I tried to restrain myself, to keep from responding to the touch of Thurnus. I could not do so. I thought of Elicia Nevins, who had been my lovely beauty rival in the college on Earth. How amused the haughty Elicia would have been to see me now, a half naked slave girl, clad in the scandalous Ta-Teera, her lips pressed to a cup, responding so helplessly to a man's touch. How humiliated and embarrassed I was to even think of the proud, serene, contemptuous Elicia in my present predicament. How pleased I was that she could not see her old rival now.
Thurnus moved the cup a bit closer to him, maneuvering me into a yet more helpless position. My hands were clenched on the wrist that held the cup. I felt the cup with my teeth.
"Marla is a pretty name," said my Master. He looked at Marla, in his arms. "Do you not think Marla is a good name for a slave?"
"Oh, yes, Master," she whispered. "Marla is a superb name for a slave." She began to kiss him about the throat and chin.
"Perhaps I should call her 'Marla, " said he.
I knew that, in an instant, my name might be Marla. I shuddered.
"But we already have one Marla among our girls," smiled my Master, looking down into the beautiful, uplifted dark eyes of the lovely Marla.
"Yes, Master," she whispered.
I did not know what name I would wear.
"If the nameless slave interests you in the least," said my master to Thurnus, indicating me with his head, "you may, of course, do what you wish with her."
I shuddered, a slave girl on Gor.
"But," said Thurnus, laughing, "you have come to examine sleen."
My master shrugged. "That is true," he admitted.
"Let us then waste no more time sporting with slave girls," said Thurnus, "but turn our attention to more serious business." Thurnus looked at me. "You may remove your lips from the cup, Girl," he said.
I withdrew my lips from the cup. He removed his hand from my body, and stood up.
I knelt on the floor. My eyes were wide. My teeth were gritted. I wanted to scratch at the mats on the floor with my fingernails.
My master rose to his feet, and his lieutenants with him. Marla angrily, pouting, put her legs beneath her, and knelt. We were only girls. The men had business. There were more important things for them to attend to than us.
I wanted to roll on the floor and scream.
I looked at the Home Stone in the hut. In this hut, for it was here that his Home Stone resided, Thurnus was sovereign. In this hut, even had he been a lowly man or beggar, he, because of the presence in it of his Home Stone, was Ubar. A palace without a Home Stone is but a hovel; a hovel which contains a Home Stone is a palace.
In this house, this hut, this palace, Thurnus's was the supremacy. Here he might do as he pleased. His rights in this house, his supremacy in this place, was acknowledged by all guests. They shared the hospitality of his Home Stone.
Had Thurnus requested me my master, in such a situation, would have granted me to him immediately. Not to have done so would have been inexcusably rude, a betrayal, a boorish breech of hospitality and good manners.
Yet Thurnus, though I had little doubt he found me of more than casual interest, had not asked for me. I wondered if he had, in his openness with me, been testing my master, to learn him better. Thurnus impressed me as a shrewd man. My master had well respected the house of Thurnus, and his sovereignty within it. Satisfied then with the acknowledgement of this power, which was rightfully his in this house, Thurnus neither put me to his purposes, nor requested of my master his permission to do so, a permission which would have assuredly been promptly and willingly tendered. Having thus certified my master's recognition of his rights, he chose, magnanimously and nobly, as is often done, not to exercise them. I was, after all, my master's property. In this simple manner these two strong men had shown one another, in the Gorean mode, respect.
But Gorean males, I knew, in such situations, not only respected one another, but were often generous with one another.
In the feast to come tonight, Eta had warned me, there would be a general exchange of slave girls, the bond girls of the village being made available to my master's men, and his own girls, among whom I was one, being made available to the young lads of the community. We would be run between the huts within the palisade.
The men prepared to leave the hut.
My master snapped his fingers and Maria sprang to her feet and went out the door of the hut. His lieutenants followed her.
I was on my hands and knees. There were tears in my eyes. I lifted my hand to my master.
"I am afraid I have aroused your slave," said Thurnus, looking back at me.
"Please, Master," I whispered.
"It doesn't matter," he said. Then he turned and went down the stairs. "Let us look at sleen," he said.
Thurnus looked at me. "You are a pretty little slave," he said. Then he, too, turned, and, descending the steps, left the vicinity of the hut.
In the hut, alone, I struck the mats with my fists. In a short time, one of the men of my master entered the hut. He tied my hands behind my back.
"Simmer and cook until the feast, Little Pudding," he said. "You will then be well ready."
7
Clitus Vitellius
"Do not run me, Master," wept Slave Beads. "I was once a free woman!"
"To the line," said my master.
Slave Beads stumbled. to the long line scratched in the in the village of Tabuk 's Ford. She wore the shreds of what had once been the last undergarment beneath her robes of concealment. Its sleeves had been torn away; it had been rent at the side; it had been cut short, and later torn even shorter, until it hung high upon her thighs, exposing even the left hip; at the throat it had been ripped open down, down to the belly, two inches below the navel. She was barefoot, as is common among slave girls.
"Where will we run?" wailed Slave Beads to me.
"There is nowhere to run," I told her. The village was surrounded by a palisade, the gate of which was barred.
"I do not want to be run as a slave girl," wept Slave Beads. She covered her eyes with her hands.
"Stop blubbering," said Lehna.
"Yes, Mistress," said Slave Beads. She was frightened of Lehna. One of the first things that had been done with her after her branding was to be put in a Sirik and given over to Lehna for a disciplinary switching.
My master, with his men, in a bold coup, had several weeks ago stolen the Lady Sabina of Fortress of Saphronicus from among her retainers, on her journey to be joined in companionship to Thandar of Ti, of Ti, of the Four Cities of Saleria, those comprising the Salerian Confederation. The motivation for this abduction, as well as the motivation for the companionship originally, was apparently political. The companionship was to weld commercial and political relationships between Fortress of Saphronicus and the Salerian Confederation, which was an aggressive and expanding league of cities northeast of the Vosk. The growing power of the Salerian Confederation was not viewed with favor by the city of Ar, which, lying in Gor's northern hemisphere, is the major power between the Vosk and the Cartius, and between the Voltai Range and Thassa, the sea. The Ubar of Ar, whose name is Marlenus, is said to be an ambitious and brilliant man, proud and courageous, and imperialistic. He might view the Salerian Confederation as eventually being capable, if it continued to expand, of posing a threat to Ar, either to its security or to its ambitions. As geopolitical matters now stood a plurality of disunited cities, most of them rather small, lay scattered in the territories north of the Vosk. This created, for a strong state, such as Ar, defensively, a reasonably stable, secure border, and, with respect to her possible ambitions, an attractive, exploitable power vacuum. The growth of the Salerian Confederation, on the other hand, might conceivably alter this situation to the detriment of Ar. If the cities of Saleria should multiply and grow strong, their power might balance or exceed that of great Ar itself. Armies and tarn cavalries might then move south. Already, only some years ago, Ar had tasted the bitterness of enemies within her walls, when, in the political confusion following the temporary loss of her Home Stone and the deposition of her Ubar, Marlenus, there had been a revolt of tributary cities, organized and led by Pa-Kur, Master of the Caste of Assassins. The horde of Pa-Kur, as it is spoken of, had set siege to glorious Ar. Initiates, inept and cowardly, then holding power in Ar, had surrendered the city, an act which to this day in Ar has tended to damage the prestige of that caste. On the day of Ar's surrender itself was she saved, by the uprising of her very citizens, violent in the streets, abetted by the forces of certain cities of the north, notably Ko-ro-ba and Thentis. This is told of in the songs. One of the heroes in the songs is called Tarl of Bristol. Marlenus, too, is a hero in such songs. He later retook the throne of Ar, following upon the forcible, civil overthrew of Cernus of Ar, declared a false Ubar. He sits now upon the throne of Ar. He is sometimes spoken of as the Ubar of Ubars.