do so.
I saw a lantern approaching, held by one of two guardsmen. I cast aside the binding fiber, and then crept to the side, to lie on my belly in the shadows behind a tent. I felt one of the tent ropes on my shoulder.
I heard someone inside the tent stirring in sleep. The lantern of the guardsmen had then passed.
15 Alarm Bars
'Holdl Who goes there?' called a voice. I heard the snarling of the patrol sleen, its jerking at its chain.
Weeping, I fled back among the tents. The guardsman did not release the sleen. He would probably not want it loose among the tents.
I crouched behind a tent, in the darkness. This was the third time I had tried to leave the camp. Once there had been stakes and wire; another time there had been a deep ditch; each time there had been guardsmen with sleen. The sleen, I had little doubt, had been able to detect my approach, and had led the guardsmen to my vicinity. The perimeter of the camp seemed ringed with guards and sleen. The camp was heavily guarded. This was perhaps because it was still within the range of Corcyrus, and perhaps, too, because of a special captive, a Tatrix, thought to be chained in a suspended cage.
I looked up. I moaned. In the moonlight, not more than a hundred yards away, I could see the cage slung from its branch. In my running, and fear, disoriented, and once pursued by drunken soldiers, I had inadvertently returned to its vicinity. If I were caught I did not doubt but what I would soon again find myself the prisoner of those cramped quarters, though doubtless in fresher, sturdier bonds, probably of iron, and not locked, but hammered closed about my neck and limbs. The cage, too, then would probably be closed with plates and rivets, and the guards doubled or tripled about it. I crouched down, my head in my hands. In a little more than an Ahn, I feared, the camp would be awakened. Already it seemed to me that there were more people about than before, more men to avoid.
I shrank back into the shadows. Two men, cooks, I think, from their conversation, were passing.
I heard wings overhead. Looking up I saw a tarn. It was flying northwest. Behind it, on long ropes, dangled a tarn basket. Sleen were no problem for it, I thought bitterly. It was not the first such departure, or, indeed, arrival, I had noted in the camp.
I had hitherto avoided the more fit, busy portions of the camp, generally about the areas for tradesmen, suppliers and sutlers, and the storage, delivery and mess areas.
There were too many men there, and it would be, surely, too easy to be detected. I, then, stealthily, my heart pounding, began to follow, keeping in the shadows, the two men who had just passed. I was terribly frightened.
They were moving toward the center of the camp.
'What are you doing there, Slut, skulking about?' called a man. I had not seen him, between the tents. He had some gear slung over his shoulder. He was apparently waiting there. I backed away from him.
'Let her go,' said another man, emerging from a tent. He, too, carried some gear. 'You can see she is a slave, returning to her master.' I then hurried away. In the darkness they had not detected that I lacked a brand. Too, they had not noticed that my neck was not encircled by a slave collar.
I was now in consternation. I did not see how I could proceed.
People seemed to be getting up now about the camp.
'Ena!' called a girl, hurrying to catch up with another.
I stepped back into the shadows.
A tall, slim girl, naked, turned about. A bit of slave silk dangled languidly from her left hand.
The new girl was short and lusciously bodied. She wore a brief, silken slave tunic, fastened with a single tie at her bosom. A single tug frees the tie and allows the garment to be parted for the view and pleasures of a master. Both women wore collars.
'And how did the night go?' asked the new girl. 'Were you well used?' 'Yes,' responded the taller girl, dreamily. 'And you?'
'Superbly,' said the shorter girl.
The two girls then began to walk down the lane between the tents.
L my head down, my hair about my neck and shoulders, hopefully tending to conceal the bareness of my neck, the absence there of a steel circlet, fell into step behind them, seemingly, I hoped, only another slave on her way back to her master.
I soon became aware that this must be a lane leading to the chains.
Other girls, soon, here aid there, entered it, before and behind me, and between me and those who had been directly before me.
'And what of the resistance you -intended to offer?' one girl was asking another.
'It was crushed,' said the other. 'He did not choose to accept it. Then he made me serve him well.'
'It is the fifth time you have served in his tent since we left Argentum,' said the first girl.
'Yes,' said the second. 'think he likes you,' said the first girl. 'Perhaps,' said the other.
'Do you think he will buy you?' asked the first girl.
'it matters not to me,' said the other. 'I do not care, one way or the other.' 'There are stains on your face as though you bad been crying,' said the girl. 'And it does not seem to me that you have been beaten.'
'Oh?' asked the other.
'You pretentious tarsk sow,' laughed the first girl, 'you were begging him to buy youl'
'What if I was!' said the other, tossing her bead.
'And when did you beg this?' asked the girl.
'After my resistance bad been crushed, and he made me serve him without compromise as a slave,' said the other, and again this morning, before we parted.'
'You seem pleased enough now,' observed the girl.
'Tassy,' said the other, 'he is going to make an offer for me!'
'That is marvelous, Yitza!' said the first girl.
'But will Myron let me go?' asked the second girl.
'I do not know,' said the first. 'Such matters are between the men.' The second girl moaned.
'Look at it this way,' said the first girl. 'If we did not wear collars we would not even know the touch of such men as Rutilius. Too, if we were not slaves and sent to their tents, we would not even know what to do. We would be only ignorant free women.'
'How I sometimes pity free womenl' laughed the second girl. 'They are so stupidl'
'But fear them, Yitza,' said the first girl, 'for they are free and you are enslaved.'
'Of course,' said the second girl, shuddering.
'And remember that they hate you,' said the first.
'I know,' said the second.
A man stepped out, into the center of the lane. I stopped, frightened. But his attention was on another.
'Yeela,' said lie.
A girl, addressed by a free man, fell to her knees before him.
'I have paid fee for you,' he said.
'it is early, Master,' she laughed. 'Would you lie to a poor slave?' 'Perhaps,' lie said.
'If you have not, know that you will be charged,' she laughed. 'I am not for freel'
But then he had crouched down and taken her in his arms. She was thrown beneath him, grasping at him, to the dirt. Frightened, I took my way about them. I tried to hide among other girls. I hoped that no man would decide to pull me out from among them.
'What is for breakfast?' I heard one girl asking another.
'I have heard,' said the other girl, who was a shorter one, 'that each of us will have five berries put in our gruel this morning.'
