Temos, and Jad, in Cos. We were some pasangs outside Ar. We wore wind scarves. Dust rose up for feet about us. The season was dry. Where our beasts trod the prints of their feet, and claws remained evident in the dust. In places the earth cracked under their step.
'Are you sure?' he asked.
'Yes,' I said.
'I saw her only once before,' he said, 'on a fellow's shoulder, in Ar, in our district, carried in slave fashion, her upper body wrapped closely in the toils of a net.'
'Helpless,' I said.
'Utterly,' he said.
'She had been taken,' I said, 'only moments before.'
'You are sure it is she?' he asked.
'Yes,' I said.
'Her head was completely enclosed in a slave hood, buckled shut,' he said. 'It is she,' I said. 'I saw her before, in the room. I recognize her.'
'I am not sure I understand your plan,' he said.
'Let us approach,' I said.
We had left Ar early in the morning, and had circled the remains of her walls to the west and then took smaller roads into the hills to the northeast. We then, after noting the travelers on the road, particularly on the more isolated roads to the northeast, running through the villa districts, doubled back. In this fashion one tends almost automatically to cancel through the large numbers of coincidental travelers and detect those whose relationship with you is likely to be more purposeful, those who are following you. The likelihood of a given individual following you in both directions is small. Similarly, there is small likelihood of having someone or other constantly behind you on isolated roads. This helps to compensate for the possibility that the trackers might be acting in relays or shifts, one picking up where another turns aside.
We turned the tharlarion towards the fields where the girl was filling a vessel with water.
Her figure, extremely female, exquisitely curved, was rather like the figure of another girl we had encountered earlier in the morning, some pasangs to the northeast of the city, on one of the isolated roads winding through the hills, among which, nestled back, almost out of sight, were set a number of small, white- washed villas. Apparently she had come from some stream or rivulet, or public place, where she had been laundering, for she had had in her possession a basket filled with dampened clothes. Her hair, too, which she had apparently recently washed, was wet. This sort of thing would normally be done at a cemented pool within the walls of the villa, to the back, but, I had gathered, given the dryness of the season, the villa reservoir might be being reserved for drinking water.
We had come upon her as she was about to turn into the path leading toward one of the small villas.
'A pretty one,' commented Marcus.
'Hola,' had called I, 'slave!'
She immediately stopped and put down the basket, and hurried to the side of the road where we waited.
'Yes,' I said. 'She is indeed a pretty one.'
She did not dally in kneeling. I noted with approval the position of her knees. 'Quite pretty,' I said.
She looked up. Perhaps free men wished to inquire directions of her? Then she looked down. I saw that she would be quite lively in a man's hands. She had a common band collar, flat, close-fitting. She wore a brief tunic of white rep-cloth. She was barefoot.
'You are a girl of this house?' I asked, indicating the villa behind her. 'Yes, Master,' she said.
'You have the look of a woman who is well and muchly mastered,' I said.
She smiled suddenly, charmingly, gratefully, in embarrassment.
'It seems you have been laundering,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'I see that the water source is not far away,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'Your tunic is damp,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said, shyly.
'And it seems you are a careless laundress,' I said.
'Master?' she said.
'The tunic is quite wet,' I said.
She lifted her right hand a bit from her thigh, as though she might cover herself, but quickly returned it to position.
'The wet tunic sets you off well,' I commented.
'Forgive me, Master,' she said, frightened.
'Perhaps your master will notice it,' I said, 'as you return flushed from your labors, delighted, your hair washed, your body freshened.'
She put down her head, quickly.
'But doubtless it is not the calculated act of a scheming slave girl, one cleverly aware of what she is doing,' I said. 'Doubtless it is a mere inadvertence, a merely accidental calling to your master's attention of your beauty, a totally unintentional, never-dreamed-of reminder of him of the promise of its delights.'
She would not raise her head.
'What a clever little slut she is,' said Marcus.
'But she did not plan on meeting two strange fellows on the road,' I said. 'Did you, slave?' I asked.
'No, Master!' she said.
'Do you fear our armbands?' I asked.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'Do not do so,' I said.
'Thank you, Master,' she whispered. Some apprehension on her part was not irrational. Those of Cos, and in the pay of Cos, could do much as they pleased in Ar and its environs, and particularly in the case of slaves. Who would have the courage, or foolishness, to gainsay them the use of such an object, to challenge the employments to which they might put such a mere fair article of property? Too, she was barefoot and slave clad. And in the garmenture of female slaves, even in spite of its customary scandalous brevity, nether shielding is almost never provided. In this way the girl is kept aware of her vulnerability and is immediately available to the attentions of the master. Also, out here, in the vicinity of the villa of her master, I doubted that she was in the iron belt. Also I did not detect, beneath her dampened tunic, any signs of the close-fitting apparatus, no sign of either its horizontal component, usually a bar or metal strap tightly encircling the waist, nor of its vertical component, usually hinged to the horizontal component in front and swung up, then, between the girl's legs, to the back, where the whole is usually fastened together, there, at the small of the back, with a padlock. She blushed, perhaps sensing the current purport of my scrutiny. She was lovely, and much at our mercy. Her apprehension was not irrational, as I have mentioned. It would not have been difficult to have her and then, with a few horts of binding fiber, leave her behind in the ditch, bound hand and foot, at the roadside. More alarmingly, we might have confiscated her, in the name of reparations, or such, bound her and put a rope on her neck and led her off, at my stirrup. In the last few months that sort of thing had happened to hundreds of slaves in Ar who had happened to catch the eye of one fellow or another. Too, if one tired of them, they could always be sold afterwards.
'Do you think I would object,' I said, 'to a slave girl's desire to please her master, to call herself to his attention, to signify to him her desire, to request his touch, to beg him for her mastering?'
'I think not, Master,' she said, shyly.
'It is not the same as the wearing of the bondage knot in the hair, the offering of fruit, the serving of wine, the moaning, the prostrations, the obeisances, the gently, supplicatory licking of the feet?'
'Yes, Master!' she said.
'What is your master's name?' I asked.
'Teibar,' she said, 'of Ar.'
'And what are you called?' I asked.
'Tuka,' she said, 'if it pleases master.'
