Kajira of Gor (48 page)

You are very pretty, as a slave,” he said, regarding me, musingly, his hands on

my ankles. He moved my ankles, tight in his grip, slowly, widely apart. I could

not prevent this. Then angrily, he closed them. ‘No,” be said. “It would be too

long much like her.” Then, with a loop of thong, he crossed my ankles and tied

them together. I could not rise to my feet now. He then looped a thong from my

ankles to a slave ring near the foot of the dais. I could not now even squirm

from my place. “Doubtless she will be naked in the sack,” he muttered to

himself, “as naked as a slave. The in-human beasts will have done that to her.’

I must try not to look at her more than is necessary.” .

He then, quickly, rose from my side and went to the side of the room. He loosed

the rope there, that rope going up to a ring in the ceiling, and then down to

the sack.

I fought frenziedly to free myself. I could not do so.

Hand by hand, he lowered the golden sack to the tiles. He then opened it and

drew forth from it the vulnerable, quivering body of a naked woman. She looked

wildly at him. She was bound head and foot. She was gagged.

“They have put you in a collar!” he said. “How dare they have done this!”

She struggled to kneel to him. I do not even know if he, in his agitation,

realized this. The collar, of course, was the collar of Hassan. He had put it on

her in Ar, and had apparently never removed it.

“No!” cried Ligurious. “The beasts! The beastsl They have put your fair thigh

under the iron!”

I recalled that Hassan, in Ar, had informed her that the’ would make a stop

first, before proceeding to his lodging That stop, I now realized, must have

been the shop of metal worker.

There the slave mark would have been burned into her thigh. It would already be

on her, thus, when shi was carried over his threshold, naked and on his

shoulder, a slave.

The hands of Ligurbious fumbled at the cords on he ankles, and then on her

hands. He was sweating. She knelt frightened, her back to him.

“What have they done to you!” he cried. “What have they done to you!”

She knelt with her back to him, her head down, frightened.

Could he not see what they had done to her?

She was not the same woman he had known. He had known a cold, supercilious,

arrogant woman, one who had been petulant and harsh, one who had been cruel,

severe an~ demanding, an imperious and haughty slut. This, now, was not she.

There were many differences. For example, she knelt now rather than stood, and

she was now naked, rather than regally robed and bedecked. Too, of course, on

her neck, now there was a locked, close-fitting, steel slave collar, and on the

thigh, of course, might be found a certain, meaningful mark one apprising all

who might find it of interest of her status that it was bond.

Too, for those who might, find such thing interesting, it might have been noted

that her master, Hassan apparently had her on a careful diet and exercise

program Her body was now vital and healthy, and excitingly curved far beyond

anything that one commonly expects in a free woman.

But all of these things, in their way, were perhaps rather trivial or external.

The most important difference about her how were internal differences, deep,

profound differences, differences which manifested themselves beautifully and

unmistakably in such things as appearance, carriage, attitude and behavior.

These differences were doubtless consequences of having been helplessly in the

hands of Hassan, the Slave Hunter. These were the major differences in her. She

was now soft and vulnerable; she was now extremely feminine; she was now

informed and mastered; she was now, in the thousand ways in which this can be

true of a woman, slave.

Ligurious tore the gag from her.

“Master,” she sobbed.

“You know me,” he said. “I am Ligurious!”

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“Do not call me ‘Master,’” he said, his voice throaty with emotion. I saw that

he was only too eager to hear this word from her. He was fighting himself. But

even this innocent title, doing little more than recognizing the place of his

maleness in the order of primate nature, and surely a suitable expression on the

lips of a female slave, such as she now was, alarmed him. Too long bad he

idolized this woman. He was not yet ready to see that she had become real; it

seemed he desperately wished to keep her as some remote, cherished illusion. On

the other hand, there was a painful ambiguity in his relationship to her,

probably one that she had once fully exploited.

This had been evident in his attitudes toward me. He had, at various times, I

had understood, seriously considered subjecting me to his pleasure and, rather

clearly, I think, in the modality of the uncompromising master. In this, he had,

I think clearly evidenced his desire to use her in the same fashion. He had

wished to use me as a proxy for his longed-for domination of her. Our

resemblances, however, had apparently been too close. Each time he had refrained

from doing so. I do not think he truly desired me, or at least not other than as

a man might casually desire a girl he sees in a paga tavern or, say, one of the

girls he might notice chained in a row on their mats on a side street, but he

did desire her. Ligurious was truly a master; he had proved this with other

women; similarly, in most circumstances, had he so much as snapped his fingers

at me, I would have thrown my legs apart for him; this was not the modality

though, for whatever reason, in which he related to this other woman; he seemed

to see her as some frosty ideal of perfection, as something finer than and

different from all other women, as something of which he might scarcely be

worthy, as something to which he should perhaps dare not aspire, as something

almost untouchable and abstract. In his mind he condemned her to perfection; in

this fashion he kept her from being a woman. Hassan, of course, did not see her

in this fashion. In his arms she would not find herself cheated of herself. This

is not all that unusual, incidentally. A woman revered by one man as an icy

goddess is often another man’s pleading, licking slave. Ligurious, to his fury,

as a timid swain, would never get a hundredth from her of what Hassan, her

master, might command with a casual word. But this, of course, was only to be

expected. She was, after all, Hassan’s slave.

“But you are a free man,” she whispered. “What are you doing here? What are you

doing? Where is Hassan, my master?”

“Do you wish to be impaled?” he asked.

“No!” she said.

“Your body!” he suddenly cried,’ looking at her. “It is that of a slave!”

“Yes, Master,” she wept, trying to crouch down and cover her breasts with her

hands.

“And the collar on your throat, and the brand, superb!”

“Thank you, Master,” she wept. “No,” he suddenly cried, much to himself; “It

cannot be!” Then, not looking at her, he angrily pointed to the tunic, on the

tiles near me. “Put that on,” he said. “Be quick! In the halls they will think

you are she.”

“Yes, Master,” she said.

I struggled again to free myself, and could not do so.

In a moment Ligurious had freed my ankles of the thong that fastened me to the

slave ring and dragged me by the arm across the tiles to the golden sack. There,

putting me to my stomach, he began to replace my bonds with those she had worn.

This, presumably, is what Hassan would have done had he himself been effecting

this change of slaves.

“It is so small,” she said, pulling down at the sides of the slave tunic.

I looked up at her, angrily. It was the slave tunic Miles of Argentum put us all

in. We all wore it, all of his girls. To be sure, in it she was well displayed,

and as what she now was, a slave.

My gag was then replaced with the one which she had worn. The wadding was packed

into my mouth. It was still wet from her saliva. It was then secured in place. I

was then thrust feet first into the golden slave sack. My head was thrust down.

The sack was tied shut over my head. In a moment I felt myself, bit by bit,

helpless in the sack, being hoisted upward. The rope was then secured, and,

miserable and frightened, I swung slowly back and forth in the darkness of the

sack until, eventually, there was little more movement than that connected with

the tension of the rope, and my own small, occasional movements.

I ~ ~be ~ b~ng I~Wered.

f ~o not think I had been in it for even an Aim. Surely it Was not yet time for

the great feast.

Then the sack was on the floor.

It was opened.

My eyes widened. I could not cry out, gagged. I was drawn from the sack by

Drusus Rencius.

Behind him, naked, bound hand and foot, gagged, kneeling, was Sheila, the former

Tatrix of Corcyrus.

Drusus Rencius removed my bonds and, lastly, my gag. “Be silent,” he said.

I nodded, and knelt before him, as the slave I was, before a master.

I then saw him, and not gently, replace the bonds on Sheila, she now on her

belly on the tiles, with those I had worn, even to the gag, packed then tightly

in her mouth, wet and sopping, and secured there. He then thrust her in the

sack, tied it shut and, in moments, had hoisted her high to the ceiling, its

enclosed and helpless prisoner.

I reached out, timidly, to touch Drusus Rencius. “May I speak?” I whispered. I

did not wish to be cuffed.

“Yes,” he said.

“I am not the Tatrix of Corcyrus,” I said.

“I am sure you are not,” he said. “I have been a dupe and a fool, as I am sure

so, too, have been many of us.”

“Where is Ligurious?” I asked, frightened.

“He is with his cronies from Corcyrus, those pretending to be envoys from

Turia,” he said.

“Fortunately they did not see me. I recognized them, of course. Indeed, I have

been keeping a close eye on Ligurious ever since I discovered he was in the

palace. I saw him, for example, enter the throne room, and saw you enter later.

I then, later, saw him leaving the throne room with the other woman, she whom,

after he left his quarters, I took the liberty of replacing in the sack where

she belongs. He was in his banquet robes when he left his quarters. Accordingly

I do not think he will discover her new whereabouts until the sack is opened.”

“It is intended,” I said, “that the cohorts of Ligurious detain Hassan, and

prevent him from attending the banquet.”

“Hassan, I am sure,” said Drusus Rencius, “can take care of himself.”

I looked at him, wildly.

“Stand,” he said.

I did so.

“I believe this is yours,” said Drusus Rencius, lifting skimpy tunic which,

doubtless hut shortly before, he had moved from Sheila, probably binding and

gagging her.

“Yes, Master,” I said.

“Put it on,” he said, throwing it against my body.

I caught it. “Yes, Master,” I said. In a moment I was in It does not take long

to don such a garment. I adjusted it my body. Then I straightened up. I saw I

was being inspect as a slave.

“Turn, slowly,” he said.

I did so, displaying as well as I could one of the property of Miles of

Argentum.

“Have you been named?” he asked.

“Yes, Master,” I said.

“What is it?” he asked.

“’Sheila,’ Master,” I said.

He smiled. “That would seem appropriate,” He said, least from the point of view

of Miles of Argentum. That, incidentally, is the name of the slave in the sack.

It was on her in Ar by her master, Hassan, the Slave Hunter.”

I nodded. I had not known that. He could have named I anything, of course.

Daphne, Jean, Wanda, Marjorie, Ta Nose, Excrement, whatever he pleased. It had

apparently amused him, however, perhaps as an irony, to put her name back on

her, this time, of course, as a mere cognon in bondage, a convenience by means

of which to refer to as the animal she now was, a slave name.

“You are very pretty, Sheila,” he said.

“Thank you, Master,” I said. That was my current sl~ name.

“The other Sheila, too, is very pretty,” he said. “It will interesting, tonight,

to compare you, when you are both naked and in chains, side by side, presented

to Claudius a the high council.”

“Doubtless, Master,” I said. In such a situation, ni might, I supposed, make

their appraisals and deterministic under almost ideal conditions. The conditions

would be most as favorable as those of a slave market. We might even be measured

and posed. When I was exhibited before him this fashion it was my hope that

Drusus Rencius would like what he saw.

33
   
The Inquiry; The Outcome of the Inquiry; I Am the Slave of Miles of

Argentum

The dancers had now scurried away with a jangle of The musicians were quiet. The

floor, between the tables cleared. The feast slaves had drawn back, behind the t

At these tables were Claudius, the Ubar of Argentum members of the high council.

There were-numerous other dignitaries there, as well, both from Argentum and

from cities. Miles of Argentum was there, and Drusus Rencius Ligurious.

Interestingly enough, Aemilianus of Ar, wb( once been my master, was there, and

Publius, who had the house master in the house of Kliomenes, in Cos Hassan, the