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A Warrior's Vengeance; The Furs Of My Master

We were but four bridges from the Towers of the Warriors when Clitus Vitellius turned suddenly, regarding me. I stopped, suddenly, naked, behind him, where I was heeling him. The virginal girl, too, stopped suddenly. But he did not look at her. He approached me. He stood before me, his shield on his left arm, the mighty spear grasped in his right hand. Immediately I trembled, and knelt, head down.

"Oh!" cried the virginal girl. He, placing the spear and shield to one side, had moved to her and was tying her hands behind her back. He fastened her by the wrists to a ring at the foot of the Four Lamps bridge. Such rings arecommon in Gorean cities, in public places, and serve the convenience of masters in tethering their slaves. The ring was mounted on a post, about a yard high. She stood at the post, naked, tethered there, her hands fastened behind her back, at the foot of the Four Lamps bridge. I could see the lights of glorious Ar. The light of one lamp was upon her. She was very beautiful. "Master?" she begged.

He took a blunt marking stick from his pouch and wrote Gorean words on her left shoulder.

He then, to her amazement, and mine, removed his collar from her throat.

"Master?" she sobbed.

He replaced the collar and marking stick in his pouch. "Can you read?" he asked her.

"Yes," she said.

"Read then what I have inscribed upon your body," said he.

"I cannot well see it, Master," she said. "But from the feel of it in my flesh, I know what you have written."

"Speak it aloud," said he, "Slave."

"You have written 'Collar me. Own me, " she said.

"Yes," he said.

"You are leaving me here for the first stranger who passes, Master?" she asked.

"Do you object, Slave?" he asked.

"No, Master!" she said, drawing back. The point of the spear, which Clitus Vitellius had now retrieved, was at her throat.

I then felt the point of the spear in my back. "On your feet, Slave," he said.

Swiftly I rose to my feet.

He then strode past me, and began the crossing of the bridge of Four Lamps. I hastened to follow him, heeling him obediently. I did turn, on the crest of the bridge, to look back at the tethered girl. The area at the foot of the bridge was deserted. It was late. She seemed very much alone there, naked, the light of the lamp on her, tethered, waiting for the first individual who might chance by.

I turned away, hurrying to follow Clitus Vitellius. I remembered the look he had given me when first, moments ago, he had stopped and turned, and approached me. Never had I seen such lust, possessiveness and desire in a man's eyes. I felt weak. I wondered about the service of how many girls I would have to render to him. He had cast aside the virginal girl, arrogantly, in a warrior's gesture, leaving her for whomsoever might find and desire her. Her slave service, and mine, and more, he would now want from me. I did not know if I could be so much a slave to him.

We were but a short way from the Towers of Warriors, on the second of its approaching high bridges, when again Clitus Vitellius turned and faced me.

"I cannot wait," he said to me.

"Yes, Master," I said. We were on a high bridge, one of the highest in all Ar. The lights of the city were strewn beneath us; above us burned the stars of Gor.

He placed his shield upon the bridge, straps down, its convex surface like a bow facing the stars.

He indicated that I should take my position upon it, and I did so, my head down. With the straps, brought about the sides of the great shield he fastened my wrists apart, one on each side, about at shoulder level, at the edges of the shield. I lay over the shield, bound upon it.

"Now I have you where I want you, Dina," said he, "Earth girl."

"Yes, Master," I said.

Swiftly he took me in his arms. I yielded immediately to my master.

"I love you, Master," I said to him.

His hands were upon my shoulders. He dragged me upward to his pressing mouth, pulling me against the wrist straps which held my wrists at the shield's edges. I thought he might tear me from the shield. Then he flung me back, arched across its surface. I felt his lips at my belly and thighs. I could not protect myself from the fierce ardor to which I must submit. Then again I cried out, lost in my slave's love of him, my master.

He unbound my wrists from the shield. He thrust me from its surface. I rolled to my side, on the bridge. I lay quietly on the bridge, in his collar.

"It is getting late," he said. "I must get you to the love furs."

"Yes, Master," I said.

"Get up," he said. He moved his foot against my body.

I tried to get up, but could scarcely stand. I sank to my hands and knees.

He laughed at me.

I sank to my side. I lifted my hand to him.

"Get up, Earth girl," he said.

"I will try, Master," I said.

But again I fell to my knees.

"Do not beat me, Master," I begged. "You have made me so weak."

"I can smell your weakness," he said.

"Yes, Master," I. said. I was so overcome by my love for him that I could not stand. I had never known such weakness. I felt I had the strength only to lie vulnerably before him, perhaps holding and kissing him, awaiting him. It is, I suppose, one of nature's utilities, reducing the female's effectiveness in self-defense or flight, putting her all the more at the mercy of the stronger beast.

"I cannot walk, Master," I said. "Let me crawl to your furs."

He slung his shield upon his back, and tied his spear, too, beneath the shield's edge, upon his back.

I felt myself lifted gently into his arms. He carried me, my head against his left shoulder, over the bridge and toward the second bridge, leading to the Towers of the Warriors.

I served him wine.

I was the only girl in his compartments. I well understood the meaning of this. He had chosen the perfection of one man, the complete master, and one woman, the total slave. It is called the perfect bondage, each all and perfect to the other.

It is right for some men, and not for others. Much depends on whether the man has met his perfect slave and the woman her perfect master.

Clitus Vitellius and I, though I would not have dared tell him, were so related. I think he, too, knew this.

When I had served him wine he gave me, too, to drink of the cup. This was, in its way, a great honor, and a token of his recognition as to how I stood to him. I still, of course, did not dare to drink from the same edge of the cup as he, the master.

I put the cup aside.

At his indication I spread the love furs. I did not spread them upon the couch hut at its foot. I was slave. Only a small lamp burned in the compartment.

At a gesture from Clitus Vitellius I reclined upon the furs, at the foot of the couch.

He slipped away his tunic and crouched beside me. I could see he could scarcely restrain himself from seizing me.

"I'm yours," I told him. I lifted my arms to him. "Take me, Master," I said.

"I care for you," he said.

I regarded him. "Be strong with me, Master," I whispered. "I do not want to challenge you. I do not want to fight you. I want to serve you, and I want to love you. I want to give you all, holding back nothing, ever."

He regarded me.

"Do you not understand, Master?" I asked. "If I had the choice, I would choose not to be free but to be your slave." A woman, I had learned, must choose between freedom and love. Both are estimable virtues. Let each choose which is best for her.

"But I do not give you a choice," he said.

"Of course not, Master," I said. "You are Gorean."

He looked down at the furs.

"Perhaps I will sell you," he said.

"You may do as you wish, Master," I said. I knew I was at his complete mercy, only a bond girl.

He seemed angry.

"Bring me wine, Master," I said.

He looked at me, suddenly.

"A girl is only testing her master," I smiled.

Suddenly he struck me, slapping me cruelly across the mouth. It hurt me. I tasted a bit of blood.

"Do you think," he asked, "that because I care for you I will not be strong with you?"

"No, Master," I said.

I lay in the shadow of the slave ring. A chain and heavy collar lay at the foot of the ring, the chain attached to the ring.

He took the heavy metal collar and closed it about my throat, over and about the lighter collar I wore, confining me at the ring, on the furs at the foot of his couch.

Then he touched me.

"I see you will be strong with me, Master," I said.

"What a fool I am," he said, "to care for a miserable Earth-girl slave."

"I ask only to love and serve you, Master," I said.

"Yet you are attractive," he said.

"A girl is grateful to her master, should he find her pleasing," I said.

"So you would choose to be a slave?" he asked.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"Slut," said he.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"It is I who will decide," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"I decide-" he said.

"Yes, Master," I begged.

"— that you are my slave."

"Yes, Master!" I cried.

Then I writhed in his arms as he took me, exploding in the deepest and most profound ecstasies a female can know, those of the slave orgasm, known only to the owned woman.

"How could I love you so much," he asked, "if I did not truly own you, if you were not fully mine?"

"I do not know, Master," I said. Clitus Vitellius had confessed his love for a slave. I hoped he would not now beat me.

He took me by the hair and thrust my head down to the furs. "A man can truly love only that woman," he said, "who is truly his, who belongs to him. Otherwise he is only a party to a contract."

"A woman," I said, "can love only that man to whom she truly belongs."

"To whom do you truly belong, Slave?" he asked.

"To you, Master," I said.

"You please me, Slave Girl," he said.

"Free me," I said, teasing him.

"Do you wish to feel the whip?" he asked.

"No, Master," I said, quickly, suddenly frightened. I was his. He might do to me what he wanted.

"Beg for your freedom," he said.

"Please free me, Master," I begged.

He laughed. "No," he said. "I do not free you. I will keep you as my slave."

I closed my eyes. I had been Judy Thornton, of Earth. I had been a co-ed at a small but prestigious college. I had been an English major. I had written poetry. I had been popular on campus. Now I was only a branded slave girl, Dina, helpless in the arms of her master. I thought of Elicia Nevins, who had been my beauty rival at the college. She now, too, wore a collar. I wondered if she were as happy in the arms of her master as I in the arms of mine. She had been an anthropologist. I wondered if now she truly understood, perhaps for the first time, the nature of the institution of slavery. Her master had perhaps taught her. I lay blissfully in the arms of Clitus Vitellius, owned.

I opened my eyes.

"Is a girl not to be permitted sometimes to speak her mind?" I asked.

"Perhaps upon occasion," said Clitus Vitellius, "provided she does so upon her knees and at my feet."

"You are a monster, Master," I said.

Then again I felt his body at mine, and I cried out as my legs were thrust apart.

"You are rough, Master!" I chided. Then, frightened, I said, "Forgive me, Master."

He did not beat me.

I began to respond to him, shuddering under the blows of his manhood, and surrendered myself then, content, to the delicious brutality of my ravishment.

He had many ways of taking me, and I must submit to them all, unquestioningly.

We heard men later upon the bridges outside. It was early morning.

I held Clitus Vitellius. "You are very lustful, Master," I told him.

"I am shamed neither by my health nor vitality," he said. He said this as a Gorean, explaining something to an ignorant Earth-girl slave. "And you," he said, "you must know, are an exquisitely responsive she-sleen. Does that shame you?"

"Not any more, Master," I said.

"It is an indication of your vitality and health, and emotional freedom," he said. "It is a sign that you are vigorous and sound, neither psychologically crippled nor diseased."

I had grown free on Gor, though I wore a collar. Strange, collared, I was free. Uncollared I had been a true slave, a prisoner of a pathological culture, ascetic, mechanistic and twisted.

"Perhaps I am emotionally free," I laughed. "But I scarcely am physically free."

"True," he said. He pulled me by the chain at the back of the collar back to my back on the furs at the foot of his couch.

"You keep me a slave?" I asked.

"Of course," he said.

"I never knew I would meet a man who could lust for me and desire me so much," I said, "that he would keep me as a slave."

"You never knew you would meet a man who would satisfy your deepest needs," he said, "the hidden, profound, scarcely understood, secret needs which you yourself scarcely recognized."

"You are a secret dream, which I scarcely dared dream, come true to me, Master," I said.

"And you to me, Slave," said he.

"Will you truly be hard with me, Master?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

"Will you truly, though you care for me, keep me as full slave?"

"Yes, Slave," he said.

"Subject even to discipline, if I displease you?" I asked.

"Subject to discipline, at my pleasure, whether you displease me or not," he said.

"My bondage then will be absolute," I said.

"Of course, Slave," he said.

I reached out timidly, to touch him. I kissed him, tenderly, on the shoulder.

"I love you, Master," I said.

"Be silent, Slave," he said, irritably.

"Yes, Master," I said.

He then touched me with sweetness, and tenderness, and I held him closely, but did not speak, lost in his touch, for I, a slave, had been forbidden to speak. He made gentle love to me then, which, I knew, might become abrupt or brutal as he chose. There were a thousand ways to have a slave girl and I did not doubt but what Clitus Vitellius was master of them all. How joyful I was. He was dominant over me. I was subject to him. I was his, completely without qualification. It is impossible for me to express my feelings. Perhaps this is why he had warned me to silence, that I might not try to speak, but would be content to feel what could not, in any language, be spoken. So I did not then try to speak, but, rather, contented myself with turning to the tasks of love.

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