Vagabonds of Gor

"Cheers for Borton!" called a fellow.

There were cheers. "Thank you," I said. I took a piece of tarsk from the platter. If the fellow was so good as to treat us, it would surely have been boorish to refuse his hospitality.

"Serve him!" said Borton, laughing, chewing on the joint of tarsk, to the beauty kneeling before him, indicating a fellow he knew across the circle.

The beauty looked at him, startled, puzzled, as though for an instant she could not believe what she had heard, that she had been dismissed. I thought that anger then, for just an instant, suffused her countenance but then, suddenly terrified, as though she might suddenly have realized the unacceptability of her reaction, she hurried over to the fellow Borton had indicted, to fling herself to her stomach before him, desperately and zealously licking and kissing at his feet. "You will be whipped tonight," Philebus assured her. "Yes, Master," she moaned. She had been slow to obey. The female slave is to obey instantly and unquestioningly.

"Thank you," I said to the other helper, taking a sausage from the plate.

"It serves her right!" whispered Temione.

"The lash?" I asked.

"Of course," she said. "She was slow."

The girl on her back, she stretched over the knees of the burly fellow, cried out, hot juice having fallen on her body from the joint of tarsk.

"Paga for all, from our host, the noble Borton!" called Philebus. Girls rushed about, serving. I put out my hand, keeping Temione in her place. "Master?" she asked. "You are serving me," I said.

Philebus unlocked even the holding collars on the neck chains of the girls at the post, that they, too, might participate in the serving. Swiftly, as soon as they were freed, they leaped up to do so. He glanced once at Temione, who moved, frightened, but he did not signal to her to rise. Clearly she was with me.

I took a piece of bread from the platter of the second assistant, as he came by again. "Thank you," I said. Had Marcus been with me he, too, might have obtained a free supper.

The burly fellow had now had what he wanted from the joint of tarsk and had thrown its residue to friend a few feet away. He wiped his hands on the body of the slave across his knees.

"What a brute he is!" exclaimed Temione, softly.

"But a skillful one, it seems," I said.

The girl across the burly fellow's knees squirmed and made small sounds. She could now no longer control her body.

"What a crude, brutish fellow he is!" said Temione, angrily. "Are you angry," I asked, "that it is not you who are in his power?"

"A toast to Borton the noble, Borton the generous!" called a fellow, rising unsteadily.

"A toast, a toast!" called others.

I joined, too, in this toast. It pleased me to do so.

I saw that Temione could not take her eyes off the bearded fellow. Long ago, Temione, like Amina, Klio, Elene, Rimice and Liomache, had been one of those women who makes her living off men. She, like the others, however, when I had met her, probably due to the war, the scarcity of genteel travelers, the crowds of impoverished refugees, the high prices, and so on, had fallen on hard times. Their bills unpaid, and their evasions not satisfying the i

The burly fellow now permitted the trembling, gasping woman across his knees some surcease of his attentions. He quaffed paga. She then arched her body, lifting it up to him, piteously, pleadingly, moaning. "Lie still," he said to her. "Yes, Master," she wept. He brushed back the other woman, too, who lay beside him, as she tried, with her lips and tongue, to call herself to his attention, to importune him. I did not think either of those women would have to be kept again in the tiny cages, unless perhaps for punishment or to amuse the master. They were both now, obviously, ready to serve men.