Then he gestured that she might enter his couch. Gratefully, she crawled upon the couch, his section of that furcovered, dirt sleeping level, and, trembling, shuddering with cold, drawing her body up, drew the furs about her. She lay huddled in the furs. Her body shook beneath them. We heard her moan.
“Mead!” called Ivar Forkbeard, returning to the table. Pudding was first to reach him, with a horn of mead.
“Please come to my side, Ivar Forkbeard!” wept Hilda. “I freeze! Hold me! Please hold me!”
“Let that be a lesson in passion to you other bond-maids,” laughed Ottar.
There was much laughter, and most from the beautiful, nude slaves of the men of TorvaldsIand, hot, collared, and eager in their brawny arms.
The Forkbeard, laughing, drained the horn. “Mead!” he cried. Gunnhild served him.
After this second horn of mead the Forkbeard, wiping his mouth with his arm, turned about and went to his furs.
He howled with misery.
“She is the coldest of women!” laughed Ottar.
“Hold me, Forkbeard!” she wept. “Hold me please!”
“Will you serve me well?” asked the Forkbeard.
“Yes,” she cried. “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!”
But the Forkbeard did not make her serve him then but, firmIy, held her body, locked in his arms, that of his prisoner, to his, warming her. After half of an Ahn I saw her, delicately, eyes frightened, lift her head and put her lips to his shoulder; softly, timidly, she kissed him; and then looked into his eyes. Suddenly she was flung on her back and his huge hand, roughened from the hilt of the sword, the handle of the ax, was at her body. “Oh no!” she cried. “No!”
Bets were made at the table. I bet on Ivar Forkbeard. Within an Ahn, Hilda the Haughty, to the jeers of men, the taunts of bond-maids, on her hands and knees, head down, hair falling forward, crept to the circle of the bond-maid, which Ivar Forkbeard had drawn in the dirt of the hall floor between the posts. The coals of the fire pit illuminated the left side of her body. She crawled before the bond-maids the oarsmen. She entered the circle, and then, within the circle, stood up. She stood very straight, and her head was up. “I am yours, Ivar Forkbeard,” she said. “I am yours!”
He gestured to her, and she fled from the circle, to join him, to throw herself at his side, to beg his touch, his bondmaid.
I collected nine tarn disks and two pieces of broken plate, plundered two years ago from a house on the eastern edge of Skjern.
Gunnhild had been given by the Forkbeard to Gorm for the night. I saw him holding her by the arm and pushing her ahead of him to his furs. This night her ankle wouId be held by his fetter, — not that of the Forkbeard. The Forkbeard had offered me Pudding, but, generously, thinking to have Thyri, I had, after using her once, given her for the night to Ottar. Even now she was, kneeling on his furs, being fettered by the keeper of Ivar Forkbeard’s farm. You can imagine my irritation when I saw Thyri led past me, her left wrist in the grip of an oarsman. She looked over her shoulder at me, agonized. I blew her a kiss in the Gorean fashion, kissing and gesturing, my fingers at the right side of my mouth, almost vertical, then, with the kiss, brushing gently toward her. I had no special claim on-the pretty little bond-maid, no more than any other among t~he Forkbeard’s men. The delicious little thing, like the other goods of the hall, was, for most practical purposes, for the use of us all. I heard the movements of chain, the moans of the bondmaids in the arms of their masters, men of-Torvaldsland.
I thought I would sleep alone this night.
“Tarl Red Hair,” I heard.
I followed the sound of the voice and, to my delight, as Ottar had left her, she slipping his mind apparently, as she had mine, her hands still tied before her, about the post, kneeling in the dirt, was Olga.
“I hate you, Tarl Red Hair,” she said.
I knelt beside her. I had intended to permit her to smolder for a time, she much aroused, and then later, when she had been much heated with need and desire, when, cruelly deprived, she had been aching to break into flame, throw her to my furs, but, unfortunately, I had forgotten about her.
“I forgot about you,” I told her.
“I hate you, Tarl Red Hair,” she said.
I reached out to touch her. She shrank back in fury.
“Would you please untie me?” she asked.
I did not wish to sleep alone. I wondered if the fires in Olga which, earlier, had burned so deeply, so hotly, could be truly out. I wondered if they might be rekindled.
I slipped, kneeling, behind her. I heard her body move against the post.
I pushed her collar up, under her chin, and, with two fingers of my right hand and two fingers of my left, rubhed the sides of her throat.
“Please untie me,” she whispered.
Her hands writhed in the bonds; her body pressed against the post; her left cheek was at the right side of the post~.
My hands lowered themselves on her body. And then, her hands tied about the post, we both kneelingg I caressed her. She tried to resist, in fury, but I was patient. At last I heard her sob. “You are master,” she said, “Tarl Red Hair.” I kissed her on the back of the right shoulder. She put back her head. “Take me to your filrs?” she begged. I untied her hands from the post, taking, too, the rope from her b~lly, by which Ottar had fastened her to his belt, but lett the rope on her right wrist, its free end in my hand, to lead her. But I needed not lead her. She followed eagerly, trying to press her lips to my left shoulder.
Before my sleeping area, my rude couch, my furs, I stopped. I stood behind her.
She stood very still, facing the couch, at its foot. She was a bond-maid. She was property. She was owned. “Force me,” she whispered. Bond-maids know they are chattel, and relish being treated as such. Deep in the belly, too, of every female is a desire, more ancient than the caves, to be forced to yield to the ruthless domination of a magnificent, uncompromising male, a master; deep within them they all wish to submit, vulnerably and completely. nude, to such a beast. This is completely clear in their fantasies; Earth culture, of course, gives little scope to these blood needs of the beauties of our race; accordingly, these needs, frustrated, tend to express themselves in neurosis, hysteria and hostility. Technology and social structures, following their own dynamics, integral to their development and expansion, have left behind the pitiful, rational animals who are their builders and their victims. We have built our own cage, and demind it against those who would shatter its locks.
My lett hand held her left arm, with my right hand I forced her right wrist behind her back; I thrust it up. she cried out, suddenly, with misery; I threw her to the furs; scarcf ly had she struck them, crying out, belly down, than I had clasped the tetter of black iron about her ankle; chained, she turned to face me, sitting on the furs, tears in her eyes, her hands back, her legs flexed. I discarded the leather and tur of Torvaldsland. With a movement of the chain she knelr on the turs, her head down. I entered upon the furs. “To your belly,” I said, “ankles a foot apart.”
“Yes, my Jarl,” she said. I then began to caress her, beneath the hins, on the inside of her feet, behind the backs of her knees at the sides of her breasts, high between her thighs. By the densility of her muscles, the movements of her body, sometin es her tiny cries, her breathing, she instructed me in her weakness, which I, as a warrior, might then exploit. When I was satisfied, I threw her to her back.
“I am told,” I told her, “that Olga is one of the best of the bond-maids.”
She lifted her body to me, begging for my touch. I fondled the extent of her, kissing and licking.
“What have you done to my body?” she whispered. “I have never felt this way, this deeply, this fully, before.”
“What does your body tell you?”, I asked.
“That I will be a marvel to you, Tarl Red Hair,” she whispered. “A marvel!”
“Please me,” I told her.
“Yes, my Jarl,” she wept. “Yes!”
And when she had much pleased me, I finished with her, in the lirs taking.
“Hold me,” she wept.
“I shall hold you,” I told her, “and then, in a time, bond-maid, you will be again used.”
She looLed at me, startled.
“This,” I told her, “is the first taking. It’s purpose is only to warm you for the second.”
She clutched me, not speaking.
I held her, tightly.
“Can I endure such pleasure?” she asked, frightened.
“You are bond,” I told her. “You will have no choice.”
“I~Iy Jarl,” she asked, frightened, “is it the second taking of the Gorean master, to which you intend to subject me?”
“Yes,” I told her.
“I have heard of it,” she wept. “In it,” she gasped, “the girl is permitted no quarter, no mercy!”
“That is true,” I told her.
We lay together, silently, I holding her, she against me, chained, for something like half of an Ahn. Then I touched.
“She lifted her head. “Is it beginning?” she asked.
“Yes,” I told her.
“~lay a bond-maid beg one favor of her Jarl?” she asked.
“Perhaps,” I said.
She leaned over me. I felt her hair brush my body. “Be merciless,” she whispered. “Be merciless,” she begged.
“That is my intention,” I told her, and threw her to he.
“Never have I yielded as I yielded now,” she wept, “ would not exchange my collar for all the jewels on Gor!”
I held her. In time, she slept. I, too, then, slept. It was two Ahn before dawn. In one Ahn Ottar and the Forkbeard would be up, arousing the men. The serpent, the afte noon before, had been readied. This morning, at dawn the serpent would leave the small wharf, dipping oars, gliding through fog on the inlet, the result of the cooler la winds moving over the somewhat warmer water ol the croaching Torvaldstream. Ivar Forkbeard, not wisely perhaps, was determined to attend the Thing. He had there, his opinion, an appointment to keep, with Svein Blue Toot a great Jarl of Torvaldsland, who had outlawed him.
