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“I,” said Selius Arconious. “She is my slave.”

“I see,” said the officer.

“I did not give my permission for her use.”

Ellen gasped. Does he care for me, she thought. No, she thought. But it is a point of honor with him, that his property was used without his permission. Then she moved closer to the wheel and with the fingers of her braceleted hands delicately touched the collar on her neck, beneath the rope. But I am his slave, she thought. It is his collar on my neck. I am collared. I wear the collar of my master!

“Bind the prisoners, hand and foot, all but our angry young fellow,” said the officer to his men. “Then free the slave from the wagon, and bring her before me, back-braceleted.”

In a few moments Ellen was kneeling, back-braceleted, before the officer.

“Now bring forward our jealous young master,” said the officer. “Take him to the wagon wheel. Tie him there, his hands behind his back. Where he may see.”

When this was done he turned to Selius Arconious. “Ar belongs to Cos,” he said, “and all that belongs to Ar belongs to Cos, and thus the slaves of Ar are the slaves of Cos.”

“Yes!” said more than one of the soldiers.

Selius Arconious struggled at the wheel, his muscles lunging against the ropes.

There were many lightnings and crashes of thunder.

“Beg now,” said the officer to Ellen, “as the degraded slave of a master of Ar for the inestimable privilege, unworthy though you are, of serving masters of Cos.”

Tears, mixing with the rain, streamed down the face of the kneeling, back-braceleted slave.

Ellen threw her master an agonized glance. He was furious, bound at the wheel, but feet away.

“Slut!” said the officer.

“I am the degraded slave of a master of Ar,” cried Ellen. “I beg the inestimable privilege, unworthy though I am, of serving masters of Cos!”

“And you will do so, as each may please,” said the officer.

“Yes, Master!” said Ellen.

The slave moaned to herself. Surely not before my own master, she thought, not publicly, not before him!

The officer then indicated one of his men.

“On your back, slut, and throw your legs apart,” said the first soldier.

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen, in misery, and went to her back in the rain and mud.

“More widely!” he ordered.

“Yes, Master!”

“What is going on here?” said Tersius Major, coming forward.

“So you are no longer hiding in your blankets,” said the officer. “There is nothing here which concerns you.”

“I will have my turn!” he said.

“No,” said the officer. “Only a man is worthy of using a slave.”

Tersius Major whipped the pistol from beneath his cloak.

“Use it once, and it is gone,” said the officer. “Next!”

“Kneel, open your mouth,” said the next soldier.

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen, struggling to her knees in the mud.

The storm, meanwhile, was somewhat abating, and though a steady rain fell, there was a lessening of, and then a desistance of, the earlier atmospheric chaos of thunder, wind, and electricity.

“Next,” called the officer, and then, again, “Next!”

If ever, Ellen would have wished to resist, but her body betrayed her, with its secretions and spasms, and then, moments later, despite herself, every last pathetic psychological possibility of defense was gone; every last brittle barrier of reserve and dignity was shattered; and the last thin veil-like wall was rent, and taken from her, with the ease with which a slave strip might be torn from the body of an auctioned girl, and the entire needful psychosexual fabric of her femininity, yielded, was revealed to masters. She cried out, a ravished slave.

“Squirm,” said a man.

“Yes, Master!”

“Aiii,” he cried.

Not before my master, not before my master, she wept to herself, and then, again, yielded.

“Next,” said the officer.

“Kneel, head down, facing away from me!” said a man.

“Yes, Master!”

Her head and hair went into the wet grass. She felt herself seized. How powerful are the hands of men, she thought. How weak we are, how small we are! Nature has decreed who is master!

“Next,” said the officer.

“On your belly, split your legs.”

“Yes, Master!”

“Next.”

“To your back, slave!”

“Yes, Master!”

The last to use her, when he had regained his feet, kicked her with the side of his bootlike sandal, more a gesture of contempt than anything else. “Slut of Ar,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she said. “Thank you, Master.” It is common for a slave to thank the master for disciplines, and beatings. She understands that such things are appropriate for her. Too, of course, they remind her that she is a slave.

Not before my master, she thought, not before my master!

Then Ellen lay on her back in the mud and rain, her eyes closed. She was a humbled, ravaged slave. She dared not look at Selius Arconious. Surely he had seen her buck and squirm, and spasm, and writhe, and moan and gasp, and lick and kiss, and grovel, and beg, and wrap her small legs about the large bodies of masters, as though she might thusly hold them the more securely to her.

How horrified might have been her former feminist sisters of Earth, but they were not collared on another planet, brazenly tunicked, and the tunic now and again thrust up almost to their breasts, grasped in the mud and put to the service of masters! Or would they have been thrilled, and envy her the profound, uncompromising domination to which she had been subjected, a domination which it was quite unlikely they themselves would receive at the hands of men of Earth, a domination without which they could not realize the depths of their womanhood.

There had been fifteen soldiers in all. She did not even remember which one had been he who had put her to his masterly purposes at the wheel earlier. Tersius Major had not been permitted to so much as touch her. The officer, too, had refrained from her use. Once she had looked to the bound prisoners. Portus Canio, and his fellows, Fel Doron and Loquatus, had seemed to take little interest, little more than if someone had put someone else’s small, silken she-sleen through her paces. The wounded man who was with the company of Mirus lay bound, weak, miserable, unnoticed, on the grass. The sleenmaster, he of the party of Mirus, eyes glistening, had eagerly, keenly, excitedly, scarcely capable of controlling himself, witnessed the successive ravishings of the slave. Ellen wondered if he were new to Gor. She wondered if he, doubtless of Earth, aware perhaps only of the frigid, defensive, inert, confused, unhappy, unawakened women of Earth, had seen anything like this before, the responses of a collared slave. Had he been aware before, she wondered, of the latent passion in women, waiting to be called forth by the summons of masters? Had he even, until then, begun to comprehend the joy of living on a natural world, one too wise to take false steps, one unspoiled by millennia of madness, a world on which men were men and women, if collared, must be themselves, the slaves of masters. She wondered if he had ever had a slave. It is said that once one has tasted a slave, one finds it difficult to think again in terms of free women. Perhaps it is little wonder that free women so hate slaves. She wondered if, on Earth, such men, in their enclaves on her old world, kept slaves, either women of Earth, enslaved, or women brought to Earth from Gor. She hoped they did not bring Gorean women to Earth, particularly slave girls, for that would be much like bringing lovely, warm-blooded, delicate creatures, vulnerable, natural and loving, to a wasteland, an arctic locale inimical to passion, a desert hostile to love. What a terrible sentence, too, it would be, what a terrible condemnation, even to bring a Gorean free woman to Earth. She might not understand, for a time, what a terrible thing had been done to her. But sooner or later she would doubtless learn, and try to find those who had done this terrible thing to her and, if successful, tear away her clothes before them and beg them, on her belly, lips to their boots, to return her to Gor, and as no more than a naked, collared slave, to be disposed of in the lowest of markets.