Swordsmen of Gor

over the forest with some unrecognized tarnsman. Perhaps he suspected me of having had the tarn of the guard drugged, which guard had, incidentally, as Seremides had assured me, returned unharmed to camp.

“Would you like to speak with me?” I asked.

“It is always a pleasure to speak with you,” said Lord Nishida. “Of what would you like to speak?”

“Of nothing,” I said.

“The smoke is unpleasant,” said Lord Nishida. “Let us address ourselves to the road.”

We fell in then with a company of Ashigaru, their glaives shouldered.

It did not surprise me that Lord Nishida accompanied his men on foot. The wagons were for supplies, for contract women, for the ill and lame, and such, if there were any. Commanders, unless wounded, incapacitated, or such, are not goods or freight, so to speak. Had there been kaiila he would doubtless have ridden, but there were no kaiila. Too, though some daimyos might have had recourse to sedan chairs, palanquins, or such, Lord Nishida, whom I had seen as a warrior, and one of some formidableness, would eschew such.

I wondered if he knew the location of the former Ubara of Ar, Talena, once the daughter of Marlenus, Ubar of Ubars.

Surely she could have been taken as she had been taken, from the very height of the Central Cylinder, if Seremides’ account was at all correct, only by means of either Kurii or Priest-Kings.

I considered putting the question to him, directly, but did not do so. It is unwise to move in kaissa when the board is obscure, when the number of pieces, their nature, and their positions are uncertain.

Only a fool would move then and risk a Ubar, or a Ubara.

I heard the snap of a switch and a girl’s sudden cry of pain. The switch of one of the attending Ashigaru, I gathered, had found its mark, administering a stinging rebuke for some slave’s indiscretion.

Earlier this morning Ashigaru had gathered in the slaves. Part of the camp was even then burning. One could smell the smoke, and sense the heat. Following the summons and the concomitant instructions, Pertinax and I had tunicked Cecily and Jane and tied their wrists behind their backs. If masters can strip slaves at their pleasure why can they not dress them, as well? One may either face the slave or have them face away from one. One then has them raise their arms, and one can slip the tunic over them, perhaps jerking it down and tight, so that they will well understand that the garment is a slave garment, and is put upon them by a male. As is well known the garmenture of a slave, if any is permitted, is at the discretion of the master. Interestingly, this is extremely meaningful to a woman, and is profoundly sexually stimulatory to them. We had then tied their hands behind their backs and prepared to turn them over to the nearby Ashigaru. Also profoundly sexually stimulatory to the female is the hands-behind-the-back tie. This increases their sense of vulnerability and helplessness, which, in turn, given the pervasive natural ratios of dominance and submission, and the female’s understanding of herself, that she is a slave, stimulates, enhances, and intensifies their slave reflexes, nicely readying them for their conquest and use. So I took Cecily in my arms and felt her squirming gratefully against me, her moist lips eagerly seeking mine. Pertinax similarly took his Jane in hand, and, bending her backward in his arms, ruled her lips with a master’s kiss. We then thrust them stumbling to the waiting Ashigaru who took the hair of each in a separate hand and, bending them over at the waist, conducted them both in a common leading position to some point of collection.

“Would you not, rather,” I had asked Pertinax, “it had been Saru?”

“Jane is excellent collar meat,” he said.

“I am sure of it,” I said. “But would you not rather it had been Saru?” I was pleased, incidentally, as suggested earlier, that he now seemed to grasp the nature of women, and their proper place in an advanced civilization. Many men of Earth had not.

“Saru is a slut,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “but such make excellent slaves.”

“She is different,” he said. “She is from Earth.”

I saw then that he wished, or seemed to wish, to see the females native to Gor in one way, and those native to Earth in another way, those of Gor as natural slaves, fit for the collar, ideally to be embonded, and those of Earth not, despite their absolute identity as human females. Did he truly think the women of Earth, I wondered, were different from, or superior to, the women of Gor? That seemed to me absurd. They made slaves every bit as good as the women of Gor. Certainly slavers thought so, and so, too, did buyers in hundreds of markets. Were this not so they would not be brought to the slave platforms of Gor. Indeed, some Goreans preferred them. In any event, the Earth-girl slave, having been starved of her sex on Earth, taught by a pathological, adversarial culture to fear, belittle, resent, and suspect it, discovers on Gor to her astonishment and elation that her sex is here not only of interest, but of inestimable importance and value. She will even be bought and sold as a female. Too, on Gor, she is likely to find herself the property of a dominant male, by whom she will find herself wholly mastered, as only a slave can be mastered, and handled and desired, and possessed, with a raw, animal passion for which her old world has failed to prepare her. And so, bidden with as little as a snapping of fingers, she quickly kneels and presses her soft lips to his whip, and rejoices, and is alive. I doubted Pertinax would have his rather disparaging comparison of the Gorean woman and the woman of Earth, in terms of dignity and such, had he ever met a Gorean free woman, particularly of high caste, compared to whom the free woman of Earth, less free than merely not yet collared, would be thought of at best as little more than a possible serving slave, perhaps one who might serve as a serving slave to her serving slaves. Could he not bring himself to understand that women were women, that the Gorean woman and the woman of Earth were both females, that neither was, nor should be, an imitation man, that they were quite different from men. To men they were complementary, neither, given those whims of nature which had been selected for and validated in the arena of possibilities, confirmed in caves and justified in villas, mansions, and palaces, ratified over millennia, identical nor antithetical. Should the women of Earth, then, any more than the Gorean woman, be denied her womanhood, her most profound needs and desires, the right of the natural woman, in her heart desiring to be mastered and possessed, the right to be owned, and fulfilled, the right, so to speak, to be collared? Must they comply with alien requirements, forever manifest facades and images imposed upon them from without? Too, did he not understand that his precious Saru was now, as a simple matter of fact, no longer a petty, haughty scion of fluorescently lit corridors and paneled offices, but was now a slave, merely that, nothing more, as much so as had she been such in Assyria, in Babylon, in Rome, or Damascus, and that her slave fires had been ignited? Interesting, I thought, that he thought little of, and would understand, accept, and welcome slave needs and slave passions in his Jane, recognizing their propriety, perfection, and naturalness, but was unwilling to understand, accept, or approve of them in Lord Nishida’s Saru. Did he not understand that Saru was as much a slave, and every bit as appropriately, naturally, and fittingly so, as his Jane? The collar was on her neck as rightly, as ideally, and perfectly, as it was on his Jane. Indeed, whip-exhibited on a sales platform she might have brought a few tarsk-bits more.

She was a slave. Could he not understand that?

“She is not different,” I said. “She is a woman.” Indeed, as noted, Saru’s slave fires had been ignited, and she was now their helpless, pleading prisoner, as much as any other slave, whether of Gor or Earth, in whom this lovely, irreversible development had occurred.

Once a woman’s slave fires have been ignited she can no longer be but a slave. She then needs the collar.

Without it she is in torment, and lost.

With it, she is whole.

“She is worthless,” he said.

“She is pretty,” I said.

“She is the property of Lord Nishida,” he said.

“True,” I said.

“Let us go to the center of camp,” had said Pertinax. “We are to join the guard of Lord Nishida, as I understand it.”

“Yes,” I had said.

We then left the hut which, shortly thereafter, was set afire.