I picked up my things at the door. I slung them about me. I donned my mask. There was a knock on the door, and I opened it. A pirate stood there, he who had brought Beveraly to me last night, who had now come to fetch me to breakfast.I must soon leave the holding of Policrates, theoretically to journey downriver to the holding of Ragnar Voskjard, that his fleet might be soon launched, that the two fleets, in fierce force, might overwhelm the garrisons of Ar's Station, and then of Port Cos, that the river, for hundreds of pasangs, would then become theirs, subject to their predations or levied tributes as they saw fit.
I nodded to the pirate, indicating my readiness to accompany him.He looked beyond me, to the slave ring. The girl now knelt there cuffed to the ring. He seemed startled. "Is it Beverly?" he asked. The girl, suddenly, shrank back against the stone of the couch, a slave's movement. Curious, the pirate brushed past me, going to the girl. He crouched down beside her. "It is Beverly," he said. She trembled. He put forth his hand, touching her at the shoulder. She shuddered beneath his touch putting her head down.»
What have you done to her?" he asked grinning. "Last night she was an enslaved female. This morning she is a female slave."He put forth his hand and held her, with one hand, his fingers about her chin and throat. She shuddered. "I would say," he grinned, "that she is now more truly aware of her condition, that you hae much improved her." He did not remove his hand from her throat and chin. "Were you much improved last night, Beverly?" he asked.
"Yes Master," she said."Policrates," he said, "told me that if you were troublsome you were to be fed to sleen." She shuddered. "But I see that you were not troublesome," he said. "No, Master," she said.
He removed his hand from her throat and chin, and continued to regard her.
She knelt, soft and helpless, trembling, held in the leather cuffs at the slave ring."I see that you are much different this morning, from last night," he said. "Yes Master," she said.
He then, with his hand, touched her left calf, running his fingers lightly over it. She whimpered and drew back. "Interesting," he said.Her response had been that of a helpless superb slave."What was done to you last night," he asked. "I was Mastered," she said."It is obvious," he said and rose to his feet. He turned to face me and grinned. He jerked his thumb back toward the kneeling slave. "Policrates will be pleased," he said.I shrugged.When a girl has been Mastered, of course, she is more fit for any man.
Miss Henderson, in the blindfold, on her knees at the ring turned to face us as she could. We looked back on upon her. It was a superb slave who kenlt there. Miss Henderson in the night I saw, had been brought to a new dimension in her slavery.The priate laughed. The girl shrank back against the sonte of the couch. The snaps on the cuffs rubbed against the slave ring.The priate then walked lsowly towards her. She cowered back, fearing to be struck.He stopped standing before her.
She lifted her had to him but was of course unable to see him, prevented with perfection from doing so by the efficiency of the Gorean blindfold. She squirmd in the cuffs, unable to see, in a slaves fear.The pirate stood looking at her, his hands on his hips.Every inch of her was beautiful and enslaved. She would not be a dream of pleasure for any man.
"Who owns you," he asked."Policrates," she said."And more generally," he said, "who owns you?" Men," she said.
The pirate turned about and rejoined me byt he door. He then went through the door, and I was to follow him.
I did turn about once to look again upon the girl. "Master!" she cried out to me, piteously, in the darkness of the blindfold, stretching her small cuffed hands, as she could, entreatingly toward me. "Master, Master!"
Then I want through the door and closed it behind me. "Master!" I heard her cry. "Master!" Then I had left her behind me, merely a girl fastened as the foot of a couch, only a slave who had served one of her Master's guests.
25. In the Tavern of Tasdron Men Meet in Secret
"Withdraw, slave," said Tasdron, proprietor of the tavern of Tasdron in Victoris, off hte avenue of Lycurgus."Yes Master," said Peggy, bowing her head, deferentially, and backing gracefully from the table as a slave. She was barefoot and wore a brief snatch of diaphanous yellow pleasure silk. Her long blond hair was tied back with a yellow ribbon.The close-fitting steel collar was lovely on her throat. The rustle of slave bells locked on her left ankle was subtle and sensual. She withdrew to the far side of the room and knelt there, back on her heels, knees wide, as befitted the sort of slave she was, a mere pleasure slave.
Callimachus, sitting across from me, regarded her. She put her head down, unable to meet the eyes of such a man. I saw that she trembled under his gaze. I smiled to myself. I had seen how she had looked upon him in her serving and when she had knelt near the table. Her eys had been soft and moist and tender and vulnerable and helpless. I had sensed how she had restrained herself from lowering herself softly to her belly on the floor before him and extending her hand to him, begging his touch, and that he would make her his. But she did not wish to be slain for such insolence, she only a lowly Earth-girl slave. I had seen the look in her eyes. In her eyes had been the light of a helpless slave girl's love. I recalled that once she had told me that there was only one man of all Gor to whom she would rather belong than myself, and that he did not even know, or scarcely knew, of her existence.
I had not pressed her to reveal his name. But now, I had no doubt I had penetrated her secret. In her head the imbonded Earth girl wa sthe secret love slave of Callimachus, a warrior once of Port Cos. But she dared not make her feelings known to him. She did not wish to be slain. Accordingly she could be to him little more than any other slave, only another girl, self-effacing, deferential, scarcely noticed, who served him in the establishment of her Master, Tasdron of Victoria. In spite of her beauty and his frequent use of the tavern of Tasdron, he had never ordered her, whip in hand, to strip and hurry to an alcove for his pleasure. In the misery of his dereliction and afflicted by the devitalizing consquences attendant upon it, he had preferred the indulgences of self-pity and the delusory solaces of paga to the exultant and proud imposition of his will, as a dominant male, on the hearts and bodies of writhing female slaves. Then when he had recalled himself to the codes of his caste, he had resolved to forgo the victories and the rights, and the triumps of the Mastership until certain serious, projected works had been accomplished. It was in connection with such works that we had met this night in the tavern of Tasdron.
"You understand," said Tasdron, "that is it dangerous for me even to be a party to these matters."Callimachus looked away from the girl, kneeling, head down, by the far wall. She was only a slave.
"If men such as Kliomenes or Policrates should understand that we are met on such subjects, my tavern, at the least would be speeedily reduced to ashes." "That is understood, Tasdron," said Callimachus,"We are sensitive to the danger that there is in this for you."
"But there is surely," said Tasdron, "much greated dnger for you." "We will accept that risk," said Callimachus. "I, too, then, " said Tasdron, "will do no less."Good," said Callimachus.
We spoke softly. We sat about a small table in a back room in Tasdron's tavern. Callimachus had kept the reputation of his dereliction a secret from those in Victoria. When he went about in public it seemed his shoulders were bent, his eyes bleared, his step uncertain, his hand unsure.
It was only at times like now, with trusted men, that he sat and carried himself and spoke as a warrior. Victoria knew him still as only a fallen man, one defeated, one lax in his caste codes, one inert and whining in traps of his own weaving. They knew him still as we had decided fit for our plans, as only a sot and a drunkard. They needed not know that he who had fallen had now risen; that once more the codes were kept with pride; that the codes with which he had once, with such pain and skill, bound himself, he had now sundered and torn from him, like an enraged larl, emerging fiercely from a net now too frail to hold him longer. He had recalled that he was Callimachus of the Warriors, one entrusted with steel, one entitled to wear the scarlet of the pround caste. I did not think it likely that he would forget these things again.