She thought of herself groveling and kneeling, at the snap of a whip. How quickly she had learned to do that, how naturally!
The grasslands are commonly dry, but this was in the spring, and storms sometimes erupt, and, when they do, it is often with a sudden rage, a blackening of the sky, a rising of wind, a rushing of clouds, a shattering of lightning, a beating, pounding, of fierce, torrential rains.
And the wind was now rising.
He continued to touch her.
The slave began to writhe against the wheel. His mouth closed on hers. She felt the first pattering of rain.
Slaves are responsive. It is for such things that they are purchased. A girl who is more responsive will commonly bring a higher price than one who is less responsive. To be sure, sooner or later, the slaves fires are kindled in every girl and eventually even those who took the greatest pride in the inertness of their bellies will come weeping to the master’s feet. It is an interesting experience, doubtless, for a proud, cold woman who has loathed men to find herself now become a heated, dependent slave hopelessly in love with her master, so different from the men she had known, and in desperate need of his touch.
Her lips met his, though they were not those of her master. Tongue met tongue. His hands were hard, imperious upon her.
Let us not think ill of her, for she was a female slave. She could not help herself, nor did she wish to help herself. She pressed her lips madly upon him, gratefully. She gasped, and thrust her body against him, as she could.
He was a Gorean master, and she a female slave.
She recalled herself, long ago, before Mirus, and the two scribes, when she had been brought from the laundry. “I am eager to beg,” she had said. “I am Ellen, the slave girl of Mirus of Ar. I beg to please a man, any man.”
Yes, yes, she thought, gasping, slave eager, frenziedly grateful, a man, any man!
On Earth, at her current age, some eighteen or nineteen years of age, she might have been a freshman in college, being doubtless noticed by upperclassmen.
A young, beautiful girl.
Here, on Gor, she was a young, beautiful slave, and one whose lovely body had been well honed to quiver and squirm in responsiveness.
How different she would have been from Earth!
How the young men might have cried out, could they have seen her as she was now!
“Slave,” he whispered, contemptuously.
The wind blew her hair to the side, whipping it away from the wheel. “Yes, Master,” she whispered. “Yes, yes, yes, Master!”
“Oh!” she said, lifted, lowered, penetrated.
On his manhood was then the slave impaled.
A bolt of lighting momentarily illuminated the prairie.
He held her under the arms, they braceleted over her head, moving her. She was ground back against the wheel rim. She turned her head to the side, and then from side to side.
He was mighty and she, slave, obediently receptive as she must be, welcomed him, bent back, fastened, over the wheel, as the yielding, helpless, collared vessel of his pleasure.
Rain slashed downward in torrents. Lightning flashed. Thunder, the wild drums of the sky, crashed about them.
“I beg mercy, Master!” wept Ellen.
“You will receive none, slave,” he snarled.
“Aiii!” cried the slave.
In that moment, in a great flash of lightning, she saw a figure, that of the officer, hurling aside his blankets, rising angrily to his feet.
And at the same time she heard a cry of rage from beneath the boards of the inverted wagon, and the entire surface beneath her, seemed to shudder, and buck, once, twice, exerting force upon the straining ropes fastened to the stakes, and then the wagon rose up, suddenly, the ropes tautening and dragging stakes from the softened, rain-drenched earth.
“Alert!” cried the officer, his weapon drawn, momentarily illuminated in another chainlike, frightening blazing in the sky.
The soldier, the armsman, cursing, leapt from its surface.
The wagon was then up, suddenly on its side, the open wagon bed momentarily facing the officer, and his mustering men. Ellen, terrified, half-blinded in the rain, braceleted as she was, was twisted about, dragged to the side. The wagon rocked. She saw the dark figures of men about. She clung to the wheel to which she was fastened, and it spun beneath her, and she turned with it, and then, to her misery, she felt the wagon rock backward, and it was falling away, toward the ground, and she nearly slipped from the wheel to which she clung, and then, as the wagon heavily righted itself, striking into the earth, she was on her knees in the soaked grass.
“Do not move, sleen of Ar!” she heard the officer cry.
His men had encircled the now upright wagon, weapons at the ready.
Selius Arconious was momentarily illuminated in a flash of lightning, looking wildly about, his fists clenched.
“You are a fool!” cried the sleenmaster, now freed like the others from beneath the wagon.
“Steady, steady!” said Portus Canio to Selius Arconious.
“If any move, kill them!” said the officer to his men.
Ellen, through the spokes of the wheel, now on the far side of the wagon, saw the beasts. Their fur was matted and glistening from the rain. They were so closely together that it was only with difficulty that she saw there were three there.
Ellen had undergone the shifting of the wagon with no serious injury. In a few moments she would be aware of an aching in her right thigh, which had been bruised, but she was not aware of it in those first moments. She was fortunate, not to have been seriously injured, as, in the turning of the wagon, an arm might have been torn from its socket or an arm or wrist broken.
She pulled back, suddenly, frightened, as the two gray hunting sleen, slithering, bellies close to the grass, moved past her, to take shelter beneath the wagon. They looked at her, with large eyes. Sleen, in general, are not fond of water. It does not deter them, however, in the tenacity of pursuit; when hunting they will enter the water, and swim, unhesitatingly, single-mindedly. There is, however, an animal called the sea sleen, which is aquatic. There seems to be some dispute as to whether the sea sleen is a true sleen or not. The usual view, as she understands it, is that it is a true sleen, adapted to an aquatic environment. She felt the drenched fur of one of the sleen rub against her arm. There was a powerful odor to the two beasts, accentuated doubtless by the dampening of the fur. This odor was very clear in the cool, washed air. She pulled at the bracelets. They held her to the wheel. She was sure the sleen were harmless at present, particularly if she did not make sudden moves, or annoy them. On the other hand, she knew that at a mere command such beasts might unhesitantly tear her to pieces.
“Kneel, crowd together!” said the officer to those who had been confined.
Reluctantly they did so. There were bows bent taut, arrows at the cord, whipped with silk. Swords were drawn. Spears were ready for the thrust.
“I will deal with you later!” shouted the officer, amidst the lightning, amongst the claps of thunder, to the soldier who had pleasured himself with the slave.
“It was not my watch!” he shouted back.
“Later,” said the officer.
“She is only a slave,” said the soldier.
“Later,” the officer assured him.
“You did not forbid her to us,” said one of the soldiers, angrily.
“He did not detunick her,” said another. “Is it not that which was forbidden?”
“She is only a slave,” another reiterated, furiously.
The officer turned his attention to the group of kneeling prisoners. “And who amongst you,” he asked, “organized, or instigated, the lifting of the wagon?”