Tribesmen of Gor

4 Riders Join the Caravan of Farouk

The caravan moved slowly.

I turned my kaiila, and, kicking its flanks, urged it down the long line of laden animals.

With my scimitar tip I lifted aside a curtain.

The girl, startled, cried out. She sat within, her knees to the left, her ankles together, her weight partly on her hands, to the right, on the small, silk-covered cushion of the frame. It was semicircular and about a yard in width at its widest point. The superstructure of the frame rose about four feet above the frame at its highest point, inclosing, as in an open-fronted, flat-bottomed, half globe, its occupant. This frame, however, was covered completely with layers of white rep cloth, to reflect the sun, with the exception of the front, which was closed with a center-opening curtain, also of white rep-sloth. The wood of the frame is tem-wood. It is light. It is carried by a pack kaiila, strapped to the beast, and steadied on both sides by braces against the pack blankets. This frame is called, in Gorean, the kurdah. It is used to transport women, either slave or free, in the Tahari. The girl was not chained within the kurdah. There is no need for it. The desert serves as cage.

“Veil yourself,” I laughed.

Angrily Alyena, the former Miss Priscilla Blake-Allen of Earth, took the tiny, triangular yellow veil, utterly diaphanous, and held it before her face, covering the lower portion of her face. The veil was drawn back and she held it at her ears. The light silk was held across the bridge of her nose, where, beautifully, its porous, yellow sheen broke to the left and right. Her mouth, angry, was visible behind the veil. It, too, covered her chin. The mouth of a woman, by men of the Tahari, and by Goreans generally, is found extremely provocative, sexually. The slave veil is a mockery, in its way. It reveals, as much as conceals, yet it adds a touch of subtlety, mystery; slave veils are made to be torn away, the lips of the master then crushing those of the slave.

Aside from her veil, and her collar, in the kurdah, she was stark naked.

She held the veil before her face. I saw her eyes, very blue, over the yellow.

“At least now,” I said to her, “you are not face-stripped.”

Her eyes flashed.

“Shameless!” I said.

She held the veil to her face.

“Fasten it,” I said, “and wear it in the kurdah. Should I find you again so shamelessly unveiled, without my permission, you will be lashed.”

“Yes. Master.” she said, and, holding the veil with one hand, groped on the cushion for the tiny golden string with which she might fasten it upon her. With the scimitar tip I let the curtain of rep-cloth fall, concealing her again in the kurdah.

I laughed as I spun the kaiila, hearing her utter a tiny cry of rage inside the kurdah.

I did not doubt, however, but what the next time I opened the curtain of the kurdah it would be a veiled slave I would encounter therein.

Alyena was very lovely, though she had much to learn. She had not yet even been whipped. That detail, however, unless she displeased me, I would leave to her new master, to he to whom I would eventually give or sell her.

The sand kaiila, or desert kaiila, is a kaiila, and handles similarly, but it is not identically the same animal which is indigenous, domestic and wild, in the middle latitudes of Gor’s southern hemisphere; that animal, used as a mount by the Wagon Peoples, is not found in the northern hemisphere of Gor; there is obviously a phylogenetic affinity between the two varieties, or species; I conjecture, though I do not know, that the sand kaiila is a desert-adapted mutation of the subequatorial stock; both animals are lofty, proud, silken creatures, long-necked and smooth-gaited; both are triply lidded, the third lid being a transparent membrane, of great utility in the blasts of the dry storms of the southern plains or the Tahari; both creatures are comparable in size, ranging from some twenty to twenty-two hands at the shoulder; both are swift; both have incredible stamina; under ideal conditions both can range six hundred pasangs in a day; in the dune country, of course, in the heavy, sliding sands, a march of fifty pasangs is considered good; both, too, I might mention, are high-strung, vicious-tempered animals; in pelt the southern kaiila ranges from a rich gold to black; the sand kaiila, on the other hand, are almost all tawny, though I have seen black sand kaiila; differences, some of them striking and important, however, exist between the animals; most notably, perhaps, the sand kaiila suckles its young; the southern kaiila are viviparous, but the young, within hours after birth, hunt, by instinct; the mother delivers the young in the vicinity of game; whereas there is game in the Tahari, birds, small mammals, an occasional sand sleen, and some species of tabuk, it is rare; the suckling of the young in the sand kaiila is a valuable trait in the survival of the animal; kaiila milk, which is used, like verr milk, by the peoples of the Tahari, is reddish, and has a strong, salty taste; it contains much ferrous sulphate; a similar difference between the two animals, or two sorts of kaiila, is that the sand kaiila is omnivorous, whereas the southern kaiila is strictly carnivorous; both have storage tissues; if necessary, both can go several days without water; the southern kaiila also, however, has a storage stomach, and can go several days without meat; the sand kaiila, unfortunately, must feed more frequently: some of the pack animals in a caravan are used in carrying fodder; whatever is needed, and is not available enroute, must be carried; sometimes, with a mounted herdsman, caravan kaiila are released to hunt tabuk; a more trivial difference between the sand kaiila and the southern kaiila is that the paws of the sand kaiila are much broader, the digits even webbed with leathery fibers, and heavily padded, than those of its southern counterpart.

I returned to my place in the caravan line.

In the Tahari there is an almost constant wind. It is a hot wind, but the nomads and the men who ply the Tahari welcome it. Without it, the desert would be almost unbearable, even to those with water and whose bodies are shielded from the sun.

I listened to the caravan bells, which sound is pleasing. The kaiila moved slowly.

Prevailingly, the wind in the Tahari blows from the north or northwest. There is little to fear from it, except, in the spring, should it rise and shift to the east, or, in the fall, should it blow westward.

We were moving through hilly country, with much scrub brush. There were many large rocks strewn about. Underfoot there was much dust and gravel.

On the shaded sides of some rocks, and the shaded slopes of hills, here and there, grew stubborn, brownish patches of verr grass. Occasionally we passed a water hole, and the tents of nomads. About some of these water holes there were a dozen or so small trees, flahdah trees, like hat-topped umbrellas on crooked sticks, not more than twenty feet high; they are narrow branched, with lanceolate leaves. About the water, little more than muddy, shallow ponds, save for the flahdahs, nothing grew; only dried, cracked earth, whitish and buckled, for a radius of more than a quarter of a pasang, could be found; what vegetation there might have been had been grazed off, even to the roots; one could place one’s hand in the cracks in the earth; each crack adjoins others to constitute an extensive reticulated pattern; each square in this pattern is shallowly concave. The nomads, when camping at a watering place, commonly pitch their tent near a tree; this affords them shade; also they place and hang goods in the branches of the tree, using it for storage.

From time to time the caravan stopped and, boiling water over tiny fires, we made tea.

At a watering hole, from a nomad, I purchased Alyena a brief second-hand, black-and-white-striped, rep-cloth slave djellaba. It came high on her thighs.

This was that she would have something in which to sleep. She was permitted to wear it only for sleep. I slept her at my feet. I taught her to pitch a tent, and cook, and perform many useful services for a man.

At night, when the caravan made camp, I would lift Alyena from the kurdah, and, sweeping her across the saddle and lowering her, drop her to her feet in the gravel.

“Find Aya,” I would tell her. “Beg her to put you to work.” Aya was one of the slave women of Farouk.

Once she had dared to say to me, “But Aya makes me do all her work!”

I kicked the kaiila toward her, and she was buffeted from her feet rolling in the gravel, and then lay, hands shielding her face, on her back beneath the very paws of the beast, it hissing and stamping, scratching at the gravel about her.

“Hurry!” I told her.

She scrambled to her feet, and fled to Aya. “I hurry, Master!” she cried.

Inadvertently, she had cried in Gorean. I was pleased.

Of course Aya exploited her. It was my intention that she should. But, too, Aya, with her kaiila strap, continued her lessons in Gorean. Too, she taught her skills useful to a Tahari female, the making of ropes from kaiila hair, the cutting and plaiting of reins, the weaving of cloth and mats, the decoration and beading of leather goods, the use of the mortar and pestle, the use of the grain quern, the preparation and spicing of stews, the cleaning of verr and, primarily when we camped near watering holes in the vicinity of nomads, the milking of verr and kaiila. Too, she was taught the churning of milk in skin bags.

“She is making me learn the labors of a free woman,” once had complained Alyena to me.

I had gestured her to her knees. “You are a poor sort,” L told her. “To a nomad I may sell you. In his tent the heavy labors of the free woman will doubtless be yours, in addition to the labors of a slave.”

“I would have to work as a free woman,” she whispered, “and yet be also a slave?”

“Yes,” I said.

She shuddered. “Sell me to a rich man,” she begged.

“I will sell you, or give you, or loan you, or rent you,” I said, “to whomsoever I please.”

“Yes, Master,” she said, angrily.

At night, around the campfire, I knelt her behind me, her wrists braceleted behind her. By hand I fed her. On me she depended for her food.

I listened to the caravan bells. I pulled the burnoose down about my face, shading my eyes.

The movements of the men of the Tahari are, during the hours of heat, usually slow, almost languid or graceful. They engage in little unnecessary movement.

They do not, if they can help it, overheat themselves. They sweat as little as possible, which conserves body fluid. Their garments are loose and voluminous, yet closely woven. The outer garment when in caravan, usually the burnoose, is almost invariably white. This color reflects the rays of the sun. The looseness of the garments, acting as a bellows in movement, circulates air about the body, which air, circulating, over the damp skin, cools the body by evaporation: the close weave of the garment is to keep the moisture and water, as much as possible, within the garment, preferably condensing back on the skin. There are two desiderata, which are crucial in these matters; the first is to minimize perspiration: the second is to retain as much moisture, lost through perspiration, as is possible on the body.

I was growing drowsy, lulled by the bells, the even gait of the kaiila.

On a rise, pushing back the burnoose, I stood in my stirrups and looked back. I saw the end of the caravan, more than a pasang away. It wound, slowly, gracefully, through the hills. At its very end came a man on a single kaiila.

From time to time, he dismounted, gathering shed kaiila hair and thrusting it in bags at his saddle. The kaiila, unlike the verr and hurt, is never sheared. When it sheds its hair, however, the hair may be gathered, and, depending on the hair, various cloths can be made from it. There is a soft, fine hair, the most prized, which grows on the belly of the animal; there is an undercoating of hair, soft but coarser, which is used for most cloth; and there are the long, outer hairs. These, though still soft and pliant, are, comparatively, the most coarse. The hairs of this coat are used primarily for rope and tent cloth.

I scanned the horizon. I saw nothing.

Once more I lowered myself into the saddle. Again I drew the hood of the burnoose about my face. I shut my eyes against the reflection of the sun from the dust, the gravel and rocks. I removed my slippers after a time, and thrust them under the girth strap. I put my feet against the neck of the kaiila.

I listened to the kaiila bells.

Alyena was learning Gorean quickly. This pleased me. When I had picked her up at the pens of Tor, she had been there for fourteen days, almost three Gorean weeks. I had asked, of course, for a report on her from the slave master, who had consulted his records. She had been placed, of course, as I had requested, in a stimulation chamber; the first five nights the rope harness had been used, as I had specified; it had not been used thereafter for discipline, however, as the girl had been cooperative and diligent; furthermore, her attention and efforts were such that it had not been deemed necessary either to deny her food or put her under the whip; she had not been starved; she had not been lashed.

The first Gorean words the Earth girl had been taught, and she had learned them in the pens of Samos of Port Kar, were “La Kajira,” which means, “I am a slave girl.”

“The barbarian,” said the slave master, “is highly intelligent, as the intelligence of females goes, but, strangely, her body is stupid; its muscles seem locked together.”

“Have you heard of Earth?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I have heard of it.” He looked at me. “Is there truly such a place,” he asked.

“Yes.” I told him.

“I had thought it might be mythical,” he said.

“No,” I told him.

“I have had girls in the pens.” he said, “who have claimed to have been from there. Some have begged me to return them to Earth.”

“What did you do with them?” I asked.

“I whipped them,” he said, “and they were silent. Interestingly, I have never had a girl who claimed to be from Earth, who had been fully owned, who wished to return. Indeed, it is enough merely to threaten such 1 girl with return to Earth to make them do anything.” He smiled. “They love their collars.”

“Only in a collar can a woman be truly free.” I said. It was a Gorean saying.

History on Earth, long ago, had taken a turning away from the body, from nature, from the needs of men and women, from genetically linked psyche-biological realities; this turning away, ultimately and inevitably, had produced an unloved, exploited, polluted planet swarming with miserable populations of unhappy, petty, self-seeking, frustrated animals, the human being of Earth had no Home Stone; this turning away had never taken place on the planet Gor.

“The girl, then,” said the slave master, referring to Alyena, “is an Earth girl.”

“Yes,” I said, “she is an Earth girl, brought here, like many others, by slave ship.”

“Interesting,” he said.

“Over several years,” I said, “entire sets of her muscles have become habituated to moving in mechanistic, conjoint patterns, like the parts of machines, other muscles, perhaps partly atrophied, were not used at all.”

“We have subjected her to an intense exercise program,” said the man, “but we have had little success. She does not yet feel as a female, so she does not yet move as a female. I think she does not yet know what it is to be a female.”

“That,” I said, “she will learn from a man.”

“Are all the women of Earth like that?” asked the man.

“Many,” I said, “not all.”

“It must be a dreary place,” said the man.

“On Earth,” I said, “women try to be identical with men.”

“Why should that be?” asked the man.

“Perhaps because there are few men,” I said.

“The male population is small?” he asked.

“There are many males,” I said, “but few men.”

“I find this hard to understand,” said the slave master.

I smiled. “The distinction,” I said, “makes little sense to a Gorean.”

He shrugged.

“I do not blame the males,” I said, “nor the females. Both are fellow victims.

In virtue of historical factors, social, institutional and technological, having to do with the development of a given world, the male, from the cradle, is programmed with antimasculine values, taught to distrust his instincts, to hate and fear them, and, ideally, to revel in his de-masculinization. He lives miserably, of course, unfulfilled, frustrated, subject to hideous diseases, and has little to console himself with other than the ignorant servility with which he has worn his chains, taking smug, righteous pride in his allegiance to them.”

“On such a world, then, women have won?” asked the man.

“No,” I said, “the machine has won. Women, too, have lost.”

“Surely, someday on Earth,” said the man, “the males will dare to be men?”

“I do not think so,” I said, “save for rare individuals. The process of teaching, unconscious, subtle, pervasive, is too effective. It is not unusual for a woman to fear her womanhood; what is less generally recognized is that many men fear their own manhood; they conceal their blood; they pretend it does not exist; it is even dangerous, in such a society, to suggest that men consider honesty in such matters, to suggest that they dare to be men, to suggest that they might, if they wished, tear away their own chains. The weakest, the most trapped among them, are often the first, with hysteria, knowing they themselves are not strong enough to take their rightful freedoms, and envying others they fear might have the strength, to denounce such modest suggestions.”

“The weak,” said the man, “are always those who fear the strong.”

“They fear, not strangely, a world in which not everyone is like themselves.”

“Let all be weak, for I am weak,” smiled the man.

“Yes, “I said.

“And what of the women?” asked the man.

“They attempt to imitate the masculinity they do not find in men,” I said.

“Grotesque,” said the man.

“It is depressing,” I said. “Let us see the slave.”

The slave master clapped his hands, then called through the silver curtain.

“92,683,” he said.

“She has a bit more fluidity, more sensuality, in her body movement now,” he said. “She moves somewhat better than she did. Here are her exercises.” He thrust a sheet of paper to me. I looked at it. They were familiar exercises, slave-female: exercises, designed to keep a girl supple, loose, vital, fit, for her master. “You are familiar with matters of diet?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. The diet of the slave girl was regulated with the same attention and care as that which a man of Earth would bestow on his prize hunting dogs, or otherwise esteemed domestic animals. Caloric intake was supervised with particular care. A common problem with slave girls was petty thievery, as they attempted to steal pastries or sweets. Many slave girls have a craving for sweets. These are commonly kept from them. A girl might have to perform superbly for hours before her master before he, in his generosity, would consent to throw her a candy.

“Her body, of course,” said the man, “is now much more alive to the world about her.”

The stimulation chamber would have accomplished this. Now her skin would be much more aware of such tiny things as a change in air movement in a room, temperature, humidity, and such; also she would now be more keenly sensitive to differences in textures with which her body might come in contact, such as the granulation of the stones on which her feet walked, whether there was slight moisture on tiles, the fall of silk, in different varieties, on her shoulder, the precise feeling of the pile of a rug beneath her thigh, the exact feeling of a strap cinched on her body, the exact feeling of slave bracelets, cool and inflexible, on her small wrists. Her entire body would, now, be alive, an organ of touch, a sheet of sentience and vitality. I was satisfied. It was a step toward sensuality.

“The slave, 92683,” said a woman’s voice.

Through the strings of the silver curtain emerged the girl. “Kneel here, little Alyena,” said the slave master, in Gorean.

I observed as the girl knelt. I thought the slave master too modest. Subtly, but unmistakably, she was a different girl. She still had far to go, but there was no doubt as to the fact that improvement had heed wrought in her. Interestingly, I sensed that the girl did not really understand certain changes, which had been brought about in her. Doubtless she still thought herself the identical girl who had been placed in the pens. Certain of these changes, mostly in movements, and ways of holding the body, are, sometimes, unconscious concomitants of the training of the girl: they accompany, as pleasant consequences, a latent value, other forms of training which have rather different manifest objectives. An obvious example is the stimulation-chamber training, which is overtly, concerned with honing a physical and psychological responsiveness to surface sensation, this responsiveness, however, is reflected in the entire attitude, and expressions, of the girl. One does not, so to speak, train the girl to “look vital”; rather one makes her vital; she then, perhaps without even understanding it, or thinking about it, looks vital.

The girl knelt before the desk of the slave master. I sat to one side, in a curule chair. She knelt obediently, beautifully, as a pleasure slave. She was in the presence of free men. I saw her eyes briefly close, relishing the feel of the stone floor, as she knelt back on her heels, on her knees and the tops of her toes; I saw her body straighten itself, exposing itself, drinking in the atmosphere of the room. Her eyes were very much alive, very blue. She looked irritated.

“What about such things,” I asked the slave master, “as giving pleasure to men.”

“We have shown her some simple things,” he said, “about all she is now capable of.”

“Have you taught her to dance?” I asked.

“She is not yet ready to dance,” said the slave master.

I looked at the girl, to detect how much of the conversation, in Gorean, she understood. Her grasp was imperfect. “Stand, Girl,” I said to her in Gorean.

Gracefully she stood. I observed her.

“Bracelets!” I said in Gorean, harshly.

The girl snapped to position, hands behind the small of her back, head lifted, chin up, turned to the left. In such a posture she may be conveniently put in bracelets, and leashed.

“Kneel,” I told her. Again she knelt, in the position of the pleasure slave.

To one side, her arms folded, the quirt in her hand, in leather strips and halter, with collar and ring, with high-laced sandals, stood the large female slave, who had originally conducted the girl from the room, and had brought her back today. She smiled.

I pointed to the stones at my feet. “Crawl,” I said, in Gorean.

The girl slipped to her belly, and, as a slave girl, crawled to my feet. She put her lips to my foot; I felt her hair over it. “Return,” I told her. On her belly, head down, she returned to where she had knelt.

“Kneel,” I said.

Again she knelt in the position of the pleasure slave. Her eyes wire angry.

Excellent, I thought to myself.

“She has been diligent?” I asked the slave master.

“Yes,” he said.

I smiled. The girl had fallen into the rebellion of compliance. To avoid the deprivation of food, the whip, she obeyed perfectly, but outwardly. She was trying to retain an island in which she would be her own mistress. She thought she was deceiving us. I did not see that it was mine to do, but doubtless, in time, her master, when he wished, would shatter her, taking this island from her, making her completely a slave. For now, I thought I would let her think she was fooling us. Later, when a master wished, he would, when it pleased him, to her horror, break her totally to his will.

I had little doubt that the lovely Alyena would one day, in the arms of a strong man, for whom I was saving her; become a true slave, adoringly and vulnerably the property of her master.

I glanced to the large female slave, with the quirt, standing near the silver curtain.

“Why are you not in slave silk?” I asked her.

Her eyes flashed. Her hand clenched on the quirt.

“She is useful in the pens,” said the slave master. “She terrorizes feminine girls.”

I turned to Alyena. “What do you think,” I asked, in English, “of the female slave?”

“I fear her,” whispered small, lovely Alyena.

“Why,” I asked.

“She is so strong, so hard,” said Alyena.

“What you fear in her.” I said, “is masculinity, but it is not a true masculinity; it is fraudulent.” I looked down at her. “The masculinity you must learn to fear,” I told her, “is the masculinity of men.”

“She is a match for any man,” said Alyena. Her eyes shone with pride.

I turned to the slave master. “Fetch a male slave,” I said.

One was brought. He was not a large fellow. He was however, an inch or so taller than the female slave.

“You certify to me,” said I to the slave master, “that this man is neither clumsy nor stupid, nor drunk, nor an instructor in combat intent upon increasing the confidence of his pupils.”

“It is so certified,” he smiled. “He is used in cleaning the pens. He is a drover who falsified the quality-markings on spice crates.”

I placed a copper tarn disk on the desk of the slave master. “Fight,” I said to the slaves.

“Fight,” said the slave master.

The man looked puzzled. With a cry of rage, shrill and vicious, the female slave leapt toward him, slashing him across the face with the quirt. She struck him twice before he, angry, took the quirt from her and threw it aside.

“Do not anger me,” he told her.

He turned and caught her kick on his left thigh. She leapt at him, fingers like claws, to tear out his eyes. He seized her wrists. He turned her about. She could not move. Then, with considerable force, as she cried out with misery, he flung her, the length of her body, belly front, against the stone wall. He then stepped back, jerked her ankles from under her and flung her to the stones, and knelt across her back. She wept and struck the stones with her fists. Then her halter was removed and her hands pulled behind her and bound with it. He discarded her belt and the strips of leather. He removed her sandals. With one of the long, straplike laces, he crossed and bound her ankles. Then, angrily, he turned her collar, hurting her, with its ring, to the back. With the other straplike lace, run through the ring and tied to the binding on her ankles, he jerked her ankles up, high, fastening them there. Then he crouched over her and she lay bound at his feet. He turned her head, looking over her right shoulder, so that it faced him; he crouched so that she could not move; his right ankle was against her left cheek. He poised his thumbs, held downward, over her eyes.

“I am a woman at your mercy,” she wept. “Please, Master, do not hurt me!”

He looked to the slave master. The slave master came to where the woman lay. He looked down at her. He called two slaves from behind the silver curtain. They looked down at the woman. Then the slave master said, “Put her in slave silk, and give her to male slaves.”

She was freed of the cord binding her ankles to her collar ring.

She was jerked to her feet, and held there; she could not stand by herself for her feet were still crossed and bound. “Who are the masters,” asked the slave master of her.

The woman, hair before her face, held upright by men, looked at Alyena. The woman trembled. “Men,” she whispered. “Men are the masters.” Alyena’s face turned white.

The woman was carried from the room, to the pens. For a silver tarsk I purchased the male slave, and freed him. “Stand,” I said to Alyena, who was trembling.

I put the walking chains on her, which I had purchased a few days ago in the bazaar.

I looked down into her eyes. “Who are the masters?” I asked.

She looked up at me, angrily. Then she said, “Men-men are the masters.”

I then left the office of the slave master of Tor, followed by the slave girl.

On the back of the kaiila, on the road to the Oasis of Nine Wells, drowsily, I listened to the kaiila bells.

It was in the late afternoon. We would stop in an Ahn or two for camp.

Fires would be lit. The kaiila would be put in circles, ten animals to the circle, and fodder, by kaiila boys, would be thrown into the center of the circle.

The tents would be pitched. The opening of the Tahari tent usually faces the east, that the morning sun may warm it. Gor, like the Earth, rotates to the east. The nights require, often, a heavy djellaba or an extra blanket. Many nomads build a small kaiila-dung fire in the tent, to smolder during the night, to warm their feet. I needed not do this, of course, for at my feet slept the former Miss Priscilla Blake-Allen, the girl, Alyena.

At night the kaiila are hobbled. The slave girls, too, are hobbled. With the kaiila a simple figure-eight twist of kaiilahair rope, above the spreading paws, below the knees, is sufficient. A girl, of course, is chained. When finished with her, I would cross Alyena’s ankles and, with the walking chain, suitably shortened, chain them together. That way she could not stand. I would then throw her brief djellaba against the desert cold, and order her to a position of sleep. On the mat, toward morning, she would pull the hood over her face, fold her arms and pull up her legs, knees bent; the djellaba came far up her thighs; I would watch her sleeping, sometime, for she was quite beautiful. Once she opened her eyes. “Master,” she said. “Sleep, Slave,” I told her. “Yes, Master,” she said. In the morning I would unchain her early that she might, like the other slave girls in camp, be about her duties. Once she stole a date. I did not whip her. I chained her, arms over her head, back against the trunk, to a flahdah tree. I permitted nomad children to discomfit her. They are fiendish little beggars. They tickled her with the lanceolate leaves of the tree. They put honey about her, to attract the tiny black sand flies, which infest such water holes in the spring. When we would break camp, I would lift her to the kurdah, placing her within.

I became aware of the pounding of kaiila pads on the dry surface. Suddenly I was alert, awake.

I spun the kaiila, and stood in the stirrups.

A man was riding by, the length of the caravan, one of the points. “Riders!” he cried. “Riders!”

I could see them now, more than a hundred of them, sweeping toward us over the crest of one of the hills, to my left, the west.

Their burnooses whipped behind them as they mounted the crest of the hill and, the animals half sliding, descended the other side, approaching us. Guards from our caravan were hastening outward to meet them. I stood in the stirrups. I saw no one approaching from other directions. There might be, of course, such delayed charges. Reassured I was to see points riding out about the caravan, outriders, to guard against such surprise. I saw Farouk, merchant and caravan master, ride by, burnoose swirling behind him, lance in hand. With him were six men. I saw drovers, holding the reins of their beasts, shading their eyes, looking over the dust to the west. One of the kinsmen of Farouk went to the kurdahs of slave girls, hobble chains at his saddle pommel; he would rein in before a kurdah, throw the girl the hobble and order her, “Shackle yourself”; he would wait the moment it took for the girl to snap the small ring about her right wrist and, behind her body, the larger one about her left ankle; the rings are separated by about six inches of chain; they are not sleeping hobbles, which confine only the ankles; then he would rush to the next kurdah, fling a hobble to the next girl, and repeat his command. I rode down the caravan until I came to Alyena’s kurdah. She thrust her head out, veiled, her fists holding apart the rep-cloth curtain.

“What is going on?” she cried.

“Be silent,” I told her. She looked frightened.

“Stay within the kurdah, Slave,” I warned her. “And do not peer out.”

“Yes, Master,” she said.

I turned the kaiila, loosened the scimitar in the sheath.

“They are Aretai!” cried a man.

I thrust the scimitar back, deep, in the sheath.

I saw, some hundred yards from the caravan, the riders reined up. With them I saw Farouk, conversing with their captain. The caravan guards, on nervous, prancing kaiila, were behind him. Lances were high, butts in the stirrup sheath, like needles against the hills.

I rode my kaiila out a few steps, toward the men, then returned it to the caravan.

“They are Aretai,” said one of the drovers. The caravan, I knew, was bound for the Oasis of Nine Wells. It was held by Suleiman, master of a thousand lances.

He was high pasha of the Aretai.

Several of the newcomers fanned out to flank the caravan, at large intervals. A cluster of them rode toward its head, another cluster toward its rear. Some twenty of them, with Farouk, and certain guards, began to work their way down the caravan, beast by beast, checking the drovers and kaiila tenders.

“What are they doing?” I asked a nearby drover.

“They are looking for Kavars,” he said.

“What will they do with them if they find them?” I asked.

“Kill them,” said the man.

I watched the men, on their kaiila, accompanied by Farouk, the caravan master, moving, man by man, towards us.

“They are the men of Suleiman,” said the drover, standing nearby, the rein of his kaiila in his hand. “They have come to give us escort to the Oasis of Nine Wells.”

Closer came the men, stopping, starting, moving from one man to the next, down the long line. They were led by a captain, with a red-bordered burnoose. Several of them held their scimitars, unsheathed, across the leather of their saddles.

“You are not a Kavar, are you?” asked the drover.

“No,” I said.

The riders were before us.

The drover threw back the hood of his burnoose, and pulled down the veil about his face. Beneath the burnoose he wore a skullcap. The rep-cloth veil was red; it had been soaked in a primitive dye, mixed from water and the mashed roots of the telekint; when he perspired, it had run; his face was stained. He thrust back the sleeve of his trail shirt.

The captain looked at me. “Sleeve,” he said. I thrust back the sleeve of my shirt, revealing my left forearm. It did not bear the blue scimitar, tattooed on the forearm of a Kavar boy at puberty.

“He is not Kavar,” said Farouk. He made as though to urge his mount further down the line.

The captain did not turn his mount. He continued to look at me. “Who are you?” he asked.

“I am not a Kavar,” I told him.

“He calls himself Hakim, of Tor,” said Farouk.

“Near the north gate of Tor,” said the captain, “there is a well. What is its name?”

“There is no well near the north gate of Tor,” I told him.

“What is the name of the well near the stalls of the saddlemakers?” asked the captain.

“The well of the fourth passage hand,” I told him. Water, more than a century ago, had been struck there, during the fourth passage hand, in the third year of the Administrator Shiraz, then Bey of Tor.

I was pleased that I had spent some days in Tor, before engaging in the lessons of the scimitar, learning the city. It is not wise to assume an identity which one cannot cognitively substantiate.

“Your accent,” said the captain, “is not of Tor.

“I was not always of Tor,” I told him. “Originally I was from the north.”

“He is a Kavar spy,” said one of the lieutenants, at the side of the captain.

“Why are you bound for the Oasis of Nine Wells?” asked the captain.

“I have gems to sell Suleiman, your master,” said I, “for bricks of pressed dates.”

“Let us kill him,” urged the lieutenant.

“Is this your kurdah?” asked the captain, gesturing to the kurdah on the nearby kaiila.

“Yes,” I said.

In making their examination of the caravan they had, with their scimitars, opened the curtains of the kurdahs, for there might have been Kavars concealed therein. They had found, however, only girls, slaves, their right wrists and left ankles locked in five-link slave hobbles.

“What is in it?” he asked.

“Only a slave girl,” I told him.

He pressed his kaiila to the kurdah, and, with the tip of his scimitar, prepared to lift back the curtain to his right.

My scimitar, blade to blade, blocked his.

The men tensed. Fists clenched on the hilts of scimitars.

Lances were lowered.

“Perhaps you conceal within a Kavar?” asked the captain.

With my own scimitar tip I brushed back the curtain. In the kurdah, kneeling, frightened, naked save for collar and veil, the girl shrank back.

“Thigh,” said the captain.

The girl turned her left thigh to him, showing her brand. “It is only a slave girl,” said the lieutenant, disappointed.

The captain smiled. He regarded the sweet, small, luscious, exposed slave curves of the girl. “But a pretty little one,” he said.

“Face-strip yourself,” I ordered her.

The girl, fingers behind the back of her head, at the golden string, lowered her veil. Her body had lifted beautifully when her hands had sought the string behind her head. I noted how she had done it. I grinned to myself. She was a slave girl and did not know it.

“Yes,” said the captain, “a pretty slave.” His eyes lingered on her unveiled mouth, then he drank in the rest of her, then the whole of her. He looked at me.

“I congratulate you on your slave,” he said.

I acknowledged his compliment, inclining and lifting my head.

“Perhaps, tonight,” he suggested, “she may dance for us.”

“She does not know how to dance,” I said. Then, to the girl, in English, I said, “You are not yet ready to dance for the pleasure of men.” She shrank back. “Of course not,” she said, in English. But I could see that, in spite of her anger, her denial, her eyes had been excited, curious. Doubtless she had, from time to time, wondered what it would be like, a collared slave girl, to dance naked in the sand, in the light of the campfire, laboring vulnerably under whip-threat to please Gorean warriors. It would be a long time, I thought, before the cool, white-skinned Alyena would beg, “Dance me! Dance me for the pleasure of men!”

“She is barbarian,” said I to the captain. “She speaks little Gorean. I told her she was not yet ready to dance for the pleasure of men.”

“A pity,” said he. In Gorean female dance the girl is expected, often, to satisfy, fully, whatever passions she succeeds in arousing in her audience. She is not permitted merely to excite, and flee away: when, at the conclusion of the swirling music, she flings herself to the floor at the mercy of free men, her dance is but half finished; she has yet to pay the price of her beauty.

“You must have her taught to dance,” said the captain.

“It is my intention,” I said.

“The whip,” said the captain. “can teach a girl many things.”

“Truly have you spoken,” I agreed.

“A pretty slave,” he said, and then turned his kaiila away, his men following, to continue his examination of the men of the caravan. As he turned his kaiila, the lieutenant, who had accompanied him, he who had asserted that I was a Kavar spy, he who had urged them to slay me, cast me a dark look. Then he, too, was with the rest, and Farouk, down the caravan line.

“It will not be necessary, Master,” said Alyena, loftily, in Gorean, “to use the whip on me, to make me dance.”

“I know,” I laughed, “Slave!”

Her fists clenched.

“Veil yourself, “I said.

She did so.

“Remain within,” I said, “and do not peer out.”

“Yes, Master,” she said.

I saw her eyes, blue, angry, over the yellow veil, and then I, laughing, with my scimitar, brushed down the right-hand curtain of the kurdah, it dropping, concealing her within, a slave girl.

Gradually, as a girl begins to realize she is a slave, truly, in a society in which there are slaves, and in which one can truly be just that, and without an escape, a fantastic transformation takes place in her. I could already see the beginnings of this transformation in Alyena. She was already becoming excited about her collar, and her ownership by men. She was becoming curious about them.

She was becoming brazen, and shameless, as befits an article of property. She was now permitting herself thoughts and dreams that might have scandalized a free woman, but were for her, only a slave, quite appropriate. She was becoming petty, and pretty, and provocative. She was becoming sensual. She was becoming sly, clever, owned. Recently she had stooped to stealing a date. Though I had, of course, punished her for this, I was, secretly, quite pleased. It meant she was becoming a slave girl. Now I had seen her lift her body, beautifully, in removing her veil before men. I had seen her curiosity about what it would be to dance before them. She had informed me that it would not be necessary for me to use the leather on her, before she would apply herself to the lessons of the dances of slave girls. She thought herself, in herself, quite free, a slave only in name and collar, but in this she was deceiving herself. Let her keep that bit of pride, I thought, until some master takes it from her, and she, shattered, prone on the tiles, or submission mat, knows then, truly, she is only slave.

The lovely Alyena, though she did not know it, and would have refused to believe it, was coming along quite well.

She was becoming a slave girl.