mistress.
Verr are to be milked, the eggs of vulos gathered, and the sleen must be watered and fed, and their cages cleaned.
In the middle of the morning we return to the hut of Thurnus, where pans of slave gruel have been put out for us, beneath the hut. This gruel must be eaten, and the pans licked clean. In the manner of peasant slave girls we kneel or lie upon our bellies and may not use our hands.
After our meal the true work of our day begins. There is water to be carried, wood to be gathered and fields to be tended. Many and various, and long, are the tasks of a peasant village. Upon slave girls do most of these tasks devolve. We must do them or die. Sometimes the boys surprise us in the fields and tie us together and rape us. It does not matter, for we are only slave girls.
It seemed every bone in my body ached.
Ten days ago Thurnus had used me for plowing. He did not own bosk. Girls are cheaper than bosk.
It was the first time I had felt a whip.
I had been hitched with the other girls, and, together, sweating, we had labored naked in the traces under our master's whip. Slowly, leaning forward, our feet digging into the earth, we had pitted our strength against the restraining band of the harness, and, slowly, the great blade had begun to move through the deep soil, turning it for our master. After a few yards I thought I might die. Who would know if I did not put my full strength upon the trace? It was then that I first felt the whip. It was not the five-bladed slave whip, invented for the full and perfect punishment of an erring slave girl, but only a light, one-bladed bosk whip, little more than a switch of leather, a mere incitement and encouragement to better performance on the part of a slacking plow beast, but it struck my back like a hot snake and a rifle shot. I could not believe what it felt like. It was the first time I had ever been struck with a whip.
'Come, Dina, pull harder,' said Thurnus.
'Yes, Master!' I cried, hurling myself against the trace. He had not been angry. My back felt as though it had been lashed with a hot cable.
I could not believe the pain of the whip. I could not even conjecture what it would be to feel a true slave whip on my body. Yet I knew a girl could be subjected to a full and lengthy lashing by the true slave whip for so small a thing as having failed in some way that she might not even understand to be completely pleasing to a master. Indeed, she could be subjected to such a lashing for no other reason than that it pleased the master to do so. I had now, for the first time, the former Judy Thornton, felt a whip. I groaned in misery. I now had a new insight into the condition of my slavery. I would do anything, eagerly, the masters wanted.
But in less than an hour I had collapsed in the traces, unconscious.
I dimly remember Thurnus's hand on the back of my neck and Sandal Thong's saying, 'Do not kill her, Thurnus. Can you not see she is only a pretty slave, that she is only for the pleasure of men and not for the fields?'
'We can pull the plow without her, Master,' said Turnip.
'We have done it many times before,' said Radish.
'Do not break her neck, Master,' pleaded Verr Tail.
Thurnus's hand left the back of my neck.
I remember him tying my hands behind my back, and tying my ankles together, and leaving me in a furrow. I then again lost consciousness. That night Thurnus carried me, bound, over his shoulder, back to the village, and threw me down between the pilings of his hut. 'What is wrong?' asked Melina. 'This one is a weakling,' said Thurnus. 'I will kill her for you,' said Melina. She drew from her coarse robes a short knife. I rose on one elbow, naked and bound, helpless in the dirt at her feet. I regarded her with horror. She approached me with the knife. 'Please, no, Mistress!' I wept. 'Go into the house, Woman,' said Thurnus, angrily. 'You are the weakling, Thurnus,' snapped Melina. She then put away the knife, and stood up.
'It was a mistake to have followed you,' she said.
He looked at her without speaking.
'You could have been a caste leader for a district,' she said. 'Instead I am only the companion of a village leader. I could have companioned a district leader. You stink of the sleen you train and the girls you own.'
There were slaves present, and yet she so spoke.
'You are a weakling and a fool, Thurnus,' she said. 'I despise you.'
'Go into the house, Woman,' he said. Angrily Melina turned and climbed the steps into the hut. At the top of the steps she turned. 'You do not have much longer to give orders in Tabuk's Ford, Thurnus,' she said. Then she disappeared into the hut.
'Untie Dina,' said Thurnus, 'and take her to the cage.'
'Yes, Master,' said his girls.
'Poor little Dina,' said Thurnus, looking down at me, as the ropes were removed from my small limbs. 'You make a very poor she-bosk,' he said. Then he grinned. Then he turned away.
I struck angrily down at the ground with the hoe. Of course I made a poor she-bosk! It was not my fault I was not a female bosk, like so many of the lasses of peasant stock. Marla and Chanda and Donna and Slave Beads would have been no better! And I did not think Lehna or Eta would have been much better either! How I would have loved to have seen Maria try to pull the plow! She would have done no better than I! Angrily I hoed the suls. I was healthy and vital, but I was not large, not strong. I could not help that. It was not my fault. I was small, and slight and weak. I could not help that. It was not my fault! I was perhaps beautiful, but beauty availed nothing when one felt the weight of the plow at one's back and knew that behind you the master was lifting his whip. Thurnus was disappointed in my weakness.
I chopped down angrily at the ground with the hoe. It was hard for me even to carry water to the fields, struggling under the great wooden yoke over my shoulders, with its attached buckets. Sometimes I fell, spilling the water. And I was slow. The other girls, who were my friends, did parts of my heavier work and I, in turn, did much of the lighter work which was theirs. Yet I did not like this for it was harder on them. I wanted to do my share. It was only that I was weak, that I was not a good peasant's girl.
Sometimes in the fields I hated Clitus Vitellius. It was he who had left me in a peasant village! He had made me love him, conquering me to the last cell of my body, and had then, laughing, given me to a peasant. He knew the sort of girl I was, delicate and sensitive, slight and beautiful, from Earth, and then he had, to his amusement, put me to harsh, weighty slavery in a peasant village, giving me to Thurnus. I struck down at the aids. How I hated Clitus Vitellius!
I looked up again. The cart of Tup Ladletender, the itinerant peddler, was now much farther down the road, on the dirt road leading to the great road, formed of blocks of stone, leading to Ar.
I was thought little of in the village, though my cage sisters were kind to me.
I was not big enough or strong enough to be a good peasant's girl.
I hated peasants. What idiots they were! There were better things to do with a beautiful slave girl than hitch her to a plow!
'The village is not a good place for you, Dina,' Turnip had once said to me. 'You are a city slave. You should be at a man's feet, in the secrecy of his compartments, collared and chained, curled and purring like a content she-sleen.'
'Perhaps,' I said.
'I would curl and purr at the feet of Thurnus,' had said the large Sandal Thong. We had all laughed. But she had not been joking. It seemed strange to me to think of the large Sandal Thong wanting to submit to the domination of a man. Yet she, too, I reminded myself, was a woman.
Because of my slightness of strength Thurnus had had me help him often with the sleen. Some of the animals I grew to know. But, on the whole, I feared the sleen, and they, sensing this, were unusually vicious with me.
'Are you good for nothing?' had asked Thurnus in exasperation. I had backed away from him, in the sand of the training pit where we had been working. The sun bad been hot, and the sand was hot. It had not rained in several days. The Sa-Tarna was in danger of drought.
Thurnus took me by the arms and shook me. 'You are good for nothing,' he said, angrily.
I had shuddered in his touch.
'What is wrong?' he asked.
