“I trust,” I said, “you will soon be more explicit.”
“At Shipcamp,” he said.
“It is growing cold,” I said.
“Let us return to the shelters,” he said.
I shielded my eyes, as I could, from the light of the candle. It was not bright, I suppose, but the contrast with the darkness of the slave house was painful. I half closed my eyes. I could not see who held the candle. I knew he would carry a switch. At the entrance to the slave house, that rude, long, low-ceilinged, wooden building, the visitors are given a small lamp, or a taper, in its holder, and a switch. The offerings, on their mats, are aligned on the two sides of the building, with an aisle between them.
If we are not pleasing, we are switched.
We strive to be pleasing.
“Does the light hurt your eyes, pretty kajira?” he asked.
“Yes, Master,” I whispered.
“Get on your belly,” he said.
I turned to my belly, with a soft rattle of the chain. I felt it pull against my collar ring. The chain runs to a heavy ring anchored in the floor, on my left, if I were on my back. The mat is thick, and coarse, and the floor is of planking. We are not coddled.
I had seldom been switched.
We hope to please the masters.
The palms of my hands were on the mat, at the sides of my head. I looked to the left, my right cheek on the mat.
I sensed that he was regarding me. We are on some four feet of chain. We are naked.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“Laura,” I said, “if it pleases Master.” They may name us, of course, as they please. I had been used under a variety of names. Sometimes, I fear, we stand proxy for another.
“That is a barbarian name,” he said. “Are you a barbarian?”
“Yes, Master,” I said. I tensed. “Please do not whip me, Master,” I begged. Some men seem to feel that barbarian women, some barbarian women, from the world Earth, have exceeded their place, and they are then whipped. I did not think that I had exceeded my place. I think I had recognized what it was, since puberty.
Even on my former world, I had been curious as to what it might be, to be owned and serve a master. On Gor, I had learned. Yet each master is different, and our helplessness in the arms of one may not be identical with our helplessness in the arms of another. There are a thousand ecstasies, and a thousand yieldings, each in a sense the same, and yet each different. What is common in each is that one is slave, and one is master. Sometimes, if only from a chagrin at my lowliness, or perhaps in an attempt to recover something of my former free woman’s independence and pride, I had resolved to resist the attentions to which I found myself subjected, but I had soon found myself succumbing as might any other collar slut, which I now was. How helpless we are in their hands! Initially, weeks ago, I had surrendered myself, at least in part, for fear of the consequences of a master’s displeasure, or even his failure to find me fully pleasing. In my training, as brief as it was, I had been taught the lash of the switch and, once, the stroke of the whip, and would go to great lengths to avoid both. I also learned that there are infallible signs in a slave’s body, signs of authentic response, which signs are easily read by Gorean males. They easily detect, and do not accept, pretense. Accordingly, after leaving the house, and having felt the switch, and, once, the lash, I had surrendered wholly, and helplessly, as I must, holding back nothing, surrendered to feeling, emotion, and radical sentience, as a yielding, worthless object, as a slave to her master, which I was. Again and again I would steel myself to resist, somehow, even despite the perils, but then I would be touched, and I would be again a slave. Too, I feared, but longed for, the growing of my needs, now multiplying, waxing, and intensifying. In my mind, and belly, I was becoming different, or, perhaps better, was becoming more and more, in my mind and belly, what I had always been, a slave. And surely I now knew at least the glimmer of slave fires. Men were seeing to it. I had no choice. I was given no choice. It was being done to me, regardless of my will. I felt helpless, but then a slave is helpless. How far I was now from the arrogance of my former self, which, while desperately desiring bondage, had sought, in accord with the mechanistic, sterile prescriptions of my world, demanded of me, to deny these desires, and drive them from my mind! No longer were such options permitted me. I could no longer help myself. I was now a slave!
“Oh!” I said, suddenly, touched.
“Excellent,” he said.
I dug my fingernails into the mat.
***
Some weeks ago, my coffle, disembarked, marched east from the sea, had arrived at an extensive enclave termed Tarncamp. There were many buildings there, for housing, cooking, feeding, washing, sleeping, exercise, storage, and such. Amongst them we passed an impressive pavilion. It was said to be the pavilion of a Lord Nishida. He was first, I gathered, in the camp. The pavilion, palisaded, seemed to be the center of much activity. Men came and went, and slaves, as well. In passing by the open gate, with its two large panels, swung back on each side from the palisade wall, I could see the pavilion within was largely open, rather like an extensive dais. Guards were about. Did he fear attack? In passing, I heard the roar of a beast from somewhere within the palisade. I trusted that it was well secured. It reminded me of the roars, though they had been from a much greater distance, I had heard on the beach, and, twice, in my journey to this place, through the forest. I supposed they emanated from the same, or a similar, sort of beast. It soon became clear that this large enclave was a work camp of some sort, one in which, apparently, much timbering took place. We saw wagons, filled with logs, drawn by tharlarion. We also saw stables in which such beasts might be fed, watered, and sheltered. The journey here had taken some four days. We had, however, following others, including the several men bearing the two large, strange, apparently weighty boxes or crates unloaded from our galley, soon left Tarncamp, and, by a short trail, emerged onto what we learned was a training area of sorts. Here I had my first clear sight of tarns. Before, in the forest, I had known them only as large, frightening shadows overhead, rapid, monstrous darknesses overhead, storms of wings smiting the air, whose passage had torn leaves from the canopy, these then showering downward, scattering about us. Too, I had not forgotten the single wild, streaming, raucous scream I had heard. It had been said that they killed men, and that men flew them. One alighted on the training ground not ten yards from us. Dust scattered about. We crowded together, stripped, our necks in the rope coffle, instinctively. I think I cried out. I know others did. How small the rider was compared to the bird! I think it fair to call it a bird, but it was no form of life with which I was familiar. I wondered on what world such a thing might have emerged from the dark, grisly, unforgiving, demanding games of nature, certainly not on my former world, nor, I suspected, this world. Perhaps it had arisen on some larger world, perhaps a much larger world, a world on which evolution might select for such massive size and power. In this sense, I did not know if such a monster were well thought of as a bird, or not. It was, as far as I could tell, a form of life alien to both the Earth and Gor. Still it was clearly a bird, or very birdlike. It had talons, a beak, long and wicked, and mighty wings. Too, it was crested. I had heard of convergent evolution, as in a shape best fitted to negotiate an aquatic environment, examples of which might be the dolphin, the fish, the ichthyosaur, and such. Too, consider eyes, and how widely spread they are amongst diverse life forms, insects, fish, mammals, birds, and such. Considering the values of given shapes, certain appendages, diverse irritabilities, tactual, auditory, and visual sensors, and such, one would expect them to arise, sooner or later, on any world capable of sustaining complex life forms. Accordingly, I supposed, evolution might provide a place on diverse worlds for birds, or birdlike creatures, creatures of keen eyesight, creatures which might attack, grasp, and tear, creatures not bound to the earth, creatures which might negotiate and traverse the very atmosphere itself.
“Hold your coffle!” called the fellow from the saddle of the tarn, he yards from the ground.
His command was not necessary. We were terrified to move, and were crowded together.
“Burdens down!” called the coffle master. “Stand, align yourselves!” We knew how we were to stand. We stood as slaves, erect and proud, as prize goods.
“Where do you get these tarsks?” called the fellow in the saddle.
“In Brundisium!” responded the coffle master.
We were indignant, as we knew we had been carefully selected. Even a slave has her pride, though it may be no more than the pride of a slave. We must be careful, of course, to give little, or no, sign of our displeasure or annoyance. We did not wish to be cuffed, or put to our bellies and switched in the dirt. Too, we had not been given permission to speak. We could not help it if prices had been low in Brundisium. After all, there had been, I had gathered, serious difficulties in Ar, a large city, in the recent past. Indeed, at least three items in our coffle had been former free women of Ar, two of high caste.
“A copper tarsk for the lot!” said the fellow on the tarn.
“Some sold for silver!” said the coffle master.
I had sold for copper.
“Mat girls,” laughed the tarnsman.
“We must on to Shipcamp,” said the coffle master.
“Hold the coffle,” said the tarnsman, pointing. “See the targets. An exercise is underway. A flight is behind me. I am charged to clear the field.”
We looked to our right, and, in the distance, we saw specks, several specks, moving specks.
The coffle master shaded his eyes.
The specks were far, and, for a bit, it seemed they were arrested, not even moving, and then it was clear they were moving, and were larger, slightly larger. At the distance their speed was not clearly discernible, and yet I was sure, from their passage in the forest, overhead, that it was likely to be considerable.
I looked to my left and saw rows of targets, perhaps forty or fifty.
These were perhaps something in the neighborhood of a foot and a half in width, and some six feet high. Portions of the targets were colored, rather at the level of what might be a man’s waist, chest, neck, and head.
When I turned back, the specks were no longer specks but clearly spread ranks of flighted creatures, at four levels, and, as I later determined, each rank was followed by its column, the ranks in these columns separated by some fifty yards, or so.
The fellow who had arrested our progress, then, with a snap of wings and a shower of dust, departed the field.
Shortly thereafter four waves, or ranks, of tarnsmen swept by, the lowest wave perhaps no more than five yards from the ground, the highest perhaps twenty or twenty-five yards from the ground. In a moment they were gone, arrows launched, but, wheeling about, they returned from the opposite direction, and again loosed their missiles, and then wheeled about, again, and, approaching from the original direction, loosed another volley of missiles, and then sped away. There had been three passes. The targets were bristling with arrows, front and back. Fellows from the margins of the field went to the targets and retrieved the arrows. I would later learn that records were kept, as each arrow could be identified as that of a given bowman. In this way, marksmanship might be evaluated, and bowmen distinguished. The bows used, though I did not realize the importance of this at the time, were short bows. Such a bow can clear the saddle, enabling its missile to be fired easily in any direction. The crossbow is well known on Gor, but its rate of fire is far exceeded by that of the straight bow, either the peasant bow or the shorter, saddle bow.
I was much frightened by what I saw. Almost every arrow fired had struck a target. How frightening, I thought, to be the quarry of such marksmen!
I would later learn that there had been, some days previous, an attack on this camp, which had been repulsed, in part by such tarnsmen.
Shortly after the exercise, the flights apparently departed for some rendezvous, the fellow who had cleared the field returned.
“May we proceed?” called our coffle master.
“Do you want to run any of your girls?” asked the tarnsmen.
“No,” said the coffle master.
I did not understand this exchange. One or two of the other girls, however, must have understood, for their relief, given the negative response of the coffle master, was evident.
“Burdens up,” called the coffle master, and we retrieved our burdens. I think we were all pleased to leave the training area.
Later that evening, we were camped along a road leading east from the training area, toward a place called Shipcamp. We lay in the leaves and grass, as usual, our hands bound behind us, our coffle rope tied between two trees. We could speak to one another then, though softly, that the men not be disturbed.
“I am frightened,” I whispered, to Relia, who had earlier had the lot number Eighteen. It was she who had fled toward the stairs in the dungeon, but had been precluded from reaching them by one of our keepers. She had looked well on her knees, licking and kissing a man’s feet, in gratitude for not having been beaten. Prior to this experience she had been insufferably proud, and arrogant, at least with some of us, though not daring this with the masters, and was certainly so with myself, for I was only a barbarian. She had apparently once been of the Merchants, perhaps the high Merchants, and had even held herself to be of high caste, despite the fact that few Goreans accepted the Merchants as a high caste. It was regarded as a rich caste, but that is not, in the eyes of many, the same as being a high caste. It was, of course, a powerful caste, given its wealth, and even Ubars might court its favor. How are men to be paid, and wars waged, if not with gold? In any event, she who had once been “Eighteen” had now changed considerably, and surely was now better aware of the meaning of the mark which had been burned into her left thigh, just under the hip. She was still reserved with me, and regarded me with condescension, but would no longer strike me, or speak to me as she had originally, perhaps if only because doing so would offer her chain sisters an excellent, and welcome, pretext for administering, given the recent past, another unpleasant lesson in civility. After they had seen her on her knees in the dungeon, a frightened slave at a master’s feet, they no longer stood in awe of her. Indeed, it was not unusual now for one or the other of them to push her, trip her, strike her, or pull her hair. Even now there were bruises on her body. We policed ourselves, so to speak, as no First Girl had been set over us, who would enforce order. I thought ‘Relia’, which name had been given to her just before mine had been given to me, was a nice name, and it was, of course, at least, a Gorean name. Indeed, as I understood it, some free women had that name. If she was purchased by a free woman, of course, it would have been instantly changed, to something more appropriate to a slave, Lana, Tula, Lita, or such. She was quite lovely, and, I suspect, that influenced the master who had named her. Masters often prefer lovely names for slaves; mistresses are usually less indulgent. She was taller than I was as I was taller than the girl behind me in the coffle, who was Janina, another nice name, which was also Gorean. Our lot numbers were now all but indistinguishable on our left breasts. I think we had all tried to remove them, as well as we could, with the bit of precious oil we were supplied when, roped together, we were allowed to enter the shallow, washing pools. We envied the freer girls who might be permitted a wooden tub in the open air. In the house, I had learned that a slave is to keep herself clean, fresh, rested, and well groomed. A free woman may be as ill-kempt and slovenly as she pleases, but this option is not permitted to the slave. She is, after all, a property, and is to be pleasing to her master. Many masters prefer long hair in a slave, hair which is “slave long,” as it is not only lovely but is often useful, as well, in the furs, for delighting and tantalizing a master. Too, she may sometimes be bound with her own hair, and certainly controlled by means of it. Some masters, too, prefer a smooth slave, and, in such a case, may have the slave depilated, or have her body hair shaved away. Sometimes the master attends to this himself. This is more common in certain cities than in others.