To one side, her arms folded, the quirt in her hand, in leather strips and halter, with collar and ring, with high-laced sandals, stood the large female slave, who had originally conducted the girl from the room, and had brought her back today. She smiled.
I pointed to the stones at my feet. “Crawl,” I said, in Gorean.
The girl slipped to her belly, and, as a slave girl, crawled to my feet. She put her lips to my foot; I felt her hair over it. “Return,” I told her. On her belly, head down, she returned to where she had knelt.
“Kneel,” I said.
Again she knelt in the position of the pleasure slave. Her eyes wire angry.
Excellent, I thought to myself.
“She has been diligent?” I asked the slave master.
“Yes,” he said.
I smiled. The girl had fallen into the rebellion of compliance. To avoid the deprivation of food, the whip, she obeyed perfectly, but outwardly. She was trying to retain an island in which she would be her own mistress. She thought she was deceiving us. I did not see that it was mine to do, but doubtless, in time, her master, when he wished, would shatter her, taking this island from her, making her completely a slave. For now, I thought I would let her think she was fooling us. Later, when a master wished, he would, when it pleased him, to her horror, break her totally to his will.
I had little doubt that the lovely Alyena would one day, in the arms of a strong man, for whom I was saving her; become a true slave, adoringly and vulnerably the property of her master.
I glanced to the large female slave, with the quirt, standing near the silver curtain.
“Why are you not in slave silk?” I asked her.
Her eyes flashed. Her hand clenched on the quirt.
“She is useful in the pens,” said the slave master. “She terrorizes feminine girls.”
I turned to Alyena. “What do you think,” I asked, in English, “of the female slave?”
“I fear her,” whispered small, lovely Alyena.
“Why,” I asked.
“She is so strong, so hard,” said Alyena.
“What you fear in her.” I said, “is masculinity, but it is not a true masculinity; it is fraudulent.” I looked down at her. “The masculinity you must learn to fear,” I told her, “is the masculinity of men.”
“She is a match for any man,” said Alyena. Her eyes shone with pride.
I turned to the slave master. “Fetch a male slave,” I said.
One was brought. He was not a large fellow. He was however, an inch or so taller than the female slave.
“You certify to me,” said I to the slave master, “that this man is neither clumsy nor stupid, nor drunk, nor an instructor in combat intent upon increasing the confidence of his pupils.”
“It is so certified,” he smiled. “He is used in cleaning the pens. He is a drover who falsified the quality-markings on spice crates.”
I placed a copper tarn disk on the desk of the slave master. “Fight,” I said to the slaves.
“Fight,” said the slave master.
The man looked puzzled. With a cry of rage, shrill and vicious, the female slave leapt toward him, slashing him across the face with the quirt. She struck him twice before he, angry, took the quirt from her and threw it aside.
“Do not anger me,” he told her.
He turned and caught her kick on his left thigh. She leapt at him, fingers like claws, to tear out his eyes. He seized her wrists. He turned her about. She could not move. Then, with considerable force, as she cried out with misery, he flung her, the length of her body, belly front, against the stone wall. He then stepped back, jerked her ankles from under her and flung her to the stones, and knelt across her back. She wept and struck the stones with her fists. Then her halter was removed and her hands pulled behind her and bound with it. He discarded her belt and the strips of leather. He removed her sandals. With one of the long, straplike laces, he crossed and bound her ankles. Then, angrily, he turned her collar, hurting her, with its ring, to the back. With the other straplike lace, run through the ring and tied to the binding on her ankles, he jerked her ankles up, high, fastening them there. Then he crouched over her and she lay bound at his feet. He turned her head, looking over her right shoulder, so that it faced him; he crouched so that she could not move; his right ankle was against her left cheek. He poised his thumbs, held downward, over her eyes.
“I am a woman at your mercy,” she wept. “Please, Master, do not hurt me!”
He looked to the slave master. The slave master came to where the woman lay. He looked down at her. He called two slaves from behind the silver curtain. They looked down at the woman. Then the slave master said, “Put her in slave silk, and give her to male slaves.”
She was freed of the cord binding her ankles to her collar ring.
She was jerked to her feet, and held there; she could not stand by herself for her feet were still crossed and bound. “Who are the masters,” asked the slave master of her.
The woman, hair before her face, held upright by men, looked at Alyena. The woman trembled. “Men,” she whispered. “Men are the masters.” Alyena’s face turned white.
The woman was carried from the room, to the pens. For a silver tarsk I purchased the male slave, and freed him. “Stand,” I said to Alyena, who was trembling.
I put the walking chains on her, which I had purchased a few days ago in the bazaar.
I looked down into her eyes. “Who are the masters?” I asked.
She looked up at me, angrily. Then she said, “Men-men are the masters.”
I then left the office of the slave master of Tor, followed by the slave girl.
On the back of the kaiila, on the road to the Oasis of Nine Wells, drowsily, I listened to the kaiila bells.
It was in the late afternoon. We would stop in an Ahn or two for camp.
Fires would be lit. The kaiila would be put in circles, ten animals to the circle, and fodder, by kaiila boys, would be thrown into the center of the circle.
The tents would be pitched. The opening of the Tahari tent usually faces the east, that the morning sun may warm it. Gor, like the Earth, rotates to the east. The nights require, often, a heavy djellaba or an extra blanket. Many nomads build a small kaiila-dung fire in the tent, to smolder during the night, to warm their feet. I needed not do this, of course, for at my feet slept the former Miss Priscilla Blake-Allen, the girl, Alyena.
At night the kaiila are hobbled. The slave girls, too, are hobbled. With the kaiila a simple figure-eight twist of kaiilahair rope, above the spreading paws, below the knees, is sufficient. A girl, of course, is chained. When finished with her, I would cross Alyena’s ankles and, with the walking chain, suitably shortened, chain them together. That way she could not stand. I would then throw her brief djellaba against the desert cold, and order her to a position of sleep. On the mat, toward morning, she would pull the hood over her face, fold her arms and pull up her legs, knees bent; the djellaba came far up her thighs; I would watch her sleeping, sometime, for she was quite beautiful. Once she opened her eyes. “Master,” she said. “Sleep, Slave,” I told her. “Yes, Master,” she said. In the morning I would unchain her early that she might, like the other slave girls in camp, be about her duties. Once she stole a date. I did not whip her. I chained her, arms over her head, back against the trunk, to a flahdah tree. I permitted nomad children to discomfit her. They are fiendish little beggars. They tickled her with the lanceolate leaves of the tree. They put honey about her, to attract the tiny black sand flies, which infest such water holes in the spring. When we would break camp, I would lift her to the kurdah, placing her within.
I became aware of the pounding of kaiila pads on the dry surface. Suddenly I was alert, awake.
I spun the kaiila, and stood in the stirrups.
A man was riding by, the length of the caravan, one of the points. “Riders!” he cried. “Riders!”
I could see them now, more than a hundred of them, sweeping toward us over the crest of one of the hills, to my left, the west.
Their burnooses whipped behind them as they mounted the crest of the hill and, the animals half sliding, descended the other side, approaching us. Guards from our caravan were hastening outward to meet them. I stood in the stirrups. I saw no one approaching from other directions. There might be, of course, such delayed charges. Reassured I was to see points riding out about the caravan, outriders, to guard against such surprise. I saw Farouk, merchant and caravan master, ride by, burnoose swirling behind him, lance in hand. With him were six men. I saw drovers, holding the reins of their beasts, shading their eyes, looking over the dust to the west. One of the kinsmen of Farouk went to the kurdahs of slave girls, hobble chains at his saddle pommel; he would rein in before a kurdah, throw the girl the hobble and order her, “Shackle yourself”; he would wait the moment it took for the girl to snap the small ring about her right wrist and, behind her body, the larger one about her left ankle; the rings are separated by about six inches of chain; they are not sleeping hobbles, which confine only the ankles; then he would rush to the next kurdah, fling a hobble to the next girl, and repeat his command. I rode down the caravan until I came to Alyena’s kurdah. She thrust her head out, veiled, her fists holding apart the rep- cloth curtain.
“What is going on?” she cried.
“Be silent,” I told her. She looked frightened.
“Stay within the kurdah, Slave,” I warned her. “And do not peer out.”
“Yes, Master,” she said.
I turned the kaiila, loosened the scimitar in the sheath.
“They are Aretai!” cried a man.
I thrust the scimitar back, deep, in the sheath.
I saw, some hundred yards from the caravan, the riders reined up. With them I saw Farouk, conversing with their captain. The caravan guards, on nervous, prancing kaiila, were behind him. Lances were high, butts in the stirrup sheath, like needles against the hills.
I rode my kaiila out a few steps, toward the men, then returned it to the caravan.
“They are Aretai,” said one of the drovers. The caravan, I knew, was bound for the Oasis of Nine Wells. It was held by Suleiman, master of a thousand lances.
He was high pasha of the Aretai.
