Then, again, there was only the pain, and she wept, and pulled at the ropes, and shook with misery.
She did not know how many strokes were administered to her. She was barely aware of her wrists being freed from the post, though they remained bound together. She then lay under the post on her stomach, her bound wrists stretched out, moaning, sobbing. Then she felt herself dragged on her belly through the wood chips and grass under the post and toward the center of the tarsk pen. There, to her misery, she was turned to her back and her wrists, over her head and back, fastened to a pole. She looked up in fear and pain at her master, standing above her.
“Speak!” he cried, angrily.
“Thank you, Master!” she wept, in terror, looking up at him. “Thank you, Master! Thank you for beating me!”
He angrily cast the whip aside, and then crouched beside her. She felt her legs thrust widely, brutally, apart. He was not gentle with her.
Afterwards he left her there, in the tarsk pen, and she turned, weeping, blubbering, half in shock, eyes wide, to her side, to relieve her back from contact with the soiled, rough ground, the stained wood chips, of the abandoned pen.
It was there in the tarsk pen that she spent the night.
Before dawn, the next day, Portus Canio came to her, sponged her back, and her body, with a damp rag, cooling her and cleaning her, and freed her.
Unbidden, she set about her duties.
She tidied the camp, built the fire, set up the cooking rods, boiled water, and prepared breakfast for the men. While they ate, she knelt down beside their blankets, kissed them, shook them out and folded them, and placed them in the wagon.
When she was finished she returned to the vicinity of the fire. There were now two shallow pans there, one filled with water, the other with a handful of moist gruel. “Thank you, Masters,” she whispered. Then she went to all fours before the pans, and, putting her head down, ate and drank from the pans.
She cast many an anxious look at her master, but he did not so much as look at her. This disturbed her, terribly.
When the tharlarion had been hitched, and the men were clearly ready to depart, she could stand it no more, and ran to the feet of her master, and put her head down, and wept, and covered his feet with tears and kisses. “Please, forgive me, Master!” she wept. “Please forgive me!”
Then, as she dared to lift her eyes, clutching his calves, and looking fearfully up at him, she suddenly felt an almost uncontrollable cry of need in her belly, one suffusing upward and downward throughout her small body. She made a small noise of astonishment, and of fear. It was so sudden. She pressed her thighs together, frightened. Surely she was in need. She hoped he could not smell her need, her raw, naked slave’s need. She remembered his hands upon her, and how she had been handled and used, how she had been put to his pleasure.
“You will be used, slut,” said he, “if and when I please.”
She put down her head, in consternation.
“Stand,” said he, “and put your hands behind you, wrists crossed.”
She did so and her wrists, in a moment, were tightly thonged behind her. A rope was then tied on her neck and attached to the back of the wagon.
“You will be a naked slave,” he said, “publicly exposed on a common road.”
She put her head down, remembering her own former words.
She wondered if, and when, she would again be given a tunic. A slave, she knew, cannot count upon a tunic. Sometimes she must earn a tunic, or a slave strip.
The wagon then left the camp and, shortly thereafter, trundled onto the heavy, broad, fitted stones of the Viktel Aria.
Ellen, on the rope leash, followed. In the vicinity of Venna there were several caravansaries outside the walls. Ellen heard a delighted female voice cry out, “Greetings, slave girl!”
Looking about, Ellen saw that it was the blonde she had tormented yesterday afternoon, but now the blonde was tunicked, although, to be sure, briefly.
“Respond,” called Selius Arconious, from behind her.
“Greetings, Mistress,” said Ellen.
“Now,” said Selius Arconious, “eyes front, slave!”
And then Ellen continued on her way, not looking to the side, or back. She kept her gaze fixed squarely ahead. Tears streamed down her face, and under the coarse rope knotted about her neck.
The men, having finished their repast, retired to a larger, open area, smoothly floored, looking out over Ar. The night was beautiful, and there were many lights. The slave cleared. Later, rising from her knees within, at a gesture from her master, the slave brought forth and served small glasses of Turian liqueurs.
Toward the Twentieth Ahn, the Gorean midnight, the guests took their leave. The door closed and the slave was alone with her master.
Selius Arconious, standing, regarded his property, kneeling.
“May I speak, Master?” she asked.
“Yes,” said he.
“It is my hope,” she said, “that the evening went well.”
“I think it went very well,” said he.
“A slave is pleased, if master is pleased,” she said.
“Though perhaps,” he said, “it lasted too long.”
“Master?” asked the slave.
She knew that she was exquisitely beautiful, and would bring a high price in the market. She could tell, too, that her master was now regarding her with that look which slaves know only too well. No woman in a collar can mistake such a look. She put her head down, shyly.
“You did well this evening,” he said.
“Thank you, Master.”
“You are a good slave, Ellen,” he said.
“Master has taught me how to be a good slave,” said Ellen. “He has given me no choice.”
“Do you wish a choice?” he asked.
“No, Master,” she smiled.
The slave whip hung on its peg not far from the great couch, with its slave ring. On the other hand, it was seldom used. A supple switch served sufficiently for occasional admonitions.
One time, however, several days ago, he did strip her, tie her wrists together before her body and conduct her down the stairs to the hall of the building, where it opened at the street level. Two children, and, later, a free woman, were passed on the stairs. None paid her attention. Her master then tied her wrists over her head to a dangling ceiling ring in the hall, a ring for the use of the tenants, one not far from the door, and drew her up in such a way that she was stretched upward by the wrists, and standing on the tips of her toes.
“What have I done, Master?” she had asked in genuine puzzlement.
A free woman then entered the building, who had been shopping. “Slut!” she said to Ellen. “Yes, Mistress,” said Ellen. “Beat her well,” she said. “Have no fear, dear lady,” said Selius Arconious, politely.
“I do not know what I have done, Master!” said Ellen.
“Surely you recall,” said he, “the festival camp, where you were to be punished on two counts, first, for not having revealed skill in slave dance, and, second, for having spoken without permission.”
“Master?” asked Ellen.
“You were to receive ten strokes for the first offense, and five for the second,” said Selius Arconious. “That is, accordingly, a total of fifteen strokes.”
“But Master kindly purchased the strokes!” said Ellen. “He paid fifteen tarsk-bits! One for each blow! Thus, he spared me the blows!”