Ring, Girl, Whip

based on Gorean fiction by John Norman

The girl sagged sobbing in her chains.

Her bark-cloth skirt had been torn from her and stuffed into her mouth as a gag. She was naked but for her belt collar and brands. Her formerly long and glossy brown hair had been crudely sheared short to her scalp. Her sweaty body trembled against the dance pole.

All of the household vijakazi, slavegirls, were assembled in the Great Hall, of Mfalme Mwindu's residence, in a wide circle around the dance-pit to witness the punishment.

The Mfalme, Ubar of the Ancient City Of Ruins, lord of all he surveyed, turned from the girl and swept the circle of slaves with a hard and pitiless gaze. Without warning, he thrust up his arm above his head, a ring held between thumb and forefinger.

"Theft," he say, "is unacceptable in this City. Unacceptable among the Free, infinitely more so among the collared."

The Mfalme's deep voice, intentionally projected, rolled easily to every corner of the huge room. Every slavegirl's eyes were averted, most trembling as badly as the chained girl. Mwindu saw the exotic passion-girl Mai, his mwanzo kijakazi, first girl, sitting on her mat about five feet away from him. Rare is the pleasure or passion-girl in a wealthy household who does not wear a cosmetic of some kind to emphasize certain features, certainly it was true of the vijakazi in the residence. Their masters, the workers and askaris of the great house, liked their girls at their very best possible. Even the kettle girls, lowest of the slave hierarchy, were allowed make-up in the Ubar's household. Mai never wore cosmetics. She didn't have to. Careful breeding had rendered the copper-skinned girl a natural radiant beauty. Even her black on black almond eyes were exaggerated purely by Nature. The Mfalme had killed because of her, twice, both Free men. She was his openly known love-slave. She was the only kajira within the circle with him, aside from the unfortunate slut chained to the turwood pillar.

He could conjecture what the exotic dancer was thinking. It wasn't a difficult guess, after all, the first-girl had expressed them only minutes ago before he and she had come downstairs to the hall. He'd been drinking bitter tea from a stone cup in his reception room when Mai had begged permission to speak. Then she had begged for mercy for the condemned girl, on account that it was Mai's own fault as first-girl that the theft had occurred at all. As the slave-mistress of the household she should have prevented the crime. If anyone should be pusnished, it was her.

While Mwindu appreciated the girl's ethics, and kajirae most certainly have them, he disagreed with her conclusions. The punishment would go forth.

"This ring, nothing more than a band of steel, is practically worthless. Bina. But it didn't belong to her." And he pointed at the manacled slave. "In truth, it doesn't belong to the girl she stole it from, her Home chain-sister. It belongs to the master of the chain-sister who let her keep it as long as it pleased him. It is property, as this wretched slut is property. As all of you are property."

Again he swept the circle with a raptor's glance, letting the elemental truth of his words sink in. "The only difference between this ring and you all is that this ring doesn't feel pain. This ring doesn't bleed."

He unclipped the coiled whip from his belt, let the five lashes of the kurt unfurl and pat down to the hard tiles of the floor. The girl, looking fearfully back over her shoulder shook her head and mumbled a plea through her gag. Her soulful gray eyes were pink from crying and wide with fear. She was a curvecous slut with a pretty smile. Mwindu had seen her dance many times, on the upriver voyage on the Ua aboard a galley and in the very sands where she was now chained to a slave-ring in the post. She was a good dancer.

His sight moved from her and he looked out the row of long wide windows of the hall, all of the big rectangles protected by arabesque lattice. Through the decorative steel grills he could see both a portion of the ruins and the Forest to the south. Blue sky, white and gray cloud. It was beautiful in the Upland country of the Jungle, even a few degrees cooler than the lowlands, if a bit wetter. It was the only Inlander settlement so deep in the wilderness. And he was responsible for its welfare, for its success. The launching of the re-settlement of the Ancient City, Mji Bomoko, had been a generation in the making. He was determined that it succeed. The ten thousand souls under his protection depended on him to uphold the law. And even a ubar must obey the laws of the city he rules over.

"This ring, he growled, "doesn't care if its whipped."

With that, he tossed the trinket to the little one from whom it was stolen. The girl, called Limp by everyone, due to a partially crippled leg, caught it and quickly put it on the floor by her knee, as if it were too hot to keep. She was Mai's closet friend and second-girl of the house. The ubar turned his attention back to the restrained falarina. "This is the portion of a thief," he said.

He brought back his arm, the long and pronounced muscles springing into tension beneath his dark brown skin, the bicep bulging, then the arm coming back around and the black lashes of the kurt dancing through the air, before smacking against the unprotected skin of the slave.

Of course she screamed. Of course she did. A Human can no more take the lash in silence than they can thrust their hand in fire without extreme comment. The girl screamed into her balled up skirt. Her feet danced a quick jig of pain in the sands. And she lost her water. The urine sheeting down her thighs, then clumping the sands. Her tanned back was now slashed with five livid red welts. Even robbed of its raw edge, her whimpers were pitious through the gag.

The ubar stood unmoved.

One kiss of the slave-whip is really enough to drive home the point, enough of a punishment for minor theft. But the girl wasn't being whipped solely to teach her the errors of her ways. The household kajirae were there to learn a lesson as well. He raised the whip once more and slashed out again, pulling the strike, not wishing to actually flay the girl down to her muscles and backbones. For purposes of practical demostration, the puckered welts would do. There were now ten decorating her. Again the muffled scream. Again a release of water, the smell of it strong now in the humid Hall.

Slowly, he recoiled the whip, securing it once more to his belt. He looked around the circle of vijakazi. He saw the lowered heads, the trembling shoulders, the lovely faces crumbled ugly in silent sobs.

"This wretch will stay chained here until nightfall. At which time she will be released, her wounds cleaned and dressed. Her face will then be branded with the mark of thief and she will forever after be a field-slut until the day she dies. Anyone giving her drink, food, or aid of any sort, before the fall of night will share her fate.

"So let it be written," he finished in a soft tone. "So let it be done." Then he strode from the room, his sandal-leather smacking hard against the aged tiles.

Mai knelt, trembling, weeping with the rest of the assembled vijakazi. She would have nightmares for years hearing the screams and seeing the terrified expression of the disgraced kajira as the whip lashed out at her. She would never forget the crack of the tails as they hit too soft flesh. The girls cried for their lost sister, slumped in her chains against the post. There was nothing more they were allowed to do.

The afternoon passed into evening while the House of Mwindu wept.