Hunters of Gor (31 page)

Tyros lifted the iron, glowing redly, from the fire. Its marking surface, its

termination, soft and red in the night, was in the form of a large, block letter

in Gorean script, the initial of Karjirus, a common Gorean expression for a male

slave. A female’s brand is smaller, and much more graceful, usually being the

initial, in cursive script, of Kajira, the most common Gorean expression for a

female slave. Some cities, Treve, for example, have their own brands. The Wagon

Peoples, too, each have an individual brand for their female slaves. The Tuchuk

brand, tiny and fine, is the paired bosk horns. Tana, the paga slave in Lydius,

wore it. The brand of the Kataii is that of a bow, facing to the left; the brand

of the Kassars is that of the three-weighted bola; the brand of the Paravaci is

a symbolic representation of a bosk head, a semicircle resting on an inverted

isosceles triangle. Another common expression for a female slave, incidentally,

the initial of which, in cursive script, is sometimes used to mark a girl, is

Sa-for-a, which means, literally, Chain Daughter.

The man with the leather glove thrust the iron back in the fire. It was not yet

hot enough to well mark a slave. White heat is preferred.

Marlenus struggled futilely. He was theirs to brand. Men went about the circle,

checking the bonds of the men of Marlenus, staked out. Here and there they

tightened straps, and cords and binding fibers. Then they were satisfied.

The moons, the three white, dominating moons of Gor, were now rearing over the

tree tops.

I waited, crouching now on the branch. I studied the men and women below in the

camp. How many were there? How did they seem? Which seemed most alert? Who did I

suppose might be the most dangerous? At what height hung the hilt of the swords

in the sheaths slung over the left shoulder? Which girls walked with their heads

the highest, which carried their spears well?

I looked at the moons. They now stood well over the trees.

I crouched on the branch. I was patient. The blood in me that I felt then was

not that of the merchant. It was an older blood, one almost forgotten, the blood

of the warrior, the blood of the huntsman.

My girls, the four paga slaves, I had left behind me, more than a pasang from

this place, tied, gagged, in a slave star. I would not need them tonight. Before

fastening them in the slave star I had, on their bellies, watered them at a

small stream. I had then found a suitable, thick-trunked tree. I sat them about

the tree, their backs to it, and fastened them in the star, the left wrist of

the first girl bound to the right wrist of the next, and so about the tree,

until the star was closed by binding the left wrist to the fourth girl to the

last untethered wrist, the right wrist of the first girl. I then crossed their

ankles, and bound their ankles together, each girl individually. With a rock I

struck down a forest urt. With bits of the raw flesh I fed them, thrusting

pieces in their mouth. Ilene was sickened, repulsed, but, upon my command,

swallowed her feeding. She was not a Gorean girl. She was only a weak girl of

Earth, taken as slave to this barbaric planet.

“Are you not, too, of Earth?” she asked.

“Yes,” I told her.

“I am not as these other girls,” she said. “I am of Earth. Be merciful to me.

Give me special privileges.”

“To me,” I said, “you are only another slave.”

“Please!” she wept.

“Feed,” I told her.

“Yes, Master,” she said. The slave then fed.

I, crouching down on the grass, with my two hands and teeth, finished the

remainder of the animal.

The girls’ gags and waddings, formed from the slave silk of the garments of two

of them, I had set out on the grass to dry.

It had grown dark.

I must soon be to the clearing.

I reinserted the gags in the mouths of the fair captives.

“I am of Earth,” said Ilene, piteously.

“You are a Gorean slave girl,” I told her. I then thrust the large wadding into

her mouth, and tied it tightly in place. Her eyes, over the gag, regarded me

with horror. She knew then that she could be to me only what she would be to any

other Gorean male, a slave. I looked into her eyes. They were those of a Gorean

slave girl.

I was not pleased with Ilene. She had not been completely open with me. It was

for that reason that she would be sold in Port Kar.

I walked about the girls and checked the knots of the slave star. They were

secured, perfectly.

They looked at me, over their gags. If panthers came upon them in the night, or

sleen, their cried would not serve to alert my enemies.

I was not much pleased with them. They had aided in the betrayal of my camp.

Without them it would not have been possible. I recalled how they had, on the

beach, laughed and jested with the men of Tyros. Now they, who had served the

men of Tyros, were bound as the helpless slaves of one of Port Kar, one to whom,

in the betrayal of his camp, they had done great injury.

I smiled, looking at them, and they shuddered. They had served the men of Tyros.

They would serve one of Port Kar even better. I would see to that.

I was displeased particularly with the one called Ilene. She had not been

completely open with me. I would have special use for her.

As it grew dark I cut and dragged torn brush about the girls, to form a

makeshift defensive perimeter.

I saw gratitude in their eyes.

“Do not be grateful to me, Slaves,” said I. “I am saving you for tomorrow, when,

in the performance of my will, you will face dangers greater than those of sleen

and panthers.”

The gratitude in their eyes was transformed to fear.

I thrust the last bush, spreading and thick, of thorn brush into place.

Then, not bidding them farewell, I turned and disappeared among the shadows and

trees.

On the branch of the tree, high, in the darkness, crouching, I saw the man of

Tyros, with his leather glove, reach to the handle of the slave iron, protruding

from the brazier. By this time the moons were high. By this time the men of

Tyros, and the panther girls, had all gathered about in the conquest circle.

He lifted it up and there was a cry of pleasure. It was white with the ferocity

of its heating. It was now ready to brand a slave.

Sarus, the leader of the men of Tyros, waved his men back now, except for the

man with the iron. They took their places about the edges of the circle, sitting

cross-legged. The panther girls of Hura’s band, more than a hundred of them,

entered the circle. The moons were now near the height of the sky. At a sign

from Hura the man from Tyros thrust the iron back into the brazier, to draw it

forth again at her signal. The man with the hide drum then, for the first time

was silent.

I looked down into the circle, with its fires, with its men staked out, with the

men of Tyros sitting about its edges, with Marlenus helpless beside the brazier,

the man from Tyros, with the leather glove, crouching beside it, with the

panther girls, beautiful, numerous, lithe, in their skins and necklaces of claws

and ornaments of gold.

There was a long silence, of some Ihn, and then, at a nod from Hura, who threw

her long black hair back, and lifted her head to the moons, the drum began again

its beat. Mira’s head was down, and shaking. Her right foot was stamping. The

panther girls put down their heads. I saw their fists begin to clench and

unclench. They stood, scarcely moving, but I could sense the movement of the

drum in their blood.

The men of Tyros glanced to one another. It was few free men who had ever

looked, unbound, on the rites of panther girls.

Hura’s eyes were on the moons. She lifted her hands, fingers like claws, and

screamed her need.

The girls then, following her, began to dance.

I looked upon Marlenus. He struggled, but he could not, of course, free himself.

It was he who had, long ago, banished me from the city of Ar, denying me bread,

fire and salt.

It was he who had always been so successful. It was he upon whom luck and glory

had shone.

I began to grow furious with Marlenus. He had been Ubar, the Ubar of Ubars. He

had been fortunate, always fortunate. I had come to the forest to find Talena. I

had not done so. I, and my men, had been outwitted by panther girls. We had

fallen to them. We would have been raped and sold slave had not Marlenus, with

almost casual insolence, rescued us.

Then he had invited us to his camp, and we had come, and dined upon his

largesse!

In the game he had devastatingly beaten me.

I looked down to the circle.

It might have been a rite not of women, but of she-panthers! How starved must be

the lonely, hating panther women of the forests, so gross is their hostility, so

fierce their hatred, and yet need, of men. They twisted, screaming now, clawing

at the moons. I would scarcely have guessed at the primitive hungers evident in

each movement of those barbaric, feline bodies. They would be masters of men.

Proud, magnificent creatures. And yet by biology, by their beauty, by their

aroused inwardness, could not, in fact, own but only, in their true fulfillment,

belong, be taken, be conquered. It was little wonder such proud, fine women

hated men, to whom nature had destined them. Woman is the natural love prey of

men. She is natural quarry. She is complete only when caught, only when brought

to the joy of her capture and conquest. It was not strange that the proud,

intelligent women of the forest, and elsewhere, chose war with men, rather than

admit the meaning of his strength and swiftness, the meaning of their own

weakness and beauty. Set a woman to run down a man and she cannot do so. Set a

man to run down a woman and he will be successful. Nature has not destined her

to escape him. It has destined her to be his capture and love.

I smiled to myself at those who regarded the needs of women as inferior to those

of men. The woman, I realized, looking down upon the panther girls, has an

imperative, enormous need. It is as great as that of the male, I expected,

perhaps greater, for she is less satiable, and the tissues of her womanhood are

widely spread, and intricate and deep. Her entire body, is seems, is alive to

feeling, and yielding and touching, is a need. Her beauty is she, and its

meaning, from the turn of an ankle to the delicacy of her deft, sweet fingers,

from the turn of a calf to her belly and the beauties of her breasts, to those

of her shoulders and throat and the marvelousness of her head and hair, is a

need. How tragic it is, I thought, that such incredible human beings should be

so belittled, frustrated and abused. I do not refer to the cruelties of Gorean

slavery, which celebrate women and, in their rude fashion, often

uncompromisingly, force the helpless, total surrender she yearns in the heart of

her to give, but the subtler, crueler slaveries of Earth, pretending to respect

her and then, by education and acculturation, depriving her not only of status

and independence, but of love.

The Gorean slave girl, if nothing else, is commonly no stranger to love. She is

not permitted to be. She is at man’s beck and call and, accordingly, willingly

or not, will be taught love. If necessary she will learn it under the whip,

writhing in chains.

The Gorean slave girl, in my opinion, is the most desirable of women. What man,

I wonder, fully aroused, does not wish to own his woman. What woman, I wonder,

fully aroused, helpless, is not, in fact, in the arms of her lover, owned.

The drum was now very heady, swift. The dance of the panther girls became more

wild, more frenzied. Vicious, sinuous, clawing, lithe, these savage beauties, in

their skins and gold, with their knives, their light spears, weapons darting,

danced. They were terrible and beautiful, in the streaming, flooding light of

the looming, primitive moons, their eyes blazing. The hair of all was unbound.

Several had already, oblivious of the presence of the men of Tyros, torn away

their skins to the waist, others completely. On some I could hear the movement

of the necklaces of sleen teeth tied about their necks, the shivering and

ringing of slender golden bangles on their tanned ankles. In their dance they

danced among the staked-out bodies of the men of Marlenus, and about the great

Ubar himself. Their weapons leapt at the bound men, but never did the blows

fall.

The coals in the brazier formed a blazing cylinder in the firelit darkness of

the circle. I could see, dark, the handle of the slave iron.

The dance would soon strike its climax. It could continue little longer. The

women would go mad with their need to strike and rape.

Suddenly the drum stopped and Hura stopped, her body bent backward, her head

back, her long black hair falling to the back of her knees.

She was breathing deeply, very deeply. Her body was covered with a sheen of

sweat.

The girls not put down their weapons and crowded about the bound figure of

Marlenus, looking at him, inching closer, breathing heavily, not speaking.

“Brand him,” said Hura.

Marlenus had once denied me bread, and fire and salt. He had once banished me