Read Raiders of Gor for Free Online Page B

and in my worthless heart it so sickened me tha tI did not
    much care now whetehr I lived or died. I did not even much care that I might
    spend the rest of my life as an abject slave, abused on a rence island, the
    sport of a girl or children, the butt of cruelty and jests of men. Such,
    doubtless, was deserved. How could I face free men again, when in my own heart I
    could not even face myself?
    It was hot, and the coils of marsh vine around my throat were hot. Beneath the
    coils my neck was red, and slippery with sweat and dirt. I put my finger in the
    collar, to pull it a bit from my throat.
    “Do not touch your collar,” she said.
    I removed my hand from the collar.
    “There, cut there,” said she, and again I cut rence for my mistress.
    “It is hot,” she said.
    I turned.
    She had loosened the cord that laced the tunic, refastening it more loosely. In
    the narrow innuendo of the slightly parted tunic I sensed her perfection.
    She laughed. “Cut rence, Slave.”
    Again I turned to my work.
    “You are pretty in your collar,” she said.
    I did not turn to face her. It was the sort of remark one would address to a
    slave girl, a simple, comely wench in bondage. The rence knife flashed through a
    stem and then I cut the tufted, flowered head, it falling in the water, and
    threw the stem on the rence craft, with the numerous others.
    “If you remove your collar,” she said, “you will be destroyed.”
    I said nothing.
    “Do you understand?” she asked.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Mistress,” said she.
    “Yes,” I said, “I understand, Mistress.”
    “Good,” said she, “Pretty Slave.”
    The rence knife flashed through another stem, and I cut away the flowered,
    tufted head, and threw the stem in the piles on the raft.
    “Pretty Slave,” she repeated.
    I shook with fury. “Please,” said I, “do not speak to me.”
    “I shall speak to you as I wish,” said she, “Pretty Slave.”
    I trembled with fury, the rence knife in my hand. I shook with humiliation, with
    the degradation of her scorn. I considered turning upon her and seizing her.
    “Cut rence,” said she, “Pretty Slave.”
    I turned again to the rence, trembling with fury, with shame, and again, stem by
    stem, began to cut.
    I heard her laughter behind me.
    Stem by steim, and pile by pile, the time was marked in strokes of rence.
    The sun was low now and insects moved in the sedge. The water glistened in the
    dusk, moving in small bright circles about the stems of rushes.
    Neither of us had spoken for a long time.
    “May I speak?” I asked.
    “Yes,” she said.
    “How is it,” I asked, “that so many of the rence islands are now gathered
    together?” I had wondered abut this.
    “It is near the festival of Se’Kara,” said she.
    Indeed, I knew that tomorrow was festival for the rence islands.
    “But so many?” I asked. “Surely that is unusual?”
    “You are curious for a slave,” she said. “Curiosity is not always becoming in a
    slave.”
    I said nothing.
    “Ho-Hak,” said she, “has called the nearby islands to a council.”
    “How many are there?” I asked.
    “Five,” said she, “in the general area. There are others, of course, elsewhere
    in the delta.”
    “What is the purpose of the council?” I asked.
    She would feel free to speak to me. I was confined by the marsh, and only slave.
    “He thinks to unite the rence growers,” said she, a certain amused skepticism in
    her voice.
    “For purposes of trade?” I asked.
    “In a way,” she said. “It would be useful to have similar standards for rence
    paper, to sometimes harvest in common, to sometimes, in times of need, share
    crops, and, of course, to obtain a better price for our paper than we might if
    we might if we bargained as isolated islands with the rence merchants.”
    “Those of Port Kar,” I said, “would doubtless not be pleased by such news.”
    She laughed. “Doubtless not,” said she.
    “Perhaps also,” I suggested, “in uniting the