  
Stalking Dance of the Panther Girls
Then, about me, the panther girls, circling, swaying, began a slow stalking
dance, as of hunters.
I lay in the center of the circle.
Their movements were slow, and incredibly beautiful. Then suddenly one would
cry out and thrust at me with her spear. But the spear was not thrust into my
body. Its point would stop before it had administered its wound. Many of the
blows would have been mortal. But many thrusts were only to my eyes, or arms and
legs. Every bit of me began to feel exposed, threatened.
I was their catch.
Then the dance became progressively swifter and wilder, and the feigned blows
became more frequent, and then, suddenly, with a wild cry, the swirling throng
about me stood for an instant stock still, and then with a cry, each spear
thrust down savagely toward my heart.
I cried out.
None of the spears had struck me.
The girls cast aside the spears. Then, like feeding she-panthers they knelt
about me, each one, with her hands and tongue, touching and kissing me.
I cried out with anguish.
I knew I could not long resist them.
Hunters of Gor, page 138
Dance of the Panther Girl
There was a long silence, of some Ihn, and then, at a nod from Hura, who
threw her long black hair back and lifted her head to the moons, the drum began
again its beat. Mira's head was down, and shaking. Her right foot was stamping.
The panther girls put down their heads. I saw their fists begin to clench and
unclench. They stood, scarcely moving, but I could sense the movement of the
drum in their blood.
The men of Tyros glanced to one another.
It was few free men who had ever looked, unbound, on the rites of panther
girls.
Hura's eyes were on the moons. She lifted her hands, fingers like claws, and
screamed her need.
The girls then, following her, began to dance...
How starved must be the lonely, hating panther women of the forests, so gross
is their hostility, so fierce their hatred, and yet need, of men. They twisted,
screaming now, clawing at the moons. I would scarcely have guessed at the
primitive hungers evident in each movement of those barbaric, feline bodies.
They would be masters of men. Proud, magnificent creatures. And yet by biology,
by their beauty, by their aroused inwardness, could not, in fact, own but only,
in their true fulfillment, belong, be taken, be conquered....
The drum was now very heady, swift. The dance of the panther girls became
more wild, more frenzied. Vicious, sinuous, clawing, lithe, these savage
beauties, in their skins and gold, with their knives, their light spears,
weapons darting, danced. They were terrible, and beautiful, in the streaming,
flooding light of the looming, primitive moons of perilous Gor. I could hear
their cries of rage and need, hear their heels striking in the earth, their
hands slapping at their thighs. I saw the teeth of some, white, bared, at the
moons, their eyes blazing. The hair of all was unbound. Several had already,
oblivious of the presence of the men of Tyros, torn away their skins to the
waist, others completely. On some I could hear the movement of the necklaces of
sleen teeth tied about their necks, the shivering and ringing of slender golden
bangles on their tanned ankles. In their dance they danced among the staked-out
bodies of the men of Marlenus, and about the great Ubar himself. Their weapons
leapt at the bound men, but never did the blows fall...
The dance would soon strike its climax. It could continue little longer. The
women would go mad with their need to strike and rape.
Suddenly the drum stopped and Hura stopped, her body bent backward, her head
back, her long black hair falling to the back of her knees.
She was breathing deeply, very deeply. Her body was covered with a sheen of
sweat.
Hunters of Gor, page 197
|
