“You did not follow her from Brundisium, into the labors and dangers of the northern woods,” she said. “You did not risk your life to pursue her in the forest!”
“It is growing late,” I said.
“What is Laura to you?” she asked.
“No more than a foolish slave, a capture, to be returned to the Pani,” I said.
“After what you have done to me?” she said. “After what you have made me feel?”
“You are a slave,” I observed.
“I hate you,” she wept.
“You are, of course,” I said, “a nicely curved piece of collar meat.”
“Can she lick the whip as well as Laura?” she asked. “Can she belly and crawl as well as Laura? Are her lips as warm, and begging, on your thigh as those of Laura?”
I was silent.
“I am sure she is very nice,” she said.
“She is hot, and lovely,” I said.
“But perhaps not the slave for you,” she said.
“A slave is a slave,” I said. “They are interchangeable.”
“Master has the advantage over me,” she said.
“How is that?” I asked.
“A slave,” she said, “must tell the truth.”
“I see,” I said.
“Is that why one slave sells for more than another, why one slave’s price might purchase a ship, and another a wooden bowl and spoons, why one slave is bartered for a city, and another for a she-tarsk, why one girl is purchased to be chained at the foot of a Ubar’s throne and another to carry water in the fields or quarries?”
“Kneel, turn about, put your head to the leaves,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
She did not sound displeased.
“You obey promptly and well, Earth woman,” I said.
“I am no longer an Earth woman,” she said. “I am now a Gorean slave.”
“You are far from the aisle of that great emporium where I first saw you,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“Did you expect to find yourself one day as you are now?” I asked.
“No, Master,” she said.
“But you are now here, as you are,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
I then put her to my pleasure.
Chapter Fifty
He took no chances with me.
On the return to Shipcamp I was stripped, which is a common way to return an escaped slave to masters. This not only designates the slave as having been errant or displeasing, but marks her out, as well, for attention. A tunicked slave amongst tunicked slaves might attract little attention; she might even slip away again; a naked slave amongst tunicked slaves, on the other hand, is quickly noticed. Nudity, in its way, makes escape less likely. Further, in the trek to Shipcamp, my hands were braceleted behind me, and I was kept on the leash, usually, in more dangerous areas, following him, led, but in more open areas often forced to precede him, almost like a slave on promenade. At night my wrists would be braceleted about a small tree, I placed either on my belly, my arms forward about this living stanchion, or on my back, my arms back, above and behind me.
I was muchly used, for slave purposes, on the trek back to Shipcamp, especially in the evening and night, but, sometimes, during the day, as well, when, his need upon him, as it seemed so frequently to be, he would throw me to the leaves.
Often enough, as well, I would creep to him, whimpering.
Never as a free woman had I suspected how grievous, irresistible, and even painful might be a slave’s needs, how helpless she would be in their grip. I supposed even on Earth I would have been ready to yield to a master, hoping to be found pleasing. But on Gor, once I was in a collar, half naked, with a slave brand seared into my flesh, and knew myself an object, a domestic animal, only goods, these feelings and needs became far more acute. Then I had been, at Shipcamp, chained in the slave house. There I had begun to sense the ecstasy, and the terror, and the helplessness, of one in whom slave fires had been ignited. Then, after my recapture, in the arms of my captor, for whose touch I had longed even as long ago as my former world, when I had seen him but once before my acquisition, these fires had begun, perhaps to his amusement, to blaze in such a way that I found myself their prisoner and victim. Doubtless this was due in part to his ruthless skill in setting such fires in