The formation seemed large to be a patrol.
I watched the robes of free women, passing in the street, the wagons, the now increasing throngs, the palanquins of rich men, some with lovely, briefly tunicked slaves chained behind them, attached to the palanquins, an affectation of display.
My mistress was long in the shop. I assumed I would have many packages to bear.
I then saw a kaiila pass. It was lofty, stately, fanged and silken. I had heard of such beasts, but this was the first one I had seen. It was yellow, with flowing hair. Its rider was mounted in a high, purple saddle, with knives in saddle sheaths. He bore a long, willowy black lance. A net of linked chain, unhooked; dangled beside his helmet. His eyes bore the epicanthic fold. He was, I gathered, of one of the Wagon Peoples, most likely the Tuchuks. His face, colorfully scarred, was marked in the rude heraldry of those distant, savage riders.
'Slave,' said a woman's voice.
Immediately I knelt, head down. I saw the sandals and robes of a free woman before me.
'Where is the shop of Tabron, who is the worker of silver?' she asked.
'I do not know, Mistress,' I said. 'I am not of this city. Forgive me, Mistress.'
'Ignorant beast,' she said.
'Yes, Mistress,' I said. Then, with a turn of her robes, she had gone on.
I got again to my feet, and leaned against the wall of the shop of Philebus. I felt the collar at my throat, of sturdy steel. It was enameled white. In it, incised, in tiny, dark cursive letters, in a feminine-type script, was a message in Gorean. It read, I had been told, `I am the property of the Lady Florence of Vonda.' The lock on the back of the collar had a double bolt, the double bolt, however, responding to a single key. I was barefoot. The tunic my mistress had given me was of white silk.
I stood straighter then, by the wall, for I now heard the counting of a cadence. Passing now in the street before me, in ranks of four, was a column of men. The four files, as I counted that nearest to me, were fifty deep. The men wore scarlet tunics. Behind their left shoulders were round shields. On their heads were scarlet caps, with yellow tassels. Behind their left shoulder, over the shields, there hung steel helmets. Sheathed swords, short, were slung at their left shoulders. On their right shoulders they bore spears, with long, bronze, tapering blades. Their feet wore heavy, thick-soled sandals, which, almost like boots, with swirling leather, rose high about their calves. The sound of these bootlike sandals on the atones of the street was clear and regular. Behind the right shoulder, slung on the shaft of the spears, were light packs. I gathered the men were leaving the city. The Gorean infantryman usually marches light. Military supply posts, walled, 0ccur at intervals on major roads. Indeed, one of the apparent anomalies of Gor is the quality and linearity of certain roads, which are carefully kept in repair, roads which often, seemingly paradoxically, pass through sparsely populated territo• ries. The nature of these roads and their quality seems peculiar until one examines maps on which they occur. It then becomes clear that most of them lead toward borders and frontiers. They are then, in effect, military highways. This becomes clearer, too, when it is recognized that most of the supply posts occur at forty pasang intervals. Forty pasangs is an average day's march for a Gorean infantryman. I wondered why the troops were leaving the city. Too, such troops, as I understood it, usually departed from a city in the early morning, primarily, I supposed, that a normal day's march might be completed. I watched the troops disappearing down the street. They had been led by two officers, also afoot. The column had been flanked, too, by two other officers, presumably of lesser rank. The column's tread had been even. The unison bad been unpretentious but, in its way, stirring and dramatic. One felt that what was passing was not at that moment simply a collection of men, an aggregate of diverse individuals, but a unit. This, I take it, was a tribute to the training of such men. At the head of the column, behind the officers, but a pace or two before the rightermost man in the first rank, there marched a fellow who bore a standard on which was mounted an image of a silver taro. Many such standards are over a century old. The Gorean soldier is commonly a professional soldier, usually of the caste of Warriors. In a sense, given the cruel selections undergone by his forebears, he has been bred to his work. In his blood there is the spear and war.
The column had now disappeared. When departing from main roads such troops can be followed by bosk wagons or tharlarion wagons, bearing supplies: Too, by taro, they can be supplied from the air. It should also be mentioned that it is not unusual nor impractical for such troops, which are usually in fairly small numbers, to live off the game-rich Gorean countryside. Levies, too, within certain territories, can be imposed on villages for their provisioning. Mobility and surprise are often features of Gorean warfare. Much of it is more akin to the raid than to the siege or the open conflict of large bodies of men over large areas. It would be extremely unusual, for example, for a Gorean city to have more than five thousand men in the field in a given time.
Uneasily I touched the collar on my neck. It read, I had been told, `I am the property of the Lady Florence of Vonda.' I could not remove it, of course, for I was a slave and it had been locked on me. I looked down the avenue of the Central Cylinder, down which the troops had disappeared. I had heard, inadvertently from the Lady Melpomiene, as I had stood at the stirrup of my mistress, that an uneasy situation existed currently between Ar and the Salerian Confederation. The Lady Melpomene had said she was leaving Ar that night. The Lady Florence, of course, if I were identified as her slave, would by my collar presumably be recognized as a citizeness of Vonda, one of the cities of the confederation. I did not think it would go easily with her if hostilities should break out openly and she be seized in Ar. Indeed, we might be sold from the same platform. I wondered what she might look like in a collar. I knew, of course, what she looked like naked, for I was her silk slave. Free women think as little of concealing their bodies before their silk slaves as the women of Earth would before their pet dogs. Too, of course, it would not be well to be a woman of Ar in Vonda, should hostilities break out. Immediate reduction to total slavery would surely be the least of what would be inflicted on such a woman. I thought it would be desirable, from my mistress' point of view, to leave Ar in the near future, and make her way to her house in the resort town of Venna. I began to be uneasy. It seemed to me that the sooner we departed from the walls of Ar the better it might be. My alarm, of course, was not simply on behalf of my mistress, but on my own behalf as well. Gorean men, I had learned, are not patient with silk slaves. I did not wish to risk crawlng on my stomach, over stones, under whips, perhaps for pasangs, to the nearest slave market.
Some fifty yards away, in the street, another palanquin passed, borne by draft slaves, some lovely enslaved girls, in brief tunics, chained by the neck to a bar at its back. Their hands, too, were locked behind their backs in slave bracelets. Perhaps the display was a bit ostentatious, but I did not object. The girls were slim-thighed and sweetly breasted.
I looked down to the girl who, wrists bound, on the shortened neck-leash, sat at the slave ring in front of the shop of Philebus. It was later in the afternoon now, and it was hot. I was surprised to see, though I gave no sign of this, that she had been looking at me. She turned her head away. I continued to regard her. I think she was aware of this. She sat a bit more straightly against the wall, putting her head back. I thought again of the girls chained behind the palanquin I had just seen, and the girl before me now, at the ring, fastened there. How marvelous I thought to be on such a world, where such women might be owned. I was not displeased then to be on Gor. I regarded her ankles, her calves and thighs, the sweetness of her belly and breasts, her throat, her face, her hair.
'I am thirsty,' she said.
'Kneel,' I said.
'Never,' she said.
I looked away.
'I am kneeling,' she said.
I looked back at her. She was now kneeling.
'Slave!' said the male silk slave, fastened at the wall, at the next ring.
Somehow I had known the girl would kneel to me. It is difficult to say how I had known this. Indeed, perhaps I had not known it. Perhaps I had only expected it.
She was kneeling. She had obeyed.
I recalled our earlier exchange, in which she had told me that she was not for the likes of me, but for free men. 'Do you yield well in their arms, Slave?' I had asked her. 'I expect you yield well indeed, Slave,' I had said to her. She had flushed crimson, and had sobbed. Our relationship was now quite different than it would have been, I sensed, had that exchange not taken place. In that exchange I had made it clear to her that she was a woman, and that, if she were to relate to me, she must do so as a woman. I would have it no other way. I had seen fit, by an act of my will, that of a male, to deny to her the convenient refuges of deceit, pretense and fraud. She now knelt at my feet. I had, by an imperious word, put her there.
