barbarian," said one of the men.

  "Yes," said the captain, getting up.

  "But a pretty one," said one of the men.

  The captain regarded me, bound at his feet. "Yes," he said. Then he donned the helmet, turned, and left the tent.

  The other slave girls in the tent, save she who had been beaten, who lay miserably in a corner of the tent, looked angrily at me. One rubbed the bruise on her shoulder. "Kajira," she hissed. I turned to my side, in the dirt. I wept. I lay a captured slave girl, in the tent of enemies.

  Gone then was the romance of slavery. I moaned with misery. I had been used to create a diversion, had been employed as a mere pawn. I had been exposed to danger, as though I might have been a mere slave. Did my master not love me? Did he not
care for me? Did he not reciprocate the feelings which I had for him? I wept, an insignificant slave.

  I heard the men leaving the camp. Then the camp was empty, save for the wounded, and the slave girls, of which I was one.

  "Dina," said the girl with the bruise to me. She had called me that because of my brand, the Dina, or Slave Flower. Girls who wear the brand are sometimes spoken of as Dinas. As she had said "Dina," it had been a term of abuse. The Dina brand is one of the more frequently found of the specialized brands on Gor. Dinas, such as I was, were relatively common girls.

  The camp was now quiet.

  The bruised girl came over to me. "Dina!" she said, and kicked me. Then she returned to the other girls.

  "Our poor mistress," cried the girl who had kicked me. "Pity her!"

  I heard the sounds of the night outside the tent, the insects, the cries of fleers.

  Surreptitiously, for I did not wish to be struck or again kicked, I tried to move my wrists and ankles. It was useless. Thongs had been used, not rope; the knots, simple and efficient, had been made by a warrior. With a minimum of means I was held with absolute perfection. A Gorean warrior had bound me.

  I heard again, from outside, the cries of the hook-billed fleer.

  I reared up.

  The slave girls cried out, then were silent. Swords lay at their throats.

  My master was in the tent, following his men through the rent silken wall.

  One of the men carried a looped coffle chain, with wrist rings.

  "Master!" I cried out with elation. I struggled to sit up. He crouched beside me and, with his unsheathed blade, slashed apart the leather which bound me. I flung myself to his feet, pressing my lips to his sandals. "Master!" I wept with joy. He had come back! He had not left me. But he pulled away from my hands and lips at his sandals, and issued orders to his men. The four slave maids crouched terrified, under swords, in the center of the tent, including she who had been beaten. Some men left the tent.

  "Kneel to be coffled," said one of the men. The girls knelt, closely, one behind the other. There were six wrist rings on the chain he carried. He placed the girl who had been whipped by the Lady Sabina first in the coffle line. "Left wrist coffle," he said. They lifted their left wrists, frightened. Interestingly, the man snapping the wrist rings on the girls' left wrists did not put the first girl in the first ring, but the second. When the four maids were coffled there was, thus, an empty wrist ring both at the head and the rear of the line. "Stand, Slaves," said the man. "Lower chain." The girls stood. Then, ordered, they lowered their wrists. They were then in line, standing, coffled.

  Outside I heard bosk being hitched to wagons. Other bosk I heard being freed and driven into the woods.

  I wondered if the camp would be fired. I supposed not, for the glow of the burning silk and canvas in the night sky might too soon apprise the camp's soldiers of what had occurred. An obvious trail had been left for the soldiers to begin to follow; then the men of my master had circled about to return to the camp. The trail would become difficult to detect, then perhaps disappear. The men of the camp had not had trained sleen. While the pursuing soldiers followed a false scent, my master's men returned to their camp, from which, later, in a new direction, they might make their departure. My master prepared to leave the tent. I wanted to run beside him, but he would not permit it. He pushed me back. I must remain within. He left the tent.

  The man who had coffled the girls now stood back, looking at them. "May I speak?" begged the first in the line, she who had been earlier whipped. "Yes," he said. "I hate my mistress," she said. "I am ready to love you, Master!" "Do you not enjoy being owned by a woman?" he asked. "I want to love a man," she wept. "Shameless slave," cried the last girl in the line, she who had lamented the fate of her mistress, and who had called me "Dina," and kicked me. "I am a woman and a slave!" cried the first. "I want a man! I need a man!"

  "Do not fear, Slave," grinned the man who had locked her in her wrist ring, "you will not be neglected when wench service is wished."

  "Thank you, Master," she said, and stood very straight, very proudly.

  "Brazen slave," scolded the last girl in the line.

  "Comb the hair of the spoiled brat of a merchant, if you wish," said the first. "I will dance naked before a man."

  "Slave!" cried the last girl in the line, horrified.

  "Yes, slave!" said the first, angrily, proudly.

  I heard a wagon being driven from the camp. In it, I suspected, lay the dowry riches of the Lady Sabina of Fortress of Saphronicus. The location of the lady herself I did not know, but I had little doubt she was in a safe place, probably blindfolded, gagged and chained to a tree somewhere. I wondered if she had been permitted to retain her clothing.

  "Do you have pretty legs?" asked the man of the second girl in the line.

  "Yes, Master," she said, smiling.

  "You are aware," he queried, "of the penalties for lying to a free man?"

  "Examine them, Master," she said, smiling, boldly. "It will not be necessary to beat me."

  The last girl in the line cried out with indignation.

  The man, with his knife, cut away much of the long, flowing white gown the girl wore, considerably shortening it, until it was provocatively high, ragged and exciting, on her thighs.

  "It will not be necessary to beat you," he acknowledged.

  "Thank you, Master," she said.

  The last girl in the line snorted angrily, tossing her head in the air.

  "Do you have pretty legs?" asked the man of the second gowned girl in the coffle.

  "I do not know, Master," she whispered. "I am only a girl's maid."

  "Let us see," said the man, and, as he had with the first, transformed the flowing classic, sleeveless garment into a sweet scrap of lovely slave livery.

  "May I speak?" asked the second gowned girl.

  "Yes," he said.

  "Are my legs-pretty?" she asked.

  "Yes," he said.

  "A girl is pleased," she said. She, too, like the others, stood straight.

  "How shameless you are, all of you!" scolded she who was the third of the gowned girls in the line, the last in the line.

  "And you?" inquired the man.

  "I am a woman's slave," she said proudly. "I am above such things." She did not look at him. "I have dignity," she said.

  "But a slave girl is not permitted dignity," he said. Then he said, "We will see your legs." He then, with his knife, shortened her gown, as he had those of the others, until its shreds, too, ragged and exciting, were high on her thighs. She stood before him, her legs, though those of a girl's maid, bared to his eyes.

  "Excellent legs," he said.

  She shuddered, but I did not think that she was entirely displeased with his appraisal. All women wish to be attractive to men. "I-I want to be a woman's slave," she said, I thought a bit uncertainly.

  "Do you fear men so?" he asked.

  She did not speak.

  "What you want," he pointed out to her, "is not important." He regarded her. "Is it?" he asked.

  "No, Master," she said.

  He touched her about the throat and chin. "Have you never been curious about the touch of a man?" he asked.

  "Come to me," said the first girl. "I will love you like you have never been loved before!"

  "He is touching me!" cried the last girl.

  "Wanton slave!" laughed the first.

  The man then went to the first girl and took her in his arms. She cried out with pleasure and pressed herself to him, melting and yielding to his tunic and leather. He subjected her mouth and lips to a kiss which could have been only the prelude to fierce slave rape.

  "I can kiss, too," cried the last girl. "Master! Please, Master!"

  "No," moaned the first girl. "She is nothing. Stay with me. I am sensuous. You do not know what it is to have had a slave girl until you have had me!"

  I heard a second wagon being driven from the camp. I thought it might be one of the produ
ce wagons, but, as it later turned out, the treasure freight of the dowry wagon had been divided between two wagons, the produce in one discarded, to lighten the load and make driving swifter.