Vagabonds of Gor

I sat back from the dancing floor, my back to the wall, the musicians to my left.

"Paga, Master?" asked a girl, kneeling beside the low table, behind which I sat, cross-legged.

I regarded her. She was well made up, with lipstick, eye shadow, and such, a painted slave, as it is said. There was a pearl droplet on a tiny golden chain, on her forehead. She was clad in a snatch of yellow slave silk. She was necklaced, as well as collared: Her left arm was encircled with a serpentine ornament. Her wrists were heavy with bracelets. Two of these, one on each wrist, were locked there. On them were snap rings. They could thus be joined, and she could not free herself from them. Her left ankle was belled, these bells being attached to a locked anklet.

"Yes," I said, but I would nurse that paga.

She rose to her feet humbly, head down, and then, with a swirl of slave silk and a flash of bells, turned and hurried to the paga counter.

I studied the fellows in the tavern. I did not see any here who had been in the vicinity of our camp.

I had thought that they might make their move outside, in the alley. They had not done so.

The dance was coming to an end and the slave who had been "netted," now well in custody, bound and leashed, was being displayed by the «hunters» to the patrons. Now the captive knelt in the center of the dance floor, the «hunters» exultant about her. Then, as the music swirled to a conclusion, the captive lowered her head, humbly. There was much Gorean applause, the striking of the left shoulder with the palm of the right hand. There was then, suddenly, the snapping of a slave lash, and the «hunters» swiftly stripped themselves, cast aside their staffs and knelt with the prisoner. Then one of the fellows from the tavern took the net and cast it over the lot of them. No longer then were the hunters hunters. Now, they, too, were only netted slaves. Then, to a passage of music, all rose up, hunted and hunters, all now in the net, and, in the small, pretty ru

The girl who had gone to fetch my paga now returned and knelt before the table. She kissed the goblet, and then, her head down, between her extended arms, proffered it to me. "Paga, Master?" she asked.

I took the paga and put it on the table.

"Sipa, Master?" she asked. She came, of course, with the price of the drink.

"You may go," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

Often, of course, one does not make use of the girl who comes with the drink. Many men, for example, come to such a tavern merely to drink, to hear the news, to visit with friends, such things. Some come to them to play Kaissa. If one is interested in a particular girl, of course, it is a simple matter to summon her to your table.

I looked about the floor, at the numerous patrons. Although most of them were doubtless fellows from Brundisium, citizens of that polity, there were many others about, as well, in particular, oarsmen from the galleys in the harbor, not far away, and soldiers from the camp outside the walls, mostly mercenaries, on which Cos depends heavily, but some, too, who were apparently regulars.

I considered the doors leading off the main paga room. Some of those were undoubtedly the doors to private dining areas.

One of those doors opened and a luscious, dark-haired slave emerged, clad in a light brown tunic. She burned to the paga counter to fetch paga, which she then, carefully, carried back into the other room, closing the door behind her.

The last time I had seen the luscious wench had been earlier this evening, returning from the wagon of Ephialtes. She had been naked, her hands braceleted behind her back, being marched at her master's stirrup, chained to it by the neck.

I had, of course, seen her before, and not merely this evening, neck-chained at the stirrup. I had seen her months ago, helpless in chains beside her master's desk. Indeed, at that time, she had not even been a legal slave, the legalities of her condition, to her distress, given what had been done to her, and what she had become, being denied to her by her master. Now, however, she was not merely a natural slave, aware of herself, reduced, and self-confessed, begging the resolution and solace of the collar, but a legal slave, fully and perfectly imbonded in law. Once she had been the Lady Cara, of Ve