"Never," she said.

I continued to eat.

Then I reached down to where her head, as I sat cross-legged, lay in the snow by my knee. She was on her belly. "Please," she begged. "Please."

I thrust meat in her mouth. Gratefully she ate it. In time she looked up at me. "You made me crawl to you on my belly," she said, resentfully.

I stood up. I must be on my way.

"I never thought I would meet a man so strong," she said. She shuddered. I thought it must be from cold.

"The tarn?" she asked.

"It was weak," I said. "I freed it."

"You are going north," she said.

"I have business in the north," I said.

"You will go afoot?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"You will have little chance to survive," she said.

"I will live on the herd," I said. "The only danger, as I see it, will be the winter."

In such times even groups of the red hunters sometimes perished.

"Do not follow me further," I said.

"I cannot live alone in the north," she said. "I would surely fail to reach the south safely."

I thought her assessment of the situation accurate.

"Panther Girls," I said, "such as, here and there, frequent the northern forests, might survive."

"I am not a Panther Girl," she said.

I looked at her kneeling in the snow at my feet, her small, trim figure, her soft, sweet exquisite curves, her delicately beautiful throat and face, the pleading blue eyes, the lush wealth of auburn hair loose behind her naked shoulders.

"That is true," I said. I looked upon her. Her body, so helpless and exquisitely feminine, seemed made for rapacious seizure at the hands of a rude master. Her face, vulnerable and delicate, would be easy to read. Tears might swiftly be brought to her eyes by a word, or fear to those lovely features, by as little as an imperial gesture. I considered whether it would be worth while teaching her the collar.

"I am an Earth girl," she said.

I nodded. She knew nothing of woodcraft or of survival. She was alone on a harsh world.

"You are an enemy," I told her.

"Do not leave me," she begged. She swallowed hard. "Without a man to feed and protect me," she said, "I will die."

I recalled how she had responded when, before I had won ray freedom, I had informed her that the red hunters might starve, if the tabuk were not permitted to continue their northward migration.

"It is not my concern," she had said.

"Please," she said, looking up at me.

"It is not my concern," I said.

"Oh, no!" she wept. "Please!"

"Do not attempt to follow me," I said. "If you persist, I shall bind you, hand and foot, and leave you in the snow."

"I am pretty," she said. "I know that I am pretty." She looked up at me, tears in her eyes. "Might not men be persuaded," she asked, "to let me live?"

I smiled, recalling what once I had suggested to her.

"Please," she begged.

"You do not know of what you speak," I laughed. "You are only an ignorant Earth girl."

"Teach me," she begged.

She put her arms to her sides and lifted her body before me.

"What a salacious tart you are," I said.

Tears formed in her eyes.

I considered to myself how she might look in a snatch of slave silk and a steel collar, one bearing a master's name. The prospect was not completely displeasing.

"Assume attitudes and postures," I said to her. "Try to interest me."

With a cry of misery she tried then to provoke my interest. She was clumsy but I learned, incontrovertibly, that which I had wished to determine. She who performed so desperately before me was a natural slave. I had thought this the first instant I had laid eyes on her. It was now confirmed beyond doubt. The insight, sensitivity, taste and lust of the Kur agents who had recruited her was surely to be commended.

"It is enough." I told her.

She lay at my feet in the snow, terrified.

"What do you feel like?" I asked.

"It is a strange feeling," she said. "I have never felt it before."

"It is the feeling of being a woman," I said.

She reached out to touch my ankle. "Please," she said, "take me with you."

I bent to her and began to tie together her ankles. "No!" she said. "Please! Please!"

Her ankles were tied.

"No!" she said.

"I do not wish the inconvenience in the north," I said, "of bothering with a free woman."

I knotted her hands behind her back.

"I do not ask to come with you as a free woman!" she cried.

"Oh?" I asked.

"No!" she said.

"Do you know the meaning of your words, foolish girl?" I asked.

"Yes," she wept.

"You would dare to be a slave?" I asked.

"Yes," she whispered. I wondered at her words. Did she not know the hopelessness, the completeness, of being a slave girl on Gor? If she did not, she would learn.

I rose to my feet.

She struggled to her knees, her ankles crossed and bound, her hands tied behind her. "I beg to be a slave," she wept.

I looked down upon her.

"I know," she said, "that with a man of your strength I could never be anything but a slave."

"To any Gorean male," I said.

"Yes, yes," she said.

I freed her ankles of the bonds and freed her hands, but then retied her hands before her body. I knelt her before me, knees wide, back on her heels, arms lifted and raised, her head down, between her bound arms.

"Are you familiar with any of the rituals of enslavement?" I asked.

"I, Sidney Anderson, of Earth," she said, "submit myself to Tarl Cabot, of Gor, as a slave, completely, his to do with as he pleases."

I saw that she had been curious as to what it would be like to be a slave. She had inquired into this matter. It was an excellent sign.

She was then a beautiful, little exquisite brute at my feet, a slave animal.

I took a length of binding fiber and knotted it, with capture knots, about her throat. It was her collar. Too, the capture knots, those of a warrior, would serve to identify her as mine in the north.

She looked up at me, frightened, a slave.

"Kiss my feet," I told her.

She bent her head to my feet and, through the fur of my boots, I felt her lips press against them. She then, timidly, tears in her eyes, lifted her head.

I put my hands in her hair. She must regard me. "You are Arlene," I told her.

She shook with emotion.

"Lift your wrists," I said.

She did so.

I freed her of the binding fiber on her wrists, and returned it to my pack.

"I have never had a girl's name before," she said.

"You are now only a girl," I told her.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Yes, what?" I asked.

"Yes," she whispered, "-Master."

I then threw her to her back in the snow, that I might begin to teach her the meaning of her collar.

12

I Tent With Imnak

At The Gathering Of The People; I Advance Arlene A Bit In Her Training "Put them on, Slave Girl," said Thimble, not pleasantly.

"Yes, Mistress," said Arlene. In the hide tent she slipped into the brief fur panties worn by the women of the north. She had been forced to sew them herself, under the direction of Thimble and Thistle. At the left hip they bore the sign of the looped binding fiber, sewn in them with red-dyed sinew, which identified them as the garment of one who was an owned beast.

Imnak and I sat across from one another, both cross-legged. He dropped a tiny bone to the fur mat between us.

Each player, in turn, drops a bone, one of several in his supply. The bone Imnak had dropped was carved in the shape of a small tabuk. Each of the bones is carved to resemble an animal, such as an arctic gant, a northern bosk, a lart, a tabuk or sleen, and so on. The bone which remains upright is the winner. If both bones do not remain upright there is no winner on that throw. Similarly, if both bones should remain upright, they are dropped again. A bone which does not remain upright, if its opposing bone does remain upright, is placed in the stock of him whose bone remained upright. The game is finished when one of the two players is cleaned out of bones.

"Pull on the stockings," said Thimble to Arlene. Arlene did so. The stockings were of lart fur. Each, in its side, wore the sign of the looped binding fiber. "Now," said Thimble, "the boots." In cold weather a layer of grass, for warmth, for insulation, changed daily, is placed in the bottom of the boots, between the inside sole of the boot and the foot of the stocking. Arlene now, of course, did not bother with this. The best harvests of grass for use in this way occur, naturally at the foot of the bird cliffs. Arlene drew on the high boots. They reached to her crotch. It was a hot crotch, as I had determined, a superb crotch for a slave girl. The fur trim at their top touched the panties. She was stripped from the waist up. Many of the women of the red hunters, too, went about so, inside and outside the tents, in the warmer weather. They of course, being free, did not have leather, like Arlene, or bondage strings, like Thimble and Thistle, at their throats. Similarly, their garments did not bear the slave marks of the looped binding fiber. Such marks, of course, were not necessary, in the north, for determining what Thimble, and Thistle and Arlene were. Even the leather or bondage strings at their throats were not necessary for that purpose. Their white skins alone, as they were females, identified them as slave beasts.

The tiny tabuk which Imnak had dropped remained standing upright.

I took my eyes from Arlene. What a lovely catch she had been!

I had not yet bothered to teach her complete slavery. I was in no hurry. Let her retain for a time a shred of her pride and dignity. I could always rip it from her when I wished, or when she herself should beg me to take it from her.