by John Norman
“We all are,” said Laura.
“Tonight I wager Nelsa will dance naked before a campfire,” said a girl.
“The whip dance, I hope,” said another.
Nelsa had not been popular with the other girls.
“The work-master will now want a new favorite,” said one.
“I am glad I am not blond-haired and blue-eyed,” said another.
Several of the girls turned to look at Ina, who was blond-haired and blue-eyed. She shrank back, shaking her head, negatively.
“Learn to hold firmly to the sides of the tub,” said a girl.
“Perhaps you will get a candy in your bin,” said another.
“Look out!” cried a girl.
The slaves shrank down. Some flung themselves prone to the roof.
“No!” said a girl. “That is one of ours!”
They stood up, again, amidst the laundry. Sticks from the shattered rack were strewn about.
“Some of this laundry will have to be washed again,” said one of the girls.
“Look!” said one of the other slaves.
“That is one of them!” said another.
Another tarn was streaking by, a hundred yards to the left.
The slave who had cried out clapped her hands with pleasure. “See!” she cried. “He has a free woman!”
Clutched in the talons of the tarn, fearing to struggle lest she fall, but nonetheless helplessly held, held as though gripped with iron, was a human figure, though it seemed little more now than a pathetic bundle, trailing shreds of robes and veils.
“Good for you!” cried one of the girls to the speeding tarnsman.
“Put the iron to her!” cried another.
“Collar her!” cried another.
“Teach her to kiss the whip!”
“Make her jump and squirm!” cried yet another.
“I speculate that her life is going to change,” said Laura to Ellen.
“Doubtless,” said Ellen, touching her collar, frightened.
Two tarnsmen of the city snapped by in pursuit of the fellow with the free woman. They terminated their pursuit at the city walls. Doubtless they had their orders, and there might well be other Treveans within the city.
In a few moments the alarm bar had stopped ringing.
“The raid is over,” said a girl.
“Now a pursuit will be organized,” said another.
“Wait,” said one of the girls. “There is another!”
“The clever monster!” said another.
“He waited until the bar had stopped ringing.”
“Where was he?”
“Below.”
“Help! Help!” cried the woman in the net.
“He is going to land on the roof,” said one of the girls, frightened.
“Stay back, keep away from him!” warned Laura.
The tarn came down, wings beating, hovering, and then alit on the roof. The rider leaped from the saddle, and pulled the net to the side. It contained a lovely young woman in a slave tunic and collar. She reached out, through the heavy mesh of the net. “Help me! Help me!” she cried. “Summon guardsmen!”
“He is clever,” said Laura. “Here the guardsmen may take him for a defender. If he is of Treve, he does not wear their leather.”
The tarnsman then regarded the cluster of slaves on the roof.
“We are in the presence of a free man,” said Laura. “Kneel. He may be of the city.”
The slaves knelt.
“Kneel as the slaves you are,” whispered Laura.
Knees then were spread, and widely, beneath the long gowns.
The tarnsman grinned.
“What do you think of my slave?” he called.
“I am not a slave!” cried the woman in the net.
“She is beautiful, Master,” said Laura.
“Call guardsmen!” screamed the woman in the net, holding to its mesh.
“There are no guardsmen to call,” said Laura.
“I am a free woman!” cried the prisoner of the net. “He took my clothing! He tunicked me! He put a collar on me!”
“He is clever,” said Laura to the others. “If it is thought she is a slave the pursuit will be pressed less vigorously.”
“What do you think of the legs of my slave?” inquired the tarnsman.
“They are well revealed, Master,” said Laura.
“They are lovely enough to be the legs of a slave girl, surely, Master,” said one of the slaves.
“It was not I who revealed my legs!” cried the woman in the net. “It was he who put me in this scandalous tunic. It was he who revealed them!”
The woman in the net tried to force the brief tunic she wore down further on her body. She did not have much success in this, as the tunic, perhaps by intent, was quite short.
“Save me!” demanded the woman in the net. “Get this collar off my neck!” She pulled at it, angrily, futilely. She was unsuccessful, of course, as such devices are not designed to be removed by their wearers.
One of the girls laughed, at the absurdity of the behavior of the net’s occupant.
“Whip her! Whip her!” cried the net’s occupant.
The tarnsman looked about, studying the sky.
“In a few moments the pursuit, organized, will depart, following the raiders,” said Laura. “He will then go in another direction.”
“I wish I belonged to such a master,” said one of the girls.
Laura looked at her, sharply, with interest. “Yes,” she then said, “so do I.”
“I am from Brundisium,” said the tarnsman, pleasantly. “I asked this woman to be my free companion, but she refused. Accordingly I decided I would make her my slave.”
“Excellent, Master,” said one of the girls.
“Free me! Free me! Call guardsmen!” cried the woman in the net.
“I have waited for days, for there to be a raid I could use for cover, a raid I could turn to my own advantage,” he said.
“Master is strong and clever,” said Laura.
“You are a pretty slave,” he said.
Laura spread her knees more widely, but subtly, seemingly shyly, beneath her gown. Ellen gasped. She had not seen Laura like this before, so before a man.
So, she thought, Laura is indeed a slave girl. I wonder if I would ever behave so before a man.
Surely not I!
Ellen did not think this behavior on Laura’s part was unnoticed by the stalwart figure on the roof. The tarn shifted, restlessly.
“Get me out of this sack!” demanded the free woman.
“May I present Lady Temesne?” inquired the tarnsman.
“That is a Cosian name,” said a girl. Ellen made little of that.
“Mistress,” said Laura, respectfully.
“Mistress,” said several of the girls, bowing their heads.
“Mistress,” said Ellen, bowing her head, as the others. This was the first free Gorean woman Ellen had ever encountered. She began to sense the awe with which such were to be regarded by such as she, and the deference that would be expected of her in the presence of such. To be sure, this one was in a slave tunic and collar.
“Get me out of this sack!” cried Lady Temesne.
Her accent did seem different from that of many of the other girls, Ellen thought.
The tarnsman then, to the gratification of Lady Temesne, opened the sack, and she began to crawl hurriedly from it, but her gratification was short-lived, as he took her by the hair, when her feet were still tangled in the mesh, and pressed her down on her stomach on the roof, and then knelt across her body. “What are you doing?” she cried. “Put your hands behind you,” he told her. “Now.” Weakly she put her small hands behind her. He pulled them together and, in a moment, they had been encircled with binding fiber, and were lashed together. She cried out, softly, in protest, as she was gagged. She whimpered in misery, as she was blindfolded. He then drew her from the net, crossed her ankles, bound them together, and looked down upon
her. There was no denying that she was a lovely catch. He then thrust her back in the net, her knees pulled up under her chin, and tied the net shut, close about her. He then fastened the net on short ropes close to the belly of the tarn. It would then be less obvious.
He then returned to watching the sky.
“Laura,” whispered Ellen.
“Yes,” said Laura.
“He is waiting for tarnsmen to leave the city?”
“Yes,” said Laura.
“What of Nelsa?” asked Ellen.
“Do not concern yourself about her,” said Laura. “She is merely a captured slave.”
“Will they hurt her?” asked Ellen.
“I do not think so,” said Laura. “Probably no more than to occasionally remind her that she is a slave and, of course, to see to it that she is perfect in her service.”
“But the whip dance?”
“True, that will hurt her,” said Laura, “but it will teach her, too, who her masters are.”
Ellen shuddered.
“Is Treve a city?” Ellen asked.
“Yes,” said Laura. “And little love is lost between those of Treve and this city.”
“What is the name of this city?” asked Ellen.
“You do not know?”
“No.”
“Ar,” said Laura.
At that moment several flights of tarnsmen, dozens in each flight, swept overhead.
The tarnsman raised his hand, saluting the flights as they passed.
“He is magnificent!” breathed Laura, in awe. “He will well know how to keep a woman!”
He was now ready to ascend the rope ladder to the saddle, several feet above the surface of the roof. That ladder is then pulled up and tied to the saddle. There are normally two or four rings fastened at the sides of a tarnsman’s saddle, one or two on each side.
“Master!” called Laura suddenly.
He turned to look upon her.
“May I speak?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“May I rise?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
She quickly ran to him and, as slaves gasped, she knelt before him, bending over, her head down between her arms, which were lifted, the wrists crossed.
“How dare you submit yourself as a free woman?” he asked.
“Forgive me, Master!” wept Laura, lowering herself humbly to her belly before him, and pressing her lips to his bootlike sandals. She looked up, tears in her eyes. “Perhaps Master would care to capture a worthless slave?”
The occupant of the net, tied close to the belly of the tarn, squirmed, whimpering, angrily.
“She wants to be the only one,” whispered a girl to Ellen.
The tarnsman crouched down beside Laura and, with a length of binding fiber, crossed her wrists and bound them together before her body. He then, similarly, crossed her ankles, and bound them, as well. He then carried her to the saddle, over his shoulder, and laid her gently on her back, across the saddle, on the large plain surface before the pommel, perhaps a surface prepared for just such a purpose. It was then but a moment’s work to fasten her bound wrists to the forward ring on the left, and her bound ankles to the forward ring on the right. In this fashion she was bound before him, belly up, stretched over the saddle. He then considered her for a moment, and then took a knife from his belt.
Slaves gasped, thrilled.
Laura’s gown, in a moment, cut from her, cast aside, had fluttered to the roof.
“I am yours, Master!” said Laura.
“You tell me nothing I do not know, slave,” he said.
He then freed the rolled blanket from behind the saddle, opened it, and threw it over the slave, concealing her.
The tunicked, collared free woman, bound in the net, gagged and blindfolded, squirmed and whimpered.
“I suspect,” whispered the girl to Ellen’s right, “our noble little tunic-wearer will be sold in Brundisium.”
“Perhaps he will keep them both,” said another girl.
“Perhaps,” said another.
“She does have pretty legs,” said another.
“The tunic displays them well,” said another.
“Surely,” said another.
The tarn then smote the air, leapt from the roof, soared for a moment, and then, wings beating, rose higher, leveled in its flight, and then streaked from the city, in a direction other than that taken by those in pursuit of the Trevean raiders.
“We may now rise,” said one of the girls, watching the tarn disappear in the distance.
Ellen stood up, uncertainly.
“They take women,” she said, in awe. “They bind us. They steal us. They carry us off. They think nothing of this. They make us theirs. They make us slaves. They use us as they please. We are nothing to them. They buy and sell us. They do as they wish with us!”
“They are men,” said one of the girls.
“I fear you,” she whispered to herself, “beautiful world on which I am a slave.”
“The hatch is now open!” called one of the girls.
“We must clean up things and get back to work,” said another.
Nelsa was gone. Laura, too, was gone. Tonight Nelsa might be performing the whip dance for masters. Ellen did not know what the whip dance was but she was not displeased that it, whatever it was, might be required of Nelsa. She did not think that Nelsa would be a bother or a nuisance to her new masters. The whip takes that out of a woman. She did not know what Laura’s fate might be. Whatever it was, it was in the hands of the tarnsman from Brundisium.
“Have you no work to do, slave girl?” inquired one of the girls.
“Forgive me, Mistress,” said Ellen, and drew toward her, across the roof, under a line, her large basket, and then reached into it for another damp garment, to shake out, smooth and hang.
“There are many more baskets below,” said a slave.
Ellen, with the wooden pins, hung a garment on the line. It was a male’s work tunic. It was large. Ellen wondered what its wearer might look like, and what he might be like, and what it would be like to be owned by him.
“Man!” called a girl.
Instantly the slaves fell to their knees and assumed first obeisance position.
“Is Ellen, who is the slave of Mirus, here?” asked the man.
Ellen was too frightened to respond.
“Who is first girl?” asked the man.
“We have lost two slaves, to tarnsmen, Master,” said blond-haired, blue-eyed Ina. “We could not return to the interior of the cylinder. The hatch had been secured from within. Nelsa and Laura, slaves of the house. Of those upon the roof, Laura was first girl.”
“Last week, our lads took eight from Treve, three of whom were free,” said the man.
“Glory to Ar!” said Ina.
“Glory to Ar!” said several of the others.
“All three were put up for sale yesterday,” he said.
“Excellent, Master,” said Ina.
“Our warriors did well,” said the man.
“Yes, Master,” said Ina.
“I trust the brigands from Treve bagged little or nothing.”
“Let us hope so, Master,” said Ina.
Ellen was certain that the raiders had captured at least one free woman, as she had seen her helpless in the grasp of a tarn’s talons. This was not to take account of the fate of the Lady Temesne, for her abductor had been a spurned suitor from Brundisium. The Lady Temesne, who had regarded herself as too fine to accept his suit, might this very night be at his feet, begging to please. But she might be sold in favor of Laura. But then Ellen did not know. The Lady Temesne did have pretty legs. It might be noted that the guard had paid little explicit attention to the slaves involved in these transactions, though he had kept track, noting that five slaves had been taken from Treve recently. One does, in that sense, one supposes, count or “keep score,” as one might do with kaiila or tharlarion. The free woman is in theory priceless. Thus she is not
comparable with the female slave. As she is priceless, there is a sense in which even thousands of female slaves would not be as valuable as one free woman. On the other hand, reality often embarrasses argument, and it must be admitted that a single female slave, particularly if trained, is often preferred to dozens of free women. But men are that way, she supposed. Ellen did not know what her own value was. It would depend of course, on conditions in the market, and what men were willing to pay. That was an odd, but charming, in its way, thought, that she would now, in a sense, literally for the first time in her life, have value. It is interesting, this sort of thing, she thought. At one moment a woman is free and priceless, and then, in another moment, suddenly, she becomes a very practical, tangible commodity, something very real and very factual, something with a specific value, like any other piece of merchandise. In this sense a woman is without specific or actual value until she becomes a slave; it is then that she acquires specific or actual value. To be sure, these considerations are based largely on legal fictions, for, in fact, free women do have tangible values, the higher born being valued better than the lower born, the upper castes over the lower castes, the more intelligent over the less intelligent, the more beautiful over the less beautiful, and so on. To be sure the slave block commonly introduces a radical common denominator. Stripped of all conventional and social dignities and merits, as well as of their clothing, bereft of all artificialities, what is for sale there is, generally, assuming that there is nothing special about the item, that it is not the daughter of a Ubar, or the daughter of one’s worst enemy, or such, is the intelligence, sensitivity, beauty and personness of the item herself.
It would not be known for a day or two presumably how the Trevean raiders had fared within the city.
Ellen was curious as to her market value, and the thought that she must now have one charmed her. That gave an entirely new dimension to her self-concept. She, earlier, being free, had never had such a value. Now she knew she had one, whatever it might be. She knew that girls were often very vain, about the prices they would bring, and such. She thought that that was silly, but she hoped that she would bring a good price, and, certainly, one superior to that which might have been garnered by Nelsa. But she did not fear that her master would sell her. It thrilled her, of course, to know that he had this power, and that he had this power made her feel so much more a slave, but she was certain he would never choose to exercise it. I am sure he loves me, thought Ellen. Or, at least, that he wants me. Surely he thought that my “flanks were of interest.” I love him!