Dancer of Gor

"Can you walk, Master?" begged Tupita, crouching near Mirus. "Can you run? They are gone! They will be coming back! Get up! Run! Flee!"

Mirus looked over at me, his eyes glazed with pain.

"Get up, Master!" begged Tupita. "Lean on me! I will try to help you!" She helped him to his feet. He stood, unsteadily. He looked at me.

"Good, Master!" cried Tupita. "Lean on me! I will try to help you!" How strong Mirus must be, I thought, that he could even stand.

"Hurry, Master," said Tupita. "Hurry!"

But suddenly he moved his arm and flung her to the side.

"Master!" she cried.

He bent down, nearly fell, and picked up the blade which had fallen from the hand of the man who had been urged earlier by Fulvius to kill him, he whom Hendow had dropped, the blade with which he himself had been threatened. His eyes wild he staggered toward me, the blade lifted over his head, in two hands.

I screamed.

Tupita leaped to her feet and flung herself between us, shielding me with her own body.

"Stupid slave!" cried Mirus. "With draw! Get out of the way!"

"You are out of your head, Mirus!" she cried. "You are not the master I know. She is only a slave. Do not hurt her!"

"She betrayed me!" he cried, the blade poised.

"Hendow, your friend, loved her!" she cried. "He cared for her. He sought her! He saved your life! Will you now kill her with the very blade from which he saved you?"

"She betrayed me!" he snarled.

I was startled to hear her asserveration of Hendow" s affection for me. He was so terrible, so fierce. Yet it seemed he had not in truth followed me to recapture me and punish me, visiting upon me the terrible severities to be suitably visited upon a runaway slave. I remembered how gently he had touched me on the side of the head. I wept, confused, startled, astonished, in wonder, considering his love. Had I been so blind to it? Yet I do not doubt that he would have kept me always, even in his love, as a helpless slave. He was that sort of man. Indeed, how could I, a woman, truly, fully, love any other sort?

I saw he did not want to strike Tupita. Her beauty, so wild and pathetic, bare-breasted, in its collar and shreds of skirt, was between us.

"I tried to warn you, Master," I wept. "I tried to withdraw! You would not let me. You would not listen! Masters were watching!"

"What would you have had her do?" cried Tupita. "Do you no understand? We are slaves, slaves! What do you think her life would have been worth if she had not been successful in her work? If she had even been suspected in her work would this, too, not have been dangerous for her masters?"

"Get out of the way!" he cried.

"You are not yourself," she cried. "Do not kill her!"

"Get out of the way," he cried, "or you will die first!"

"Go, Tupita!" I wept. "Go, run!"

"Move!" cried Mirus.

"No," said Tupita, firmly. "If it is your will, so be it. I will die first."

I saw the blade waver.

"It is my desire to be pleasing to my master," she said.

I saw the blade lower. Mirus stepped back.

"By the love I bear you, if not the love you bear me," she said, "spare her." I saw Mirus look at me, with hatred. But he crouched down then, the point of the blade in the dirt, his hands on the guard, steadying himself with the weapon, almost as with a staff. "She may live," he said. Then he sobbed.

"Oh, my master, I love you!" wept Tupita, rushing to him. "I love you! I love you!"

"I have followed you, hunting for you, even from Brundisium," said Mirus. "I traveled from city to city. I took service here and there. But always I searched for you. I did not wish to live without you. I sought you even in Argentum." I recalled I had asked Mirus if he had been looking for me in Argentum. He had not been. he had claimed he was seeking service, and his fortune. I had been somewhat chagrined by this answer, that he had not been looking for me. I now realized that he had been seeking Tupita. Many Gorean men, in their vanity, will not admit to caring for slaves. Even the thought of it, it seems, would embarrass them. Who would care for a meaningless slut in a collar? Yet too often, for just such women, luscious and helpless, and in bondage, men are prepared to kill. Indeed, had I not still found him so attractive, and had I not, in my own vanity, been so concerned with my own possible beauty and desirability, rather than that of others, too, might have understood that immediately. Certainly he had inquired closely after her. I had not been able to help him. Then he had fallen to the men of Tyrrhenius, later to be sold to the black chain of Ionicus.

"Oh," cried Tupita, "I love you so! I love you so, my master!"