02 - OUTLAW OF GOR
 

KNEEL, KNELT, KNEELING:
 

Thorn's hands would allow me to rise no further. I knelt, yoked, before the Tatrix of Tharna.

Pag. 11

 

Then, to the festive music of flutes and drums, the girl kneels. The young man approaches her, bearing a slave collar, its engraving proclaiming his name and city. The music grows more intense, mounting to an overpowering, barbaric crescendo, which stops suddenly, abruptly. The room is silent, absolutely silent, except for the decisive click of the collar lock.

It is a sound the girl will never forget.

Pag. 37

 

At the end of her dance, she is given a cup of wine, but she may not drink.
She approaches the young man and kneels before him, her knees in the dictated position of the Pleasure Slave, and, head down, she proffers the wine to him. He drinks. There is another general shout of commendation and well wishing, and the feast begins, for none before the young man may touch food on such occasions. From that moment on, the young man's sisters never again serve him, for that is the girl's task. She is his slave.

Pag. 38

 

'Am I beautiful?' she asked.
'Yes,' I said, 'you are beautiful.'

Deliberately, with both hands, she slipped her garment some inches down her shoulders, fully revealing her white throat. It was bare, not encircled by one of the slender, graceful slave collars of Gor. She was free. 

'Do you wish me to kneel to be collared?' she asked.
'No,' I said.
'Do you wish to see me fully?' she asked.

'No,' I said.

'I have never been owned before,' she said. 'I do not know how to act, or
what to do - save only that I know I must do whatever you wish.'

Pag. 40

 

I wondered what sort of woman was the Tatrix of Tharna, what lay concealed behind that mask of gold. For a moment I felt sorry for the golden creature before whose throne I knelt.

Pag. 77

 

Shaking with fury she stood before me, over me, in her golden robes and mask. 'Give me the whip!' she cried. 'Give it to me!' The man with the wrist straps hastily knelt before her, lifting it to her hands. She snapped it cruelly in the air, and its report was sharp and vicious.

Pag. 78

 

'Kneel to the Tatrix of Tharna,' repeated the imperious voice. Our fellow prisoners knelt. Only Andreas and I remained standing.

'Why do you not kneel?' I asked. 

'Do you think that only warriors are brave?'  he asked.

Suddenly he was struck from behind, brutally in the back by the butt of a spear, and, with a groan he sank downwards. The spear struck me, too, again and again, in the back and across the shoulders, but I stood, somehow strong in the yoke, like an ox. Then with a harsh crack a lash suddenly struck my legs and curled about them like a fiery snake. My legs were jerked from beneath me and I fell heavily in the sand.

I looked about myself.

As I had expected I and my fellow prisoners knelt in the sands of an arena.

Pag. 86

 

There were cries of impatience from the stands, shrill, female voices oddly contrasting with the placidity of the silver masks. All eyes seemed turned to one section of the stands, that before which we knelt, a section that gleamed with gold.

[…]

Then, to my astonishment, the men of Tharna who were yoked in the arena, kneeling, rejected by their city, condemned, chanted a strange paean. Andreas and I, not being of Tharna, were alone silent, and I would guess he was as surprised as I.

Pag. 87

 

It was customary on Gor for a female captive to kneel in the presence of her captor, but she was, after all, a Tatrix, and I did not wish to enforce the point.

Pag. 107

 

The warrior whose arm had been broken knelt on the marble flooring of the pillar, bent over, rocking back and forth, the injured arm held against his body. His fellow stood near me, among the tarns, perhaps to watch me, perhaps to steady and soothe the excitable giants.

Pag. 119

 

Chained as I was I could not get to the grating. I cursed.

Then it seemed that Andreas and the slave grew beneath my feet. Other slaves knelt beneath them, giving their backs that the two might rise higher. Standing side by side they lifted me higher into the shaft.

My shackled wrists seized the grating. 'I have it,' I cried. 'Drag me down!'

Pag. 131

 

She was a blond girl with golden hair that fell behind her to the small of her back.  Her eyes were blue. She was of dazzling beauty. She trembled like a frantic animal. She knelt, her back against a slender, white birchlike tree to which she was chained naked. Her hands were joined over her head and behind the tree by slave bracelets. Her ankles were similarly fastened by a short slave chain which encircled the tree.

Pag. 151

 

He clapped his hands sharply twice, and there was a scurrying and tumbling of bodies and the sound of the long chain slipping through the ankle rings.
The girls now knelt, each in the position of the Pleasure Slave, in their camisks on the grass, in a line between the two trees to which their chain was fastened. As I passed each she boldly raised her eyes to mine and said,
'Buy Me, Master'.

Pag. 159

 

Targo seemed relieved. Clutching me by the elbow, he guided me back to the tree where the blond girl knelt chained.

Pag. 160

 

'First,' she said, 'you will use me, will you not?' 'No,' I said.

Then she knelt at my feet and put her head to the rug, throwing her hair over her head, exposing her neck.

'Strike,' she said.
I lifted her to her feet.

Pag. 162

 

She picked up the two yellow cords and, holding them in her hands, knelt before me in the position of the Pleasure Slave.

'I am going to free you,' I said.

Humbly she held the cords up for me to accept, her eyes bright, entreating, raised to mine.

'I am not of Tharna,' I said.
'But I am,' she said.
I saw that she knelt upon a scarlet rug. 'I am going to free you,' I said.
'I am not yet free,' she said.
I was silent.

Pag. 172

 

Most of the silver masks however, when it was understood their battle had been lost and the laws of Tharna were irrevocably shattered came of their own free will into the streets and submitted themselves in the traditional fashion of the captive Gorean female, kneeling, lowering the head, and lifting and raising the arms, wrists crossed for binding.

Pag. 205

 

 

STAND, STANDING, STOOD, LIFT/ED, RISE, RISED, RISEN:
 

The restraining slave bracelets are removed. She rises. Her feet are bare on the thick, ornately wrought rug that carpets the chamber. There is a slight sound from the bells strapped to her ankles. She is angry, defiant.

Though she is clad only in the almost transparent scarlet dancing silks of Gor, her back is straight, her head high. She is determined not to be tamed, not to submit, and her proud carriage bespeaks this fact. The spectators seem amused. She glares at them. Angrily she looks from face to face. There is no one she knows, or could know, because she has been taken from a hostile city, she is a woman of the enemy. Fists clenched, she stands in the centre of the room, all eyes upon her, beautiful in the light of the hanging lamps.

She faces the young man, wearing his collar. 'You will never tame me!' she cries.

Her outburst provokes laughter, skeptical observations, some good- natured
hooting.

Pag. 37

 

'Ko-ro-ba,' I said.

The effect was electric. The girl, who had been standing behind us, stifled a scream. Thorn and his warrior sprang to their feet. My sword was free of its sheath.

'Returned from the Cities of Dust,' gasped the warrior. 'No,' I said, 'I am a living man, as you.'

'Better you had gone to the Cities of Dust,' said Thorn. 'You are cursed by the Priest-Kings.'

I looked at the girl.

'Your name is the most hated on Gor,' she said, her voice flat, her eyes not meeting mine.

We four stood together, not speaking. It seemed a long time. I felt the grass on my ankles, still wet from the morning dew. I heard a bird cry in the distance.

Thorn shrugged.
'I will need time,' he said, 'to bury my man.'

Silently, Thorn and the other warrior scooped out a narrow trench and buried their comrade. Then wrapping a cloak about two spears, and fastening it with binding fibre, they formed an improvised litter. On this, Thorn and his warrior placed the wounded companion.

Thorn looked at the girl and, to my astonishment, she approached him and
extended her wrists. He snapped slave bracelets on them.

'You do not need to go with them,' I told her.
'I would bring you no pleasure,' she said bitterly.
'I will free you,' I said.
'I accept nothing from the hands of Tarl of Ko-ro-ba,' she said.

Pag. 45

When the girl had been unchained I lifted her in my arms and carried her into one of the domed tents that had been indicated to me.

[…]

'Strike,' she said.
I lifted her to her feet.
'Didn't you buy me to destroy me?' she asked, bewildered.

Pag. 162

 

'Why did you buy me?' she asked. 'Surely you wish to exact your vengeance?
Have you forgotten it was I who put you in a yoke, who whipped you, who condemned you to the Amusements, who would have given you to the tarn? That
it was I who betrayed you and sent you to the mines of Tharna?'

'No,' I said, my eyes hard. 'I have not forgotten.'

'Nor have I,' she said proudly, making it clear that she would ask me for
nothing, and expect nothing of me, not even her life.

She stood bravely before me, yet so helpless, so much at my mercy. She might have stood thus before a larl in the Voltai.

Pag. 163

 

I smiled and looked on Lara.
The girl had risen to her feet.

To my surprise she went to the tent flaps and closed them, tying them shut on the inside.

Pag. 171

​

Lady Leh