desirable, loose animal, to be taken in hand and dealt with as strong men might please.
I shuddered, and better hitched up the disrobing loop at my left shoulder.
I looked about.
I heard a snuffling, and grunting, to one side, and stopped. There were three small tarsks there, rooting, only a few paces away. Some tarsks are extremely large, so large that they are sometimes hunted in the open plains with lances, from tarnback, but these were no larger than verr. The boar can be dangerous, with its short temper and curved, slashing tusks, but I saw no boar here, and, in any event, they are most dangerous in the spring, when marking out territory. They were rooting, of course, and this meant food. I waited for a time, and then, when they had drifted on, rooting elsewhere, investigated their rooting place, with its turned, gouged ground. I found some small, tuberous roots which had been missed, or rejected. I did not know what they were, but from the texture of the root and its starchiness, I would have supposed some tiny variety of wild Sul. I also found another root, and carelessly bit into it, which turned out to be a most serious, even hideous, mistake, unless, perhaps, one were on the brink of dying of starvation. It was not poisonous, of course, but one could easily conceive of it being regarded as such. In a loose sense, it was edible. It had been left by the tarsks, and this was not surprising. Its bitterness was unbelievable. Recoiling, dismayed, weeping with misery, I spat it out, and then, hacking and coughing, half retching, continued to spit away whatever residue I could. I spat again and again into the ground. I knew well what it was, for I had encountered a fluid, brewed from it, long ago, in my training. I had been knelt, my hands tied behind me. Then I had cried out in pain, for my head, by the hair, had been jerked back, far back, by a guard. I saw the ceiling above me. Without releasing my hair, but keeping my head in place by means of it, he then, with his free hand, pinched shut my nostrils. I had then sensed a second guard, approaching. As he neared, and then loomed over me, I saw he carried a metal, narrow-spouted vessel. In a moment, I began to gasp. Only through my mouth could I breathe. I tried to squirm, and shake my head, but I was held in place. Then, as I opened my mouth widely, gasping, fighting for breath, I felt the spout of the metal vessel in my mouth. I could not fully close my mouth because of it. I took a deep breath, sucking the air into my lungs. Then, before I could breathe again, the vessel was tipped, and fluid began to flood into my mouth, a repellant, gross, revolting fluid, and it filled my mouth like a pool. Held as I was, I could not rid myself of it. I needed air. My head hurt, from the strain on my tightly grasped hair. My wrists fought the cords that held them. In my oral cavity, bitter and reeking, brimming it, reposed that small, foul pool, like a tiny lake of bitter, odious filth. I wanted to force it from my mouth, but could not do so. I had no air with which to expel it. I feared I might suffocate. My lungs cried out for air. I must breathe, but to do so the beverage must first be swallowed. I did so. No, I had not forgotten slave wine. It is brewed from the sip root. Relia had told me that in the vast grasslands far to the east, the Barrens, the white slaves of red masters must chew and swallow the root raw. I spat again into the dirt. We are to be bred, of course, only as, and when, and if, the masters please. Our bodies are not our own; they are the masters’. I was then allowed to rise and return to the training room. My hands, tied behind me, would not be unbound for over an Ahn. We must not be allowed to rid ourselves of the fluid. The taste was with me for more than a day. Slave wine has been developed by the green caste, the caste of Physicians, one of the five high castes of Gor, the others being the Initiates, the Builders, the Scribes, and