'Yes, Master!' she said. 'I am happier than I ever knew a woman could be!'
'But you are a slave?' I said.
'It is what I am!' she said.
'Perhaps that is the explanation of your happiness,' I said.
'It is, Master!' she said.
'The collar looks well on your throat,' I said.
'It belongs there, Master!' she said. 'All my life I was craving and desiring total slavery, and now I have it!'
'That is why you are so happy?' I said.
'Yes, Master!' she said.
'And has your master something to do with this?' I asked.
'Doubtless, Master,' she said. 'He is the most wonderful of masters!'
'But what if you had a harsh master, one cruel or unfeeling.'
'I would still be a slave,' she said. 'I would still love my condition. It is what I am.'
'I see,' I said.
Her knees squirmed a little.
'She is uneasy,' said Marcus.
'Yes,' I said.
'May I speak, Masters?' she asked.
'Yes,' said Marcus.
'I fear my master will wonder what has become of me,' she said.
'Do you fear you will be whipped?' asked Marcus.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'You are not yet dismissed,' said Marcus.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'Your tunic is still quite damp,' I said.
Her hands moved a little on her thighs, but she retained position.
I considered her slave curves, which would not in any event be well concealed by rep-cloth, and certainly were not so now that it had been splashed with water, even soaked by it.
'Tuka,' I said, 'is a very common slave name.'
'It is fitting for me, Master,' she said, 'who am a common slave.'
'What is your brand?' I asked.
'That of most girls,' she said, 'the common Kajira mark. It is fitting, as I am a common girl.'
'You regard yourself as a common slave?' I asked.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'Yet,' I said, 'I think you would bring a good price, stripped, and on the block.'
'I would try to perform well,' she said.
'Tuka!' we heard. We looked up to the villa. From where we were, over the white-washed wall, we could see the veranda of the main building, where it was nestled back, in the side of a hill. On the veranda there was a well-built fellow, with dark hair.
The girl looked up at us, frightened, agonized.
'Your master?' I asked.
'Yes, Master!' she said.
She squirmed. She looked about. In the beauty there was great agitation. Obviously she wished to rise up and run to her master, hurrying as she could. Slave girls do not dally when their masters call. That call takes precedence, of course, over a detention by strangers, but it is a rare girl who will simply leap up, not dismissed, and flee from the presence of free men.
'You may go,' I said.
'Thank you, Master!' she cried, and leaped up. She was in such a hurry that she sped past the basket of laundry a pace or two, but then, suddenly recollecting it, hurried back, picked it up, and then, balancing it on her head with two hands, sped through the gate of the villa and up the path to the house. The fellow had, in the meantime, seeing her approach, withdrawn into the house. We saw her on the veranda where she turned once, to look at us, then hurried within.
'A superb slave,' said Marcus.
'Yes,' I said.
'I expect she will be cuffed a bit,' he said, 'either for dallying or for permitting herself to be seen so provocatively on the road, with a dampened tunic.'
'I expect you are right,' I said.
'To be sure,' said Marcus, 'he will doubtless understand that she did not expect to meet folks about, surely not at this Ahn, and that the tunic was dampened for his benefit.'
'He will presumably, if he pleases, take such matters into consideration,' I said.
'By now she has probably been cuffed,' he said.
'I would suppose so,' I said.
'Or stripped and lashed,' he said.
'Perhaps,' I said.
'And now who knows to what lingering, pleasurable purposes she is being put?'
'I do not know,' I said, 'but it is my conjecture that she will serve well.'
'I do not doubt it,' said Marcus.
I looked about, turning in the saddle of the tharlarion. 'I see no one on the road,' I said. 'let us now retrace our steps. By noon I wish to be southwest of Ar, in the vicinity of the sul fields.
'That is she,' I had whispered to Marcus.
'I am not sure I understand your plan,' he had said.
'Let us approach,' I had said.
The sun was now high overhead. It was much hotter here, in this area, and at this time of day, than it had been earlier in the villa districts, in the hills northeast of Ar, the Fulvians, foothills to the Voltai.
In the softness of the dust, then among the vines, moving across the field, our tharlarion in stately gait, we approached the girl, she at the large wooden tank, filling the vessels which would be slung over her yoke. She wore a brief, brown rag, perhaps from some other girl who had been given something better. Her hair had been cropped rather closely to her head, as is not uncommon with field slaves. She was barefoot and her feet and calves were white with dust. She lifted the large vessel from the tank with both hands, and then, her head down for a moment, rested it on the rim of the tank. She then, after a time, carefully, slowly, lowered it to the ground. It would not do to spill the water. She moved slowly, as though her body might be stiff and sore. I conjectured that her muscles ached. She was not accustomed, I supposed, to such labor.
As it was shortly before noon the shadows were small, and behind us, but she heard the movement of the feet of the tharlarion in the dirt behind her and spun about, frightened, immediately kneeling, putting her head to the dirt.
We halted the beasts some feet from her. She trembled. It would have done her no good, of course, to have run, even would it have been permitted that she do so. She could have been easily overtaken or ridden down, even trampled. It would not have been difficult to head off or turn her back, or to have her between us in sport, like some object in a game, a terrified, confused quarry, buffeted, or struck to the ground, again and again, until perhaps she lay quietly in the dust, trembling, and the tharlarion would come and gently, firmly, place its great clawed foot on her back, holding her in place for our binding fiber. Also, had we been slavers, she might, in her hasty flight, as we overtook her, have been roped or netted. In the south, the Wagon Peoples sometimes use the bola in such captures, the cords and weights, whipping about the girls legs and ankles, pinning them together, hurling her to the ground, where, in an instant, before she can free herself, the captor, leaping from the saddle, is upon her.
I let her remain in her current posture for a time. It is a good for a master to be patient. Let the girl well understand the meaning of such things.
