Captive of Gor (22 page)

I looked at him with fury.

I drew again on the cigarette. “What do you want with me?” I asked.

Suddenly the beast made a noise. It was a rumble, a growl. I stiffened, and

turned.

It has lifted its head. Its wide, pointed ears lifted. It was listening.

(pg. 151) The man and I, watched the beast, I, frightened, he, alert, cautious.

His eyes seemed to meet those of the beast, and the beast seemed to look at him.

Then it had lifted its lips away from its teeth, and looked away, its ears still

lifted. It growled again.

“It is a sleen outside,” said the man.

I trembled.

“When I was brought here,” I said, “twice the band caught the scent of a sleen.”

The man looked at me. “It was stalking you,” he said, “you, and the others.”

“Perhaps there were different sleen,” I whispered.

“Perhaps,” he said.

The beast now crouched on the straw, its nostrils wide in the leathery snout,

its eyes bright and black, the ears lifted.

“It is close,” said the man. He looked at me. “Sometimes the sleen will follow a

quarry for pasangs, before making its strike, lurking, approaching, withdrawing,

then at last, when satisfied, attacking from the darkness.”

The beast growled menacingly.

To my horror I heard a snuffling behind the door, and then a whining, a

scratching.

The man smiled. “It is the sleen,” he said.

“Do not be frightened,” he said. “We are safe in the hut.”

I heard a scratching, as of heavy claws, at the door.

The small hairs on the back of my neck rose.

“The door is stout,” said the man. “We are safe in the hut.”

I looked to the boards, shuttered across the window. It was a small window, not

more than a foot in diameter.

“The sleen was probably following the band,” he said. “The trail led here.”

“Why doesn’t he follow the panther girls?” I whispered.

“He might have,” said the man, “but he did not.” He gestured with his head to

the beast. “Also, he may smell the beast. Sleen are sometimes curious, and not

infrequently resentful of the intrusion of strange animals into what they choose

to regard as their territory.”

(pg. 152) There was an angry whine behind the door. This was answered by a

throaty snarl from the collared beast within.

“Why doesn’t he go away?” I asked.

“He may smell the beast,” said the man.

I took another draw on the cigarette.

“Or,” said the man, “he may smell food within.”

“Food?” I asked.

“You and I,” said he.

My hand shook with the cigarette, spilling ashes.

“We are safe within,” he said.

“Don’t you have any weapons, powerful weapons,” I asked, “with which you might

kill it?”

The man smiled. “It is unwise to carry weapons of power on the surface of Gor,”

he said.

I did not understand this.

“But,” he smiled, “we are safe within.”

I hoped that he was right.

“You are lovely in your robe,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said.

I could no longer hear the sleen now.

I ground out the cigarette on the table, and looked at him, coolly.

“I was not brought to Gor, was I,” I asked, “to be a simple female slave, simply

to be given, or sold, to a master?”

“I told you,” he reminded me, “that at the age of seventeen you were marked for

abduction. In any event, you would have been brought to Gor as a female slave.”

“But in my case,” I pressed, “there were, were there not, additional

considerations?”

“Yes,” he said.

I leaned back. I suddenly felt sharp, and cool. There was something they needed

of me. I now could bargain. I now could negotiate. I might yet be able to

arrange for my return to Earth. I must be clever. I must be shrewd. I had power.

“Would you like to discuss business with me?” I asked.

“You are very beautiful in your robe,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said. I felt a certain sense of triumph now.

“Would you like another cigarette?” he asked.

(pg. 153) I did not want one.

“Yes, thank you,” I said.

He gave me another cigarette, and I took it. He closed the small, flat golden

cigarette box and struck a small match. I leaned forward, and he bent forward to

light the cigarette. The flame from the match was but an inch short of the

cigarette. He looked at me. “You are prepared to negotiate?” he asked.

I smiled at him. “Perhaps,” I said.

He brought the match toward the cigarette, and I bent forward for the light.

The match dropped.

I looked at him, startled.

Suddenly, with fury, he, with his full strength, slapped me across the side of

the face, literally knocking me from the bench and against the wall.

Instantly he was on me and tore the robe from my body. Then, insolently,

brutally, he threw me to my belly in the dirt. He knelt across my body and I

felt my hands jerked behind my body. With the binding fiber he had earlier

removed, he lashed them with ferocious cruelty behind my body. Then he sprang to

his feet and kicked me in the side. Terrified, in pain, I rolled to my side,

looking up at him in horror. He bend down and seized me by the hair and the left

arm and thrust me toward the beast.

“Feed!” he cried.

I screamed, thrust toward the wide, fanged jaws of the beast.

He jerked me back, cruelly, on my knees, and I saw the jaws snapping at me, saw

the curved teeth, the hideous tongue and eyes. Again and again the jaws snapped

at me, once grazing my body, as I was held just outside the perimeter of the

beast’s chain. It pulled against the chain and collar, trying to reach me.

Then, angrily, the man threw me backward in the dirt, across the room, on my

side.

“Do not feed!” he cried to the beast.

Then, from a hook on the wall, he took a large piece of meat, bosk meat, and

threw it to the animal.

(pg. 154) It began tearing at it with its fangs and claws. It could have been my

body.

The man approached me.

I lay on my side in the dirt, naked and bound, looking up at him in horror. In

his hand he held an uplifted slave whip.

“You told me you were free,” he said.

“No! No!” I cried. “I am a slave! A slave!”

“A hundred arrow points is too much for such a slave,” he said.

Terrified, I struggled to my knees and put my head down, to his feet.

“Kiss my feet,” said he, “Slave.”

I did so.

“The proud Miss Brinton,” he said.

I trembled at his feet.

“Are you prepared to negotiate?” he asked.

I put my forehead against his feet, to the straps of his sandals, my hair

falling across his sandals.

“Command me,” I begged.

He stepped away from me. I lifted my head. I saw that he took the red-silk robe,

and cast it into the fire. Kneeling in the dirt, naked and bound, tears in my

eyes, I watched it burn.

He regarded me.

I put down my head. “Command me, Master,” I begged, Elinor Brinton, a cowering

Gorean slave girl.

“It is our intention,” he said, “to have you trained as a slave girl, to give

exquisite pleasures to a master. And then you will be placed in a certain

house.”

“Yes, Master?” I asked.

“And,” he said, “in this house, you will poison its master.”

I looked at him with horror.

Suddenly there was a horrifying squeal and a splintering of wood.

I screamed.

The head of a sleen, eyes blazing, its long needlelike teeth snapping, thrust

through the small, broken window, the shutters (pg. 155) splintered to the side.

Snarling, it began to wiggle its shoulders, like a cat, through the opening.

The beast at the side of the wall went wild.

The man, suddenly distraught, cried out in fear, backing away from the window.

I was on my feet, backed against the wall.

The large, wide, triangular head of the sleen, its nocturnal eyes blinking

against the sudden light of the fire, thrust further into the room, followed by

its shoulders, then its right, clawed paw.

The beast bellowed in fury, leaping up.

The man, as though brought to his senses by the maddened cry of the beast,

picked up the slave whip and ran to the window, striking the sleen, trying to

drive it back through the window. But, as I watched in horror, I realized the

sleen could not retreat. It now had two paws through the window and a third of

its body. It squealed and hissed in fury, struck by the whip, and then it caught

it in its teeth and tore it away from the man. I, bound, screamed and pressed

against the wall. Then the man picked up a piece of wood, kindling, from near

the fire, and struck the sleen. The wood broke across its neck. Another paw and

leg, clawed, scrabbled through the window. The sleen has six legs. It is long,

sinuous; it resembles a lizard, save that it is furred and mammalian. In its

attack frenzy it is one of the most dangerous animals on Gor. Wildly the man

bent down to the fire and picked up a piece of wood from the fire, burning, and

thrust it toward the sleen. It squealed in pain, blinded in one eye. Then it

caught the wood in its teeth and wrenched it away. Then another leg came through

the window, and almost half of the animal’s body thrust into the room. The man

then screamed and fled to the door. He threw up the beams, unlocking it. The

beast roared at him and he turned, terrified. I screamed. I could not

understand. It was almost as though the beast had commanded him to remain.

The sleen, hissing, one eye blazing, the other seared by the torch, maddened

with pain, began to wiggle and squirm through the aperture.

(pg. 156) Then to my horror I observed the beast. It lifted its large paws to

its throat. The paws were six-digited, several jointed, almost like furred

tentacles, surmounted by clawlike growths, blunted, filed. It unfastened the

buckled collar at its throat and cast it aside.

Then, with a cry of rage, it leapt toward the sleen. The two animals locked in

combat. The sleen came through the window, scrambling through, biting and

tearing. The beast seized it about the throat, its great jaws biting at the

throat and vertebrae. The two animals rolled in the small hut, twisting,

squealing, hissing, scattering the benches and table. Then, with a horrifying

snap of bone and tearing of flesh, and fur the jaws of the beast bit through the

back of the sleen’s neck. It stood there then, holding the body of the sleen in

its claws, its mouth dropping fur and blood. The body of the sleen twisted

compulsively. The beast turned to regard us.

“It’s dead,” cried the man. “Put it down.”

The beast looked at him, uncomprehendingly, and I was suddenly terrified. The

man, too, seemed terrified.

Then the beast threw back its head and uttered a wild horrifying scream, and

fell to feeding on the sleen’s carcass.

“No! No!” cried the man. “Do not feed! Do not feed!”

The beast raised its head, half buried in the sleen’s body, meat hanging from

its jaws.

“Do not feed!” whispered the man.

I was terrified.

The beast was in its feeding frenzy. I suspected it could not then be

controlled. Surely the man, who knew more than I of such matters, was almost

beside himself with terror.

“Stop!’ cried the man.

The beast looked at him, eyes blazing, its face drenched in blood.

“Obey your master!” I cried. “Obey your master!”

The beast looked at me. I shall never forget the horror I felt. “I am the

master,” it said.

The man cried out and fled from the hut. I, forgotten by the beast in its

feeding, inched toward the door, and then, hearing the feeding of the beast

behind me, fled, naked and bound, into the darkness.

11
   
Soron of Ar

(pg. 157) I knelt on the low wooden platform, while one of the leather workers,

with a long needle, approached my face.

“See,” said Targo, to the other girls, “El-in-or is brave.”

Many of them were whimpering.

I closed my eyes. No anesthetic was used, for I was a slave, but it was not

particularly painful.

It was said to be a Turian custom, from the far south, which was spreading

north.

The leather worker then went to the other side of the platform.

There were tears in my eyes, for my eyes smarted.

I felt the second pain, sharp, followed by an unpleasant burning sensation.

The leather worker stood up.

My ears had been pierced.

The girls, in line, kneeling, cried out, whimpering and shuddering. Guards stood

on either side of the line.

“See how brave El-in-or is,” said Targo.

The leather worker wiped away the bit of blood with a cloth.

He then fixed two tiny steel rods, with threaded ends, through the wounds. To

each end of each of the rods he threaded a tiny steel disk, that the tiny rods

might be held in the wounds. The disks and rods would be removed in 4 days.

“Next,” he said.

None of the girls moved.

I left the platform.

(pg. 158) Ute, biting her lip, tears in her eyes, said, “I will go next.”

The other girls gasped, and shuddered.

Ute knelt on the platform.

I stood to one side. My hand went to my right ear. “Do not touch your ear,

Slave,” snapped the leather worker.

“No, Master,” I said.

“Stand against the wall, El-in-or,” said Targo.