by John Norman
“Oh!” cried the blond girL
A stout fellow, in the garb of the tarn keepers, smelling of the tarn cots, stood looking at her. She pulled back, and shook her head, “No.” Her eyes were frightened.
The stout fellow looked about, and caught the eye of one of the slaver’s men who, seeing him, made his way through the crowds to his side.
“These are new slaves?” asked the tarn keeper.
“Fresh to the collar,” said the slaver’s man.
“I need a wench,” said the man, “one who will cost me little, one to keep in the cots by day, to shovel the excrement of tarns, one to keep in my hut by night, as a pot-and-mat girl.”
“These four wenches,” said the slaver’s man, expansively, indicating the small coffle, “are comely candidates for such a post.” He stepped upon the platform, and crouched upon its surface. “Consider this one,” he said, indicating the blond, who was first upon the chain.
He reached to her tunic.
“Don’t touch me,” she cried, drawing back.
“A barbarian,” said the tam keeper.
“Yes,” said the slaver’s man.
“And the others?” asked the tarn keeper.
“They are all barbarian, Master,” said the slaver’s man.
The dark-haired girl, seeing the tam keeper’s eyes upon her, shrank back.
The tarn keeper turned and walked away. The girls looked at one another, frightened, and knelt back. They seemed relieved. This relief, however, was surely premature. Another slaver’s man joined his colleague at the platform. “We will never sell these,” said the first. “They are raw girls, untrained, inept, clumsy, meaningless sluts. They do not even speak Gorean.”
“Tenalion has no intention of putting them on the main block in the pavilion,” said the second. He had a five-bladed slave whip at his belt.
“It would be a waste of block time,” said the first. “Who would want girls this worthless and ignorant?” he asked. “We shall surely have to transport them back to Ar.”
“Who of Ar would want them?” asked the second man grinning.
“We will have to take them back to Ar,” said the first man.
“We could sell them for sleen feed here,” said the second.
“That is true,” granted the first.
“Attend to the forty through forty-five platforms,” said the second man, who seemed to have greater authority than the first. “I shall stay in this vicinity for the time.”
The other man nodded, and turned away.
The second slaver’s man regarded the four girls, who did not meet his eyes. He wore blue and yellow, a tunic. He wore studded leather wristlets. At his belt hung the whip. The girls now seemed apprehensive. I did not blame them. One in whose charge they were now stood near them. I saw them look at his whip, but there was no real comprehension of it in their eyes. They did not yet understand the whip, or what it might do to them. I gathered they had never been whipped.
“The bids have begun in the pavilion,” I heard.
“Move forward,” said the slaver’s man to the girls, in Gorean. They did not understand his words, but his gesture was clear. Frightened, they, on their knees, crept forward to the edge of the platform. They were now quite near the crowd. Before they had been back about a yard or so on the platform. When a girl is back somewhat it is easier to see her. On the other hand, the proximity of female flesh to the buyer can in itself, of course, be a powerful inducement to her purchase. What man, truly close to a beautiful female, can fail to feel her in his blood, and want to own her?
The slaver, I conjectured, knew his business.
The girls looked at one another, terrified. They were now close to the men.
“Please, don’t!” begged the blond girl. A man in the crowd, passing her, had put his hand on her thigh.
The slaver’s man looked at her, angrily. She looked at him, tears in her eyes. Did he not know what the beast, in passing, had done? He looked away.
What did it matter that someone had touched, even intimately caressed, a woman who was only a slave?
She tried to creep back, but the slaver’s man, seeing this, irritably removed his whip from his belt and, with its coils, indicated the place on the platform where her knees must be. They were placed in such a way as to be a quarter of an inch over the edge of the platform. The other girls, too, made certain their knees were perfectly aligned. The robes of passing men then brushed their knees.
“I would look at this one,” said a leather worker, who stopped before the blond, first on the chain.
She shrank back.
“She is a beauty, isn’t she?” smiled the slaver. “Open her tunic. See what she has to offer you,” he invited.
The leather worker reached toward the girl, but she scrambled back. “Don’t touch me!” she cried. The dark-haired girl cried out with pain, dragged by her collar back, too. She fell twisted, on her side, in the chain.
“I’ll scream,” warned the blond girl.
The leather worker was quite puzzled. “I do not think I am interested,” he said. “Too, this one is a barbarian. She is not broken to the collar.”
“Break her to your collar,” said the slaver’s man.
“I do not want to take the time to break a girl in,” he said.
“Wait, kind sir,” said the slaver. “Wait! See what delights would await you.”
The man hesitated.
“Prodicus!” called the slaver’s man.
In a moment the first slaver’s man, who had gone to supervise the forty through forty-five platforms, those in the two hundreds, joined his colleague.
The second slaver’s man, who carried the whip, which he now uncoiled, unnoticed, I am sure, by the girls, indicated the blond with his head.
The fellow called to the platform scrambled onto it and swiftly knelt the blond before the slaver’s man with the whip and the leather worker. The fellow on the platform then jerked loose the knot at the blond’s right hip, which held the wrap-around tunic closed. “No!” she screamed. He jerked it back, away from her, exposing her. She was very beautiful. It lay behind her, over her chained wrists. He kicked her knees apart. Then he crouched behind her, holding her by the upper arms. She struggled, twisting, on her knees. She began to scream miserably, her head back. She pressed her knees closely together. The slaver’s man with the whip angrily leaped to the platform. He kicked her knees open again. She was sobbing and screaming. Men about laughed. “See, Master?” asked the slaver’s man with the whip, but the leather worker had gone. The slaver’s man glared down, in fury, at the chained blond. Another man in the crowd reached to take the ankle of the dark-haired girl in his hand and she, with a rattle of chain, jerked it away. She looked at him, terrified. “They are all barbarians,” said a man, “all of them.” Puzzled by the reactions of the blond and the dark-haired girl other men in the crowd reached out to touch the last two girls on the chain. One held with his two hands the thighs of the third girl, who had worn the plaid flannel shirt. She screamed in the collar. Another man took the fourth girl, who had worn the beige flannel shirt, under the arms, and pulled her to him. She fought to pull her lips back, that they might not touch his. She struggled in his arms. She screamed. He thrust her back on her side on the platform, and left her. The man who had held the thighs of the third girl, too, released her. There was much laughter in the crowd. She scrambled back in her chains, sobbing. The slaver’s man was furious. He looked from one girl to the other, to the stripped, chained blond, to the cowering dark-haired girl, her neck cut by the collar, from its movement, to the third girl, sobbing and looking up at him, to the fourth girl, lying on her side, her legs drawn up, crying. He gestured to his colleague. This man went to the second girl and jerked back her tunic, and to the third and jerked back her tunic, and to the fourth and jerked back her tunic. Then they lay in their chains, exposed at his feet. Then he put them under the whip.
In moments they writhed at his feet, slave girls, screaming
for mercy.
Tenalion of Ar, the slaver, their master, stood at the edge of the platform. He was not pleased.
“They are worthless,” said the man with the whip, coiling it.
The girls lay on the platform, sobbing. Stripes were on their bodies.
“Take anything for them,” said Tenalion, and turned away.
“Two,” said a voice. “Two. How much?”
It was the fellow from the polar basin, who wore no jacket, but fur trousers and boots, with the bow at his back, and the rawhide rope on his shoulder. In his left hand he carried a bundle of furs, smaller now, than it had been, and a sack, which was now less bulky than it had been when I had seen it earlier near the puppet theater. I remembered he had sold carvings to a corpulent, gross fellow, one whose booth had been set up in the street of the dealers in artifacts and curios. It was not far from the puppet theater.
I moved in more closely, thinking he might have difficulty in communicating with the slaver’s man.
“Those,” said the coppery-skinned fellow, pointing to the blond and the dark-haired girl, freshly whipped, crying in their chains.
“Yes?” asked the slaver’s man.
“Cheap?” asked the man, a red hunter from the bleak countries north even of Ax Glacier.
“These two?” asked the slaver’s man.
The hunter nodded.
The slaver’s man knelt the two stripped girls before the hunter.
They looked at him with fear.
He was a man. They had felt the whip.
“Yes cheap. Very cheap,” said the slaver’s man. “Do you have money?”
The hunter pulled a pelt from the bundle of furs he carried. It was snowy white, and thick, the winter fur of a two-stomached snow larl. It almost seemed to glisten. The slaver’s man appreciated its value. Such a pelt could sell in Ar for half a silver tarsk. He took the pelt and examined it. The snow larl hunts in the sun. The food in the second stomach can be held almost indefinitely. It is filled in the fall and must last the larl through the winter night, which lasts months, the number of months depending on the latitude of his individual territory. It is not a large animal. It is about ten inches high and, weighs between eight and twelve pounds. It is mammalian, and has four legs. It eats bird’s eggs and preys on the leem, a small arctic rodent, some five to ten ounces in weight, which hibernates during the winter.
“Not enough,” said the slaver’s man. The hunter grunted. He had guessed this. I did not think the slaver’s man was out to defraud the hunter. For one thing, the fellow, this far south, probably had some conception of the values of the furs. For another thing the hunters of the north, though a generally kind, peaceable folk, except with animals, think little of killing. They are inured to it. As hunters they live with blood and death.
The hunter drew forth from the bundle of furs two tiny pelts of the leem. These were brown, the summer coats of the animals.
“Look,” said the slaver’s man, gesturing at the two girls, the blond and the dark-haired girl. “Two beauties!”
The hunter drew forth two more pelts of the leem.
“Not enough,” said the slaver’s man.
The hunter grunted and bent down, retying the bundle of furs. He picked up the bundle and began to leave.
“Wait! laughed the slaver’s man. “They are yours!”
The girls reacted. “We have been sold,” whispered the dark-haired girl. I recalled she had worn soft, black, custom-fitted feminine slacks, a soft, delicious, turtle-necked, red pull-over. It had been a beautiful top and had doubtless been quite expensive. I recalled that she had been rich. She was now the naked slave girl of a red hunter.
The slaver’s man put the pelts in a pouch which hung from his belt.
With his right hand he pulled the head of the blond girl down, until it was at her knees. He did the same with the head of the dark-haired girl. They knelt as they had been placed. They had felt the whip.
The slaver then went behind them and freed their ankles from the steel ankle loops. He then unlocked the two-inch-high steel cuffs which had held the hands of the girls behind them. Their platform tunics, loose, he then let fall to the boards of the platform. The hunter, meanwhile, with a knife, bad cut a length from the rope of twisted sleen hide which he wore over his shoulder. He fastened the two girls together by the neck. The slaver then unlocked the slaves’ throat collars and tossed them, with the chain, to the platform.
The two beauties were drawn by the hunter from the platform and they then stood, frightened, tied together by the neck, before it.
The third and fourth girl looked upon these proceedings with unfeigned terror. They knew they themselves could be as easily the objects of so casual a transaction, putting them in the total power of a buyer, their master.
The red hunter, with two short lengths of the leather rope, jerked the hands of the beauties behind them and, swiftly, expertly, fastened them together. The blond-haired girl winced. “Oh,” said the dark-haired girl, suddenly. I saw the hunter had tied women before. They were totally helpless.
The red hunters are generally a kind, peaceable folk, except with animals. Two sorts of beasts are kept in domestication in the north; the first sort of beast is the snow sleen; the second is the white-skinned woman.
“Ho,” said the red hunter, and strode from the platform. The two beasts he had purchased hurried after him.
“Theirs will be a hard slavery,” I said to the slaver’s man.
“They will learn to pull a sled under the whip,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. Such women were used as draft animals. But they would serve, too, as slave girls do, many other purposes.
“Wait until the red women get hold of them,” laughed the slaver’s man.
“They may kill them,” I said.
“They have one ‘chance for life,” he said, “to obey with total perfection.”
“But,” I asked, “is that not every slave girl’s one chance for life?”
“True,” he said. Then he turned and looked at the third and fourth girl.
They looked at him with terror. Beside them, on the platform, were two pairs of opened, empty ankle loops, two pairs of opened, empty wrist cuffs, two opened, empty collars, and some chain, and two platform tunics, discarded.
“I think,” I said, “that these two girls might now be moved back on the platform and have their hands chained before their bodies rather than behind.”
“I think you are right,” he said, chuckling. He climbed to the platform and moved the girls back. He then unlocked the left cuff of the first girl and then recuffed her, this time with her small hands before her body. He did the same with the second. In doing this he had discarded their platform tunics. He then rejoined me before the platform.
They now knelt back on the platform in normal display location, their hands chained before them. They looked at him.
The slaver’s man, with the whip, gestured broadly, expansively, to the passing crowd. He grinned at the girls.
The fourth girl, who had once worn the denim pants and beige flannel shirt, extended her chained hands to the crowd. “Buy me, Masters!” she cried out. “Buy me for your lover and slave. I am beautiful. I will serve you well!” She called out in English, for she knew no Gorean, but there could be little misinterpretation of her intent or of the desperate. piteous nature of her entreaties. “Buy me! Buy me!” she begged.
“I am even more beautiful!” cried the other suddenly. “Buy me instead!”
I saw men gathering about them. The girls redoubled their piteous efforts to please. “Buy me, Master!” cried one. “Buy me, kind masters!” cried the other. They sought the eyes of men in the crowd. I could see they now, though they were barbarian, excited interest. Some men like a barbarian girl. And if a girl is not fully broken to the collar, one can always teach her. There is always the whip.
“How much do you want for them?” asked a man.
“They are not cheap,” said the slaver’s man.<
br />
I smiled to myself and left the area of the platform. They would soon be sold.
I pressed through the crowds.
The sales in the pavillion would already have begun. “Buy these girls! Buy these girls!” I heard, as I made my way between the platforms toward the pavilion. “Buy me, Master!” called a girl, with long dark hair, naked, lying on her side on one of the darkly varnished platforms, her body hail covered with chains bound about her.
“A tarsk bit to enter, Master,” said a slaver’s man at the entrance to the pavilion.
I handed him a tarsk bit from my pouch, and pushed through the canvas.
My nostrils flared, my blood moved now faster in my veins. There is something charged and exhilarating about a slave market, the color, the movement, the excitement of the crowds, the bidding, the intensity, the lovely women being sold.
“Four copper tarsks!” was a bid called from the floor.
The girl stood on the block, her right side to the bidders. Her hands were behind her head, and her body was arched back. Her left leg was behind her, her right leg, flexed, thrust forth.
“Six!” was another bid.
She then faced the bidders, half crouched, her hands at her head, throwing her hair forward over her face. She regarded them angrily, sullenly, through her hair. Yet there was in her eyes a sultry need recognized by Gorean buyers. Taken home, she would soon become a satisfactory, hot slave, piteous and eager at her master’s feet. She was directed by the auctioneer, responding to his voice commands and the light, deft, guiding touches of his whip.
I moved through the crowds, to get somewhat closer to the block. The girl was sold for fifteen copper tarsks to a metal worker from Tor.
I looked about in the crowd.
The next girl was a willowy blond Earth girl. She was sent to the block in what are regarded as the odd undergarments of Earth females. Both the upper undergarment and the lower were white. Her hands were braceleted behind her and the auctioneer, his whip in his belt, controlled her by the hair. She was hysterical. Her brassiere was first removed, then the panties. The latter garment, by Goreans, is regarded as a peculiarly strange one. It, silken and brier, is obviously a slave’s garment, but it is closed at the bottom. It would take a man an extra moment to rape such a slave.