clumsy slaves

[sweetlarma]

“‘Paga!’ called my captor.
I almost fainted. I went to him and, shaking, poured paga into his goblet; I was terrified that I might spill it; it was not only that I feared, should I spill the beverage, that I might be beaten for my clumsiness; it was even more than I wished to appear graceful and beautiful before him; but I shook, and was awkward; the paga sloshed in the goblet but, as my heart almost stood still, it did not spill; he looked at me; I was a clumsy girl, and a poor slave; I felt so small and unworthy before him; I was not only a girl, small and weak before these mighty men; I was not even a good slave. Trembling, I extended the goblet to him. He did not take it. I shrank back, confused. I did not know what to do. I realized then that I had, in my confusion and distress, forgotten to place my lips upon the goblet in subservience. I quickly pressed my lips to the goblet, kissing it. Then, suddenly, as I was to hand it to him, I boldly, again, lifted the goblet’s side to my lips. Holding it in both hands, I kissed it again, lovingly, delicately, fully, lingering, my eyes closed. I had never kissed a boy on Earth with the helplessness and passion that I bestowed upon the mere goblet of my Gorean captor. I belonged to him. I was his. I loved him! I felt the metal of the cup beneath my full, pressing lips. I opened my eyes. I proffered, tears in my eyes, the cup of paga to my captor. It was though, with the cup, I was giving myself to him. Yet I knew I needed not give myself to him, for I was his, and a slave girl; he could take me whenever he wished me. He took the cup from my hands, and dismissed me.”
Slave Girl of Gor, pp. 68-69

[sweetlarma]

Samos then signaled to the musicians, who were seated to one side, that they should prepare to play.
Samos signaled again to the musicians, and they began to play a sensual, slow, adagio melody.
Samos glanced at the dancer.
I, too glanced at her. She was not trained. She did not know slave dance. Her movements were those of a virgin, a white-silk girl. She had not yet been taught slave helplessness. No man yet in his arms had taught her the exquisite, transforming degradations of the utilized slave, the wrenching surrender spasms, enforced upon her by his will, of the conquered bondwoman, experiences which, once she has had them, she is never willing to give up, experiences which she comes to need, experiences for which she will do anything, experiences which, whether she wishes it or not, put her at and keep her at, the mercy of men.
“She is clumsy,” said Samos. He was irritated. I saw he did not wish, really, to have her killed.
A man laughed at her, as she tried to dance before him. “Her throat will be cut within the Ahn,” laughed another man. Another man turned away from her, when she approached him, to have his goblet of paga filled by a luscious, half-naked, collared slave.
“Clumsy, clumsy,” said Samos. “I thought she might have the makings, somehow, of a pleasure slave.”
“She is trying,” I said.
“She does not have what it takes,” said Samos.
“Her body is richly curved,” I said. “That suggests an abundance of female hormones, and that, in turn, suggests the potentialities, the capacities for love, the sensibilities, the dispositions of the pleasure slave.”
“She is not acceptable,” said Samos. “She is inadequate.”
“She is trying desperately to please,” I said.
“But she is not succeeding,” he said.
“She has a lovely body,” I said. “Perhaps someone could buy her for a pittance, for a pot girl.”
“She is not adequate,” said Samos. “I will have to have her destroyed.”
“Dance, you stupid slave,” hissed one. “Do you not know you are a slave? Do you not know you are owned?”
A wild look, one of sudden, fearful insight, came over the face of the dancer. She had not thought, specifically, objectively, it seemed, about this aspect of matters. But, of course, she was owned. She was now property. She could now be bought and sold, like a tarsk, at the pleasure of masters.
“Dance, fool!” cried one of the slave girls to the former Lady Rowena of Lydius.
“See the free woman!” laughed one of the slaves. “It is the sleen for her,” said another.
“Please men!” cried another. “What do you think you are for?”
She who had been the Lady Rowena fell sobbing to her knees, helpless on the tiles, covering her face with her hands. The music stopped.
“With your permission,” I said to Samos. I rose to my feet and went to the girl, now prone, red eyed, on the tiles. I crouched down beside her. I turned her over, handling her with authority, as a slave is handled. She looked up at me. Never before, doubtless, had she been handled like this. “Her face is beautiful,” I said, “her body is curvaceous, her limbs are fair. It seems she should bring a good price.” She gasped, appraised as a female.
“Men desire women,” I told her.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“And you belong to that sex,” I said, “which is maddeningly, exquisitely desirable.”
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“And you are,” I said, “I think, objectively, a beautiful member of that sex.”
“Thank you, Master,” she whispered.
“It therefore seems not inconceivable that men might find you desirable.”
“Yes, Master,” she whispered.
“Does that please you?” I asked.
“It terrifies me,” she said.
“Do you have normal feelings toward men?” I asked.
“I think so, Master,” she said. “Now that you are a slave,” I said, “it is not only permissible for you to yield to these feelings, but you must do so.”
“Master!” she whispered.
“Yes,” I said, “for you are now a slave.”
“Yes, Master,” she whispered, shuddering.
“That makes quite a difference, doesn't it?” I asked.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“She does not have slave reflexes,” said a man.
“We are now going to put these things together,” I said. “First, you are an exquisitely desirable woman. You are the sort of woman who could drive a man mad with passion. You are the sort of woman to possess whom men might kill. Furthermore, your beauty and desirability is increased a thousandfold because you are a property girl, a slave.”
“Yes, Master,” she whispered. “Oh, Master!”
“Men are now of even greater interest to you, are they not?” I asked.
“Yes, Master!” she wept.
“Now,” I said, “second, let us consider things from the point of view of the woman, from your point of view.”
“As a slave,” I said, “it is not only permissible for you to yield to your deepest, most stirring, most primitive, most overwhelmingly feminine urges but you must do so, shamelessly, unqualifiedly, completely.”
“Yes, Master,” she cried, and thrust herself suddenly, piteously, against my hand. I then, by the hair, pulled her about and threw her lengthwise, prone, to the tiles. She looked up at me, over her shoulder. I saw wildness in her eyes. I saw that she had begun to sense what it might be to be an aroused slave.
“Whip,” I said, to a man. The whip was placed in my hand.
“Master?” asked the girl, apprehensively.
“I do not believe you were given permission to stop dancing earlier,” I said.
“No, Master,” she said.
“As you are a stupid girl and new to your condition, your punishment, this time, will be light. Three lashes.”
“Three!” she sobbed.
“Do not expect masters to be so lenient with your stupidity in the future,” I said.
“No, Master,” she wept.
Then, doubtless for the first time in her life, she who had been the proud free woman, the Lady Rowena of Lydius, naked, and on her belly on the tiles, felt, like the common girl she now was, the slave whip of Gor.
“Stand,” I told her. “Back straight, belly in, breasts out. Lift your hands to your shoulders, flex your knees.”
“I have been whipped,” she said, disbelievingly.
“See the difference?” said a man to another at his table. “How she stands?”
“Yes,” said the other.
I touched her here and there, with the whip, deftly, correcting a line, or the tension of a curve.
She shrank back from the touch of the whip. She now knew what it could to do to her. She had felt it. After, a girl has once felt the whip the mere sight of it is usually enough to bring her immediately into line. “What hangs upon the wall?” a master might ask. “The slave whip, Master,” she responds. “How may I be more pleasing?”
I handed the whip back to the fellow who had had it, and returned to my place at the table of Samos.
He signaled the musicians, and they began, again, to play.
I saw that it was a slave who danced before the men. She gyrated but inches from a burly oarsman, then leaped back, eluding his drunken grasp. She moved between the tables, a slave, an owned woman. Then she was kneeling beside a man, kissing and caressing him, and then, as though it were involuntary, as though her hands were tied behind her and she was being pulled back, away from him, by a rope, she retreated from him. In a moment she was showering another man with her hair and kisses. Then she offered a man wine, holding the goblet, pressing it Against her belly, swaying sensuously before him. She was then again in the center of the tiles, among the tables. She made as if to speak, and then, suddenly, stopped, as though startled. Then she took a wad of her long, golden hair and, swiftly balling it, thrust it, as though insolently, in her mouth. She then looked at the men reproachfully. It was as though a man, perhaps not desiring to hear her speak, had gagged her with her own hair. There was laughter. She drew the hair from her mouth, drawing some of it, in loosening it, deeply back between her teeth, with her head back, as though she might have been in the constraint of a gag strap, all this to the music, and then her hair was free, and, with a movement of her head and movements of her hands, beautifully, she draped and spread it about her. It seemed then she withdrew modestly, frightened, behind the hair, drawing it like a cloak or sheet about her, as though by means of this piteous device she might hope desperately to conceal at least some minimal particle of her beauty from the rude scrutiny of masters. But it was not to be permitted.
To a swirl of music, taking her hair to the sides, holding it, parting it, with clenched fists thrust behind her, twisting, her body thrust forward, her beauty was suddenly, it seemed as though by command, or by the action of another, brazenly bared. “Good!” said more than one man. There was a striking of shoulders in Gorean applause. Even some of the slave girls cried out with pleasure. The girl had done it well. Then she was again dancing among the tables. Her movements gave much pleasure. She entertained well. If Samos had known she would prove this good he might have put her in bells or a chain. I doubted that some of the things she had done, in all their abundance and richness, had been merely thought up on the spur of the moment. I suspected that many times in her dreams and fantasies she had danced thus before men, as a slave. Then, lo, one night in Port Kar she found herself truly a slave, and so dancing, and for her life.
As the music neared its climax she returned before our table, dancing desperately and pleadingly. It was there that was to be found her master.
She lowered herself to the floor and there, on her knees, and her sides, and her belly and back, continued her dance.
Men cried out with pleasure.
Floor movements are among the most stimulatory aspects of slave dance. I regarded her. She was not bad. She was, of course, not trained. A connoisseur of slave dance, I suppose, might have pointed out errors in the pointing of a toe, the extension of a limb, the use of a hand, not well framing the body, not subtly inviting the viewer’s eye inward, and so on, but, on the whole, she was definitely not bad. Given her lack of training, a lack which could, of course, be easily remedied, she was not bad, really. Much of what she did, I suppose, is instinctual in a woman. Too, of course, she was dancing for her life.
She writhed well, an utterly helpless, begging slave. Then the music was finished and she was before us, kneeling, her head down, in submission to Samos. She lifted her head to regard Samos, her master. She searched his face fearfully, for the least sign of her fate. It was he who would decide whether she would live or die.
“For the moment, at least,” said Samos, “you will not be thrown to sleen.”
Players of Gor - 19

[sweetlarma]

My steps took me again to the Paga tavern where I had begun this night.
I was alone, and miserable. I was cold. There was nothing of worth in Port Kar, nor in all the worlds of all the suns.
I pushed open the doors of the Paga tavern.
The musicians, and the dancer, had gone, long ago I supposed.
There were not so many men in the Paga tavern now, and those there were seemed mostly lost in stupor. Here and there some lay among the tables, their tunics soiled with Paga. Others lay, wrapped in ship’s cloaks, against the wall. Some two or three still sat groggily at the tables, staring at goblets half-filled with Paga. The girls, saving those who served still in the curtained alcoves, must have been somewhere chained for the night, probably in a slave room off the kitchen. The proprietor, when I entered, lifted his head from the counter, behind which hung a great bottle of Paga in its pouring sling.
I threw down a copper tarn disk and he tilted the great bottle.
I took my goblet of Paga to a table and sat down, cross-legged, behind it.
I did not want to drink. I wanted only to be alone. I did not even want to think. I wanted only to be alone.
I heard weeping from one of the alcoves.
It irritated me. I did not wish to be disturbed. I put my head in my hands and leaned forward, elbows on the table.
I hated Port Kar, and all that was of it. And I hated myself, for I, too, was of Port Kar. That I had learned this night. I would never forget this night. All that was in Port Kar was rotten and worthless. There was no good in her.
The curtain from one of the alcoves was flung apart. There stood there, framed in its conical threshold, Surbus, he who was a captain of Port Kar. I looked upon him with loathing, despising him. How ugly he was, with his fierce beard, the narrow eyes, the ear gone from the right side of his face. I had heard of him, and well. I knew him to be pirate; and I knew him to be slaver, and murderer, and thief; I knew him to be a cruel and worthless man, abominable, truly of Port Kar and, as I looked upon him, the filth and rottenness, I felt nothing but disgust.
In his arms he held, stripped, the bound body of a slave girl. It was she who had served me the night before, before Surbus, and his cutthroats and pirates, had entered the tavern. I had not much noticed her. She was thin, and not very pretty. She had blond hair, and, as I recalled, blue eyes. She was not much of a slave. I had not paid her much attention. I remembered that she had begged me to protect her and that I, of course, had refused.
Surbus threw the girl over his shoulder and went to the counter.
“I am not pleased with her,” he said to the proprietor.
“I am sorry, noble Surbus,” said the man. “I shall have her beaten.”
“I am not pleased with her!” cried Surbus.
“You wish her destroyed?” asked the man.
“Yes,” said Surbus, “destroyed.”
“Her price,” said the proprietor, “is five silver tarsks.”
From his pouch Surbus placed five silver tarsks, one after the other, on the counter.
“I will give you six,” I said to the proprietor.
Surbus scowled at me.
“I have sold her for five,” said the proprietor, “to this noble gentleman. Do not interfere, Stranger, this man is Surbus.”
Surbus threw back his head and laughed. “Yes,” he said, “I am Surbus.”
“I am Bosk,” I said, “from the Marshes.”
Surbus looked at me, and then laughed. He turned away from the counter now, taking the girl from his shoulder and holding her, bound, in his arms. I saw that she was conscious, and her eyes red from weeping. But she seemed numb, beyond feeling.
“What are you going to do with her?” I asked.
“I am going to throw her to the urts,” said Surbus.
“Please,” she whispered, “please, Surbus.”
“To the urts!” laughed Surbus, looking down at her.
She closed her eyes.
The giant urts, silken and blazing-eyed, living mostly on the garbage in the canals, are not stranger to bodies, both living and dead, found cast into their waters.
“To the urts!” laughed Surbus.
I looked upon him, Surbus, slaver, pirate, thief, murderer. This man was totally evil. I felt nothing but hatred, and an ugly, irrepressible disgust of him.
“No,” I said.
He looked at me, startled.
“No,” I said, and moved the blade from the sheath.
“She is mine,” he said.
“Surbus often,” said the proprietor, “thus destroys a girl who has not pleased him.”
I regarded them both.
“I own her,” said Surbus.
“That is true,” said the proprietor hastily. “You saw yourself her sale. She is truly his slave, his to do with as he wishes, duly purchased.”
“She is mine,” said Surbus. “What right have you to interfere?”
“The right of one of Port Kar,” I said, “to do what pleases him.”
Surbus threw the girl from him and, with a swift, clean motion, unsheathed his blade.
“You are a fool, Stranger,” said the proprietor, “That is Surbus, one of the finest swords in Port Kar.”
Our discourse with steel was brief.
Then, with a cry of hatred and elation, my blade, parallel to the ground, that it not wedge itself between the ribs of its target, passed through his body. I kicked him from the blade and withdrew the bloodied steel.
The proprietor was looking at me, wide-eyed.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Bosk,” I told him. “Bosk from the Marshes.”
Several of the men around the tables, roused by the flash of steel, had awakened.
They sat there, startled.
I moved the blade in a semicircle, facing them. None of them moved against me.
I tore off some of his tunic and cleaned the blade on it.
He lay there on his back, blood moving from his mouth, the chest of his tunic scarlet, fighting for breath.
I looked down on him. I had been of the warriors. I knew he would not live long.
I felt no compunction. He was totally evil.
I went to the slave girl and cut the binding fiber that fastened her ankles and wrists. The chains which she had worn while serving Paga, and when she had asked for my protection, had been removed, doubtless while she had been in the alcove, sometime after I had left the tavern, that she might have better rendered Surbus, Captain of Port Kar, the dues of the slave girl. They had been serving bracelets, with two lengths of chain, each about a foot long, which linked them.
I looked about the room. The proprietor stood back, behind his counter. None of the men had arisen from the tables, though many were of the crew of Surbus himself.
I looked at him.
His eyes were on me, and his hand, weakly, lifted. His eyes were agonized. He coughed blood. He seemed to want to speak, but could not do so.
I looked away from him.
I resheathed the blade.
It was good that Surbus lay dying. He was evil.
I looked upon the slave girl. She was a poor sort. She was scrawny, and thin faced, with narrow shoulders. Her blue eyes were pale. The hair was thin, stringy. She was a poor slave.
To my surprise she went and knelt next to Surbus, and held his head. He was looking at me. Again he tried to speak.
“Please,” said the girl to me, looking up at me, holding the head of the dying man.
I looked upon them both, puzzled. He was evil. She, perhaps, was mad. Did she not understand that he would have hurled her bound to the urts in the canals?
His hand lifted again, even more weakly, extended to me. There was agony in his eyes. His lips moved, but there was no sound.
The girl looked up at me, and said, “Please, I am too weak.”
“What does he want?” I asked, impatient. He was pirate, slaver, thief, murderer. He was evil, totally evil, and I felt for him only disgust.
“He wants to see the sea,” she said.
I said nothing.
“Please,” she said, “I am too weak.”
I bent and put the arm of the dying man about my shoulders and, lifting him, with the girl’s help, went back through the kitchen of the tavern and, one by one, climbed the high, narrow stairs to the top of the building.
We came to the roof, and there, near its edge, holding Surbus between us, we waited. The morning was cold, and damp. It was about daybreak.
And then the dawn came and, over the buildings of Port Kar, beyond them, and beyond the shallow, muddy Tamber, where the Vosk empties, we saw, I for the first time, gleaming Thassa, the Sea.
The right hand of Surbus reached across his body and touched me. He nodded his head. His eyes did not seem pained to me, nor unhappy. His lips moved, but then he coughed, and there was more blood, and he stiffened, and then, his head falling to one side, he was only weight in our arms.
We lowered him to the roof.
“What did he say?” I asked.
The girl smiled at me. “Thank you,” she said. “He said Thank you.”
I stood up, wearily, and looked out over the sea, gleaming Thassa.
“She is very beautiful,” I said.
“Yes,” said the girl, “yes.”
“Do the men of Port Kar love the sea?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “they do.”
I looked on her.
“What will you do now?” I asked. “Where will you go?”
“I do not know,” she said. She dropped her head. “I will go away.”
I put out my hand and touched her cheek. “Do not do that,” I said. “Follow me.”
There were tears in her eyes. “Thank you,” she said.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Luma,” she said.
I, followed by the slave Luma, left the roof, descended the long, narrow stairs.
In the kitchen we met the proprietor. “Surbus is dead,” I told him. He nodded. The body, I knew, would be disposed of in the canals.
I pointed to Luma’s collar. “Key,” I said.
The proprietor brought a key and removed his steel from her throat.
She fingered her throat, now bare, perhaps for the first time in years, of the encircling collar.
I would buy her another, when it was convenient, suitably engraved, proclaiming her mine.
We left the kitchen.
In the large central room of the tavern, we stopped.
I thrust the girl behind me.
There, waiting for us, standing, armed, were seventy or eighty men. They were seamen of Port Kar. I recognized many of them. They had come with Surbus to the tavern the night before. They were portions of his crews.
I unsheathed my blade.
One of the men stood forward, a tall man, lean, young, but with a face that showed the marks of Thassa. He had gray eyes, large, rope-rough hands.
“I am Tab,” he said. “I was second to Surbus.”
I said nothing, but watched them.
“You let him see the sea?” said Tab.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then,” said Tab, “we are your men.”
Raiders of Gor-120-125