John Norman (33 page)

His hand moved toward her helplessness, but he did not touch her.

She looked at him, in terror, her body charged with blood, hurtling in the rapids of her beauty.

This was the beast who had taken her in the forest, who had brought her slave to his camp. How she hated him! She had been forced, as a beast of burden, to carry flint. He had looked on, impassively, when she had been tied as bait, to lure a predatory beast to a trap. She, and Ugly Girl, too, for that matter, might have been killed! She hated him! And she had fled, but he, like a dog, had followed her, easily. There had been no escape from him! She looked up at him. She knew she could not escape him. She shuddered, remembering the leopard. She had fallen. It had leaped toward her. The great shaft, tipped with sharpened stone, had struck it from her. Then he, seemingly as terrible, as fierce, as inhuman and bloodthirsty as the beast itself, had fallen upon it, and, striking again and again, had killed it. She remembered the grass, the night, the blood pulsating from the beast’s throat, and the killer hunching beside it, drinking its blood, and then, as a man, drawing signs upon his body, and among them, the sign of the Men.

And then standing over her, she only a naked, frightened female, from another time, at his feet, with the great, stone-tipped spear.

The leopard, gutted and bled, he had forced her to carry back to the caves, his trophy, borne on the shoulders of the recaptured female slave.

Then he had put her in this prison, in this cave, where she, nude, confined by the steepness of the cliffs, must, helpless, await his pleasure.

And then, the day after her incarceration, he had, viciously, with his man’s strength, laid the switch richly to her beauty, well disciplining the slave for her flight. She had cried out to him that she would not run away again. She had, inadvertently, to her astonishment, and horror, in English, addressed him as “Master.”

“No man will ever master Brenda Hamilton,” she said. And then, helplessly, closing her eyes, she lifted her body to him.

She, body arched, heard his great laughter in the cave, and, opening her eyes, saw him sitting beside her, his head thrown back, roaring with laughter.

She lowered her body, and turned her head to one side.

When he had finished laughing, she again regarded him.

“Yes, I’m yours,” she said, “Master.” She again lifted her body. “I am not ashamed. You are my master. Do with me what you will. I am your slave.”

Tree saw the lovely slave girl lift her body to him, as though sloe might be of the women.

He knew then that he could make her kick, and make her kick superbly.

He threw back his huge head and laughed.

When he looked again upon her, she again, pleadingly, lifted her body to him. She said something in her barbarous, unintelligible tongue. Tree did not precisely understand what she said, of course, but he understood clearly the submissiveness of her tone of voice. She was asking him to use her as a female. She was submitting herself to him.

Gently with tongue and fingers he fell upon the most vulnerable delicacies and beauties of her helplessness.

She began to writhe and scream with pleasure.

But Tree did not forget the lessons of Old Woman for he, in his strategems, had only begun to arouse the lovely, helpless slave. When he finally entered her she was quivering and crying and biting at him, but even then he, following the advice of Old Woman, resisted her pleadings, and the piteous, supplicatory movements of her body, sometimes, by sheer force, holding her, weeping, immobile. But at last, after more than a thousand, varying stabs of pleasure, swift, and slow, and gentle, and fierce, and sweet and hard, he, as she screamed with pleasure, rearing under him, shattered her, exploding within her the long-withheld tenseness, the force, of his manhood. He did not then withdraw from her either, for Old Woman had told him to stay with the woman, and hold her, and caress her, or it would be like taking food from her mouth, leaving her half hungry.

“Don’t leave me!” wept Brenda Hamilton. “Don’t leave me!” She fought the thongs that bound her wrists behind her back. She wanted to seize the hunter, and hold him, tightly, in her arms, never letting him go. But her wrists were behind her back, fastened tightly in rawhide loops. He could leave her with ease, should he wish.

“Please don’t leave me!” she wept.

And the hunter continued to hold her, small, soft, yielded, piteously his, against the now-relaxed gentleness of his leanness, his supine might, his hardness, now suddenly gentle, now unbent like a great bow.

Though she knew he could not understand her, Brenda Hamilton, in English, softly, her head against his chest, spoke to the hunter.

“My name is Brenda Hamilton,” she said. “You could not perhaps understand my world. It is very different from yours. I come from a different time. On my own world I am of some small importance. There I am a respected person, highly intelligent and well educated. I have an advanced degree in a technical subject from a great university. Here I am only a naked female, and even my wrists are bound. Here I am only an outsider, and a despised slave, but here I am in your arms. My world, in many ways, is empty. This world, in many ways, is much more real. I suppose I should be horrified that I lie here a slave in a primeval cave but I am not, dear hunter, dissatisfied. I would not have it otherwise, dear hunter. Do you know why that is? Do you think it is simply because you have mastered me, and made me behave as a slave in your arms? Because you have made me truly a slave? Oh yes, dear hunter, I acknowledge that I am your slave, completely. You have given me no choice in that. But is there not more to it, dear hunter? It is not that I am simply a slave girl. I am rather a slave girl who helplessly loves her master. Did you give me choice, either, in that? No, you did not, you beast.” Then Hamilton, gently, kissed the hunter. “The slave girl loves her master,” she whispered. “I love you, my master.”

It was late afternoon when the hunter left the slave. Before he left, he untied her hands. But he did not let her touch him; rather he thrust her back, stumbling, tears in her eyes, for she was, after all, only a slave.

Then his lean body, band over hand, disappeared up the knotted rawhide rope, which he drew up after him.

Brenda Hamilton extended her hand after him. “Come back to me, Master,” she cried. “Come back to me, soon!”

In the cave Brenda Hamilton threw herself on the hides and cried out for joy. “I love him!” she cried. “I love him!” And then she moaned, “Come back to me, soon, Master!”

Not only had the incompleted sensation in her body, which the hunter had long ago induced in her, been completed, but it had led to a thousand other rhapsodies of pleasure, dimensions of feeling, of emotion, of tissue sentience, of body awareness, of which before in her life she had never suspected the existence. Her body, for the first time, seemed rich and glorious, and saturated with excitement and feeling. She wanted to kiss his hands and lips and manhood for what they had done to her. For the first time in her life she felt the fantastic sentience of an owned, loving female. And, too, she had begun to suspect, in his touchings and lovings, that even beyond these dimensions of joy, like thousands of doors and horizons, there might lie others, and more. She wanted to train herself, and to grow, from day to day, from year to year, eagerly exploring and learning, in sentience and feeling. She knew women could improve themselves in such matters, as in any others. She must give attention to them. She must train herself to become more responsive, perhaps more swiftly reflexive, to feel more rapidly and more deeply. She had just begun to sense the possible depths of her feelings, the possible heights of her ecstasies. She had just begun, under the hands of a primeval hunter, to learn the possibilities, the capacities, of her femaleness.

“I love you, Master!” she cried.

That night, bringing a piece of hot meat in his teeth, Tree returned to the lovely slave.

He did not tie her hands.

He offered her the meat. She threw it aside and fell to her knees before him, thrusting her head beneath his skins, kissing his manhood.

Tree took her in his arms and, laughing, threw her back to the hides on the floor of the cave.

Four days more was the lovely Brenda Hamilton kept a helpless love slave in the primeval cave.

In this time the hunter spent much time with her, day and night, only leaving her to fetch food and water. When he returned she would welcome him, helplessly, deliciously, and melt into his arms.

“Tree keeps his little bird long on her perch,” said Spear to Old Woman.

“He is training her well,” said Old Woman.

Spear had laughed, and turned away.

Old Woman smiled to herself. She remembered that, years ago, though it was still fresh in her memory, when she had been a young and beautiful woman, Drawer had similarly trained her, and superbly.

Above, in her high, prison cave, Brenda Hamilton lay in the arms of her hunter. “I love you, Master,” she whispered to him. “I love you.”

Had she known of the conversation of Spear and Old Woman, and could she have spoken the language of the Men, she would have stood brazenly before Tree, laughing, her hands behind her head, her body thrust toward him. “Yes, Master,” she would have laughed. “You have trained me well. I am now a well-trained slave.”

And Tree would have seized her by the ankle and again pulled her to the hides, laughing, and she, in his arms, looking up at him, a lovely, eager slave, would, lifting her lips and body again to his, have again addressed herself to her duties, those of his pleasure.

“Thank you, oh thank you, Master!” cried Brenda Hamilton. She reached out and took the rectangle of soft deerskin, about a foot wide, and some two feet long, beveled inward on each end. Both edges, and the beveled sides, were turned and sewn, and through the top edge, through perforations, was drawn, as though stitched through, a slender rawhide strap, serving as a belt. Delightedly she wrapped this simple skirt about her, and tied the ends of the strap belt, as she had seen the women do, over her left hip. Because of the inwardly beveled edges, her left leg was muchly revealed, and thrust provocatively from the skirt. Many of the younger women wore such garments. Flower, and Antelope, did. Cloud did not.

Brenda Hamilton, delighted, proud, walked and posed, and turned, before her hunter, her master.

He, she saw, was startled to see her thusly.

Then she walked before him as one of the women, as she had seen the women walk, displaying themselves in their walk to men.

She saw him grin widely.

He gestured her to him, and she ran, barefoot, to him..

He jerked on the knot at her left hip. It could not be immediately loosened.

“Tie this properly,” he said to her in the language of the Men.

“Yes, Master,” she said in English, shyly, well understanding him. Obediently she tied the knot in the fashion of the younger women. She lifted her lips to him, and kissed him. “You beast,” she whispered. Now, at a single tug, she could be stripped. “You make your slave feel very vulnerable, Master,” she whispered to him. She kissed him again, excited. Then she darted away, and turned to face him. She then, in her movements, well displayed her legs. They were marvelous. Tree regarded them as the best legs of any female in the camp, except perhaps those of Flower or Butter fly. “The slave thanks her master for her beautiful gown,” said Brenda Hamilton. She then, looking demurely down, her left index finger beneath her chin, holding with her right hand the deerskin from her right thigh, curtsied to him.

Tree had never seen such a movement. It made him laugh.

“Come here,” said he, in the language of the Men, gesturing to her.

Brenda Hamilton quickly sped to her master. She knew that he, like any powerful male brute of these times, must be obeyed swiftly and well by his females. Too, unaccountably perhaps, she found herself eager to be promptly obedient to him.

From his pouch he drew forth a long tangle of claws, shells and thongs.

He untangled it and held it out, up before his face, smiling.

It was an ornament, a necklace, of the sort that the females of the Men often wore about their neck.

Brenda Hamilton put forth her hand, but she did not touch it. “It is beautiful, Master,” she whispered.

“See,” said Tree, in the language of the Men, pointing to a small rectangle of leather, about an inch square, one of five, threaded into the thongs, with the claws and shells. Brenda Hamilton looked. On it she saw, drawn, scratched into the leather and pigmented in red, the sign of the Men. The same sign, identically, appeared on the other four rectangles. Tree turned her about and then, standing quite closely behind her, wrapped the necklace, in four loops, snugly, about her neck. He then tied it behind the back of her neck, tightly. She knew it identified her, by means of the rectangles, as a woman of the Men. She put back her head, to touch the hunter. She wondered if this sort of thing were the origin of the necklace, that it served in the beginning not simply as an ornament but as, in its way, an identifying slave collar. Tree turned her roughly about. Eagerly her lips met his, those of her master.

She felt his hand reach to her hip.

An hour later, in his arms, pushing back his hair at his neck, kissing him, Brenda Hamilton saw again the tiny, strange mark on his neck. She had seen this before. It intrigued her. It was a birthmark. It was like a tiny bluish stem, with branches reaching upward. It was from this mark that her hunter had had his name, “Tree.”

She kissed the tiny mark.

He smiled and pointed to the mark, and to himself. “I am Tree,” he said, in the language of the Men. “Tree.”

She kissed him beneath the chin. “I am Brenda,” she said. She kissed him again. “Your slave’s name is Brenda, Master, unless you wish to give her another name. Then the other name would be hers, and not Brenda.”

“Brenda?” he asked, picking the name from her words.

She knelt beside him, and pointed to herself. “I am Brenda,” she said. “Brenda.”

“Brenda,” he said. She smiled.