Beasts of Gor Read Online Free PDF

held her. She threw her head back, moaning, sensing the ring on her throat. “No, no!” she wept. “I do not want to be a woman on Gor! Anything but a woman on Gor!”
    I shrugged.
    “You are joking,” she said, wildly.
    “No,” I said.
    “What language is it here which they speak?” she asked.
    I smiled.
    “Gorean,” she said.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “And I must learn it quickly?” she said.
    “Yes,” I said. “You must learn it quickly, or be slain. Gorean men are not patient”
    “—Gorean,” she said.
    “It is the language of your masters,” I said.
    “—Of my masters?” she asked.
    “Yes,” I said. “Surely you know that you are a slave girl.”
    “No!” she cried. “No! No! No! No!”
    “Take her away,” said Samos.
    The girl was dragged, screaming and sobbing, from our presence, to the pens.
    How feminine she seemed then. No longer did she seem an imitation male. She was then only what she was, a slave girl being taken to the pens.
    Samos, thoughtfully, began to unwind the long ribbon, that which the girl had worn, and which formed the scytale, from the spear’s shaft.
    We heard her screaming down the corridor, and then she cried out in pain, and was silent. The guards, wearied by her outcries, had simply cuffed her to silence. Sometimes a girl is permitted to scream. Sometimes she is not It depends on the will of the man. When she is branded a girl is commonly permitted to scream, at least for a time. But we would not hear that screaming, for, when it was done, she would be below, and far away, in the pens.
    I dismissed her from my mind, for she was a slave. Her history as a free woman had terminated; her history as an imbonded beauty had begun.
    Samos, the ribbon freed from the spear’s shaft, the spear retrieved by the guardsman, looked down at the table, at the ribbon, which now seemed only a ribbon, with meaningless marks.
    “Greetings to Tarl Cabot,” I said, recalling the message. “I await you at the world’s end. Zarendargar. War General of the People.”
    “Arrogant beasts,” he said.
    I shrugged.
    “We had no clue,” he said. “Now we have this.” He lifted the ribbon, angrily. “Here is an explicit message.”
    “It seems so,” I said.
    We did not know where lay the world’s end, but we knew where It must be sought. The world’s end was said to lie beyond Cos and Tyros, at the end of Thassa, at the world’s edge. No man had sailed to the world’s end and returned. It was not known what had occurred there. Some said that Thassa was endless, and there was no world’s end, only the green waters extending forever, gleaming, beckoning the mariner and hero onward, onward until men, one by one, had perished and the lonely ships, their steering oars lashed in place, pursued the voyage in silence, until the timbers rotted and one day, perhaps centuries later, the brave wood, warm in the sun, sank beneath the sea.
    “The ship is ready,” said Samos, looking at me.
    Others said, in stories reminiscent of Earth, and which had doubtless there had their origin, that the world’s end was protected by clashing rocks and monsters, and by mountains that could pull the nails from ships. Others said, similarly, that the end of the world was sheer, and that a ship might there plunge over the edge, to fall tumbling for days through emptiness until fierce winds broke it apart and the wreckage was lifted up to the bottom of the sea. In the maelstroms south and west of Tyros shattered planking was sometimes found. It was said that some of this was from ships which had sought the world’s end.
    “The ship is ready,” said Samos, looking at me.
    A ship had been prepared, set to sail to the world’s end. It had been built by Tersites, the half-blind, mad shipwright, long scorned on Gor. Samos regarded him a genius. I knew him for a madman; whether he might be, too, a genius, I did not know. It was an unusual ship. It was deep-keeled and square-rigged, as most Gorean ships are