“Time was short.”
“We turned to face them.”
“‘Take us with you!’ they cried.”
“‘Why?’ we inquired.”
“They did not understand this question,” laughed a fellow.
“Free women are so stupid,” said another.
“‘Please, please!’ they cried.”
“‘Remove your veils,’ ordered Torgus,” said one of the men, indicating a large fellow nearby.
“‘Never,’ they cried,” recalled another fellow, grinning.
“We turned then to leave,” said another fellow, “but we heard ‘Wait! Please, wait!’ When we looked back they begged that we remove their veils, even to the ripping of them from them, as might be done with the insolence, amusement, and scorn of a slaver. But this, in our anger and contempt, we refused to do. ‘Remove your own veils,’ we told them.”
“‘Do not so shame us!’ they wept.”
“But in moments, by their own small, desperate hands, their faces were bared to men, men neither of their families nor companionship.”
“By their own hand they had face-stripped themselves,” said one of the fellows.
At this moment three or four of the girls on the chain burst into tears.
This is perhaps difficult for those unfamiliar with Gor to understand, one supposes, but the matter is cultural, certainly in the high cities. The face of a free woman, particularly one of high caste, of station, and such, is secret to herself, and to those to whom she might choose to bare it. It is not like the face of a slave, exposed to any herdsman or peddler, any passer-by, who might choose, however casually, to look upon it.
Some of the girls, careful to retain the posture in which they had been placed, lest they be struck, wept. They had not forgotten the moment, it seemed. Later, the sting of that humiliation would fade, and they would rejoice to be freed of the encumbrances of veiling, and revel in the feel of the air on their face, a face whose soft, luscious, inviting, vulnerable lips were now exposed to the sight, and kisses, of men.
Perhaps the closest analogy to this would be a woman of Earth complying with an order to remove her clothing before imperious strangers.
From the Gorean point of view, the face of a woman, you see, is the key to her self, the face, with its beauty, its softness, its special uniqueness, its myriad expressions, proclamatory of her feelings, her thoughts, and moods. How beautiful is a woman’s face, and how its subtlest expressions, even inadvertently, even unbeknownst to herself, may be fraught with the delicious treasures of betraying disclosures! The master reads the face of a slave; he may ponder the thoughts, the motivations, and intentions of the veiled free woman.
How precious is the veil to the free woman; she is not a slave.
The free woman is mysterious; the slave is not; she is at a man’s feet.
“‘Hurry, hurry!’ we were urged,” recollected one of the fellows.
“We could hear the men of Ar on the street, doors away,” said another.
“‘Submit, strip, pronounce yourself slave, hurry to the rope,’ barked Torgus to the dismayed, frightened women,” said a man.
“In moments,” said another man, “each hastened to submit.”
Submission may be rendered in a number of ways. The most important thing is that the submission is clear. A common posture of submission is to kneel, lower the head, and extend the arms, wrists crossed, as though for binding. Often a phrase, or formula, is employed, as well, often as simple as “I submit,” “I am yours,” “Do with me as you will,” or such. If one is of the Warriors the codes then require one to either slay the captive or accept the submission. Almost invariably the submission is accepted, as women on Gor are accounted a form of wealth, at least once they are collared. I know of only one exception to this almost invariable acceptance of a submission. A woman submitted and then, later, betrayed the submission, and stabbed he to whom she had submitted. The next time she submitted her head was cut off. It might be noted that the submission, in itself, strictly, does not entail bondage, but captivity. Nonetheless it is almost invariably followed by the captive’s enslavement. A woman who submits expects the collar to follow.
“Each then,” said a fellow, “divested herself of her robes, stepped from them, declared herself slave, and hurried to Torgus, who knotted a length of a coarse, common rope about her neck.”
“We made certain each was block naked,” said a fellow.
“Some had foolishly neglected, or forgotten, to remove their sandals or slippers,” explained another fellow.
“They were suitably cuffed?” I said.
“Yes,” said a man.
This was acceptable, as they were then slaves.
Those were probably the first blows they had ever felt.
“‘We are lost,’ we thought,” said a man. “For the men of Ar were at the door itself.”
“‘We are fee fighters,’ Torgus told us, ‘in no uniform. The men outside will not know we are not of Ar. Ar is a great city. Who knows all her citizens? Throw open the door, cry out “For Glorious Ar,” in suitable accents, and drag our prizes into the street. Given the length of their hair the men of Ar will assume these are free women, captured, in accord with the proscription lists. Cry out that we are conducting them to the impaling poles.’”
“You are clever,” I said to Torgus. “I gather that the ruse was successful.”
“For a time,” said the large fellow, Torgus.
“Until it became clear we might be fleeing the city,” said another.
“This aroused suspicion, and, forced to speak, the foreignness of the accents of some of us, for not all were skilled in the intonations of Ar, unsheathed the swords of men of Ar.”
“There was then fierce blade work,” said a fellow.
“The slaves lay naked on the ground, on their bellies, covering their heads, moaning, shrieking, while steel flashed about them.”
I nodded. They would await the outcome of the fierce altercation. They would affect its outcome no more than tethered kaiila.
They must wait to learn their fate, which would by determined by men.
“Many were trod upon,” said a man, “and sparks stung their backs.”
“Here, though, in the vicinity of the pomerium,” said a man, “we were not overmatched as in the city, and we were fee fighters, and mere citizens were opposed to us.”
“We lost men, and so, too, did they, and more, but we cut our way clear to the rubble of the dismantled wall.”
“Those opposed to us knew themselves outskilled and drew back, to summon reinforcements.”
“We then struggled over the rubble, dragging the slaves with us, and were soon beyond the pomerium,” said a man. “The camp of Myron had been overrun, but Cosian regulars, abetted by Tyrian contingents, and some allies, had regrouped and, well disciplined, and orderly, in their squares, had already begun the withdrawal northwest to Torcodino, and would from there march to the great port of Brundisium, where would await them ships of Tyros and Cos.”
“We, and hundreds of fugitives, with loot, and baggage, and slaves, attached ourselves to these units, and clung to the perimeters of their camps,” said one of the fellows on the beach.
“We lost no time shortening the hair of our detestable traitresses,” said a man, “to a length suitable to their new condition, that of slave. We would not want reconnoitering tarnsmen, flighted from Ar, to suspect that they might be refugees from the proscription lists, lest determined efforts be made to recover them.”
I supposed the women had no objection to this, despite the shearing of their beloved tresses being in its way a badge of degradation and servitude.
Surely it was better to be shorn of those treasured tresses than be betrayed by them into the hands of vengeful citizens.