by John Norman
“I have lowered it,” said Kamchak. “I will let you have her for one copper tarn disk.”
Saphrar smiled. “The price is too high,” he said.
Aphris cried out in distress.
Saphrar then again lifted the tiny glass through which he had regarded her, and examined her with some care. Then he shrugged and gestured for his slaves to turn the palanquin.
“Saphrar” cried out the girl one last time.
“I do not speak to slaves,” said he, and the merchant, on the palanquin, moved away toward the walls of distant Turia.
Aphris was looking after him, numbly, her eyes red, her cheeks stained with tears.
“It does not matter,” said Kamchak soothingly to the girl.
“Even had Saphrar been a worthy man you would not now be free.”
She turned her beautiful head to stare at him, blankly.
“No,” said Kamchak, taking her hair and giving her head a friendly shake, “I would not have sold you for all the gold in Turia.”
“But why?” she whispered.
“Do you recall,” asked Kamchak, “one night two years ago when you spurned my gift and called me sleep?”
The girl nodded, her eyes frightened.
“It was on that night,” said Kamchak, “that I vowed to make you my slave.”
She dropped her head.
“And it is for that reason,” said Kamchak, “that I would not sell you for all the gold of Turia.”
She looked up, red-eyed.
“It was on that night, little Aphris,” said Kamchak, “that I decided I wanted you, and would have you, slave.”
The girl shuddered and dropped her head.
The laugh of Kamchak of the Tuchuks was loud.
He had waited long to laugh that laugh, waited long to see his fair enemy thus before him, thus bound and shamed, his, a slave.
In short order then Kamchak took the key over the head of Aphris of Turia and sprang open the retaining rings. He then led the numb, unresisting Turian maiden to his kaiila.
There, beside the paws of the animal, he made her kneel.
“Your name is Aphris of Turia,” he said to her, giving her a name.
“My name is Aphris of Turia,” she said, accepting her name at his hands.
“Submit,” ordered Kamchak.
Trembling Aphris of Turia, kneeling, lowered her head and extended her arms, wrists crossed. Kamchak quickly and tightly thonged them together.
She lifted her head. “Am I to be bound across the saddle?” she asked numbly.
“No,” said Kamchak, “there is no hurry.”
“I don’t understand,” said the girl.
Already Kamchak was placing a thong on her neck, the loose end of which he looped several times about the pommel of his saddle. “You will run alongside,” he informed her.
She looked at him in disbelief.
Elizabeth Cardwell, unbound, had already taken her position on the other side of F~teak’s kaiila, beside his right
It might have been the first time ship
Kamchak had not hit her hard, but ship
To be sure there might have been some doubt that the miserable wench thonged behind Kamchak’s kaiila could have been first stake. She was gasping and stumbling; her body glistened with perspiration; her legs were black with wet dust; her hair was tangled and thick with dust; her feet and ankles were bleeding; her calves were scratched and speckled with the red bites of fennels. When Kamchak reached his wagon, the poor girl, gasping for breath, legs trembling, fell exhausted to the grass, her entire body shaking with the ordeal of her run. I supposed that Aphris of Turia had done little in her life that was more strenuous than stepping in and out of a scented bath. Elizabeth Cardwell, on the other hand, I was pleased to see, ran well, breathing evenly, showing few signs of fatigue. She had, of course, in her time with the wagons, become used to this form of exercise. I had rather come to admire her. The life in the open air, the work, had apparently been good for her. She was trim, vital, buoyant. I wondered how many of the girls in her New York office could have run as she beside the stirrup of a Tuchuk warrior.
Kamchak leaped down from the saddle of the kaiila, puffing a bit.
“Here, here!” he cried cheerily, hauling the exhausted Aphris to her knees “There is work to be done!”
She looked up at him, the thong still on her neck, her wrists bound. Her eyes seemed dazed.
“There are bosk to be groomed,” he informed her, “and their horns and hoofs must be polished there is fodder to be fetched and dung to be gathered the wagon must be wiped and the wheels greased and there is water to be brought from the stream some four pasangs. away and meat to hammer and cook for supper! hurry! hurry, Lazy Girl!”
Then he leaned back and laughed his Tuchuk laugh, slapping his thighs.
Elizabeth Cardwell was removing the thong from the girl’s neck and unbinding her wrists. “Come along,” she said, kindly. “I will show you.”
Aphris stood up, wobbling, still dazed. She turned her eyes on Elizabeth, whom she seemed to see then for the first time.
“Your accent,” said Aphris, slowly. “You are barbarian.” She said it with a kind of horror.
She turned in fury and followed Elizabeth Cardwell away.
After this Kamchak and I left the wagon and wandered about, stopping at one of the slave wagons for a bottle of Paga, which, while wandering about, we killed between us.
This year, as it turned out, the Wagon Peoples had done exceedingly well in the games of Love War a bit of news we picked up with the Paga and about seventy percent of the Turian maidens had been led slave from the stakes to which they had been manacled. In some years I knew the percentages were rather the other way about. It apparently made for zestful competition. We also heard that the wench Hereena, of the First Wagon, had been won by a Turian officer representing the house of Saphrar of the Merchants, to whom, for a fee, he presented her. I gathered that she would become another of his dancing girls. “A bit of perfume and silk will be good for that wench,” stated Kamchak. It seemed strange to think of her, so wild and insolent, arrogant on the back of her kaiila, now a perfumed, silken slave of Turians. “She could use a bit of whip and steel, that wench,” Kamchak muttered between swallows of Paga, pretty much draining the bottle. It was too bad, I thought, but at least I supposed there would be one fellows among the wagons, the young man Harold, he whom the girl had so abused, he who had not yet won the Courage Scar, who would be just as pleased as not that she, with all her contempt and spleen, was now delightfully salted away in bangles and bells behind the high, thick walls of a Turian’s pleasure garden.
Kamchak had circled around and we found ourselves back at the slave wagon.
We decided to wager to see who would get the second bottle of Paga.
“What about the flight of birds?” asked Kamchak.
“Agreed,” I said, “but I have first choice.”
“Very well,” he said.
I knew, of course, that it was spring and, in this hemisphere, most birds, if there were any migrating, would be moving south. “South,” I said.
“North,” he said.
We then waited about a minute, and I saw several birds river gulls flying north.
“Those are Vosk gulls,” said Kamchak, “In the spring, when the ice breaks in the Vosk, they fly north.”
I fished some coins out of my pouch for the Paga.
“The first southern migrations of meadow kites,” he said, “have already taken place. The migrations of the forest hurlit and the horned aim do not take place until later in the spring. This is the time that the Vosk gulls fly.”
“Oh,” I said.
Singing Tuchuk songs, we managed to make it back to the wagon.
Elizabeth had the meat roasted, though it was now considerably overdone.
“The meat is overdone,” said Kamchak.
“They are both stinking drunk,” said Aphris of Turia.
I looked at her.
Both of them were beautiful. “No,” I corrected her, “gloriously inebriated.”
Kamchak was looking closely at the girls, leaning forward, squinting.
I blinked a few Ames.
“Is anything wrong?” asked Elizabeth Cardwell.
I noted that there was a large welt on the side of her face, that her hair was ripped up a bit and that there were five long scratches on the left side of her face.
“No,” I said.
Aphris of Turia appeared in even worse shape. She had surely lost more than one handful of hair. There were teeth marks in her left arm and, if I was not mistaken, her right eye was ringed and discoloured.
“The meat is overdone,” grumbled Kamchak. A master takes no interest in the squabbles of slaves, it being beneath him. He of course would not have approved had one of the girls been maimed, blinded or disfigured.
“Have the bosk been tended?” asked Kamchak.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth firmly.
Kamchak looked at Aphris. “Have the bosk been tended?” he asked.
She looked up suddenly, her eyes bright with tears. She cast an angry look at Elizabeth. “Yes,” she said, “they have been tended.”
“Good,” said Kamchak, “good.” Then he pointed at the meat. “It is overdone,” he said.
“You were hours late,” said Elizabeth.
“Hours,” repeated Aphris.
“It is overdone,” said Kamchak.
“I shall roast fresh meat,” said Elizabeth, getting up, and she did so. Aphris only sniffed.
When the meat was ready Kamchak ate his fill, and drank down, too, a flagon of bosk milk; I did the same, though the milk, at least for me, did not sit too well with the Paga of the afternoon.
Kamchak, as he often did, was sitting on what resembled a grey rock, rather squarish, except that the corners tended to be a bit rounded. When I had first seen this thing, heaped with other odds and ends in one corner of the wagon, some of the odds and ends being tankards of jewels and small, heavy chests filled with golden tarn disks, I had thought it merely a rock. Once, when rummaging through his things, Kamchak had kicked it across the rug for me to look at. I was surprised at the way it bounced on the rug and, when I picked it up, I was interested to see how light it was. It was clearly not a rock. It was rather leathery and had a rained surface. I was a bit reminded of some of the loose, tumbled rocks I had once glimpsed in certain abandoned portions of the place of Priest-Kings, far beneath the Sardar. Among such rocks it would not have been noticed.
“What do you make of it?” Kamchak asked.
“Interesting,” I observed.
“Yes,” said he, “I thought so.” He held out his hands and I tossed the object back. “I have had it for some time,” he said. “It was given to me by two travellers.”
“Oh,” I said.
When Kamchak had finished his freshly roasted meat and his flagon of bosk milk, he shook his head and rubbed his nose.
He looked at Miss Cardwell. “Tenchika and Dina are gone,” said he. “You may sleep once more in the wagon.”
Elizabeth cast a grateful look at him. I gathered that the ground under the wagon was hard.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I thought he was your master,” remarked Aphris.
“Master,” added Elizabeth, with a withering look at Aphris, who smiled.
I now began to understand why there were often problems in a wagon with more than one girl. Still, Tenchika and Dina had not quarrelled very much. Perhaps this was because Tenchika’s heart was elsewhere, in the wagon of Albrecht of the Kassars.
“Who, may I ask,” asked Aphris, “were Tenchika and Dina?”
“Slaves, Turian wenches,” said Kamchak.
“They were sold,” Elizabeth informed Aphris.
“Oh,” said Aphris. Then she looked at Kamchak. “I do not suppose I shall be fortunate enough to be sold?”
“She would probably bring a high price,” pointed out Elizabeth, hopefully.
“Higher than a barbarian surely,” remarked Aphris.
“Do not fret, Little Aphris,” said Kamchak, “when I am finished with you I shall if it pleases me put you on the block in the public slave wagon.”
“I shall look forward to the day,” she said.
“On the other hand,” said Kamchak, “I may feed you to the kaiila.”
At this the Turian maiden trembled slightly, and looked down.
“I doubt that you are good for much,” Kamchak said, “but kaiila feed.”
Aphris looked up angrily.
Elizabeth laughed and clapped her hands.
“You,” said Kamchak, glaring at Elizabeth, “you stupid little barbarian you cannot even dance!”
Elizabeth looked down, confused, rather shamed. It was true, what Kamchak had said.
The voice of Aphris was timid and quiet. “I can’t either,” she said.
“What!” howled Kamchak.
“No,” cried Aphris, “I never learned!”
“Kaiila feed!” cried Kamchak.
“I’m sorry,” said Aphris, now a bit irritated, “I just never planned on becoming a slave.”
“You should have learned anyway,” cried the disappointed Kamchak.
“Nonsense,” said Aphris.
“It will cost money,” grumbled Kamchak, “but you will learn, I will have you taught.”
Aphris sniffed and looked away.
Elizabeth was looking at me. Then she turned to Kamchak. To my astonishment, she asked, “Could I, too, be taught?”
“Why?” he asked.
She looked down, blushing.
“She is only a barbarian,” said Aphris, “All knees and elbows she could never learn.”
“Hah!” laughed Kamchak. “The Little Barbarian does not wish to become second girl in the wagon!” He gave Elizabeth’s head a rough, affectionate shake. “You will fight for your place! Excellent!”
“She can be first girl if she wishes,” sniffed Aphris. “I shall escape at the first opportunity and return to Turia.”
“Beware of the herd sleep,” said Kamchak.
Aphris turned white.
“If you attempt to leave the wagons at night they will sense you out and rip my pretty little slave girl in pieces.”
“It is true,” I warned Aphris of Turia.
“Nonetheless,” said Aphris, “I will escape.”
“But not tonight!” guffawed Kamchak.
“No,” said Aphris acidly, “not tonight.” Then she looked about herself, disdainfully at the interior of the wagon. Her gaze rested for a moment on the kaiila saddle which had been part of the spoils which Kamchak had acquired for Tenchika. In the saddle, in their sheaths, were seven quivas.
Aphris turned again to face Kamchak. “This slave,” she said, indicating Elizabeth, “would not give me anything to eat.”
“Kamchak must eat first, Slave,” responded Elizabeth.
“Well,” said Aphris, “he has eaten.”
Kamchak then took a bit of meat that was left over from the fresh-roasted meat that Miss Cardwell had prepared. He held it out in his hand. “Eat,” he said to Aphris, “but do not touch it with your hands.”
Aphris looked at him in fury,-but then smiled. “Certainly,” she said and the proud Aphris of Turia, kneeling, bent forward, to eat the meat held in the hand of her master.
Kamchak’s laugh was cut short when she sank her fine white teeth into his hand with a savage bite.
“Aiii!” he howled, jumping up and sticking his bleeding hand into his mouth, sucking the blood from the wound.
Elizabeth had leaped up and so had I.
Aphris had sprung to her feet and ran to the side of the wagon where there lay the kaiila saddle with its seven sheathed quivas. She jerked one of the quivas from its saddle sheath and stood with the blade facing us. She was bent over with rage.
Kamchak sat down again, still sucking his hand. I also sat down, and so, too, did Elizabeth Cardwell.
We left
Aphris standing there, clutching the knife, breathing deeply.
“Sleep!” cried the girl. “I have a knife!”
Kamchak paid her no attention now but was looking at his hand. He seemed satisfied that the wound was not serious, and picked up the piece of meat which he had dropped, which he tossed to Elizabeth, who, in silence, ate it. He then pointed at the remains of the overdone roast, indicating that she might eat it.
“I have a knife!” cried Aphris in fury.
Kamchak was now picking his teeth with a fingernail.
“Bring wine,” he said to Elizabeth, who, her mouth filled with meat; went and fetched a small skin of wine and a cup, which she filled for him. When Kamchak had drunk the cup of wine he looked again at Aphris. “For what you have done,” he said, “it is common to call for one of the Clan of Torturers.”
“I will kill myself first,” cried Aphris, posing the quiva over her heart.
Kamchak shrugged.
The girl did not slay herself. “NO,” she cried, “I will slay you.”
“Much better,” said Kamchak, nodding. “Much better.”
“I have a knife!” cried out Aphris.
“Obviously,” said Kamchak. He then got up and walked rather heavily over to one wall of the wagon and took a slave whip from the wall.
He faced Aphris of Turia.
“Sleep!” she wept. She threw back her hand with the knife to rush forward and thrust it into the heart of Kamchak but the coil of the whip lashed forth and I saw its stinging tip wrap four times about the wrist and forearm of the Turian girl who cried out in sudden pain and Kamchak had stepped to the side and with a motion of his hand had thrown her off balance and then by the whip dragged her rudely over the rug to his feet. There he stepped on her wrist and removed the knife from her open hand. He thrust it in his belt.
“Slay me!” wept the girl. “I will not be your slave!”
But Kamchak had hauled her to her feet and then flung her back to where she had stood before. Dazed, holding her right arm, on which could be seen four encircling blazes of scarlet, she regarded him. Kamchak then removed the quiva from his belt and hurled it across the room until it struck in one of the poles of the frame supporting the wagon hides, two inches in the wood, beside the throat of the girl.
“Take the quiva,” said Kamchak.