Dancer of Gor

I lay on my stomach, on the blanket, it in the soft sand, bound and gagged. I had been quickly and efficiently rendered helpless. I suspected then that this may not have been done entirely by feel. I had the distinct feeling that the thing, even in this darkness, might be able to see. Even to me the darkness was not absolute. I could tell something of its outline in the night. There must therefore, somehow, be some light, perhaps a tiny bit of light from the moons, or even the stars, filtered through the cover of the clouds. Whereas this might be so small that it was scarcely detectable by a human, it might be more than adequate for a different, more efficient nocturnal adaptations. Humans even illuminated the streets of their cities, at least in certain areas. In venturing out into the night they were not unaccustomed to carrying lanterns with them, or touches, and that for so simple a purpose as merely to see their way. This thing near me I suspected had no need of such artifices. I heard, and felt it, its snout at my back, touching me once or twice, with its tiny intakes of air, sniffling me. Then, as I stiffened in terror, I felt digits of its hand, or paw, on my back. It was feeling some of the welts on my back. These were from my beating by Aulus, on the Vitkel Aria. I had deserved that beating. I had not been pleasing to a master. Then it put its head down, close to me. I then felt its tongue, curiously, exploratory, a rough tongue, like a cat" s, lick slowly at one or two of the welts. I heard a small noise from its throat. I feared it might be becoming excited. Then it straightened up. I was relieved. I was pleased that there was no blood on my back. It then turned about, its huge form crouched down. It was still for a moment, very still, perhaps looking about, perhaps reconnoitering. It then took one of my bound ankles in its paw. It them dragged me by the ankle from the blanket, between the other girls, on my side, through the sand, toward the bars. In so small a thing as this I sensed its alieness. No human, I think, would have drawn me along like this. It was more like some shambling predator pulling a four-footed animal behind it, by a leg. In a moment it was at the bars, on the far side, away from the gate. Then to my amazement it drew me between the bars which, literally, it seemed, had been bent apart. Apparently it had not been admitted. It had admitted itself. It had apparently taken the bars in its paws, those bars which might well have confined men, let alone women, and bent them apart. Outside the bars, on the dirt, it lifted me in its arms and, half crouching, carried me into some trees. There in the darkness, alone with it, I began to whimper and struggle. I did not want to be taken from the camp, not now, not this way! It then put me down, on the dirt. I struggled at its feet, bound. I feared it would now, in this isolated place, eat me. But it lifted me up, by the back of the neck, to a kneeling position. Did I know what it was doing? I was not kneeling before it, a position appropriate for a slave! It then lifted me up again, a foot or so, such that I seemed really to be neither kneeling or standing. I was held by the back of the neck again, its grip, that of only one hand or paw, easily supporting my weight. I felt the dirt on the tops of my toes, as my feet now were, their soles exposed. i having been lifted up from a kneeling position. My knees were bent. It then, with its right paw, struck me. My head was flung to the side. I lost consciousness.

28 The Well

"Are you all right?" asked Tupita.

"Tupita!" I said.

"Yes," she whispered, touching my forehead, soothingly. "Rest. Do not try to rise. You were cruelly struck."

"Where am I?" I asked.

"Look up," she said.

I looked up, blinking against the light. Far above me, as at the end of some off, vertical tunnel, I could see a circular opening, perhaps some seven or eight feet across, and, across this, in open sockets, there was a peeled, rounded timber, about which a rope was wound. A few feet below this timber, attached to the rope, there dangled a bucket. Over the opening, too, there were the remains, mostly a frame, of what was once apparently a small arched roof. Through the remains of this roof I could see, framed in the wreckage, the blue sky, and, interestingly, in it, like tiny points, stars. The light of the sun not obliterating them from this perspective, one could see them, even now, in the daylight.

I rose to my knees, in the dried leaves and gravel. "Tela!" I said. "Tuka," she whispered. Tela was kneeling a few feet from me. She still wore, soiled now, the tiny, thin rectangle of red silk she had worn in the tent of Aulus. It was all that Aulus, by custom, permitted women to wear in his tent, saving their collars.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"Yes," she whispered.

I kissed Tupita, and Tela.