their deep, subsurface sockets.
'We surrender!' called the pirates on the wall. Swords were flung down. I put my prisoner with the rest. From the wall's height I could see the walk near the holding crowded with our men, emerged from the holds of the _Tuka_ and _Tina_. The fleet of Policrates, as I knew, some forty ships, was abroad, to prevent reinforcements from the eastern towns, should they appear, from proceeding westward to assist at the defense of the chain. Accordingly, within the fortress, under the command of Kliomenes, only a small force had been left, some two hundred to two hundred and fifty men. These would have been sufficient to hold the fortress against a significant attack, but, once the enemy, in numbers, as we were, were within, the defense of the holding would be a lost cause.
From the wall, looking down and across the sea yard, Callimachus and I saw Aemilianus emerging from the holding. He looked upward, toward the wall. He lifted his bloody sword into the air.
'We have won,' said Callimachus.
'This battle,' I said.
'Yes,' he said.
We would not raise over the holding of Policrates the flags of Port Cos, or of Victoria, or of Ar's Station.
Chapter 11 — MILES OF VONDA AND I OBSERVE SLAVES, UTILIZING THE SCREENED BALCONY ABOVE THE CENTRAL SLAVE QUARTERS
'Would you care to join me, my friend, Miles of Vonda?' I asked.
'Yes,' said he.
It was the night of our victory, that in which we had taken the holding.
I put the heavy key into the lock on the door, and opened it. It led onto a narrow balcony, screened by intricate grillwork, which, some twenty feet above the floor, encircled the area of the central slave quarters.
The room below was lit by lamps.
We observed the girls through the grillwork. It is so designed that they do not know when they are under observation, — and when they are not. Anything that they might do or say, thus, for all they know, is being seen and heard by men. This is acceptable. They are slaves.
'Yes,' I said, softly, 'she is beautiful.'
Miles of Vonda, I saw, could not take his eyes from one slave. She sat against the far wall, her hands upon her knees. She was auburn-haired, and luscious. She was clad in her collar, and a bit of yellow rag. She had once been the Lady Florence of Vonda. She was now the mere slave, Florence.
I saw the fists of Miles of Vonda clench.
'If we are successful,' I said, 'doubtless she, and the others, will be distributed.' These girls, of course, like silver and gold, and rich cloths, were loot, and prizes. 'You have thus far played a significant and handsome role in our business, Miles of Vonda,' I said. 'If you desire her, it is quite possible she will be allotted to you, as a portion of the spoils.'
'If I want her,' said Miles of Vonda, lightly. 'There are doubtless numerous others captive below who are quite as beautiful.'
'Doubtless,' I granted him, 'but, yet, she is quite lovely.'
'Yes,' he said, looking upon her, 'she is.' I smiled to myself. Did Miles of Vonda seek to conceal from me his affection for a mere slave? It was obvious that he cherished that slave. I had little doubt but what he would die for her.
'It seems that you, too,' said Miles of Vonda, looking at me, 'find one of these slaves of interest.'
'Several are not displeasing to my senses,' I admitted.
'What of that exquisite little brunet?' he asked.
'Which one?' I asked.
'That one,' said he, indicating a collared girl in a scandalously brief bit of red rag sitting below and across from us, near the foot of the opposite wall.
'Her?' I asked.
'Yes,' he said.
I shrugged. It was not impossible that my eyes had more than once strayed to her.
I saw her petulantly, impatiently, push another girl away from her, who had, apparently in her opinion, come too close to her.
'She apparently has a nasty streak in her,' said Miles of Vonda.
'She is from Earth,' I said. 'The whip can take that out of her.'
'Could you whip her?' asked Miles of Vonda.
'Of course,' I told him. What woman could respect a man who is not strong enough to put her under the whip?
We continued to look downward into the central room of the slave quarters. Many such rooms are quite lovely, resplendent with multicolored tiles and rich hangings, and beautifully appointed with baths and columns, but this was not such a room. This was more in the nature of a gloomy, forbidding, ill-lit, stoutly secure incarceration chamber for females. The walls were high and stern; the tiles were large and dark. In the center of the room there was a cistern. To one side there was a trough for wastes. Scraps of food were commonly thrown to the girls through a window in the grillwork on the side of the room to our left.
It is not common on the part of pirates to pamper their slaves. All the girls in the holding we had placed in this one room, that they might, for our convenience, be located in a single place. Among them, too, we had placed Shirley and Lola, who had been at the prows of the _Tuka_ and _Tina_ when we had entered the sea yard. Before we had put them in with the other girls we had given them brief slave tunics, that they might have some prestige among their new fellow slaves.
When the fellow had thrust Lola into the room, earlier in the afternoon, I had, from the concealment of the balcony, wishing to keep my presence in the holding unknown to the brunet, observed what had ensued. Seeing the small, exquisite brunet in the bit of red rag, Lola had shrieked with pleasure. 'You sold me!' she cried, delightedly, more of her body covered by her brief slave tunic than was covered of the body of the brunet by the scrap of red cloth she had been allotted. 'You sold me!' she cried. 'Now, you, too, wear a collar!' The brunet, terrified, had shrunk back against the wall.
The fellow who had brought Lola to the central room of the slave quarters took her by the hair and shook her head. 'She is not to be attacked, or blinded,' he told her. This warning I had instructed him to issue to Lola, anticipating her hostility, which was only too understandable, against the brunet. 'Yes, Master! Yes, Master!' had wept Lola.
She had then been locked inside, with Shirley, and the others. I had instructed Lola, clearly and firmly, prior to her confinement in the central room of the slave quarters that she was to mention to no one that I was present in the holding. A similar injunction was imposed upon lovely Shirley. These girls would keep this secret. They were slaves. They did not wish to be fed to sleen. Accordingly, though the brunet would know that, to her woe, she, now in her own collar, was confined with a girl to whom she had once been almost as Mistress, she would not begin to know or suspect that one named Jason, of Victoria, a free man, resided now within the same holding as she.
'How beautiful are slaves,' said Miles of Vonda.
'Yes,' I said.
I watched Lola moving toward the brunet. She had, I gathered, seen the brunet push the other girl away, earlier. She sat down, apparently indolently, next to the brunet, and stretched her body languorously, as a slave girl. Though Lola seemed thoughtless and unconcerned in what she did, neither I nor the brunet could be under any delusion as to what was transpiring. She then, as though wearily, and paying no attention, intruded herself even more closely to the brunet. Would the brunet push her away, as she had the other? If so, Lola would not, strictly, have attacked her. The first blow would have been struck by the brunet. Lola, it could then seem, could only be defending herself.
