Panther Girls

“Some call them the forest girls,” said Ute. “Others call them the panther girls, for they dress themselves in the teeth and skins of forest panthers, which they slay with their spears and bows.”
Captive of Gor pgs: 82 

These were forest girls, sometimes called panther girls, who lived wild and free in the northern forests, outlaw women, sometimes enslaving men, when it pleased them to do so.
Captive of Gor pgs: 118

The men shouted. Women cursed, and screamed their hatred of the panther girls. Children cried out and pelted them with pebbles. Slave girls in the crowd rushed forward to surge about the carts, to poke at them with sticks, strike them with switches and spit upon them.
Captive of Gor pgs: 213

I was not interested in the purchase of men, but I was interested in whatever information I might be able to gather from panther girls. And these girls were free. Who knew what they might know?
“Wine, Slave,” said Sheera.
“Yes, Mistress,” whispered Cara, and filled her cup.
Sheera regarded her with contempt. Head down, Cara crept back.
Panther girls are arrogant. They live by themselves in the northern forests, by hunting, and slaving and outlawry. They have little respect for anyone, or anything, saving themselves and, undeniably, the beasts they hunt, the tawny forest panthers, the swift, sinuous sleen.
Hunters of Gor pgs: 28

Panther girls are arrogant. They live by themselves in the northern forests, by hunting, and slaving and outlawry.
They have little respect for anyone, or anything, saving themselves and, undeniably, the beasts they hunt, the tawny forest panthers, the swift, sinuous sleen.
I can understand why it is that such women hate men, but it is less clear to me why they hold such enmity to women. Indeed, they accord more respect to men, who hunt them, and whom they hunt, as worthy foes, than they do to women other than themselves....It is said that panther girls, conquered, make incredible slaves.
Hunters of Gor pgs: 28-29

Each band of panther girls customarily has a semi-permanent camp, particularly in the winter, but, too, each band, customarily, has its dancing circle.
Hunters of Gor pgs: 30

"A steel knife for each," I proposed to Sheera, "and twenty arrow points, of steel, for each."
"Forty arrow points for each, and the knives," said Sheera, cutting at the sand.
I could see she did not much want to conduct these negotiations. Her heart was not in the bargaining. She was angry.
"Very well," I said.
"And a stone of candies," she said, looking up, suddenly.
"Very well," I said.
"For each!" she demanded.
"Very well," I said.
She slapped her knees and laughed. The girls seemed delighted. There was little sugar in the forest, save naturally in certain berries, and simple hard candies, such as a child might buy in shops in Ar, or Ko-ro-ba, were, among the panther girls in the remote forests, prized. It was not unknown that among the bands in the forests, a male might be sold for as little as a handful of such candies. When dealing with men, however, the girls usually demanded, and received, goods of greater value to them, usually knives, arrow points, small spear points; sometimes armlets, and bracelets and necklaces, and mirrors; sometimes slave nets and slave traps, to aid in their hunting; sometimes slave chains, and manacles, to secure their catches.
Hunters of Gor pgs: 31

There was another sound from beyond the perimeter. I saw something white move in the darkness, stumbling between two panther girls.
A panther girl holding each arm, she was thrust into the camp. She was still braceleted, of course, but now her hands in the bracelets, with binding fiber, had been tied close to her belly. Her brief white garment had been torn to her waist. The fillet was gone from her hair. Sheera was thrust forward and forced to her knees, head down, by the fire. She had been much switched.
"We encountered this strayed slave," said the girl.
"She is mine," I said.
"Do you know who she was?" asked the girl.
I shrugged. "A slave," I said.
There was laughter from the girls beyond the perimeter, in the darkness. Sheera lowered her head still more.
"She was once a panther girl," said the girl. "She was once Sheera, the panther girl."
"Oh," I said.
The girl laughed. "She was a great rival to Verna. Verna now takes pleasure in returning her to you." The girl looked at Sheera. "You wear a collar well, Sheera," said she.
Sheera looked at her, her eyes glazed with pain.
Hunters of Gor pgs: 88-89

There is a Gorean saying that free women, raised gently in the high cylinders, in their robes of concealment, unarmed, untrained in weapons, may, by the slaver, be plucked like flowers.
There is no such saying pertaining to panther girls.
Hunters of Gor pgs: 118

She looked down at me, and laughed. "Any panther girl," she said, "who falls to men deserves the collar." She fingered the hilt of the knife. "There is a saying among panther girls," she said, "that say any girl who permits herself to fall to men desires in her heart to be their slave."
Hunters of Gor pgs: 133

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 pgs: 138

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 pgs: 197

Slave girls, many of whom have been forced to yield themselves totally to a man, are an object of hatred to panther girls. They represent what the panther girl most fears and hates, her sex.
Hunters of Gor pgs: 201

Some girls attempt to flee to the greenwood forests of the north. In such forests, in certain territories, there roam bands of free women, the lithe, ferocious Panther Girls of Gor, but these despise and hate women not of their own fierce ilk; in particular do they revile and hold in contempt girls, beauties, who have been slaves to men; should such a girl, fleeing enter the cool vastness of their green domain, she is commonly hunted down like a tabuk doe and cruelly captured; the forests are not for such as she; she is tethered and bound, and often lashed, then driven by switches helplessly to the shores of Thassa or the banks of the Laurius, and then sold back to men, usually for weapons or candy.
Slave Girl of Gor pgs: 98