true, what I had been told, that those who entered the mountains would do so on foot. I regretted having to leave the tarn, but he could not accompany me. I talked to him for perhaps an hour, a foolish thing to do perhaps, and then gave his beak a hardy slap and shoved it from me. I pointed out over the fields, away from the mountains. 'Tabuk!' I said.
The beast did not stir.
'Tabuk!' I repeated.
I think, though it may be absurd, that the beast felt that he might have failed me, that he had not carried me into the mountains. I think, too, though it is perhaps still more absurd, that he knew that I would not be waiting for him when he returned from his hunt.
The great head moved quizzically and dipped to the ground, rubbing against my leg.
Had it failed me? Was I now rejecting it?
'Go, Ubar of the Skies,' I said. 'Go.'
When I had said Ubar of the Skies, the bird had lifted its head, now more than a yard above my own. I had called him that when I recognised him in the arena of Tharna, when we had been aloft as one creature in the sky. The great bird stalked away from me, about fifteen yards, and then turned, looking at me again.
I gestured to the fields away from the mountains.
It shook its wings and screamed, and hurled itself against the wind. I watched it until, a tiny speck against the blue sky, it disappeared in the distance.
I felt unaccountably sad, and turned to face the mountains of the Sardar. Before them, resting on the grassy plains beneath, was the Fair of En' Kara. I had not walked more than a pasang when, from a cluster of trees to my right, on the other side of a thin, swift stream that flowed from the Sardar, I heard the terrified scream of a girl.
Chapter Twenty-One: I BUY A GIRL
Out from my scabbard leaped the sword and I splashed across the cold stream, making for the grove of trees across the way.
Once more the terrified scream rang out.
Now I was among the trees, moving rapidly, but cautiously.
Then the smell of a cooking fire came to my nostrils. I heard the hum of unhurried conversation. Through the trees I could see tent canvas, a tharlarion wagon, the strap-masters unharnessing a brace of low tharlarions, the huge, herbivorous draft lizards of Gor. For all I could tell neither of them had heard the scream, or paid it any attention. I slowed to a walk and entered the clearing among the tents. One or two guardsmen eyed me curiously. One arose and went to check the woods behind me, to see if I were alone. I glanced about myself. It was a peaceful scene, the cooking fires, the domed tents, the unharnessing of the animals, one I remembered from the caravan of Mintar, of the Merchant Caste. But this was a small camp, not like the pasangs of wagons that constituted the entourage of the wealthy Mintar. I heard the scream once again. I saw that the cover of the tharlarion wagon, which had been rolled back, was of blue and yellow silk.
It was the camp of a slaver.
I thrust my sword back in the scabbard and took off my helmet. 'Tal,' I said to two guardsmen who crouched at the side of a fire, playing Stones, a guessing game in which one person must guess whether the number of stones held in the fist of another is odd or even.
'Tal,' said one guardsman. The other, attempting to guess the stones, did not even look up.
I walked between the tents and saw the girl.
She was a blond girl with golden hair that fell behind her to the small of her back. Her eyes were blue. She was of dazzling beauty. She trembled like a frantic animal. She knelt, her back against a slender, white birchlike tree to which she was chained naked. Her hands were joined over her head and behind the tree by slave bracelets. Her ankles were similarly fastened by a short slave chain which encircled the tree.
Her eyes had turned to me, begging, pleading, as though I might deliver her from her predicament, but when she looked upon me, those fear-glazed eyes, if possible, seemed even more terrified. She uttered a hopeless cry. She began to shake uncontrollably and her head fell forward in despair. I gathered she had taken me for another slaver.
There was an iron brazier near the tree, which was filled with glowing coals. I could feel its heat ten yards away. From the brazier protruded the handles of three irons.
There was a man beside the irons, stripped to the waist, wearing thick leather gloves, one of the minions of the slaver. He was a grizzled man, rather heavy, sweating, blind in one eye. He regarded me without too much interest, as he waited for the irons to heat.
I noted the thigh of the girl.
It had not yet been branded.
When an individual captures a girl for his own uses, he does not always mark her, though it is commonly done. On the other hand, the professional slaver, as a business practice, almost always brands his chattels, and it is seldom that an unbranded girl ascends the block.
The brand is to be distinguished from the collar, though both are a designation of slavery. The primary significance of the collar is that it identifies the master and his city. The collar of a given girl may be changed countless times, but the brand continues throughout to bespeak her status. The brand is normally concealed by the briefly skirted slave livery of Gor but, of course, when the camisk is worn, it is always clearly visible, reminding the girl and others of her station.
The brand itself, in the case of girls, is a rather graceful mark, being the initial letter of the Gorean expression for slave in cursive script. If a male is branded, the same initial is used, but rendered in a block letter.
Noting my interest in the girl, the man beside the irons went to her side, and, taking her by the hair, threw back her face for my inspection. 'She' s a beauty, isn' t she?' he said.
I nodded agreement.
I wondered why those piteous eyes looked upon me with such fear. 'Perhaps you want to buy her?' asked the man.
'No,' I said.
The heavy-set man winked his sightless eye in my direction. His voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. 'She' s not trained,' he said. 'And she is as hard to manage as a sleen.'
I smiled.
'But,' said the man, 'the iron will take that out of her.' I wondered if it would.
He withdrew one of the irons from the fire. It glowed a fiery red. At the sight of the glowing metal the girl uncontrollably screamed, pulling at the slave bracelets, at the shackles that held her to the tree. The heavy-set man thrust the iron back into the brazier.
'She' s a loud one,' he said, shamefacedly. Then, with a shrug in my direction, as if to ask my pardon, he went to the girl and took a handful of her long hair. He wadded it into a small, tight ball and suddenly shoved it in her mouth. It immediately expanded, and before she could spit the hair out, he had looped more of her hair about her head and tied it, in such a way as to keep the expanded ball of hair in her mouth. The girl choked silently, trying to spit the ball of hair from her mouth, but of course she could not. It was an old slaver' s trick. I knew tarnsmen sometimes silenced their captives in the same way.
'Sorry, Sweet Wench,' said the grizzled man, giving the girl' s head a friendly shake, 'but we don' t want Targo coming over here with his whip and beating the tharlarion oil out of us both, do we?'
Sobbing silently the girl' s head fell down again in her breast. The grizzled man absent-mindedly hummed a caravan tune while waiting for the irons to heat.
My emotions were mixed. I had rushed to the scene to free the girl, to protect her. Yet when I arrived, I found that she was merely a slave, and that her owner, quite properly from Gor' s point of view, was attending to the routine business of marking his property. Had I attempted to free her, it would have been as much an act of theft as if I had driven off the tharlarion wagon.
