Fighting Slave of Gor (35 page)

I knelt near the end of the line. The Mistress, with a long, tharlarion quirt, had begun her inspection.

When the Lady Melpomene had finished with me, after that long night of her use of me, she had held for me another draft of water, discolored by the reddish Tassa powder. I had not wished to drink this. Then she had held her dagger to my body. I drank. Soon I was unconscious.

"Kneel more straightly, Slave," said the Lady Florence to another stable slave, down the line from me.

Apparently the two men in the hire of the Lady Melpomene, those two who had originally captured me, and carried me to her house in Venna, returned for me. I did not regain consciousness until, painfully, I was aware of being thrown upon a hard surface. I heard two men hurrying away. I was, knees drawn up, and head down, fastened in a slave sack. Within the sack itself my ankles were crossed and tied, and my hands, too, were similarly fastened, behind my back.

"What is going on here?" I heard cry. "Stop!" It had been the voice of Kenneth, the head keeper of my Mistress' slaves, the Lady Florence of Vonda. I had heard a wagon rattling away, swiftly.

"What is going on?" I had heard, a woman's voice, that of my Mistress. Over my head I had felt the sack being untied.

"It is Jason," had said Kenneth. He had drawn me from the sack by a bound arm. I felt my head slapped to the side. "You are in the presence of the Mistress," had said Kenneth.

I had then knelt before her. I was on the porch of her house in Venna. I was naked.

"There is a note tied to his collar," said Kenneth. Men and women of the household, including male and female slaves, domestic slaves, house slaves, such as short-legged, luscious Taphris, had gathered about. The note on my collar was taken and handed to the Mistress. She read the note in fury, and then crumpled it, and cast it to the side. She looked down at me, in fury.

"Send him to the stables," she said.

"Yes, Lady Florence," had said Kenneth.

"Have the rest of you nothing better to do than gawk at a stable slave?" she snapped.

Quickly the small crowd dissipated, the free persons turning aside to their duties and the slaves, barefoot, including Taphris, scurrying quickly to their tasks. Lady Florence, Kenneth and myself were alone left on the porch.

Kenneth unbound my ankles and threw aside the binding fiber which had restrained them.

I kept my head down.

Kenneth stood up. "Lady Florence," he asked.

"Yes?" she said.

"When we return to your villa near Vonda," he asked, "is the slave to be returned to the house or is it your intention that he serve there, as well as here, in the stables, not your private stables but the great stables?" The Lady Florence owned more than a thousand tharlarion. She bred and raised tharlarion, and her stables were among the finest in the vicinity of Vonda.

"He is a stable slave," she said, angrily. "Use him as such."

"In the great stables?" he asked.

"Yes," she said.

"As a full stable slave," he asked, "subject to all the conditions and strictures of such?"

"Yes," she said.

"Excellent," he said.

Then, in fury, she had spun about and left, robes swirling.

I lifted my head. Kenneth was chuckling. For some reason he seemed pleased.

"Master," I said.

"Yes?" he said.

"May I know what was in the note which was affixed to my collar?"

"I, too, am curious," he grinned. He picked up the note. " `My sweet friend and compatriot, Lady Florence of Vonda,'" read Kenneth, "`Thank you very much for the use of your lovely silk slave, Jason. I enjoyed him very much. It is easy to see why you are so fond of him. Incidentally, thank you, too, for the lovely gift of perfume. I wore it while using him for my pleasure. Thank you again, my sweet and understanding friend, and generous friend, for your kindness in these matters. I wish you well. Melpomene, Lady of Vonda.'"

Kenneth then dropped the note, muchly where he had found it.

He pulled me to my feet and thrust me, stumbling, to my right, down the steps and toward the wagon way leading about the house, toward the stables.

At the corner of the house we stopped.

"Look," he said.

I looked back. The Lady Florence had come out again on the porch. She looked about, but did not see us, as we were some distance away, at the corner of the house, and shielded by trees. She bent down, furtively, and snatched up the note which had been attached to my collar. Then she hurried again into the house.

"She is a woman," said Kenneth.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"She cannot bear that it might be found," laughed Kenneth. "Too, perhaps she wants it, that she may, regarding it, hate the Lady Melpomene even more than she has in the past, if that is possible."

"Yes, Master," I said.

"Did you see how furtive she was," he asked, "so fearful of discovery?"

"Yes, Master," I said.

"She is, for all her wealth and freedom," he said, "only a woman."

"Yes, Master," I said.

"Is she pleasant in the furs?" he asked.

"It was I, a silk slave," I said, smiling, "not she, who must needs be pleasant in the furs."

"Of course," he said. Then he said, "Would she look well in a collar? Would she look well naked, upon a slave block"

I was startled. "May I respond to such questions?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

"Yes," I said, "she would look well in a collar, and would look well naked, upon a slave block."

"I had guessed as much," he grinned.

"If I may speak, Master," I said, "you seem pleased to learn that I have been consigned to the stables."

"I am," said he. "I expect that you will make coins for Barns and myself."

"Master?" I asked.

"Can you fight?" he asked.

"No," I said.

He laughed. "You are a big fellow," he said, "and strong. Too, you seem fast. Too, you are clearly intelligent. That is important, more important than many fools understand."

"I do not know how to fight," I said. I was very conscious of the binding fiber confining my wrists behind my back.

"Tighten your belly," he said.

I did so. He then, as I anticipated, struck me, heavily, in the gut. I was, of course, in good condition, and set for the blow.

"Good," said Kenneth.

"I do not know how to fight," I told him.

"In the stables," said Kenneth, "authority is mine. You will, for all practical purposes, belong to me. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Master," I said.

"Do you wish to live?" he asked.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"You will then do as you're told," he said

"Yes, Master," I said.

"In the stables," he said, "we have, too, besides the male slaves, some Kajirae, stable sluts, as we call them. I can assign these as I please."

I looked at him. I thought of Gorean Kajirae. I inadvertently licked my lips.

He laughed, and turned about, leading the way about the corner of the house, treading upon the wagon way.

"Come along, Stable Slave," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said, following him.

The line of kneeling, male stable slaves was straight. I knelt near the end of that line. The Mistress, not hurrying, continued her inspection. Kenneth and Barus followed her. Occasionally she stopped to speak to a slave, sometimes to put him under questions, pertaining to his duties and his discharging of them. She could be quite thorough, my mistress, the lofty Lady Florence of Vonda. Many of the slaves feared her, her demands and her quirt. She held over them, of course, the power of life and death. She was only a few slaves from me now. It had rained the night before, and the ground was soft. She wore a full, beige skirt, the hem of which fell to within some six inches of the ground, and slim, high, black-leather boots; a beige blouse, and a beige jacket, belted, which fell to her thighs; too, she wore a loose hood, attached to the jacket by hooks, of matching beige material, and an opaque veil, also of beige material. Such garments, far less formal than the common attire of the Gorean free woman, are sometimes worn by rich women in the supervision and inspection of certain sorts of holdings, such as orchards, fields, ranches and vineyards. They constitute, for such women, so to speak, a habit for work.

The mistress was now but five slaves from me.

The skirt's hem, some six inches from the ground, protects the skirt from being soiled by water or mud. Doubtless that is the principal reason for its height. Also, however, interestingly, it functions as a slave control device. The sight of the Mistress' ankle, of course, even booted, is tantalizing; it is exciting and provocative. The male slave, thus, if he is vital, finds himself powerfully drawn to look upon it. On the other hand he knows that such an act can be punished by death. Thus, when he is in the presence of his Mistress, she in such a habit, he becomes fearful and ill at ease. She, in effect, flaunts herself in front of him, acting however as though no such thing is going on. She knows that he is in misery. She exploits this in her control of him.

The Mistress was now some four slaves from me. I was the thirty-fifth in a long line of male slaves, some forty-two in length. We knelt, in brief brown tunics, in the soft earth. The sunlight~was bright; the air was Gorean in its exuberance and freshness. The homely smells of the stable yard and the barns, with their straw-filled stalls, are not really objectionable, when one grows used to them. The odors are distinctive but, when one grows accustomed to them, familiar and not really unpleasant. I rather liked the odors of the stables and barns, such complex mixed odors, ranging from straw, and hay and leather, to the organic wastes of our huge charges, some four species of draft tharlarion. We did not, in the great stables, raise saddle tharlarion, though in the house stables, here in the Mistress' villa, some forty pasangs south sect west of Vonda, there were several saddle tharlarion. The Mistress did not breed and raise racing tharlarion, incidentally. These are usually larger and more agile beasts than common saddle tharlarion and are smaller, of course, than either draft tharlarion or war tharlarion, the latter used almost exclusively in the tharlarion cavalries of Gor, huge, upright beasts, several tons in weight, guided by voice commands and the blows of spears. The Lady Melpomene of Vonda, incidentally, I had heard, for such stories reach even the stables, had fared badly in the tharlarion races in Venna. I recalled that she had hoped to recoup her lost fortunes in such races. Apparently she had failed to do so. As the story went, and my own knowledge, as far as it went, corroborated the story, she had wagered what were, in effect, her last serious financial resources, the proceeds garnered from the sale of her house in Venna, on the outcomes of certain tharlarion races. She had thought herself, in virtue of the possession of significant and secret information, assured of certain winners in these races. Unfortunately for her this information, as I suspect is often the case in such matters, proved unreliable. Her wagers had, at any rate, proved uniformly disastrous. She had become a ruined woman. She had had to flee from Venna under the cover of darkness, that she not be delivered to the mercies of her creditors. Such creditors often come for a woman with a collar and chain. She resided now in Vonda, in a tiny, dingy holding, where she, as a citizeness of that city, would have, at least against foreign creditors, the protection of its Home Stone. The Lady Melpomene of Vonda, impoverished, ruined, had little now to pride herself on save the name of her family and the splendor of her lineage. The Lady Florence, though she must have been aware of these things, never, it was said, at home or abroad, mentioned the name of the Lady Melpomene. She had, perhaps, forgotten about her.

The Mistress was still some four slaves from me. She was sharply questioning one of my fellow slaves. Stammering and cringing, he was trying to satisfy her. I observed the Mistress' ankles, which, below the swirling hem of the beige skirt, were well turned in the high, slim boots. A slaver, of course, would remove such boots before shackling her. I saw Kenneth, behind her, grinning at me. I decided I had best look away from the Mistress.

We had worked hard, the last two days, preparing the stables and the animals for the inspection of the Mistress. I did not know if she would find fault or not, but, to me, objectively, it seemed the holding was in splendid condition. Kenneth, who had held an earlier inspection, had been satisfied, and he was, I suspected, harder to please than would be the Mistress. Indeed, it was a bit unusual that the Mistress conducted her own inspections. Too, it seems she was spending longer with the slaves than one would normally expect. This sudden, exacting concern with the details of the operation of the great stables was unusual for her. She was Mistress, of course, and might do as she wished.

"Do you wish to be whipped, with the snake?" she asked a fellow down the line from me.

"No, Mistress," he said, swiftly.

"Then do your work well, Slave," she said.

"Yes, Mistress," he stammered.

I considered again the polished, black leather of her trim, high boots. A free woman, of course, if she owns slaves, does not polish her own boots. That would be done by one of the house slaves. I suspected that it was Taphris, short-legged and luscious, who polished her boots.