how Donna had knelt beside Genserich and licked his thigh, beautiful, loving, obedient beast that she was. I would have loved to kneel beside his thigh, that master first seen on a far world, and so express my slave’s devotion, hoping not to be cuffed away, to the side.
How glorious, how wonderful, to have a master to serve!
He had no interest in me.
But other men would, I knew.
Had not Master Genserich or Master Aeson kicked my knees apart, that I might understand I was, in that camp, a pleasure slave?
We have our power, our beauty, our wit, our intelligence, and may use it to our advantage. So, too, might a free woman. But how limited, and confined she is! Are not we, with our training, half-naked in our tunics, a thousand times more desirable, in our animal way, than the free woman? Does she not know that in any war of attractiveness, she is far outdone by the slave? When the heat of their manhood is upon them is it not we whom they seek, whom they buy, whom they bid for in the markets, whom they chain to their couch?
I wished that that master, who had had no interest in me, might now look upon me.
Some men were, why not he?
It would be pleasant to make him suffer.
How long ago it seemed that he had first looked upon me! At that time I did not even know that there was a world, Gor. I had, of course, heard rumors of such a world, but who had not? But, of course, it did not exist. And then I had found myself on a slave block, under torches, naked, being vended in Brundisium!
I wished he was watching me. How I would make him suffer!
I submerged my head in the water and lifted it up, almost immediately. I thrust my wet hair back about my head, and, keeping my hands behind my head, put my head far back, and lifted it to the late-afternoon sky, my back arched, the water streaming from my body, sparkling in its droplets falling to the river.
How I hated him!
I wondered if he were watching, from the shore, if he saw me, as I was now.
I hoped so.
I would make him suffer!
I thought that I had even now improved on my block measurements.
Was he watching?
I would make him suffer.
I thought I might go for even a silver tarsk, now, in open bidding.
Was he watching?
Let him suffer!
Now I would follow Tula and Mila to the shore, and don my freshened, still-damp tunic. It would cling nicely to my body. I would not notice that of course. Then I would fasten the disrobing loop, slowly, modestly, carefully.
I wished that he whom I hated might be on shore, watching me, not that it made any difference to me.
He had scorned me on the dock at Shipcamp, and I would scorn him here, but not, of course, to the extent of risking a beating.
I had apparently lost consciousness shortly after hearing certain words, following which I had sensed, rather as though I might be somewhere else, that the sleen had not attacked me, that it might have been soothed, that it might now be gone. Certainly I no longer felt the heat of its breath on my back, nor was I any longer half-choked in the stifling reek of it, emanating from that deep, cavernous, fanged maw. Then clearly the beast had been pacified, and was being fed. I heard its feeding, the voracious tearing of the meat, the sound of its gorging, and it was then, I think, that I lost consciousness.
Tula and Mila were with me when I opened my eyes.
They kissed me. “You are alive, Vulo,” had said Tula. Mila gave me water from a metal cup.
“There was a sleen,” I said.
“There is nothing to fear from it now,” said Mila.
“Unless you run again,” said Tula. “Then it might kill you.”
“The hunt is done,” said Tula.
“But you have been caught,” said Mila.
I was then very afraid.
But there would be little in this camp, I thought, from which my scent might be taken.
Might I not run again?
I was sure the sleen had been somehow set on my track from Shipcamp. They would take me back there. I had run. What, then, would be done with me there?
I must run again!
Once I was roped, and leashed, I would be helpless.
“There were two with the sleen,” said Tula, “the use master and another. They were hunting together. We thought them with