Slave Girl of Gor (34 page)

"He thought so little of you?" asked Thurnus.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"It is a pretty name," he had said. "it is only that it is common."

"Yes, Master," I had said.

"I name you Dina," he said, putting the name on me, naming his animal. "Who are you?" he asked.

"Dina," I had said, "Master."

"What is your name?" asked Radish.

I smiled. "Dina," I said.

"Many girls with your brand are called Dina," said Turnip.

"I have heard that," I said.

"It is a pretty name," said Verr Tail. "Thank you," I said.

"It must be nice to have a girl's name," said Turnip.

I did not respond.

"I am Radish," said Radish. "I am Turnip," said Turnip. "I am Verr Tail," said Verr Tail.

Sandal Thong looked at me. "I am Sandal Thong," she said.

"Tal," I said to them.

"Tal," they said to me.

"You are first in the cage?" I asked Sandal Thong.

"Yes," she said.

"It will not be necessary to kick or beat me," I said. "I will obey you."

"We are all women. We are all slaves," said Sandal Thong.

"We are all under the whip," said Turnip.

"I have been hand whipped," I said. "But I have never felt the slave whip."

"Have you been a slave long?" asked Radish.

"No," I said.

"You are very pretty to have been free," said Turnip.

"I lived far away," I said.

"Your accent marks you as barbarian," said Sandal Thong.

"Yes," I said.

"Where did you live?" asked Verr Tail.

"A place called Earth," I said.

"I have never heard of it," said Turnip.

"Is it in the north?" asked Radish.

"It is far away," I said. "Let us not speak of it." How could I speak of Earth to them? I did not want them to think me mad, or a liar. Could they believe a world might exist where men, shouting political slogans, vied with one another to surrender their dominance, hastening gleefully to their own castration? Could such a world be welcomed by any save Lesbians, and men who were not men? Truth and political convenience, I thought, do not always coincide.

"Barbarian places are so dull," said Turnip. "Have you never been chained in Ar?"

"No," I said.

"I was sold once in Ar," she said. "It is a marvelous city."

"I am pleased to hear it," I said. Clitus Vitellius, I knew, was of Ar.

"It is strange that you have never felt the slave whip," said Turnip.

I shrugged.

"Perhaps she was too pretty to whip," said Turnip.

"I think it is always the ugly girls who are whipped," said Verr Tail.

"That is not true," said Radish.

"I would suppose," I said, "that any girl, beautiful or not, if she needs a whipping, would be whipped by her master." It surprised me that I, an Earth girl, had said this. Yet, why should a girl who needs a whipping not be whipped, if she has a Gorean master?"

"Dina is right," said Radish.

"They whip us," said Sandal Thong, "when it pleases them."

Radish laughed, and slapped her thighs. "Yes," she said, "the beasts! They put us under the leather whenever it pleases them, whether we have done anything or not!"

"Men are the masters," said Turnip. "They do with us what they please."

"This is a peasant village, Dina," said Verr Tail. "If you remain long us the village, you will learn the slave whip well."

I shuddered.

"I have never even really been switched," I said. Eta had never switched me, though she had held switch rights over me, as first girl in the camp. I had been stung twice across the back of the thighs, below the short tunic, by Melina, companion of my master, Thurnus, when she had hurried me to the kennel. It was been terribly humiliating and unpleasant. It was hard to imagine what a true switching would be. I could not even conjecture what it would be to feel the flash of the slave whip on my body.

"Does the whip hurt, Sandal Thong?" I asked.

"Yes," said Sandal Thong.

"Does the whip hurt very much?" I asked.

"Yes," said Sandal Thong.

"You are strong, Sandal Thong," I said, "do you fear the whip?"

"Yes," she said.

"Do you fear the whip very much?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, "I fear the whip very much."

I shuddered. If even the large, strong Sandal Thong so feared the whip, I wondered what it would do to me.

"It is time to sleep now," said Radish.

We lay down in the straw, and were soon asleep. I awakened once, sweating. I had had a strange dream. I had dreamed I knelt naked, in a steel collar, on smooth tiles, in a beautiful room, as though in a palace. Before me had been a low table. On this table had been strands of thread and, in small cups, beads, slave beads, of various colors, red, yellow and purple, and other colors. I understood, somehow, that I must make a necklace. A slave whip had been lifted before me. "What is this?" asked a voice. "A slave whip, Master," I had said. "And what are you?" had inquired the voice. "A slave, Master," I had said. "Do you obey?" asked the voice. "Yes, Master," I had said. The whip then, roughly, had been forced against my face; it pressed against my lips, bruising them; I felt it with my teeth. "Kiss the whip Slave," said the voice. I had kissed the whip. "Who commands me?" I had asked. It had seemed as though I must ask that. Yet it was not the sort of thing a slave girl would naturally ask. Such an inquiry might be thought to border on insolence. Yet I was not taken by the wrists and thrown fiat upon the tiles and whipped. "You are commanded by Belisarius, Slave Girl," was the response. The response, somehow, seemed oddly fitting, expected. Yet I knew no Belisarius. "What is the command of Belisarius, the slave girl's master?" I had asked. "It is simple," said the voice. "Yes, Master," I had said. "Bead a necklace, Slave Girl," said the voice. "Yes, Master," I had said. Then my hands had reached toward the strands of thread on the table, and toward the cups of tiny beads. Then I had awakened. I did not understand the dream. I put out my hand. I was not on smooth tiles. My hand felt straw, and wood, and a steel bar, and the tiered dirt behind it. The dream was then gone. I lay awake, looking up at the bars and wood above me. The moons were full outside, and I rose to my feet in the straw. I was not in a palace. I was in a cage at Tabuk's Ford. I went to the side of the cage and, over the vertical, banking earth, looked out. My small hands held the bars. The roof of the cage was a few inches above my head. My fists clutched the bars. I had been Judy Thorton. I was caged! I cried out, startled. Bran Loort grinned at me. The other girls turned restlessly, but did not awaken. I shrank back from the bars. I lay down in the straw. He was looking at me. I tried to pull the short woolen tunic more over my legs.

"I am going to be first in Tabuk's Ford," whispered Bran Loort. "When I am first," he said, "Melina will give you to me."

He slipped away from the bars.

I drew up my legs. I huddled in the straw, trembling.

I chopped at the dry earth about the sul plant.

I had been twenty days slave at Tabuk's Ford.

The peasant hoe has a staff some six feet in length. Its head is iron, and heavy, some six inches at the cutting edge, tapering to four inches where it joins the stall. It is fastened to the staff by the staff's fitting through a hollow, ringlike socket at its termination. A wedge is driven into the head of the staff to expand and tighten the wood in the socket.

I was too small to use such a tool well. I did not make a good peasant's slave.

It is difficult to convey the hardship of slavery in a peasant village, particularly for a slight girl, such as I.

I stood up, straightening my back. It hurt. I shaded my eyes.

On the road from Tabuk's Ford I could see the cart of Tup Ladletender, the itinerant peddler, he between its handles, bent over, drawing it.

I looked at my hands. They were raw and blistered, and dirty. I moved my finger inside the rope collar, moving it out a bit from my neck, wiping sweat and dirt from under it. The rope scratched my neck, but I must wear it. It was token of my slavery.

The day begins early, before dawn, when Melina loosens the padlocks on our cage.

We climb out and kneel before her, our heads to her feet. She holds the switch over us. She is our mistress.

Verr are to be milked, the eggs of vulos gathered, and the sleen must be watered and fed, and their cages cleaned.

In the middle of the morning we return to the hut of Thurnus, where pans of slave gruel have been put out for us, beneath the hut. This gruel must be eaten, and the pans licked clean. In the manner of peasant slave girls we kneel or lie upon our bellies and may not use our hands.

After our meal the true work of our day begins. There is water to be carried, wood to be gathered and fields to be tended. Many and various, and long, are the tasks of a peasant village. Upon slave girls do most of these tasks devolve. We must do them or die. Sometimes the boys surprise us in the fields and tie us together and rape us. It does not matter, for we are only slave girls.

It seemed every bone in my body ached.

Ten days ago Thurnus had used me for plowing. He did not own bosk. Girls are cheaper than bosk.

It was the first time I had felt a whip.

I had been hitched with the other girls, and, together, sweating, we had labored naked in the traces under our master's whip. Slowly, leaning forward, our feet digging into the earth, we had pitted our strength against the restraining band of the harness, and, slowly, the great blade had begun to move through the deep soil, turning it for our master. After a few yards I thought I might die. Who would know if I did not put my full strength upon the trace? It was then that I first felt the whip. It was not the five-bladed slave whip, invented for the full and perfect punishment of an erring slave girl, but only a light, one-bladed bosk whip, little more than a switch of leather, a mere incitement and encouragement to better performance on the part of a slacking plow beast, but it struck my back like a hot snake and a rifle shot. I could not believe what it felt like. It was the first time I had ever been struck with a whip.

"Come, Dina, pull harder," said Thurnus.

"Yes, Master!" I cried, hurling myself against the trace. He had not been angry. My back felt as though it had been lashed with a hot cable.

I could not believe the pain of the whip. I could not even conjecture what it would be to feel a true slave whip on my body. Yet I knew a girl could be subjected to a full and lengthy lashing by the true slave whip for so small a thing as having failed in some way that she might not even understand to be completely pleasing to a master. Indeed, she could be subjected to such a lashing for no other reason than that it pleased the master to do so. I had now, for the first time, the former Judy Thornton, felt a whip. I groaned in misery. I now had a new insight into the condition of my slavery. I would do anything, eagerly, the masters wanted.

But in less than an hour I had collapsed in the traces, unconscious.

I dimly remember Thurnus's hand on the back of my neck and Sandal Thong's saying, "Do not kill her, Thurnus. Can you not see she is only a pretty slave, that she is only for the pleasure of men and not for the fields?"

"We can pull the plow without her, Master," said Turnip.

"We have done it many times before," said Radish.

"Do not break her neck, Master," pleaded Verr Tail.

Thurnus's hand left the back of my neck.

I remember him tying my hands behind my back, and tying my ankles together, and leaving me in a furrow. I then again lost consciousness. That night Thurnus carried me, bound, over his shoulder, back to the village, and threw me down between the pilings of his hut. "What is wrong?" asked Melina. "This one is a weakling," said Thurnus. "I will kill her for you," said Melina. She drew from her coarse robes a short knife. I rose on one elbow, naked and bound, helpless in the dirt at her feet. I regarded her with horror. She approached me with the knife. "Please, no, Mistress!" I wept. "Go into the house, Woman," said Thurnus, angrily. "You are the weakling, Thurnus," snapped Melina. She then put away the knife, and stood up.

"It was a mistake to have followed you," she said.

He looked at her without speaking.

"You could have been a caste leader for a district," she said. "Instead I am only the companion of a village leader. I could have companioned a district leader. You stink of the sleen you train and the girls you own."

There were slaves present, and yet she so spoke.

"You are a weakling and a fool, Thurnus," she said. "I despise you."

"Go into the house, Woman," he said. Angrily Melina turned and climbed the steps into the hut. At the top of the steps she turned. "You do not have much longer to give orders in Tabuk's Ford, Thurnus," she said. Then she disappeared into the hut.

"Untie Dina," said Thurnus, "and take her to the cage."