'Do you think I could please other men?' she asked. 'Yes,' I said. 'I know that I am not as desirable as most women,' she said. 'You are desirable,' I said. 'And to some men you will be inutterable desirable.'
'How kind you are to a helpless female prisoner,' she said. 'I speak the truth,' I said. 'You are kind,' she said. I said nothing.
'I will try to please my masters well,' she said. 'I would recommend it,' I said. She shuddered against me.'The men of Ar,' said said, 'took my freedom from me, when they made me prisoner. You hae taken my freedom from me, when you forced me to yield as a female slave.'
'Your yielding,' I said, 'was not that of a female slave, for you are not yet, truly, a female slave. Yet is was doubtless the fullest yielding of which you were at this time capable.'Can there be more?' she asked.
'You can not at this time,' I said, even begin to suspect the depths, the dimensions, the wonders and marvels of slave submission.'What you have done to me is irreversible.' she said, 'I can never go back now knowing what I do, to being a proud free woman.'
I shrugged. It was nothing to me.
'And yet,' she said, sobbing, 'I am too plain to be a slave.'You are a women,' I told her. 'Yes,' she said, 'I am a woman. I did not know it before, truly, what it was to be a woman.'
'It is not being a kind of man,' I told her. 'No, she said, 'it is being a full female in the order of nature.'Yes, I said. She sobbed.
'What is wrong?' I asked. 'I want a master,' she said. 'I want to be everything, and do everything for him. I want to give him all of me, holding nothing back. I want to be nothing to him, onl his owned slave, totally loving and seving him.'And so?' I said. 'But I am plain,' she said. 'No man will want me.'
'Are you done with her yet?' asked a rough voice. We were startled and looked up. There at the edge of the stara standing, was a large uncouth fellow in the garments of the Tarn Keepers. 'Yes,' I said.I smiled. I sat up and took the Lady Gina's free shackle and jerked her ankels closely together. I preapred to close the openshackle about her right ankle. Her ankles would then be chained together, as before, with about eight inches of chain separating them. The shackles were large and of heavy iron.
'Do not reshackle her,' he said.'Very well,' I said and got up.'You look like a tasty pudding,' he said to the Lady Gina. She looked up at him from the straw. 'Are you branded yet, Female?' he asked her. Her hand went inadvertently to her left thigh. 'No,' she said, 'no.'Is she any good?' he asked me. 'Yes,' I said, 'she is pretty good. And thereis no telling how good she will be when she is properly enslaved and finds herself in the possession of the right master.' 'Of course,' he said. He again looked down at her.There was a startled, soft light in the eyes of the Lady Gina as she looked up at the fellow. Suddenly, to me, she seem very soft and very vulnerable in the straw. It was as though a transformation somehow had come over her.
'She is beautiful,' He said. 'Yes,' I said, for somehow, suddenly, perhaps with the sudden understanding and acceptance of her nauture and condition, it had become true.
She gasped and looked up at him, spoken of as beautiful.She trembled.He then kicked her and she cried out in pain.'Split your legs Woman of Vonda,' he said. 'You are to be had.'Yes, Master!' she cried out.
I watched for a moment as she writhed in his arms. 'You will look well on the block,' he told her.
'Yes, Master,' she whispered. 'Perhaps I will buy you,' he said. 'Yes Master,' she whispered, 'Yes, Master!'
I left the two together, and began to thread my way through the tables, between the soldiers and merchants, and others, and the stripped, shackled women of Vonda, serving as waitressed, toward the opening of the food tent. 'Our forces have already moved north,' one man was saying. 'The troops from Lara will not be here for two dsays,' said another. 'By that time they will find here only the ashes of Vonda,' laughed another. As I accidentally brushed against a woman of Vonda she trembled and put down her head and knelt swiftly. I continued past her. 'It is dangerous for merchant caravans,' a man was saying. 'Many have been attacked,' said another. 'It is rumored the river pirates are the worst,' said another. 'They grow bold with the withdrawal of troops from Lara. They have struck even into Lara herself, then withdrawing to their galleys.' 'Perhaps this will cause the troops of Lara to return,' said another, 'to protect their own holdings.'No,' said another,'they are committed.' 'They are to be sold in the river markets' said somone, as I went past.I did not understand the meaning of his remark. It did not, I gathered, pertain to the women of Vonda. It would be difficult to get them to the river markes, which lay beyond Lara, down teh Vosk, and higher prices, presumable, could be obtained for them in the markets of the south. Most of them, I assumed, women of the enemy, would be sold from the slave blocks of Ar herself.
As I went through the opening of the tent, I was jostled by a large man. He wore a mask. 'Watch where you are going,' he said angrily. I stepped back, but did not respond to him. I was angry. It had been he, it seemed to me, who had struck against me. Suddenly for a moment he stopped and looked at me closely. It seemed as though he might have thought he knew me. Too, it seemed to me that I might in spite of the mask somehow have found him familiar. Then saying nothing more, he brushed past me and entered the tent. He was alone. I could not place him. Then I left the food tent and went to the tarn cots. I hoped to be able to arrange for transportation to the vicinity of Lara. I retained five silver tarsks.
This is a considerable sum. I felt reasonably certain I could find some tarnsman, perhaps from a neutral city, who might, by a suitably circuitous route, get me into the neighborhood of Lara.
Some tarns had apparently recently arrived from the west. Some of them had apparently been carrying refugees. I saw some wounded men. Here and there small groups of men huddled about, dismally. I saw no women in theses groups, even slaves.Some of these wore the white and gold of the merchansts. Some of them even wore masks.They crouched about fires.
'Who are these people,' I asked one of the fellows near the cots. 'Mostly merchants,' said he. 'There are the victims of the predations of river pirates in Lara.'Some wear masks,' I said. 'Yet most are know to us,' said the man. 'Even masked. There, not masked if Splenius and Zarto. You know Zarto, the iron merchant? 'No,' I said. 'He lost his wagons of igots,' said the man. 'Beside him, masked is Horemius. Eight stone of perfumes were taken from him. There, farther to the left, in the brown mask is Zadron, the dealer in silver. He lost almost everything. In the red mask is Publius, also of thesilver merchants, He retains only the belt of silver on his shoulder.'
'I see no woman with them, no slaves,' I said. 'They were embattled,' said the man. 'For their lives they bartered their goods and slaves.'
'They were all from Lara or her vicinity?' I asked. 'Yes,' said he. 'They had not realized that the troops of Lara would be moving east or that hte brigands and pirates would move so boldly.'
'Are these all of them?' I asked apprehensively. 'No,' said the fellow. 'Some of them have gone to the food tents.'Was one of them Oneander, a salt and leather merchant?' I asked. 'Yes,' said the fellow.
4. The City of Lara; I Renew An Acquaintance
The girl sstirred uneasily. Her legs were drawn up. She wore the Ta-Teena, the slave rag and a collar. She lay in the corner of the main room of the inn. She lay on a slave mat. I had put here there.
I sat, cross-legged, behing one of the low tables in the room. I chewed on a crust of bread. The inn, now, was deserted. It had been evacuated early this morning.
'That is ten copper tarsks,' had said the man last night placing before me a bowl of sul porrage. I had not argued. I had paid him.
'You cannot put me out!' a free woman had been crying to t e proprietor of the inn aat his counter to the side. 'You did not pay me for your last night's lodging,' hd toldher. 'Pay me now for that, and for tonight, or you may not remain within the inn.'
'A silver tarsk for a night's lodging!' she cried. 'That is unheard of. It is outrageous. You hae no right to charge such prices!' Others, too, about the counter uttered such cries. The Inn was thta of Strobuis, in Lara, at the confluence of the Olniand Vosk. It was crowded with refugees from Bonda. Many hundreds had fled from Vonda and most had taken the river southward, paying highly for their fares on the varities of river craft, barges, skiffs, river galleys and even coracles, which had brought them to Lara.
'Those are my prices,' said Strobuis. 'Sleen!' cried more than one man. 'Whatever the traffic will bear,' had grinned a fellow near me at my table. 'I am a free woman of Vonda!' the woman at the counter was crying.
I lifted the sul porrage to my lips. The mask I wore, like those of some of the others in the room,covered
