Some six hundred women had been taken in the two kasbahs, all female slaves.
Some fifteen hundred men, who had surrendered, now wore the chains of slaves.
The men would march toward the rear of the columns, before the rear guard. The women, for there were insufficient wagons or kaiila for them, would march, in separate groups of fifty, within the columns amid toward their center. They were more valuable than the men. Each female slave group was a fifty bracelet coffle.
I moved the kaiila over to regard the female slave groups, which stood at the wall, not yet herded to their places in the columns. Each girl was fastened by the left wrist, in wrist coffle in her group. Each girl was separated by some five feet of light, gleaming chain. It was not a heavy chain to carry. As I moved the kaiila slowly along the line of chained girls, to examine them, the leather, looped and knotted about the pommel of my saddle, grew taut. It led to the crossed, bound wrists of the girl I had tethered to the pommel. She had ten feet of tether. She followed.
The feet of the women had been bound in leather. They stood ankle deep in the sand. Later, when the sun was high, sheets would be thrown over them, to protect their eves from the glare, their bodies from the sun. The sheet is placed over the head, completely, so that the girl cannot see. Then, with a piece of string, looped twice about her neck and tied snugly, it is held in place. This is inferior, of course, to moving a woman in a sheltered slave wagon or in a kurdah.
The sheets, of course, had not yet been placed.
The girls stood straight, proud under the gaze of a warrior. “Tal, Master,” said many of them, as I rode slowly by. “Buy me in Tor, Master,” called another. One girl, in the fourth group, pressed out from the others, her left wrist behind her, held by the chain. She pressed her face against the left forequarter of my kaiila and, turning looked up at me, her face tear-stained. It was Tafa. I recalled her from the dungeon in what had been the kasbah of Ibn Saran, the morning before I had begun the march to Klima. She was a good wench. I moved the kaiila on. Zina, who had been taken with Tafa in a caravan raid by Hassan, the bandit, had not been at the two kasbahs in the desert. We did not know to whom she had been sold. We did not know at whose feet she knelt.
Toward the beginning of the fourth group I saw another girl I remembered. She turned away, trying to hide her face. I stopped the kaiila. Sensing that I had stopped, she fell to her knees and faced me, her head down. “Forgive me, Master,” she whispered. “Look at me, Slave, Girl,” I told her. She looked up, frightened. It was Zaya, the red-haired girl, who had served sugars with the black wine in the palace of Suleiman Pasha. She had testified against me at Nine Wells.
“Do you recall,” I asked, “who it was who struck Suleiman Pasha?”
“Hamid!” she wept. “Hamid, lieutenant to Shakar, captain of the Aretai!”
“Your memory has improved,” I congratulated her. From my saddlebags I threw her a candy.
“Are you not angry with me, Master?” she asked. “No,” I said.
She thrust the candy in her mouth. I moved the kaiila on.
Hamid was not chained with the male prisoners. He had been taken to a remote Aretai oasis. There, in this exile, he would be a slave.
In the second group from the front I passed two women I had earlier met, Lana, the tall girl, who had been the seraglio mistress in the kasbah of Tama, and the other girl, who had served with her, in charge of the oils of the bath. They stood proudly, as chained slave girls. Their utility in the seraglio terminated by myself and Hassan, Tarna had, in fury, sent them to the lowest levels of her kasbah, to serve there as wench sport for her soldiers. Little did they know but their proud mistress, whom they had never seen had recently, as they had, now, too, a rightless slave girl, served men, she herself richly yielding rude soldiers delicious wench sport.
“Tal, Master,” they said to me.
“Tal, Slave Girls,” I said to them.
I moved the kaiila on. The male slaves of the seraglio had been freed. They were to be given money and safe conduct to Tor. They, though afoot, joined the march.
One exception had Haroun, high Pasha of the Kavars, made. “That one,” he had said, sitting in court, in the audience chamber of what had been the kasbah of Ibn Saran, indicating the silken fellow who had worn the ruby necklace, who had tried to betray us to the guards of Tarna, “that one sell in Tor-sell him to a woman.” The fellow had been dragged away. He was with the male slaves toward the rear of the column; he alone among them was not stripped; he wore his seraglio silk, the ruby necklace; they did not look pleasantly upon him.
At the first group of fifty girls, nude, waiting in wrist coffle, I stopped. She was the twenty-third girl from the first girl on the line.
Her left wrist behind her, held by the chain to her sisters in bondage, she stepped forth. She put her head to my stirrup, not looking up. I felt her press her lips deeply, fervently, to my boot.
She looked up then, tears in her eyes.
“My thanks,” she whispered, “Master.”
“You are in the first group, twenty-third girl,” I said. “I hear among the men that you are quite good.”
“A girl is grateful,” she said, “if men should find her pleasing.
I made as though to ride from her. Her small right hand was at the stirrup. Her left hand was behind her, locked in its bracelet.
“I am not the same as a man,” she said, looking up.
“Obviously,” I said, looking on her stripped slave beauty.
“I am different,” she said. She looked up. “I love being different,” she whispered.
I nodded.
“I love men,” she said. “They are so strong, so magnificent. I love being commanded by them. I love obeying them. I love knowing that if I displease them in the slightest, I will be whipped or slain. I had not known such feelings were possible.”
I regarded the girl in her rapture. How thrilled she was to discover the deliciousness of her own domination by men. Women desire male domination. Not receiving it they become petty, frustrated, competitive, hostile, and vicious, a function of this basic need having failed to be satisfied. The institution of female slavery in a society provides a vehicle for the expression and satisfaction of this basic need. The slave girl, of course, is completely and totally at the mercy of men. She is the most dominated of women. Further, her domination is supported by her civilization; it is legally binding and culturally sanctioned; it is complete; she sees it in the eyes of all who took upon her, it is complete, she is slave.
“I love being a slave,” said the girl, looking up at me.
“Kneel,” I told her.
“Yes, Master,” she said. She knelt. I lifted the single rein of the kaiila. I set my heels to touch its flanks, to move ahead in the line of march.
“Master,” said the girl.
“Yes,” I said.
“May I speak?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Will I be sold in Tor,” she asked.
“Yes I told her. “You will be sold nude in Tor, from a slave block.”
“To whom will I be sold?” she asked.
“A Master.” I said. Then I kicked the kaiila in the flanks and moved ahead. The leather at the pommel of my saddle grew taut as I pulled with me, stumbling, the girl I had tethered there. Behind me, kneeling in the sand, in wrist coffle, fastened, to others, on each side of her, I left a nameless slave beauty, who once had been Tarna.
It would be time enough in Tor, for her to have a name. She would receive it from her master. It would be whatever he wished. It is useful for a slave to have a name. It makes it easier to summon and command her.
I looked at the girl tethered to my saddle. Of all the slave girls about, save one in a white kurdah, near the bead of the march, she was the only one who was clothed. Her neck was encircled by a band of steel, the slave collar. It was no longer that of Ibn Saran; it wore the name of Hakim of Tor. That was who the girl belonged to. Tight leather bound her wrists; her tether led to my saddle, The garment she wore was incredibly brief, a rag, it was of brown rep-cloth, stained with grease and dirt; I had found it in the kitchens of Ibn Saran; it had been used in the cleaning of pans; I had ripped it at the neck: I had torn it, lengthily, on the left side, to reveal the marvelous curve from her left breast to her left hip; let men look upon her beauty; it would be as public as I cared to make it, for she was my slave.
After she had falsely testified against me at Nine Wells, she had smiled, slyly, in triumph, pleased with her work, pleased that I would be sent to the brine pits of Klima; I had escaped from Nine Wells, but, recaptured, was enchained, destined for Klima; I well recalled her elation, her contempt, her scorn, as she had looked down upon me, helpless in the chain; she had flung me a token, something by which to remember her, a bit of slave silk, redolent with slave perfume; she had flung me a kiss, laughing, before being ordered back to her barred alcove by the slave master who at that time was supervising her.
I would not forget pretty Vella. Now I owned her. She had begged me to forgive her, as though a word from me would make all things right. When she had been flung to the feet of Hakim of Tor, she had looked up, in terror, then joy, seeing then who was Hakim of Tor, the master to whom I had consigned her, myself.
“Do not rise, Slave Girl,” I told her.
“Am I forgiven, Tarl?” she bad begged. “Am I forgiven?”
“Fetch the whip,” I told her.
I saw T`Zshal, who was riding past, leading his thousand lances. He reined in, and his men behind him.
“We are returning, to Klima,” he said.
“But you have kaiila,” I said.
“We are slaves of the salt, slaves of the desert,” he said. “We return to Klima.”
“The Salt Ubar is gone,” I said.
“We will negotiate with local pashas and regulate the desert, and discuss the prices of the varieties of salt,” said T`Zshal.
“The price of salt will soon rise,” I suggested.
“It is not impossible,” said T`Zshal.
I wondered if it were wise to have armed the men of Klima and put them in the saddles of kaiila. They were not typical men. There was none there who had not survived the march to Klima.
“Should you ever need aid,” said T`Zshal, “send word to Klima. The slaves of the salt will ride.”
“My thanks,” I said. They would be fierce allies. They were desperate and mighty men. Each there had made the march to Klima.
“Things now,” I said, “I conjecture, will change at Klima.” I recalled that Hassan had warned me against taking a bit of silk, perfumed, into Klima. I had hidden it in
