particularly hostile intent. If I watched my step, I did not think I truly had anything to fear from them.
'Why are you here?' asked the girl.
'Your slave needs discipline,' said Miles of Vonda.
I turned about and took the startled girl by the chain at her collar. Swiftly I lashed her face, back and forth, striking her twice, first with the palm of my hand, and then with the back of it. Then I threw her to her side in the straw. She looked up at me in disbelief, horrified. There was blood at her mouth. I do not think she had ever been struck by a man before. Indeed, as a Gorean free woman, it is possible that she had never been struck, truly and seriously, by anyone before.
'Position,' I told her.
Then she struggled to her knees and knelt again in the position of the pleasure slave, that of a woman who is of interest to men.
'Why are you here?' I asked Miles of Vonda.
He smiled. 'It is of no concern of yours,' he said. 'Where is she who was your Mistress?'
'I do not know,' I said. The girl trembled. Miles of Vonda, of course, would not be likely to recognize her, for, hitherto, he would have seen her only in the robes of a free woman and heavily and modestly veiled. I did not think him likely to identify the lofty Lady Florence, a rich, high-born woman of Vonda, with the scantily-clad, exciting, punished girl who knelt chained as a slut beside me.
'Did she escape?' he asked.
'I think she escaped the brigands,' I said.
'Where is she now?' he asked.
'Perhaps safe in Vonda, or in its vicinity,' I said. 'Why do you seek her?'.
'These are hard times,' said Miles of Vonda. 'There is a breakdown of law and order.'
'I see,' I said. 'But why, in such times, would you be searching for she who was once my Mistress?'
'Who knows what could happen to a woman in such times?' he asked. He lifted the light slave chains before me. They rustled in the palm of his hand.
'I see,' I said.
'She is not here,' said Miles of Vonda to his men. 'We shall search elsewhere, in the vicinity, in the brush near the roads leading to Vonda.' He turned again to face me. 'Enjoy your slut, Jason,' said he. He smiled. 'You have well earned her.'
'Thank you,' said I, 'Miles of Vonda.'
The men then departed from the barn. I took the back of the girl's neck, over the collar, in one hand, and held my other hand over her mouth, that she might not speak until I was sure the men had gone. Finally, after several Elm, I removed my hands from the back of her neck and mouth.
'Did you see that?' she whispered. 'He was looking for me, and he was carrying slave chains.'
'Yes,' I said. I smiled. Miles of Vonda had been one of several unsuccessful suitors for the hand of the proud Lady Florence of Vonda. He had not been successful in winning her to be his in Free Companionship, nor had his many competitors. The Lady Florence had held herself to be too good for men. Now, perhaps he reasoned, if she could not be enticed to kneel across from him at his table in the honorable resplendent robes of free companionship she might at least, perhaps, more appropriately, crawl to him naked, on her belly, under the whip, across the tiles of his slave quarters.
She looked at me, frightened.
'On your back, slut,' I told her.
She lay back in the straw, the chain on her throat. She brushed it to one side with her hand.
'You struck me,' she said.
'Yes,' I said.
'I was never struck before,' she said. 'It is a strange feeling, to have been struck by a man.'
I looked down at her.
'I must obey you, mustn't I?' she asked.
'Yes,' I said.
'Are you going to strike me again?' she asked.
'If it pleases me,' I said.
'Do not strike me again,' she said. 'Kiss and caress me instead.'
'I will do either, or both, as it might please me,' I said.
'Then I am, in your arms, no better than a slave,' she said.
'Yes,' I said.
She sat up, angrily, pulling at the collar that encircled her throat. It remained well fastened on her.
'Do you really think to remove it?' I asked her.
'No,' she said, angrily. She sat forward, holding her knees. 'What a fool Miles of Vonda is,' she said. 'He looked upon me and could not even tell the difference between the Lady Florence of Vonda and a mere slave girl.'
'The light was poor,' I said. 'He did not examine your thigh for a brand.'
'But he looked at me!' she said.
'That is true,' I admitted, smiling. I well remembered the casual care with which the chained beauty at my side had been examined.
'How could he not have recognized me as a free woman?' she asked.
'He did not examine your thigh,' I said.
'Light the lantern, Jason,' she said, 'please.'
I found the lantern on its outjutting perpendicular and, in a few Ehn, adding some oil, turning up the wick and striking some pyrites together, relit it. I rehung the lantern on the perpendicular.
'Look at me, Jason,' she said. 'Do you think that I am a slave?'
'I know that you are a free woman,' I said. Then I snapped, 'Position!'
Angrily she assumed the position of the house slave. I continued to look at her. Angrily she spread her knees.
'It is difficult to talk to a man as a free woman in this position,' she said.
'Doubtless that is true,' I said.
'May I assume another position?' she asked.
'No,' I said.
'Look at me, Jason,' she said. 'Can you not see that I am a free woman?'
'I know that you are a free woman,' I said.
She tossed her head, irritably. There was a sound of metal, that of the collar with its ring, and of the chain, with its lock, depending from the ring. 'Suppose you did not know,' she said. 'Then what would you think?'
I smiled.
'No!' she said. 'No!'
'I could, of course, examine your thighs, your lower left abdomen, your body generally,' I said. The thighs and the lower left abdomen are the brand sites recommended by Merchant Law. Masters, of course, may brand a girl wherever they please. She is theirs. Sometimes brands are placed on the left side of the neck, on the left calf, the interior of the left heel, and on the inside of the left forearm. The customary brand site, incidentally, is high on the left thigh. That is the site almost invariably utilized in marking Gorean kajirae.
'No,' she said. 'No!' She regarded me, in fury. 'Can you not simply look upon me and see that I am free?'
'Perhaps if I saw you in the robes of concealment, and veiled, being carried in a palanquin through the streets of Vonda by slaves,' I said, 'I would think you free.'
'It has nothing to do with such things!' she said. 'Free women are different from slave girls. They are simply different! Free woman are noble and fine! Slave girls are only meaningless, lascivious, sensuous, little sluts!'
'Many slave girls are as large, or larger than you, Lady Florence,' I said. 'Too, where do you think slave girls come from? Very few are bred slaves.'
'Did you see how Miles of Vonda looked at me?' she asked.
'Yes,' I said.
'As though I might have been a slave girl!' she said.
