'You are young in the ways of war,' said Aemilianus. 'Not everything in war is nodding plumes and the sun flashing from silvered clouds.'
'If Ar is in danger,' he said, 'she must be warned.'
'By renegades?' asked Aemilianus.
'Renegades?' he asked.
'Surely,' said Aemilianus. 'I, you, the others, all of us, we have all be pronounced renegades.'
'Should Ar not be warned?' he asked.
'And what do you think we, we who were abandoned by Ar, we whom she holds in dishonor and contempt, we whose Home Stone she spits upon, we whom she has pronounced renegades owe to her-a€”now?'
'We own her nothing,' said Marcus, bitterly. 'But I would still see her warned.' 'And so, too, would I,' said Aemilianus, smiling. 'So, too, would I.' 'But of what is she to be warned?' he asked.
'And to whom would you speak?' I asked.
'We do not know for certain what is going to happen,' said Aemilianus. 'At the moment we have little but our suspicions, our fears.'
'Ar will destroy the Cosians in the north, and then destroy them in the south,' said Marcus.
'Quite possibly,' said Aemilianus.
'Then there is nothing to do,' he said, slowly.
'Not now,' said Aemilianus.
We were now within the harbor at Port Cos. The piers were some three hundred yards away, jammed with people. Music came from them. Pennons waved. The pharos on its promontory was behind us now, to port, something like a pasang away. The flotilla, entering the harbor, with its flags and streamers, would be a splendid sight. Already, too, from the piers, it would be able to be seen that the two slaves hung from the outjutting display beams on either side of the concave bow of the Tais.
'Do not concern yourself now about such matters,' said Aemilianus to the young warrior. 'Rejoice now. We have come safe to Port Cos.'
The slave whip snapped again, loudly, sharply, unmistakable in its definition and authority. The two girls cried out again, startled. Publia jerked in her harness as though she might have been struck, but it had not touched her. Claudia, too, winced, but, too, it had not touched her.
'Publia, Claudia!' said the keeper.
'Yes, Master!' said Publia.
'Yes, Master!' said Claudia.
'You, Publia,' he said, 'prepared well to surrender yourself to Cosians.' 'Yes, Master,' she wept.
'You, Claudia,' he said, 'were a traitress to your city.'
'Yes, Master,' she wept.
'And you are not both slaves,' he said.
'Yes, Master!' they said.
'And so,' he said, 'you will enter Port Cos as the slaves, and sluts, you are.' 'Master?' asked Publia.
'The movements of your hips, and your squirmings and glances,' he said, 'will leave no doubt as to the fittingness of your bondage.'
'Master!' wept Publia, in protest.
'Please, no, Master!' called Claudia.
'Your movements for the most part,' said the keeper, 'will be slow and sensuous, but terribly meaningful, sexually. These may be mixed upon occasion with sudden, perhaps surprising, movements, almost spasmodic, or spasmodic, in nature. I trust that you understand these things. If there is difficulty in the matter it may perhaps be clarified by the whip.'
Publia threw back her head and wept, in the harness.
'You, Publia, first,' he said. He then required of her a variety of forward and backward movements of the lower belly, and then lateral movements of the hips. These things ranged, in their varieties, from almost imperceptible extensions and shadings, to sharp, forward thrusts, such as bumps and buckings, and from scarcely detectible lateral movements, to tantalizing or abrupt movements, to rhythmical swayings. He had Claudia, too, do these things. 'Now,' said he, 'consider transitions among such movements.' My hands clenched on the rail. The slaves were beautiful. 'Now,' said he, 'slow, rotatory movements of the hips, slow, agonizingly slow, grinding movements!' I thought that many on the piers might have to hurry their own girls home, if they could make it that far. I was almost in pain.
'Well done, girls,' said the keeper. 'And do not forget the beauty of your breasts, and your squirmings, your glances and smiles.'
Publia cried out in misery.
We were now something like a hundred yards from the piers. Two of the fellows on the bow deck already had the forward lines in hand.
'It has been decided, slaves,' said the keeper to them, 'hat you will be sold at auction. In order, however, that you come into the keeping of Cosians, attendance at the auction, save by sales personnel, will be limited to Cosians. After a Cosian buys you, of course, he can do with you what he wants. We are now nearing the pier. I will point out various Cosians in the crowd, for there will be several. They are recognizable by their habiliments. You will then direct your glances and your movements particularly to them. Be pretty. Arouse interest in yourselves. We want them sweating blood when they bid for you!'
Aemilianus was already raising his hand to the crowds. There was much cheering. 'Look!' cried a fellow on the dock, pointing to the slaves.
'Yes!' said a man. 'Yes!' cried another.
'Sensuous sluts!' laughed a man.
Claudia cried out with misery, but did not cease to move.
As so many were waving to us, I, too, with many of the others, at the starboard rail, waved back.
All seemed a riot of music and color.
'There,' said the keeper, gesturing with his whip, as we drew alongside the pier. 'There is a fellow of Cos! Present yourselves to him! You are female slaves! Do it! And there is another!'
'I am not such a girl!' suddenly cried Claudia. Then she threw back her head and shrieked, as the lash, like lightning and fire, struck about her body.
She dangled and jerked in the harness, sobbing, though she had been struck but once.
'I am such a girl!' cried Publia, fervently, seeing the keeper turn toward her. 'I am such a girl!'
'If she is recalcitrant, or not pleasing,' cried slave girls on the pier, 'strike her! Strike her! Punish her! Punish her! Punish her severely!' Slave girls, kept under strict discipline themselves, they wanted it imposed on others with the same authority, exactness and perfection that it was imposed upon them. They were deeply concerned that Claudia not be permitted to get away with anything, no more than they. Was she, too, not a slave girl? Thus, interestingly, it is often slave girls themselves who are most zealous to see that masters are strict with their slaves. ' The keeper turned back toward Claudia.
'I, too, am such a girl!' she cried out, wildly, swinging in the harness. Clearly she did not wish another blow from the disciplinary instrument. Yet, too, I think that the matter was far deeper than that, and this became clear but an instant later. The chain-and-leather harness, incidentally, is muchly open. That is what one would expect, considering its display purposes. On the other hand, a consequence of this openness, also, of course, is that it affords little, or no, protection, from the slave whip. Claudia swung in the harness to face me. Our eyes met. 'Yes!' she cried. 'Yes! I am such a girl!' 'You are,' I assured her.
'Yes!' she wept. 'Yes!'
I saw then that her small rebellion had been no more than a foolish sop to her pride, one perhaps she thought in order, I wondered if she had uttered her silly noise only because I was there, who had known her when she was a mere free woman. I hoped not. But in any case, whether because of her own pride, in itself, or her concern that I who had known her as a free woman was about, or because of the strangers in the crowd, or the other slave girls, or whatever, how woefully out of place was the absurd utterance in her new reality! But then I saw in her eyes, she half laughing, half crying, that whatever had been her motivation, whether some or all of the things I had wondered about, or even others, that she had only wanted the reassurance of the whip, the reassurance of the inflexibility of the will of men, that she must now obey, and was truly a slave. Moving as she
