"She is a match for any man," said Alyena. Her eyes shone with pride.

I turned to the slave master. "Fetch a male slave," I said.

One was brought. He was not a large fellow. He was, however, an inch or so taller than the female slave.

"You certify to me," said I to the slave master, "that this man is neither clumsy nor stupid, nor drunk, nor an instructor in combat intent upon increasing the confidence of his pupils."

"It is so certified," he smiled. "He is used in cleaning the pens. He is a drover who falsified the quality-markings on spice crates."

I placed a copper tarn disk on the desk of the slave master.

"Fight," I said to the slaves.

"Fight," said the slave master.

The man looked puzzled. With a cry of rage, shrill and vicious, the female slave leapt toward him, slashing his across the face with the quirt. she struck him twice before he, angry, took the quirt from her and threw it aside.

"Do not anger me," her told her.

He turned and caught her kick on his left thigh. She leapt at him, fingers like claws, to tear out his eyes. He seized her wrists. He turned her about. She could not move. Then, with considerable force, as she cried out with misery, he flung her, the length of her body, belly front, against the stone wall.

He then stepped back, jerked her ankles from under her and flung her to the stones, and knelt across her back. She wept and struck the stones with her fists. Then her halter was removed and her hands pulled behind her and bound with it.

He discarded her belt and the strips of leather. He removed her sandals. With one of the long, straplike laces, he crossed and bound her ankles. Then, angrily, he turned her collar, hurting her, with its ring, to the back. 

With the other straplike lace, run through the ring and tied the binding on her ankles, her jerked her ankles up, high, fastening them there. The he crouched over her and she lay bound at his feet. He turned her head, looking over her tight shoulder, so that it faced him; he crouched so that she could not move; his right ankle was against her left cheek. He poised his thumbs, held downward, over her eyes.

"I am a woman at you mercy," she wept. "Please, Master, do not hurt me!"

He looked to the slave master. The slave master came to the woman lay. He looked down at her. He called tow slaves from behind the silver curtain. They looked down at the woman. Then the slave master said, "Put her in slave silk, and give her to male slaves."

She was freed of the cord binding her ankles to her collar ring.

She was jerked to her feet and held there; she could not stand by herself for her feet were still crossed and bound. "Who are the masters," asked the slave master of her.

The woman, hair before her face, held upright by men, looked to Alyena. The woman trembled. "Men," she whispered. "Men are the masters."


"Tribesman of Gor" pages 79-80