(as performed in Nomads of Gor)
The figure of the woman, swathed in black, heavily veiled,
descended the steps of the slave wagon. Once at the foot of the stairs she
stopped and stood for a long moment. Then the musicians began, the hand-drums
first, a rhythm of heartbeat and flight.
To the music, beautifully, it seemed the frightened figure ran
first here and then there, occasionally avoiding imaginary objects or throwing
up her arms, ran as though through the crowds of a burning city-alone, yet
somehow suggesting the presence about her of hunted others..
Now, in the background, scarcely to be seen, was the figure of a
warrior in scarlet cape. He, too, in his way, though hardly seeming to move,
approached, and it seemed that wherever the girl might flee there was found the
warrior. And then at last his hand was upon her shoulder and she threw back her
head and lifted her hands and it seemed her entire body was wretchedness and
despair. He turned the figure to him and, with both hands, brushed away hood and
veil..
There was a cry of delight from the crowd..
The girl's face was fixed in the dancer's stylized moan of
terror, but she was beautiful. I had seen her before, of course, as had Kamchak,
but it was startling still to see her thus in the firelight-her hair was long
and silken black, her eyes dark, the color of her skin tannish..
She seemed to plead with the warrior but he did not move. She
seemed to writhe in misery and try to escape his grip but she did not..
Then he removed his hands from her shoulders and, as the crowd
cried out, she sank in abject misery at his feet and performed the ceremony of
submission, kneeling, lowering the head and lifting and extending the arms,
wrists crossed..
The warrior then turned from her and held out one hand..
Someone from the darkness threw him, coiled, the chain and
collar..
He gestured for the woman to rise and she did so and stood
before him, head lowered..
He pushed up her head and then, with a click that could be heard
throughout the enclosure, closed the collar.....a Turian collar.....about her
throat. The chain to which the collar was attached was a good deal longer than
that of the Sirik, containing perhaps twenty feet of length..
Then, to the music, the girl seemed to twist and turn and move
away from him, as he played out the chain, until she stood wretched some twenty
feet from him at the chain's length. She did not move then for a moment, but
stood crouched down, her hands on the chain.
I saw that Aphris and Elizabeth were watching fascinated. Kamchak, too, would
not take his eyes from the woman.
The music had stopped.
Then with a suddenness that almost made me jump and the crowd cry out with
delight the music began again but this time as a barbaric cry of rebellion and
rage and the wench from Port Kar was suddenly a chained she-larl biting and
tearing at the chain and she had cast her black robes from her and stood savage
revealed in diaphanous, swirling yellow Pleasure Silk. There was now a frenzy
and hatred in the dance, a fury even to the baring of teeth and snarling. She
turned within the collar, as the Turian collar is designed to permit. She
circled the warrior like a captive moon to his imprisoning scarlet sun, always
at the length of the chain. Then he would take up a fist of chain, drawing her
each time inches closer. At times he would permit her to draw back again, but
never to the full length of the chain, and each time he permitted her to
withdraw, it was less than the last. The dance consists of serveral phases,
depending on the general orbit allowed the girl by the chain. Certain of these
phases are very slow, in which there is almost no movement, save perhaps the
turning of a head or the movement of a hand; others are defiant and swift; some
are graceful and pleading; each time, as the common thread, she is drawn closer
to the caped warrior. At last his fist was within the Turian collar itself and
he drew the girl, piteous and exhausted, to his lips, subduing her with his
kiss, and then her arms were about his neck and unresisting, obedient, her head
to his chest, she was lifted lightly in his arms and carried from the firelight.
Nomads of Gor, page 153
