The girls had hurried to their kennels before me. When I arrived there I found them waiting, kneeling on the boards of their kennels, before their chain rings, in the position of pleasure slaves, back on heels, heads up, hands on thighs, backs straight, knees wide.
"Take your hands off her," said Taphris. My left hand had strayed to her right thigh, and my right hand to her left hip. It is hard to keep one's hands off a female slave. They have been made to be handled, and mastered.
"That slave," snapped Taphris to Tuka, referring to me, "is not to be pleasured. It is the will of the Mistress."
"But what of my pleasure, my needs?" asked Tuka.
"Be silent, slave," snapped Taphris.
"Yes, Mistress," said Tuka, for she sensed that Taphris had power with the Mistress. Taphris was not even being chained.
"Scream, squirm, sob, bite at your chain, tear with your fingernails at the floor of your kennel, if you wish," advised Taphris, smiling. "I am sure the Mistress will not object to that."
"Yes, Mistress," moaned Tuka.
Angry, I went then to Claudia and locked her chain on her collar.
"You have chained me," she whispered.
I grinned at her. "Yes," I said. Her breasts heaved. On Gor it is generally understood that a man who chains a woman has full rights over her.
"Master," she whispered to me.
"Slave," I said to her.
"Yes, Master," she whispered.
"Do not fraternize with the sluts," ordered Taphris.
I then, in turn, secured Peliope and Leah in their kennels. Both drew in their breath briefly, briefly, too, closing their eyes, when the heavy lock was closed about their collar loops. They then looked at me, the weight of the chain dragging down their collars. I saw that either, at a snap of my fingers, would have thrown themselves on their backs on the boards before me.
"Do not dally," said Taphris, "or I shall make a report of it to the Mistress."
I rose to my feet.
"Surely you have tasks to perform," she said.
"I must go to the incubation shed," I said. "I think it will be quite warm there, perhaps even uncomfortable: You need not accompany me there."
"I will come with you," she said.
I looked at her. "Very well," I said. "Doubtless something can be found for you to do there."
"I am not to be used for the pleasure of men," she said.
I turned about and left the kennel shed. I heard the bare feet of Taphris pattering after me. I heard, too, Tuka cry out with misery, jerking at her chain. I heard the other girls, too, moan. Then I had left the shed, Taphris with me. I paused only long enough to bar the door, from the outside.
On the way to the incubation shed, I heard the ringing of the bar which signified the arrival of the fifteenth Ahn. The stable sluts, with the exception of Taphris, were now shut away from the sight of the Mistress' guests, should they arrive early. They would not now be seen during the visit of the guests unless the guests should request to look upon them.
In the incubation shed, Bares, looking down at Taphris, held the half-gourd cup. "Are you under perfect discipline, Taphris?" he had asked.
"Yes, Master," she had said, trembling.
"It did not seem so this afternoon," he had said.
"Forgive me, Master," she had said, trembling. "Please do not have me slain" Taphris, a Gorean slave girl, knew that she was at the complete mercy of free persons. Bares, as one of the Mistress' slave keepers, could kill her, or have her killed, at a whim. The Mistress, she knew, could always send another spy to the tables, perhaps Pamela or Bonnie, other house slaves. Neither Pamela nor Bonnie, as I have mentioned, were Earth girls, though they both wore Earth-girl names. Such names, as I have mentioned, are often used as slave names on Gor.
Taphris kept her head down.
"We know you are the Mistress' spy," said Bares.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Serve Jason water," he cried.
"Jason!" she cried.
He handed her the cup formed from the yellow half-gourd. She looked down at it, clutched in her hands. "Do you wish me to repeat a command?" he asked.
"No, Master!" she cried and leaped to her feet, hurrying to the water, in its wooden bucket, at the side of the shed. Quickly she returned with the half-gourd brimming full. She looked at Bares, and then she knelt before me, and pressed the half-gourd into her naked belly, head down, then lifted it to her lips, and lingeringly kissed it, then proffered it to me, kneeling, arms extended, trembling, head down between her arms.
"Speak," I told her.
"I bring you drink, Master," she said.
I took the cup and drank, looking upon her. How fit she seemed, in her place in the order of nature, naked, kneeling before a man. At this point it is common to rape the female.
"Let me throw her to her back in the sand," I begged Bares.
She shrank back, regarding Bares. At his least word or gesture, the smallest token of his permission, she knew she would be raped.
She trembled.
"No," said Bares, at last, regarding her, "she is not to be used for the pleasure of men, and the Mistress has given strict orders that you, unless receiving her explicit permission, are to be denied the pleasures of slut sport."
I turned away and, furious, helpless, an aroused, collared slave, struck with the side of my fist at the wall of the incubation shed.
"Return the dipper to the bucket, Taphris," I heard. I had, in fury, cast the dipper down to the sand. Bares had not reprimanded me.
"Yes, Master," I heard.
I sobbed in anger at the wall.
When I turned about Taphris, again, had been set about her homely duties, naked, on her hands and knees, carrying the sticks in her mouth, of feeding the fires in the flame ditch. I glared at her. How right she seemed for seizing and raping. She did not dare to meet my eyes.
"Here, Jason," said Bares. "Come here! Listen!"
I went to where he now knelt in the sand. The sand there began to sink down slightly. I saw it stir. Then, suddenly, the horny snout of a tharlarion thrust up from the hot sand. Its eyes blinked. Its tongue darted in and out of its mouth, licking sand from about its jaws. Its head was some eight inches in width.
"Snout strap," said Bares.
I picked up one of the long, leather, coiled snout straps lying at hand.
The head of the tiny hatchling, some eight inches wide, some foot or so in length, was now fully emerged from the sand. I saw one clublike foot, clawed, strike up out of the sand. It hissed.
I looped the snout strap about its jaws and tied them shut. It squirmed and half pulled itself from the leathery casing which had contained it, drawing it up, half out of the sand.
"Girth cloth, Taphris!" called Bares.
Together Bares and I drew the hatchling out of the sand. With my foot I thrust back the clinging shell.
"Watch out for the tail!" said Bares to Taphris. She stepped back.
Bares and I threw the hatchling on its back and, rolling it, then, wrapped its torso in the folds of the girth cloth. This tends to protect it against the tunnel air when it is carried to the nursery. I bent down and, with the help of Bares, got the hatchling to my shoulders. The head, with its strapped-shut jaws, rotated on the neck, some two feet in length. It struck against my thigh. The young beast weighed, I conjecture, some one hundred and forty to one hundred and fifty pounds. Bares slid back the bolt and lifted up the large trap door at one side of the shed and I, carefully, in the light of the fires of the incubation shed, descended the dirt ramp. At the bottom the tunnel, in its center, is floored by a set of single boards, laid end to end. This permits it to be traversed in the darkness. One need only keep one or both feet on the board. With the help of the boards, and a bit of practice, usually following a torch the first time, it is not difficult to find one's way about the tunnels in the darkness. Strings, depending from the ceiling, through which one brushes, indicate side tunnels. Inclines indicate exits. The strings contain knots on the side on which the side tunnel occurs. If one encounters, as in side tunnels, approaching the main tunnel, a fully knotted, dependent wall of strings, then one knows that a left-and-right branching is imminent. This occured in the tunneling under the domain of the Lady Florence only where the main tunnel was approached.