I looked up at him.
"It is well known to Rask of Treve," I smiled, "whom it is that the slave girl, El-in-or, loves."
"Speak it," he said.
"She loves her master," I said. "She loves Rask of Treve."
"I am he," he said.
"It is you whom she loves," I said.
"And who are you? he asked, his finger idly at my hip.
"She!" I cried, suddenly, laughing, with pleasure.
He kissed my throat.
"Has she been conquered?" he asked.
"Yes!" I said. "Yes!" I held him.
"Conquer me!" I wept. "Again conquer me!"
There were sounds of the early morning in the camp. It was now light. Far off, I could hear Ute summoning her girls. A tarn cried in the compound. I heard the sounds of pans. Some fires were being lit.
"In your dance, before you fell before me in the sand," said Rask of Treve, "I thought I detected in your dance something other than contempt and scorn." "Yes," I said. I kissed him.
I knew then what I had not understood before, what, for brief moments in the firelight, on the sand before his warriors and their slaves, my body had danced to him, my need, my desire for him, my readiness and my desperate plea for his touch.
For those moments, briefly mingled with the dancing of my pride, my insolence, my contempt and scorn, I had, not fully aware, yet sensing fear what I did, in the dance of a slave girl, piteously begged for the love of my master. He had seen fit to touch me, and had summoned me to his tent.
We heard the sounds of the camp.
My left ankle wore the heavy chain. We lay together on the grassy knoll. I held him to me, my cheek at his waist. His hand lay gently on the right side of my head.
"It is time for you to be about your work, Slave," he said.
"Yes, Master," I whispered.
From his pouch he took forth a key and sprang open the heavy manacle that had clasped, so perfectly confining it, my left ankle.
He put his cloak about my shoulders. "Go to the shed," he said, "and get a work tunic."
I was being dismissed.
I threw the cloak to the grass and knelt at his feet, as though chained. I looked up at him. He was now standing on his feet, and he looked down at me, tenderly.
"I am chained at your feet," I said. It was a saying of a Gorean slave, to express her feelings.
"Yes," he said, gently.
"I love you!" I cried. I thrust my head to his feet. I suddenly began to weep. "Do not sell me!" I begged. "Do not sell me! Keep me for yourself! Keep me forever for yourself!" I could not bear the thought of being separated from him. It would have been the torture of the tearing of my heart from my body. The very thought caused in me excruciating suffering. I looked up agonized. I understood then as I had not before what could be the cruelty, the tragedy, of being a female slave. What if I had not pleased him sufficiently? "I will please you more!" I wept. "More! I will give you everything! Everything! Keep me! Do not sell me! I love you! I love you!" I lifted my wrists to him, as though they wore slave bracelets. I smiled through my tears. "You see," I whispered, "I am chained at your feet."
"Does the proud El-in-or beg to be kept as my slave?" he smiled.
"Yes," I said, "she begs."
"To your work!" he laughed.
I leaped to my feet. He seized me in his arms, and, on the summit of the knoll, held me long, lovingly, in his arms. I looked up, into his eyes. "I love you, Master," I whispered. Then I laughed, and cried out. He, his body tightening, startling again mighty with strength, astonishing me, delighting me, lifted me from my feet and lowered me, gently, to the grass, covering me with his cloak. Again he forced me to weep with pleasure.
When I leaped up, laughing, shaking my head and hair, he again offered to place his cloak about my shoulders, that my body might be covered when I went to the shed for the work slaves.
It was much honor that he did me, a mere female slave. How the girls would have cried out with envy to see me, secure in such a cloak, and that, too, of the mighty Rask of Treve!
But I did not wish to wear it. Did I so, it would not have been well concealed that he, my master, had touched with gentleness, and care, a girl who wore a collar. What would his men think? And I wore penalty brands. Surely a girl such as I, after being brutally used, should have been casually dismissed, or beaten and spurned. No, let it not be revealed that he, my master, the mighty Rask of Treve, had been tender with a slave, particularly such a low and miserable slave as I.
I laughed and hurled the cloak back to him. "A steel-collar girl," I said, "should not have so fine a cloak!"
He laughed. "And one with pierced ears!" he said.
"Yes," I laughed, "and one with pierced ears!"
I turned about and sped down the hill to the shed for female work slaves. I was ravenously hungry. I had little doubt that Ute would have saved me a roll from the feeding pan. I loved her! She would also, however, have a full roster of work for me to perform this day. She played no favorites. I was one of her girls. She would treat me no differently than the others. I loved her! And I loved, too, my master.
I turned. He was watching me, from the hill. I smiled, and waved to him. He lifted his hand. I turned again, and ran toward the work shed.
Before I appeared before the shed, I stopped and, secretly, pressed my fingertips to my lips and then to the lettering on my collar, which proclaimed me the slave of a Gorean warrior. I loved him! I laughed. You could read his name, that of my master, on my collar. It was Rask of Treve. I was not displeased that I had been chained under the moons of Gor. I hurried to the shed.
"I have saved a roll for you," said Ute.
"Thank you, Ute, I said.
"Eat it quickly," she said." You have much work to do today."
"Yes, Ute," I cried, kissing her. "I will! I will!"
17 Port Kar
The past few years had been the most happy and beautiful of my life. "Hands to the rear. Cross your wrists," said the man.
I did so.
I felt the straps through the heavy wicker. My wrists were pulled back, tight against the wicker, and bound there. I shared the tarn basket, my knees drawn up, with five other girls. We were naked. Our ankles were tied together at the center of the basket.
"They will be in Ar by nightfall," said the man.
My head fell forward on my breast.
Yet I had few regrets, for in the past weeks I had been happy, and I had been alive.
I would never forget the face, nor the touch, of Rask of Treve, nor the long walks, and the speakings, and touchings beyond the palisade.
"Will they be sold in the Curulean? asked a nearby warrior.
"Yes," said the man.
Two of the girls, bound helplessly in the basket, squealed with pleasure. In the beginning, following my total conquer by Rask of Treve, I had been summoned night after night to his tent. I had served him in a delicious variety of ways, to our mutual pleasure, for I had been well trained. I had feared only that my imagination might fall short of the invention of new and exciting ways to please him. Sometimes to my fury, he had tried to put me from him, and had summoned other women to his tent, but often he would send them away again, and it would be I, El-in-or, who would again be commanded to the tent of scarlet canvas, red-silk lined, on its eight poles.