| “How shameful!” said the free woman, sternly.
The slave girls groveled at her feet. Slave girls fear free women muchly. It is almost as if there were some unspoken war between them, almost as if they might be mortal enemies. In such a war, or such an enmity, of course, the slave girl is completely at the mercy of the free person; she is only slave. One of the great fears of a slave girl is that she will be sold to a woman. Free women treat their female slaves with incredible hatred and cruelty. Why this is I do not know. Some say it is because they, the free women, envy the girls their collars and wish that they, too, were collared, and at the complete mercy of masters. Free women view the platform with stern disapproval; on it, female beauty is displayed for the inspection of men; this, for some reason, outrages them; perhaps they are furious because they cannot display their own beauty, or that they are not themselves as beautiful as women found fit, by lusty men with discerning eyes, for slavery; it is difficult to know what the truth is in such matters; these matters are further complicated, particularly in the north, by the conviction among free women that free women are above such things as sex, and that only low and loose girls, and slaves, are interested in such matters; free women of the north regard themselves as superior to sex; many are frigid, at least until carried off and collared; they often insist that, even when they have faces and figures that drive men wild, that it is their mind on which he must concentrate his attentions; some free men, to their misery, and the perhaps surprising irritation of the female, attempt to comply with this imperative; they are fools enough to believe what such women claim is the truth about themselves; they should listen instead to the dreams and fantasies of women, and recall, for their instruction, the responses of a free woman, once collared, squirming in the chains of a bond-maid. These teach us truths which many women dare not speak and which, by others, are denied, interestingly, with a most psychologically revealing hysteria and vehemence. “No woman,” it is said, “knows truly what she is until she has worn the collar.” Some free women apparently fear sex because they feel it lowers the woman. This is quite correct. . . . “Shameful!” cried the free woman. . . . “I do not approve of the platform,” said the free woman, coldly. Forkbeard did not respond to her, but regarded her with great deference. Marauders of Gor Book 9 Page 155 – 156 “Come tonight to our hall, Champion,” said she. The Blue Tooth did not gainsay her. The woman of the Jarl had spoken. Free women in the north have much power. The Jarl’s Woman, in the Kaissa of the north, is a more powerful piece than the Ubara in the Kaissa of the south. This is not to deny that the Ubara in the south, in fact, exercises as much or more power than her northern counterpart. It is only to recognize that her power in the south is less explicitly acknowledged. Marauders of Gor Book 9 Page 191 The girls, though collared in the manner of Torvaldsland, and serving men, were fully clothed. Their kirtles of white wool, smudged and stained with 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. Marauders of Gor Book 9 Page 195 – 196 “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. I wondered what Bera would say if she knew that Hilda had been put at the oar, and taught to heel; that she had been whipped, and taught to obey; that she had been caressed, and taught to respond. “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. In fury, Bera, lifting her skirt from about her ankles, took her way from the long table, retiring to her own quarters. Marauders of Gor Book 9 Page 200 – 201 Page7 |