I screamed in terror, sprang to my feet, and tried to run back toward the cages, but had moved not a step or two before I was caught in the rear portal by one of the fellows there, and held. I struggled, wildly, but my strength was no more than that of a child in his arms. I began to shudder. I turned to look at the beast, saw the eyes and fangs, screamed again, and lost consciousness.
Chapter Ten
I folded the ironed sheets carefully.
Afterwards I would deliver them about. One launders the sheets at the public troughs, and later sprinkles them, and puts them under the handled irons, heated on the plate over the house fire.
The tunic I wore was suitable for a woman’s slave, brown, high-necked, and mid-calfed, rather different from what a man would be likely to put on a slave. On the other hand, it was surely not the cruel farce of sul cloth which had been mentioned during the bargaining at the Tarsk Market. In the markets and the streets I had seen the typical garmenture of other women’s slaves, following their mistresses, heads down, modestly, supposedly that they might not reflect upon their mistresses by exchanging glances with passing men, garmentures which served to demonstrate at once the status and taste of the mistress and the presumed, irreproachable deportment of her slaves. To be sure, many a quick smile and sly glance was passed now and then between such a putatively virtuous pet and one hardy, bold fellow or another. Occasionally, caught in such a contretemps, I had seen a girl mercilessly switched, until she cowered, rolling under the blows, sobbing and crying out, and I scarcely dared to speculate what might occur when she was marched home to a whipping ring.
In the outer room of the Tarsk Market I had been revived abruptly and unpleasantly by a canister of cold water splashed on my body. It took only a startled, miserable instant to recall the occasion of my loss of consciousness, and one of the first sights to greet me were the eyes of that enormous, crouching beast, regarding me, peering out from within that dark, loose, blanket-like robe and hood within which he concealed, as he could, his massive, but strangely agile frame, that of some sort of hirsute, large-chested, muscular bipedalian, or near- bipedalian, form of life, surely one with which I was unfamiliar. It could rear upright, freeing its grasping appendages for the manipulation of tools, but, as I would later learn, it could also move on all fours, using the knuckles of its forelimbs, with great speed, much faster than a man could run, or a woman. Its entire mien suggested a kind of animal which was predatory, aggressive, and carnivorous. Yet I had gathered from the utilization of the device, or translator, which still hung from its neck, I could see the loose chain, it was rational. Interestingly this reassurance of rationality did not allay my trepidation but increased it, for it bespoke no ordinary beast but one which might pursue its ends not blindly, or even merely cunningly, but patiently, wisely, calculatedly. Surely it was an unfamiliar, fearful robe for intelligence to wear. It was no more than a dozen feet from me. None of the men were near it. I struggled a bit, and fell to my side. While unconscious I had been tightly bound. My wrists had been fastened together behind my back, and my arms had been tied tightly to my sides. Also a leather collar was on my neck, from which a leash dangled, and the end of the leash was clutched in one of the beast’s massive paws.
“Please save me, Masters!” I wept to the men about. “I will be a good slave! Keep me! Am I not pretty? I beg to please you, and wholly, unquestioningly, and abjectly, responding to your least whim, in all the ways of the female slave! I will please you muchly. Rescue me! Do not let me be taken by this beast!”
Surely they must have some pity, or feeling, for one who was, after all, a female of their own species, though one with a brand incised into her left thigh.
“Please, Masters!” I wept. “Please, Masters!”
“You have been paid for,” said the leader of the men.
“Return his money!” I begged. “Sell me to another!”
“The money was good,” said Petranos. “Everything is in order.”
“Please!” I wept.
“It is too late,” said a fellow.
“Please, please, please!” I begged, thrusting my head to the floor.
“This is an honest house,” said the leader of the men.
I felt the leash draw taut and my head was pulled up, and I must, along the length of the leash, regard the beast.
With a last, wary look about the room, before which the men shrank back, he backed through the portal, and I could not gain my feet, and was dragged from the room, my shoulder abrading on the wooden floor, and then I was on the stones of the street.
“Do not eat me!” I begged, from my side, looking to him, frightened, sore, lying on the street, he much as a gloomy boulder in the shadows.
Two or three of the men appeared in the doorway, dark against the light behind them from the room.
A low growl, of obvious menace, was emitted from the throat of the beast, and then men withdrew, and the door was shut, and I heard it bolted.
There was then little light in the street.
The leash was slackened, and gently snapped, twice.
This was a signal, to a trained animal.
I must try to rise to my feet, to be led.
Perhaps, then, I was not the first woman he had had on his leash! Who had taught a beast this? What of the others? Had they been eaten?
I tried to rise, but my legs gave way beneath me.
“Forgive me, Master,” I said. “I cannot stand. I am too weak. I am too frightened.”
I cowered then, and expected to be beaten with the free end of the leash, but my legs would still not hold me.
“Forgive me, Master,” I whispered.
Again he administered the simple leash signal.
I tried to rise, struggling, but again slipped to the stones.
He then approached me, and sat me, facing him. He then crossed my ankles, and, with the free end of the leash, bound them together.
I watched, with an odd fascination.
In the house, of course, the slaves are familiarized with various bindings and tetherings to which they might be subjected. Accustoming them to bonds of various sorts is part of their training. Additionally, they are instructed in various responses to various bindings, for example, how to exploit them to their advantage, how to wear them attractively, how to move seductively within them, how to utilize them to enhance their desirability, how to use them in such a way, by movement and expression, as to excite and stimulate the master, and so on. To be sure, ropes, thongs, bracelets, chains, and such, are not only attractive on the slave, but, as she understands her confinement, her vulnerability, and her helplessness, they have their role in intensifying her sexuality, in heightening her receptivity, her readiness, and passion, as well. A slave will often beg for binding. To be sure, the very condition of bondage itself, aside from questions of restraint, with its signals, rituals, garmentures, behaviors, accouterments, expectations, and such, is richly and profoundly sexual; it is a way of life, a richly sexual way of life, and, given the radical sexual dimorphism of the human species, and the selections of millennia, a very natural way of life, one in fulfilling accord with the biotruths of human nature.
As I watched my ankles being tied I noted the beast was using warrior knots, the sort which quickly and easily secure a woman. As women are common loot on Gor, of greater interest than, say, goblets and tapestries, warriors are instructed in such knots. By their means a woman may be rendered wholly helpless in a matter of Ihn. I moved my ankles a little. They were well tethered.
Where, I wondered, would such a beast have learned such knots? Surely it was not itself a member of the Scarlet Caste. Perhaps it had once known a warrior, somewhere, on some world or other.
I knew little of Gor, but it did not seem likely to me that this form of beast would be indigenous to this world.
“I know you understand Gorean,” I whispered.
