Tribesmen of Gor

26 The March

It was early morning.

I could hear the drums. The march was soon to begin. The kaiila shifted in the sand. Leather was looped and loosely knotted about the high pommel of my desert saddle. My boots were in the stirrups. The scimitar was at my side. I held the light lance of the Tahari, its butt in the stirrup sheath on my right.

I saw Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars, in swirling white, ride past. At his side, in the black kaffiyeh and white agal cording of the Aretai, rode Suleiman, high Pasha of that tribe, holder of the great kasbah at Nine Wells, master of a thousand lances. Behind Haroun rode Baram, sheik of Bezhad, his vizier. Behind Suleiman, on a swift kaiila, rode Shakar, with silver-tipped lance, a high captain of the Aretai.

I looked behind me, at the long lines of men. The sun was now striking the south wall of what had been the kasbah of Abdul, Ibn Saran, who had been the Salt Ubar. The line of march extended from this kasbah, across the desert, to the kasbah which had been once the holding of Tama, once a beautiful and proud desert chieftainess. It was at that kasbah that could be found the head of the march.

I saw the young khan of the Tajuks, in white turban, ride by, going to the rear of the columns. He was accompanied by twenty riders.

The march would proceed to Red Rock, thence to Two Scimitars, thence to Nine Wells, thence, by a major caravan route, to Tor. Different bodies of men would leave the march at various points, as tribesmen returned to their lands. Only some few hundred would journey as far as Tor, and those largely to conduct herded slaves to the fine markets of that city, which is the Tahari clearing house for slaves to be sold north. Already word had been sent ahead to Tor that preparations be made. Cages must be scheduled, chains forged, slave meal garnered. For the female slaves cosmetics and perfumes must be anticipated.

Arrangements must be made for auction houses. Dates must be set. Advance publicity is particularly important. The sale must be widely and thoroughly advertised, in many cities. Before the first girl, barefoot, nude, ascends the block, to be sold, much must be done. A great deal of planning, and organization and hard work must take place before she lifts her head to the buyers, looking out upon them, one of whom will own her, and she bears the first call of the auctioneer, he lifting his coiled whip behind her, “What am I bid?”

In the march were Kavars, Ta`Kara, Bakahs, Char, Kashani, Aretai, Luraz, Tashid, Raviri, Ti, Zevar, Arani and, holding the position of the rear guard, with black lances, Tajuks.

In the march were hundreds of pack kaiila, many carrying water.

The tempo of the drums increased, indicating that the time for the beginning of the march would be soon.

The sun was now full on the south wall of what had been the kasbah of Abdul, Ibn Saran, the Salt Ubar.

A dozen kaiila moved past in stately line, laden with water.

Some six hundred women had been taken in the two kasbahs, all female slaves.

Some fifteen hundred men, who had surrendered, now wore the chains of slaves.

The men would march toward the rear of the columns, before the rear guard. The women, for there were insufficient wagons or kaiila for them, would march, in separate groups of fifty, within the columns amid toward their center. They were more valuable than the men. Each female slave group was a fifty bracelet coffle.

I moved the kaiila over to regard the female slave groups, which stood at the wall, not yet herded to their places in the columns. Each girl was fastened by the left wrist, in wrist coffle in her group. Each girl was separated by some five feet of light, gleaming chain. It was not a heavy chain to carry. As I moved the kaiila slowly along the line of chained girls, to examine them, the leather, looped and knotted about the pommel of my saddle, grew taut. It led to the crossed, bound wrists of the girl I had tethered to the pommel. She had ten feet of tether. She followed.

The feet of the women had been bound in leather. They stood ankle deep in the sand. Later, when the sun was high, sheets would be thrown over them, to protect their eves from the glare, their bodies from the sun. The sheet is placed over the head, completely, so that the girl cannot see. Then, with a piece of string, looped twice about her neck and tied snugly, it is held in place. This is inferior, of course, to moving a woman in a sheltered slave wagon or in a kurdah.

The sheets, of course, had not yet been placed.

The girls stood straight, proud under the gaze of a warrior. “Tal, Master,” said many of them, as I rode slowly by. “Buy me in Tor, Master,” called another. One girl, in the fourth group, pressed out from the others, her left wrist behind her, held by the chain. She pressed her face against the left forequarter of my kaiila and, turning looked up at me, her face tear-stained. It was Tafa. I recalled her from the dungeon in what had been the kasbah of Ibn Saran, the morning before I had begun the march to Klima. She was a good wench. I moved the kaiila on. Zina, who had been taken with Tafa in a caravan raid by Hassan, the bandit, had not been at the two kasbahs in the desert. We did not know to whom she had been sold. We did not know at whose feet she knelt.

Toward the beginning of the fourth group I saw another girl I remembered. She turned away, trying to hide her face. I stopped the kaiila. Sensing that I had stopped, she fell to her knees and faced me, her head down. “Forgive me, Master,” she whispered. “Look at me, Slave, Girl,” I told her. She looked up, frightened. It was Zaya, the red-haired girl, who had served sugars with the black wine in the palace of Suleiman Pasha. She had testified against me at Nine Wells.

“Do you recall,” I asked, “who it was who struck Suleiman Pasha?”

“Hamid!” she wept. “Hamid, lieutenant to Shakar, captain of the Aretai!”

“Your memory has improved,” I congratulated her. From my saddlebags I threw her a candy.

“Are you not angry with me, Master?” she asked. “No,” I said.

She thrust the candy in her mouth. I moved the kaiila on.

Hamid was not chained with the male prisoners. He had been taken to a remote Aretai oasis. There, in this exile, he would be a slave.

In the second group from the front I passed two women I had earlier met, Lana, the tall girl, who had been the seraglio mistress in the kasbah of Tama, and the other girl, who had served with her, in charge of the oils of the bath. They stood proudly, as chained slave girls. Their utility in the seraglio terminated by myself and Hassan, Tarna had, in fury, sent them to the lowest levels of her kasbah, to serve there as wench sport for her soldiers. Little did they know but their proud mistress, whom they had never seen had recently, as they had, now, too, a rightless slave girl, served men, she herself richly yielding rude soldiers delicious wench sport.

“Tal, Master,” they said to me.

“Tal, Slave Girls,” I said to them.

I moved the kaiila on. The male slaves of the seraglio had been freed. They were to be given money and safe conduct to Tor. They, though afoot, joined the march.

One exception had Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars, made. “That one,” he had said, sitting in court, in the audience chamber of what had been the kasbah of Ibn Saran, indicating the silken fellow who had worn the ruby necklace, who had tried to betray us to the guards of Tarna, “that one sell in Tor-sell him to a woman.” The fellow had been dragged away. He was with the male slaves toward the rear of the column; he alone among them was not stripped; he wore his seraglio silk, the ruby necklace; they did not look pleasantly upon him.

At the first group of fifty girls, nude, waiting in wrist coffle, I stopped. She was the twenty-third girl from the first girl on the line.

Her left wrist behind her, held by the chain to her sisters in bondage, she stepped forth. She put her head to my stirrup, not looking up. I felt her press her lips deeply, fervently, to my boot.

She looked up then, tears in her eyes.

“My thanks,” she whispered, “Master.”

“You are in the first group, twenty-third girl,” I said. “I hear among the men that you are quite good.”

“A girl is grateful,” she said, “if men should find her pleasing.

I made as though to ride from her. Her small right hand was at the stirrup. Her left hand was behind her, locked in its bracelet.

“I am not the same as a man,” she said, looking up.

“Obviously,” I said, looking on her stripped slave beauty.

“I am different,” she said. She looked up. “I love being different,” she whispered.

I nodded.

“I love men,” she said. “They are so strong, so magnificent. I love being commanded by them. I love obeying them. I love knowing that if I displease them in the slightest, I will be whipped or slain. I had not known such feelings were possible.”

I regarded the girl in her rapture. How thrilled she was to discover the deliciousness of her own domination by men. Women desire male domination. Not receiving it they become petty, frustrated, competitive, hostile, and vicious, a function of this basic need having failed to be satisfied. The institution of female slavery in a society provides a vehicle for the expression and satisfaction of this basic need. The slave girl, of course, is completely and totally at the mercy of men. She is the most dominated of women. Further, her domination is supported by her civilization; it is legally binding and culturally sanctioned; it is complete; she sees it in the eyes of all who took upon her, it is complete, she is slave.

“I love being a slave,” said the girl, looking up at me.

“Kneel,” I told her.

“Yes, Master,” she said. She knelt. I lifted the single rein of the kaiila. I set my heels to touch its flanks, to move ahead in the line of march.

“Master,” said the girl.

“Yes,” I said.

“May I speak?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Will I be sold in Tor,” she asked.

“Yes I told her. “You will be sold nude in Tor, from a slave block.”

“To whom will I be sold?” she asked.

“A Master.” I said. Then I kicked the kaiila in the flanks and moved ahead. The leather at the pommel of my saddle grew taut as I pulled with me, stumbling, the girl I had tethered there. Behind me, kneeling in the sand, in wrist coffle, fastened, to others, on each side of her, I left a nameless slave beauty, who once had been Tarna.

It would be time enough in Tor, for her to have a name. She would receive it from her master. It would be whatever he wished. It is useful for a slave to have a name. It makes it easier to summon and command her.

I looked at the girl tethered to my saddle. Of all the slave girls about, save one in a white kurdah, near the bead of the march, she was the only one who was clothed. Her neck was encircled by a band of steel, the slave collar. It was no longer that of Ibn Saran; it wore the name of Hakim of Tor. That was who the girl belonged to. Tight leather bound her wrists; her tether led to my saddle, The garment she wore was incredibly brief, a rag, it was of brown rep-cloth, stained with grease and dirt; I had found it in the kitchens of Ibn Saran; it had been used in the cleaning of pans; I had ripped it at the neck: I had torn it, lengthily, on the left side, to reveal the marvelous curve from her left breast to her left hip; let men look upon her beauty; it would be as public as I cared to make it, for she was my slave.

After she had falsely testified against me at Nine Wells, she had smiled, slyly, in triumph, pleased with her work, pleased that I would be sent to the brine pits of Klima; I had escaped from Nine Wells, but, recaptured, was enchained, destined for Klima; I well recalled her elation, her contempt, her scorn, as she had looked down upon me, helpless in the chain; she had flung me a token, something by which to remember her, a bit of slave silk, redolent with slave perfume; she had flung me a kiss, laughing, before being ordered back to her barred alcove by the slave master who at that time was supervising her.

I would not forget pretty Vella. Now I owned her. She had begged me to forgive her, as though a word from me would make all things right. When she had been flung to the feet of Hakim of Tor, she had looked up, in terror, then joy, seeing then who was Hakim of Tor, the master to whom I had consigned her, myself.

“Do not rise, Slave Girl,” I told her.

“Am I forgiven, Tarl?” she bad begged. “Am I forgiven?”

“Fetch the whip,” I told her.

I saw T`Zshal, who was riding past, leading his thousand lances. He reined in, and his men behind him.

“We are returning, to Klima,” he said.

“But you have kaiila,” I said.

“We are slaves of the salt, slaves of the desert,” he said. “We return to Klima.”

“The Salt Ubar is gone,” I said.

“We will negotiate with local pashas and regulate the desert, and discuss the prices of the varieties of salt,” said T`Zshal.

“The price of salt will soon rise,” I suggested.

“It is not impossible,” said T`Zshal.

I wondered if it were wise to have armed the men of Klima and put them in the saddles of kaiila. They were not typical men. There was none there who had not survived the march to Klima.

“Should you ever need aid,” said T`Zshal, “send word to Klima. The slaves of the salt will ride.”

“My thanks,” I said. They would be fierce allies. They were desperate and mighty men. Each there had made the march to Klima.

“Things now,” I said, “I conjecture, will change at Klima.” I recalled that Hassan had warned me against taking a bit of silk, perfumed, into Klima. I had hidden it in the crusts. “Men would kill you for it,” he said.

T`Zshal looked about himself. Slave girls, in coffle, shrank back.

“We will need taverns, cafes, at Klima,” he said. “The men have been too long without recreation.”

“With control of much salt,” I said, “you may have much what you wish.”

“We shall confederate the salt districts,” said T`Zshal.

“You are indeed ambitious,” I said. T’Zshal, I saw, was a leader.

Haroun, sitting in court, in what had been the audience room of the kasbah of Ibn Saran, had invited T’Zshal, and his lances, to join his service. T`Zshal and the others had refused. “We will return to Klima, said he, “Master.” T’Zshal, I knew, would serve under no man. “I would rather be first at Klima than second in Tor,” he had said. He was a slave, true, but of no man, only of the salt, and the desert.

“I wish you well,” said T`Zshal.

“I wish you well,” I said.

His kaiila, with a scattering of sand, sped from me. He was followed by a thousand riders.

I rode, slowly, toward the head of the columns, across the desert between the two kasbahs.

Some two hundred yards from the head of the, column, I passed the small Abdul, who had been a water carrier in Tor, and an agent of Ibn Saran. It was not impossible, through his work with Ibn Saran, that he knew matters of importance pertaining to the wars of Priest-Kings and Kurii. Two chains ran to his metal collar, on opposite sides, leading, respectively, to the stirrup of a mounted rider on each side of him. His hands were manacled to a loop of chain about his waist. He did not raise his head. He feared to look me in the face. “Let him be sent to Tor,” I had suggested. “I will have agents of Samos, of Port Kar, sent to that city.” It will be done,” had said Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars. The agents of Samos have interesting techniques of interrogation. I had no doubt that they would learn all that small Abdul had to tell them. After that, no longer of use to the agents of Priest-Kings, he could be sold south, into the Tahari.

Some hundred yards from the bead of the column, I passed a large white kurdah, on a large, black kaiila. I did not brush aside the curtain. It did not contain a girl I owned. It contained a slave girl, an exquisitely feminine girl, blond-haired and blue-eyed; she was richly veiled and bejeweled; it was said she was the preferred slave of the great Haroun himself, high Pasha of the Kavars; it was said her name was Alyena; she was of high station; she wore silks, and veils, and jewels; but the collar on her throat was of steel.

In what had been the kasbah of Ibn Saran she had been thrown naked to the foot of the dais on which, cross-legged, sat the great Haroun himself. She had not dared to raise her head. “I will keep this slave,” he had said. She had been dragged away, weeping. “I am the slave of Hassan,” she had wept. “I love only him!” That night, sent to his quarters; she had knelt before her veiled master.

“Do you love another, Girl?” he had asked, sternly.

“Yes,” she said, “Master. Forgive me. Slay me, if you must.”

“And who is he?” asked her veiled master.

“Hassan,” she wept. “Hassan, the bandit.”

“A most splendid fellow,” said her master.

The girl looked up, startled. His veil was about his shoulders.

“Hassan!” she wept. “Hassan!” She threw herself to his feet, covering them with kisses as a slave girl.

When she looked up, he commanded her to the couch. She ran eagerly to it, tearing the slave silks with which she had been adorned from her body, and knelt upon it, small, her head down, awaiting her master. He joined her, discarding his robes. Then he seized her by the hair and pulled her head up and flung her on her back to the depth of the luscious silk, and then, with the cruel exploitativeness of the Tahari master, he claimed her as his own.

Toward morning he reminded her that she must be whipped three times. First, she had called out his name at Red Rock, among the flames, during the raid of Tarna’s men; secondly, she had fled from his riders, to return to Red Rock, to seek him out, when she had been captured; third, she had, that very evening, upon discovering who might be her master, cried out his name, “Hassan! Hassan!”

“Whip me, Master,” she said, lying in his arms. “I love you.

“Am I forgiven, Tarl?” Vella had begged. “Am I forgiven?”

“Fetch the whip,” I had told her.

She looked at me, dumbfounded. Women of Earth are always forgiven. They are never punished, no matter what they do. They, of course, are not slave girls.

They lack the legalities, and the collar.

“You cannot be serious,” she said.

“Did I not speak of this to you when I first bound you as a slave girl?” I asked. I referred to our conversation in the room of preparation, when I had first surprised and captured her, making her mine.

“I asked when you would whip me,” she said, numbly. “You responded, when it was to your convenience.” She looked at me, miserably.

“It is now convenient,” I told her.

She sprang wildly to her feet. “I hate you!” she cried. “I hate you!”

Her small fists were clenched. She was, wild with rage, quite beautiful in the brief, stained rag I had given her to wear.

“I hate you!” she cried. “I hate all of you!’’ she cried, turning to look at the many warriors in the great room. “I hate men!” she cried. She was barefoot on the tiles. She was the only woman in the room, and she was slave. “I hate all men!” she cried. “I hate them! I hate them!” She spun to face me. “And I hate Priest-Kings, too!” she cried. “I hate you all!”

No one responded to her, but gazed impassively upon her.

“I betrayed Priest-Kings!” she cried. “Yes! I served Kurii! Yes! And I am glad I did, glad! Yes, glad! Glad! Glad!” Her eyes blazed. “Punish me!” she demanded.

“You are not to be punished because you betrayed Priest-Kings,” I told her.

“You left me in a paga tavern in Lydius,” she cried out, “a chained paga slave!”

“You chose to flee the Sardar,” I told her. “It was a brave act. It did not turn out well for you. You fell slave. On Gor, as not on Earth, a girl bears the consequences of her actions.”

“You could have purchased me”‘ she cried.

“Yes,” I said, “you were within my means.”

“But you did not do so!” she cried.

“It did seem convenient to me, at that time,” I said, “to purchase you, to keep you as a slave.”

“As a slave!” she cried. “You should have freed me!”

“As I recall,” I said, “you begged to be freed.”

“Yes!” she cried.

The men in the room looked at one another.

“I had not known, until that time,” I said, “that you were, in the belly of you, a true slave girl.”

She looked at me, angrily. She turned red.

On Gor it is said that only a true slave begs to be freed. That act, incontrovertibly, on Gor, more deeply than a brand and a collar, marks the individual as a true slave. Who but such a true slave would beg to be freed?

Such individuals, of course, are never freed, but, commonly, their nature now being made undeniably clear, are put under heavier restraints and treated more harshly. When Talena, the daughter of Marlenus of Ar, Ubar of Ar, had, in a missive to him, begged her freedom, he had, on his sword and on the medallion of Ar, sworn against her the oath of disownment. As a consequence, she was no longer of high birth, no longer his daughter. I had had Samos free her and transmit her to Ar. There she lived, free but of no status; she was no longer recognized, in the sight of its Home Stone, as a citizen of Ar; she had not even the collar of a slave girl for her identity; she was kept sequestered by Marlenus in the central cylinder, that his shame not be publicly displayed upon the high bridges of the city.

“No!” cried the girl. “You should have freed me!”

I looked at her, in her rage. I did not suppose she had acted much differently than would have many women. The Goreans believe, of course, that in the belly of every woman there is a slave girl, waiting to be revealed by the right master.

“You should have freed me!” she cried. “You should have freed me!”

I looked at her, in her rage, her beauty, her clenched fists, the brief, revealing rag.

“You are too beautiful to be free,” I told her.

She reacted as though struck.

She looked about, at the men in the room, clad in the garb of the Tahari. They looked upon her. She shuddered, knowing that among them she was too beautiful to be free.

She turned again to face me. She drew herself up. “I am pleased I identified you for Ibn Saran,” she said. “I am pleased that I testified against you at Nine Wells. Punish me.”

“You are not to be punished because you identified me for Ibn Saran,” I said, “nor because you testified against me at Nine Wells.”

She looked at me, furious.

“Were you not commanded by your Master, Ibn Saran, to so testify?” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“You were a good slave girl. You are to be commended,” I said.

“Throw her a candy,” I said to one of the men.

He did so.

“Eat it,” I told Vella.

She did so.

“You are to be punished,” I said, “and punished only, because you, a slave girl, have not been found pleasing.”

She looked at me with horror.

“For so little?” she said.

I gestured to a man, an Aretai, in white burnoose, with black kafflyeh and white agal cording, who stood nearby. He tossed a Gorean slave whip to the tiles, some twenty feet from the girl.

She looked at the whip in disbelief. Earth women, no matter what they do, are never punished. She could not believe that she was to be treated as a Gorean slave girl.

“Fetch the whip,” I told her.

She stood straight. “Never!” she cried. “Never! Never!”

“Bring a sand glass,” I said, “of one Ehn’s sand.” It was brought. The Gorean day consists of twenty Ahn; the Gorean Ahn, or hour, of forty Ehn, or minutes; the Ehn consists of eighty Ihn, or seconds. An Ihn is slightly less than an Earth second.

The glass was inverted.

She looked at it. “You can never make me do this,” she said, “Tarl.”

She watched the sand slip through the glass. She turned to face me. “I’m pleased that I betrayed Priest-Kings. I’m pleased that I served Kurii I’m pleased that I identified you for Ibn Saran. I’m pleased that I testified against you at Nine Wells! Do you understand? Pleased!”

A quarter of the sand had slipped through the glass.

“You did not free me in Lydius. You kept me a slave!” she cried petulantly.

The sand had now slipped half through the glass. She looked about, from face to face, finding in them no sign of emotion, and then again she faced me.

“Of course I smiled at Nine Wells,” she cried. “I wanted you sent to Klima! I wanted you sent there! Vengeance was sweet! Only you escaped! Of course I mocked you from the window of the kasbah of Ibn Saran! There would be no women at Klima! Of course in insolence I hurled you a bit of perfumed silk, to torment you in the march and, later, at Klima. Of course I lightly blew you a kiss of farewell, delighted in my triumph over you! Of course! Of course! Yes, yes, I mocked you when you were helpless! It gave me much pleasure to do so!”

There was only a quarter of the sand remaining. She looked at it, miserably.

She turned to me again. “I was cruel and petty, Tarl,” she said. “Forgive me!”

The sand was almost slipped from the glass.

“I am a woman of Earth,” she cried. “Of Earth!” Such women, of course, were never punished, no matter what they did. They were always forgiven. “Forgive me, Tarl!” she cried. “Forgive me!”

But she was a Gorean slave girl.

“Never will I fetch the whip!” she cried.

Then, crying out with misery, frightened, a moment before the sand slipped from the glass, she turned toward the whip.

“In the fashion of the Tahari,” I told her.

She moaned, and fell to her hands and knees. The men, impassively, watched her go to the whip and pick it up, in her teeth.

“Put the whip down,” I told her.

She put the whip down, dropping it from her teeth. She looked at me, joyfully.

“Kneel,” I told her. She did so, puzzled. “Strip,” I told her, “without rising to your feet.” She did so, angrily, slipping the tiny, torn rag over her head and putting it to one side. She shook her hair; she straightened her body. A murmur of appreciation coursed through the men in the room. Then one, in Gorean fashion, struck his left shoulder, and then the others. She knelt, straight, while men applauded the beauty of her. How proud she was! How fantastically beautiful are women! And I owned her.

“Tie your garment about your right ankle,” I told her. She did this, sitting, and then, again, knelt.

“Now pick up the whip again,” I said, “in your teeth.” She did so.

She did not wear a collar. I had had that of Ibn Saran removed. I would put her in one of mine later. She was naked except that about her right ankle was tied a rag, and, strangely perhaps, about her left wrist was knotted a bit of bleached slave silk.

She looked at me, the whip in her teeth.

“Now go to your former slave alcove to be beaten,” I told her.

She left the room, a slave girl on her way to discipline.

I turned to one of the men nearby. “Be as her caller and guard,” I said to him.

He nodded, and, bending down, picked up a strap which lay nearby. “I shall come presently,” I told him. He acknowledged this. He left the room, following the girl.

A guard is not used in such cases to prevent the escape of the girl, for, in such a situation, in a house or kasbah, there is no escape for her. He serves to protect her, interestingly, from other slave girls. The strap or coiled rope be carries is used less often to hasten, in a humiliating fashion, a girl who might otherwise dally on the way to discipline, though it may serve this purpose, than it is to drive other girls from her. Such a strap or rope, of course, can sting hotly through slave silk. She is very vulnerable, you see, the girl who is to be punished, on the way to discipline. She is naked; she is not permitted to rise; she may not even speak, for the whip must be held between her teeth; to drop it is twenty extra lashes. Resentments, jealousies, petty feuds, enemities, are common among female slaves. Particularly is there jealousy and hatred for the most beautiful slaves, or for the highest slaves. Such a girl, on her way to discipline, is a delight to those who hate and envy her, and who would be only too pleased to take this opportunity to jeer and abuse her, sometimes cruelly and physically. Although many girls in the kasbah were chained here and there for the pleasures of men’ most were freed of impediments, that they might fetch and serve, and be seized when and wherever the men might want them. These, in the halls, would constitute a genuine danger to Vella, who, a high slave, had been the object of much envy. How pleased they would be to see proud Vella crawling in the halls to her discipline. The second reason a man accompanies the girl is to be the caller. He performs what is spoken of sometimes as the whip song, though it is not a song, but rather a series of calls or announcements.

These summon other girls to witness one of their sisters on the way to discipline. “Here is a girl who has not been fully pleasing,” cries the man.

“Look upon her. She is going to discipline. She was not completely pleasing. See her! Come, witness a girl who has not been fully pleasing!” These cries bring the other girls, with their burdens, and such, to watch the progress through the halls of the girl who is to be punished. Soon a derisive, moving gauntlet is formed, through which, constantly, the miserable, whip-bearing girl crawls. She is spat upon, and struck, with hands and straps, and kicked, and much abused, but, of course, only within those limits set by the caller and guard. This sort of thing is thought desirable in the Tahari, in encouraging the whipbearing girl to be more dutiful in the future, and the girls of the gauntlet to resolve, too, to be more dutiful, that it not be they, next, at the mercy of their enemies and rivals, who carries the whip. The actual whipping in the Tahari, incidentally, is usually a matter between the girl and the master, or he and his men. Other girls are seldom permitted to watch one of their sisters being whipped. All they know, when the doors close, is that she will be whipped.

I found the girl kneeling before the small iron gate of her former slave alcove.

The guard, having accompanied her to the quarters for female slaves, which were now empty, the girls being elsewhere, serving men, had left her there. We were alone in the large, beautiful, tiled, pillared room. She looked at me. I took the whip from her teeth and thrust it in my sash.

“Remove the rag from your right ankle,” I told her. She did this, and put it to one side.

She had come through the corridors from the audience chamber on her hands and knees, carrying the whip, head down, in her teeth, between two lines, moving with her, of slave girls, girls running, when she had crawled by them, to be again at the head of the line, to have again their lashing stroke, their cry or jeer.

I threw her a towel that she might wipe her body and long, swirling dark hair, cleaning it. She did so, gratefully. I saw that she had been much struck and abused. The girls had had much sport with her as she had crawled, helpless, to her discipline. Vella was obviously the object of much hostility among the other slave girls. She was apparently much resented and hated. Vella was too beautiful, I supposed, to be popular with women. The very beauty, which made her prized among men, would make her an object of hostility and loathing among women. A beauty like Vella on Gor bad little choice but to relate to men, and, of course, she a slave, on their terms. Too, she had been a high slave, much above the other girls, now fallen far below them, now a fit object for their abuse and scorn, to be tempered only to the degree to which they were willing to feel the flash of the guard’s strap through their silk. She looked at me, tears in her eyes.

“Tarl?” she asked.

She moved toward me, and slipped to her feet, encircling my body with her small arms. About her left wrist, knotted, was the bleached silk from Klima. She put her head against my shoulder, and then lifted it, softly kissing me. She was a very delicious and beautiful naked slave. “I love you, Tarl,” she said.

“Give me your left wrist,” I said.

She extended her left wrist to me. I removed from it the silk from Klima. I put it in my sash.

“I did not realize until now your plan,” she said, “to pretend to make me your slave, to fool the others.” She looked about. “We are alone.” she smiled.

I opened the small square gate in the alcove, set in the bars, some ten inches from the floor. The opening is about eighteen inches square.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

I would use a standard Tahari tie.

“Tarl?” she asked.

The door is opened that the girl’s beauty not he hurt against the closed bars of the tiny gate.

“Oh!” she cried. I thrust her, holding her by her arms from behind, on her knees, belly tight, against the flat iron piece over which the door swings, in closing. Her knees were thus through the bars, on the inside of the cell. With a length of binding fiber, about her knees and behind and over the bars I secured her in position. She could not fall backwards. I then took her wrists up, one at a time, she, startled, not resisting, and tied them, on the outside, each to a separate bar, on either side of the small iron gate. “Tarl!” she said. She can grasp the bar with her small hand.

I regarded her.

“Tarl,” she said, “you need not carry your plan so far. We shall not be surprised. Girls will not be permitted to return here until the earliest hours of the morning. We shall not be surprised. It is not necessary to fasten me like this, so helplessly.”

I said nothing. How foolish I thought her. But she was, of course, a woman of Earth.

“Enough of this joke,” she said, irritably. “Release me, now! Now!”

But she did not find herself released.

“Tarl,” she said. The right side of her face was pressed against the flat iron bar, some two inches high, at the top of the opening, against which the gate, when closed, rests. “Do you realize what you have done?”

“What?” I asked.

“You have put me in Tahari whipping position,” she said.

“Oh?” I said.

“It is degrading,” she said. “Release me, immediately!” She squirmed. She was helpless, warrior-tied. “Immediately!” she said. “Immediately!”

But she was not released.

I took the whip from my sash.

“You will not truly strike me with the whip, will you?” she asked. She spoke to me, her head turned, over her left shoulder. “I am a woman of Earth,” she said.

“You cannot treat me like a mere Gorean slave girl. You know you cannot do it!”

I opened the whip, letting the broad, soft leather fall loose.

“We are alone here,” she said. “None will know whether you strike me or not. You need not strike me. You may simply say that you did. I shall, in the deception, corroborate your story. The charade that you would keep me as a slave need not now be prolonged.” She tried to turn her head, to look at me. But she could not see me. “Surely you have no intention of making we a true slave, for you are only of Earth,” she laughed. “Only of Earth!” Then she said, “Release me, now! I demand it! You are only of Earth! Only of Earth! I simply demand to be released, Tarl! Now! Now!”

I said nothing.

She did not find herself released.

“None will know if you do not whip me,” she said.

“I will know,” I told her. “And one other, too, will know.”

“Who?” she asked.

“The pretty little she-animal and slave, Vella,” I said.

Her fists clenched in the bindings.

“You may call me Elizabeth,” she said.

“Who is she?” I asked.

“Oh, Tarl,” she scolded.

I smiled. Did she not know there was no Elizabeth unless a master chose to call her by that name?

She spoke more confidently now. “I am a woman of Earth,” she said. “It is not necessary to beat a woman of Earth to teach her a lesson, should that be perhaps, amusing and preposterous though it is, what is in your mind. She, Tarl, is not an animal who must be whipped. She is a person. She is not a mere Gorean girl, a simple, vital, half-animal thing. She is a person! A true person! I have learned my lesson, Tarl. I am truly sorry. I was cruel and petty. I know! I am sorry. I have learned my lesson. It will not be necessary to beat me.” She smiled. “Untie me, Tarl,” she said. “Untie me now.”

I stepped to the bars.

“Thank you, Tarl,” she said. But I did not untie her. I held the bit of bleached slave silk, removed from my sash, over her nose and mouth. She could breathe easily through it, and speak through it. But she could not breathe or speak without feeling it, without inhaling and taking into her very body the faint, lingering traces of slave perfume, hers, which yet clung to it. Suddenly her voice, her lips moving beneath the silk, became less certain. “I am not a Gorean girl,” she said, “fit for physical discipline. I am not one of those animals who understands only the whip.”

I replaced the bit of silk in my sash. I stepped back.

“I am a woman of Earth!” she cried. Her small hands, wrists warrior-tied to the bars, clenched the bars in terror. She turned her head again, desperately, trying to look at me. She could not see me. “Tarl!” she cried. “Tarl?”

I swung back the whip.

“You will not punish me as a Gorean slave girl!” she cried.

“You have not been pleasing,” I said.

After the fourth stroke she screamed out, weeping, “I have been punished! Stop!

Stop! A girl has been punished! Stop!” After the sixth stroke she cried out, “Please stop, I beg of you, Master!”

Twenty strokes did I give the slave girl. Then I untied her from the bars. She fell to the tiles before me, reaching for my ankles, pressing her lips, hot and wet, to my boots, her tears hot on the leather. “What are you?” I asked. “A Gorean slave girl at the feet of her master,” she said.

“I have not begun to punish you,’’ I told her. She looked at me with fear, and wonder. I tied her small garment, which I picked up from the floor, about her neck, and her hands behind her back. I strode through the halls, she, stumbling, running, following me. Outside, I untied her, and then retied her, belly up, head down, over the saddle of a kaiila, and took her to the nearby kasbah, which had once been that of Tarna. There I took her down to the fourth level, the lowest level, and, throwing the tiny garment into a cell, whence it would be retrieved later, I took her to the branding chamber, threw her into the device, and locked it on her thigh. Hassan was there and the iron was already hot. It was the same iron with which he had, the night before, marked the proud Tarna.

It had been cleaned, with a solvent. One iron, properly cared for, can mark thousands of women. “No, Master,” she said, “please!” “Do you wish to mark her?” asked Hassan. “Yes,” I said. I would place the mark on her left thigh, above that of the four bosk horns. It would be the common Gorean female slave mark, fitting for a low girl, such as she, one who had not been fully pleasing.

I held up the iron, white hot, for the girl’s inspection.

“You will soon be branded, Girl.” I told her.

“Don’t brand me!” she cried. “Please don’t brand me!” She wept.

Hassan regarded her with interest.

“We are now ready,” I told her.

She looked at me, then at the glowing, white-hot marking surface of the iron.

She watched it with horror, as it approached her.

I held it poised at her thigh.

“Don’t!” she cried. “Don’t!”

“You are now to be branded, Slave Girl,” I told her. “No,” she screamed. Then I branded her. For five long Ihn I held the iron, pressing it in. I watched it sink in her thigh, smoking and crackling and hissing. It was a larger brand than that of the four bosk horns; I made sure it marked her more deeply. We three, Hassan, I and the girl, smelled the marked, burned slave flesh of her. Then, swiftly, cleanly, I withdrew it. Her head was back. She was screaming and weeping. “A perfect brand,” said Hassan, looking on. “Perfect!” I was pleased.

Such a brand would be envied by other girls. It would improve the sleek little animal’s value.

I removed the locking device, and spun loose the twist handles, releasing her thigh. I freed her of the snap bracelets. I carried her, naked, branded, weeping, to the small cell where I had thrown her tiny garment, to be retrieved later. I put her down on the straw. Her throat was bare, for I had had, the preceding night, the collar of Ibn Saran removed from her throat.

“Assume the posture of female submission,” I told her. She did so, kneeling back on her heels, her arms extended, wrists crossed, her head between them, down.

She was weeping.

“Repeat after me,” I told her, “‘I, once Miss Elizabeth Cardwell, of the planet Earth-’ “ “I, once Miss Elizabeth Cardwell of the planet Earth-” she said.

“ ‘-herewith submit myself, completely and totally, in all things-’“ “-herewith submit myself, completely and totally, in all things-” she said.

“-to he who is now known here as Hakim of Tor-”‘

“-to he who is now known here as Hakim of Tor-” she said.

“ ‘-his girl, his slave, an article of his property, his to do with as he pleases-’ “ “-his girl, his slave, an article of his property, his to do with as he pleases,” she said.

Hassan handed me the collar. It was inscribed ‘I am the property of Hakim of Tor’. I showed it to the girl. She could not read Taharic script. I read it to her. I put it about her neck. I snapped it shut.

“ ‘I am yours, Master,’ “ I said to the girl.

She ‘looked up at me, tears in her eyes, her neck in my locked collar. “I am yours, Master,” she said.

“Congratulations on your slave!” said Hassan. `She is lovely meat. Now I must attend to my own slave.” He laughed, and left.

The girl sank to the straw, and looked up at me. Her eyes were soft with tears.

She whispered. “I am yours now, Tarl,” she said.

“You own me. You truly own me.”

“What is your name?” I asked.

“What ever master wishes,” she whispered.

“I will call you ‘Vella’,” I said.

“I am Vella,” she said, her head down. After a time she lifted her head. “May I call you Tarl?” she asked.

“Only if given permission,” I told her. This was normal Gorean slave custom.

Generally, of course, such permission is not even asked, and, if asked, would be denied. Sometimes a girl is whipped for even daring to ask this permission.

“A girl asks permission to call her Master by his name,” she said.

“It is denied,” I said.

“Yes, Master,” she said. I would not permit the slave girl to speak my name. It is not fitting that the name of the master be soiled by being touched by the lips of a slave girl.

I looked at her in the straw. “You were displeasing,” I told her.

“A girl has been punished by her master,” she said.

I took the chain and collar in the cell, and locked it on her throat, over her close-fitting steel collar, that identifying her as mine. She was, thus, chained to the wall.

“I have not begun to punish you,” I told her, looking down at her.

“I hate you,” she said, sullenly. “I hate you!” She looked up at me. “You caused me much pain,” she said. “You whipped me. You branded me.” She turned her head to one side. “I am confused,” she said. “I do not know what to think.”

“How is that?” I asked.

“It hurt terribly to be whipped, and branded,” she said.

“Yes?” I said.

“And yet, because of these things, I stand wonderfully and vulnerably in awe of you, and of men in general,” she said.

“What thrills you,” I said, “is not the whip, not the iron, not pain, but masculine domination. It is that to which you, unknown to yourself, are responding. What is not important is whether the master whips you or not, but that you know he is fully capable of whipping you, and will, if you are not pleasing.”

“Yes,” she said, “that is it-not the pain-but my weakness, and the strength of men, and that I am under their will, and that, if I am not pleasing, I know that be is man enough and powerful enough to put me under harsh discipline, and, should I not be pleasing, will, without a thought, do so.”

“Your body is now hot, Slave Girl,” I said.

“No!” she said.

I touched her and she writhed in the straw, turning away from me, pulling her legs up. I touched her on the shoulder, and she shuddered. Every inch of her was alive. “Slave Girl” I sneered.

“Yes, Slave Girl!” she cried, turning on her back, throwing her” body brazenly open to me.

“You seem little of Earth now,” I laughed.

She spread her hair back on the straw. “I am only a slut of a slave,” she laughed. “Treat me as such. I love you, Master!”

We heard soldiers in the hall outside.

“Will you give me to others?” she asked.

“If it pleases me,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, “You will if it pleases you.” She turned her head to the side.

“How vulnerable I am!” She looked up at me. Her head was back in the straw. “For the first time in my life,” she said, “I know that I am a slave girl, only a slave girl. It is such a strange, helpless feeling. No longer am I a woman of Earth. I am now only a Gorean slave girl.”

I lifted her by the arms. “I do not know if I love or hate,” she said. “I know only I am a slave girl, and that I am helpless, and that I am in the arms of my master.”

I lifted her toward my lips, to claim her. “Have you forgotten Earth?” she asked.

“I have never heard of that place,” I told her.

She lifted her lips, timidly, delicately, to mine. “Nor have I,” she said. She whispered, very softly. “I love you, Master.” I did not let her kiss me. Rather, I, suddenly, with a larl’s ferocity, thrust my lips to hers, cruelly, in the raping kiss of the master, and pressed her savagely back into the straw, against the very stones of the dungeon cell in which she lay slave, chained, beneath me.

She squirmed and then, held, cried out, a scream that must have carried to every cell, through every corridor, of that grim level, startling the enslaved beauties chained there, amusing the soldiers in whose arms they lay, a scream at once of wild love and of a helpless slave girl’s total submission.

Near the front of the march I joined Hassan.

“One thing puzzles me,” I told him. “One thing I do not yet understand.”

“What is that?” he asked.

“In the house of Samos, at Port Kar,” I said, “there was a girl, Veema, a message girl. The message she bore was ‘Beware Abdul.’ Mistakenly I took the Abdul of this message to be Abdul, the carrier of water, in Tor.”

“That is not a mistake which one of the Tahari would have made,” said Hassan. He looked at me. “Was not Ibn Saran at that time in the house of Samos?”

“Yes,” I said.

“The timing is interesting,” said Hassan. “Perhaps he who sent the message assumed that the information of the agents of Priest-Kings was sufficient to identify Ibn Saran with Abdul, the Salt Ubar, or, at least, to link him with that villain.”

“At that time,” it was not,” I said. Since the time of the Nest War the intelligence and surveillance networks of the Priest-Kings had been severely impaired. Even had they not have been, their information, they, seldom leaving the Sardar, not being as humans, was little better than that of their human agents, widely separated in space and time.

“But who sent the message girl, Veema, to the house of Samos?” I asked.

“I did,” said Hassan. “My brother told me to do this. He had had the message placed months before. I merely transmitted her. He then entered the desert to investigate rumors of a tower of steel. He must have been captured by men of Ibn Saran. He was released in the desert with insufficient water.”

“He made it very far,” I said.

“He was very strong,” said Hassan.

“The Priest-Kings are fortunate,” I said, “that such men fight for them.”

“I knew another,” said Hassan, “quite as strong, who fought for Kurii.”

I nodded. I would not forget Ibn Saran, lithe, like a silken panther. He had been a worthy foe. One gains a victory; one loses an enemy. I lifted my head to the sky, wide and blue, with no clouds. Somewhere up there, beyond atmospheres, beyond the orbits of Gor, and Earth and Mars, in a boulder-strewn enigmatic blackness of space, in the silence of the fragments of the asteroid belt, were the steel worlds, the lairs and domiciles of Kurii. A Kur had fought by my side to save the Gorean world. It was desired not only by men, it was desired, too, by Kurii. I did not think that Kurii, again, would be willing to sacrifice this world, to achieve another. Already, in their remote past, they had lost one world, their own. The political ascendancy of the party which bad been willing to destroy Gor, to secure the Earth, had, with the failure of their project, doubtless been brief. That a Kur had been sent to foil them was doubtless significant. Further, Gor was the true prize of the planet rooting about the sun, not the Earth, for, in the name of rights and liberty, and business, the fools of Earth, confused by the rhetoric of law and morality, shielding short- sighted greed and madness, had stood aside, permitting the poisoning of the air they breathed, the water they drank, the food they ate. That the poisoners will die with the poisoned will perhaps yield them some comfort. Priest-Kings, of course, who are accustomed to think directly in terms of realities and consequences, not words, had not permitted this same insane duplicity to be practiced upon their gullibility. They do not shrivel before the moral fervor of fanatics; rather they seek to look behind words, discarding them as largely meaningless, to discover what is truly meant, what is wanted, what is being striven for, and, if these programs and policies are implemented, what will be the nature of the resultant world, and is that world acceptable or not. To exploitation, to waste, to pollution, Priest-Kings had simply, in their technological abridgments imposed on man, said, “No.” It is, in defense of their tyranny, their despotism, you see, after all, lest you think too badly of them, their habitat as well.

I looked up at the sky. The Kurii, I suspected, did not want Earth, but Gor.

Earth might be useful as a slave planet, but the true prize, the object of their predation, would be Gor.

What then could be the next step? The uprising of native Kurii had been foiled in Torvaldsland. I had been in Torvaldsland at the time. The destruction of Gor, to rid themselves of the opposition of Priest-Kings Gor, had been foiled. When this had occurred I had been at the steel tower in the Tahari, the half-buried ship which had housed the destructive device. I gazed at the placid sky.

Surely Kurii must by now, sense the weakness of the Nest. The ship, for Tahari which had housed the destructive device had penetrated the weakened defenses of the Priest-Kings. But the Priest-Kings, after the Nest War, would be rebuilding their power.

It might well seem to Kurii that they must strike soon. There was not a cloud in the wide, bright Tahari sky. The invasion, I surmised, must be impending.

The drums of the march increased their beat. I turned on the kaiila, looking behind me, at the long columns of riders, of kaiila, of slaves. I saw the desert, the pennons. I saw the two kasbahs, which had been those of Abdul, Ibn Saran, the Salt Ubar, and Tarna, once a proud desert chieftainess.

I felt the cheek of the girl tethered to my saddle press softly against the side of my left boot, I looked down, and she looked up at me. “Master?” she asked.

“The march will be long,” I told her. “If you cannot make it,” I said, “you will be dragged.”

She smiled up at me. She kissed the side of my boot. “A girl knows,” she said, “Master.” She again kissed the side of my boot, in the stirrup, and again looked up at me. “I know I deserved to be whipped,” she said, and she looked at me in awe, and admiration, “and you whipped me.” She again kissed my boot, and again regarded me, eyes smiling. “I was proud,” she said, “and arrogant, and insolent, and contemptuous, and, when you were helpless, mocked you to my delight from safety. You did not approve of this. You returned from Klima. You burned me with the iron and made me your slave.” Her eyes shone. “You are magnificent!” she said. With the back of my left hand I cuffed her from the side of the saddle.

I saw the pennons on the lances, I listened to the drums. I was eager to begin the march.

Hassan, in swirling white, lifted his band. The drums stopped. I rode between Hassan, Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars, and, in the black kaffiyeh with white agal cording, Suleiman, high Pasha of the Aretai. Near us were Baram, sheik of Bezhad, vizier to Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars, and Shakar, with silver-tipped lance, a captain of the Aretai. With us, too, were other pashas.

In the march were Kavars and Aretai, Ta’Kara, Bakahs. Char, Kashani, Luraz, Tashid, Raviri, Ti, Zevar, Arani and, holding the position of the rear guard, with their black lances, Tajuks.

I looked back at the kasbahs which had been those of Abdul, Ibn Saran, the Salt Ubar, and Tarna once a proud desert chieftainess. Their walls were bright, hot and white in the morning sun.

Hassan lowered his hand. Pennons dipped and straightened. The drums began the beat of the march. There was a jangling of kaiila harness, the movement of weapons.

I began the march. Beside me, at my stirrup, my slave, was Vella.