Slave Girl of Gor by John Norman

confined in cells or kennels, the most complete and inescapable shackle placed upon me would nonetheless be always that delicate, feminine design, that small, lovely flower, resembling a rose, burned into the flesh of my upper left thigh.
    I heard the sounds of the camp about me. The men were near the fire. The roasted meat was being cut. There was conversation. Eta, long-legged and beautiful, was serving the men. I look up at the rich Gorean night, beautiful with bright stars. Turning my head I could see the three moons. I felt the smooth, brittle bark of the white-barked tree beneath my back, on the interior of my thighs, tied as I was. I could smell the roast meat, the vegetation about. I heard insects. I tried to move my ankles and wrists. I could move them very little. I had cried a great deal. My cheeks, tear-stained, felt tight under the salty rivulets which had dried upon them. I wondered what could be my status on this world, now that I had been marked. What could be the nature, on a world such as this, of a girl who wore such a mark on her body?
    Men from about the fire, including my captor, and Eta, too, approached me.
    My captor took my head in his hands, and held it so that I must look up at him. I looked to him for pity. In his eyes there was no pity. I, branded, shuddered in his grasp. "Kajira," said he to me, clearly and simply. "Kajira." Then he released my head. I continued to regard him. "Kajira," he said. I understood that I was to repeat this phrase. "Kajira," I said. I had heard this word several times before on this world. The men who had first come to the rock and chain in the wilderness had used it to me. And, too, there had been the cry of "Kajira canjellne," which had seemed to play some ritualistic role in the fierce contests which had brought me, helpless, into his uncompromising power. "La Kajira," said Eta, indicating herself. She drew up the brief garment she wore, turning to me, exposing her left thigh. It, too, bore a brand. She, too, was truly branded. I now realized that I had seen the mark before, in torchlight and half darkness, yesterday evening, when she had been stripped, hooded and belled, and set as lovely quarry to run for the amusement of the men. I had not even understood it at that time, not well seeing it, as a brand. It had never even entered my mind that it might have been a brand. It had been only a puzzling mark of some sort. I would not have believed, yesterday night, that a woman could have been branded. But now, after my recent experience with the iron, I was prepared to believe the evidence of my senses. Women, on this world, could be branded. Eta and I were, in a profound sense, I realized, now the same; we were both branded women; no longer was I her superior; a mark had been put upon me by a hot iron at the pleasure of men; I was now exactly the same as Eta; whatever she was I, too, I knew, was now that, exactly that, and only that. Her brand, however, was not precisely the same as mine. It was more slender, more vertical, more like a stem with floral, cursive loops, about an inch and a half in height, and a half inch in width; it was, I would later learn, the initial letter in cursive script of the Gorean expression 'Kajira'; my own brand was the "dina"; the dina is a small, lovely, multiply petaled flower, short-stemmed, and blooming in a turf of green leaves, usually on the slopes of hills, in the northern temperate zones of Gor; in its budding, though in few other ways, it resembles a rose; it is an exotic, alien flower; it is also spoken of, in the north, where it grows most frequently, as the slave flower; it was burned into my flesh; in the south, below the Gorean equator, where the flower is much more rare, it is prized more highly; some years ago, it was not even uncommon for lower-caste families in the south to give the name 'Dina' to their daughters; that practice has now largely vanished, with the opening and expansion of greater trade, and cultural