'He spoke to me,' she said. 'so I turned and knelt before him, the tunics clutched in my arms. 'You are pretty, he said to me. This pleased me.' Slave girls relish compliments. Indeed, there is a Gorean saying to the effect that any woman who relishes a compliment is in her heart a slave girl. She wants to please. Most Gorean men would not think twice about collaring a girl who responds, smiling, to compliments. It is regarded as right to enslave a natural slave. Most masters, incidentally, make a girl they own earn her compliments. She must struggle to be worthy of complimenting. She so struggles. Gorean compliments are generally meaningful, for they tend to be given only when deserved, and sometimes not then. A girl desires to please her master. When she is complimented she knows she has pleased him. This makes her happy, not simply because then she knows she is less likely to be punished, but because she, in her heart, being a woman, truly desires to please one who is her complete master. ''Do you know me? he asked,' she said. ''Yes, Master, I said, 'you are Bertram of Lydius. guest in the house of my Master. 'Your master has been kind to me, said he. 'I would make him a gift to show my appreciation. It would be unfit-ring for me to accept his hospitality without in some small way expressing the esteem in which I hold him and my gratitude for his generosity. 'How may I aid you, Master? I asked. 'In Lydius, said he, 'we encounter often the furs of snow sleen, fresh and handsome and warm. Too, we have there cunning tailors who can design garments with golden threads and secret pockets. I would make a gift of such a garment, a short coat or jacket, suitable for use in the tarn saddle, for your master. '
'Few,' I said, 'in Port Kar think of me as a tarnsman. I did not so speak myself to Bertram of Lydius in our conversations.'
'I did not think, Master,' she said.
'Did you not think such a gift strange for a merchant and mariner?'
'Forgive a girl, Master,' she said. 'But surely there are those in Port Kar who know you a tarnsman, and the gift seems appropriate for one to proffer who is of Lydius in the north.'
'The true Bertram of Lydius would not be likely to know me a tarnsman,' I said.
'He was not then what he seemed,' she whispered.
'I do not think so,' I said. 'I think he was an agent of Kurii.'
I thrust into her, savagely. She cried out, looking at me. She was hot with sweat. The collar was on her throat.
'I think we have here, too,' I said, holding her, 'another agent of Kurii.'
'No,' she said, 'no!' Then I began to make her respond to me.
'Oh,' she wept. 'Oh. Oh!'
'He wanted my tunic,' I told her, 'to take its measurements, that the jacket of the fur of the snow sleen might be well made.'
'Yes,' she wept. 'Yes! But only for moments! Only for moments!'
'Fool,' I said to her.
'I was tricked,' she wept.
'You were tricked, or you are a Kur agent,' I said.
'I am not a Kur agent,' she wept. She tried to rise up, but I held her down, her small shoulders down to the tiles in the blood. She could not begin to be a match for my strength.
'Even if you are a Kur agent,' I said, softly, ''know, small beauty, that you are first my slave girl.'
I looked down into her eyes.
'Yes, Master,' she said. She twisted miserably, her head to one side. 'He had the garment for only moments,' she said.
'Was it always in your sight,' I asked.
'No,' she said. 'He ordered me to remain in the hall, to wait for him.'
I laughed.
'He had it for only moments it seemed,' she said.
'Enough time,' I said, 'to press it between the bars of the sleen cage and whisper to the beast the signal for the hunt.'
'Yes!' she wept.
Then I thrust again and again into her, in the strong, increasingly intense rhythms of a savage master until the collared she of her, once that of a civilized girl, screamed and shuddered, and then lay mine, without dignity or pride, shattered, only a yielded, barbarian slave, in my arms.
I stood up, and she lay at my feet collared, in the sleen's blood.
I reached to the great ax of Torvaldsland. I stood over her, looking down at her, the ax grasped in my hands.
She looked up at me. One knee was lifted. She shook her head. She took the collar in her hands and pulled it out from her neck a bit, lifting it toward me.
'Do not strike me, Master,' she said. 'I am yours.'
I looked at the collar and chain. She looked up at me, frightened. She was well secured.
My grip tightened on the ax.
She put her hands to the side, helplessly, and, frightened, lifted her body, supplicatingly, to me.
'Please do not strike me, Master,' she said. 'I am your slave.'
I lowered the ax, holding it across my body with both hands. I looked down at her, angrily.
She lowered her body, and lay quietly in the blood, frightened. She placed the backs of her hands on the tiles, so that the palms were up, facing me, at her sides. The palms of a woman's hands are soft and vulnerable. She exposed them to me.
I did not lift the ax.
'I know little of sleen,' she said. 'I had thought It a sleen trained to hunt tabuk, in the company of archers, little more than an animal trained to turn and drive tabuk, and retrieve them.'
'It is thus that the animal was presented to us,' I said. That was true. Yet surely, in the light of such a request, one for a garment, a sleen in the house, her suspicions should have been aroused.
'He wanted a garment,' I said.
'I did not think,' she said.
'Nor did you speak to me of this thing,' I said.
'He warned me not to speak to you,' she said, 'for the gift was to come as a surprise.'
I laughed, looking at the sleen.
She put her head to one side, in shame. She turned then again to look at me. 'He had it for only a few moments,' she said.
'The cage could be opened later, and was,' I said. 'The hunt then began, through the halls of the house, in the silence and darkness.'
She closed her eyes in misery, and then opened them again, looking at me.
I heard the ship's bell, in the great hail, striking. I heard footsteps in the hall outside.
'It is morning,' I said.
Thurnock appeared at the door to my chamber. 'Word has come,' said he, 'from the house of Samos. He would speak with you.'
'Prepare the longboat,' I said. We would make our way through the canals to his house.
'Yes, Captain,' he said, and turned and left.
I put aside the ax. With water, poured into a bowl, and fur, I cleaned myself. I donned a fresh tunic. I tied my own sandals.
The girl did not speak.
I slung a sword over my left shoulder, an admiral's blade.
'You did not let me tie your sandals,' she said.
I fetched the key to the collar, and went to her, and opened the collar.
'You have duties to attend to,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said. On her knees she suddenly grasped my legs, weeping, looking up at me. 'Forgive me, Master,' she cried. 'I was tricked! I was tricked!'
'It is morning in Port Kar,' I said.
She put down her head to my feet. She kissed my feet. She then looked up at me. 'If I do not please you this day, Master,' she said, 'impale me.'
