“My Jarl,” said Thyri.
“Yes,” said the Forkbeard.
“Should this thrall,” she asked, indicating Tarsk, once Wulfstan of Kassau, “be permitted to look upon the beauty of the bond-maids?”
“What do you mean?” asked Ivar Forkbeard.
“He is, after all,” said thyri, “only a thrall.”
I wondered that she would deny the young man this pleasure. I recalled that she had said she hated him. I, personally, had no objection tohis presence in the shed. Thralls, I expected, had few pleasures. It might have been more than a year since he had been permitted a female.
The young man looked upon the proud Thyri with great bitterness.
She lifted her head, and laughed.
“I think,” said IvarForkbeard, “that I will send him back to the tent.”
“Excellent,” she said. She smiled at the thrall.
“Chain!” said the Forkbeard. One of his men took from over his shoulder a looped chain. At each end it terminated in a manacle. It had been held, looped, by these manacles being locked into one another. He removed it from his shoulder and opened the manacles. The chain itself was about a yard long. He handed it to the Forkbeard.
The young man would go chained to the tent.
“Wrist,” said the Forkbeard.
The young man extended his wrists. Thyri watched, delighted.
The Forkbeard closed the manacle about the young man’s left wrist.
Thyri laughed.
Then the Forkbeard took Thyri’s right wrist and closed it in the other fetter.
“My Jarl!” she cried.
“She is yours until morning,” the Forkbeard told the young thrall. “Use her behind the tent.”
“My thanks, my Jarl!” he cried.
“My Jarl!” wept Thyri.
Tarsk seized the length of chain in his right fist, about a foot from her fetter. He jerked it. The fetter was large on her wrist, but she could not slip it. She was held. She looked at him with horror. “Hurry, Bond-maid!” he cried. He turned about, dragging her by the right wrist, and, almost running, pulled her, stumbling, crying out, after him.
The Forkbeard, and I, and his men, laughed. We had not been much pleased at the insolence of the bond-maid with respect to the young thrall; once, we recalled, her taunting of him had almost cost him his life; I had intervened, and he had only been whipped instead; I had little doubt that Wulfstan of Kassau, the thrall, Tarsk, had many scores to settle with the pretty little she-sleen, once a fine young lady of Kassau; too, I recalled, she had once refused his suit, he supposedly not being good enough for her. “I hope,” said the Forkbeard, “he will not make her scream all night behind the tent. I wish to obtain a good night’s rest.”
“It would be a shame,” said I, “to interfere with his pleasure.”
“If necessary,” said the Forkbeard, “I will simply have him gag her with her own kirtle.”
“Excellent,” I said.
The Forkbeard then turned his attention to the chained female slaves in the shed.
Some extended their bodies to him; some turned, to display themselves, provocatively; for he was obviously a desirable master; but others affected not to notice him; though I noticed that their bodies were held beautifully as he passed, particularly should he pause to regard them; other girls, perhaps newer to their collars, shrank back against the boards, trying to cover themselves; some regarded him with tears in their eyes; some with fear; some with open hostility; others with sullen resentment; all knew that he might, like any man, own them, completely.
To my surprise, he stopped before a dark-haired girl who sat with her legs drawn up, her arms about them, her ankles crossed; her cheek was aid across her knees; she seemed startled that the Forkbeard stopped before her; she looked up at him, frightened, and then put her face down again, across her knees, but now her eyes were frightened, and every inch of her seemed tense.
She looked up at him, but then could not meet his eyes. She seemed a shy, introverted girl, one who might, before her capture, have been much alone.
The she had been caught by slavers.
“I would make a poor slave, my Jarl,” she whispered.
“What do you know of this girl?” asked the Forkbeard of the officer of Svein Blue Tooth, who was accompanying him.
“She peaks little and, as she can, when not chained, as in the exercise pen, she keeps to herself.”
The Forkbeard reached his hand toward her knee, but, she watching, terrified, did not touch it, and then withdrew it.
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, then opened them. She had feared to be touched.
Where as fear inhibits sexual performance in a male, rendering it impossible, because neutralizing aggression, essential to male power, fear in a woman, some fear, not terror, can, interestingly, improve her responsiveness, perhaps by facilitating her abject submission, which can then lead to multiple orgasms. This is another reason, incidentally, why Goreans favor the enslavement of desirable women; the slave girl knows that she must please her master, and that she will be punished, and perhaps harshly if she does not; this maked her not only desperate to please the brute who fondles her, but also produces in her a genuine fear of him; this fear on her part enhances her receptivity and responsiveness; also, of course, since fear stimulates aggression, which is intimately connected with male sexuality, her fear, which she is unable to help, to her master’s amusement, deepens and augments the very predation in which she finds herself as quarry; and if she should not be afraid, it is no great matter; any woman, if the master wishes, can be taught fear.
After the Forkbeard had withdrawn his hand he studied her eyes intently. I, too, detected that for which he had sought, the object of his experiment. Though she had feared his touch, yet, when he had withdrawn his hand, there was, momentarily, disappointment in her eyes. She both feared to be touched, and desperately yearned for the touch.
“Is she healthy?” asked the Forkbeard.
“Yes,” said the officer of Svein Blue Tooth.
I had seen such women, sometimes on Earth. They were often studious, quiet girls, keeping much to themselves, lonely girls, yet with brilliant minds, marvelous imaginations, and fantastic, suppressed latent sexuality. They were often among the greatest surprises, and bargains, in the Gorean slave markets. Viginia Kent, whom I had known in Ar, years ago, who had become the companion of the warrior Relius of Ar, been such a girl. On Earth she had taught acient history and classical languages at a small college on Earth; to many she might then have seemed a rather blue-stocking, forbidding girl; Gorean slavers, however, with greater perception perhaps then her fellow Earthlings, had seen her potential; she had been, one of several such items of cargo, abducted to Gor; on Gor, given no choice, suitably trained, she had become one of the most exquisite and delicious female slaves it had ever been my pleasure to see in a collar. Relius, given her, had freed her; his friend, Ho-Sorl, given another Earth girl, Phyllis Robertson, had kept the latter in a collar; Relius was younger that Ho-Sorl, and a romantic. Ho-Sorl, doubtless, was more experienced in the handling of females; I wondered if Virginia, to her astonishment, perhaps after a quarrel or after a night of depriving Relius in order to obtain some whim of herhad awakened one morning recollared, again the slave of a master.
“Kneel,” said the Forkbeard to the girl, “legs apart, palms of your hands on your thighs.”
With a movement of the chain, she did so.
He crouched before her.
“I may wish to use you to breed thralls,” he said. “You must be healthy for the farm. Put your head back, close your eyes and open your mouth.”
She did as she was told, that the Forkbeard might examine her teeth. Much may be told of the age and condition of a female slave, as of a kaiila or bosk, from her teeth.
But the Forkbeard did not look into her mouth. His left hand slipped to the small of her back, holding her, and his right hand went suddenly to her body. She cried out, trying to pull back, but could not, and then, her eyes closed, whimpering, she thrust forward, writhing and then, sobbing, held herself immobile, teeth gritted, eyes screwed shut, trying not to feel. When his hands left her body she tried, sobbing, to strike him, but he caught both her small wrists, holding them. She struggled futilely, held kneeling.
“Put your head back,” he said. “Open your mouth.”
She shook her head, wildly.
“I am holding your hands,” he pointed out.
Warily, eyes open, she opened her mouth. He looked at her teeth.
“I may wish to use you to breed thralls,” he said. “You must be healthy for the farm.”
He stood up.
“What do you want for her?” he asked the officer of Svein Blue Tooth.
“I had her for a broken coin,” he said, “half a silver tarn disk of Tharna. I will let you have her for a whole coin.”
The Forkbeard returned tot he man the tarn disk of silver which he had received for Dagmar.
The officer of Svein Blue Tooth, with a key at his belt, unlocked the padlock which held the girl’s collar to the common chain. He tossed the padlock, open, into one of the wooden boxes projecting from the wall.
The girl, kneeling, looked up at the Forkbeard. “Why did my Jarl buy me?” she asked.
“You have excellent teeth,” said the Forkbeard.
“For what will my Jarl use me?” she asked.
“Doubtless you can learn to swill tarsks,” he said.
“Yes my Jarl,” she said. Then she put her cheek, to our suprise, to the side of his leg, and lowering her head, holding his boot, kissed it.
It was very delicately, and lovingly, done.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“Peggie Stevens,” she said. I smiled. It was an Earth name.
