Swordsmen of Gor

a slave?”

“Master?” she said.

“What you might wish is not only unimportant,” I said, “but meaningless, absurdly irrelevant.”

She looked up at me, from her belly, tears in her eyes.

“It is irrelevant,” I said, “whether or not you want to be a slave, or desire to be a slave, or need to be a slave.”

“Master?” she said.

“You will be kept as a slave,” I said, “because you are a slave, and should be a slave, and it pleases men that such as you should be owned.”

“Yes, Master,” she sobbed.

“Your will is nothing,” I said.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“You were less than fully pleasing,” I informed her. “A slave is to be fully pleasing.”

“Yes, Master!” she wept.

“I think I will sell you,” I said.

“Please, no, Master!” she wept. “I will try to please you, Master, fully, Master, fully, fully, perfectly, in all ways! Please do not sell me, Master! Keep me, I beg you!”

“I will do as I wish,” I informed her.

“Yes, Master,” she wept.

“Perhaps you now better understand what it is to be a slave?”

“Yes, Master,” she whispered. “Yes, Master.”

She looked up at me, mine, her face run with tears.

I regarded her.

Her lips trembled with emotion.

Her face was sensitive, soft, and beautiful. It was nicely framed in glossy, dark hair, still a bit short, perhaps, but it would grow. Long hair, as is well known, is favored in such as she. Much may be done with it, aesthetically, and in the furs. Too, it might be noted, in passing, that the female was highly intelligent. That much improves a girl’s price. That would be important if I chose to sell her. Such women make the best slaves. They quickly learn what they now are. Too, compared to the more ordinary, or average, woman, they tend to be, at least initially, more in touch with, and more aware of, and more open to, their own deepest needs, and desires. They come into the collar, thus, half-prepared for bondage.

Gorean slavers do not bring stupid women to Gor. They do not sell well.

I looked down upon her.

I liked her as she was, at my feet, collared, naked.

She belonged there.

“Now,” I said, “we must welcome our visitor.”

She looked up at me, wildly.

“Clothe yourself, girl,” I said.

She scrambled on her knees to her discarded garment, hastily pulled it on, over her head, and turned, on her knees, to face the visitor.

She would remain kneeling until given permission to rise, as she was a slave in the presence of free men.

“Tal,” said the fellow, standing back, amidst the trees, in the shadows.

“Tal,” I rejoined.

Chapter Two

pertinax; a vessel will not beach

“Come forward,” said the fellow, gesturing toward the forest.

“You come forward,” I said, motioning him down, toward the beach. I did not know what might lurk in the forest.

“You want me within the circuit of your steel,” he remarked.

“You need not approach that closely,” I said. “Too, my blade is sheathed.”

“That seems unwise,” he said, “when greeting a stranger.”

“You do not appear to be armed,” I said.

I wondered if he realized how swiftly a blade might be unsheathed.

“Are you one of them?” he asked.

“One of whom?” I asked.

“I saw no ship,” he said.

“From the sky,” I said. “Do you know such ships?”

He wore a mottled tunic, irregularly green and brown. It would match in well with the background, with attendant shadows.

He did not have the blue and yellow chevrons which sometimes characterizes the lower-left-hand sleeve of the slavers, different, of course, from their more formal regalia, or robes, commonly blue and yellow, their colors. Some view the Slavers as a caste, others as a subcaste of the Merchants. The colors of the Merchants are yellow and white, or gold and white.

Had he been a slaver it was possible he might have been aware of the sky ships, so to speak, such as the disklike vessel of Peisistratus. On the other hand, the greater numbers, indeed, the vast majority, of Gorean slavers, one supposes, as Goreans of other sorts, had never seen such a ship. Indeed, many Gorean slavers, as many Goreans, might not even believe in the existence of such ships. They, of course, as most Goreans, would be well aware of the existence of Earth girls, from the markets, if from no other source, but they, as many Goreans, might suppose that Earth was somewhere on Gor, though doubtless far away. Much of Gor, you see, even from the point of view of Goreans, is, so to speak, terra incognita. Gor is somewhat smaller than Earth but having missed the cataclysm that drew, say, a sixth of Earth into space to form her magnificent single moon, leaving behind a mighty basin to become in time a vast ocean, her land area is quite possibly more extensive than that of Earth. In any event, much of Gor, to most Goreans, is unexplored, and consequently uncharted. There is thus no great difficulty in supposing the existence of unknown lands, even many of them, and one, perhaps, might be called “Earth.” And most Goreans, even today, would be as unacquainted with, and as skeptical of, the possibility of space travel as men of Earth might have been a thousand or more years ago.

The fellow, observing me carefully, came forward, some yards down the beach.

He was a tall man.

He glanced at the slave. “Her name is ‘27’?” he asked.

“You can read,” I said.

“Passably,” he said.

“‘27’ was a ring number,” I said. “Her name is Cecily.”

“That is a strange name,” he said.

“She is from Earth,” I said.

“That is far away,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“I am not unfamiliar with such women,” he said. “Some have been brought here, to content us.”

“There are others then,” I said.

“A few,” he said.

Gorean men need women, and by “women” they commonly understand the most luscious and desirable of women, the female slave. To be sure, the forests are dangerous, and what free woman would care to frequent them? Girls brought on chains, of course, have little to say about such things.

“She is pretty,” he said.