Blood Brothers of Gor (12 page)

"This business about the head," I said. "This was important, apparently, to both you and Hci, that it should be brought up from the draw, that it should be placed on the level, that it should be put, I gather, in the sun."

"Of course," said Cuwignaka.

"IN this, do you not see," I asked, "you are both Kaiila, you not less than he. In the end, you are both of the Isbu."

"But I am a shame to the Isbu," said Cuwignaka.

"How is that?" I asked.

"I have lost meat," he said.

"You did not lose meat," I said. "Hci is the one who lost the meat."

"I guess you are right," said Cuwignaka. "No one, though, will believe it."

"Hci is well known in the camp," I said. "You may be surprised who might believe you, and not him."

"Maybe you are right," smiled Cuwignaka.

"You should not be distressed," I said. "You should be proud."

"Why is that?" asked Cuwignaka.

"You have brought four loads of meat back to the village. I doubt that anyone has done as well."

"That is pretty good, isnt it?" said Cuwignaka.

"It is marvelous," I said.

"But men are stronger then women," said Cuwignaka. "They can cut meat better."

"But the men are needed for the hunt," I said.

"Yes," said Cuwignaka.

"And you are a man," I said.

"Yes," said Cuwignaka. "I am a man."

"Let us get the kaiila now," I said. "It is time to go back to the village."

"Four loads," said Cuwignaka. "That is pretty good, you know,"

"It is marvelous," I assured him.

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"I am ready to go back to the camp now," said Cuwignaka.

"Good," I said.

Chapter 7

BLOKETU AND IWOSO COME VISITING

"He beat me," wailed Winyela, running up to me. "He beat me!"

"You are in the presence of a free man," I said, indicating Cuwignaka.

Swiftly she fell to her knees, and put her red hair to the dust. Her hair, sometimes braided, was now, as usual, unbraided. She, like most other girls, whether of the red savages or not, wore it long and loose. Among the red savages, of course, free women commonly braid their hair. The lack of braiding, thus, usually, draws an additional distraction between slaves and free women of the red savages. The most common distraction, of course, is skin color, the slaves almost always being white and the free persons almost invariably being red. "Forgive me, Master," she said to Cuwignaka.

"All right," he said.

She straightened her body, but remained on her knees, before us. "He beat me!" she said. She was naked, except for Canka's collar. Her small wrists were bound before her body, with several tight loops of a rawhide thong.

"Stand," I said, "and turn, slowly.

She did.

"Kneel," I said.

She knelt.

"Yes," I said. "There is little doubt about it. You have been beaten."

"It is not funny," she said.

"Apparently with a kaiila quirt," I said.

"Yes," she said. Some of the braiding marks were still visible in her flesh.

"I thought he liked me," she said.

"You are still alive," I pointed out.

"He took away my clothes, and tied me to a whipping stake, on my knees!" she said.

"That is not uncommon in camps of the red savages, for

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white female slaves," I said. "Besides you would not want you clothes bloodied."

She looked at me, angrily.

"Your hair was thrown forward," I said.

"Yes," she said.

"That is so it will not cushion the blows which might fall on your back," I said.

"Doubtless," she said.

"Too," I said, "you would not want to get blood on your hair."

"Of course not," she said.

"Do you think that you are the first girl who has ever been whipped?" I asked.

"No," she said.

"Apparently you did not spend all of your time on your knees, your hair thrown forward, your head and belly down."

"No," she said. "I was struck from my knees by almost the first stroke. I twisted and cried out. I must have supplied much amusement to the women of the red savages who were watching."

"They hate white slave girls," I said. "They enjoy seeing them beaten."

"Then I could cry out no more," she said. "I must simply lie there--"

"And take your punishment--?"

"Yes, and take my punishment--"

"As a slave--?"

"Yes," she said, "--as a slave."

I smiled. This was apparently the first full beating to which the former Miss Millicent Aubrey-Welles, the former deutante from Pennsylvania, had ever been subjected. It had not only physically punished her, and well, but, too, obviously, she had felt it as keenly humiliating. It had not only hurt her, but had horrified and scandalized her.

"You seem outraged," I said.

"I am," she said.

"Why?" I asked.

"I was beaten," she said.

"Do you find yourself eager for a repetition of the experience?" I asked.

"No," she said. "No!"

"The experience, then, was instructive?" I said.

"Yes," she said.

"Why were you beaten?" I asked.

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"I cut meat poorly, out on the prairie," she said.

"Wasnapohdi warned you," I said. "You would not let her help. You would not listen."

Winyela squirmed angrily, on her knees in the dust, her small wrists bound tightly before her.

"You were displeasing," I said. "Be pleased that your punishment was not more severe than it was."

Winyela looked up at me, tears in her eyes.

"You might have been fed to sleen," I said.

She shuddered.

"Do you not realize, pretty Winyela," I said, "that you are only a slave?"

"He did not even give me back my clothes," she said.

"These are holiday times," I said. "Surely you have seen more than one white female slave naked in the camp."

"He even left me bount," she said, lifting her secured wrists.

"That is perhaps a bit of extra discipline," I said.

"I am ashamed," she said. "I want to hide. Please let me go into your lodge."

I considered this.

"Beaten slave," said a white female, in a scandalously short shirtdress, and collar, a brunet slave of the Wismahi, sneeringly, to Winyela.

"You may enter the lodge," I said to Winyela.

"Thank you," she whispered, and crept within. Cuwignaka remained outside. He had pegged down three hides and, one after the other, alternating his efforts, was scraping them. All about the camp hides such as these, pegged down, and meat racks, heavy with sheets of kailiauk meat, were in evidence. These are common sights in summer camps. The meat is left two or three days in the sun, this being sufficient for its preservation. It is taken in at night to protect it from the night air.

Inside the lodge Winyela lay on her stomach, on the robes, and, her head lying on her bound hands, wept.

"Do you wish to be beaten again?" I asked.

"No," she said.

"Then, doubtless, you are resolving to be a better slave," I said.

She looked at me, tears streaming down her cheeks, her eyes red.

"Do not be so upset," I said. "You are only a slave."

"Canka struck me," she said. "He beat me."

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"And well," I said.

"Yes!" she said.

"Did you expect to be displeasing with impurnity?" I asked.

She regarded me, red-eyed.

"I see you did," I said. "Well, now you have learned better."

"I was beaten!" she said.

"Your sense of outrage is inappropriate," I said. "I suggest you rid yourself of it, immediately, lest it become the occassion of further discipline."

"Discipline?" she asked.

"Slave discipline," I said.

She swollowed hard.

"Replace it with a suitable attitude of trepidation," I said. "You are only a slave."

I observed her naked flanks, on the robes.

She shuddered.

"You should not feel outrage," I told her. "You are only a slave. That is an emotion which would be more appropriate in a free woman, one, say, stripped, and unjustifiably beaten, as though she might be a mere slave. Beatings, on the other hand, are the due of slaves, particularly ones which are in the least respect displeasing, as they might be of any other owned animal."

"I might as well belong to anyone," she said, bitterly.

"That is true," I said. "But you belong to Canka."

"Yes," she said, bitterly. "I belong to Canka." She put her head down, weeping. "I'm so ashamed," she said. "I was so humiliated."

"I understand," I said. The females of the red savages, with their laughter and catcalls, in particular, would not have made the lovely slave's ordeal any easier. Too, that a given girl has been beaten, and has thus, presumably, failed to be fully pleasing in some way, makes her an object of contempt and ridicule among other girls. Little love is lost, commonly, between competitive slave girls. Girls commonly like seeing other girls being beaten, whom they think are too proud, or whome they don't like. It is almost a holiday in the slave quarters when a high slave is to be whipped, particularly if she is then to be reduced to the status of a common girl.

"Am I permitted to feel shame, humiliation?" she asked, angrily.

"Of course," I said. "Those are emotions which are permitted to slaves."

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"How generous are the masters," she said.

"Too, shame and humiliation, like chains and whips, can be useful disciplinary devices."

"Of course," she said.

"A shamed, humiliated slave, tied and beaten, is usualy swift thereafter to learn her lessons," I said.

"I do not doubt it," she said.

"Tell me truthfully now," I said. "During the beating itself, before you were alone, writhing with the pain, what did you find most shameful, most humiliating?"

"Must I answer?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"That I knew, in my heart," she said, "that I deserved the beating, that I rechly deserved it."

"Oh?" I asked.

"I di dnot listen to Wasnapohdi," she said. "I was proud and vain. I was clumsy. I was stupid. I cut meat poorly. I displeased my master."

"I see," I said.

"Then I found myself stripped and tied on my knees at the whipping stake. I was to be publicly punished. Then the quirt fell upon me."

"Many times, in private beatings," I said, "such things as shame or humiliation will enter very little into the situation."

She regarded me.

"Often," I said, "the girl merely fears the leather, or its wary of it, and, hoping to give it a wide berth, behaves herself accordingly. For most practical purposes she knows that if she behaves in certain ways she will not feel it, and if she behaves in other ways, she will feel it. It is almost like a law of nature. It is always there, of course, in the background, and she knows that she is subject to it. Similarly, of course, even in her deepest love, she knows that, ultimately, her very life is dependent on the whim of her master. She can be thrown to sleen, at a word from him, if he wishes."

"We are so owned," she whispered.

"Sometimes," I said, "girls, some girls, who are not sure of their slavery, and its limits, will test their masters."

"Oh?" she said.

"Like you," I said.

"I?" she asked, startled.

"And the masters are not found wanting," I said. "The beauty is quickly rassured as to the existence of boundaries."

"I?" she asked.