The girl lifted her head.
“You are crying,” said the stranger.
“Forgive me, Master,” she said.
“She has not been long in the collar,” said the taverner.
“She is barbarian, is she not?” asked the stranger.
“I fear so,” said the taverner, “but she is not without interest, I trust.”
“Paga, Master?” asked the girl.
“What is your name?” asked the stranger.
The girl cast a frightened look at the taverner. Then she said, “I have no name, Master. I have not been given a name. Forgive me, Master.”
“Yes,” said the stranger. “Her accent is clearly barbarian.”
“Some men,” said the taverner, “enjoy the accent. It makes their barbarian status clear, and thus gives their mastery, in its perfection, an interesting and exotic flavor. As they are barbarians, one’s relationship to them is uncomplicated. One need not be concerned with their treatment. One may treat them as one wishes.”
“One’s relationship to collar meat, of any sort,” said a fellow, he I took to be a mercenary, “is uncomplicated.”
“Who is concerned with collar meat?” said another. “They are all the same, Gorean or barbarian. One will treat them as one wishes.”
“I think,” said another, “it is even more delicious to take a Gorean woman, one of those haughty she-sleen, so arrogant and lofty in their pride, so pretentiously superior, and strip them and teach them the collar.”
“The terrified lips of either sort, pressed supplicatingly to your feet, are pleasant,” said a fellow.
“Yes,” said another.
“Would you like a name?” asked the stranger.
“That is at the pleasure of masters,” whispered the girl. “It will be as they wish. I am theirs, to be named or not.”
As such as the girl are domestic animals, they have no name in their own right, no more than other domestic animals, say, verr, tarsk, or kaiila. One such as she would commonly bring more than a verr or tarsk, but far less than a kaiila.
“Many barbarians learn to speak a fluent lovely Gorean,” said the taverner.
“I understand so,” said the stranger. I gathered he might have known instances of such.
“You had a name in your former life,” said the stranger.
“Yes, Master,” she said. A tear coursed down her cheek.
“It is gone,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“Would you like to name her?” asked the taverner.
“Is she any good?” asked the stranger.
Obviously such considerations might affect the quality and nature of a name.
“The fires have begun to burn in her belly,” said the taverner.
One of the men laughed.
The girl put her head down, trembling, shamed.
I suspected that the fires had, indeed, begun to burn in her belly. I wondered if she knew, now, how much, later, their prisoner she would be. Compared to them how feeble and imperfect would be the bars of cages, the weight of shackles.
“Paga, Master?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
She rose gracefully, backed away deferentially, and then turned, and hurried to the serving table.
The tavern was muchly dark, but we could see her outline at the serving table, in the light of the tiny bowl lamp. She wiped out a goblet with a cloth, set it beside the vat, lifted the lid from the vat, and dipped the goblet in the amber fluid, filling it. She then put the goblet down, replaced the vat lid, and, to the sound of the bells on her left ankle, approached the table. She knelt at the side of the table, rather before the stranger. She widened her knees and put her head down. She had both hands on the goblet.
“Paga, Master?” she asked, again.
The girl was lithe, slender, dark-eyed, dark-haired, well breasted, sweetly thighed, with an inviting love cradle. Her hands and feet were small.
The soft glow of the tiny lamp, the single lamp, on its chains, hanging near the table, glinted on the metal goblet, and the close-fitting, narrow band encircling her neck.
“Yes,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” she whispered.
She pressed the metal of the goblet to her waist, and then, gently, but unmistakably, to her breasts, after which she lifted the goblet, regarding the stranger, frightened, over its rim. She then kissed the goblet, and licked it for a moment with her small tongue, and then kissed it again, tenderly, lingeringly, supplicatingly, and then lowered her head between her extended arms, lifting the goblet to the stranger.
The stranger took the goblet, and regarded the girl. She knelt back.
“
“I think,” said the stranger, “I shall name her.”
“If you wish,” said the taverner. He could later, of course, do what he wished with the name, removing it, or changing it.
“Let her, for the time,” said the stranger, “be Talena.”
Men cried out in protest.
The girl looked up, her hand risen before her mouth, in terror.
“Never! Never!” said the taverner. “That hated name is no longer spoken. It is to be heard no more.”
‘Talena’, it might be noted, was at one time a common name on Gor, much as dozens of other names. To be sure, it was a high-caste name, rare amongst the lower castes. But even so, it was not unknown in the lower castes, and I have encountered it even amongst the Peasants, the fundamental caste, the “Ox on which the Home Stone rests.” It was rare as a slave name until after the fall of Ar, and the rise of Talena of Ar to the throne of Ar, placed on the throne as a puppet Ubara by the occupying forces of victorious Cos and Tyros, the major maritime Ubarates of Gor, abetted by numerous mercenary companies. It was only after that time that some masters outside of Ar, in various far cities, and even as faraway as Cos and Tyros, in their contempt for the new Ubara, regarded as having betrayed her Home Stone, might place that now-contemptible name upon some slaves, usually deficient or temporarily lacking slaves, as a punishment name. Well then might they strive for a name with less affinity to the whip. In Ar itself, to name a slave ‘Talena’ was deemed an act of sedition, punishable by impalement. For many years Ar had been ruled by the great Marlenus of Ar, a giant of a man, mountainous in boldness and power, yet famed as much for subtlety and cunning. Marlenus was ambitious, despotic, and imperialistic. Known Gor stood much in fear of him. This Talena was once his daughter. It seems that long ago, during the Planting Feast of Ar, a bold tarnsman, thought to be from the north, seized the Home Stone of Ar, which catastrophe brought about the temporary downfall of the Ubar, who fled from the city with chosen men. In the disruptions and chaos ensuing upon the loss of the Home Stone, leagues of cities, enemies to Ar, under the leadership of an Assassin, Pa-Kur, marched on the troubled, disunited city. His “horde,” as historians would come to speak of it, lay encamped outside her walls, poised to breach her defenses, ready to enter, sack, and burn the city; all seemed lost; but Marlenus, somehow abetted in his return by a figure now thought by many to be mythical, a Tarl of Bristol, which city we do not know, entered and rallied his city, and the invading horde was resisted and routed. Pa-Kur may have perished, but this is not known, as the body was never found. This Tarl of Bristol, if such a figure ever existed, supposedly companioned Talena, daughter of the Ubar, but appears to have deserted her. Much is unclear. Somehow, it seems, she was apprehended by Rask of Treve, perhaps in trying to return to Ar. Ar and Treve are mortal enemies. One
