Nomads of Gor by John Norman Page B

carefully
      wrapped her, shivering and weeping, in the pelt of the red
      larl.
      She lay there, trembling and moaning, surely on the verge
      of hysteria. I was afraid the next phase of her condition
      would be one of numbness, shock, perhaps of refusal to
      believe what had befallen her, madness.
      Kamchak had looked at me. He was genuinely puzzled by
      what he regarded as her unusual emotional reactions. He
      was, of course, aware that no girl, Gorean or otherwise,
      could be expected to take lightly a sudden reduction to an
      abject and complete slavery, particularly considering what
      that would mean among the wagons.
      He did, however, regard Miss Cardwell's responses as
      rather peculiar, and somewhat reprehensible. Once he got up
      and kicked her with his furred boot, telling her to be quiet.
      She did not, of course, understand Gorean, but his intention
      and his impatience were sufficiently clear to preclude the
      necessity of a translation. She stopped moaning, but she
      continued to shiver, and sometimes she sobbed. I saw him
      take a slave whip from the wall and approach her, and then
      turn back and replace it on the wall. I was surprised that he
      had not used it, and wondered why. I was pleased that he
      had not beaten her, for I might have interfered. I tried to
      talk to Kamchak and help him to understand the shock that
      the girl had undergone, the total alteration of her life and
      circumstances, unexplained finding herself alone on the
      prairie, the Tuchuks, the capture, the return to the Wagons,
      her examination in the grassy avenue, the Sirik, the interro-
      gation, the threat of execution, then the fact, difficult for her
      to grasp, of being literally an owned slave girl. I tried to
      explain to Kamchak that her old world had not prepared her
      for these things, for the slaveries of her old world are of a
      different kind, more subtle and invisible, thought by some
      not even to exist.
      Kamchak said nothing, but then he got up and from a
      chest in the wagon he took forth a goblet and filled it with an
      amber fluid, into which he shook a dark, bluish powder. He
      .~.i
    _
     
           62
                            NOMADS OF GOR
           then took Elizabeth Cardwell in his left arm and with his
           right hand gave her the drink. Her eyes were frightened, but
           she drank. In a few moments she was asleep.
           Once or twice that night, to Kamchak's annoyance and my
           own loss of sleep, she screamed, jerking at the chain, but we
           discovered that she had not awakened.
           I supposed that on the morrow Kamchak would call for
           the Tuchuk Iron Master, to brand what he called his little
           barbarian; the brand of the Tuchuk slave, incidentally, is not
           the same as that generally used in the cities. which for girls,
           is the first letter of the expression Kajira in cursive script. but
            the sign of the four bask horns that of the Tuchuk standard;
           the brand of the four bask horns, set in such a manner as to
           somewhat resemble the letter "H." is only about an inch
           high; the common Gorean brand, on the other hand, is
            usually an inch and a half to two inches high; the brand of the
           four bask horns, of course, is also used to mark the bask of
           the Tuchuks, but there, of course, it is much larger, forming
           roughly a six-inch square; following the branding, I supposed
           that Kamchak would have one of the tiny nose rings affixed;
           all Tuchuk females, slave or free, wear such rings; after these
           things there would only remain, of course, an engraved
     
           Turian collar and the clothing of Elizabeth Cardwell Kajir.
           In the morning I