Swordsmen of Gor

This is quite understandable. It is hard to resist them. But then they are clothed, if clothed, in such a way as to make it hard to resist them. Too, they are trained in such a manner, even as to the femininity and grace of their movements, as to be difficult to resist. The female slave, naked or half naked, collared, utterly vulnerable, is the most helpless, needful, and, however inadvertently, or unwillingly, the most seductive of women. Too, she exists for the pleasure of men, understands this, surrenders to it, wholly, and humbly, and takes great pleasure in it. She loves to serve, to obey, and please. It is what she wants to do. It is her life. And, too, when the slave fires, long ago ignited, and then never far from the surface, begin again to flame in her fair belly, as under the cruel and shameful imperatives of biology they frequently must, earning her the contempt of free women, her seductiveness is then, soon, far less than a matter of inadvertence, or reluctance. See her glance, the trembling of a lip, the faltering of a word, the pleading of the eye. A glance, a touch, can ignite her. Few things are more seductive than a beautiful woman squirming on her belly before you, miserable in her need, her lips pressed fervently to your feet, begging for your caress. I wondered if he ever thought of the delicate, arrogant Sumomo so. I supposed so. Why not? He was a man. I thought she might make a lovely collar-girl, a lovely, mere collar-girl.

I expected to find Tajima in the barrack assigned to the guards, whose dispatch and returns he would log, but instead I encountered him crossing the training area, toward the track which led to the main camp area. With him were some five Ashigaru, two of whom bore lanterns.

“Tarl Cabot, tarnsman!” he said.

“What is wrong?” I said.

“I was going to send a runner for you,” he said.

“What is wrong?” I asked.

“The night,” said he, “is amiss.”

The Ashigaru with him exchanged glances.

“How is this?” I asked.

“Look to the sky,” he said, looking up, and pointing, toward the south.

“I see nothing,” I said.

“That is what is to be seen,” he said.

“The guard?” I said.

“There is no guard,” he said.

“He is due?” I said.

“Four Ehn past,” said Tajima.

“Saddle a tarn,” I said.

“It is waiting,” said Tajima. “Too, a ten is armed, and asaddle.”

“I go alone,” I said.

“No, Tarl Cabot, tarnsman,” he said.

“This,” I said, “I fear, has to do with me.”

“How can that be?” asked Tajima.

“I do not know,” I said.

“The tarn is waiting,” said Tajima.

Chapter Twenty-Six

what occurred in an interview

The night was cloudy.

I was aloft.

The tarn pierced the wind. Vapor, foglike, swept past. I felt moisture, a spattering of rain.

On the ground it had been warm. But here, aflight, there was the sharp, cutting, rushing of wind. My tunic whipped about me. Commonly the tarnsman jackets himself in leather, but I was as I had been, as I had come from the feast. I was unhelmeted. It was cold.

I was responding to a summons.

I did not think my life was in jeopardy. I could have been set upon in the darkness, but had not been.

Might this be some new thread in the obscure tapestry which Lord Nishida, or others, were weaving?

A ten would soon be aflight, to search for the overdue guard, whose failure to return when expected had concerned Tajima.

Thusly had I instructed the guard.

But I wanted, first, my lead.

I had little doubt the absence of the guard had something to do with the voice in the darkness.

The sky was to be clear, and any rendezvous was to be unnoted.

It had been a man’s voice, of course. Few women, slave or free, are about in the Gorean darkness, and certainly not in the forests, or outside a city’s walls. Those familiar with the Gorean culture will find nothing anomalous in this. Women, even free women, are regarded as trophies, and prizes. They make such lovely slaves. Sometimes a girl will flee a projected, unwanted companionship but these flights are seldom successful, and the fair fugitives are likely to find themselves soon caged and collared. Sometimes they are returned to their city where they are given, now as a naked slave, to he from whose companionship they had fled.

For a slave girl herself, a chain daughter, there is no escape, given her garmenture, the collar, the brand, and the entire culture, which is arrayed to remand her into the authority of the free. At best she might come into the keeping of a new master, and then, as a caught runaway, be subjected to a far more heinous, confining, and terrifying bondage than that from which she had fled. And at worst she might be torn to pieces by pursuing sleen or be hamstrung, to spend the rest of her life pulling herself about by her hands, being whipped, and living on garbage, and serving as an object lesson for other slaves. A first attempt at escape is usually punished only by a severe whipping. After all, not every girl, early in her collaring, can be expected to understand the impossibility of escape. The more intelligent the girl, of course, the more clearly this is understood. Soon all understand the collar is on them, that they are in it, and that it is locked. For the Gorean slave girl there is no escape.

Let us briefly consider the matter of the fugitive from the unwanted companionship, who is returned to her former suitor, now as a slave.

The perquisites he might have sought via her companioning, resources, connections, and such, are then no longer available, but the girl herself is his, to do with as he pleases. As the projected social and economic losses he may have sustained by her flight will presumably far outweigh her value on a sales platform one may appreciate his likely disappointment, if not actual disgruntlement, consequent upon her untoward and unacceptable behavior. Accordingly he may not, at least immediately, put her into the markets, but might keep her for himself, for perhaps months, to derive from her skin, so to speak, an ample compensatory retribution of servitude and pleasure, prior to having her led to a convenient market, hooded, braceleted, and leashed. Indeed, she who was in her view once too fine for his couch may later plead, her lips to his sandals, with all her heart, to be kept at his slave ring.

The decision, of course, is his.

There are masters, of course, and there are slaves, and much depends on the individuals, but, always, the masters are masters and the slaves are slave.

It was fall.

Below me I could see the lanterns of the training area.

I thought the missing guard most likely safe. If someone wanted something of me, it would be unwise to do more than divert, delay, or waylay a guard.

Commonly the price of a death is another death, or more.

The guard might, of course, have been acting under the command of Lord Nishida, or another officer.

Somewhere he might be waiting to resume his rounds.

But I did not think Lord Nishida was involved in this. He could have spoken to me in his tent. There must be another, or others.

I took the tarn then south, abruptly, and tried to count the Ihn, compounding them into Ehn. Soon, much at my own level, some four hundred yards above the trees, I saw what I had anticipated, the brief unshuttering of a