Raiders of Gor by John Norman Read Free Book Online Page A

there she said, “Turn,” and I did so, and
    faced her.
    “My,” she said, “you are a pretty, pretty slave. It will be a lucky girl who
    wins you at festival.”
    I said nothing.
    “Is Pretty Slave hungry?” she asked, solicitously.
    I would not respond.
    She laughed and reached into the wallet at her side and drew forth two handsful
    of rence paste and thrust them in my mouth. She herself nibbled on a rence cake,
    watching me, and tehn on some dried fish wich she drew also from the wallet.
    Then she took a long draught of water from a yellow, curved gourd, and then,
    thrusting the neck of the gourd into my mouth, gave me a swallow, then drawing
    it away again and laughing, but then giving it to me again, that I might drink.
    When I had drunk, she put the plug, carved from gourd stem, back in the gourd,
    and replaced it in the corner.
    “It is time for sleep,” she said. “Pretty Slave must sleep, for tomorrow he will
    have many things to do. He will be very busy.”
    She indicated that I should lie on my left side, facing her.
    Then, with another coil of marsh vine, she tied my ankles together.
    She unrolled her sleeping mat.
    She looked at me, and laughed.
    Then, as I lay there, bound, she unlaced her tunic, opening it. Her beauty, and
    it was considerable, was now but ill concealed.
    Again she looked on me, and, to may amazement, insolently, with a liquid motion,
    slipped the tunic off, over head.
    She sat of the mat and regarded me.
    She had undressed herself before me as casually as though I had been an animal.
    “I see,” said she, “that you must again be punished.”
    Involuntarily, instinctively, I tried to withdraw but, bound, I could not.
    She struck me with savagery, four times.
    Inwardly I screamed with agony.
    Then, sitting on the mat, forgetting me, she turned to the repair of a small
    sack, woven of rence, which had hung in the corner of the hut. She used thin
    strips of rence, breaking them and biting them, weaving them in and out. She
    worked carefully, attentively.
    I had been a warrior of Ko-ro-ba.
    Then on an island of rence in the delta of the Vosk I had learned myself, that I
    was, in the core of myself, ignoble and craven, worthless and fearing, only
    coward.
    I had been a warrior of Ko-ro-ba.
    Now I was only a girl’s slave.
    “May I speak?” I asked.
    “Yes,” she said, not looking up.
    “Mistress has not honored me,” said I, “even by telling me her name. May I not
    know the name of my mistress?”
    “Telima,” she said, finishing the work in which she had been engaged. SHen hung
    the sack again in the corner, putting the scraps and strips of rence left over
    from her work at the foot of her sleeping mat. Then, kneeling on the mat, she
    bent to the small lamp in its copper bowl on the flooring of the hut. Before she
    blew it out she said, “My name is Telima. The name of your mistress is Telima.”
    Then she blew it out.
    We lay in the darkness for a long time.
    Then I heard her roll over to me. I could sense her lying near me, on her
    elbows, looking down a me.
    Her hair brushed me.
    Then I cried out, involuntarily.
    “I wil not hurt Pretty Slave,” she said.
    “Please,” said I, “do not speak so to me.”
    “Be silent,” said she, “Pretty Slave.”
    Then she touched me again.
    “Ah,” said she, “it seems a slave finds his mistress beautiful.”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Ah,” chided she, “it seems a slave has not yet learned his lesson.”
    “Please,” I said, “do not strike me again.”
    “Perhaps,” said she, “a slave should again be punished.”
    “Please,” I said, “do not strike me again.”
    “Do you find me truely beautiful?” she asked. She had one finger inside my
    collar of marsh vine, idly playing with the side of my neck.
    “Yes,” I whispered. “Yes.”
    “Know you not,” asked she, with sudden insolence and coldness, “that I am a free
    woman?”
    I said nothing.
    “Dare you aspire to a free woman?” she