right hand.
'My thanks, Praetor,' said Ulafi, receiving back the slave papers from the magistrate.
'Slave! Slave!' screamed the leader of the she-urts to the bound girl. 'Slave! Slave!' they cried.
'To think we let you fish garbage with us, when you were only a slave!' cried the leader.
Then the she-urts who had accompanied me to the station of the praetor, kicking and striking with their ropes, fell upon the bound slave.
She wept, kicked and struck. 'Slave! Slave!' they cried.
'Get back!' called the praetor, angrily, to them. 'Get back, or we will collar you all!'
The girls, swiftly, shrank back, fearfully. But they continued to look with hatred on the slave.
The blond girl tried to make herself even smaller and more submissive, that she be not more abused. She sobbed. She had had a taste of the feelings of free women towards a slave, which she was.
'Captain Ulafi,' said the praetor.
'Yes, Praetor,' said Ulafi.
'Have her marked before you leave port,' he said.
'Yes, Praetor,' said Ulafi. He turned to his first officer. 'Make ready to leave port,' he said. 'We have twenty Ahn.'
'Yes, Captain,' said the man.
'Bring an ankle rack,' said Ulafi to one of the guardsmen. One was brought.
'Put her in it,' said Ulafi. The guardsman removed his neck strap from her throat, freeing, too, her ankles. He untied her hands. Lifting her under the stomach he held her ankles near the rack; another guardsman placed her ankles in the semicircular openings in the bottom block and then swung shut the top block, with its matching semicircular openings, over them. He secured the top block, hinged at the left, to the bottom block, with a metal bolt on a chain, thrust through the staple on the lower block, over the hasp, swung down from the upper block.
The guardsman who had held the girl then ceased to support her. She made a little cry. The weight of her upper body was then on the palms of her hands, her arms stiff. Her ankles were locked in the rack. This helped to support her weight. Her ankles protruded behind the rack. Her feet were small and pretty. She looked about, helplessly.
'Bring the scimitar of discipline,' said Ulafi. This was brought by a guardsman. Ulafi showed the heavy, curved blade to the girl. She looked at it with horror.
'You should not have run away, little white slave,' he said.
'No, no!' she said, in English.
He went behind her and, gently, that be not cut her, laid the blade upon her ankles.
'No, no!' she cried. 'Please, don't! Please, don't! I will be good! I will be good!'
She tried to turn her head, to look behind her. 'I will not run away again!' she cried. 'Please, please,' she whimpered, 'do not cut off my feet.'
Ulafi handed the scimitar to one of the guardsmen. He then went to the girl's head, taking the dagger from his sash.
She was trembling in misery.
Ulafi pointed to the high desk of the praetor. Then he looked at her. 'Kajira?' he asked.
The girl had lied before the desk of the praetor. She had denied being a Kajira, a slave girl.
She twisted her head upward, toward the praetor's desk. 'Forgive me! Forgive me!' she begged.
'Kajira?' asked Ulafi.
'Yes, yes,' she sobbed. Then she cried out, 'La Kajira! La Kajira!' This was a bit of Gorean known to her. 'I am a slave girl.
Ulafi, with his dagger, but not cutting her, put it first to her right ear, and then to the side of her small nose, and then to the left ear.
'Don't hurt me,' she begged. 'I'm sorry I lied! Forgive me, forgive me! La Kajira! La Kajira!'
Ulafi stood up, replacing the dagger in his sash. The girl had now learned that her feet might be cut off for running away, that her ears and nose might be cut from her for lying. She was still an ignorant girl, of course, but she now knew a little more of what it might be to be a slave on Gor.
'Release her from the rack,' said Ulafi. The rack was opened and the girl collapsed, shuddering, on the wharf.
'Tie her hands and fasten her at a dock ring,' said Ulafi, to his second officer, and two seamen, one of whom was the fellow who had passed me on the walkway of the Rim canal, on the way to the pier of the Red Urt. 'Then whip her,' said Ulafi. 'Then bring her to the shop of the metal worker. I shall await you there. Bring, too, a pole and cage to the shop.'
'Yes, Captain,' said the second officer.
'Come with me, if you would,' said Ulafi to me.
I followed him to the shop of the metal worker. Outside the shop, stripped, weeping, chained by the neck to a ring, freshly branded, was the girl who had been the Lady Sasi, of Port Kar. A guardsman stood near her. If she was not soon sold for the cost of her branding she would be taken and put on the public shelves, large, flat steps; leading down to the water, near where the Central canal meets Thassa, the sea. She was a cheap slave, but she was pretty. I did not think she should have attempted to inconvenience honest citizens. When she saw me she tried to cover herself and crouch small. I smiled. Did she not know she was branded?
'Heat an iron,' said Ulafi to the metal worker, a brawny fellow in a leather apron.
'Tal,' said the man to me.
'Tal,' said I to him.
'We always keep an iron hot,' said the metal worker. But he did turn to his assistant, a lad of some twelve years. 'Heat the coals,' said he to him. The lad took a bellows and, opening and closing it, forced air into the conical forge. The handles of some six irons, their heads and a portion of their shafts buried in the coals, could be seen.
I looked out the door of the shop. I could see the girl, about one hundred and fifty yards away, her wrists crossed and bound before her, tied by the wrists to a heavy ring at the side of the pier. She knelt. Then the first stroke of the whip hit her. She screamed. Then she could scream no more but was twisting, gasping, on her stomach, and side and back, under the blows of the whip. I think she had not understood before what it might mean, truly, to he whipped. Men passed her, going about their business. The disciplining of a slave girl on Gor is not that unusual a sight.
'I have five brands,' said the metal worker, 'the common Kajira brand, the Dina, the Palm, the mark of Treve, the mark of Port Kar.'
'We have a common girl to brand,' said Ulafi. 'Let it be the common Kajira brand.'
I could see that the girl had now been unbound from the ring. She could apparently not walk. One of the seamen had thrown her over his shoulder and was bringing her toward the shop. She was in shock. I think she had not realized what the whip could do to her.
Yet the beating had been merciful and brief. I doubt that she was struck more than ten or fifteen times.
I think the purpose of the whipping had been little more than to teach her what the whip could feel like. A girl who knows what the whip can feel like strives to be pleasing to the master.
I could see the lateen sails on Ulafi's ship loosened on their yards.
Men stood by the mooring ropes.
Two sailors, behind the second officer, carried a slave cage. It was supported on a pole, the ends of which rested on their shoulders.
The, girl was brought into the shop and stood in the branding rack, which was then locked on her, holding her upright. The metal worker placed her wrists behind her in the wrist clamps, adjustable, each on their vertical, flat metal bar. He screwed shut the clamps. She winced. He then shackled her feet on the rotating metal platform.
'Left thigh or right thigh? he asked.
'Left thigh,' said Ulafi. Slave girls are commonly branded on the left thigh. Sometimes they are branded on the right thigh, or lower left abdomen.
The metal worker turned the apparatus, spinning the shaft, with its attached, circular metal platform. The
