Bondmaid Quotes

He then drew with the handle of his ax a circle, some twenty feet in diameter, in the dirt floor of the temple. It was a bond-maid circle.
"Females," he cried out, gesturing with the great ax toward the wall opposite the doors, "swiftly! To the wall! Stand with your backs against it!"
Terrified, weeping, the men groaning, the females fled to the wall. I saw, standing there, terrified, their backs against it, the blond girl in the scarlet vest and skirt, her hair in the snood of scarlet yarn, tied with filaments of golden wire; and the large, statesque girl, too, in black velvet, with the silver straps crossed over her breasts, tied about her waist, with the purse. Ivar Forkbeard, in the light of the burning wall of the temple, quickly examined the line of women. From some he took jewelry, bracelets, necklaces and rings. From others he took purses, hanging at their belts. He tore away the purse from the large blonde girl, and the silver straps, too, which had decorated the black velvet of her gown. She shrank back against the wall. She was large breasted. The men of Torvaldsland are fond of such women. The jewelry and coins which he took he hurled to a golden sacrificial bowl, which one of his men carried at his side. As he went down the line, too, he freed certain of the women of the wall, telling them to swiftly return to their places, and lie beneath the ax. Gratefully they fled to their former places.
This left nineteen girls at the wall. I admired the taste of Forkbeard. They were beauties. My choices would have been the same.
Among them, of course, were the slender blond girl in the red vest and skirt, and the larger one, now in black velvet, torn, stripped of its silver straps, its brooches, the purse.
He ripped the snood of scarlet yarn from the slender blond girl's hair. Her hair, now loose, fell behind her to the small of her back. He then tore away the ribbons and comb of bone and leather that had so intricately held the hair of the larger blond girl, she in black velvet. Her hair was even longer than that of the more slender girl.
The nineteen girls regarded him, terrified, eyes wide, their faces lit on the left side by the flames of the burning wall.
"Go to the bond-maid circle," said Ivar Forkbeard, indicating the circle he had drawn in the dirt.
"The women cried out in misery. To enter the circle, if one is a female, is, by the laws of Torvaldsland, to declare oneself a bond-maid. A woman, of course, need not enter the circle of her own free will. She may, for example, be thrown within it, naked and bound. Howsoever she enters the circle, voluntarily or by force, free or secured, she emerges from it, by the laws of Torvaldsland, as a bond-maid.
"Seventeen of the girls, weeping, fled to the circle, and huddled within it.
Two did not, the slender blond girl and the larger one, in black velvet.
"I am Aelgifu," said the large girl. "I am the daughter of Gurt of Kassau. He is administrator. There will be ransom money for me."
"It is true!" cried a man, the burgher in black satin, whose chain of office Forkbeard had torn from his neck.
"One hundred pieces of gold," said Forkbeard to him, observing the girl.
She stiffened.
"Yes," cried the man, "Yes!"
"Five nights from this night," said Ivar Forkbeard, "on the skerry of Einar by the rune-stone of the Torvaldsmark."
I had heard of this stone. It is taken by many to mark the border between Torvaldsland and the south. Many of those of Torvaldsland, however, take its borders to be much farther extended than the Torvaldsmark. Indeed, some of the men of Torvaldsland regard Torvaldsland to be wherever their ships beach, as they took their country, their steel, with them.
"Yes!" said the man. "I will bring the money to that place."
"Go to the bond-maid circle," said Ivar Forkbeard to the large girl, "but do not enter it."
"Yes," she said, hurrying to its edge.
"The wall of the temple will not last much longer," said one of the men of the Forkbeard.
Forkbeard looked then at the younger, blond, more slender girl, she with her hair now loose, the snood of scarlet yarn ripped away, in her red vest and skirt, and black shoes. She looked up at him, boldly. "My father is poorer than Aelgifu's," she said, "but for me, too, there will be a ransom."
He looked down at her and grinned. "You are too pretty to ransom," he said.
She looked at him with horror. In the crowd I heard a man and a woman cry out with misery.
"Go to the circle and enter it," said Ivar Forkbeard to the girl.
She held up her head. "No," she said. "I am free. Never will I consent to be a bond-maid. I shall first choose death!"
"Very well," laughed the Forkbeard. "Kneel."
Startled, she did so, uncertainly.
"Put your head down," he said, "throw your hair forward, exposing your neck."
She did so.
He lifted the great ax.
Suddenly she cried out and thrust her head to his boot. She held his ankle.
"Have mercy on a bond-maid!" she wept.
Ivar Forkbeard laughed and reached down and pulled her up by the arm, his great fist closed about her arm within the white woolen blouse, and thrust her stumbling well within the circle.
"The wall will soon fall," said one of the men.
I could see the fire creeping now, too, to the roof.
"Bond-maids," ordered Ivar Forkbeard harshly, "strip!"
Crying out the girls removed their garments. I saw that the weeping, slender blond-haired girl was incredibly beautiful. Her legs and belly, and breasts, were marvelous. And her face, too, was beautiful, sensitive and intelligent. I envied the Forkbeard his catch.
"Fetter them," said Ivar Forkbeard.
"I hear the townsfolk gathering," said one of the men at the door.
Two of the men of Torvaldsland had, from their left shoulder to their right hip, that their right arms be less impeded, a chain formed of slave bracelets; each pair of bracelets locked at each end about one of the bracelets of another pair, the whole thus forming a circle. Now they removed this chain of bracelets, and, one by one, removed the pairs, closing them about the small wrists, behind their backs, of the female captives, now bond-maids. These bracelets were of the sort used to hold women in the north. They are less ornate and finely tooled than those available in the south. But they are satisfactory for their purpose. They consist of curved, hinged bands of black iron, three quarters of an inch in width and a quarter inch in thickness. On one of the each of the two curved pieces constituting a bracelet there is a welded ring; the two welded rings are joined by a single link, about an inch in width, counting both sides, each of which is about a quarter of an inch in diameter, and three inches long. Some of the girls cried out with pain as the fetters, locking, bit into their wrists. I saw the slender girl's wrists pulled behind her and snapped in the fetters. She winced. They were rough, plain fetters, but they would hold her well, quite as well as the intricately wrought counterparts of the south.
Ivar Forkbeard regarded Aelgifu. "Fetter her, too," he said. She was fettered.
The fire had now climbed the wall unto the roof and had taken hold on another wall, near the railing, against which the women, earlier, had stood.
It was growing hard to breathe in the temple.
"Coffle the females," said Forkbeard.
With a long length of binding fiber the nineteen girls were swiftly fastened throat to throat.
Aelgifu, clothed, led the coffle. She was free. The others were only bond-maids.
The beams which secured the doors were thrown back, but the doors were not opened.
The men of Torvaldsland struggled to lift their burdens. Gold is not light.
"Utilize the bond-maids," said the Forkbeard, angrily. Swiftly, about the necks of the bond-maids were tied strings of cups, candlesticks and sacks, improvised from cloaks, of plate. Soon, they, too, were heavily burdened. Several staggered under the weight of the riches they bore.
"In the north, my pretty maids," Ivar assured them, "the burdens you carry will be more prosaic, bundles of wood for the fires, buckets of water for the hall, baskets of dung for the fields."
They looked at him with horror, understanding then what the nature of their life would be.
And at night, of course, they would serve the feasts of their masters, carrying and filling the great horns, and delighting them with the softness of their bodies in the furs.
Marauders of Gor, pages 44-47

Between the benches, amidships, among piles of loot, their wrists fettered behind them, sat the naked bond-maids, and Aelgifu, in her torn, black velvet. They were still in throat coffle. Their ankles had been crossed, and lashed tightly with binding fiber. Aelgifu's shoes, I noted, had been removed, and her woolen hose; this was done that her ankles and feet, bared now like those of the bond-maids, might be as securely tied. No Gorean puts binding fiber over shoes or hose.
Marauders of Gor, page 53

Somewhat behind us, between the benches, in the shade of the awning, among other riches taken in the sack of the temple of Kassau, were the bond-maids. They, loot, too, knelt, or sat or laid among golden plate, and candlesticks and golden hangings. Their ankles were no longer bound; their wrists, now, those of most of them, were fettered before their bodies; about their necks, now, however, they wore not simple binding fiber; it had been replaced the first evening out of Kassau; they wore now, knotted about their throats, a coffle rope of the north, about a half inch in thickness, of braided leather, cored with wire. At night they slept with their hands fettered behind them. Some of the girls slept, some curled on the golden hangings of the temple; some sat or knelt, head down; of the girls, four of them, though still held in the coffle, were no longer fettered. They knelt, with soft cloths and polishes, cleaning and rubbing to a high shine, which must please the Forkbeard, the golden trove of the looted temple of Kassau.
Marauders of Gor, pages 58-59

As he approached the bond-maids they shrank back from him, fearing him, as would any bond-maid one of the men of Torvaldsland.
Marauders of Gor, page 61

She now saw the men of Torvaldsland in their mightiness, in their freedom, and strength and power, and she, a stripped, fettered bond-maid, coffled, feared them. She knew that she belonged to them, such fierce and mighty beasts, and that she, and her beauty, lay at their mercy, that she, and her beauty, were theirs to do with as they pleased.
Marauders of Gor, page 61

A bailing scoop was thrust into her hands. It has four sides. It is made of wood. It is about six inches in width. There is a diagonally set board in its bottom, and the back and two sides are straight. It has a straight, but rounded handle, carved smaller at the two ends, one where it adjoins the scoop, the other in back of the grip.
Gorm moved aside eight narrow planks from the loose decking. Below, some two inches deep, about a foot below the deck planking, about two inches over the keel beam, black and briny, shifted the bilge water. There was not much water in the bilge, and I was surprised. For a clinker-built ship, the serpent of Ivar Forkbeard was extraodrinarily tight. The ship, actually, had not needed to be bailed at all. Indeed, it had not been bailed since Kassau. The average ship of Torvaldsland is, by custom, bailed once a day, even if the bilge water does not necessitate it. A ship which must, of necessity, be bailed three times in two days is regarded as unseaworthy. Many such ships, however, are sailed by the men of Torvaldsland, particulatly late in the season, when the ship is less tight from months of the sea's buffeting. In the spring, of course, before the ships are brought from the sheds on rollers to the sea, they are completely recalked and tarred.
"Bail," said the Forkbead.
The girl went to the opened planking and fell to her knees beside it, the wooden scoop in her hands.
"Return to me," said the Forkbeard, harshly.
Frightened the girl did so.
"Now turn about," said he, "and walk there as a bond-maid."
Her face went white.
Then she turned and walked to the opened planking as a bond-maid.
The other bond-maids gasped. The men watching her hooted with pleasure. I grinned. I wanted her. "Bond-maid!" scorned Aelgifu, from where she was fettered and chained to the mast. I gathered that these two, in Kassau, had been rival beauties. Then, sobbing, the blondish girl, who had been forced to walk as a bond-maid, fell to her knees beside the opened planking. Once she vomited over the side. But, on the whole, she did well.
Once the Forkbeard went to her and taught her to check the scoop, with her left hand, for snails, that they not be thrown overboard.
Retunring to me he held one of the snails, whose shell he crushed between his fingers, and sucked out the animal, chewing and swallowing it. He then threw the shell fragments overboard.
"They are edible," he said. "And we use them for fish bait."
Marauders of Gor, pages 61-62

"I am finished," said the slender girl, returning to where we sat, and kneeling on the deck.
She had performed her first task for her master, the Forkbeard, drying, as it is said, the belly of his serpent. It had been the first of her labors, set to her by her master in her bondage.
"Give Gorm back the scoop," said the Forkbeard, "and then carry water to my men."
"Yes," she said.
The Forkbeard looked at her.
"Yes," she said, "--my Jarl." To the bond-maid the meanest of the free men of the North is her Jarl.
Marauders of Gor, page 63

Another of the bondmaids was then freed to mix the bond-maid gruel, mixing fresh water with Sa-Tarna meal, and then stirring in the raw fish.
Marauders of Gor, page 63-64

The girl who had prepared the bond-maid gruel had now been refettered and placed again in the coffle.
The slender blond girl, who had been giving the men water from the skin bag, was now given the work of filling small bowls from the large wooden bowl, for the bond-maids. She used a bronze ladle, the handle of which was curved like the neck and head of a lovely bird. About the handle was a closed bronze ring, loose. It formed a collar for the bird's neck. The bond-maids did not much care for their gruel, unsweetened, mudlike Sa-Tarna meal, with raw fish. They fed, however. One girl who did not care to feed was struck twice across her back by a knotted rope in the hand of Gorm. Quickly then, and well, she fed. The girls, including the slender blondish girl, emptied their bowls, even to licking them, and rubbing them with their saliva-dampened fingers, that no grain be left, lest Gorm, their keeper in the ship, should not be pleased. They looked to one another in fear, and put down their bowls, as they finished, fed bond-wenches.
Marauders of Gor, pages 64-65

"I will not eat the gruel of bond-maids," said Aelgifu.
"You will eat it," said the Forkbeard, "or you will be stripped and put to the oar."
She looked at him with horror.
"That will not violate you, my pretty," said the Forkbeard.
In this punishment, the girl, clothed or unclothed, is bound tightly on an oar, hands behind her, her head down, toward the blade. When the oar lifts from the water she gasps for breath, only in another moment to be submerged again. A recalcitrant girl may be kept on the oar for hours. There is also, however, some danger in this, for sea sleen and the white sharks of the north occasionally attempt to tear such a girl from the oar. When food is low it is not unknown for the men of Torvaldsland to use a bond-maid, if one is available on the ship, for bait in such a manner. The least pleaing girl is always used. This practice, of course, encourages bond-maids to vie vigorously to please their masters. An Ahn on the oar is usually more than sufficient to make the coldest and proudest of females an obedient, eager-to-please bond-maid. It is regarded as second only to the five-lash Gorean slave whip, used also in the south, and what among the men of Torvaldsland is called teh whip of the furs, in which the master, with his body, incontrovertibly teaches the girl her slavery.
Marauders of Gor, page 66

The blond, slender girl's wrists were now fettered before her body, and a rope attached to the fetters. It was thrown over the spar. Her hands were jerked over her head. Then, by her fettered wrists, she moaning, her naked body twisting against the mast, foot by foot, she was drawn to five feet below the spar. She dangled there, in pain, her body that of a stripped bond-maid, exquisite, tempting, squirming, a taunt to the blood of the men of Thorgard of Scagnar.
"That will encourage them to row their best," said Ivar Forkbeard.
Then the other bond-maids, seventeen of them, were thrust to the rail, and, steadied by the hands of rowers, who stood upon it, wrists fettered behind them, in coffle.
The ship of Thorgard was now little more than a quarter of a pasang away. I could detect its captain, doubtless the great Thorgard himself, on its stern deck, above the helmsman, with a glass of the builders.
What marvelous beauties he saw, seventeen naked prizes, fettered and coffled, that might be his, could he but take them, and, dangling from the mast, perhaps the most exquisite of all, the slender, blond girl, perhaps herself worth five bond-maids of the more common sort. Aelgifu, too, of course, might be seen, chained to the mast, her wrists fettered before her. That she was clothed would indicate to Thorgard that she was free, and might bring high ransom.
Marauders of Gor, page 72

Then he went to the bond-maids. "Remove their gags," he said.
Their gags were removed, but they dared not speak. They were bond-maids. Their bodies, bound, loot, prizes of the Forkbeard, lying in the darkness, among the glint of gold taken in the sack of Kassau's temple, were very beautiful.
Marauders of Gor, page 78

"Heat the irons!" called the Forkbeard.
"They are hot!" laughed a brawny man, in leather apron, standing on the dock.
The girls shuddered. They would be branded.
"Bring the anvil to the branding log!" said the Forkbeard. They knew then they would wear collars.
"It is there!" laughed the brawny fellow, doubtless a smith.
Marauders of Gor, page 83

Gorm then stood beside Ivar Forkbeard. He carried, on a strap over his shoulder, a tall, dark vessel, filled with liquid.
The men on the shore laughed.
Attached to the vessel, by a light chain, was a golden cup. It had two handles.
From a spout on the vessel, grinning, Gorm filled the golden cup. The liquid swirling in the cup was black.
"Drink," said Ivar Forkbeard, thrusting the cup into the hands of the slender, blond girl, she who had, so long ago, in the temple of Kassau, worn the snood of scarlet yarn, with twisted golden wire, the red vest and skirt, the white blouse.
She held the cup. It was decorated; about its sides, cunningly wrought, was a design, bond-maids, chained. A chain design also decorated the rim, and, at five places on the cup, was the image of a slave whip, five-strapped.
She looked at the black liquid.
"Drink," said the Forkbeard.
She lifted it to her lips, and tasted it. She closed her eyes, and twisted her face.
"It is too bitter," she wept.
She felt the knife of the Forkbeard at her belly. "Drink," said he.
She threw back her head and drank down the foul brew. She began to cough and weep. The coffle rope was untied from her throat. "Send her to the branding log," said the Forkbeard. He thrust the girl down the gangplank, into the arms of the waiting men, who hurried her from the dock.
One by one, the prizes of Ivar Forkbeard, even the rich, proud Aelgifu, were forced to down the slave wine. Then they were, one by one, freed from the coffle, and hurried to the branding log.
Marauders of Gor, page 83-84

A bond-maid thrust through the crowd. "Does my Jarl not remember Gunnhild?" she asked. She whimpered, and slipped to his side, holding him, lifting her lips to kiss him on the throat, beneath the beard. About her neck, riveted, was a collar of black iron, with a welded ring, to which a chain might be attached. "What of Pouting Lips?" said another girl, kneeling before him, lifting her eyes to his. Sometimes bond-maids are given descriptive names. The girl had full, sensuous lips, she was blond; she also smelled of verr; it had doubtless been she whom I had seen on the slope herding verr. "Pouting Lips has been in agony awaiting the return of her Jarl," she whimpered. The Forkbeard shook her head with his great hand. "What of Olga?" whined another wench, sweet and trapping, black-haired; "Do not forget Pretty Ankles, my Jarl," said another wench, a delicious little thing, perhaps not more than sixteen. She thrust her lips greedily to the back of his left hand, biting at the hair there.
"Away you wenches!" laughed Ottar. "The Forkbeard has new prizes, fresher meat to chew!"
Gunnhild, angrily, with two hands, jerked her kirtle to her waist, and stood straight, proudly before the Forkbeard, her breasts, which were marvelous, thrust forward. How magnificent she seemed, the heavy black iron at her throat, riveted. "None of them can please you," she said, "as well as Gunnhild!"
He seized her in his arms and raped her lips with a kiss, his hand at her body, then threw her from him to the boards of the dock.
"Prepare a feast!" he said. "Let a feast be prepared!"
"Yes, my Jarl!" she cried, and leaped to her feet, running toward the palisade. "Yes, my Jarl!" cried the girls, hurrying behind her, to begin the preparations for the feast.
Marauders of Gor, pages 85-86

I accompanied the Forkbeard to a place behind, and to one side, of a forge shed. There was a great log there, from a fallen tree. The bark had been removed from the log. It was something in the neighborhood of a yard in thickness. Against the log, kneeling, one behind the other, their right shoulders in contact with it, knelt the new bond-maids and Aelgifu. Some men stood about, as well, and the brawny fellow, the smith. Nearby, on a large flat stone, to keep it from sinking into the ground, was the anvil. A few feet away, glowing with heat, stood two canister braziers. In these, among the white coals, were irons. Air, by means of a small bellows, pumped by a thrall boy, in white wool, collared, hair-cropped, was forced through a tube in the bottom of each. The air above the canisters shook with heat.
To one side, tall, broad-shouldered, stood a young male thrall, in the thrall tunic of white wool, his hair cropped short, an iron collar on his throat.
"She first," said the Forkbeard, indicating the slender, blond girl.
She, moaning, was seized by a fellow and thrown on her belly over the peeled log. Two men held her upper arms; two others her upper legs. A fifth men, with a heavy, leather glove, drew forth one of the irons from the fire; the air about its tip shuddered with heat.
"Please, my Jarl," she cried, "do not mark your girl!"
At a sign from the Forkbeard, the iron was pressed deeply into her flesh, and held there, smoking for five Ihn. It was only when it was pulled away that she screamed. Her eyes had been shut, her teeth gritted. She had tried not to scream. She had dared to pit her will against the iron. But, when the iron had been pulled back, from deep within her flesh, smoking, she, her pride gone, her will shattered, had screamed with pain, long and miserably, revealing herself as only another branded girl. She, by the arm, was dragged from the log. She threw back her head, tears streaming down her face, and again screamed in pain. She looked down at her body. She was marked for identification. A hand on her arm, she was thrust, sobbing, to the anvil, besides which she was thrust to her knees.
The brand used by Forkbeard is not uncommon in the north, though there is less uniformity in Torvaldsland on these matters than in the south, where the merchant caste, with its recommendations for standardization, is more powerful. All over Gor, of course, the slave girl is a familiar commodity. The brand used by the Forkbeard, found rather frequently in the north, consisted of a half circle, with, at the right tip, adjoining it, a steep, diagonal line. The half circle is about an inch and a quarter in width, and the diagonal line about an inch and a quater in height. The brand is, like many, symbolic. In the north, the bond-maid is sometimes referred to as a woman whose belly lies beneath the sword.
"Look up at me," said the smith.
The slender, blond girl, tears in her eyes, looking up at him.
He opened the hinged collar of black iron, about a half inch in height. He put it about her throat. It also contained a welded ring, suitable for the attachment of a chain.
"Put your head beside the anvil," he said.
He took her hair and threw it forward, and thrust her neck against the left side of the anvil. Over the anvil lay the joining ends of the two pieces of the collar. The inside of the collar was separated by a quarter of an inch from her neck. I saw the fine hairs on the back of her neck. On one part of the collar are two, small, flat, thick rings. On the other is a single such ring. These rings, when the wings of the collar are joined, are aligned, those on one wing on top and bottom, that on the other in the center. They fit closely together, one on top of the other. The holes in each, about three-eighths of an inch in diameter, too, of course, are perfectly aligned.
The smith, with his thumb, forcibly, pushed a metal rivet through the three holes. The rivet fit snugly.
"Do not move your head, Bond-maid," said the smith.
Then, with great blows of the iron hammer, he riveted the iron collar about her throat. .
Marauders of Gor, page 86-87

"Sometimes," said he, "to discipline a bond-maid, she is hurled naked among the thralls." He smiled.
Marauders of Gor, page 89

I held the large drinking horn of the north. "There is no way for this to stand upright," I said to him, puzzled.
He threw back his head again, and roared once more with laughter.
"If you cannot drain it," he said, "give it to another!"
I threw back my head and drained the horn.
"Splendid!" cried the Forkbeard.
I handed the horn to Thyri, who, in her collar, naked, between two of the benches, knelt at my feet.
"Yes, Jarl," said she, and ran to fill it, from the great vat. How marvelously beautiful is a naked, collared woman.
"Your hall," said I to the Forkbeard, "is scarcely what I had expected."
I had learned, much to my instruction, that my conception of the northern halls left much to be desired. Indeed, the true hall, lofty, high-beamed, built of logs and boards, with its benches and high-seat pillars, its carvings and hangings, its long fires, its suspended kettles, was actually quite rare, and, generally, only the richest of the Jarls possessed such. The hall of Ivar Forkbeard, I learned, to my surprise, was a type much more common. Upon reflection, however, it seemed to me not so strange that this should be so, in a bleak country, one in which many of the trees, too, would be stunned and wind-twisted. In Torvaldsland, fine timber is at a premium. Too, what fine lumber there is, is often marked and hoarded for the use of shipwrights. If a man of Torvaldsland must choose between his hall and his ship, it is the ship which, invariably, wins his choice. Furthermore, of course, were it not for goods won by his ship or ships, it would be unlikely that he would have the means to build a hall and house within it his men.
"Here, Jarl," said Thyri, again handing me the horn. It was filled with the mead of Torvaldsland, brewed from fermented honey, thick and sweet.
The hall of Ivar Forkbeard was a longhouse. It was about one hundred and twenty feet Gorean in length. Its walls, formed of turf and stone, were carved and thick, some eight feet or more in thickness. It is oriented north and south. This reduces its exposure to the north wind, which is particularly important in the Torvaldsland winter. A fire, in a rounded pit, was in its center. It consisted, for the most part, of a single, long room, which served for living, and eating and sleeping. At one end was a cooking compartment, separated from the rest of the house by a partition of wood. The roof was about six feet in height, which meant that most of those within, if male, were forced to bend over as they moved about. The long room, besides being low, is dark. Too, there is usually lingering smoke in it. Ventilation is supplied, as it is generally in Torvaldsland, by narrow holes in the roof. The center of the hall, down its length, is dug out about a foot below the ground level. In the long center are set the tables and benches. Also, in the center, down its length are two long rows of posts, each separated from the next by about seven feet, which support the roof. At the edges of the hall, at ground level, is a dirt floor, on which furs are spread. Stones mark sections off into sleeping quarters. Thus, in a sense, the hall proper is about a foot below ground level, and the sleeping level, on each side, is at the ground level, where the walls begin. The sleeping levels, which also can accommodate a man's gear, though some keep it at the foot of the level, are about eight feet in length. The hall proper, the center of the hall, is about twelve feet in width.
The two bond-maids, stripped, too, like the others, for the feast, Pretty Ankles and Pouting Lips, struggled down the length of the smoky, dark hall, a spitted, roasted tarsk on their shoulders. They were slapped by the men, hurrying them along. They laughed with pleasure. Their shoulders were protected from the heat of the metal spit by rolls of leather. The roast tarsk was flung before us on the table. With his belt knife, thrusting Pudding and Gunnhild back, Ivar Forkbeard addressed himself to the cutting of the meat.
He threw pieces down the length of the table.
Marauders of Gor, pages 89-91

He grinned. "Gunnhild," he said, "run for a horn of mead."
"Yes, my Jarl," said she, and sped from his side.
In a moment, through the dark, smoky hall, returned Gunnhild, bearing a great horn of mead.
"My Jarls," said she.
The Forkbeard took from her the horn of mead and, together, we drained it.
We then clasped hands.
Marauders of Gor, page 95

I looked to the Forkbeard. He had one arm about the full, naked waist of the daughter of the administrator of Kassau, Pudding, and the other about the waist of marvelously breasted, collared Gunnhild. "Taste your Pudding, my Jarl," begged Pudding. He kissed her. "Gunnhild! Gunnhild!" protested Gunnhild. Her hand was inside his furred shirt. He turned and thrust his mouth upon hers. "Let Pudding please you," wept Pudding. "Let Gunnhild please you!" cried Gunnhild. "I will please you better," said Pudding. "I will please you better!" cried Gunnhild. Ivar Forkbeard stood up; both bond-maids looked up at him, touching him; "Run to the furs," said Ivar Forkbeard, "both of you!"
Both girls quickly fled to his furs.
He stepped over the bench, and followed them. At the foot of the ground level, which is the sleeping level, which lies about a foot above the dug-out floor, the long center of the hall, on the floor, against the raised dirt, here and there, were rounded logs, laid lengthwise. Each log is ten to fifteen feet long, and commonly about eight inches to a foot thick. If one thinks of the sleeping level, on each side, as constituting, in effect, a couch, almost the length of the hall, except for the cooking area, the logs lie at the foot of these two couches, and parallel to their foot. About each log, fitting snugly into deep, wide, circular grooves in the wood, were several iron bands. These each contained a welded ring, to which was attached a length of chain, terminating in a black-iron fetter.
Gunnhild thrust out her left ankle; the Forkbeard fettered her; a moment later Pudding, too, had thrust forth her ankle, and her ankle, too, was locked in a fetter of the north. The Forkbeard threw off his jacket. There was a rustle of chain as the two bond-maids turned, Pudding on her left side, Gunnhild on her right, waiting for the Forkbeard to lie between them.
Marauders of Gor, page 97

He gave her no quarter. Bond-maids are treated without mercy. "I love you, my Jarl!" she screamed.
Marauders of Gor, page 98

Male thralls are chained for the night in the bosk sheds; bond-maids are kept in the hall, for the pleasure of the free men. They are often handed from one to another. It is the responsibility of he who last sports with them to secure them.
Marauders of Gor, page 99

How alive and vital they seemed! Their hair was loose, in the fashion of bond-maids. Their eyes shone; their cheeks were flushed; each inch of them, each marvelous imbonded inch of them, was incredibly alive and beautiful. How incredibly feminine they were, so living and uninhibited and delightful, so utterly fresh, so free, so spontaneous, so open in their emotions and the movements of their bodies; they now moved and laughed and walked, and stood, as women; pride was not permitted them; joy was. Only a kirtle of thin, white wool, split to the belly, stood between their beauty and the leather of their masters.
Marauders of Gor, page 100

Ottar leaped up, laughing, and raised his ax against the delighted girls.
They fled back from him, squealing and laughing.
"Olga," he said, "there is butter to be churning in the churning shed."
"Yes, my Jarl," said she, holding her skirt up, running from the place of our exercise.
"Gunnhild, Pouting Lips," said he, "to the looms."
"Yes, Jarl," said they, turning, and hurrying toward the hall. Their looms lay against its west wall.
"You, little wench," said Ottar to Thyri.
She stepped back. "Yes, Jarl," she said.
"You," he said, "gather verr dung in your kirtle and carry it to the sul patch!"
"Yes, Jarl," she laughed, and turned away. I watched her, as she ran, barefoot, to do his bidding. She was exquisite.
"You other lazy girls," cried Ottar, addressing the remaining bond-maids, "is it your wish to be cut into strips and fed to parsit fish?"
"No, my Jarl!" they cried.
"To your labors!" cried he.
Shrieking they turned about and fled away.
Marauders of Gor, page 101

The northern Sa-Tarna, in its rows, yellow and sprouting, was about ten inches high. The growing season at this latitude, mitigated by the Torvaldstream, was about one hundred and twenty days. This crop had actually been sown the preceding fall, a month following the harvest festival. It is sown early enough, however, that, before the deep frosts temporarily stop growth, a good root system can develop. Then, in the warmth of the spring, in the softening soil, the plants, hardy and rugged, again assert themselves. The yield of the fall-sown Sa-Tarna is, statistically, larger than that of the spring sown varieties.
"Good," said the Forkbeard. He climbed to his feet. He knocked the dirt from the knees of his leather trousers. "Good," he said.
Sa-Tarna is the major crop of the Forkbeard's lands, but, too, there are many gardens, and, as I have noted, bosk and verr, too, are raised. Ottar dug for the Forkbeard and myself two radishes and we, wiping the dirt from them, ate them. The tospits, in the Forkbeard's orchard, which can grow at this latitude, as the larma cannot, were too green to eat. I smiled, recalling that tospits almost invariably have an odd number of seeds, saving the rarer, long-stemmed variety. I do not care much for tospits, as they are quite bitter. Some men like them. They are commonly used, sliced and sweetened with honey, and in syrups, and to flavor, with their juices, a variety of dishes. They are also excellent in the prevention of nutritional deficiencies at sea, in long voyages, containing, I expect, a great deal of vitamin C. They are sometimes called the seaman's larma. They are a fairly hard-fleshed fruit, and are not difficult to dry and store. On the serpents they are carried in small barrels, usually kept, with vegetables, under the overturned keel of the longboat. We stopped by the churning shed, where Olga, sweating, had finished making a keg of butter. We dipped our fingers into the keg. It was quite good. "Take it to the kitchen," said the Forkbeard. "Yes, my Jarl," she said. "Hurry, lazy girl," said he. "Yes, my Jarl," she said, seizing the rope handle of the keg and, leaning to the right to balance it, hurried from the churning shed. Earlier, before he had begun his tour of inspection, Pudding had come to him, and knelt before him, holding a plate of Sa-Tarna loaves. The daughter of Gurt, the Administrator of Kassau, was being taught to bake. She watched fearfully as the Forkbeard bit into one. "It needs more salt," he had said to her. She shuddered. "Do you think you are a bond-maid of the south?" he asked. "No, my Jarl," she had said. "Do you think it is enough for you to be pleasant in the furs?" he asked. "Oh, no, my Jarl!" she cried. "Bond-maids of the north must know how to do useful things," he told her. "Yes, my Jarl," she cried. "Take these," said he, "to the stink pens and, with them, swill the tarsks!" "Yes, my Jarl," she wept, leaping to her feet, and fleeing away. "Bond-maid!" called he. She stopped, and turned. "Do you wish to go to the whipping post?" he asked. This is a stout post, outside the hall, of peeled wood, with an iron ring near the top, to which the wrists of a bond-maid, crossed, are lashed over her head. Near the bosk shed there is a similar post, with a higher ring, used for thralls. "No, my Jarl!" she said, and fled away. "It is not bad bread," said Ivar Forkbeard to me, when she had disappeared from sight. He broke me a piece. We finished it. It was really quite good, but, as the Forkbeard had said, it could have used a dash more salt. When we left the side of the hall we had stopped, briefly, to watch Gunnhild and Pouting Lips at the standing looms. They worked well, and stood beautifully, under the eyes of the Forkbeard.
Marauders of Gor, pages 102-103

She, holding her kirtle with her left hand, angrily scattered the dung about the sul plants. It would be left to a thrall to hoe it in about the plants.
Marauders of Gor, page 104

"How do you like it, Thyri," asked he, "to find that you are now a girl whose belly lies beneath the sword?"
"It lies not beneath your sword," she snapped. "I belong to free men."
Then, with the brazenness of a bond-maid, she, Thyri, who had been the fine young lady of Kassau, threw her kirtle up over her hips and, leaning forward, spit furiously at the thrall.
He leaped toward her but Ottar was even quicker. He struck Wulfstan, the thrall, Tarsk, behind the back of his neck with the handle of his ax. Wulfstan fell stunned. In an instant Ottar had bound the young man's hands before his body. He then jerked him to his knees by the iron collar.
"You have seen what your ax can do to posts," said he to me, "now let us see what it can do to the body of a man." He then threw the young thrall to his feet, holding him by the collar, his back to me. The spine, of course, would be immediately severed; moreover, part of the ax will, if the blow be powerful, emerge from the abdomen. It takes, however, more than one blow to cut a body, that of a man, in two. To strike more than twice, however, is regarded as clumsiness. The young man stood, numbly, caught. Thyri, her kirtle down, shrank back, her hand before her mouth.
"You have seen," said Ottar, to the Forkbeard, "that he has been bold with a bond-maid, the property of free men."
"Thralls and bond-maids, sometimes," said I, "banter."
"He would have put his hands upon her," said Ottar. That seemed true, and was surely more serious. Bond-maids were, after all, the property of free men. It was not permitted for a thrall to touch them.
"Would you have touched her?" asked the Forkbeard.
"Yes, my Jarl," whispered the young man.
"You see!" cried Ottar. "Let Red Hair strike!"
I smiled. "Let him be whipped instead," I said.
"No!" cried Ottar.
"Let it be as Red Hair suggests," said the Forkbeard. He then looked at the thrall. "Run to the whipping post," he said. "Beg the first free men who passes to beat you."
"Yes, my Jarl," he said.
He would be stripped and bound, wrists over his head, to the post at the bosk shed.
"Fifty strokes," said the Forkbeard.
"Yes, my Jarl," said the young man.
"The lash," said the Forkbeard, "will be the snake."
His punishment would be heavy indeed. The snake is a single-bladed whip, weighted, of braided leather, eight feet long and about a half an inch to an inch thick. It is capable of lifting the flesh from a man's back. Sometimes it is set with tiny particles of metal. It was not impossible that he would die under its blows. The snake is to be distinguished from the much more common Gorean slave whip, with its five broad striking surfaces. The latter whip, commonly used on females, punishes terribly; it has, however, the advantage of not marking the victim. No one is much concerned, of course, with whether or not a thrall is marked. A girl with an unmarked back, commonly, will bring a much higher price than a comparable wench, if her back be muchly scarred. Men commonly relish a smooth female, except for the brand scar. In Turia and Ar, it might be mentioned, it is not uncommon for a female slave to be depilated.
Marauders of Gor, pages 104-105

"Am I to be punished, my Jarl?" she asked.
"Yes," I told her.
Fear entered her eyes. How beautiful she was.
"But with the whip of the furs," I laughed.
"I look forward eagerly, my Jarl," laughed she, "to my punishment.
"Run," said I.
She turned and ran toward the hall, but, after a few steps turned, and faced me. "I await your discipline, my Jarl," she cried, and then turned again, and fled, that fine young lady of Kassau, barefoot and collared, now only a bond-maid, to the hall, to the furs, to await her discipline. Marauders of Gor, page 106

"Is it only a bond-maid, my Jarl," asked Thyri, "who can know these pleasures?"
"It is said," I said, "that only a bond-maid can know them."
She lay on her back, her head turned toward me. I lay at her side, on one elbow. Her left knee was drawn up; about her left ankle, locked, was a black-iron fetter, with its chain. On her throat was the collar of iron.
"Then, my Jarl," said she, "I am happy that I am a bondmaid."
Marauders of Gor, page 106

Ivar Forkbeard crushed to his leather Pudding and Gunnhild, kissing first one and then the other, as each eagerly sought his lips, their hands, too, those of bond-maids eager upon his body.
Marauders of Gor, page 122

"So that," said Ottar, his hands on his heavy belt, inlaid with gold, "is Hilda the Haughty, daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar!"
"Gunnhild is better!" said Pouting Lips.
"Who is Gunnhild?" asked Hilda, coldly.
"I am Gunnhild," said Gunnhild. She stood proudly on the arm of the Forkbeard, the white kirtle split to her belly, the black iron at her throat.
"A bond-maid!" laughed Hilda, contemptuously.
Gunnhild stared at her, in fury.
"Gunnhild is better!" said Pouting Lips.
Marauders of Gor, page 123

The Forkbeard turned about and, one arm about Pudding, the other about Gunnhild, started from the dock.
Hilda followed him, to his left.
"She heels nicely," said Ottar. The men and bond-maids laughed. The Forkbeard stopped. Hilda's face burned red with fury, but she kept her head high.
Pet sleen are taught to heel; so, too, sometimes, are bond-maids; I was familiar with this sort of thing, of course; in the south it was quite common for slave girls, in various fashions in various cities, to heel their masters.
Hilda, of course, was a free woman. For her to heel was an incredible humiliation.
The Forkbeard started off again, and then again stopped. Again, Hilda followed him as before.
"She is heeling!" laughed Ottar.
There were tears of rage in Hilda's eyes. What he said, of course, was true. She was heeling. On his ship the Forkbeard had taught her, though a free woman, to heel.
It had not been a pleasant voyage for the daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar. She had been, from the beginning, fettered with her belly to the mast. For a full day, too, the coverlet had been left tied over her head, fastened by the twice-turned, knotted scarf about her neck. On the second day, it had been thrust up only that the spike of a water bag could be thrust between her teeth, and then replaced; on her third day the coverlet was torn away and, with the scarf, thrown overboard; Ivar Forkbeard, on that day, watered her and, with a spoon, fed her a bit of bond-maid gruel.
Starving, she had snatched at it greedily.
"How eagerly you eat the gruel of bond-maids," he had commented.
Then she had refused to eat more. But, the next day, to his amusement, she reached forth her mouth eagerly for the nourishment.
On the fifth day, and thereafter, for her feeding, he would tie her ankles and release her from the mast, her wrists then fettered before her, that she might feed herself.
After the fifth day he fed her broths and some meats, that she might have good color.
With the improvement in her diet, as was his expectation, something of her haughtiness and temper returned.
On the eighth day he released her from the mast, that she might walk about the ship.
After she had walked about, he had said to her, "Are you ready to heel?"
"I am not a pet sleen!" she had cried.
"Put her to the oar," had said the Forkbeard.
Hilda, clothed, had been roped, hand and foot, and body, on her back, head down, to one of the nineteen-foot oars.
"You cannot do this to me," she cried.
Then, to her misery, she felt the oar move. "I am a free woman!" she cried.
Then, like any bond-maid, she found herself plunged beneath the cold green surface of Thassa.
The oar lifted.
"I am the daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar!" she cried, spitting water, half blinded.
Then the oar dipped again. When it pulled her next from the water, she was clearly terrified. She had swallowed water. She had learned what any bond-maid swiftly learns, that one must apply oneself, and be rational, if one will survive on the oar. One must follow its rhythm, and, as soon as the surface is broken, expel the air and take a deep breath. In this fashion a girl may live on the oar.
For a time the Forkbeard watched her, leaning on his elbows, on the rail, but then he left the rail.
He did, however, have Gorm watch her, with a spear. Twice in the afternoon Gorm struck away sea sleen from the girl's body. Once he thrust away one of the white sharks of the northern waters. The second of the sea sleen it had been which, with its sharp teeth, making a strike, but falling short, had torn away her green velvet gown on the right side from the hip to the hemline; a long strip of it, like a ribbon, was in its teeth as it darted away.
She had not been on the oar for half an Ahn when she had begun to beg her release; a few Ehn later, she had begun to beg to heel the Forkbeard.
But it was not until evening that the oar lifted, and she was released. She was fed hot broths and fettered again to the mast. The Forkbeard said nothing to her, but, the next day, when the sun was hot on the deck, and he had released her for her exercise, and he walked about the deck, she, though a free woman, heeled him perfectly. The crew had roared with laughter. I, too, had smiled. Hilda the Haughty, daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar, had been taught to heel.
Marauders of Gor, page 123-125

Ivar Forkbeard left the dock, his arms about Pudding and Gunnhild, who leaned against him.
Hilda, head high, followed him.
Pouting Lips ran beside her. "Gunnhild is better!" she cried.
Hilda paid her no attention.
"Thick ankles!" said Pretty Ankles.
"She has a rowing bench inside her gown," said Olga.
"Broad in the beam!" laughed another girl.
Suddenly, in fury, Hilda struck at them. The Forkbeard turned about. "What is going on here?" he asked.
"We were telling her how ugly she is," said Pouting Lips.
"I am not ugly!" cried Hilda.
"Remove your clothing," said the Forkbeard.
Her eyes widened with horror. "Never!" she cried. "Never!"
The men and bond-maids about laughed.
"You have taught me to heel," she said, "Ivar Forkbeard, but you have not taught me to obey!"
"Strip her," said the Forkbeard to the bond-maids. They leaped eagerly upon Hilda the Haughty.
In moments the proud girl, naked, was held before the Forkbeard. Olga held one arm, Pretty Ankles the other.
"Gunnhild is better," said Pouting Lips.
It was true. But Hilda the Haughty was a superb piece of female flesh. In almost any market she would surely have drawn a high price.
She struggled, held. She had a fair throat, good shoulders; she was marvelously breasted; her waist was such that one could get his hands on it well; she might have been a bit broad in the beam but I had no objection to this; in the north it is called the love cradle; it is well adapted to cushion the shocks of an oarsman's pleasure; in the south she would have been said to be sweetly hipped; if the Forkbeard wished to breed her she would bear healthy, strong young to his thralls, enriching his farm; her thighs, too, were lovely, and her calves; her ankles, while not thick, as Pretty Ankles had asserted, were heavier than those of Thyri, or Pretty Ankles herself; Hilda was, of course, a somewhat larger girl; she was probably some five years older than Pretty Ankles, and a year or so older than Thyri; Gunnhild was larger than Hilda; she was also, I expected, about a year or two older. I had no objections to Hilda's ankles; I found them quite lovely; they would take a common girl fetter nicely, with about a quarter inch tolerance.
Marauders of Gor, pages 125-126

Then he said to the bond-maids. "Take her to the whipping post."
The bond-maids, laughing, dragged Hilda to the post, stout, of peeled wood, which stood outside the hall. Ottar then, with a scrap of binding fiber, crossed and rudely bound before her body, the wrists of the daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar; he then, reaching up, fastened her wrists to the heavy iron ring over her head. Her breasts were against the post; she could not place her heels on the ground.
"How dare you place me in this position, Ivar Forkbeard!" she demanded. "I am a free woman!"
"Bring the five-strap slave slash," said Ivar Forkbeard to Gunnhild.
"Yes, my Jarl," she said, smiling. She ran to fetch it.
"I am the daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar," said Hilda. "Release me immediately!"
The lash was placed by Gunnhild in the hand of Ivar Forkbeard.
Ottar threw the girl's hair forward, so that it fell before her shoulders.
"No!" cried Hilda.
The Forkbeard touched her back with the whip; his fist held the handle and, too, beneath his fist, folded back, were the five straps. He tapped her twice.
"No!" she cried. "Please, no!"
We fell back to give the Forkbeard room, and he shook loose the straps and drew back his arm.
The first stroke threw her against the post; I saw the astonishment in her eyes, then the pain; the daughter of Thorgard seemed stunned; then she howled in misery; it was only then that she realized what the whip might do to a girl. "I will obey you!" she screamed. "I will obey you!" Ivar Forkbeard, experienced in the disciplining of women, did not deliver the second stroke for a full Ehn. In this time, she screamed, over and over, "I will obey you!" Then he struck again. Her body, again, was struck against the post; her hands twisted in the binding fiber; her entire body rubbed on the post, in agony, pressing against it; tears burst from her eyes; she was on her tiptoes, pressing against the post; her thighs were on either side of the post; but the post did not yield; she was fastened to it. Then he struck again. She writhed, twisting and howling. "I ask only to obey you!" she cried. "I beg to obey you!" When he next struck she could only close her eyes in pain. She could then scarcely breathe. She gasped. No longer could she howl or scream. She tensed, teeth gritted, her body itself a silent scream of agony. But the blow did not then fall. Was the beating done? Then she was struck again. The last five blows were delivered with her hanging in the binding fiber, her body against the post, her face to one side of it. She was then released from the post and fell to her hands and knees. The beating had been quite light, only twenty strokes. Yet I did not think it would be soon that the daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar would wish to find herself again at the post. The beating had been, though light, quite adequate to its purpose, which was to teach her, a captive, the whip.
No female forgets it.
Marauders of Gor, pages 126-128

"Men are hateful," she wept. "They are terrible beasts, using girls as their prey!" She looked about at the bond-maids.
"Resist them!" she cried. "Resist them!"
Pudding threw back her head and laughed. "Resistance is not permitted," she laughed.
Marauders of Gor, page 130

"Ottar, Gorm," said the Forkbeard. "Take her to the ice shed. Leave her there, bound hand and foot."
The bond-maids shrieked with pleasure. Men pounded their left shoulders with the palms of their right hands. Some pounded their plates on the heavy boards of the wooden tables.
Marauders of Gor, page 131

She tried futiley to free herself. She looked at me, agonized. "Untie me," she begged.
I looked at her.
"My body wants you, Tarl Red Hair," she wept. "My body needs you!"
I looked away from her, paying her no more attention. I heard her moan, and rub her body on the post. "I need you, Tarl Red Hair," she whimpered.
I would let her smolder for another Ahn or two. By that time her body would be ready. To my slightest touch it would leap, helpless, squirming, in my arms. I would use her twice, the second time in the lengthy use of the Gorean master, that use in which, over an Ahn, the female slave or bond-maid is shown no mercy.
Marauders of Gor, page 131

Late and fully were we feasting when the thrall-boy, tugging on the sleeve of Ivar Forkbeard, said to him, "My Jarl, the wench in the ice shed begs to be freed."
"How long has she begged?" asked the Forkbeard.
"For more than two Ahn," said the boy, grinning. He was male.
"Good boy," said the Forkbeard, and tore him a piece of meat.
"Thank you, my Jarl," said the boy. The boy, unlike the adult male thralls, was not chained at night in the bosk shed. Ivar was fond of him. He slept, chained, in the kitchen.
"Red Hair, Gorm," said the Forkbeard. "Before she is freed, see that her thirst is assuaged."
"Yes, Captain," said Gorm.
We carried a torch to the ice shed. We opened the heavy door, lined with leather, and lifted the torch, closing the door behind us.
In the light of the torch we saw Hilda. We approached more closely.
She lay on her side, in misery, across great blocks of ice; she could lift her head and shoulders no more than six inches from the ice; she could draw her ankles toward her body no more than six inches; small chips of wood, in which the ice is packed, clung about her body; she was bound, hand and foot, her wrists behind her, her ankles crossed and tied. Two ropes prohibited her from struggling to either a sitting or kneeling position, one running from her right ankle across the ice to a ring in the side of the shed, the other running from her throat across the ice to a similar ring on the other side of the shed.
"Please," she wept.
Her teeth chattered; her lips were blue.
She lay before us, on her back.
"Please," she wept piteously. "I beg to be permitted to run to the furs of Ivar Forkbeard."
We looked down on her. "I beg!" she cried. "I beg to be permitted to run to his furs!"
Gorm unbound the rope from her ankles, that which had held her legs straight, and that on her throat, which had prevented her from lifting her shoulders and head.
He did not unbind her wrists and ankles. He lifted her to a sitting position. She trembled with cold, whimpering. "I have brought you a drink," he said. "Drink it eagerly, Hilda the Haughty."
"Yes, yes!" she whispered, her teeth chattering.
Then, holding her head back, and lifting the cup to her mouth, he gave her of the drink he had brought with him.
And eagerly, whimpering, shuddering with cold, did Hilda the Haughty drink down the slave wine.
Gorm unbound her and threw her over his shoulder; so stiff and trembling with cold, and stiff from the ropes, was she that she could not stand.
I put my hand on her body; it was like ice. She was whimpering with cold, her head hanging down, over Gorm's back; her long hair fell to the back of his knees.
I lit the way with the torch, and we took her to the hall of the Forkbeard.
We carried her through the darkness and smoke of the hall, between the posts.
The Forkbeard was sitting on the end of his couch, his boots on the floor.
Gorm threw her, on her knees, at the feet of the Forkbeard. Her head was down; her hair was over his boots. She trembled with cold.
Men and bond-maids gathered about.
The left side of her body was illuminated dully, redly, from the coals of the fire pit. The right side of her body was in darkness.
"Who are you?" demanded the Forkbeard.
"Hilda," she wept, "daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar."
"Hilda the Haughty?" he asked.
"Yes," she wept, head down, "Hilda the Haughty."
"What do you want?" he asked.
"To share your furs," she wept.
"Are you not a free woman?" he asked.
"I beg to share your furs, Ivar Forkbeard," she wept.
He rose to his feet and shoved back a long table, and a bench, on the other side of the fire pit. With his heel he drew in the dirt floor a bond-maid circle.
She looked at him.
Then he gestured that she might enter his couch. Gratefully, she crawled upon the couch, his section of that fur-covered, dirt sleeping level, and, trembling, shuddering with cold, drawing her body up, drew the furs about her. She lay huddled in the furs. Her body shook beneath them. We heard her moan.
"Mead!" called Ivar Forkbeard, returning to the table. Pudding was the first to reach him, with a horn of mead.
"Please come to my side, Ivar Forkbeard!" wept Hilda. "I freeze! Hold me! Please hold me!"
"Let that be a lesson in passion to you other bond-maids," laughed Ottar.
There was much laughter, and most from the beautiful, nude slaves of the men of Torvaldsland, hot, collared, and eager in their brawny arms.
Marauders of Gor, pages 131-133

"Will you serve me well?" asked the Forkbeard.
"Yes," she cried. "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!"
But the Forkbeard did not make her serve him then but, firmly, held her body, locked in his arms, that of his prisoner, to his, warming her. After half of an Ahn I saw her, delicately, eyes frightened, lift her head and put her lips to his shoulder; softly, timidly, she kissed him; and then looked into his eyes. Suddenly she was flung on her back and his huge hand, roughened from the hilt of the sword, the handle of the ax, was at her body. "Oh, no!" she cried. "No!"
Bets were made at the table. I bet on Ivar Forkbeard. Within an Ahn, Hilda the Haughty, to the jeers of men, the taunts of bond-maids, on her hands and knees, head down, hair falling forward, crept to the circle of the bond-maid, which Ivar Forkbeard had drawn in the dirt of the hall floor, between the posts. The coals of the fire pit illuminated the left side of her body. She crawled before the bond-maids, the oarsmen. She entered the circle, and then, within the circle, stood up. She stood very straight, and her head was up. "I am yours, Ivar Forkbeard," she said. "I am yours!"
He gestured to her, and she fled from thecircle, to join him, to throw herself at his side, to beg his touch, his bond-maid.
Marauders of Gor, page 134

Gunnhild had been given by the Forkbeard to Gorm for the night. I saw him holding her by the arm and pushing her ahead of him to his furs. This night her ankle would be held by his fetter, not that of the Forkbeard. the Forkbeard had offered me Pudding, but, generously, thinking to have Thyri, I had, after using her once, given her for the night to Ottar.
Marauders of Gor, page 134

I had no special claim on the pretty little bond-maid, no more than any other among the Forkbeard's men. The delicious little thing, like the other goods of the hall, was, for the most practical purposes, for the use of us all.
Marauders of Gor, page 135

She stood very still, facing the couch, at its foot. She was a bond-maid. She was property. She was owned. "Force me," she whispered. Bond-maids know they are chattel, and relish being treated as such. Deep in the belly, too, of every female is a desire, more ancient than the caves, to be forced to yield to the ruthless domination of a magnificent, uncompromising male, a master; deep within them they all wish to submit, vulnerably and completely, nude, to such a beast. This is completely clear in their fantasies; Earth culture, of course, gives little scope to these blood needs of the beauties of our race; accordingly, these needs, frustrated, tend to express themselves in neurosis, hysteria and hostility. Technology and social structures, following their own dynamics, integral to their development and expansion, have left behind the pitiful, rational animals who are their builders and their victims. We have built our own cage, and defend it against those who would shatter its locks.
My left hand held her left arm; with my right hand I forced her right wrist behind her back; I thrust it up; she cried out, suddenly, with misery; I threw her to the furs; scarcely had she struck them, crying out, belly down, than I had clasped the fetter of black iron about her ankle; chained, she turned to face me, sitting on the furs, tears in her eyes, her hands back, her legs flexed. I discarded the leather and fur of Torvaldsland. With a movement of the chain she knelt on the furs, her head down. I entered upon the furs. "To your belly," I said, "ankles a foot apart." "Yes, my Jarl," she said. I then began to caress her, beneath the shins, on the inside, of her feet, behind the backs of her knees, at the sides of her breasts, high between her thighs. By the tensility of her muscles, the movements of her body, sometimes her tiny cries, her breathing, she instructed me in her weaknesses, which I, as a warrior, might then exploit. When I was satisfied, I threw her to her back.
"I am told," I told her, "that Olga is one of the best of the bond-maids."
She lifted her body to me, begging my touch. I fondled the extent of her, kissing and licking.
"What have you done to my body?" she whispered. "I have never felt this way, this deeply, this fully before."
"What does your body tell you?" I asked.
"That I will be a marvel to you, Tarl Red hair," she whispered. "A marvel."
"Please me," I told her.
"Yes, my Jarl," she wept. "Yes!"
And when she had much pleased me, I finished with her, in the first taking.
"Hold me," she wept.
"I shall hold you," I told her, "and then, in a time, Bond-maid, you will be again used."
She looked at me, startled.
"This," I told her, "is the first taking. It's purpose is only to warm you for the second."
She clutched me, not speaking.
I held her, tightly.
"Can I endure such pleasure?" she asked, frightened.
"You are bond," I told her. "You will have no choice."
"My Jarl," she asked, frightened, "is it the second taking of the Gorean master, to which you intend to subject me?"
"Yes," I told her.
"I have heard of it," she wept. "In it," she gasped, "the girl is permitted no quarter, no mercy!"
"That is true," I told her.
We lay together, silently, I holding her, she against me, chained, for something like half an Ahn. Then I touched her.
She lifted her head. "Is it beginning?" she asked.
"Yes," I told her.
"May a bond-maid beg one favor of her Jarl?" she asked.
"Perhaps," I said.
She leaned over me. I felt her hair brush my body. "Be merciless," she whispered. "Be merciless," she begged.
"That is my intention," I told her, and threw her to her back.
Marauders of Gor, pages 136-137

She gave the other girls crumbs of the pastry and permitted Dagmar, who was to be sold off, to lick frosting from her fingers.
Marauders of Gor, page 157

Light filtered into the shed from windows cut high in the wall on our right. The girls sat, or knelt or laid on straw along the wall at our left. The shed is some two hundred feet long, about ten feet wide, and eight feet in height.
An officer of Svein Blue Tooth, assisted by two thralls, quickly assessed Dagmar, stripping her, feeling her body, the firmness of her breasts, looking in her mouth.
"A tarn disk of silver," he said.
Dagmar had, two months ago, stolen a piece of cheese from Pretty Ankles; she had been beaten for that, at the post, fastened there by Ottar and switched by Pretty Ankles, until Pretty Ankles had tired of switching her; too, she had not been found sufficiently pleasing by several of the Forkbeard's oarsmen; she was, accordingly, to be sold off, as an inferior girl.
"Done," said the Forkbeard.
Dagmar was sold.
There were some one hundred bond-maids for sale in the shed. They all wore the collars of the north, with the projecting iron ring. They were fastened by a single chain, but it was not itself run through the projecting loop on their collars; rather, a heavy padlock, passing through a link of the chain and the projecting loop, secured them; in this way the chain, when a girl is taken from the chain, or added to it, need not be drawn through any of the loops; the girls may thus with convenience, be spaced on the chain, removed from it, added to it.
The Forkbeard was given the tarn disk, which he placed in his wallet. It had been taken from a sack slung about the shoulder of Blue Tooth's officer.
The officer then, pulling Dagmar by the arm, went to the right wall. There, from one of several small wooden boxes projecting at intervals from the wall, he took an opened padlock. He then walked across the shed, still holding Dagmar by the arm, and threw her to her knees. He then lifted the chain and, by means of the padlock, passing it through the loop on her collar and a link in the chain, secured her.
The Forkbeard, meanwhile, was looking at the bond-maids.
They were, of course, stripped for the view of buyers.
Marauders of Gor, page 158

The Forkbeard then turned his attention to the chained female slaves in the shed.
Some extended their bodies to him; some turned, to display themselves, provocatively; for he was obviously a desirable master; but others affected not to notice him; though I noticed that their bodies were held beautifully as he passed, particularly should he pause to regard them; other girls, perhaps newer to their collars, shrank back against the boards, trying to cover themselves; some regarded him with tears in their eyes; some with fear; some with open hostility; others with sullen resentment; all knew that he might, like any man, own them, completely.
To my surprise, he stopped before a dark-haired girl who sat with her legs drawn up, her arms about them, her ankles crossed; her cheek was laid across her knees; she seemed startled that the Forkbeard stopped before her; she looked up at him, frightened, and then put her face again down across her knees, but now her eyes were frightened, and every inch of her seemed tense.
She looked up at him, but then could not meet his eyes. She seemed a shy, introverted girl, one who might, before her capture, have been much alone.
Then she had been caught by slavers.
"I would make a poor slave, my Jarl," she whispered.
"What do you know of this girl?" asked the Forkbeard of the officer of Svein Blue Tooth, who was accompanying him. "She speaks little and, as she can, when not chained, as in the exercise pen, she keeps to herself."
The Forkbeard reached his hand toward her knee, but, she watching, terrified, did not touch it, and then withdrew it. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, then opened them. She had feared to be touched.
Whereas fear inhibits sexual performance in a male, rendering it impossible, because neutralizing aggression, essential to male power, fear in a woman, some fear, not terror, can, interestingly, improve her responsiveness, perhaps by facilitating her abject submission, which can then lead to multiple orgasms. This is another reason, incidentally, why Goreans favor the enslavement of desirable women; the slave girl knows she must please her master, and that she will be punished, and perhaps harshly, if she does not; this makes her not only desperate to please the brute who fondles her, but also produces in her a genuine fear of him; this fear on her part enhances her receptivity and responsiveness; also, of course, since fear stimulates aggression, which is intimately connected to male sexuality, her fear, which she is unable to help, to her master's amusement, deepens and augments the very predation in which she finds herself as quarry; and if she should not be afraid, it is no great matter; any woman, if the master wishes, can be taught fear.
After the Forkbeard had withdrawn his hand he studied her eyes, intently, I, too, detected that for which he had sought, the object of his experiment. Though she had feared his touch, yet, when he had withdrawn his hand, there was, momentarily, disappointment in her eyes. She both feared to be touched, and desperately yearned for the touch.
"Is she healthy?" asked the Forkbeard.
"Yes," said the officer of Svein Blue Tooth.
I had seen such women, sometimes on Earth. They were often studious, quiet girls, keeping much to themselves, lonely girls, yet with brilliant minds, marvelous imaginations, and fantastic, suppressed latent sexuality. They were often among the greatest surprises, and bargains, in the Gorean slave markets. Virginia Kent, whom I had known in Ar, years ago, who had become the companion of the warrior Relius of Ar, had been such a girl. On Earth she had taught ancient history and classical languages at a small college on Earth; to many she might then have seemed a rather blue-stocking, forbidding girl; Gorean slavers, however, with greater perception perhaps then her fellow Earthlings, had seen her potential; she had been, one of several such items of cargo, abducted to Gor; on Gor, given no choice, suitably trained, she had become one of the most exquisite and delicious female slaves it had ever been my pleasure to see in a collar. Relius, given her, had freed her; his friend, Ho-Sorl, given another Earth girl, Phyllis Robertson, had kept the latter in a collar; Relius was younger then Ho-Sorl, and a romantic. Ho-Sorl, doubtless, was more experienced in the handling of females; I wondered if Virginia, to her astonishment, perhaps after a quarrel or after a night of depriving Relius in order to obtain some whim of hers had awakened one morning recollared, again the slave of a master.
"Kneel," said the Forkbeard to the girl, "legs apart, palms of your hands on your thighs."
With a movement of chain, she did so.
He crouched before her.
"I may wish to use you to breed thralls," he said. "You must be healthy for the farm. Put your head back, close your eyes and open your mouth."
She did as she was told, that the Forkbeard might examine her teeth. Much may be told of the age and condition of a female slave, or a kaiila or bosk, from her teeth.
But the Forkbeard did not look into her mouth. His left hand slipped to the small of her back, holding her, and his right hand went suddenly to her body. She cried out, trying to pull back, but could not, and then, her eyes closed, whimpering, she thrust forward, writhing and then, sobbing, held herself immobile, teeth gritted, eyes screwed shut, trying not to feel. When his hands left her body she tried, sobbing, to strike him, but he caught both her small wrists, holding them. She struggled futilely, held kneeling.
"Put your head back," he said. "Open your mouth."
She shook her head, wildly.
"I am holding your hands," he pointed out.
Warily, eyes open, she opened her mouth. He looked at her teeth.
"I may wish to use you to breed thralls," he said. "You must be healthy for the farm."
He stood up.
"What do you want for her?" he asked the officer of Svein Blue Tooth.
"I had her for a broken coin," he said, "half a silver tarn disk of Tharna. I will let you have her for a whole coin."
The Forkbeard returned to the man the tarn disk of silver which he had received for Dagmar.
The officer of Svein Blue Tooth, with a key at his belt, unlocked the padlock which held the girl's collar to the common chain. He tossed the padlock, open, into one of the wooden boxes projecting from the right wall.
The girl, kneeling, looked up at the Forkbeard. "Why did my Jarl buy me?" she asked.
"You have excellent teeth," said the Forkbeard.
"For what will my Jarl use me?" she asked.
"Doubtless you can learn to swill tarsks," he said.
"Yes, my Jarl," she said. Then she put her cheek, to our surprise, to the side of his leg, and, lowering her head, holding his boot, kissed it.
It was very delicately, and lovingly, done.
"What is your name?" he asked.
"Peggy Stevens," she said. I smiled. It was an Earth name.
"You are an Earth female," I told her.
"Once," she said. "Now I am only a female."
"American?" I asked.
"Prior to my enslavement," she said.
"From what state?" I asked.
"Connecticut," she said.
Since the Nest Wars the probes of aliens had grown more bold, even on Gor; they had little difficulty in taking female slaves on Earth; gold, exchangeable for materials essential to their enterprises, was well guarded on Earth; it could seldom be obtained in quantities without attracting the attention of the agents of Priest-Kings; on the other hand, the women of Earth, dispersed, abundant, many of them beautiful, superb slave stock, the sort a Gorean master enjoys training to the collar, were, generally, unguarded; Earth took greater care to guard her gold than her females; accordingly, the women of Earth, unprotected, vulnerable, like luscious fruit on wild trees, were free for the pickings of Gorean slavers; a network, I gathered, existed for their selection and acquisition; Earth was helpless to prevent the taking of their most beautiful women; they were eventually sold naked from blocks in Gorean markets. I supposed that the governments of Earth, or some of them, were aware of the slaving; perhaps merchants of Middle Eastern countries were suspected; there were, however, delicate negotiations concerning oil to be respected; it would not be well to be too bold in pressing accusations; what were a few beautiful women, taken as slave girls into the harems of Middle Eastern businessmen and potentates, to the commodity which supported civilization and turned the wheels of industry; but the evidence would not point to the Middle East; further, the small amount of slaving, if any, which might be done commercially in Western Europe or on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States would not account for the numbers of missing beauties; hundreds a year, I surmised, turned up in Gorean markets. I speculated that Earth governments, or some of them, were reasonably well aware that their planet must now be the locus of frequent alien slave raids; but why would the alien power not make itself known and openly demand their jewels among the female resources of the planet; the governments would not know of the power of the Priest-Kings, which the agents of the Kurii profoundly and wisely feared; what could these governments of Earth do; they could do nothing; could they, wisely, inform their populations that their planet lay under the attacks of technologically advanced aliens, with which their own primitive technologies were incapable of coping; that they, and all of Earth, seemed to lie at the mercies of invaders from outer space; such an announcement could only bring about the loss of confidence in governments, panic, hoarding, crime, perhaps a shattering of trust and civilizations themselves. No. It was better to say nothing. Accordingly, I supposed, this very night, on Earth, there were completely unsuspecting beautiful girls, thinking it a night like any other, who would undress themselves and snap off the light, and retire, not knowing that they had been, perhaps for weeks, scouted by slavers; I wondered if they would awaken in terror, the slaver's rope on their throat, his needle, with its drug, thrusting into their side; or if, days later, perhaps weeks, they would awaken sluggishly, then suddenly alert to the change of gravity, and find themselves in a barred, cemented slave kennel, on their left ankles, locked, the steel identification device of the agents of the Kurii, that their manifests be correct, their records precise.
"How did you come to the north?" I asked the slave girl, Miss Stevens.
"I was sold in Ar," she said, "to a merchant from Cos. I was chained in a slave ship, with many other girls, on tiers in the hold. The ship fell to four raiding vessels of Torvaldsland. I have been, by my reckoning, eight months in the north."
"What did your last Jarl call you?" asked the Forkbeard.
"Butter Pan," she said.
The Forkbeard looked to Gunnhild. "What shall we call this pretty little slave?" he asked.
"Honey Cake," suggested Gunnhild.
"You are Honey Cake," said the Forkbeard.
"Yes, my Jarl," said Miss Stevens.
The Forkbeard then left the bond-maid shed. We all followed him. He did not restrain Honey Cake in any way. She, nude, in her collar, back straight, accompanied him. Her head was high. She was a bought girl. The other girls, still on the chain, regarded her with envy, with resentment, hostility. She paid them no attention. She had been purchased. They remained unbought girls, wenches left on the chain; they had not yet been found desirable enough to be purchased.
Marauders of Gor, pages 160-165

I was at the archery range when the announcement was made.
I had not intended to participate in the competition. Rather, it had been my plan to buy some small gift for the Forkbeard. Long had I enjoyed his hospitality, and he had given me many things. I did not wish, incidentally, even if I could, to give him a gift commensurate with what he had, in his hospitality, bestowed upon me; the host, in Torvaldsland, should make the greatest gifts; it is, after all, his house or hall; if his guest should make him greater gifts then he makes the guest this is regarded as something in the nature of an insult, a betrayal of hospitality; after all, the host is not running an inn, extending hospitality like a merchant, for profit; and the host must not appear more stingy than the guest who, theoretically, is the one being welcomed and sheltered; in Torvaldsland, thus, the greater generosity is the host's prerogative; should the Forkbeard, however, have come to Port Kar then, of course, it would have been my prerogative to make him greater gifts than he did me. This is, it seems to me, an intelligent custom; the host, giving first, and knowing what he can afford to give, sets the limit to the giving; the guest then makes certain that his gifts are less than those of the host; the host, in giving more, wins honor as a host; the guest, in giving less, does the host honor. Accordingly, I was concerned to find a gift for the Forkbeard; it must not be too valuable, but yet, of course, I wanted it to be something that he would appreciate.
I was on my way to the shopping booths, those near the wharves, where the best merchandise is found, when I stopped to observe the shooting.
"Win Leah! Win Leah, Master!" I heard.
I looked upon her, and she looked upon me.
She stood on a thick, rounded block; it was about a yard high, and five feet in diameter; she was dark-haired, long-haired; she had a short, luscious body, thick ankles; her hands were on her hips. "Win Leah, Master!" she challenged. She was naked, except for the Torvaldsland collar of black iron on her neck, with its projecting ring, and the heavy chain padlocked about her right ankle; the chain was about a yard long; it secured her, by means of a heavy ring, to the block. She laughed. "Win Leah, Master!" she challenged. She, with the archery talmit, was the prize in the shooting.
I noted her brand. It was a southern brand, the first letter, in cursive script, of Kajira, the most common expression for a Gorean female slave. It was entered deeply in her left thigh. Further, I noted she had addressed me as "Master," rather than "my Jarl." I took it, from these indications, she had learned her collar in the south; probably originally it had been a lock collar, snugly fitting, of steel; now, of course, it had been replaced with the riveted collar of black iron, with the projecting ring, so useful for running a chain through, or for padlocking, or linking on an anvil, with a chain. The southern collar, commonly, lacks such a ring; the southern ankle ring, however, has one, and sometimes two, one in the front and one in the back.
"Will you not try to win Leah, Master?" she taunted.
"Are you trained?" I asked.
She seemed startled. "In Ar," she whispered. "But surely you would not make me use my training in the north."
I looked upon her. She seemed the perfect solution to my problem. The gift of a female is sufficiently trivial that the honor of the Forkbeard as my host would not be in the least threatened; further, this was a desirable wench, whose cuddly slave body would be much relished by the Forkbeard and his crew; further, being trained, she would be a rare and exquisite treat for the rude giants of Torvaldsland; beyond this, of course, commanded, she would impart her skills to the best of her abilities to his other girls.
"You will do," I told her.
"I do not understand," she said, stepping back. The chain slid on the wood.
"Your name, and accent," I said, "bespeak an Earth origin."
"Yes," she whispered.
"Where are you from?" I asked.
"Canada," she whispered.
"You were once a woman of Earth," I said.
"Yes," she said.
"But now you are only a Gorean slave girl," I told her.
"I am well aware of that, Master," she said.
I turned away from her. The target in the shooting was about six inches in width, at a range of about one hundred yards. With the great bow, the peasant bow, this is not difficult work. Many marksmen, warriors, peasants, rencers, could have matched my shooting. It was, of course, quite unusual in Torvaldsland. I put twenty sheaf arrows into the target, until it bristled with wood and the feathers of the Vosk gull.
When I retrieved my arrows, to the shouting of the men, the pounding of their bows on their shields, the girl had been already unchained from the block.
I gave my name to the presiding official. Talmits would be officially awarded tomorrow. I accepted his congratulations. My girl prize knelt at my feet. I looked down upon her. "What are you?" I asked.
"Only a Gorean slave girl, Master," she said.
"Do not forget it," I told her.
"I shall not, Master," she whispered.
"Stand," I told her.
She stood and I lashed her wrists tightly together behind her back.
Marauders of Gor, page 165-167

Male thralls turned the spits over the long fire; female thralls, bond-maids, served the tables. The girls, though collared in the manner of Torvaldsland, and serving men, were fully clothed. Their kirtles of white wool, smudged with dirt and grease, fell to their ankles; they hurried about; they were barefoot; their arms, too, were bare; their hair was tied with strings behind their heads, to keep it free from sparks; their faces were, on the whole, dirty, smudged with dirt and grease; they were worked hard; Bera, I noted, kept much of an eye upon them; one girl, seized by a warrior, her waist held, his other hand sliding upward from her ankle beneath the single garment permitted her, the long, stained woolen kirtle, making her cry out with pleasure, dared to thrust her lips eagerly, furtively, to his; but she was seen by Bera; orders were given; by male thralls she was bound and, weeping, thrust to the kitchen, there to be stripped and beaten; I presumed that if Bera were not present the feast might have taken a different turn; her frigid, cold presence was, doubtless, not much welcomed by the men. But she was the woman of Svein Blue Tooth. I supposed, in time, normally, she would retire, doubtless taking Svein Blue Tooth with her. It would be then that the men might thrust back the tables and hand the bond-maids about. No Jarl I knew can hold men in his hall unless there are ample women for them. I felt sorry for Svein Blue Tooth. This night, however, it seemed Bera had no intention of retiring early. I suspected this might have accounted somewhat for the ugliness of the men with the entertainers, not that the men of Torvaldsland, under any circumstances, constitute an easily pleased audience. Generally only Kaissa and the songs of skalds can hold their attentions for long hours, that and stories told at the tables.
Marauders of Gor, pages 195-196

"You need not address me as your Jarl, my dear," said Svein Blue Tooth. "I am not your Jarl."
"But every free man is my Jarl," she said. "You see, my Jarl," said she, lifting her head proudly and pulling her rich glistening robes some inches down her shoulders, "I wear the collar of Ivar Forkbeard."
The collar of black iron, with its heavy hinge, its riveted closure, its projecting ring of iron, for a chain or padlock, showed black, heavy, against the whiteness of her lovely throat.
"You have dared to collar the daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar!" cried Bera to Ivar Forkbeard.
"My master does what he pleases, Lady," said Hilda.
Marauders of Gor, page 200

"Silence, Bond-maid!" cried Bera.
Hilda put down her head.
"To think," cried Bera, "that I expressed solicitude for a collar-girl!"
Hilda dared not speak. For a bond-maid to speak in such a situation might be to invite a sentence of death. She shuddered.
Marauders of Gor, pages 200-201

"You collared her!" laughed Svein Blue Tooth.
"Of course," said the Forkbeard.
"Superb!" laughed Svein Blue Tooth, rubbing his hands together.
"Lift your head, Wench," he said. His attitude toward Hilda had changed, completely.
Marauders of Gor, page 201

She was now only another girl whose belly lay beneath the sword, a property-girl, a collar-girl, a slave, a bond-maid.
Marauders of Gor, page 201

I saw the Kur who held the leashes of the caught bond-maids dragging the girls from the hall. He held the leashes, several in each hand, of more than forty catches. The collars were of thick leather, with metal insert locks, flat metal bolts slipping, locking, into spring catches; when closed, two rectangular metal plates adjoined; sewn into each collar was a light, welded metal ring; about this was closed the leash snap; the action of the leash snap was mechanical but, apparently, it was beyond the strength of a woman to open it. The leashes were some fifteen feet in length, allowing in this radius one Kur to hold several captives at once. The Kur left the hall. Screaming, stumbling, helplessly, the caught women followed their beast master.
Marauders of Gor, page 211

Then, from below, we heard the hunting cry of a sleen, and then of two others, then others.
I did not envy Hilda, Ivar's slave. The Kurii would take little note of the sleen. Their cries were neither of alarm nor of fury. They were only gathering in another animal, perhaps a new one, wandered too close to the camp, or a stray, to be expeditiously returned to its herd. The first light then began to touch the valley. From the noises of the sleen we could detect the progress of their hunt, and the location of the imbonded daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar.
"There," said Ivar, pointing.
They caught her north of the bosk herd. We could see her white body, and the dark, sinuous, furred shapes converging upon it. Then she was surrounded, and she stopped. Then the sleen opened a passage for her, indicating to her which direction she was to go. Where else she turned she was met with the fangs and hisses of the accompanying animals. When she tried to move in any direction other than that of the opened passage they snapped at her, viciously. A single snap could tear off a hand or foot. Then two of the sleen fell in behind her and, snarling and snapping at her heels, drove her before them. We saw her fleeing before them, trying to escape the swift, terrible jaws. We feared, more than once, that they would kill her. A female who cannot be herded is destroyed by the herding sleen.
In the northwest quadrant of the camp was the herd of verr; in the northeast quadrant were the tarsk pens. The bosk were penned at the southern end of the camp. Near the center of the camp but somewhat to the south and east of the center, behind its poles and crossbars, lashed together, was a different herd of Kurii livestock. It was to this pen that the daughter of Thorgard of Scagnar, running before the snapping, snarling sleen, was driven. She darted between the crossbars and, in a moment, no longer harried by sleen, found herself on the trampled turf within, another member of the herd. It was as we had planned. The sleen now resumed their rounds, patrolling the perimeter of the pen. The new animal had been added to the herd. They were no longer interested in it, unless it should attempt to leave the pen. We saw Hilda, a speck in the grayish light, hurrying to the herd within, it huddled on the damp, soiled, trampled turf.
"I wish," said Ivar Forkbeard, "that I had such a herd."
The herd, indeed, consisted of sleek, beautiful animals, fair and two-legged. There must have been three or four thousand chattels confined in the great pen.
Marauders of Gor, pages 244-245

Too, among them now, prisoner, was Hilda, perhaps Ivar's preferred slave.
Marauders of Gor, page 245

I was pleased to note that the women feared more the men of Torvaldsland than even sleen and Kurii. Danger to them was of no interest to us. Their lives were unimportant. They were slaves. Accordingly, we used them to create a diversion.
Marauders of Gor, page 249

There was screaming from within the tent, the screaming of Thorgard's silken girls, many of them short, plump, lusciously bodied. Some were chained by the left ankle. The silks they wore, clinging and diaphanous, were designed not to conceal their beauty but to reveal it, to enhance and accentuate it, to expose it sensuously to the survey of a master. They, collared, shrank back, cowering on the cushions, drawing back to the side of the tent. I scarcely glanced at them. They would belong to the victors.
Marauders of Gor, pages 251-252

Then, to our surprise, from within the Kurii lines we saw two or three hundred slave girls whipped forth. They were bound together in fours and fives. Some were bound together by the wrists, others by the ankles, some by the waist, many by the throat. They were cattle, caught and tethered in the camp, in the confusion, by Kurii. They were to be used to break our lines. I saw Aelgifu, Pudding, among them. Her wrists were pulled out from the sides of her body, bound to the wrists of a girl on either side, as they themselves were fastened. We heard the cracking of whips, and the cries of pain. Faster and faster ran the girls toward us, fleeing the whips. Behind them, rapidly, the Kurii advanced.
"Charge!" cried Svein Blue Tooth. The lines of men, too, hurtled forward.
Not ten yards before the clash took place, Svein Blue Tooth and his lieutenants before the running line, as the girls, under the whips of Kurii, fled, terrified, seeing the axes, the leveled weapons, toward them, made a sign no bond-maid of the north mistakes, the belly sign. Almost as one the girls, crying out, flung themselves to their bellies among the bodies and the charge of the men of Torvaldsland, missing not a step, took its way over them, striking the startled Kurii with an unimpeded impact. I cut down one of the Kurii with its whip. "When the whip is put to the back of slaves," I told it, "it is we who shall do so." There was, instantly, fierce fighting, in and among, and over, the bodies of the tethered bond-maids. Those who could covered their heads with their hands. Bodies, human and Kur, fell bloodied to the grass. Bond-maids, half crushed, some with broken bones, screamed. They struggled, some to rise, but, tethered, few could do so. Most lay prone, trembling, as the feet shifted about them, weapons clashing over their heads. The Kurii, some seventeen or eighteen hundred of them, fell back.
"Cut the wenches free," ordered Svein Blue Tooth. Blades swiftly freed the prone, hysterical bond-maids. Many were covered with blood. Svein Blue Tooth, and others, by the hair, hurled bond-wenches to their feet. "Get to the pen!" he cried. They stumbled away, hurrying to the pen. "Help her!" ordered the Blue Tooth to two frightened girls. They bent to lift and support one of their sisters in bondage, whose leg was broken, binding fiber still knotted about the ankle. "Tarl Red Hair!" wept Gunnhild. My blade flashed at her throat, cutting the tether that bound her, on either side, to two other girls. "Get to the pen," I told her. "Yes, my Jarl!" she cried, running toward the pen. The girls, those who could, fled the field, to return to the pen in which the Kurii had originally confined them. Those who could not walk were, under the orders of men, by other bond-maids, carried or aided to the pen. I saw Pretty Ankles put out her hand to Ivar Forkbeard. Severed binding fiber was knotted tight about her belly. "To the pen," commanded the Forkbeard. Weeping, she hurried to the pen.
Marauders of Gor, pages 254-255

"My Jarl," said a voice. We turned about. Hilda knelt to Ivar Forkbeard, her hair to his feet. "May I not follow my Jarl?" she begged. "A lowly bond-maid begs to heel her Jarl."
"Then, heel," said Ivar, good-naturedly, turning away.
"Thank you, my Jarl!" she wept, leaping to her feet, and falling into step on his left, two steps behind him.
Marauders of Gor, page 258

"You did well earlier today, and now. You are free," At his feet lay the bloodied Kur. He stood over it, a free man. "Wulfstan," cried Thyri. She sprang to her feet and ran to him, burying her head, weeping, in her hair against his chest. "I love you," she wept. "I love you."
"The wench is yours," laughed Ivar Forkbeard.
"I love you," wept Thyri. "Kneel," said Wulfstan. Startle
d, Thyri did so. "You are mine now," said Wulfstan.
"But surely you will free me, Wulfstan!" she cried.
Wulfstan lifted his head and uttered a long, shrill whistle, of the sort with which Kurii summon herd sleen. One of the animals must have been within a hundred yards for it came immediately. Wulfstan lifted Thyri by one arm and threw her before the beast. "Take her to the pen," said Wulfstan to the animal. "Wulfstan!" cried Thyri. Then the beast, snarling, half-charged her, stopping short, hissing, eyes blazing. "Wulfstan!" cried Thyri, backing away from the beast, shaking her head. "No, Wulfstan!" "If I still wish you later," he said, "I will retrieve you from the pen, with others which I might claim as my share of the booty." "Wulfstan!" she cried, protesting. The sleen snapped at her, and, weeping, she turned and fled to the pen, the beast hissing and biting at her, driving her before it.
The three of us laughed. Ivar and I had little doubt that Wulfstan, upon reflection, would indeed retrieve his pretty Thyri, vital and slim, from the pen, and, indeed, perhaps others as well. Once the proud young lady of Kassau had spurned his suit, regarding herself as being too good for him. Now he would see that she served him completely, deliciously, helplessly, as a bond-maid, an article of his property, his to do with as he wished, and perhaps serve him as only one of several such lowly wenches. We laughed. Thyri would wear her collar well for a master such as Wulfstan, once of Kassau, now of Torvaldsland.
Marauders of Gor, pages 259-260

To one side knelt the silken girls I had seen in the tent. There were seventeen of them. Under the dark sky, kneeling in the mud, they looked much different than they had in the tent. Their silks were soiled, their legs and the bottoms of their feet stained with mire. Their hands were tied behind their backs. They were fastened to one another by binding fiber in throat coffle. Those that had been wearing chains had had the locks unfastened, the keys found in one of the chests in a nearby tent. Over them, proud and regal, a switch in her hand, stood Olga. She waved the switch at them. "I took them all for you, my Jarl!" she elated. "I simply ordered them, with confidence and authority, to kneel in a line, facing away from me, to be bound. They did so!" The Forkbeard laughed at the lovely chattels. "They are slaves," he said. None of the girls even dared to lift her eyes to him. We saw, too, to one side, the former Miss Peggy Stevens of Earth, now Honey Cake. Her eyes were joyous, seeing the Forkbeard, seeing that he lived. She ran to the Forkbeard, kneeling, putting her head to his feet. She, too, like Pretty Ankles had severed binding fiber knotted about her belly. By the ring of the Kur collar which she wore Ivar Forkbeard jerked her to her feet, so that she stood on her tiptoes, looking up at him. He grinned. "To the pen with you, Slave," he said. She looked at him, adoringly. "Yes, Master," she whispered.
"Wait," said Olga. "Do not permit her to go alone."
"How is this?" asked Ivar.
"Recollect you, my Jarl," asked Olga, "the golden girl, she with ringed ears, from the south, who lost in the assessments of beauty to Gunnhild?"
"Well do I do so," responded Ivar, licking his lips.
"Behold," laughed Olga. She went to a piece of tent canvas, which, casually, loosely, was thrown over some object. She threw it back. Lying in the dirt, her legs drawn up, her wrists tied behind her back, was the deliciously bodied little wench, dark-haired, in gold silk, now dirtied and torn, in golden collar, and gold earrings, who had exchanged words with Ivar's wool-kirtled wenches at the thing. She was the trained girl, the southern silk girl. In fury, she squirmed to her feet. "I am not a Kur girl," she cried. Indeed, she did not wear the heavy leather collar, with ring and lock, which Kurii fastened on their female cattle. She wore a collar of gold, and earrings, and, torn and muddied, a slip of golden silk, of the sort with which masters sometimes display their girl slaves. It was incredibly brief. "I have a human master," she said, angrily, "to whom I demand to be immediately returned."
"We took her, Honey Cake and I," said Olga.
"Your master," said Ivar, thinking, recollecting the captain behind whom he had seen her heeling at the thing, "is Rolf of Red Fjord." Rolf of Red Fjord, I knew, was a minor captain. He, and his men, had participated in the fighting.
"No!" laughed the girl. "After the contest of beauty, in which, through the cheating of the judges, I lost, I was sold to the agent of another, a much greater one than a mere Rolf of Red Fjord. My master is truly powerful! Release me this instant! Fear him!"
Olga, to the girl's outrage, tore away her golden silk, revealing her to the Forkbeard. "Oh!" she cried, in fury. Gunnhild had won the contest, and won it fairly. But I was forced to admit that the wench now before us, struggling to free her wrists, not revealed to us, luscious, sensuous, short, squirming, infuriated, was incredibly desirable; we considered her body, her face, her obvious intelligence; she would bring a high price; she would make a delicious armful in the furs.
"How is it that you have dared to strip me!" demanded the girl.
"Who is your master?" inquired Ivar Forkbeard.
She drew herself up proudly. She threw back her shoulders. In her eyes, hot with fury, was the arrogance of the high-owned slave. She smiled insolently, contemptuously. Then she said, "Thorgard of Scagnar."
"Thorgard of Scagnar!" called a voice, that of Gorm. We turned. Thorgard of Scagnar, raiment torn, bloodied, a broken spear shaft bound behind his back and before his arms, his wrists pulled forward, held at the sides of his rib cage, fastened by a rope across his belly, herded by men with spears, stumbled forward. A length of simple, coarse tent rope, some seven feet in length, had been knotted about his neck. By this tether Gorm dragged him before Ivar Forkbeard.
The golden girl regarded Thorgard of Scagnar with horror. Then, eyes terrified, she regarded Ivar Forkbeard, of Forkbeard's Landfall. "You are mine now," said the Forkbeard. Then he said to Honey Cake, "Take my new slave to the pen."
"Yes, Master," she laughed. Then she took the golden girl, the southern girl, by the hair. "Come, Slave," she said. She dragged the bound silk girl, bent over, behind her. "I think," said Ivar Forkbeard, "I will give her for a month to Gunnhild, and my other wenches. They will enjoy having their own slave. Then, when the month is done, I will turn her over to the crew, and she will be, then, as my other bond-maids, no more or less."
Marauders of Gor, pages 262-264

"I have something else for you," I told her. "Come here."
She approached me. From my pouch I drew forth a leather Kur collar, with its lock, and, sewn in leather, its large, rounded ring. "What is it?" she asked, apprehensively. I took it behind her neck, and then, closing it about her throat, thrust the large, flattish bolt, snapping it, into the locking breech. The two edges of metal, bordered by the leather, fitted closely together. The collar is some three inches in height. The girl must keep her chin up. "It is the collar of a Kur cow," I told her.
"No!" she cried. I turned her about and, taking a pair of the rude iron slave bracelets of the north, black and common, with which bond-maids are commonly secured, locked her wrists behind her back. I then, with the bloodied Quiva, the Tuchuk saddle knife, cut her clothes from her. Then, by a length of binding fiber, looped double in the ring of her collar, tied her on her knees to the foot of the Kur. Then, with the knife, I knelt at the Kur's throat.
Marauders of Gor, page 275

"Permit me to kiss you, Master," begged Leah. She snuggled against me. She was naked on the rough bench of the north. My right arm was about her, holding her to me, in my right hand, held in its grip of golden wire, was a great horn of steaming mead. The girl, in her need, pressed herself against the coarse woolen tunic of Torvaldsland. I looked down into her uplifted eyes, pleading. It was the need of a slave girl.
Marauders of Gor, page 277

Mead was replenished in the drinking horn by a dark-haired bond-maid, who filled it, head down, shyly, not looking at me. She was the only one in the hall who was not stripped, though, to be sure, her kirtle, by order of her master, was high on her hips, and, over the shoulders, was split to her belly. Like any other wench, on her neck, riveted, was a simple collar of black iron. She had worn a Kur collar before, and, with hundreds of others, had been rescued from the pens. The fixing of the Kur collar, it had been decided by Svein Blue Tooth, was equivalent to the fixing of the metal collar and, in itself, was sufficient to reduce the subject to slavery, which condition deprives the subject of legal status, and rights attached thereto, such as the right to stand in companionship. Accordingly, to her astonishment, Bera, who had been the companion of Svein Blue Tooth, discovered suddenly that she was only one wench among others. From a line, as part of his spoils, the Blue Tooth picked her out. She had displeased him mightily in the recent years. Yet was the Blue Tooth fond of the arrogant wench. It was not until he had switched her, like any other girl, that she understood that their relationship had undergone a transformation, and that she was, truly, precisely what she seemed to be, now his bond-maid. No longer would her dour presence deprive his feasts of joy. No longer would she, in her free woman's scorn, shower contempt on bond-maids, trying to make them ashamed of their beauty. She, too, now, was no more than they. She now had new tasks to which to address herself, cooking, and churning and carrying water; the improvement of her own carriage, and beauty and attractiveness; and the giving of inordinate pleasure in the furs to her master, Svein Blue Tooth, Jarl of Torvaldsland; if she did not do so, well she knew, as an imbonded wench, that others would; it was not, indeed, until her reduction to slavery that she realized, for the first time, how fine a male, how attractive and how powerful, was Svein Blue Tooth, whom she had for years taken for granted; seeing him objectively for the first time, from the perspective of a slave girl, who is nothing herself, and comparing him with other free men, she realized suddenly how mighty, how splendid and magnificent he truly was. She set herself diligently to please him, in service and in pleasure, and, if he would permit it, in love. Bera went to the next man, to fill his cup with mead, from the heavy, hot tankard, gripped with cloth, which she carried. She was sweating. She was barefoot. The bond-maid was happy.
Marauders of Gor, pages 277-278

"You are a wanton slave," I said. She looked up at me, laughing. "A girl in a collar is not permitted inhibitions," she said. It was true. Slave girls must reveal their sexual nature, totally. Do they not do so, they are beaten. On Earth, Leah had been a prim girl, reserved, even haughty and formal. I had forced these truths from her. But on Gor, as with others of her ilk, such lies and false dignities were not permitted her. On Gor, should the girl be so unfortunate as to fall into slavery, the total depth of her needs, her sensations, her deepest and most concealed sensualities, must expose themselves helplessly to the master, even though he may, if he chooses, mock her cruelly, to her misery, for her vulnerabilities. An example will make this clear. Every woman, of glandular normality, has an occasional desire, often frightening her, to writhe lasciviously, naked, before a powerful male. Should she miserably fall to slavery the passion dance of a nude slave girl will surely be among the least of what is commanded of her. Consider then the plight of the girl. She is forced, to her shame, to do what she had, for years in the secret of her heart, yearned to do. But how helpless, how vulnerable, she is! The dance ended, she falls to the sand, or tiles. Has she pleased him? She can do no more. She looks up. Her pride is gone, like her clothing, save for brand and collar, stripped away. There are tears in her eyes. She is at his mercy. If he repudiates her, she is shamed; she has failed as a female. Probably she will be sold in disgust. But if she discovers, to her terror, that she has pleased him, and he gestures her to him, she knows that she, after such a performance, cannot be respected but can be only a slave in his arms. She has danced as a slave; she will be used as a slave. She is a slave.
Marauders of Gor, pages 278-279

Many were the lamps, bowls on spears, which burned, and torches, too. And brightly glowed the long fire in the hall, over which tarsk and bosk, crackling and glistening with hot fat, roasted, turned heavily on spits by eager, laughing bond-maids.
Marauders of Gor, page 279

"Gifts!" cried Ivar Forkbeard. His men, bearing boxes, trunks, bulging sacks, came forward. They spilled the contents of these containers before the table. It was the loot of the temple of Kassau, and the sapphires of Schendi, which had figured in the wergild imposed upon him by Svein Blue Tooth in the days of his outlawry. Knee deep in riches waded Ivar and, laughing, hurled untold wealth to those in the hall. Then his men, too, distributed the riches. Then, too, naked slave girls were ordered to the riches, to scoop up sapphires in goblets and carry them about the tables, serving them to the men, kneeling, head down, arms extended, as though they might be wine, and the warriors, laughing, reached into the cups and seized jewels. I saw Hrolf, from the East, the giant, mysterious Torvaldslander, take one jewel from the goblet proffered him, kneeling, by a naked, collared beauty. He slipped it in his pouch, as a souvenir. Ivar Forkbeard himself came to me, and pressed into my hand a sapphire of Schendi. "Thank you," said I, "Ivar Forkbeard." I, too, slipped the sapphire into my pouch. To me, too, it was rich with meaning.
"Ivar!" called Svein Blue Tooth, when the loot was distributed, pointing to Hilda, who, in her collar, stripped, cuddled at the Forkbeard's side, "are you not, too, going to give away that pretty little trinket?"
"No!" laughed the Forkbeard. "This pretty little trinket, this pretty little bauble, I keep for myself!" He then took Hilda in his arms and, holding her across his body, kissed her. She melted to him, in the fantastic, total yielding of the slave girl.
Marauders of Gor, pages 280-281

Slave girls, naked, carrying burdens, loaded the ship of Ivar Forkbeard, the Hilda, moored at the wharf of the Thing Fields. We stood on the wooden boards of the wharf.
Marauders of Gor, page 287

She had spent the last five days chained in a small, log slave kennel.
Marauders of Gor, page 287

I watched the girls loading the ship. Aelgifu, or Pudding, passed me, and then Gunnhild and Olga, bent under boxes carried on their backs. Pouting Lips and Pretty Ankles returned from the ship, down the gangplank, barefoot, to fetch more burdens. Hilda, bent over, a heavy sack of salt over her shoulders, staggered up the gangplank. Thyri returned down the gangplank, a yoke on her shoulders, from which dangled two empty baskets, on ropes. She had been carrying tospits and vegetables to the deck locker, to fill it. Wulfstan, once of Kassau, now of Torvaldsland, in charge of supplying the ship, leaned over the rail.
"Fetch more tospits, Slave Girl," he called. "Yes, Master," said Thyri."
I saw Rollo board the ship. He carried a great ax, weapons, a sleenskin bag filled with gear. He was the first of the oarsmen to board.
Now came slave girls bearing skins of water. They walked slowly, bent over, placing each step carefully, that they not lose their balance, heavy skins, bulging and damp, across their shoulders. I saw Honey Cake among them, and the Forkbeard's golden girl, the southern silk girl, too, she laboring as any other bond-maid. I do not think that in the south she had been forced so to work. She staggered. "Hurry," said the girl behind her, "or we will be beaten!" The girl moaned, and staggered to the gangplank, and, slowly, foot by foot, her bare feet pressed by the weight deeply into the rough boards, climbed, carrying her burden, to the deck of the ship. Among the girls, too, I saw Bera, she one of Blue Tooth's girls, one of several, who had been placed under the orders of Wulfstan to assist in the loading. She was naked. The other girls, resenting the tunic she had been given, had stripped her. Svein Blue Tooth had laughed. Masters do not interfere in the squabbles of slaves.
Marauders of Gor, pages 288-289

"On your back," said a seaman to her, "and lift your legs, ankles crossed." The girl did so. He put the two-piece, hinged, double ankle ring on her. This is a simple fetter, without links, holding the ankles crossed. It does not permit the girl to rise to her feet.
Marauders of Gor, pages 291-292

Whereas it commonly takes a third of an Ahn to arouse a free woman, a female slave is often responsive from almost the first touch of the master. Why this should be I do not know. I suspect it is due, primarily, to two factors: the first is psychological. The collar itself, and the state of bondage, for no reason clear in my mind, commonly transforms even the tepid free woman into an orgasmic marvel of a slave. Perhaps they fear to be whipped if they are not pleasing? Perhaps, behaviorally, given no choice but to act as a passionate female slave, they find, suddenly, through simple psychological relationships, they, to their horror, have become only a passionate female slave. Perhaps it is the knowing that they are rightless, owned, dominated, which so deeply, so incredibly, triggers the profound web of yielding, piteously receptive, helplessly submitting reflexes; perhaps in the depth of their bodies lies the secret need to be sexually subjugated, totally, without which they cannot attain their full sexuality. I do not know. The second reason is presumably simple. It is merely that the female slave, abandoned, responsive, owned, constantly at her master's beck and call, ready constantly for his least pleasure, is frequently used. Female slaves are sometimes used, when the master's time permits, three and four, or more, times a day. It is not unusual to give an entire day to sport with a female slave, something unthinkable with a free woman. The slave girl, of course, has no rights. She may be used for hours. What counts is not her will, but her master's. Frequent use of the female slave, I suspect, keeps her body honed to submissive perfection. Whatever be the reasons, a common female slave, and one of no unusual heat for a slave, will be carried through a series of multiple yieldings, dozens, before the average free woman can be warmed. Then, when the master wishes, scorning perhaps her helplessness in his arms, despising perhaps, to her misery, her vulnerability to him, he takes ruthlessly, perhaps contemptuously, his delight with her. As a note, it might be added, that the slave female, in her master's arms, must, if he so commands, under the threat of the whip or death, vocalize her sensations, thus ventilating and reinforcing, multiplying, deepening, and increasing and intensifying them. Thus, cruelly, she is forced to help arouse herself and contribute to her own pleasures, and consequently, of course, those of the master. This command, sometimes implicit, sometimes a matter of the master's policy with his girl or girls, under which she is placed, to vocalize her pleasures, and abundantly, as well as, in her abandon, nudity, and beauty, manifest them physically, guides, accurately and surely, the master in the detailed exploitation of her weaknesses, in his depredations practiced on her body. She must betray herself. Do not blame her. No choice is given her. She is an instrument of passion on which he plays, delighting himself with the music of her expressions, her movements, her cries, even the wild, unrestrainable odors of her sexual subjugation. Do not blame her. No choice is given her.
Marauders of Gor, pages 292-293

"To my feet," I told her. "Yes, Master," she whispered. She lay on her side, her head on her arm. She did not look up at me.
Marauders of Gor, page 294