John Norman - Gor 21 - Mercenaries of Gor

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Mercenaries of Gor
Gor 21
John Norman
1 What Occurred Outside Samnium
“I do not know about other women,” she said, “but I am one who wishes to belong to a
man, wholly,”
“Beware your words,” I cautioned her.
“I am a free woman,” she said. “I can speak as I please.”
I could not gainsay her in this. She was free. She could, accordingly, say what she
wished, and without requiring permission. She stood before me. She had dared to brush back
her hood. She had unpinned her shimmering veils, permitting them to fall about her throat and
shoulders. A soft movement of hands and a shake of her head had thrown her long, dark hair
behind her back. She had dark eyes. Her face was softly rounded. It was delicate and
beautiful.
“You have unpinned your veil,” I observed.
“Yes,” she said.
“You are brazen,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, insolently.
I mused, considering this. It is not difficult, of course, to take insolence from a
woman.
“Why have you unpinned your veil before me?” I asked.
“Perhaps you will like what you see,” she said.
“Bold female,” I observed.
She tossed her head, impatiently.
“Do you have the least inkling as to what it might be, to belong to a man, wholly?”
“Do you find me pleasing?” she asked.
“Answer my question,” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
I wondered if this is true. It might be. She was Gorean.
(pg. 7) “Now, she said. “Answer mine!”
“Do not court an altercation in your condition, unless you are prepared to accept it, in
its full consequences,” I said.
She shuddered. She lowered her eyes. “It is said that there is in every woman that
which I sense so fearfully, yet longingly, in myself.”
“I wonder if that is true,” I said.
“I do not know,” she said, “but I know that it is in me, passionately, strongly,
irresistibly.”
“You are bold,” I said.
“A free woman may be bold,” she said.
“True,” I granted her.
“I need this for my fulfillment, to be one with myself,” she said.
“Speak clearly,” I said. She was free. I saw no point in making it easy for her.
“I want to be a total woman, in the order of nature,” she said.
I shrugged.
“My heart cries out,” she wept, “with the need to be accepted, to be acquired, to be
owned, to be mastered, to be forced to submit, to be forced to will-lessly and selflessly serve
and love!”
I did not respond to her.
“I beg this of you, for you are a man,” she said.
“Speak with greater precision,” I said.
She shook her head. “Please, no,” she said.
I shrugged.
“Mine is the slave sex!” she said, angrily, defiantly.
“The slave sex?” I asked.
“Yes!” she said.
“And you are a member of that sex?” I asked.
“Yes!” she said, angrily.
“I see,” I said.
“I am tired of trying to be like a man!” she said. “It is a lie which robs me of myself!”
I said nothing.
(pg. 8) “I want to be true to myself,” she said. “I want to be fulfilled!”
“Such a thing is not reversible by your will,” I said.
“I am well aware of that,” she said.
“There are many sorts of masters,” I said, “and you would be at the disposal of any of
them, and totally,”
“I know,” she whispered.
I said nothing.
“You have still not answered my question,” she said. “Do you find me pleasing?”
“It is difficult to say,” I said, “bundled and covered as you are.”
“She looked at me, frightened.
“Strip,” I said. She would be assessed.
She reached to the veils about her throat and shoulders and, taking them, dropped
them softly to the grass. She stood not more than a hundred yards from the gate of Tesius, in
the city of Samnium, some two hundred pasangs east and a bit south of Brundisium, both
cities continental allies of the island ubarate of Cos. She slipped softly from her slippers. She
must then have felt the touch of the grass blades on her ankles. She looked at me. Her hands
went to the stiff, high brocaded collar of her robes, the robes of concealment, to the numerous
eyes and hooks there, holding it tightly, protectively, about her throat, up high under her chin.
“Do not dally,” I told her.
In a few moments she had parted her robes, and slipped them, first the street robe, that
stiff, ornate fabric, and then the house robe, scarcely less inflexible and forbidding, from her
small, soft shoulders. Clad now only in a silken sliplike undergarment, she then looked at me.
“Completely,” I said, “absolutely.”
She then stood before me, even more naked than many a girl up for vending, waiting
to be thrust to the surface of the block, for she wore no collar, no chains, no brand. A
merchant on his way to the gate of Tesius paused, to gaze upon her. So, too, did two soldiers,
guardsmen of Samnium. She stood very straight, inspected. None of these wrinkled their
noses nor spat upon the ground.
(pg. 9) “What is your name?” I asked.
“Charlotte, Lady of Samnium,” she said.
“Turn slowly before me, Lady Charlotte,” I said. “Now place your hands, clasped
behind the back of your head, and arch your back. Good. You may now kneel. Do you know
the position of the pleasure slave? Good.”
“How does it feel to be kneeling before a man?” I asked.
“I have never been like this before a man,” she said.
“How does it feel?” I asked.
“I do not know,” she said. “I am so confused. It is so overwhelming. I am uncertain. I
do not know what I feel like. I am almost giddy.”
“Lift your chin,” I said.
She complied immediately, unhesitantly.
“Spread your knees more widely,” I said. Again, unhesitantly, immediately, she
complied.
I regarded Lady Charlotte. I saw that she might be suitable. She was beautiful, and
extremely feminine. I saw one of the soldiers licking his lips.
“These are difficult and dark times,” I told her. “I tell you nothing you do not know
when I tell you that. Too, I now inform you that where I go, it will be dangerous.”
She looked up at me.
“Remain in the city,” I said. “There you will be safe, there you will be secure.”
“No,” she said.
“No?” I asked.
“No,” she said, firmly. “I am not yours. I do not need to obey you.”
“Assume a position on your hands and knees,” I told her.
“Yes,” I said. I removed a slave whip from my pack.
“I am free!” she said.
“I think it will do you good to feel this,” I said, shaking out the five, soft, broad blades.
I then went behind her.
“Ai!” she cried, struck. “It hurts, so!” she wept, now, a moment later, beginning to feel
the pain in its fullness, now on her stomach, disbelief in her eyes. “I did not know it was like
that.” (pg. 10) “I struck you but once, and not hard, I told her.
“That was not hard?” she gasped, striped, stung, sobbing, terrified.
“No,” I told her. “Go back now to the city, and be safe.”
“No,” she sobbed. “No!”
I crouched near her, looking at her closely.
“No,” she said. “No, no!”
I regarded her.
“Please,” she said.
“Very well,” I said.
She looked at me, wildly, elated. I thrust her face down to the grass. She sobbed with
relief, with pleasure. I drew forth a slave collar from my pack. Roughly, unceremoniously, I
placed it on her neck, snapping it shut, locking it.
“Good,” said the merchant, turning away. “Good,” said the two soldiers, too, turning
away. I regarded her.
She was now collared. She was now a slave. She was now mine.
She looked up at me, frightened. “I am yours,” she whispered.
“Yes,” I said.
“Please strike me once more,” she said, “that I may this time feel the blow as a slave.”
I said nothing.
“I want to feel your whip, as your slave,” she said.
“Very well,” I said. I then, by the hair and an arm, drew her again to her hands and
knees. I again then stood behind her but this time I did not strike her immediately, but let her
wait, as a slave, that she might anticipate the blow, and grow apprehensive of it, and not know
precisely when it would fall. Then the blades hissed suddenly down upon her and again she
cried out, sobbing, flung to the grass, which she clutched with her fingers. “You punish me,”
she said. “You can do with me as you please. I am your slave! I am yours!”
I looked down upon her. She was not unattractive. I had not planned to take a slave
with me from Samnium, but I did not truly object to doing so. She could cook for me, and
serve me, and keep me warm in the furs. It was late in Se’Kara. I (pg. 11) would find her a
useful convenience, a lovely one. Every man needs such a convenience. Then, when I wished,
I could give her away, or dispose of her in some market.
“Do you think you were struck hard?” I asked.
“I do not know, Master,” she said.
“You were not,” I informed her.
“Yes, Master,” she whispered, frightened, sensing what might have been done to her
but had not been. To be sure, I had struck her harder than the first time, for she was now a
slave, and slaves, of course, are whipped differently from free women, but I had not, truly,
struck her with great force.
“Can men strike harder than that?” she asked.
“Do not be absurd,” I said. “I struck you with only a tiny fraction of the force that an
average fellow, if he wished, might bring to such a task. Too, I struck you only once, and in
only one area, one less sensitive to pain than many others.”
“I see, Master,” she said, shuddering. She had then sensed what it might be to be a
whipped slave girl. And whipping, of course, is only one of the punishments to which such a
girl might be subjected. “I will try to be a good slave, Master,” she whispered, frightened,
understanding now perhaps some what better than before something of the categorical and
absolute nature of her new condition.
“Who were you?” I asked.
“Lady Charlotte, of Samnium,” she said.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“A slave, only a slave, yours,” she said.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“I have no name,” she said. “I have not yet been given one. My master has not yet
given me a name.”
“Your responses are correct,” I said.
She sobbed with relief.
“Do you wish a name?” I asked.
“It is all within the will of the Master,” she said. “I want only only what Master wants.
I desire only to please.”
“It will be a convenience for me to have a name for you,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“You are, ‘Feiqa’ ” I said, naming her.
(pg. 12) “Thank you, Master,” she breathed, elated, ‘Feiqa’ is a lovely name. It is not
unknown among dancers in the Tahari.
Other such names are ‘Aytul’ ‘Benek’, ‘Emine’, ‘Faize’, ‘Mine’, ‘Yasemine’ and ‘
Yasine’. The ‘qa’ in the name ‘Feiqa’, incidentally, is pronounced rather like ‘kah’ in English.
I have not spelled it ‘Feikah’ in English because the letter in question, in the Gorean spelling,
is a ‘kwah’ and not a ’kef’. The ‘kwah’ in Gorean, which I think is possibly related, directly
or indirectly, to the English ‘q’, does not always have a ‘kwah’ sound. Sometimes it does,
sometimes it does not; in the name ‘Feiqa’ it does not. Although this may seem strange to
native English speakers, it is certainly not linguistically unprecedented. For example, in
Spanish, certainly one of the major languages spoken on Earth, the letter ‘q’ seldom, if ever,
has the ‘kwah’ sound. Even in English, of course, the letter ‘q’ itself is not pronounced with a
‘kwah’ sound, but rather with a ‘k’ or ‘c’ sound as in ‘kue’ or ‘cue’.
I gathered my shield and weapons from the grass near us, where they lay with my
pack. I slung my helmet over my left shoulder. I set my eyes to the southeast, away from the
high gray walls of Samnium.
“Fetch my pack, Feiqa,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said. She would serve as my beast of burden.
I watched her as she, unaided, struggled with the pack. Then she had it on her back.
Her back was bent. “It is heavy, Master,” she said. I did not respond to her. She lowered her
head, bearing the pack. The wind moved through the trampled grass. She shivered. It was now
late in Se’Kara. Already on Thassa the winds would be chill and the cold waves would be
dashing and plunging to the bulwarks and washing the decks with their cold floods. I regarded
the girl. In warmer seasons, or warmer areas, one may take one’s time in making the decision
as to whether or not a female is to be permitted clothing. Some masters keep their slaves
naked for a year or more. The girl is then grateful when, and if, she is permitted clothing, be it
only a bit of cloth or some rag or other. In this latitude, however, and in this season, I would
have to see to the slave’s garmenture. I looked back at the discarded (pg. 13) clothing on the
grass. She could take none of that, of course It was no longer proper for her. It was the
clothing of a free woman. That sort of thing was now behind her. I could have her fashion
something from a rough blanket perhaps, and find her something to wrap her feet in. Too, I
might be able to find her something, which might function as a cloak. That she could clutch
about her head and shoulders.
“Do you know how to heel, Feiqa?” I asked.
“Yes, Master,” she said. She was a Gorean woman, familiar at least superficially with
the duties and obligations of slaves. To be sure, as a recently free woman, she might perhaps
find herself astounded and horrified at some of the things that would now, even routinely, be
required of her. I did not know. Certain things which are not only common knowledge to
slaves but, even a normal, familiar part of their lives seem to be scarcely suspected by free
women. These are the sorts of things about which free women, horrified and scandalized,
scarcely believing them, sometimes whisper, fearfully, delightedly, among themselves. Some
Earth-girl slaves brought to Gor, incidentally, do not even know how to heel. Incredibly, they
must be taught. They learn quickly, of course, in the collar, and subject to the whip.
I looked back, again, to the walls of Samnium. It had been spared the savageries of the
war, doubtless because of its relationship with Cos. I then set out to the southeast. I did not
look back. I was followed by Feiqa. (pg. 14)
2 There Are Hardships in These Times
I looked up from Feiqa, moaning in my arms, clutching at me. I had heard a tiny noise.
I thrust her back, and away, she whimpering. I reached to my knife, and stood up, in the
darkness. I stood on the lowered circular floor, dug out of the earth, packed down and tiled
with stone, behind a part of a wall. It was the remains of a calked, woven-stick wall. It was
now broken and charred. I could see the dark sky, with the moons, over its jagged, serrated
edge. I could hear the whisper of other leaves outside. They were blown to and fro, like dry,
brittle, fugitives, on the small, central commons between the huts.
We had made our camp here, in the burnt, roofless, half-fallen ruins of one of the huts.
It had given us shelter from the wind. The village had been deserted, perhaps, judging from
the absence of crockery, household effects and furnishings, even before it had been burned. It
stood like most Gorean villages at the hub of its wheel of fields, the fields, striplike, spanning
out from it like spokes. Most Gorean peasants live in such villages, many of them palisaded,
which they leave in the morning to tend their fields, to which they return at night after their
day’s labors. The fields about this village, however, and near other villages, too, in this part of
the country, were now untended. They were untilled and desolate. Armies had passed here.
“Is there someone there?” asked a voice, a woman’s voice.
I did not respond. I listened.
(pg. 15) “Who is there?” she asked. The voice sounded hollow and weak. I heard the
whimpering of a child.
I did not respond.
“Who is there?” she begged.
I moved a little in the shadows, slowly, and back and toward the center of the hut. In
moving slowly, one tends to convey, on a very basic level, that one is not intending harm; to
be sure, even predators like the larl occasionally abuse this form of signaling, for example, in
hunting tabuk, using it for purposes of deception; more rapid movement, of course, tends to
precipitate defensive reactions. In moving back I had also tended to reassure the figure in the
doorway that I meant no harm, this movement, too, of course, had the advantage of ensuring
me reaction space; in moving toward the center of the hut I made it possible for her to see me
better, this tending too, one supposes, to allay suspicions; in this way, too, of course, I secured
myself weapon space. These things seemed to be instinctual, or, at least, to be done with very
little conscious thought. They seem very natural. We tend to take them for granted. It is
interesting, however, upon occasion, to speculate upon the possible origins of just such
familiar and taken-for-granted accommodations and adjustments. It seems possible they have
been selected for. At any rate, they, or their analogues, are found throughout the animal
kingdom.
The small figure stood just outside what had once been the threshold of the hut. It had
come there naturally, it seemed, as if perhaps by force of habit, or conviction, although the
door was no longer there. It seemed forlorn, and weary. It clutched something in its arms.
“Are you a brigand?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“It is a free woman,” whispered Feiqa, kneeling on the blankets.
“Cover your nakedness,” I said. Feiqa pulled her tiny, coarse tunic about her self.
“This is my house,” said the woman.
“Do you wish us to leave?” I asked.
“Do you have anything to eat?” she asked.
(pg. 16) “A little,” I said. “Are you hungry?”
“No,” she said.
“Perhaps the child is hungry?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “We have plenty.”
I said nothing.
“I am a free woman!” she said, suddenly, piteously.
“We have food,” I said. “We have used your house. Permit us to share it with you.”
“Oh, I have begged at the wagons,” she said suddenly, sobbing. “It is not a new thing
for me! I have begged! I have been on my knees for a crust of bread. I have fought with other
women for garbage beside the road.”
“You shall not beg in your own house,” I said.
She began to sob, and the small child, bundled in her arms, began to whimper.
I approached her very slowly, and drew back the edge of the coverlet about the child.
Its eyes seemed very large. Its face was dirty.
“There are hundreds of us,” she said, “following the wagons. In these times only
soldiers can live.”
“The forces of Ar,” I said, “are even now being mustered, to repel the invaders. The
soldiers of Cos, and their mercenary contingents, no matter how numerous, will be no match
for the marshaled squares of Ar.”
“My child is hungry,” she said. “What do I care for the banners of Ar, or Cos?”
“Are you companioned?” I asked.
“I do not know any longer,” she said.
“Where are the men?” I asked.
“Gone, she said. “Fled, driven away, killed. Many were impressed into service. They
are gone, all of them are gone.”
“What happened here?” I asked.
“Foragers,” she said. “They came for supplies, and men. They took what we had. Then
they burned the village.”
I nodded. I supposed things might not have been much different if the foragers had
been soldiers of Ar.
“Would you like to stay in my house tonight?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Build up the fire,” I said to Feiqa, who was kneeling (pg. 17) back in the shadows.
She had put her tunic about her. Too, she had pulled up the blanket about her body. As soon
as I had spoken she crawled over the flat stones to the ashes of the fire, and began to prod
among them, stirring them with a narrow stick, searching for covert vital embers.
“Surely you are a brigand,” said the woman to me.
“No,” I said.
“Then you are a deserter,” she said. “It would be death for you to be found.”
“No,” I said. “I am not a deserter.”
“What are you then?” she asked.
“A traveler,” I said.
“What is your caste?” she asked.
“Scarlet is the color of my caste,” I said.
“I thought it might be,” she said. “Who but such as you can live in these times?”
I gave her some bread from my pack, from a rep-cloth draw-sack, and a bit of dried
meat, paper thin, from its tied leather envelope.
“There, there,” she crooned to the child, putting bits of bread into its mouth.
“I have water,” I said, “but no broth or soup.”
“The ditches are filled with water,” she said. “Here, here, little one.”
“Why did you come back?” I asked.
“I came to look for roots,” she said, chewing.
“Did you find any?” I asked.
She looked at me quickly, narrowly. “No,” she said.
“Have more bread,” I said, offering it.
She hesitated.
“It is a gift, like your hospitality,” I said, “between free persons. Did you not accept it
I should be shamed.”
(pg. 18) “You are kind,” she said. “Not to make me beg in my own house.”
“Eat,” I said.
Feiqa had now succeeded in reviving the fire. It was now a small, sturdy, cheerful
blaze. She knelt near it, on her bare knees, in the tiny, coarse tunic, on the flat, sooted, stained
stones, tending it
“She is collared!” cried the woman, suddenly, looking at Feiqa.
Feiqa shrunk back, her hand inadvertently going to her collar. Too, her thigh now
wore a brand, the common Kajira mark, high on her left thigh, just under the hip. I had had it
put on her two days after leaving the vicinity of Samnium, at the town of Market of Semris,
well known for its sales of tarsks. It had been put on in the house of the slaver, Teibar. He
brands superbly, and his prices are competitive. No longer could the former Lady Charlotte,
once of Samnium, be mistaken for a free woman.
The free woman looked at Feiqa, aghast.
“Belly,” I said to Feiqa.
Immediately Feiqa, trembling, went to her belly on the stained, sooted stones near the
fire. “I will not have a slave in my house!” said the free woman.
Feiqa trembled.
“I know your sort” cried the free woman. “I see them sometimes with the wagons,
sleek, chained and well-fed, while free women starve.
“It is natural that such women be cared for,” I said. “They are salable animals,
properties. They represent a form of wealth. It is natural to look after them as it is to look after
tharlarion or tarsks.”
“You will not stay in my house!” cried the free woman to Feiqa. “I will not keep
livestock in my house.”
Feiqa clenched her small fists beside her head. I could see she did not care to hear this
sort of thing. In Samnium she had been a rich woman, of a family well known on its Street of
Coins. Doubtless many times she would have held herself a thousand times superior to the
poor peasant women, coming (pg. 19) in from the villages, in their bleached woolen robes,
bringing their sacks and baskets of grain and produce to the city’s markets. Her clenched fists
indicated that perhaps she did not yet fully understand that all that was now behind her.
“Animal!” screamed the free woman.
Feiqa looked up angrily, tears in her eyes, and lifted herself an inch or two from the
floor on the palms of her hands. “I was once as free as you!” she said.
“Oh!” cried Feiqa, suddenly, sobbing, recoiling from my kick, and then “Aii!” she
cried, in sharp pain, as, my hand in her hair, she was jerked up to a kneeling position.
“But no more!” I said. I was furious. I could not believe her insolence.
“No, Master,” she wept, “no more!”
I then with the back of my hand, and then its palm, first one, and then the other, back
and forth, to and fro, again and again, lashed her head from side to side. Then I flung her on
her belly before the free woman. There was blood on my hand, and about her mouth and lips.
“Forgive me!” she begged the free woman. “Forgive me!”
“Address her as ‘Mistress,’ I said. It is customary for Gorean slaves to address free
women as “Mistress” and free men as “Master.”
“I beg your forgiveness, Mistress!” wept the girl. “Forgive me, please, I beg it of
you!” “She is new to the collar,” I apologized to the free woman. “I think that perhaps even
now she does not fully understand its import. Yet I think that perhaps she understands
something more of its meaning now than she did a few moments ago. “Shall I kill her?”
Hearing this question Feiqa cried out in fear and shuddered uncontrollably on her belly
before the free woman. She then clutched at her ankles and, putting down her head, began to
cover her feet with desperate, placatory kisses. “Please forgive the animal!” wept Feiqa. “The
animal begs your forgiveness! Please, Mistress! Please, gracious, beautiful, noble Mistress!
Forgive Feiqa, please forgive Feiqa, who is only a slave!” I looked down at Feiqa. I think she
now (pg. 20) understood her collar better than before. I had, for her insolence and
unconscionable behavior, literally placed her life in the hands of the free woman. She now
understood this sort of thing could be done. Too, she would now understand even more keenly
how her life was completely and totally, absolutely, at the mercy of a Master. It thus came
home to her, I think, fully, perhaps for the first time, what it could be to be a Gorean slave.
“Are you sorry for what you have done?” asked the free woman.
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, Mistress!” wept Feiqa, her head down, doing obeisance to one
who was a thousand times, nay, infinitely, her superior, the free woman of the peasants.
“You may live,” said the free woman.
“Thank you, Mistress!” wept Feiqa, head down, shuddering and sobbing
uncontrollably at the free woman’s feet.
“Have you learned anything from this, Feiqa?” I asked.
“Yes, Master,” she wept.
“What?” I asked.
“That I am a slave, she said.
“Do not forget it, Feiqa,” I told her.
“No, Master,” she sobbed, fervently.
“Will you stay the night?” asked the free woman.
“With your permission,” I said.
“You are welcome here,” she said. “But you will have to sleep your animal outside.”
I glanced down at Feiqa. She was still shuddering. It would be difficult for her, I
supposed, at least for a time, to cope with her new comprehension concerning the nature of
her condition.
“I do not allow livestock in my house,” said the free woman.
I smiled, looking down at Feiqa. To be sure, the former rich young lady of Samnium
was now livestock, that and nothing more. Too I smiled because of the free woman’s concern,
and outrage, at the very thought of having a slave in the house. This seemed amusing to me
for two reasons. First, it is quite common for Goreans to keep slaves, a lovely form of
domestic animal, in the house. Indeed the richer and more (pg. 21) well-to-do Gorean the
more likely it is that he will have slaves in the house. In the houses of administrators, in the
domiciles of high merchants, in the palaces of Ubars, for example, slaves, and usually
beautiful ones, for they can afford them, are often abundant. Secondly, it is not unusual either
for many peasants to keep animals in the house, usually verr or bosk, sometimes tarsk, at least
in the winter. The family lives in one section of the dwelling, and the animals are quartered in
the other.
“Go outside,” I told Feiqa.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“Would you like a little more food?” I asked the free woman. “I have some more.”
She looked at me.
“Please,” I said.
She took two more wedges of yellow Sa-Tarna bread. I put some more sticks on the
fire. “Here,” she said, embarrassed, She drew some roots, and two suls, from her robe.
They had been freshly dug. Dirt still clung to them. She put them down on the stones,
between us.
I sat down cross-legged, and she knelt down, opposite me, knees together, in the
common fashion of the Gorean free woman. The roots, the two suls, were between us. She
rocked the child in her arms.
“I thought you could find no roots,” I smiled.
“Some were left in the garden,” she said. “I remembered them. I came back for them.
There was very little left though. Others obviously had come before me. These things were
missed. They are poor stuff. We used to use the produce of that garden for tarsk feed.”
“They are fine roots,” I said. “and splendid suls.”
“We even hunt for tarsk troughs,” she said, wearily, “and dig in the cold dirt of the
pens. The tarsk are gone, but sometimes a bit of feed remains, fallen between the cracks, or
missed by the animals, having been trampled into the mud. There are many tricks we learn in
these days.”
“I do not want to take your food,” I said.
“Would you shame me?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
(pg. 22) “Share my kettle,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said. I took one of the roots and broke off a bit of it in my hand. I
rubbed the dirt from it. I bit into it. “Good,” I said. I did not eat more however. I would let her
keep her food. I had done in this matter what would be sufficient. I had, in what I had done,
acknowledged her as the mistress in her house; I had shown her honor; I had “shared her
kettle.” “Little Andar is asleep,” she said, looking at the bundled child.
I nodded.
“You may sleep your slave inside the threshold,” she said. (pg. 23)
3 Tula
“Throw back your hoods, pull down your veils, females!” laughed the wagoner.
The women crowding about the back of the wagon, many with their hands
outstretched, the sleeves of their robes falling back, cried out in consternation.
“—if you would be fed!” he added.
These women must be new, I thought. Probably they had come only recently to the
wagons, probably trekking overland from some contacted village, perhaps one from as far
away as fifty pasangs, a common range for the excursions, the searches and collections of
mounted foragers. Most of the women I had seen following the wagons, at any rate, knew
enough by now to approach them only bareheaded, as female supplicants, too, to be more
pleasing to the men who might possibly be persuaded to feed them, with their hair visible and
loose as that of slaves. Similarly, most had already discarded or hidden their veils, even when
not begging. They did not even wear them in their own small, foul, often-fireless makeshift
camps near the wagons, camps, to be sure, to which men might sometimes come. It had been
discovered that a woman who is seen with a veil, even if she has lowered the veil, abjectly
and piteously face-stripping herself, is less likely to be fed than one with no veil in evidence.
Too, of course, it had been quickly noted that such women, too, tended to be less frequently
selected for the pleasure of the drivers. The men with the wagons had not seen fit to permit
the women the dignity of veiling. In this, of course, they treated them like slaves. “Please!”
cried a woman, thrusting back her hood and (pg. 24) tearing away her veil. “Feed me! Please,
feed me!’ The others, too, then almost instantly, hastily, each seeming to hurry to be before
the others, some moaning and crying out in misery, unhooded and unveiled themselves.
“That is better, females,” laughed the driver.
Many of the women moaned and wept.
They were now, to be sure, I mused, in their predicament and helplessness, even
though free women, as the driver had implied, little more then mere females. One could
probably not be more a female unless one was a slave.
“Feed us!” they cried piteously to the driver, many of them with their arms
outstretched, their hands lifted, their palms opened, crowding and pressing about the back of
the wagon. “We beg food!” “We are hungry!” “Please!” “Feed us, please!” “Please!”
I looked at their faces. On the whole they seemed to be simple, plain women, peasant
women, and peasant lasses. One or two of them, I thought, might be suitable for the collar.
“Here!” cried the driver, laughing, throwing pieces of bread from a sack to one and
then another of the women. The first piece of bread he threw to the woman who had been the
first to unhood and face-strip herself, perhaps thereby rewarding her for her intelligence and
alacrity. He then threw pieces to certain others of the women, generally to those who were the
prettiest and begged the hardest. Sometimes, not unoften, these pieces of bread were torn
away from the prettier, more feminine women by their brawnier, huskier, more masculine
fellows. Where there are no men, or no true men, to protect them, feminine women will, in a
grotesque perversion of nature, be controlled, exploited and dominated by more masculine
women, sometimes monsters and mere caricatures of men. Yet even such grosser women,
sometimes little more than surrogates for males, can upon occasion, in the hands of a strong
uncompromising master, be forced to manifest and fulfil, realizing then for the first time, the
depths of their long-denied, long-suppressed womanness. There are two sexes. They are not
the same.
“More, more, please!” begged the females.
Then, amusing himself, the driver tossed some bits of (pg. 25) bread into the air and
watched the desperate, anxious women crowd and bunch under it, pushing and shoving for
position, and trying to leap upward, thrusting at one another, to snatch at it.
“More, please!” they screamed.
摘要：

MercenariesofGorGor21JohnNorman1WhatOccurredOutsideSamnium“Idonotknowaboutotherwomen,”shesaid,“butIamonewhowishestobelongtoaman,wholly,”“Bewareyourwords,”Icautionedher.“Iamafreewoman,”shesaid.“IcanspeakasIplease.”Icouldnotgainsayherinthis.Shewasfree.Shecould,accordingly,saywhatshewished,andwithoutre...

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