Slave Girl Of Gor

9
Rain

I cut at the soil with the hoe, chopping and loosening the dirt about the roots of the sul plant.

The sun was high overhead. It was hot. There was a peasant's kerchief on my head.

I worked in my master's fields. I was alone. I wore a peasant's tunic. It was white and sleeveless, of the wool of the Hurt. It came high on my thighs. Thurnus had shortened it. His companion, Melina, had taken the Ta-Teera from me and burned it. "Scandalous slave! Scandalous garment!" she had cried. She had then thrown me a peasant tunic, which had fallen to my knees. Thurnus, wanting to see more of my legs, to her anger, had shortened it with shears.

I straightened my body. My back hurt. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand.

"You will learn toil, small beauty," he had said when I had knelt before him, among the pilings beneath his hut, my hands tied behind my back, my neck roped to one of the pilings.

I remembered the morning bitterly.

"I am going to Ar with the master," had said Marla, turning before me. "Now who is the most beautiful?" she asked.

"You, Marla," I had said.

"Farewell, Slave," she said, and left me.

I had knelt there beneath the hut of Thurnus, in the Ta-Teera, my hands tied behind my back, my neck roped to one of the pilings.

To another of the pilings four beautiful she-sleen were tethered. They were on short tethers. They were sleek, lovely animals. My master had purchased them. They could not reach me.

Clitus Vitellius and his men milled about.

"I shall miss you," said Eta, kissing me. "I wish you well, Slave," she said.

Lehna, Donna and Chanda came to me, and kissed me, and hugged me. "I wish you well, Slave," they said.

"I wish you well," I said.

Slave Beads stood to one side, looking at me.

"Will you not say farewell to your sister slave?" I asked.

She came to my side, and knelt down beside me. "Yes," she said, tears in her eyes. "We are all slaves," she said. She took me in her arms and kissed me. Slave Beads was no longer the Lady Sabina. She, too, now, was only a slave. "I wish you well, Slave," she said.

"I wish you well, Slave," I said to her.

"Coffle line!" snapped a guard.

Swiftly the girls fell into coffle line. I watched them. I wished I were with them.

Each beauty knew her place.

They did not daily forming the line. They did not wish to be whipped.

Marla led the line. What beautiful legs she had. The girls extended their left wrists, for the rings to be locked upon them. They stood straight, their eyes looking ahead, under discipline. Maria's right foot determined the line. Each girl, with the exception of Maria, the line's leader, aligned her right foot with that of the girl before her in the line. Sometimes a coffle line is drawn in the dirt and the right foot of each girl is placed on it vertically, such that the line besects the ball and heel of each foot.

Clitus Vitellius did not so much as look at me.

The guard, who was the blond soldier, Mirus, whom I found most attractive of the men of Clitus Vitellius, after he himself, unlooped the coffle chain from his shoulder.

The girls stood erect, left arms extended, wrist straight with the arm, their left arms aligned, each at a forty degree angle from her body, right arms at their sides, palms on thighs, ankles closely together, bellies sucked in, chins up.

Marla's wrist was locked in the first wrist ring. She smiled. She was coffled. When the lock snapped on her wrist she placed her chained left wrist at her side, her palm on her left thigh, still looking ahead.

Lehna, who was very beautiful, was the next locked in the coffle. She placed her left wrist at her side, looking ahead.

There are a large variety of coffle arrangements, given mixtures and combinations of materials and bonds, and aesthetic, physical and psychological considerations. Coffle arrangements are seldom random. From the physical point of view, the most common coffles are left-wrist coffles, left-ankle coffles and throat coffles. Left-wrist coffles and throat coffles are useful trekking coffles. The left-ankle coffle and the throat coffle free the hands to carry burdens. Clitus Vitellius still had the wagons stolen from the camp of the Lady Sabina and so his girls did not have to carry the burdens of his camp. Such burdens are often carried by girls in ankle coffle or throat coffle, and are balanced on the head, usually steadied by the right hand.

Donna and Chanda were now added to the coffle. Their left hands, now locked in wrist-rings, lay against their left thighs.

There was another snap of a wrist ring and the chain bore yet another jewel, the lovely, half-stripped Slave Beads.

Last on the chain was Eta. The guard looked at her, and their eyes met, and then he put the chain on her.

I did not know why Eta was last on the chain. I knew the look in the eyes of the guard. He wanted her for his own slave. She looked frightened. He stood behind her for a moment, and she pressed back, putting her head back against his shoulder. Then he moved away from her.

There was a mark on the side of Eta's face, where she had been struck. Perhaps she had not been fully pleasing for an instant to one of the soldiers, or to Clitus Vitellius, and had thus been struck, and put at the rear of the chain. Perhaps she was at the rear of the chain because she was the most beautiful, and her beauty was being saved for last; thus the chain would have begun with the beautiful Marla and then, with a surprise, finished with a girl yet more beautiful than the first. But perhaps she was thought to be ugly for a day or two, until the blow healed, and thus, for ugliness, was put at the back of the line. Or, perhaps it was merely that the last wrist-ring had then been open, I being left in Tabuk's Ford, and thus there was no reason for her any longer to be excluded from the coffle. Thus, she would merely have been placed in the available wrist ring, in my place.

Sometimes masters punish us without explaining the reason It is then for the slave girl to guess and wonder, and try harder to please. Sometimes, perhaps, there is no reason! We are so much at their mercy!

Beside my knee, in the dirt, there was a pan of water, and one of wet meal.

The last girl, Eta, was now coffled.

"Stand easily, Slaves," said the guard, and walked away.

Marla turned to face me. She lifted her chained left wrist… "I wear the chain of Clitus Vitellius," she said. "You wear the rope of a peasant."

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

She turned away from me.

The men were now hitching the bosk to the wagons taken from the camp of the Lady Sabina.

Two peasant boys stood nearby. They looked at me. I, kneeling, clad in the Ta-Teera, my hands tied behind my back, my neck roped to the piling beneath Thurnus's hut, regarded them.

"Greetings, Slave Girl," they said to me.

"Greetings, Masters," I said to them.

They turned away, grinning, and left the vicinity of the hut.

The first team of bosk was hitched up, two of the great animals, broad, shaggy, with polished horns.

Clitus Vitellius was talking with Thurnus.

"I, and the men, and other girls," he had said, "will leave Tabuk's Ford in the morning. You will remain behind. I am giving you to Thurnus."

I had cried out with misery and horror in his arms. "Master!" I had cried. He had then gagged me. He then tied my hands behind my back, and took me naked and stumbling from his furs. He found an ankle stock of heavy wood near the perimeter of his camp area. He put me on my back. The stock consisted of two heavy, oblong pieces of wood, each about four inches thick, joined together by hinged iron. He flung open the stock. He looked down at me. I half reared up, struggling, to a sitting position, my hands tied behind my back, my eyes wild over the gag. Our eyes met. He then, swiftly, brutally, used me, and I, miserable, helpless, my eyes hot with tears, again could not resist him, and, again, unable to help myself, responded to him, and responded as a slave. He laughed at me derisively and then, crouching beside me, threw my ankles into the stock and closed it, one of the two four-inch blocks of wood on each side of my ankles, and flung the hasp over the staple, which would hold the blocks shut. Then, with a drilled peg and a bit of binding fiber, attached to the stock, he, slipping the fiber through the staple and securing it to the peg, fastened the hasp down. This would hold a bound slave. If. my hands had not been tied a padlock would have been used. Tied as I was I was the prisoner of the stock, its weight and constraint. I lay on the ground, twisting, moaning. It seemed my guts had been torn out. I looked up, miserable, at the stars.

Clitus Vitellius then left me, to return to his furs, to sleep.

I cut again at the soil with the hoe, chopping down, loosening the dirt about the roots of the sul plants.

The sun was terribly hot.

On my throat I wore a rope collar. My hands were terribly blistered. It was painful to hold the hoe. My back hurt me. It seemed every muscle in my body ached.

I wanted to throw myself down and weep, but the suls must be hoed.

"You will learn toil, small beauty," Thurnus had told me. I had well learned toil, and misery. It is not easy to be a peasant's girl.

It is a hard slavery.

I remembered seeing Clitus Vitellius leave. He had not looked back. I had wanted to call out after him, but I had not dared. I did not wish to be whipped.

It is not easy to be a peasant's girl. it is a hard slavery.

I remembered the sting of the switch across the back of my thighs as Melina had driven me to the kennel.

"I will make you wish you wore a longer tunic, Slave!" she had cried.

I had dropped through the kennel door and, some feet below, struck the straw-strewn floor of the kennel. The kennel was a cage, a sleen cage, tipped on its side, fully barred, sunk mostly into the ground. The cage in its original attitude, when used for sleen, would have been some four feet in height, six feet in width and twelve feet in length. Tipped on its side, to better accommodate humans, it was some six feet in height and four by twelve feet in breadth and length. In this attitude, it was entered from the top. Within there was a wooden, runged ladder, for climbing out of it. It was sunk some four and a half feet in the ground. Wooden planks, covered with straw, lay over the bars on the bottom. These planks were separated by some two inches apiece, to facilitate drainage. The cage was roofed, too, with planks; these planks were set flush with one, another; they were fastened over the top of the bars, including some, sawed, over the barred door. At night a tarpaulin was thrown over the cage roof. Standing in the cage one could look out, one's shoulders being approximately at ground level.

I dropped to the floor of the cage.

I heard the heavy barred gate at the top, over my head, with its attached planks, flung shut. It made a harsh sound of metal and wood. Then I heard the rattle of two heavy padlocks on chains. There were two heavy metal snaps, as the door above me was fastened shut.

I looked up. I was locked within.

"Kneel," said a voice.

I knelt. There were four other girls in the cage.

"In the position of the pleasure slave," said one of them.

I complied.

"Let us see your brand," said another.

I turned to the side and drew back the tunic.

"A Dina," said another girl. There were four besides myself in the cage, Thurnus's other girls.

"Did you know," asked one, "that Dinas are suitable to be the slaves of slaves?"

"No," I said, "I did not."

"You were not given permission to cover your brand," said one, sharply.

I drew back my hand. I turned to face them, on my knees. They sat in the cage, on the straw.

"Are you a pleasure slave?" asked one, curious.

"Yes," I said.

They laughed. "Here you are a work slave," said one. "Here you will be worked hard," said another.

I straightened my back. They made me angry. I assessed them, obviously to a woman's eyes, though a man might not have noticed, one by one. It is a slight, tacit thing that women understand. I smiled. They were angry.

"Perhaps I will not be worked as hard as you think," I said.

I was clearly their superior in beauty.

"Insolent slave!" cried one. "How haughty you are, Slave Girl!" said another.

I shrugged.

"Do you think you are more beautiful than we?" asked one of them.

"Yes," I told them.

"Do you think you will please the master more than we?" asked another.

"Yes," I told them. "I am clearly more beautiful."

"She-tarsk," said one. "She-sleen!" cried another.

"You will be worked hard!" said another girl.

"We will see to that!" vowed the fourth girl.

"Do you have a comb for my hair?" I asked.

"Do not break the position of the pleasure slave," warned the largest of the girls, Sandal Thong, a long-armed, freckled giantess of a peasant wench.

"Very well," I said.

"It becomes you," said Verr Tail, a wide-shouldered, auburn-haired girl.

"Thank you," I said.

I did not wish to be caged with them. I could sense their hostility. Too, they could surely detect that I did not care for them. But we were locked in the same small cage.

"Doubtless you will soon become the master's favorite," said Turnip, a dark-haired, wide-faced girl.

"Perhaps," I said, tossing my head.

"Radish is now favorite," said Sandal Thong, indicating a blondish, thick-ankled girl at her left. I recognized her. It was she whose heartbeat had given the time count in the boys' sport of girl hunt the preceding night. Last night she had served one of the warriors of Clitus Vitellius. I recalled her pressing back against him, his hand on her heart, his calling the count. I myself had been in the arms of such men many times. They were not peasant boys.

"I was the girl of a warrior," I told them.

"You are very pretty," said Radish. I decided I did not dislike Radish.

"You were poor in the furs," said Sandal Thong. "That is why he gave you away."

"No!" I cried.

"Poor in the furs!" laughed Sandal Thong.

"Why did he give you away?" asked Verr Tail.

"I do not know," I said.

"Poor in the furs!" said Sandal Thong, pointing her finger at me.

"We have few furs in this village," laughed Turnip. "We will see how you roll in the straw!"

"If you are not good," said Verr Tail, "we will soon know. Thurnus will tell everyone whether you are good or not."

"I am good," I told them.

"Why did your master give you away?" asked Turnip.

"It amused him," I said. "He is Clitus Vitellius, a captain. He can have many girls, more beautiful than I. He made me love him, hopelessly and desperately, and then, for his amusement, discarded me. He toyed with me. He used me for the object of his sport. Then, when he had won, fully and completely, he cast me aside, ridding himself of me, giving me away."

"Did you truly love him?" asked Radish.

"Yes," I said.

"What a slave you are!" laughed Sandal Thong.

"He made me love him!" I cried defensively. Yet I knew I would have loved him, even had he not made me love him. Had I had the choice as a free woman I would have chosen to love him; but the choice had not been mine, for I had been a slave; he had overwhelmed me, forcing me to love him, consulting not my will, before I could have chosen to do so; I who had desired to kneel before him of my own free will had been commanded to his sandals as a slave girl.

"You are a fool to have loved your master," said Sandal Thong.

"I love my master," said Radish.

Sandal Thong turned about and struck Radish to the side of the cage. "Slave!" she cried.

"I cannot help it that I love my master!" said Radish.

Sandal Thong spun about, facing me. "Do not break the position of the pleasure slave!" she said.

I held position. "Are you not a slave, too?" I cried.

Sandal Thong stood up. She was a tall girl. She fingered the rope collar on her throat. She stood there in the brief slave tunic, of the wool of the Hurt. It was the only garment she had, as with the rest of us. She was a large girl, heavy-boned, tall, stronger than we, powerful when compared to us, but to a man she, too, would have been slight, at their mercy. "Yes," she said, "I can be beaten, or sold or slain. I can be given as a gift among men. They can put me in chains. They can burn me with irons. They can do with me what they wish." She looked out through the bars of the cage, at ground level. "I must kneel to them. I must be obedient. I must do what I am told." She looked down at me. "Yes," she said, "I, too, am a slave."

"We are all slaves," said Radish.

"I do not want to be a woman!" cried Sandal Thong suddenly, shaking the bars of the cage. She put her face against them, weeping.

"You weep like a woman," I said.

She spun to face me.

"Once," said I, "I did not wish to be a woman. Then I met men such as I had not dreamed could exist. They made me happy to be a woman. Never again would I have wanted to be anything else. My womanhood, though it puts me at the mercy of men, is now exquisitely precious to me. Among such men I would not trade my womanhood for anything in the world. Every girl has a master. It is only, Sandal Thong, that you have not yet met yours."

She looked at me, angrily, the bars in back of her.

"There is some man, Sandal Thong," I said, "whose sandals you would beg to untie with your teeth."

"If Thurnus would so much as look at me," she said, "I would crawl ten pasangs on my belly to lick the dust from his ankles."

"Thurnus, then," I said, "is your master."

"Yes," she said, "Thurnus is my master."

"What is your name?" asked Radish.

"Do you have a name?" had asked Thurnus of me, earlier.

"My former master, Clitus Vitellius, of Ar," I had said, "called me Dina."

"He thought so little of you?" asked Thurnus.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"It is a pretty name," he had said. "it is only that it is common."

"Yes, Master," I had said.

"I name you Dina," he said, putting the name on me, naming his animal. "Who are you?" he asked.

"Dina," I had said, "Master."

"What is your name?" asked Radish.

I smiled. "Dina," I said.

"Many girls with your brand are called Dina," said Turnip.

"I have heard that," I said.

"It is a pretty name," said Verr Tail. "Thank you," I said.

"It must be nice to have a girl's name," said Turnip.

I did not respond.

"I am Radish," said Radish. "I am Turnip," said Turnip. "I am Verr Tail," said Verr Tail.

Sandal Thong looked at me. "I am Sandal Thong," she said.

"Tal," I said to them.

"Tal," they said to me.

"You are first in the cage?" I asked Sandal Thong.

"Yes," she said.

"It will not be necessary to kick or beat me," I said. "I will obey you."

"We are all women. We are all slaves," said Sandal Thong.

"We are all under the whip," said Turnip.

"I have been hand whipped," I said. "But I have never felt the slave whip."

"Have you been a slave long?" asked Radish.

"No," I said.

"You are very pretty to have been free," said Turnip.

"I lived far away," I said.

"Your accent marks you as barbarian," said Sandal Thong.

"Yes," I said.

"Where did you live?" asked Verr Tail.

"A place called Earth," I said.

"I have never heard of it," said Turnip.

"Is it in the north?" asked Radish.

"It is far away," I said. "Let us not speak of it." How could I speak of Earth to them? I did not want them to think me mad, or a liar. Could they believe a world might exist where men, shouting political slogans, vied with one another to surrender their dominance, hastening gleefully to their own castration? Could such a world be welcomed by any save Lesbians, and men who were not men? Truth and political convenience, I thought, do not always coincide.

"Barbarian places are so dull," said Turnip. "Have you never been chained in Ar?"

"No," I said.

"I was sold once in Ar," she said. "It is a marvelous city."

"I am pleased to hear it," I said. Clitus Vitellius, I knew, was of Ar.

"It is strange that you have never felt the slave whip," said Turnip.

I shrugged.

"Perhaps she was too pretty to whip," said Turnip.

"I think it is always the ugly girls who are whipped," said Verr Tail.

"That is not true," said Radish.

"I would suppose," I said, "that any girl, beautiful or not, if she needs a whipping, would be whipped by her master." It surprised me that I, an Earth girl, had said this. Yet, why should a girl who needs a whipping not be whipped, if she has a Gorean master?"

"Dina is right," said Radish.

"They whip us," said Sandal Thong, "when it pleases them."

Radish laughed, and slapped her thighs. "Yes," she said, "the beasts! They put us under the leather whenever it pleases them, whether we have done anything or not!"

"Men are the masters," said Turnip. "They do with us what they please."

"This is a peasant village, Dina," said Verr Tail. "If you remain long us the village, you will learn the slave whip well."

I shuddered.

"I have never even really been switched," I said. Eta had never switched me, though she had held switch rights over me, as first girl in the camp. I had been stung twice across the back of the thighs, below the short tunic, by Melina, companion of my master, Thurnus, when she had hurried me to the kennel. It was been terribly humiliating and unpleasant. It was hard to imagine what a true switching would be. I could not even conjecture what it would be to feel the flash of the slave whip on my body.

"Does the whip hurt, Sandal Thong?" I asked.

"Yes," said Sandal Thong.

"Does the whip hurt very much?" I asked.

"Yes," said Sandal Thong.

"You are strong, Sandal Thong," I said, "do you fear the whip?"

"Yes," she said.

"Do you fear the whip very much?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, "I fear the whip very much."

I shuddered. If even the large, strong Sandal Thong so feared the whip, I wondered what it would do to me.

"It is time to sleep now," said Radish.

We lay down in the straw, and were soon asleep. I awakened once, sweating. I had had a strange dream. I had dreamed I knelt naked, in a steel collar, on smooth tiles, in a beautiful room, as though in a palace. Before me had been a low table. On this table had been strands of thread and, in small cups, beads, slave beads, of various colors, red, yellow and purple, and other colors. I understood, somehow, that I must make a necklace. A slave whip had been lifted before me. "What is this?" asked a voice. "A slave whip, Master," I had said. "And what are you?" had inquired the voice. "A slave, Master," I had said. "Do you obey?" asked the voice. "Yes, Master," I had said. The whip then, roughly, had been forced against my face; it pressed against my lips, bruising them; I felt it with my teeth. "Kiss the whip Slave," said the voice. I had kissed the whip. "Who commands me?" I had asked. It had seemed as though I must ask that. Yet it was not the sort of thing a slave girl would naturally ask. Such an inquiry might be thought to border on insolence. Yet I was not taken by the wrists and thrown fiat upon the tiles and whipped. "You are commanded by Belisarius, Slave Girl," was the response. The response, somehow, seemed oddly fitting, expected. Yet I knew no Belisarius. "What is the command of Belisarius, the slave girl's master?" I had asked. "It is simple," said the voice. "Yes, Master," I had said. "Bead a necklace, Slave Girl," said the voice. "Yes, Master," I had said. Then my hands had reached toward the strands of thread on the table, and toward the cups of tiny beads. Then I had awakened. I did not understand the dream. I put out my hand. I was not on smooth tiles. My hand felt straw, and wood, and a steel bar, and the tiered dirt behind it. The dream was then gone. I lay awake, looking up at the bars and wood above me. The moons were full outside, and I rose to my feet in the straw. I was not in a palace. I was in a cage at Tabuk's Ford. I went to the side of the cage and, over the vertical, banking earth, looked out. My small hands held the bars. The roof of the cage was a few inches above my head. My fists clutched the bars. I had been Judy Thorton. I was caged! I cried out, startled. Bran Loort grinned at me. The other girls turned restlessly, but did not awaken. I shrank back from the bars. I lay down in the straw. He was looking at me. I tried to pull the short woolen tunic more over my legs.

"I am going to be first in Tabuk's Ford," whispered Bran Loort. "When I am first," he said, "Melina will give you to me."

He slipped away from the bars.

I drew up my legs. I huddled in the straw, trembling.

I chopped at the dry earth about the sul plant.

I had been twenty days slave at Tabuk's Ford.

The peasant hoe has a staff some six feet in length. Its head is iron, and heavy, some six inches at the cutting edge, tapering to four inches where it joins the stall. It is fastened to the staff by the staff's fitting through a hollow, ringlike socket at its termination. A wedge is driven into the head of the staff to expand and tighten the wood in the socket.

I was too small to use such a tool well. I did not make a good peasant's slave.

It is difficult to convey the hardship of slavery in a peasant village, particularly for a slight girl, such as I.

I stood up, straightening my back. It hurt. I shaded my eyes.

On the road from Tabuk's Ford I could see the cart of Tup Ladletender, the itinerant peddler, he between its handles, bent over, drawing it.

I looked at my hands. They were raw and blistered, and dirty. I moved my finger inside the rope collar, moving it out a bit from my neck, wiping sweat and dirt from under it. The rope scratched my neck, but I must wear it. It was token of my slavery.

The day begins early, before dawn, when Melina loosens the padlocks on our cage.

We climb out and kneel before her, our heads to her feet. She holds the switch over us. She is our mistress.

Verr are to be milked, the eggs of vulos gathered, and the sleen must be watered and fed, and their cages cleaned.

In the middle of the morning we return to the hut of Thurnus, where pans of slave gruel have been put out for us, beneath the hut. This gruel must be eaten, and the pans licked clean. In the manner of peasant slave girls we kneel or lie upon our bellies and may not use our hands.

After our meal the true work of our day begins. There is water to be carried, wood to be gathered and fields to be tended. Many and various, and long, are the tasks of a peasant village. Upon slave girls do most of these tasks devolve. We must do them or die. Sometimes the boys surprise us in the fields and tie us together and rape us. It does not matter, for we are only slave girls.

It seemed every bone in my body ached.

Ten days ago Thurnus had used me for plowing. He did not own bosk. Girls are cheaper than bosk.

It was the first time I had felt a whip.

I had been hitched with the other girls, and, together, sweating, we had labored naked in the traces under our master's whip. Slowly, leaning forward, our feet digging into the earth, we had pitted our strength against the restraining band of the harness, and, slowly, the great blade had begun to move through the deep soil, turning it for our master. After a few yards I thought I might die. Who would know if I did not put my full strength upon the trace? It was then that I first felt the whip. It was not the five-bladed slave whip, invented for the full and perfect punishment of an erring slave girl, but only a light, one-bladed bosk whip, little more than a switch of leather, a mere incitement and encouragement to better performance on the part of a slacking plow beast, but it struck my back like a hot snake and a rifle shot. I could not believe what it felt like. It was the first time I had ever been struck with a whip.

"Come, Dina, pull harder," said Thurnus.

"Yes, Master!" I cried, hurling myself against the trace. He had not been angry. My back felt as though it had been lashed with a hot cable.

I could not believe the pain of the whip. I could not even conjecture what it would be to feel a true slave whip on my body. Yet I knew a girl could be subjected to a full and lengthy lashing by the true slave whip for so small a thing as having failed in some way that she might not even understand to be completely pleasing to a master. Indeed, she could be subjected to such a lashing for no other reason than that it pleased the master to do so. I had now, for the first time, the former Judy Thornton, felt a whip. I groaned in misery. I now had a new insight into the condition of my slavery. I would do anything, eagerly, the masters wanted.

But in less than an hour I had collapsed in the traces, unconscious.

I dimly remember Thurnus's hand on the back of my neck and Sandal Thong's saying, "Do not kill her, Thurnus. Can you not see she is only a pretty slave, that she is only for the pleasure of men and not for the fields?"

"We can pull the plow without her, Master," said Turnip.

"We have done it many times before," said Radish.

"Do not break her neck, Master," pleaded Verr Tail.

Thurnus's hand left the back of my neck.

I remember him tying my hands behind my back, and tying my ankles together, and leaving me in a furrow. I then again lost consciousness. That night Thurnus carried me, bound, over his shoulder, back to the village, and threw me down between the pilings of his hut. "What is wrong?" asked Melina. "This one is a weakling," said Thurnus. "I will kill her for you," said Melina. She drew from her coarse robes a short knife. I rose on one elbow, naked and bound, helpless in the dirt at her feet. I regarded her with horror. She approached me with the knife. "Please, no, Mistress!" I wept. "Go into the house, Woman," said Thurnus, angrily. "You are the weakling, Thurnus," snapped Melina. She then put away the knife, and stood up.

"It was a mistake to have followed you," she said.

He looked at her without speaking.

"You could have been a caste leader for a district," she said. "Instead I am only the companion of a village leader. I could have companioned a district leader. You stink of the sleen you train and the girls you own."

There were slaves present, and yet she so spoke.

"You are a weakling and a fool, Thurnus," she said. "I despise you."

"Go into the house, Woman," he said. Angrily Melina turned and climbed the steps into the hut. At the top of the steps she turned. "You do not have much longer to give orders in Tabuk's Ford, Thurnus," she said. Then she disappeared into the hut.

"Untie Dina," said Thurnus, "and take her to the cage."

"Yes, Master," said his girls.

"Poor little Dina," said Thurnus, looking down at me, as the ropes were removed from my small limbs. "You make a very poor she-bosk," he said. Then he grinned. Then he turned away.

I struck angrily down at the ground with the hoe. Of course I made a poor she-bosk! It was not my fault I was not a female bosk, like so many of the lasses of peasant stock. Marla and Chanda and Donna and Slave Beads would have been no better! And I did not think Lehna or Eta would have been much better either! How I would have loved to have seen Maria try to pull the plow! She would have done no better than I! Angrily I hoed the suls. I was healthy and vital, but I was not large, not strong. I could not help that. It was not my fault. I was small, and slight and weak. I could not help that. It was not my fault! I was perhaps beautiful, but beauty availed nothing when one felt the weight of the plow at one's back and knew that behind you the master was lifting his whip. Thurnus was disappointed in my weakness.

I chopped down angrily at the ground with the hoe. It was hard for me even to carry water to the fields, struggling under the great wooden yoke over my shoulders, with its attached buckets. Sometimes I fell, spilling the water. And I was slow. The other girls, who were my friends, did parts of my heavier work and I, in turn, did much of the lighter work which was theirs. Yet I did not like this for it was harder on them. I wanted to do my share. It was only that I was weak, that I was not a good peasant's girl.

Sometimes in the fields I hated Clitus Vitellius. It was he who had left me in a peasant village! He had made me love him, conquering me to the last cell of my body, and had then, laughing, given me to a peasant. He knew the sort of girl I was, delicate and sensitive, slight and beautiful, from Earth, and then he had, to his amusement, put me to harsh, weighty slavery in a peasant village, giving me to Thurnus. I struck down at the aids. How I hated Clitus Vitellius!

I looked up again. The cart of Tup Ladletender, the itinerant peddler, was now much farther down the road, on the dirt road leading to the great road, formed of blocks of stone, leading to Ar.

I was thought little of in the village, though my cage sisters were kind to me.

I was not big enough or strong enough to be a good peasant's girl.

I hated peasants. What idiots they were! There were better things to do with a beautiful slave girl than hitch her to a plow!

"The village is not a good place for you, Dina," Turnip had once said to me. "You are a city slave. You should be at a man's feet, in the secrecy of his compartments, collared and chained, curled and purring like a content she-sleen."

"Perhaps," I said.

"I would curl and purr at the feet of Thurnus," had said the large Sandal Thong. We had all laughed. But she had not been joking. It seemed strange to me to think of the large Sandal Thong wanting to submit to the domination of a man. Yet she, too, I reminded myself, was a woman.

Because of my slightness of strength Thurnus had had me help him often with the sleen. Some of the animals I grew to know. But, on the whole, I feared the sleen, and they, sensing this, were unusually vicious with me.

"Are you good for nothing?" had asked Thurnus in exasperation. I had backed away from him, in the sand of the training pit where we had been working. The sun bad been hot, and the sand was hot. It had not rained in several days. The Sa-Tarna was in danger of drought.

Thurnus took me by the arms and shook me. "You are good for nothing," he said, angrily.

I had shuddered in his touch.

"What is wrong?" he asked.

I averted my eyes, shamed. "Forgive me, Master," I said, "but I have not been touched by a man for several days, and I am slave."

"Ah," he said.

I turned my eyes to him. I looked up at him. He was very large. "Perhaps Master would care to rape his slave?" I said.

"Does the slave beg slave rape?" he asked.

"Yes, Master!" I said suddenly, clutching him. "Yes! Yes!" I could not control myself.

He flung me back in the sand, thrusting up the tunic over my breasts. I lay at the foot of a slave cage. He seized me, and I reached hack for the bars of the slave cage, and, holding them, cried out. I twisted and squirmed with the pleasure of his having me. Once I cried out with misery, for I saw Melina watching, from behind the wooden wall. "It is the Mistress, Master," I said. He laughed. "I do what I please with my slave girls," he said. "Let her watch, should she please to do so. Let her find excellent instruction in the behaviors of a hot slave." But Melina, angrily, had left. I then again yielded to the pleasures of him, moaning to the master a slave girl's gratitude. He had deigned to touch me. When he had done with me I knelt at his feet, whimpering. I kissed his feet. "Thank you, Master," I said.

He laughed, and lifted me up, and looked at me, and then, in great humor, flung me to the sand at his feet, from where I looked up at him. "I see, Dina," he laughed, "that you are good for something after all."

I looked down, shyly. "Thank you, Master," I said.

It was now late afternoon.

The cart of Tup Ladletender was now disappearing in the distance, a bit of dust rising behind its wheels.

He had done slave assessment on me this morning.

It was this morning that I had first discovered that I was a whore. But I suppose that every slave girl must be at least a whore, and a marvelous one.

He had not had me, but I had, in his assessment, tried to present myself to him well.

I wondered if I would see him again.

It had begun this way.

"Remain behind, Dina," had said Melina, companion of Thurnus. The other girls had left the village to carry water. Thurnus himself was gone. He would not return until late. He was visiting another village, to buy vulos.

I was frightened of Melina. She was Mistress. Too, once she had prepared to kill me, on the day when I had failed in the plowing. Too, she had seen me in the arms of Thurnus. Yet, she had not of late threatened me. And, I supposed, she was fully aware that Thurnus used all his girls. Radish was used more than I. Surely Melina knew this. Only Sandal Thong was seldom raped.

"Yes, Mistress," I said, apprehensively.

I knew Melina did not like me, but I did not think she hated me more than the other girls. I was certainly not Thurnus's favorite. He preferred larger, wider hipped, larger breasted women than I, more of the sort that Melina might have been at one time, before, in her freedom, she had gone slack and fat.

"Come over here, pretty little bird," had said Melina, gesturing to me. She stood among the pilings of the hut, in the shade. I, the Earth-girl slave, obeyed her. I went to her and, for she was free and I slave, knelt deferentially before her, my head down.

"Remove your tunic, Dina," she said.

"Yes, Mistress," I said. I slipped the short woolen tunic over my head. I was now naked.

"Go to this piling," she said, indicating one of the pilings, "and kneel there, facing it."

I did so.

"Closer," she said. "Put your knees on either side of it, and put your belly against it."

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"Do you like our village?" she asked.

"Oh, yes, Mistress!" I said.

"Put your arms around the piling," she said, "and cross your wrists, palms up."

I complied.

"Are you happy here?" she asked.

"Oh, yes, Mistress!" I said.

"Would you like to leave our village?" she asked.

"Oh, no, Mistress!" I said. Then I added, hastily, "Unless it be Mistress's will!"

She removed a bit of cord from her robes. I felt my wrists lashed together on the other side of the piling. They were tied very tightly.

"Will that hold you?" she asked.

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

She stepped back from me. She looked at me, and then she went up the stairs into her hut, and, soon, returned, with a coil of rope. She tied one end of the rope on my rope collar and then, leaving me about a foot of slack, tied the rope about the piling, at the level of my neck. The rest of the rope, depending from the piling, she let fall to the dirt.

I looked up at her.

"You are a pretty one," she said.

Because of the rope on my neck I could not stand at the piling.

"Quite pretty," she said.

"Thank you, Mistress," I said.

I was secured, naked, on my knees, at the piling. I was her prisoner.

"A peddler," she said, "is in the village."

I knew this. His name was Tup Ladletender. Radish had told me this. I had seen his arrival. He drew a handcart. It had long handles, and two large wheels. In the cart were many shelves and racks, on which there was a rich miscellany of cheap goods, and pegs and loops, from which hung many utensils, pans and tools. Drawers in the side of the wagon contained, too, mysteries of goods, such as threads, cloths, scissors, thimbles, buttons and patches, brushes and combs, sugars, herbs, spices, packets of salt, and philtres of medicine. No one knew what all might be contained in that unusual cart.

"I am going to fetch him," said Melina, "to take a look at you."

At the piling, my heart leaped. Melina was going to sell me off, I thought, while Thurnus was out of the village.

"Present yourself to him well, you little slut," warned Melina, "or I will switch you to within an inch of your life."

"I will, Mistress!" I promised. Indeed I would! When might come another chance to escape the slavery of the village? I would do anything to escape peasant slavery! Present myself well? Indeed! I would be a wonder to him of obedient, sensuous female flesh! Then suddenly I was afraid. What sort of man was he? Different modalities of wench excite different men. I wanted to be exactly what he wanted. I was desperate to be exactly what he wanted. But what would he want? What a whore you are, I thought to myself. My wrists squirmed in the bonds in which Melina had fastened me. I did not know what he would want! Would he want a quiet, timid girl, one to throw to his feet and abuse? Would he want a lascivious wench, begging to reach him with her tongue? Would he want an angry, defiant girl, to be brought to her knees in docility and surrender? Or would he want, perhaps, a cold girl, haughty, icy with contempt, to be turned into a writhing slave, screaming piteously for his touch? I did not know. One thing I knew was that I would be presented beautifully, physically, to him. Melina had seen to that. She was a clever, shrewd woman. A girl is most beautiful when she is naked, save perhaps for a collar or chain. And I was tied kneeling, in submission position. And my knees were thrust apart by the piling, about which my hands were tied, against which my belly was thrust. This would suggest, perhaps only subconsciously, my vulnerability, my penetration, and the massiveness and irresistibility of masculine power, to which I, a slave girl, must helplessly submit. Too, my hands, tied as they were, contributed to the carefully calculated effect. When I raised them, tied as I was, the softness of their palms was brought against and about the piling, in an intimate clasp. The piling, thus, would be embraced, and held beautifully. Lastly, there was a rope on my neck, long, a tether. This might easily suggest, again perhaps only on a subconscious level, that I might be removed from the post, have my hands tied behind my back, and be led away, like a tethered tabuk doe, to the master's pleasure. Such a rope might easily be looped on the back of a wagon, and I would follow, naked, barefoot, behind the wagon, in the dust. Melina was clever.

"This is the slave," said Melina.

Startled, suddenly frightened, I clutched the post. It was an involuntary reaction. But, tied as I was, I could not have helped but seize it beautifully. I then realized Melina had wanted to startle me, from the direction from which she had approached, and the suddenness of her assertion. The man had seen the reaction of a beautiful, startled slave girl, bound at a post. It had been completely natural. Melina had intended that it would be.

I decided that I would be an Earth-girl slave, the desirability of whose flesh was being assessed, tied in a peasant village. I did not know what else to do, and that is what I was. On this world I was a beautiful barbarian and alien, from a world quite different, one which had not prepared me for their world. Perhaps Gorean men might find it of interest to own, and tame and train me. Earth girls, I had heard from Eta, made superb slaves. I supposed it was true.

"How are you, little vulo?" he said.

"Well, Master," I said.

"She is barbarian," he said.

"Oh?" said Melina. She knew I was barbarian.

"Open your mouth," said the man.

I opened my mouth.

"See?" he said to Melina. He had his fingers in my mouth, opening it widely. "In the back tooth, on the top, on the left," he said, "a tiny bit of metal."

"Physicians can do that," said Melina.

"Are you from a place called Earth?" asked the man.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"See?" he asked Melina.

"Clever slave," said Meina.

I feared I would be switched.

"I am Tupelius Milius Lactantius, of the Lactantii, of the merchants, of Ar," he said to me, "but we fell upon hard times, and I, though only eight at the time, fell as well, it being my duty, caste discipline, family pride and such."

I smiled.

"She smiles well," he said. "In the villages I am known as Tup Ladletender," he said. "What is your name?"

"What do you think of her?" asked Melina.

The man regarded me. "She is obvious collar meat," he said.

I felt shamed at the post. It was obvious to the eyes of a Gorean male that I was a slave. It was only a question as to my price, and to whom I would belong.

"Is she not pretty?" asked Melina.

"In the cities," said he, "such girls are numerous. In Ar alone, each year, thousands of such girls are vended and procured in the slave markets."

I shuddered.

"What is her value?" demanded Melina.

"I could get for her, at best," he conjectured, "only a handful of copper tarsks."

I knew that I was a beautiful slave. What I had not realized was that slave beauty was so plentiful on Gor. Beautiful slaves are not unusual on this world. Beauty in collars was cheap on Gor. Girls more beautiful than I often slaved in the kitchens of great houses or, in state tunics and chains, scrubbed the floors of public buildings at night.

Melina was not pleased.

"Do you not want her?" she asked.

He caressed my flanks, and I held the post. "She is not without interest," he said.

Suddenly, without warning, he touched me, and I cried out, my body thrusting against the post, my hands clutching it, my eyes closed. I could not help myself.

"Ah," he said.

I opened my eyes, startled.

"She is a hot slave," he said. "That is good. That is very good."

"How hot is she?" asked Melina.

Again he touched me, and I cried out, miserable, bound. I could not help myself.

He laughed. "Very hot," he said. He laughed. Then he said, "Steady, little vulo."

"Please, Master, don't!" I begged.

Then I cried out, and began to writhe at the post. My fingernails tore at the wood. "Stop!" I wept. "Please, stop Master!"

He withdrew his hands and I shuddered against the post, fearing only that he might again so touch me.

He stood up.

"How hot is she?" asked Melina.

"She is hot enough to be a paga slut," he said.

"Excellent!" said Melina.

"Yet," said he, "still I think I could get only tarsks for her."

"Why is that?" inquired Melina.

"The wars," he said, "the raids, the falls of cities. There are many beauties, many of them even formerly free, who find themselves upon the block these days, being sold for. a pittance of tarsks."

"But are they as hot as this one?" demanded Melina.

"Yes, many of them," he said. "Brand a girl, put her in chains, give her a bit of training, and in a week she is panting, hot and ready for a master."

"So soon?" asked Melina.

"Yes," he said, "take a woman, any woman, not just these Earth girls, who are slave meat, but any woman, even one who is Gorean, and free, and of high caste, even one who is an iceberg, lock a collar on her, which she cannot remove; teach her she is a slave; and she will turn to fire."

Melina laughed. I reddened, bound at the post. How grievously had the women of Earth been slandered! Did they not know I was a woman of Earth? Of course they knew! How casually, how unthinkably, they spoke in the presence of a slave I But I wondered if it were true. If it were true, in Gorean law, it could be no slander.

"Lock a collar on her," said the man, putting his hands about my neck, as though they were a collar. I tensed, my throat collared in his hands. I knew he could crush my throat easily with his Gorean strength, did he choose. I felt very helpless. He removed his hands from my neck and put them in my hair. He tightened his hands, and pulled my head back. "Teach her she is a slave," he said. I cried out as he tightened his hands further in my hair, and pulled my head back further. He caused me only enough pain to let me know what he could do to me if he chose. Involuntarily I shuddered, acknowledging him as male and master. He removed his hands from my hair. I tensed at the post. I felt his hands at my flanks. "And," he said, chuckling, "she will turn to fire." He touched me, and I cried out, tears in my eyes, biting at the wood with my teeth.

"Hot enough to be a paga slut," said Melina.

"Yes," he agreed.

The women of Earth had been pronounced slave meat. I wept. If this were true, it was, in Gorean law, no slander.

I hoped that he would not touch me again.

The women of Earth are slave meat, I thought. I am a woman of Earth. I clung to the post, slave meat.

"Pretty slave meat," he said, gently touching my flanks.

I wondered if all the women of Earth were slave meat. I knew only that I, undeniably, was such. Perhaps others were not. Let other girls, in their secret heart, ask themselves that question. They need tell no one the answer to that most private and revealing of questions, unless perhaps they meet one before whom they can speak only the truth, their master. Perhaps the matter is hormonal. Perhaps there are hormones which fit a girl for slavery, as there are hormones which fit a man for mastery. I do not know.

Only on Gor had I felt my true femaleness, and that in the presence of Gorean males, who owned or could own me, men capable of owning a woman, as most men of Earth simply are not. My femaleness had been suppressed on Earth, first by my own conditioning, the confused product of centuries of intellectual and social pathology, and, secondly, by the set of societal institutions in which I had grown up and existed, rather than lived, institutions to which sexuality was irrelevant, if not inimical. It is difficult to know what would constitute a good society. Perhaps it would be a necessary condition for such a society that its institutions would be compatible, at least, with the truths of biology. A society which sickens and weakens its members, which cripples them and denies them to themselves, is not obviously superior to a society in which human beings are organic and whole, healthy, and happy and great. The test of a society is perhaps not its conformance or nonconformance to principles but the nature and human prosperity of its members. Let each look about himself and judge for himself the success of his own society. Man lives confused in the ruins of ideologies. Perhaps he will someday emerge from the caves and pens of his past. That would be a beautiful day to see. There would be a sunlit world waiting for him.

There is perhaps little to be said for the Gorean world, but in it men and women are alive.

It is a world which I would not willingly surrender.

It is a very different world from mine; in its way, I suppose it is worse; in its way, I know it is better.

It is its own place, not another's. It is honest and real. In it there is good air.

"Who is your master, little vulo?" asked Tup Ladletender of me.

"My master is Thurnus," I said, "caste leader in Tabuk's Ford, of the caste of peasants, one who makes fields fruitful and is, too, a trainer of sleen." I was proud of Thurnus, who owned me. A peasant who is actively engaged in agricultural pursuits is spoken of as one who makes fields fruitful. Sometimes this expression is applied, too, to peasants who are not actively engaged in such pursuits, as an honorific appelation. Whereas caste membership is commonly connected with the practice of an occupation, such as agriculture, or commerce, or war, there can be, of course, caste members who are not engaged in caste work and individuals who do certain forms of work who are not members of that caste commonly associated with such work. Caste, commonly, though not invariably, is a matter of birth. One may, too, be received into a caste by investment. Normally mating takes place among caste members, but if the mating is of mixed caste, the woman may elect to retain caste, which is commonly done, or be received into the caste 'of the male companion. Caste membership of the children born of such a union is a function of the caste of the father. Similar considerations, in certain cities, hold of citizenship. Caste is important to Goreans in a way that is difficult for members of a non-caste society to understand. Though there are doubtless difficulties involved with caste structure the caste situation lends an individual identity and pride, allies him with thousands of caste brothers, and provides him with various opportunities and services. Recreation on Gor is often associated with caste, and tournaments and entertainments. Similarly, most public charity on Gor is administered through caste structure. The caste system is not inflexible and there are opportunities for altering caste, but men seldom avail themselves of them; they take great pride in their castes, often comparing others' castes unfavorably to their own; a Gorean's caste, by the time he reaches adulthood, seems to have become a part of his very blood and being; the average Gorean would no more think of altering caste than the average man of Earth would of altering his citizenship, from, say, American to Russian, or French to Chinese. The caste structure, in spite of its many. defects, doubtless contributes to the stability of Gorean society, a society in which the individual has a place, in which his work is respected, and in which he can plan intelligently with respect to the future. The clan structures are kinship groups. They function, on the whole, given mating practices, within the caste structure, but they are not identical to it. For example, in a given clan there may be, though often are not, individuals of different castes. Many Goreans think of the clan as a kinship group within a caste. For most practical purposes they are correct. At least it seldom does much harm to regard the matter in this way. Clans, because of practical limitations on mobility, are usually associated, substantially, with a given city; the caste, on the other hand, is transmunicipal or intermunicipal. These remarks would not be complete without mentioning Home Stones. Perhaps the most significant difference between the man of Earth and the Gorean is that the Gorean has a Home Stone, and the man of Earth does not. It is difficult to make clear to a non-Gorean the significance of the Home Stone, for the non-Gorean has never had a Home Stone, and thus cannot understand its meaning, its reality. I think that I shall not try to make clear what is the significance to a Gorean of the Home Stone. It would be difficult to put into words; indeed, it is perhaps impossible to put into words; I shall not try. I think this is one of the saddest things about the men of Earth, that they have no Home Stone.

"What is your name, little vulo?" asked Tup Ladletender of me.

"My master has been pleased to call me 'Dina, " I said.

"If your master has been pleased to call you 'Dina, " said Ladletender, "then you are Dina."

"Oh, yes, Master!" I said, quickly. I had not meant to imply that my name might not be 'Dina. Melina was glaring at me. "I am Dina," I said swiftly, "only Dina, the girl of my master." Those four letters, in Gorean, as in English, were my complete and only designation. Such matters lie entirely within the determination of the Master.

"Pretty Dina," said Ladletender.

"Thank you, Master," I said.

"Do you want her?" asked Melina.

"She has rough hands," said Ladletender. He pulled my small hands, bound, out from the post, and rubbed his thumbs into my palms. I shuddered. "You have rough hands, Dina," he said.

"I am a peasant's girl, Master," I said. My hands were rough from digging, and washing, and holding tools.

I felt his thumbs rotating slowly in my palms. They pressed in. I thrust myself against the post, eyes closed.

"With lotions," said he, "they may be softened, so that they would be fit to caress men."

"Yes, Master," I said. I shuddered to think what his thumbs might have felt like in my palms, had my palms been slave-girl soft.

"Make an offer for the little she-sleen," said Melina.

Ladletender touched my neck, and put his finger inside the rope collar, and pulled it Out a hit from my neck. "You wear a rope collar," he said. "It must be rough and unpleasant."

"What pleases my Master," I said, "pleases me."

"Do you lie to a free man?" he asked.

"Oh, no, Master!" I cried. To be sure, the rope collar was unpleasant, and for that reason I did not like it, but, on the other hand, I, a slave, was naturally desperately eager to please Thurnus, who was my master. It was his will to which mine must conform. It was he whom I must please, fully. There was thus a sense in which what pleased Thurnus pleased me. I was pleased to please him. Did I not please him I might be summarily slain. I was pleased to please him. To please the master is what most pleases the girl.

"She is trying to be pleasing," said Melina. "Would you not like her naked in your furs? She can be purchased cheaply."

"How cheaply?" he asked.

"Cheaply," she said.

"Does Thurnus know you are selling her off?" he asked.

"It does not matter what Thurnus knows," said Melina. "I am free and companion to Thurnus. I may do what I wish."

"Would you like, pretty Dina," said Ladletender, fingering my neck, "to have a pretty steel collar, perhaps enameled?"

I have never owned a collar," I said.

"Nor would you then," pointed out Ladletender.

"Yes, Master," I said, humbled.

It was not I who would own a collar, but I, collared, who would be owned. The collar, like myself, would belong to the master. It would be his collar. I would not own it. I would only wear it.

"This rope is rough and coarse," said Ladletender, fingering the rope collar. "Would you not like a smooth steel collar, one slender and gleaming, or perhaps ornamented and cunningly wrought, or enameled, perhaps to match your eyes and hair, one designed in color and workmanship to enhance your style of beauty, one perhaps measured or custom-fitted to the beauty of your own slave throat?"

"Whatever pleases the master," I said. I knew that a steel collar did immeasurably enhance the beauty of a girl. I had much envied Eta her collar, though it had been plain. I had seen few collars on Gor, but I had learned from Eta that there was great variety among them. They ranged from simple bands of iron, hammered about a girl's throat, her head held down on an anvil, to bejeweled, wondrously wrought, close-locking circlets befitting the preferred slave of a Ubar; such collars, whether worn by a kitchen slave or the prize beauty of a Ubar, had two things in common; they cannot be removed by the girl and they mark her as slave. In the matter of collars, as in all things, Goreans commonly exhibit good taste and aesthetic sense. Indeed, good taste and aesthetic sense, abundantly and amply displayed, harmoniously manifested, in such areas as language, architecture, dress, culture and customs, seem innately Gorean. It is a civilization informed by beauty, from the tanning and cut of a workman's sandal to the glazings intermixed and fused, sensitive to light and shadow, and the time of day, which characterize the lofty towers of her beautiful cities. The same attention, of course, which the Gorean bestows upon his own life and world, is naturally bestowed upon his slave girls. They, too, must be perfect. Just as, in our world, it is not uncommon to seek the advice of an interior decorator in obtaining and organizing the appointments of one's own dwelling, so, too, in the Gorean world, it is not uncommon to call in a trainer and beautician to appraise and improve a girl. He considers such matters as her hair, its cut, cosmetics appropriate to her, the proper type of earrings, a variety of collars and slave silks, how she walks, and speaks, and kneels, and so on, and makes his recommendations. Commonly he finds an apparently plain slave, discovers her latencies, and leaves a beauty. An apparently plain girl is a challenge to such a man. They are said to be able to work wonders. They are often employed in slave pens. A common challenge to them is to take an apparently plain free woman, recently enslaved, and transform her into a ravishing, imbonded beauty. Half the work, however, some say, is done by the collar. Some say the collar releases the beauty in a woman. Perhaps it is true. I had worn only a rope collar, but yet it seemed to me that it, even in its coarseness, made me more beautiful, more exciting. When Thurnus had tied it on my throat he had shown it to me in one of Melina's mirrors. I had almost fainted at the sight of it, so exciting it had made me appear, so sexually charged it had made me. Seeing my state, he had used me immediately, and I had, my whole body, helplessly, to my amazement, responded instantly to him. He had collared me. I dared not dream what my responsiveness would have been had the collar been not of rope, which I might cut or untie, but of true steel, in which I would be helplessly locked. In a sense I both desired and feared a true collar. Collared, how could I resist any man?

"Make an offer for her," said Melina.

Tup Ladletender rose to his feet and reached into his pouch. "Here, little vulo," he said. He took something from his pouch and thrust it in my mouth, pressing it between my teeth with his thumb, depositing it in the side of my mouth. I was startled, kneeling in the dirt at the post, my hands bound about it. "Thank you, Master," I said. It was a small, hard candy. It was sweet. I closed my eyes. It was the first sweet I had had since I had been brought to Gor. In the plain diet of a slave girl, such things are very precious. Girls would fight and tear at one another for a chocolate. Confections are commonly used by masters as rewards in the training and conditioning of their girls. Beyond this they may continue to function as control devices and incitements. Even a slave girl of many years never loses her taste for a bit of candy, for which she may have to work for hours. It is common to give the girl the candy while she is in a kneeling position, putting it in her mouth for her. On the other hand, in training, candies are commonly thrown to the girls. Sometimes, too, for the amusement of the master, candies will be thrown to the floor among several girls, to observe their struggle to obtain these prizes.

"Make an offer for her," said Melina.

"Why do you want to sell her off?" asked Ladletender.

"Make an offer," said Melina.

"Perhaps," he said, looking at me.

"Is she not pretty?" demanded Melina.

"Yes, she is pretty," he said.

"Imagine her, collared, naked in your furs," said Melina, "rubbing against you, desperate to please you."

"I am a merchant," said Ladletender. "If I buy her, I buy her to sell her for a profit."

"But surely you could richly use her before you sell her," suggested Melina.

Ladletender grinned. "Two copper tarsks," he said.

A strange sensation came over me. I realized a price had been offered for me. It is a very strange feeling. The price, of course, even for an Earth girl such as myself, was not realistic. It was intended only to begin the bargaining. Surely I would be worth at least four or five copper tarsks in any market.

"I will sell her to you for less," said Melina.

Ladletender seemed startled.

I opened my eyes, startled, too.

"I need something from your wagon," she said. She looked at me, narrowly. "Come away from the post," she said to Ladletender. They left me tied at the post. She and Ladletender, who seemed puzzled, went to his wagon, with the two long handles. They conversed there. I could not hear their conversation. I sucked at the candy. It was delicious. I wanted it to last as long as possible. I did move a bit about the post where I might look, as though inadvertently, at the pair of free persons at the wagon. I was curious. I was puzzled. From one of the many drawers in the wagon, Tup Ladletender gave into the keeping of Melina, companion of Thurnus, a tiny packet, such as might contain a medicine or powder. I then turned about at the post, so that they would not know I had observed them, and continued to relish the candy. In a short time Melina returned and untied me from the post, and, to my surprise, removed the long rope, though not the rope collar, from my neck. I had expected to be bound, wrists behind my back, and tethered by the neck of the rear of Ladletender's wagon, to follow him, his slave girl, naked and barefoot from the village.

"Put on your tunic," said Melina to me. "Get a hoe. Go to the sul fields. Hoe suls. Bran Loort will fetch you and bring you back when it is time. Speak to no one."

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

"Hurry," said Melina, looking about.

I donned the brief, woolen slave tunic, slipping it swiftly over my head.

Melina seemed agitated.

"May a slave speak, Mistress?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"Have I not been sold, Mistress?" I asked.

"Perhaps, pretty Dina," said Melina, companion to Thurnus. "We shall see."

"Yes, Mistress," I said, puzzled.

"Tomorrow, my pretty little she-sleen," she said, "you will belong either to Tup Ladletender or Bran Loort."

I looked at her, puzzled. "Go," she said. "Hurry! Speak to no one!"

I turned about and, hurrying, went to fetch a tool. The last of the candy dissolved in my mouth. There was no one to speak to.

I chopped at the dry earth about the sul plant.

It had not rained in fifteen days, and it had been dry, too, before that time. The land was in drought.

Tup Ladletender's cart had now disappeared down the road leading from Tabuk's Ford, he between its handles, bent over, drawing it. Left behind now was not even a bit of dust.

It was late afternoon.

I was totally alone in the fields, unprotected.

I did not understand much of what had happened to me. I did not know why I had been brought to Gor. I had awakened naked and chained by the neck. Men had demanded slave beads of me. I had not understood them. They had prepared to kill me. I had been rescued by Clitus Vitellius, who had branded me and made me a slave. He had toyed with me, making me love him helplessly, and had then, for his amusement, given me away! How I hated him! How I loved him! Always I would remember his hands upon me! Always in my heart I would be his slave girl. I wondered if he ever called to mind the girl he had so casually, contemptuously, discarded. Of course not! She was only a slave. And he had his pick of women, even free women, who would wear a collar for his touch. He would not remember me, a slave he once briefly owned and sported with. But I would remember him, always. I loved him. I hated him! Always in my heart I would think of him as my master. I so loved him, and hated him! If only I could have vengeance upon him! How sweet it would be to subject him to the revenge of a scorned slave girl! But what chance had a slave girl for revenge? She was only slave. I cut down at the suls, viciously. I thought of the strange dream I had had, in which I, naked and collared, kneeling on tiles in a beautiful room, as though in a palace, had been strangely commanded to bead a necklace. "Who commands me?" I had asked. "You are commanded by Belisarius, Slave Girl," was the response. The response, somehow, had seemed oddly fitting, expected, though I had known no Belisarius. "What is the command of Belisarius, the slave girl's master?" I had asked. "It is simple," had said the voice. "Yes, Master," I had said. "Bead a necklace, Slave Girl," had said the voice. "Yes, Master," I had said. Then my hands had reached toward the strands of thread on the table, and toward the cups of tiny beads. Then I had awakened. I had not understood the dream. Bran Loort had been near the bars of the cage. He had startled me. "I am going to be first in Tabuk's Ford," whispered Bran Loort. "When I am first," he said, "Melina will give you to me." He had then slipped away from the bars. I had huddled in the straw, trembling. Today, I had thought that I was sold, and perhaps had been, but I did not know. Tup Ladletender, I knew, had left the village without me. I had been sent to the fields. Melina had purchased something from Ladletender, a packet, containing a powder or medicine. I was to say nothing. Bran Loort would fetch me, I had been told. I was to remain in the fields until then. I understood little of this.

I cut down at the suls. I was to say nothing.

I was alone in the fields.

I lifted the heavy hoe, with the stout staff and great metal blade, again and again. It was terribly hot work, and hard. My hack hurt. My hands hurt. My muscles ached. I worked hard, very hard, for I was a peasant's girl. Such girls are not treated gently if they do not do full work. I did not wish to be whipped.

The sun was sinking.

My tunic was soaked with sweat. My feet and legs were black with dirt and sweat.

The rope collar clung and scratched about my throat.

I stood upright, in pain. I was too slight a girl for peasant work. I held the hoe, breathing deeply, my head back.

How I had wanted Tup Ladletender to purchase me, to take me from the labors of the fields. I would have been willing to be anything he had wanted at the post, anything to interest him, anything to escape Tabuk's Ford, but he and Melina, in their cleverness, had manipulated me in such a way that I was unable to be anything but what I was, an Earth-girl slave whose passions put her helplessly at the mercy of men. Willing to be a whore, I had been forced to be naturally myself, a slave girl, more helplessly a whore than any whore could be. A slave girl must be at least a whore, and a marvelous one at that. Being a whore is but a small step in the direction of being a slave girl. But I did not care. I would have done anything to escape Tabuk's Ford. A slave girl owns nothing. She has nothing to offer a man but her service and her beauty. She has nothing with which to pay but herself. That is the way men want it.

I was sure that Tup Ladletender had found me appealing.

I did not know if he had bought me or not.

I bent again to my arduous labors.

Suddenly I straightened myself. "Bran Loort!" I cried.

He stood a few feet from me, a coil of rope in his hand. My hands clutched the handle of the hoe.

He looked at me.

I flung it down. A girl dares not raise a weapon against a free man. Some girls have been slain, or had their hands cut off, for so much as touching a weapon.

"I have come to fetch you, Dina," he said.

I looked about. There was another peasant lad on my left. He, too, carried rope. I turned quickly. Four others were behind me. Another was on my right. Two others, too, appeared, behind Bran Loort. One of them carried, too, a coil of rope.

There was nowhere to run.

"She is the clever girl who eluded us in the game of girl catch in the village," said one of the lads.

"Greetings, clever girl," said another.

"Greetings, Master," I said to him.

I extended my wrists, crossed for binding, to Bran Loort. "You are going to take me to my master," I said.

He laughed.

I drew back my wrists. I looked about, fearfully. The boys approached more closely, closing about me.

I spun and ran, but fled into the arms of one of the young males, who roughly threw me back to the center of the circle. I tried again to break the circle and was again caught and flung again to its center. They were now close about me.

I extended my wrists, crossed, to Bran Loort. "Bind me," I said, "and take me to my master."

He smiled.

I trembled, and shrank back before him, almost into the arms of one of his brawny young cohorts.

"Are you going to rape me, Bran Loort?" I asked.

"And more," said he.

"Thurnus will not be pleased," I said.

"Tonight," he said, "you will belong to me."

"I do not understand," I said.

"Tonight," he said, "you will be a feast and a festival to us, Dina."

I trembled.

"Hold her," said Bran Loort.

Two boys held my arms.

"Ankle-leash her, both ankles," he said. This was done. I stood before them, ropes on my ankles.

"Put your arms at your sides," said Bran Loort, "out a bit from your body."

I did so.

I then stood before them, double wrist-leashed, ropes placed knotted on my wrists. The ropes on my wrists and ankles, serving as leashes, were cut from the coils of rope brought to the field. The remainders of the coils swung in the hands of Bran Loort and one of his cohorts. I knew I might be beaten with them.

"You will obey," said Bran Loort.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"Remove your kerchief," he said.

I lifted my leashed wrists and pulled away the kerchief, shading my head, freeing my hair.

"Pretty," said one of the boys.

"Tear the kerchief," said Bran Loort.

"Please," I said. I did not wish to destroy the kerchief. It. like the girl, Dina, whom I was, belonged to my master. Dina was responsible for it. The master might not be pleased if it were torn or soiled. Dina might be beaten.

"Tear it," said Bran Loort. I, with difficulty, tore the kerchief, the boys amused at my weakness.

"Drop it upon the ground and, step upon it, grinding it into the dirt," said Bran Loort.

I did so, with the heel of my leashed foot. I was sure now that I would be beaten upon my return to the village.

I looked at the boys. I realized, suddenly, I had more to fear from them than from the swift switch of an angry Thurnus or Melina. Their eyes terrified me. My limbs were leashed. I stood alone among them, their prisoner.

I knew I must please them.

"Are you docile and cooperative?" asked Bran Loort.

"Yes, Master," I whispered.

"Strip," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said. I reached to pull the coarse, brief tunic over my head. I hoped they would be soon done with me.

But my hands, held by the ropes on my wrists, could not reach the bottom of the tunic. My fingers struggled to reach it, but an inch from its wool, clinging about my thighs. I tried again to seize the tunic but was prohibited by the ropes from doing so. I looked at Bran Loort in alarm, in protest.

"Strip," he said. He swung the coil of rope which he carried, whiplike, easily in his hand. Behind me there was another lad, with such a coil of rope.

Wildly I tried to seize the garment, to pull it over my head, but the boys would not let me touch it. I struggled to get my fingers on the white, coarse wool, but I could not reach it.

"Are you docile and cooperative?" asked Bran Loort.

"Yes, Master!" I cried. "Yes, Master!"

"Strip," he said.

Again I tried to reach the garment but again was not permitted to do so. Then I tried to seize the garment at the neck and tear it away but the boys would not let my hands reach the garment.

"You are a rebellious slave," said Bran Loort.

"No, Master!" I cried.

"Obey then," he said.

I tried again to tear away the garment. Again I was not permitted to do so.

"Rebellious slave," said Bran Loort.

Suddenly the rope, coiled, held by the boy behind me, hissed and cut into the back of my thighs.

"Oh," I cried.

At the same time Bran Loort himself struck down at me with the rope he carried, striking me across the shoulder and neck.

The boys yanked the ropes on my ankles, and, by their means, and by means of those held by the other two boys, those fastened on my wrists, I was turned and thrown to my stomach, in the dirt, spread-eagled.

Bran Loort and the other lad struck me again and again with the ropes they carried and then I, sobbing, cut by the ropes, marked even through the tunic, was, by the leashes on my limbs pulled to a kneeling position before him, my arms held out from my sides. There was dirt on the side of my face and on my body, blackening and staining the sweat-soaked tunic. I could taste dirt in my mouth.

"Bring her," said Bran Loort.

I was jerked to my feet by the ropes on my wrists and stumbling, dragged among them, was conducted from the ml field. The ruined kerchief and the hoe lay behind.

Many are the clever things which may be done to a girl who is, as I was, fully limb-leashed. Much sport had the cruel peasant boys with me. They made me fall when they pleased, and as they pleased; sometimes they threw me forward, sometimes backward; sometimes they carried me, face up or face down, suspended between them: sometimes they dragged me by an ankle or a wrist on my back or stomach, or twisting; sometimes they dragged me or made me walk where they wished, though it might be through rocks or gravel.

I did not know if I could live, so led.

We stopped once. I was still clothed at.that time. I was held by the ropes before Bran Loort. I was covered with sweat and dirt; I was gasping; I was trembling, shaken with muscular stress from the cruel march, as well as with fear, knowing myself fully in their hands, not knowing what fate they might choose to inflict upon me. We stood in the vicinity of a thicket of thorn brush, of the sort which is occasionally used to wall camps.

"You are still clothed," said Bran Loort observing me.

"Let me tear away my clothes before you," I begged, "that the beauty of a poor slave girl may be bared to you."

"Do so," he said.

I cried out in anguish. Again the ropes would not let me strip myself.

"You have apparently not yet learned your lesson," he said.

"Please, Master!" I wept.

"Let the thorn brush strip her," said Bran Loort.

"No!" I cried.

By the ropes I was dragged into the midst of tenacious, barbed brush, that thicket of such. I screamed with misery. I begged mercy. I was shown none. The brush tore at my clothing and body. Rudely I was drawn through it. I cried out, throwing my head from side to side. I kept my eyes closed, that I be not blinded. "Please, Masters!" I cried. They did not see fit to show a girl mercy. Bloodied, my body a welter of scratches and linear wounds, I was pulled from the brush. The Earth-girl slave was now naked.

They hit me with the ropes and again we continued our journey. They sang as they conducted me to the place of their feast, on the grass by the stream.

There they held my wrists about a tree and, striking many times, put me under rope-discipline. Held against the tree, feeling its bark with the side of my cheek, weeping, shuddering under the blows of the coiled rope, I wondered what I had done to them that they should be so cruel to me.

They then took me and threw me to the grass on my back. My ankles, by the rope leashes tied on them, held by two boys, were pulled widely apart. Bran Loort looked down upon me.

I realized then that I, a slave girl, had, days ago, eluded them in the game of girl catch. I had, in that game, by my cleverness, bested them. I did not now feel clever. I would now pay for my cleverness. How foolish of a slave girl to attempt to best a free man. Does she not know she may someday come into his ownership!

I cried out. Bran Loort was the first to have me.

"Come out, Thurnus!" called Bran Loort. "See what I have for you."

I lay at the feet of Bran Loort, my knees drawn up, on my side in the dirt. My hands were tied behind my back. I was naked, and my body was covered with dried blood and dirt. A rope, knotted, ran from my neck to his hand. My cheek was in the dust. I was cold, and my body ached, from the rope beatings and abuse to which it had been subjected. I think I was partly in shock. I could no longer cry. The only flicker of feeling left in me was a fear of free men. I, a slave girl, had once bested free men in the game of girl catch. I had learned my lesson well. Never again would I try to best free men. They were master. I was slave.

"Come out, Thurnus!" called Bran Loort. "See what I have for you!"

My head jerked as Bran Loort, emphasizing his words, drew on the rope tied on my neck. I put my head down, shoulders trembling.

"Thurnus! Come out!" cried Bran Loort.

I shuddered.

I lay in the dirt before the hut of Thurnus.

It was night now, and men stood about, with torches. There were the eight young men of Bran Loort, and others, too, gathered from the village. The free men and women were there, and some slaves, not yet caged for the night. Sandal Thong was there, and Turnip, and Verr Tail and Radish. Melina had wanted them to see what was to occur. There were no children present. Bran Loort stood forward, his staff in his left hand, my neck rope in his right. His eight young men stood near to him, each with his staff. Ringing us were villagers and slaves. All eyes turned to the doorway of Thurnus's hut. Melina emerged from the hut and descended the stairs to the ground. Thurnus's hut was near to the center of the village, near its clearing. I could smell the sleen in the cool, night air. It was chilly.

My back and legs were covered with welts from the rope lashings I had been given. My thighs were sore.

Melina stood at the bottom of the stairs. She, too, turned to face the opening.

I looked at Bran Loort. He looked very splendid, proud and strong, a girl's neck rope in his hand, she, proof of his manhood, at his feet. The staff he held was over six feet in length and some two to three inches in width. "I am going to be first in Tabuk's Ford," had Bran Loort once said to me. I recalled, too, something else he had said. "When I am first," he had said, "Melina will give you to me."

"Come out, Thurnus," called Melina, from the foot of the stairs below the hut.

I looked to the doorway of the hut. It was dark, empty.

The eyes of all looked at the opening to the hut.

Thurnus did not appear.

Men stood about, with torches. It was silent, save for the crackle of the torches. I lay bound. The ropes on my wrists, holding them closely behind my back, were very tight.

I heard a sleen squeal from some eighty yards away, behind the huts, in the cage areas.

There was a change in the breathing of the crowd. Thurnus stood now in the entrance to his hut.

"Geetings, Thurnus," called Bran Loort.

"Greetings, Bran Loort," said Thurnus.

Bran Loort's heavily sandaled foot struck into my belly. I cried out with pain.

"On your knees, Slave Girl," said Bran Loort.

I struggled to my knees. He took up the slack in the neck rope, coiling it, holding my head a foot from his thigh. My vision blurred, and then cleared. I saw Thurnus looking down at me.

He regarded me.

Much and well had the young men of Tabuk's Ford pleasured themselves with the girl from Earth, the former Judy Thornton, now the helpless Gorean slave girl, Dina.

I put my head down, under the gaze of my master. But I was not to be permitted this courtesy. The rope, Bran Loort's fist in it, at my neck, the knot, under the left side of my jaw, pulled my head up.

I was to be displayed to Thurnus.

"I have something here of yours," said Bran Loort.

"I see," said Thurnus.

"She is a hot little slave," he said, "juicy and pretty."

"That is known to me." said Thurnus.

"She kneels now at my feet," said Bran Loort.

"I see that, Bran Loort," said Thumus.

Swiftly Bran Loort then discarded the rope and, with his foot, thrust me to one side. I fell sprawling in the dirt, and turned, lying on one side, to watch.

Bran Loort stood with both hands on his staff, one hand grasped in its center, the other hand, his left, some eighteen inches below the center of the staff. But Thurnus had not moved.

No one stirred in the crowd. I heard the crackle of the torches.

Bran Loort seemed for a moment unsteady. He looked from one of his cohorts to another.

Then he again turned to face Thurnus, who stood, not speaking, at the height of the stairs, some six or seven feet above the level of the ground, in the doorway to his hut.

"I have abused your slave," said Bran Loort.

"That is what slaves are for," said Thurnus.

"We took much pleasure in her!" said Bran Loort, angrily.

"Did you find her pleasing?" asked Thurnus.

"Yes," said Bran Loort. He gripped the long, heavy staff more firmly, standing ready.

"Then," said Thurnus, "it will not be necessary for me to beat or slay her."

Bran Loort looked puzzled.

"Surely you know, Bran Loort," said Thurnus, "it is the duty of a slave girl to be fully and completely pleasing to men. Were she not so she would be subject to severe punishment, including even torture and death, should it be the master's wish."

"We took her without your permission," said Bran Loort.

"In this," said Thurnus, "you have committed a breach of code."

"It does not matter to me," said Bran Loort.

"Neither a plow, nor a bosk, nor a girl may one man take from another, saving with the owner's saying of it," quoted Thurnus.

"I do not care," said Bran Loort.

"What is it, Bran Loort, that separates men from sleen and larls?" asked Thurnus.

"I do not know," said Bran Loort.

"It is the codes," said Thurnus.

"The codes are meaningless noises, taught to boys," said Bran Loort.

"The codes are the wall," said Thurnus.

"I do not understand," said Bran Loort.

"It is the codes which separate men from sleen and larls," said Thurnus. "They are the difference. They are the wall."

"I do not understand," said Bran Loort.

"You have left the shelter of the wall, Bran Loort," said Thurnus.

"Do you threaten me, Thurnus of Tabuk's Ford?" asked Bran Loort.

"You stand now outside the shelter of the wall," said Thurnus.

"I do not fear you!" cried Bran Loort.

"Had you asked of me my permission, Bran Loort," said 'Thurnus, indicating me with a gesture of his head, "willingly and without thought, gladly, would I have given you temporary master rights over her."

I lay in the dirt, my hands bound behind my back, the rope on my neck, watching. It was true what Thurnus had said. I could have been loaned to Bran Loort, and would have had to serve him as though he were my own master.

"But you did not ask my permission," said Thurnus.

"No," said Bran Loort, angrily, "I did not."

"Before, too, you have done such things, you, and these others, though not to the degree nor with the intent of this day."

It was true. Sometimes the boys had caught us, Thurnus's girls, or those of others, too, and roped us together and raped us in the furrows of the fields, but it had been done in the bullying rowdyism of their youth, having slave girls at their mercy. There had been no intent of insult, or umbrage, in it. It had been the hot, fierce, innocent sport of strong young men, powerful and excited, who held brief-tunicked, branded girls, in rope collars, in their arms, nothing more. Does a slave girl not expect slave rape? Some masters enjoy having their girls raped occasionally; it serves to remind them that they are slaves. This sort of rape is not uncommon in a peasant village. It is usually taken for granted and ignored, save perhaps by the abused girls, but they are only slaves. Indeed, it is sometimes encouraged, to pacify young men whose natural aggressions otherwise might turn aside into destructive channels. It is also regarded, at times, as an aid in helping young males attain their manhood. "If she pleases you, run her down, and take her, son," is a not uncommon piece of paternal advice in a peasant village. I had heard this twice, though it had not been I on whom the young man had been set. Verr Tail had been caught and raped on her back, struggling, in the stream, once, and Radish had been caught and forced to give pleasure between the sleen cages. Each of these young men had walked differently following their conquest. I had shrunk back when they had approached. I knew they were now men, and I was only a slave. These two young men were not among the cohorts of Bran Loort. But what had been done today to me was clearly different in its intent and gravity from the casual, expected, fierce exhibitions of male aggression to which imbonded girls such as I must become accustomed.

"I have been patient with you, Bran Loort," said Thurnus. "We are grateful for your patience," said Bran Loort. He looked about, at his cohorts, grinning. He set his staff, butt down, in the dirt.

I sensed that the codes were to be invoked. What Bran Loort and his fellows had done exceeded the normal rights of custom, the leniencies and tacit permissions of a peasant community; commonly the codes are invisible; they exist not to control human life, but to make it possible. The rapes of Verr Tail and Radish, interestingly, had not counted as code breaches, though in neither case had explicit permission for their conquest been granted by Thurnus; such permission, in such cases, was implicit in the customs of the community; it did not constitute a "taking from" but a brief use of, an "enjoyment of," without the intent to do injury to the honor of the master; "taking from," in the sense of the code is not, strictly, theft, though theft would be "taking from." "Taking from," in the sense of the codes, implies the feature of being done against the presumed will of the master, of infringing his rights, more significantly, of offending his honor. In what Bran Loort had done, insult had been intended. The Gorean peasant, like Goreans in general, has a fierce sense of honor. Bran Loort had known exactly what he had been doing.

"I am disposed to be merciful, Bran Loort," said Thumus, looking at me. "You may now request my permission for what you have done to this slave."

"But," said Bran Loort, "I do not request your permission."

"I must then call the council," said Thurnus, "that we may consider what is to be done with you."

Bran Loort, throwing his head back, laughed, as did his fellows.

"Why do you laugh, Bran Loort?" inquired Thurnus.

"Only the caste leader may call the council," said Bran Loort. "And I do not choose to summon it into session."

"Are you caste leader in Tabuk's Ford?" asked Thumus.

"I am," said Bran Loort.

"Who has said this?" inquired Thurnus.

"I have said it," said Bran Loort. And he gestured to his fellows. "We have said it," he added.

There were nine of them, including Bran Loort. They were large, strong young men. "Yes," said more than one of them.

"I am sorry," said Thurnus. "I had thought that you had in you the makings of a caste leader."

"I am caste leader," said Bran Loort.

"In what village is that?" asked Thurnus.

"In Tabuk's Ford," said Bran Loort, angrily.

"Have you conveyed this intelligence to Thurnus of Tabuk's Ford?" inquired Thurnus.

"I do so now," said Bran Loort. "I am first in Tabuk's Ford."

"I speak for Thurnus, caste leader in the village of Tabuk's Ford," said Thurnus. "He speaks it not so."

"I am first here," said Bran Loort.

"In the name of Thurnus, he of the peasants, caste leader of the village of Tabuk's Ford," said Thurnus, "I speak. He, Thurnus, is first"

"I am first!" cried Bran Loort.

"No," said Thurnus.

Bran Loort turned white.

"Will it be the test of five arrows?" asked Thurnus.

In this the villagers, with the exception of the two contestants, leave the village and the gate is closed. Each contestant carries in the village his bow, the great bow, the peasant bow, and five arrows. He who opens the gate to readmit the villagers is caste leader.

"No," said Bran Loort, uneasily. He did not care to face the bow of Thurnus. The skill of Thurnus with the great bow was legendary, even among peasants.

"Then," asked Thurnus, "it will be the test of knives?"

In this the two men leave the village and enter, from opposite sides, a darkened wood. He who returns to the village is caste leader.

"No," said Bran Loort. Few men, I thought, would care to meet Thurnus in the darkness of the woods armed with steel. The peasant is a part of the land. He can be like a rock or a tree. Or the lightning that can strike without warning from the dark sky.

Bran Loort lifted his staff. "I am of the peasants," he said.

"Very well," said Thurnus. "We shall subject this matter to grim adjudication. The staff will speak. The wood of our land will decide."

"Good!" said Bran Loort.

I noted that Sandal Thong had slipped from the crowd. None other seemed to note her going.

Slowly, step by step, Thurnus descended the stairs from his hut.

Melina, eyes glittering, stepped back from the foot of the stairs. Men, and villagers all, and slaves, cleared a space near the hut of Thurnus.

"Build up the village fire," said Thurnus. Men hurried to do this. Thurnus opened his tunic, then pulled it down about his waist. He flexed his arms, and hitched up the skirt of the tunic, higher in his belt, until it was high on his thighs. Bran Loort, too, did these things.

Thurnus came to me and lifted me to my feet, his hands on my arms. "Is it because of your beauty, little slave," he asked, "that this has come about?"

I could not answer him, so miserable I was. I could not stand without his holding me.

"No," said Thurnus. 'There is more involved here." He turned me about and untied my wrists, and unknotted the rope from my neck, throwing it away.

I stood in my brand and rope collar before him.

I looked up at him. He had been kind to me.

"Gag her and put her in the rape-rack," he said to a man.

I regarded him, startled, as I was dragged from his presence. I would be secured in the rape-rack, the ready spoils for the victor. I did not know why I would be gagged.

The young men of Bran Loort gathered about him, encouraging him. Thurnus stood to one side, not seeming to pay them attention.

With a cry of misery I was thrown onto the beams of the rack. My left ankle was thrust into the semi-circular opening in the lower left ankle beam and the upper left ankle beam, with its matching semi-circular opening, was dropped, and locked, in place. My other ankle was similarly secured in the separate matching beams for the right ankle. The rape-rack at Tabuk's Ford is a specially prepared horizontal stock, cut away in a V-shape at the lower end. My wrists were seized and my hair and I was thrown down on my back, wrists held in place, and my head, too, by my hair, in three semi-circular openings. A single beam, with matching semi-circular openings, on a heavy hinge, closes the stock. It was swung up and then dropped in place, and locked shut. I was now held in the stock, on my back, by my ankles, wrists and neck. I could move very little. I closed my eyes. I opened them to see a man above me. Looking up and back, my head down, I saw a piece of cloth in his hand. It was large. I wept as it was wadded, painfully, in my mouth. He then secured it in place with a narrow piece of folded cloth which slipped deeply between my teeth. He then, with another three scarves, covering the bottom portion of my face, one over the other, completed the task of gagging the slave girl. I could not utter a sound. I did not know why I had been gagged. My neck rested on the back of the semi-circular opening in the lower beam. It was painful. I am Judy Thorton, I tried to tell myself. I am Judy Thorton! I am an Earth girl! This cannot be happening to me! But I knew I was only Dina, a Gorean slave at the mercy of masters.

I turned my head to the side, to see the combat. I saw Turnip looking at me. Her eyes were frightened. Then she looked away. It could have been she in the stock. Radish was watching Thurnus, frightened. So, too, was Verr Tail. Sandal Thong was nowhere to be seen.

"Are you ready, Thurnus?" asked Bran Loort.

Villagers had cleared a circle. The fire was now high, and one could see well.

"Will you not require a staff?" asked Bran Loort, grinning.

"Perhaps," said Thurnus. He looked at the eight cohorts of Bran Loort. "These fellows, I gather," said Thurnus, "will not enter our competition."

"I am sufficient onto the task of putting a slack, fat fellow such as you under caste discipline," grinned Bran Loort.

"Perhaps," granted Thurnus.

"You will need a staff," pointed out Bran Loort.

"Yes," said Thurnus. He turned to one of Bran Loort's cohorts. "Strike at me," he said.

The young man grinned. He smote down at Thurnus. Thurnus seized the staff and, suddenly, with strength like that of a larl, jerked the young man toward him, at the same time kicking upward savagely, blasting the fellow in the teeth with the heel of his sandal, the young man reeling back, blood spattering from his nose and mouth, clutching at his face, the staff in the hands of Thurnus. There were teeth in the dirt. The young man sat, dazed, on the ground.

"A good staff," said Thurnus, "must be one with which one can thrust," and, saying this, looking at one young man, he drove the staff, like a spear into the ribs of another, "and slice," added Thurnus, who then smote the first fellow, whose attention was now on his struck fellow, along the side of the face. The first fellow fell in the dirt clutching his ribs. I had little doubt that one or more had been broken; the second fellow lay inert in the dirt, blood at the side of his head. "But," said Thurnus, "a good staff must also be strong." The young men stood, tensed, five of them, and Bran Loort. "Come at me," said Thurnus to another of the men. Enraged the fellow charged. Thurnus was behind him and smote down, shattering the heavy staff across the fellow's back. He lay in the dirt, unable to rise. The staff had been more than two inches in diameter. "That staff, you see," said Thurnus, instructing the younger men, "was flawed. It was weak. He gestured to the fellow lying in the dirt, his face contorted with pain, scratching at the dust. "It did not even break his back," said Thurnus. "Such a staff may not be relied upon in combat." He turned to one of the four young men, and Bran Loort. "Give me another staff," he said to one of them. The young man looked at him and, frightened, threw him the staff, not wanting to come close to him. "A better weapon," said Thurnus, hefting the staff. He looked at the fellow who had thrown him the staff. "Come here," he said. Uneasily the lad approached. "The first lesson you must learn," said Thurnus, swiftly jabbing the staff deeply, without warning, into his stomach, "is never to give a weapon to an enemy." The young man, bent over, retched in the dirt. Thurnus smote him sharply on the side of the head, felling him. He then turned to the other two young men, and Bran Loort. "You should keep your guard up," said Thurnus to one of them, who immediately, warily, raised his staff. Thurnus then smote the other fellow, at whom he did not appear to be looking. He turned, watching the fellow fall into the dirt. "You, too, of course," said Thurnus, "should keep your guard up. That is important." The other young man, he beside Bran Loort, then suddenly struck at Thurnus, but Thurnus, clearly, had been expecting the blow. He parried it and slipped behind the other's staff, bringing up the lower end of his own staff. The fellow's face turned white and he sank away. "Aggressiveness is good," said Thurnus, "but beware of the counterstroke." Thurnus looked about himself. Of the nine men only one, Bran Loort, now stood ready. Thurnus grinned. He indicated the young men, strewn about. 'These others, I now gather," said Thurnus, "will not enter our competition."

"You are skillful, Thurnus," said Bran Loort. He held his staff ready.

"I am sorry that I must now do this to you, Bran Loort," said Thurnus. "I had thought you had in you the makings of a caste leader."

"I am caste leader here," said Bran Loort.

"You are young, Bran Loort," said Thurnus. "You should have waited. It is not yet your time."

"I am caste leader here," said Bran Loort.

"The caste leader must know many things," said Thurnus. "It takes many years to learn them, the weather, the crops, animals, men. It is not easy to be caste leader."

Thurnus turned away, his head down, to tie his sandal. Bran Loort hesitated only an instant, and then he struck down, the staff stopped, striking across Thurnus's turned shoulder. It had been like striking a rock. Bran Loort stepped back.

"Too, to earn the respect of peasants," said Thurnus, straightening up, retrieving his staff, his sandal tied, "the caste leader should be strong."

Bran Loort was white-faced.

"Now let us fight," said Thurnus.

Swiftly did the two men engage with their quick staves. There was a fierce ringing of wood. Dust flew about their ankles. Blows, numerous and fierce, were struck and parried. Bran Loort was not unskilled, and he was young and strong, but no match was he for the grim and mighty Thurnus, caste leader of Tabuk's Ford, my master. As well might a young larl with spotted coat be matched against a giant, tawny claw Ubar of the Voltai. At last, bloodied and beaten, Bran Loort lay helpless at the feet of Thurnus, caste leader of the village of Tabuk's Ford. He looked up, glazed-eyed. Some five of his cohorts, two of whom had recovered consciousness, seizing their staves, edged nearer.

"Beat him!" cried Bran Loort, pointing out Thurnus.

There was a cry of anger from the onlookers.

The young men raised their staves, together, to charge upon Thurnus, who turned, to accept their challenge.

"Stop!" cried a voice. There were the shrill squeals of sleen. Sandal Thong stood at the edge of the circle, in each fist the leash, a short leash, of a sleen. The animals strained against the leashed collars, trying to creep forward, their eyes blazing, saliva loose and dripping from their jaws, the wet fangs shining in the firelight. "On the first man who moves," cried Sandal Thong, "I shall set a sleen!"

The young men drew back.

Melina cried out with fury.

"Throw down your staves," ordered Thurnus. They, looking at the sleen, threw down their staves.

"She is only a slave!" cried Melina. "How dare you interfere?" she cried to Sandal Thong.

"I freed her this afternoon," laughed Thurnus. I saw no rope collar on her throat. She had removed it when she had stolen away from the circle of the fire.

She stood there, holding the sleen leashes, a proud free woman, in the firelight, though she wore still the rag of a slave.

"On your feet, Bran Loort," said Thurnus.

The young man, unsteadily, stood up. Thurnus, swiftly, tore away the tunic about his waist, and, taking him by the arm rudely thrust him to the heavy rack, where I lay helplessly secured. "Here is the little slave you find so lovely, Bran Loort," said Thurnus. "She lies before you, helpless." Bran Loort looked at me, miserable. "She is a juicy little beauty, is she not?" asked Thurnus. I recoiled on the beams, so spoken of. "Is she not a pretty little cake?" asked Thurnus. "Yes," whispered Bran Loort. "Take her," said Thurnus. "I give you my permission." Bran Loort looked down. "Go ahead," urged Thurnus. 'Take her!" "I cannot," whispered Bran Loort. He was a defeated man.

Bran Loort turned away from the rack and bent down to pick up his tunic. He went to the gate and it was opened for him. He left the village of Tabuk's Ford.

"Follow him, who will," said Thurnus to the young men who had been his cohorts.

But none made to follow their former leader.

"Of what village are you?" asked Thurnus.

"Tabuk's Ford," they said, sullenly.

"And who is caste leader in Tabuk's Ford?" asked Thurnus, sweating, grinning.

"Thurnus," they said.

"Go to your huts," he said. "You are under caste discipline." They withdrew from the circle of the fire. I expected that they would tend his fields for a season.

Melina had withdrawn from the circle of the fire, returning to the hut she shared with Thurnus.

"Let there be made a feast," decreed Thurnus. There was a cheer.

"But first, Thurnus, my love," said Melina, speaking now from the doorway of their hut, "let us drink to the victory of the night."

There was silence.

She carried a metal goblet, and, slowly, in stately fashion, descended the steps to the ground, approaching Thurnus.

She lifted the cup to him. "Drink, noble Thurnus, my love," said she to him. "I bring you the brew of victory."

Suddenly I realized what must be her plan. Melina was a shrewd, clever woman. She had counted on Bran Loort and his young men defeating Thurnus. Yet, in the event they did not manage this, she had purchased a powder from Tup Ladletender, the peddler. Had Bran Loort been victorious she had promised me to him. But, too, I had been promised to Tup Ladletender, in exchange for the powder, were it successful. In each plan Dina, the slave girl, had been the bauble with which to bring about her will. Had Bran Loort been successful, I would have been his. Ladletender's powder would then be unnecessary, and would be returned to him. If Bran Loort was unsuccessful, then the way would be clear to use Ladletender's powder, and I, of course, Bran Loort defeated, could then be straightforwardly tendered in payment for it. The plans, sharp alternatives, excluded one another; their common element was I, as payment. Melina had planned well.

"Drink, my love," said Melina, lifting the cup to Thumus. "Drink to your victory, and mine."

Thurnus took the cup.

I tried to cry out, but could not. I struggled in the stock. My eyes were wild over the heavy gagging that had been inflicted upon me.

None looked upon me. I struggled in the stock. I tried to scream. I could utter no sound. I wore a Gorean gag.

"Do not drink it, Master!" I wanted to scream. "It is poisoned! Do not drink! It is poison!"

"Drink, my love," said Melina.

I could utter no sound. I wore a Gorean gag.

Thurnus lifted the cup to his lips. He paused. "Drink," urged Melina.

"It is our common victory," said Thurnus.

"Yes, my love," said Melina.

"Drink first, Companion," said Thurnus.

Melina seemed startled. Then she said, "It is first your victory, then mine, my love."

Thurnus smiled.

"Drink you first, my love," she urged.

"My love," smiled Thurnus, "drink you first."

"First, you," said she.

"Drink," said Thurnus. His voice was not pleasant.

Melina's face went white.

"Drink," said Thurnus.

She reached forth, hands shaking, to take the cup.

"I shall hold the cup," said Thurnus. "Drink."

"No," said she. She put her head down. "It is poison."

Thurnus smiled. Then he put his head back, and drained the cup.

Melina looked at him, startled.

"Greetings, Lady," said Tup Ladletender. He had emerged from between the huts.

Thurnus threw away the emptied goblet, into the dirt. "It is a harmless draught," he said. "Tup Ladletender and I, as young men," he said, "have fished and hunted sleen. Once I saved his life. We are brothers by the rite of the claws of sleen." Thurnus lifted his forearm where one might see a jagged scar. Ladletender, too, raised his arm, his sleeve falling back. On his forearm, too, there was such a scar. It had been torn by the claw of a sleen, in the hand of Thurnus; the same claw, in the hand of Ladletender, had marked the arm of Thurnus; their bloods had mingled, though they were of the peasants and merchants. "He now, has, too saved my life," said Thurnus. "I am pleased to have had the opportunity," said Ladletender.

"You tricked me," said Melina to Ladletender.

He did not respond to her.

Melina looked at Thurnus. She shrank back.

"Better," said Thurnus, "that the draught had been poison, and you had drunk first."

"Oh, no, Thurnus," she whispered. "Please, no!"

"Bring a cage," said Thurnus.

"No!" she cried.

"And a sleen collar," he said.

"No, no!" she cried.

Two men left the group.

"Let me be beaten with flails," she begged. "Set the sleen upon me!"

"Come here, female," said Thurnus.

She stood before him.

"Shave my head and return me in dishonor to my father's village," she begged.

His hands were at the shoulders of her robe. He tore it down, exposing her shoulders. The shoulders of a female are apparently exciting to a man. This fact is recognized in off-the-shoulder formal evening gowns on Earth. The existence of such gowns, if Goreans were familiar with them, except on slaves, would be taken as more evidence of the fittingness and naturalness of enslavement for Earth females. She who wears such a gown begs in her heart to be owned.

"Thurnus," protested Melina.

He held her by the arms, her shoulders bared. He shook her slightly. Her head went back. Her shoulders were wide, and strong, and beautiful. They would take a plow strap well.

Yet every part of a female body is beautiful to a Gorean, a hand, a wrist, an ankle, the back of a knee, the turn of a thigh, the sweet, soft hair, almost invisible and delicate, below and behind the ear. Each part bespeaks the glory and wonder and promise of the whole. I have heard Gorean men cry out with joy at the sight of a woman. There is little on Earth to prepare the poor Earth girl for the lust and desire with which she will find herself viewed on Gor. Initially she is bewildered, stunned and shocked. Then she is thrown on her back. She makes swift adjustment. She must. It is the Gorean world, a truly man's world, in which she is a woman. The lust of Gorean males has much to do, doubtless, with the robes of concealment worn in most cities by Gorean free women. They would not wish the casual, inadvertent flirtation of an accidentally exposed ankle to lead to their hunt, capture and enslavement. Slave girls on Gor, on the other hand, when permitted clothing, are usually dressed briefly and lightly, that their charms be muchly revealed. Gorean men wish it this way. That, accordingly, is the way it is.

Thurnus's hands were on Melina's upper arms, now bared, her robes pulled down from her shoulders. He looked at her arms. Then he looked at her face.

The cage was brought, a small, sturdy cage, tiny and tight, and a sleen collar.

"Let me be killed, Thurnus," she begged.

Thurnus lifted the sleen collar before her. With her hand she held it from her. "Kill me instead, Thurnus," she begged. "Please."

"Put your hands to your side, woman," said Thurnus.

She did so.

Thurnus then looped the sturdy, leather, metal-embossed sleen collar about her throat. With an awl, brought by a man, he punched two holes, vertically, in the leather strap, and thrust the twin buckle-claws through the holes; he then took the long, loose end of the strap, for the sleen has a large neck, thrust it through the four strap loops, thick and broad, and then, with a knife, cut off the portion of the strap which protruded beyond the last strap loop.

Melina, her shoulders bared, stood before him, wearing a sleen collar. It had, sewn in its side, a heavy ring, to which a sleen leash might be attached.

Instantly she was stripped and thrown to the ground. She looked up in fear at Thurnus.

"Into the cage, Slave," said Thurnus.

"Thurnus!" she cried.

He crouched down and, with the back of his hand, struck her across the mouth, leaving blood across the side of her face.

"Into the cage, Slave," he said.

"Yes-Master," whispered Melina. She crawled into the cage. At a gesture from Thurnus, Sandal Thong, surrendering the sleen leashes to a man, who took the animals from the clearing, came to the cage and, with two hands, flung down the metal gate to the cage, locking her former mistress within. There was a cheer from those about.

"Let there be a feast!" called Thurnus, caste leader of Tabuk's Ford. "And in the feast fires let an iron be heated for slave branding!"

There was another cheer.

In the tiny cage she who had been Melina crouched down, sleen-collared, her face miserable behind the bars, clutching them with her fists.

She would soon wear the mark of a slave in her flesh.

Men and women hurried about, to prepare the feast. At a gesture from Thurnus Radish, Turnip and Verr Tail ungagged me and freed me from the heavy stock. They helped me from the stock and I, by its head, sank down to the dirt. I could scarcely move. I could still taste the heavy, coarse, sour wadding of the gag in my mouth. I would not have believed so effective a gag was possible. At that time, however, I had not worn the Gorean slave hood with gag-attachment.

Verr was roasted, and puddings made. Sa-Tarna bread was brought forth and heated. Sul paga poured freely.

At the height of the festivities the cage was opened and its occupant, a former free woman, whose name had been Melina, now a naked slave in sleen collar, was ordered forth on her hands and knees. A sleen leash was attached to her collar and she was marched, as a she-sleen, crawling, abused, to the rape-rack in which I had been earlier confined. Therein she was fastened, the beams locking her ankles and neck, and wrists, in place, and, as her left thigh was held by strong men, branded by the hand of Thurnus, caste leader of the village of Tabuk's Ford. She screamed wildly, branded, and, her thigh released, cleanly marked, moaned and twisted on the wood. Her head was then shaved. Then she wept, her head back, softly moaning, held in place by the heavy beams, forgotten, as men and women returned to their feasting.

At Thurnus's right hand sat Tup Ladletender. On Thurnus's left sat the free woman, Sandal Thong, whom he had earlier this afternoon freed. She, with the two sleen, had boldly aided him in circumventing the concerted attack of Bran Loort's cohorts when they had been individually bested. The feast was served by the village slave girls, Radish, Verr Tail and Turnip among them. I was not forced to serve. I lay near the rack on which the newly branded slave lay secured. After a time she was quiet. I could not conjecture the nature of her thoughts. It did not matter. They could only be those of a slave. She the proud, former mistress, was now no more than I, only another slave, at the full mercy of men.

She was now no more than I, nothing.

I looked upward, and saw dark clouds in the sky, racing across the faces of the moons.

There was a sense of moisture in the air.

This pleased me.

Thurnus, at the feast, stood up. He lifted a goblet of paga. Tup Ladletender," said he, "by the rite of the claws of sleen, is my brother. I lift my cup to him. Let us drink!" The villagers drank. Tup Ladletender rose to his feet. "You have shared with me tonight your paga and your kettle," said he. "I drink to the hospitality of Tabuk's Ford." There was a cheer. The villagers, and Thurnus, and Ladletender, drank. "And, too, this night," said Ladletender, "I drink to one with whom I do not share caste but that which is stronger than caste, the blood of brotherhood, Thurnus, he of Tabuk's Ford." There was another cheer. The villagers, all, drank. Thurnus stood up again. "I ask this free woman," said he, indicating Sandal Thong, "for whom I muchly care, to accept me in free companionship." There was a great cry of pleasure from the villagers.

"But Thurnus," said she, "as I am now free do I not have. the right to refuse?"

"True," said Thurnus, puzzled.

"Then, noble Thurnus," said she, evenly, calmly, "I do refuse. I will not be your companion."

Thurnus lowered the cup of paga. There was silence in the clearing.

Sandal Thong gently lowered herself to the ground, and lay on her belly before Thurnus. She took his right ankle in her hands and, holding it, pressed her lips softly down upon his foot, kissing it. She lifted her head, tears in her eyes. "Let me be instead your slave," she said.

"I offer you companionship," he said.

"I beg slavery," she said.

"Why?" he asked.

"I have been in your arms, Thurnus," she said. "In your arms I can be only a slave."

"I do not understand," he said.

"I would dishonor you," she said. "In your arms I can behave only as a slave."

"I see," said he, caste leader of Tabuk's Ford.

"The love I bear you, Thurnus," she said, "is not the love of a free companion, but a hopeless slave girl's love, a love so deep and rich that she who bears it can be only her man's slave."

"Serve me paga," said Thurnus. He handed the goblet to Sandal Thong.

She took it and knelt before him, head down, proffering him the goblet. Though she was free, she served as a slave. Villagers gasped. Free women cried out, scandalized.

Thurnus set aside the cup.

"Have rope brought, and collar me, Thurnus," she said. "I am yours."

"Bring rope," said Thurnus.

Rope was brought.

Thurnus took the rope, and regarded the girl.

She looked up at him.

"Collar me," she said.

"If I collar you," he said, "you are again a slave."

"Collar me, Master," she said.

Thurnus wrapped the rope twice about her throat, and knotted it.

Sandal Thong knelt before him, his slave. He seized her in his mighty arms and crushed her to him, raping her lips with the master's kiss, mighty in its lust and possession of the collared she, and she clutched him, helplessly, crying out. Her head was back, her lips were parted. He had begun to tear the tunic from her with his teeth. "Carry me from the light of the fire, Master," she begged. "But you are a slave," he laughed. He tore the garment from her and threw her between the feast fires. She looked up at him, her eyes wild with the passion-submission of the eager slave girl. "As master wills I" she cried, throwing her head and hair back in the dirt. He leaped to her and, between the feast fires, did lengthy ravishment upon her. Her cries must have carried beyond the palisaded walls.

When he returned to his place at the feast she crawled to his feet, his slave, and lay there, daring sometimes to touch him delicately on the thigh or knee with her fingers.

The feast continued late.

The clouds gathered further in the sky, and I smelled moisture. The moons were darkened by the skudding billows of vapor.

I think that I may have fallen asleep by the rack, from my exhaustion and the pain of the beatings and rapings that I had endured.

But it was still dark when I awakened. I awakened to the clear snap of slave bracelets on my wrists. I looked up. I looked into the eyes of Tup Ladletender. I regarded my wrists. They were confined in inflexible steel. "Get up," said he, "little vulo." I struggled to my feet. I stood there, my wrists closely cuffed before me, not more than an inch apart. "You are mine now, little vulo," he said.

"Master?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "You are mine now."

"Yes, Master," I said.

I felt very strange. So simply had I changed hands.

I looked about. The feast had finished, and most of the villagers had returned to their homes. Some lay about, near the embers of the fires.

We stood near the rack on which the new slave, she who had been the free woman, Melina, lay captive. Thurnus was nearby, and Sandal Thong, and Radish, Verr Tail and Turnip.

"I name you Melina," said Thurnus to the confined slave.

"Yes, Master," she said. He had much shamed her by giving her in slavery the name she had borne as a free woman. She wore it now as the cognomen of a slave.

"May a slave speak?" she asked.

"Yes," said Thurnus.

"Why have you had my head shaved?" she asked.

"To return you as a shamed slave to the village of your father," said he.

"Please keep me, Master," she said.

"Why?" he asked.

"That I may please you," she whispered.

"Strange words from one such as you," he scoffed.

"I beg to be kept to please my master," she said.

"Have you been bereft of your wits by the brand," inquired Thurnus.

"I only wanted to be the companion of a district leader," she said.

"You are now anyone's slave to whom I give or sell you," he said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

"I did not move to become district leader," said Thurnus, "for it was your urging and intent that I do so. Had I sought the position it would have seemed to all that I did so for your ambition and to avoid the lashing of your tongue."

She squirmed on the rape-rack, confined by the beams, in misery.

"In a man's own hut," said he, "he must be master, even though he has selected out for himself a companion. It is the part of his companion to befriend and aid him, not to insult and drive him."

"I was a poor companion," she whispered. "I will try to be a better slave."

"If I choose to seek the leadership of the district," said Thurnus, "I will do so. If I do not wish to do so, I will not."

"As Master wishes," said Melina, the slave.

"You knew little of the matters of being a companion," said Thurnus.

"I will study more diligently the matters of being a slave," said Melina.

"You will begin in the morning, when you are publicly whipped," he said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

He put his hand on her body.

"At one time you cared for me," she said.

"Yes," he said, "that is true."

"Do you find my body of interest, Master?" she asked.

"Yes," said Thurnus.

"And I am strong," she said. "I can pull a plow by myself."

Thurnus smiled.

"Keep me, Master," she begged.

"Why?" he asked.

"I love you," she said.

"You know the penalties for lying?" he asked.

"I do not lie, Master," she said. "I do love you." One of the penalties which may in a peasant village be inflicted upon a lying slave girl is to throw her alive to hungry sleen. I had little doubt but what Thurnus might do this if he caught one of his girls in a lie.

"How can that be?" asked Thurnus.

"I do not know," she whispered. "It is a strange, helpless feeling. I have lain here in the stocks. I have thought much."

"Tomorrow," said Thurnus, "you will have less time to think, and more time to work."

"Long ago I loved you," she said, "but as a free woman. Then, for years I did not love you, but despised you. Now again, after long years, I feel love for you, only now it is the shameful, helpless love of a bond girl for her master."

"In the morning you will be whipped," said Thurnus.

"Yes, Master," she said. She looked up at him. "You are strong," she said, "and masterful. You are a great man, whether you are a district leader or not. My freedom blinded me to your manhood and your worth. I saw you not for the things you were but for the things you might, enhancing my own person, become. I saw you not as a man but as an instrument of my own perceptions and ambitions. I regret that I did not, in my companionship, relish and celebrate what you were, rather than an image of what you might become. I never truly knew you. I knew only the image of my own invention. I never truly looked at you. Had I done so, I might have seen you."

"You were always a shrewd, clever woman," said Thurnus.

There were tears in her eyes. "I love you," she said.

"I am putting you out into the village as village slave," he said.

"Yes. Master," she said.

"At night you will be confined in a sleen cage. During the 'clay you will feed on what men will throw you. Each day you will serve a different hut in the village."

"Yes, Master," she said.

He looked down at her.

"May I speak?" she asked. "Yes," he said.

"May I not, too, sometimes serve my master?" she asked.

"Perhaps," said Thurnus. He made as though to turn away.

"Please, Master," said Melina.

He turned to face her.

"Please touch your slave," she said.

"It is long since you have asked my touch," said Thurnus, regarding her.

"I beg it, Master," she whispered. She lifted her body in the stock. "I beg it!"

We turned away as Thurnus, swiftly and brutally, raped the slave girl in the stock.

When he had finished with her she lay gasping, half shattered in the stock. "Oh, Master!" she cried. "Master," she whispered.

"Be silent, Slave," said Thurnus.

"Yes, Master," she said, and the girl in the sleen collar was silent.

I looked upon her. I suspected that never had Thurnus wed her with such authority and force. Years ago, doubtless, she had been loved with the gentle tenderness accorded to free women. This was the first time in her life, I suspected, that she had felt the uncompromising, unbridled lust that may be vented on the helpless body of a female slave. Never before had she had an experience like this. Never before had she been so had. She looked after Thurnus, startled, confused, awe-struck, bewildered, enraptured. I saw she wanted to cry out to him, to beg him to return to her, but she dared not, for she was under discipline. Morning would be time enough for her to be whipped.

Thurnus drew his tunic about him. He looked at me. Under the eyes of a free man, I knelt.

"I have given you to Tup Ladletender," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"He was promised you, in payment for the powder he gave to one in the village," said Thurnus. "The powder was used, though it did not have the effect that one in the village had intended. Accordingly, on behalf of one who was of the village, who can no longer transact the affairs of business, having fallen into the unfortunate state of slavery, I, on behalf of that person, tender you to him in payment for the powder."

"Yes, Master," I said. My fists clenched in the slave bracelets. I was tendered in payment for a small, worthless powder. I grew angry. Surely I was at least a few copper tarsks' worth of slave girl. "But the powder was worthless," I pouted.

"But so, too, are you, pretty little Dina," said Thurnus. He threw back his head and laughed.

"Yes, Master," I said, angrily.

He turned to Sandal Thong. "I pronounce you my preferred slave," said he. "You will sleep in my hut, and tend it."

"A slave is grateful," said she, "Master."

"Too," said he, "you are first girl."

"As Master wishes," she said.

Radish, Verr Tail and Turnip fled to her, hugging her and kissing her. "We are so happy for you," said Turnip.

"I am first girl," said Sandal Thong.

"I am so happy for you," said Radish.

"Fetch a switch," said Sandal Thong.

"Sandal Thong?" asked Radish, stunned.

"Fetch a switch," said Sandal Thong.

"Yes, Mistress," said Radish, hurrying away.

In a few moments Radish returned, carrying a switch, which she placed in the hands of Sandal Thong.

"Kneel," said Sandal Thong to the three girls. They knelt.

"In a straight line, four horts apart, facing the master," she said. She dressed their line. "Straight," she said. She kicked back Radish's knees. "Backs straight, hands on thighs, bellies sucked in, heads high," she sad. She tapped Verr Tail on the belly with her switch. Verr Tail sucked her belly in, tight. She tapped Turnip twice under the chin. Turnip lifted her chin. In their eyes I could read their distress. But they knelt beautifully under Sandal Thong's discipline.

"Here are your slaves, Master," she said to Thurnus.

"Excellent," said Thurnus. He looked upon the three girls. They dared not move a muscle. I had little doubt but that Sandal Thong would richly switch any of them who disobeyed in the least, or gave the least hint of disobedience. Thurnus grinned. He began to suspect the wonders that he would now have from these girls.

"You may cage them at your pleasure," he said.

"Yes, Master," said Sandal Thong. In her love for Thurnus she was determined that he would have the best from all his girls. Too, I had little doubt but that when it was the turn of the village slave, Melina, to serve the house of Thurnus that she, too, would fall under the same strict discipline. Sandal Thong, switch in hand, would see that Melina served her master to perfection.

"You may rise, Dina," said Tup Ladletender to me.

I rose, standing in close bracelets.

"You may bid your former cagemate farewell," said Sandal Thong.

Radish, Verr Tail and Turnip came to me and wished me well, hugging and kissing me. I, too, wished them well.

"Slaves to your cage," said Sandal Thong.

"We must go to our cage," said Radish to me. "I wish you well."

"I, too, wish you well," I said. "I wish you all well."

The three girls hurried to the cage. Sandal Thong, switch in hand, came to me. She hugged and kissed me. "I wish you well, Dina," she said.

"I, too, wish you well, Mistress," I said. I addressed her as mistress, for she was first girl.

Sandal Thong then turned and followed the other girls, to lock them in the cage for the night.

Thurnus came over to me and put his hand on my head, and shook it.

I looked at him, tears in my eyes.

"The village," said he, "is no place for you, little Dina. The days are too long and the work too hard." He looked at me. "You have the body of a pleasure slave," he said. "You belong at the feet of men."

"Yes, Master," I said.

"Come along, Slave," said Tup Ladletender, taking my arm.

He began to lead me away. I stopped, and turned, pulling against his arm.

"I wish you well, Master," I said to Thurnus.

"You cannot even pull a plow," he said.

"I make a very poor she-bosk," I said.

"You are not the she-bosk," he said, "but the meadow." I put my head down, reddening. It was not mine to plow, but to be plowed. "I wish you well, little slave," said Thurnus.

"Thank you, Master," I said.

I felt Tup Ladletender's band close more firmly on my arm. "Will it be necessary to beat you?" he asked.

"No, Master," I said, frightened, and hurried on beside him, his hand on my arm.

His cart, with the two large wheels, and the two long handles, was near the village gate.

The gate was opened for us by its tender.

I expected to be tied to the back of the wagon, that I might follow in its dust. To my surprise he placed me between the two handles. He removed the slave bracelets, putting them in a drawer in the side of the cart.

"I am too weak to draw the cart, Master," I told him.

He removed two pair of wrist rings and chains from another drawer. He locked one wrist ring from one pair on the left handle, and snapped its matching wrist ring on my left wrist. He then locked one wrist ring from the other pair on the cart's long right handle and snapped its mate about my right wrist. I was chained between the handles. There was about a foot of chain between each wrist ring locked on its handle and its matching ring which clasped my corresponding wrist.

"I cannot draw the cart, Master," I told him.

I cried out as the whip cut my back. I seized the handles and threw my weight against them, bent over, digging with my feet into the dirt.

"I cannot, Master!" I cried.

The whip struck me again.

I cried out with misery and drew the cart.

I pulled Tup Ladletender's cart through the gate and out onto the dusty road leading from Tabuk's Ford.

I felt a drop of rain. Then it began to fall lightly. I looked up. The billowing, skudding clouds were swift in the night. I could see the moons behind them. Then more rain splashed into the dust. I felt it on my hair and naked body. I pulled the cart. Then it began to pour, and I slipped in the mud. Ladletender helped, pushing, at the wheels and cart. At last we waited, standing in the driving rain. Then he removed me from between the handles, and, together, we sat beneath the cart.

"The drought is broken," said Tup Ladletender to me.

"Yes, Master," I said.

After a time I said, "May I have a candy, Master?" I had not forgotten the candy he had given me beneath the hut of Thurnus. How sweet and good it had been. It had been only a cheap hard candy but such things are rare in the lives of most slave girls. They are very precious.

"Do you want it very much?" asked Tup Ladletender.

"Yes, Master," I said.

He took me in his arms, and thrust me back to the mud between the wheels of the cart.

I looked up at him.

"Earn it," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said, reaching for him.

The rain drove down from the sweet dark sky in torrents. One could scarcely see the trees and road.