Read Online Captive of Gor by John Norman - Free Book Online Page A

someone would be found, if not here, in the next city, who spoke English,
    who could put me in contact with those from whom I might purchase passage in my
    return to Earth.
    The important thing was that I had been saved, that I was safe.
    I had been rescued.
    I began to find Targo odious.
    Further, I did not care for my wrists being held by the two men, one on each
    side.
    I tried to pull my wrists away, angrily. I could not, of course, free myself.
    I hated men, and their strength.
    Targo himself had now grown more and more irritable.
    “Let me go!” I cried. “Let me go!”
    But I could not free myself.
    Once again Targo tried to speak to me, patiently, slowly. I could tell that he
    was growing furious.
    He was a fool, such a tiresome fool. They were all fools. None of them seemed to
    understand English. One, at least, of the men on the black ship had spoken
    English. I had heard him converse with the large man. There must be many, then,
    on this world, many!
    I was tired of Targo.
    “I do not understand you,” I told him, sounding out each word, with great
    contempt and coldness. Then I looked away, loftily. I had put him in his place.
    He said something to a subordinate.
    Instantly I was stripped before him.
    I screamed. The girls at the wagon tongue laughed.
    “Kajira!” cried one of the men, pointing at my thigh.
    Every inch of me blushed red.
    (pg. 53) “Kajira!” laughed Targo. “Kajira!” laughed the others. I heard the
    girls at the wagon tongue laughing, and clapping their hands.
    Tears were running out of Targo’s eyes, tiny in the fat of his face.
    Then, suddenly, he seemed angry.
    He spoke again, sharply.
    I was thrown forward on my face and stomach on the grass. The two men who had
    been holding my wrists continued to do so, but they held them apart and over my
    head, pressed down to the grass. Two other men came and held my ankles apart,
    they, too, pressed down to the grass.
    “Lana!” cried Targo.
    One of the other men went to the wagon tongue. I could not see what he did
    there. But I heard a girl laugh. In a moment she had left the wagon tongue and
    was standing somewhere behind me.
    I had been a spoiled, pampered child. The governesses and nurses who had raised
    me had scolded me, and frequently, but they had never struck me. They would have
    been dismissed immediately. In all my life I could not remember ever having been
    struck.
    Then I was whipped.
    The girl struck, with her small fierce strength, again and again, over and over,
    viscously, fiercely, as hard as she could, again and again. I cried out, and
    screamed and sobbed, and struggled. The handful of slender leather straps was
    merciless. I bit at the grass. I could not breathe. I could not see for tears.
    Again and again! “Please stop!” I cried. But then I could cry out no longer.
    There was only the grass and the tears and the pain of the straps, striking
    again and again.
    I suppose the beating lasted normally for only a few seconds, surely not for
    more than a minute.
    Targo said something to the girl, Lana, and the stinging rain of leather
    stopped.
    The two men at my ankles released them. The two men who held my wrists pulled me
    up to my knees. I must have (pg. 54) been in shock. I could not focus my eyes. I
    heard the girls laughing at the wagon tongue. I threw up on the grass. The men
    pulled me away from where I had vomited and another, from behind, holding my
    hair, pushed my face down to the ground, to the clean grass, and, turning my
    head, wiped the vomit from my mouth and chin.
    Then I was pulled again up and placed, on my knees, the men holding my wrists,
    before Targo.
    I looked up at him.
    I saw that he now held my clothing in one hand. I scarcely recognized it. He was
    looking down at me. In his other hand I saw, dangling, the handful of straps
    with which I had been beaten. The girl was now being returned by one of the men
    to her position at the wagon tongue. The entire back of my body, my legs, my
    arms, my