I kicked her with the side of my foot. "On your feet," I told her.

"Yes, Master," she said.

I let her stand there, tethered and bound, and naked, while I ate some of the roast tarsk. I brushed black ants from it. I then removed the one end of the tether from the slave stake and drew her to the tarsk. "Kneel and feed," I told her. She knelt and, putting down her head, bit at the tarsk. After a time I pulled her away from it and, again using the tether as a leash, led her to a fan palm. I tied the tether to the fan palm. "Drink," I told her. "Yes, Master," she said. While she quenched her thirst, and then knelt beside the fan palm, I destroyed the signs of our encampment. I even, slowly, painfully, drew up the slave stake and discarded it in some growth. It need not reveal that a slave, or slaves, had been tethered here. I then tied the pieces of roast tarsk together, in a heavy ring of meat. Then, fetching the lovely slave, my pretty beast of burden, I stood her in the clearing. I untied her hands and removed the tether from her throat. I threw her the bit of bark cloth for her hips. "Dress," I told her. "Yes, Master," she smiled. She wound the bit of cloth about her hips, and tucked it in. She then thrust it down further, well over her hips, that the loveliness of the slave belly be well revealed.

"Do I meet with the approval of my master?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

She posed before me, smiling. "The morning garb," she said, "of the well dressed slave girl."

"Often," said I, "slave girls are kept naked, save for their collar and brand."

"Ah," she said, "and I do not even have a collar. How deprived I am! But I am wearing my brand."

"You cannot take it off," I said.

"That is true," she smiled.

"It marks you well," I said.

She drew up the bark skirt. "Yes," she said, "it does."

"How did you get it?" I asked.

"Some cruel brute burned it into my flesh with a hot iron," she said.

"I recall," I said.

"I love my brand," she said.

"Most girls do," I said.

"It makes me prettier, doesn't it, as well as marking me as what I am, a slave?"

"Yes," I said, "a brand makes a woman a thousand times more beautiful. It is not just the aesthetic loveliness of the mark, of course, though that in itself incredibly enhances a woman's beauty; it is, of course, even more, its meaning."

"I understand, Master," she said.

"What is its meaning?" I asked.

"It means that I am a slave," she said.

"Yes," I said. "one of the most helpless, beautiful, exciting and desirable of women, she who is owned, she who is at the complete mercy of the master, she who must well serve and obey in all things."

She entered my arms and melted to me.

"We must be on our way," I told her. Then I lowered her to the ground.

"You're going to rape me, aren't you?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

I threw the ring of tarsk meat about her neck, over her shoulders. She stumbled a bit under the weight. Then she straightened herself.

"I know why most slave girls do not desire to escape their masters," she said.

"Why? I asked.

"Because we love them, and desire to please them," she said.

I turned her about, and thrust her in the direction of our main camp, where Kisu and the others awaited us.

I followed her.

I carried the long leather strap, that which had served as her tether, looped in my hand.

I looked up at the sun. We must hurry.

"Har-ta, Kajira!" I said. "Faster, Slave Girl!" I struck her with the straps, a sharp blow, that she might understand that she was not to daily.

"Yes, Master," she said.

35

The Squabbles Of Slaves

"Please do not tie me, tonight, Master," begged Tende.

"Be silent," said Kisu. He then threw her on her stomach and tied her hands behind her back and crossed her ankles and bound them. By a leather thong looped about her right forearm he fastened her to a small tree a few feet from our fire.

It had been a week since we had first, on the height of the falls, seen the flotilla of Bila Huruma pasangs behind us.

"Have you forgotten to tie me tonight, Master?" asked Janice.

"Yes, I have forgotten," I said.

"You forgot last night, too," she said.

"That is true," I said.

"Aren't you going to tie me?" she asked.

"No," I said. "Run away, if you dare."

"I neither dare to, nor do I wish to," she said.

"Lie here," I said.

She lay where I had indicated, her head at my thigh. She snuggled closely to me.

"Janice," whispered Tende.

Janice left my side to crawl to Tende. Tende had struggled to a sitting position. Janice knelt while Tende sat, for Tende was first girl. "Mistress?" asked Janice.

"May I speak with you?" asked Tende.

"Of course, Mistress," said Janice.

Tende then struggled to her knees. I knew then she wished to speak of her master.

"How can I please Kisu more?" she asked Janice.

"Do you feel, deep in your heart; that you are a slave?" asked Janice.

"Yes," said Tende, "in the most profound depths of my heart I feel that I am a slave."

"Then serve him as a slave, fully," said Janice.

"I will," said Tende.

The girls had spoken in Gorean. Kisu had asked that I have Janice and Alice help Tende with the language. I had complied. In the several weeks of our trip she had become reasonably fluent. Tende was an intelligent woman. Kisu, too, of course, profited from these lessons. Indeed, perhaps it was partly from his own interest that he insisted on these instructions for Tende. But, too, doubtless, he thought it amusing that Tende, who had once been so proud, be forced under his will to acquire a new language. For my part, I was pleased at both Kisu's and Tende's growth in Gorean. Considering Ayari and myself, and Alice and Janice, it was clearly the most sensible choice for a common medium of communication.

Janice then crawled back to my side.

"He did not forget to tie me," said Alice. She knelt a few feet from us, her hands bound behind her, a line running from her bound wrists to the same tree to which Tende was tethered.

"Oh, be quiet, Bound Slave," said Janice.

"Untie me, Master," begged Alice. "Let me serve you."

"I will serve him," said Janice, not pleasantly.

"Let me serve you, Master," begged Alice.

"Be quiet," said Janice, "or I will scratch your eyes out!"

"If I were not bound," said Alice, "I would claw you to pieces!"

One of the aspects of the mastery, inconvenient at times, though it can be borne, is the competition among girls for the attentions of the master. Indeed, some masters keep more than one girl, just for this purpose, not merely to lessen the labors of each, but that each may, in the intensity of their rivalry, strive to please him more than the other. Each wishes, of course, to undermine the position of the other and to become the favorite. From the girl's point of view there are few slaves who would not rather do double the labor and be the only wench in the master's compartments. To be sure, the loser in such a competition generally becomes the master's work slave and the winner his pleasure slave. My own view on the matter, for what it is worth, is that a pleasure slave becomes even more marvelous when she is forced to function also as a work slave. The girl who launders, cleans and cooks for a master knows well she is owned. In my own house I see that my favorite pleasure slaves, girls such as lovely, dark-haired Vella, perform their full share or, if I please, much more than their full share of servile labors. It is not unusual to see her in a brief work tunic, sleeveless and white, sweating over the laundry tubs or, on her hands and knees, naked, scrubbing the corridors in chains. I recalled that she had upon occasion displeased me. Once a guest at first refused to believe that the lovely wench in pleasure silk, a chain on her slave bracelets run to a ring on her serving collar, who served his viands at a feast was the same girl whom he had spurned to one side with his foot that afternoon in a corridor. I stripped her and put her on her hands and knees and he saw then that it was she. Even more astonished was he when I had her dance for him and the other guests. "You let such a superb slave scrub in your corridors," he asked. "Yes," I said. "Why?" he asked. "Because it pleases me," I told him.