Swordsmen of Gor Read Online Free Page A

her hands slightly behind her, and lifted her chin.
    She had received, I saw, some training in the Pleasure Cylinder. This would have occurred before she had been claimed.
    It was appropriate, of course, that she should have been apprised of such things, or several such things, even before her claiming.
    In such a way, in so simple a manner, may be precluded various instructions with the leather.
    In this position the collar may be conveniently read.
    I held the collar with two hands.
    “What does the collar say?” I asked.
    “I cannot read,” she said. “I am told it says ‘I am the property of Tarl Cabot.’”
    “That is correct,” I informed her. “Who am I?”
    “Tarl Cabot,” she said.
    “Then whose property are you?” I asked.
    “Yours,” she said, “— Master .”
    “You are a slave,” I said.
    “Am I?” she asked.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Even here?” she said.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Do you wish to be freed?” I asked.
    “There is nowhere to go,” she said. “I could not live.”
    “Do you wish to be freed?” I repeated.
    “No,” she said.
    “Why not?”
    “I beg not to be made to speak,” she said.
    “You are clad as a slave,” I said.
    “Yes,” she said.
    She wore a Gorean slave tunic.
    It was a brief, gray shipping tunic, from the ship of Peisistratus. It had a number inscribed on the upper left side, “27.” This number, as others, had been correlated with the numbers of a set of chaining rings, number 1 with ring 1, and so on. She with others of her sort had thus been chained in an orderly fashion, serially, in one of the ship’s corridors. By means of the numbers a girl, if removed from her chaining ring, can be returned to the same ring. Order, discipline, and precision are important in the closed environment of a ship. I had removed her from her ring several times during the voyage. The Lady Bina, on the other hand, had been accorded quarters, as she had insisted, in the cabin of Peisistratus himself, the captain, who then, with her guard, Grendel, had bunked with his men. It must not be thought surprising that the Lady Bina had been deferred to, for she was a free woman.
    The girl before me was fetching in the shipping tunic, but that was not surprising as such tunics, even such as hers, a shipping tunic, are not designed to conceal the charms of their occupant.
    The Gorean slave tunic, incidentally, is a form of garment with several purposes. In its revealing brevity and lightness it well marks the difference between the slave and the free woman, a difference of great consequence on Gor. From the point of view of the free woman it supposedly humiliates and degrades the slave, reminding her of her worthlessness, and that she can be bought and sold, that she is no more than a domestic animal, an article of goods, and such. The slave, on the other hand, as she grows accustomed to her status, and its remarkable value in the eyes of men, tends to revel in its enhancement of her charms, a pleasure which is likely to be seriously begrudged her by the more heavily clad free woman. Few women, of course, object to being found appealing, even excruciatingly desirable, by males. Do not even free women sometimes inadvertently disarrange their veils? So, many slaves, at least in the absence of free women, before whom they are likely to grovel and cower, and wisely, to avoid being beaten, luxuriate and rejoice in their beauty and its display. A slave tunic, you see, leaves little to the imagination. Other advantages, too, adhere to such garments. For example, as they commonly lack a nether closure, with the exception of the Turian camisk, the slave is constantly, implicitly, advised of her delicious vulnerability as a property, and reminded of one of her major concerns, which is to please the master, instantly and without question, to the best of her ability, in any way he may wish. The slave, on her part, too, cannot help but find such garments arousing. In their way they serve to