'Look,' he said.
I looked back. The Lady Florence had come out again on the porch. She looked about, but did not see us, as we were some distance away, at the corner of the house, and shielded by trees. She bent down, furtively, and snatched up the note which had been attached to my collar. Then she hurried again into the house.
'She is a woman,' said Kenneth.
'Yes, Master,' I said.
'She cannot bear that it might be found,' laughed Kenneth. 'Too, perhaps she wants it, that she may, regarding it, hate the Lady Melpomene even more than she has in the past, if that is possible.'
'Yes, Master,' I said.
'Did you see how furtive she was,' he asked, 'so fearful of discovery?'
'Yes, Master,' I said.
'She is, for all her wealth and freedom,' he said, 'only a woman.'
'Yes, Master,' I said.
'Is she pleasant in the furs?' he asked.
'It was I, a silk slave,' I said, smiling, 'not she, who must needs be pleasant in the furs.'
'Of course,' he said. Then he said, 'Would she look well in a collar? Would she look well naked, upon a slave block'
I was startled. 'May I respond to such questions?' I asked.
'Yes,' he said.
'Yes,' I said, 'she would look well in a collar, and would look well naked, upon a slave block.'
'I had guessed as much,' he grinned.
'If I may speak, Master,' I said, 'you seem pleased to learn that I have been consigned to the stables.'
'I am,' said he. 'I expect that you will make coins for Barns and myself.'
'Master?' I asked.
'Can you fight?' he asked.
'No,' I said.
He laughed. 'You are a big fellow,' he said, 'and strong. Too, you seem fast. Too, you are clearly intelligent. That is important, more important than many fools understand.'
'I do not know how to fight,' I said. I was very conscious of the binding fiber confining my wrists behind my back.
'Tighten your belly,' he said.
I did so. He then, as I anticipated, struck me, heavily, in the gut. I was, of course, in good condition, and set for the blow.
'Good,' said Kenneth.
'I do not know how to fight,' I told him.
'In the stables,' said Kenneth, 'authority is mine. You will, for all practical purposes, belong to me. Is that understood?'
'Yes, Master,' I said.
'Do you wish to live?' he asked.
'Yes, Master,' I said.
'You will then do as you're told,' he said
'Yes, Master,' I said.
'In the stables,' he said, 'we have, too, besides the male slaves, some Kajirae, stable sluts, as we call them. I can assign these as I please.'
I looked at him. I thought of Gorean Kajirae. I inadvertently licked my lips.
He laughed, and turned about, leading the way about the corner of the house, treading upon the wagon way.
'Come along, Stable Slave,' he said.
'Yes, Master,' I said, following him.
The line of kneeling, male stable slaves was straight. I knelt near the end of that line. The Mistress, not hurrying, continued her inspection. Kenneth and Barus followed her. Occasionally she stopped to speak to a slave, sometimes to put him under questions, pertaining to his duties and his discharging of them. She could be quite thorough, my mistress, the lofty Lady Florence of Vonda. Many of the slaves feared her, her demands and her quirt. She held over them, of course, the power of life and death. She was only a few slaves from me now. It had rained the night before, and the ground was soft. She wore a full, beige skirt, the hem of which fell to within some six inches of the ground, and slim, high, black-leather boots; a beige blouse, and a beige jacket, belted, which fell to her thighs; too, she wore a loose hood, attached to the jacket by hooks, of matching beige material, and an opaque veil, also of beige material. Such garments, far less formal than the common attire of the Gorean free woman, are sometimes worn by rich women in the supervision and inspection of certain sorts of holdings, such as orchards, fields, ranches and vineyards. They constitute, for such women, so to speak, a habit for work.
The mistress was now but five slaves from me.
The skirt's hem, some six inches from the ground, protects the skirt from being soiled by water or mud. Doubtless that is the principal reason for its height. Also, however, interestingly, it functions as a slave control device. The sight of the Mistress' ankle, of course, even booted, is tantalizing; it is exciting and provocative. The male slave, thus, if he is vital, finds himself powerfully drawn to look upon it. On the other hand he knows that such an act can be punished by death. Thus, when he is in the presence of his Mistress, she in such a habit, he becomes fearful and ill at ease. She, in effect, flaunts herself in front of him, acting however as though no such thing is going on. She knows that he is in misery. She exploits this in her control of him.
The Mistress was now some four slaves from me. I was the thirty-fifth in a long line of male slaves, some forty-two in length. We knelt, in brief brown tunics, in the soft earth. The sunlight~was bright; the air was Gorean in its exuberance and freshness. The homely smells of the stable yard and the barns, with their straw-filled stalls, are not really objectionable, when one grows used to them. The odors are distinctive but, when one grows accustomed to them, familiar and not really unpleasant. I rather liked the odors of the stables and barns, such complex mixed odors, ranging from straw, and hay and leather, to the organic wastes of our huge charges, some four species of draft tharlarion. We did not, in the great stables, raise saddle tharlarion, though in the house stables, here in the Mistress' villa, some forty pasangs south sect west of Vonda, there were several saddle tharlarion. The Mistress did not breed and raise racing tharlarion, incidentally. These are usually larger and more agile beasts than common saddle tharlarion and are smaller, of course, than either draft tharlarion or war tharlarion, the latter used almost exclusively in the tharlarion cavalries of Gor, huge, upright beasts, several tons in weight, guided by voice commands and the blows of spears. The Lady Melpomene of Vonda, incidentally, I had heard, for such stories reach even the stables, had fared badly in the tharlarion races in Venna. I recalled that she had hoped to recoup her lost fortunes in such races. Apparently she had failed to do so. As the story went, and my own knowledge, as far as it went, corroborated the story, she had wagered what were, in effect, her last serious financial resources, the proceeds garnered from the sale of her house in Venna, on the outcomes of certain tharlarion races. She had thought herself, in virtue of the possession of significant and secret information, assured of certain winners in these races. Unfortunately for her this information, as I suspect is often the case in such matters, proved unreliable. Her wagers had, at any rate, proved uniformly disastrous. She had become a ruined woman. She had had to flee from Venna under the cover of darkness, that she not be delivered to the mercies of her creditors. Such creditors often come for a woman with a collar and chain. She resided now in Vonda, in a tiny, dingy holding, where she, as a citizeness of that city, would have, at least against foreign creditors, the protection of its Home Stone. The Lady Melpomene of Vonda, impoverished, ruined, had little now to pride herself on save the name of her family and the splendor of her lineage. The Lady Florence, though she must have been aware of these things, never, it was said, at home or abroad, mentioned the name of the Lady Melpomene. She had, perhaps, forgotten about her.
The Mistress was still some four slaves from me. She was sharply questioning one of my fellow slaves. Stammering and cringing, he was trying to satisfy her. I observed the Mistress' ankles, which, below the swirling hem of the beige skirt, were well turned in the high, slim boots. A slaver, of course, would remove such boots before shackling her. I saw Kenneth, behind her, grinning at me. I decided I had best look away from the Mistress.
