'Good,' said the first.
Alp 'If no bad reports are received on any of us,' added the second.
'I was pleasing,' said the first.
'So, too, was I,' averred the second.
'If Jasmine is not fully pleasing again,' said the first girl, 'I think I will pull her hair out.'
'And so, too, will the rest of the chaint' laughed the second girl, the shorter one.
Jasmine, I suspected, would soon learn to be pleasing. Certainly it would be in her best interests to be so. She would probably have to spend at least a portion of every day within the reach of her chain sisters. Doubtless soon she would be begging them for counsels in sensuality, for tricks and techniques, that she might improve herself and become less inadequate as a slave.
'He took away my clothes,' one girl was telling another, 'but then he did not so much as touch me. He made me serve him, rather, in small and menial ways. I must cook Sullage for him. Then I must launder and iron a tunic. Then I must dust his goods and clean and tidy his tent. Then I was made to sew, and then clean and polish his leather.'
'And how did you feel,' asked the girl to whom she was speaking, 'performing these small tasks for him, suitable for a slave?'
'Gradually, serving him helplessly, then lovingly in these fashions, I became more and more aroused,' she said. 'Then, finally, after the polishing of the feather, I could stand it no longer. I threw myself to my belly before him, juicing like a larma.'
'Did he then content you?' asked the other girl.
'Yes,' said the girl, 'though the brute made me squirm a little first.' How well that master had understood sex, and the sexuality of the female, I thought. He apparently understood something of the pervasiveness and totality of female sexuality. They had been, in their way, having sex together for hours, before he even touched her. Well had he understood the woman, and her needs and desires to be pleasing, and to submit and serve in many ways. It was the total woman, in her wholeness, which he, to her joy, had chosen to dominate.
How terrible, I thought, to be a slave!
'Would you like to be sent again to his tent?' asked the other girl. 'Yes,' said the girl. 'Yesl Oh, yesl'
What a meaningless slut she wasl How pleased I was that I was not a slave! 'You, Slave!' called a voice.
I stopped in my tracks. I put my fists before my mouth, in terror, but, too, to hide my neck.
'Not you, you!' said the voice.
I quickly hurried on, trembling. It seemed that any moment I must be discovered. 'I must see him again,' the girl in front of me was saying.
'Why?' asked the other.
'I think he is my love master,' she breathed.
'It is more likely that you are his love slave,' laughed the other.
'He must call for me again!' said the girl.
'You are, of course, entitled to hope that,' said the other, 'when you lie alone, chained in your place.'
'He must!' she wept.
'Perhaps he will have you summoned again to his tent,' said the second girl. 'I must see him again!' she said.
'That will be decided by masters,' said the second girl. How horrifying to be a slave, I thought. How pleased I was that I was not a slave.
Swiftly, then, seeing more men waiting further down the lane, sonic with loops of chain in their hands, I slipped to the side between the tents. I could see women lining up down there, too, being put in wrist or throat coffle, each one doubtless reporting in, and in the proper position, to the appropriate slave master.
I skirted a large cooking area. I could smell freshly baked bread, and the cooking of eggs and meat.
I made my way among tents, every sense alert, sometimes crawling on my hands and knees.
It was still quite dark. Here and there, there were morning fires. The moons were down.
I cried out in misery. A sleen, snarling, leapt toward me, but was stopped by its chain.
I continued on my way, treading narrow valleys between mountains of sacks, narrow aisles separating cliffs of boxes.
'Where are you going, little lady?' called a fellow from above me.
He was standing on boxes, carrying a box. I had not even seen him.
'The chains,' he said, 'are behind you and to your right.'
Swiftly I sped away, in the general direction he had indicated. Then, when I was confident I was out of his sight, I resumed, as nearly as I could, given the bundles, the boxes and crates, my original direction.
Then I found myself in a blind alley, a place where the passage was closed by a sheer wall of boxes, several feet over my head. I hurried back and tried another passage. It, too, to my misery, was blocked. Then I suddenly realized I had lost my direction. Between the boxes, at places, darknesses in the darkness, there were narrow cracks. I did not know which ere passages and which were mere places where several boxes had been removed. I struck with my fists at the wall of boxes.
Then, suddenly, I heard a tarn scream, and not more than o or three hundred yards away.
Too, I saw a lantern approaching behind me.
I darted through an opening, came to a wall, and crouched between two boxes. I saw the light of the lantern on the boxes ahead of me, a WO it was lifted at the passage I had entered.
'She came this way,' said a voice.
I heard the two men entering the passage.
'There she is!' said one of them. I gasped, in terror.
Then I heard a sudden scrambling. 'I've got you, you little she-sleen!' he said. I heard a small body flung to the dirt. Then I heard the snapping on of slave bracelets.
'Turn her over,' said a voice.
I heard a body moked.
'She's a pretty one,' said a voice. 'Read her collar.'
'Our little thief is Tula, of the chain of Ephialtes,' said the other voice. 'I stole nothing, Masterl' cried the girl.
'Thrust up her tunic,' said the first voice. 'Now split your I legs, Tula. Good girl. Now, what were you saying?' girl 'It was only one pastry, Master,' said the girl. 'For all Tula! Do not beat herl'
'Keep those legs wide, Tula,' said the first voice. con
'Yes, Master,' whimpered the girl. imp I then listened, with misery, while the two men, one after hap the other, in the narrow passageway between the boxes, used brutal, forceful use of her almost overwhelmed me psychologically. How helpless, how dominated are slavesl I touched then myself. To my horror, I, too, was wet. I gritted my teeth. I her hoped they could not smell me. I trembled. I tried not to feel, with It was almost as though they, in inflicting themselves on that pathetic slave, were subjecting me, as well, to those in so debasing, masterly thrusts. Yet, of course, they were not, pum in this, to my scandal, I felt keen frustration. I found myself, envying her. I wondered what it would be like to be held not in the arms of such brutes, a cringing vessel for th pleasure, choiceless but to rhapsodically succumb. time forced such thoughts from my mind. Surely I must n such thoughts. Surely they were appropriate only for a slave I looked up, miserably. The sky was becoming gray n In a few minutes, perhaps, the cage would be lowered. my absence would be noted. girl.
Me entire camp, then, and its vicinity, I did not doubt, would be subjected to an inch-by-inch search, one that it uld be impossible to elude.
I had failed to escape.
'On your feet, Tula,' said one of the men.
'Tula has served you well, has she not?' begged the girl. I heard her pull at the slave bracelets.
'Put down her tunic,' said the first man.
'There,' said the second.
'When we called to you to stop, Tula,' said the first man, 'you ran. Have You ever run away before?'
'I was not really running away,' said the girl. 'I just did want you to catch me.'
