In moments they writhed at his feet, slave girls, screaming for mercy.
Tenalion of Ar, the slaver, their master, stood at the edge of the platform. He was not pleased.
"They are worthless," said the man with the whip, coiling it.
The girls lay on the platform, sobbing. Stripes were on their bodies.
"Take anything for them," said Tenalion, and turned away.
"Two," said a voice. "Two. How much?"
It was the fellow from the polar basin, who wore no jacket, but fur trousers and boots, with the bow at his back, and the rawhide rope on his shoulder. In his left hand he carried a bundle of furs, smaller now, than it had been, and a sack, which was now less bulky than it had been when I had seen it earlier near the puppet theater. I remembered he had sold carvings to a corpulent, gross fellow, one whose booth had been set up in the street of the dealers in artifacts and curios. It was not far from the puppet theater.
I moved in more closely, thinking he might have difficulty in communicating with the slaver's man.
"Those," said the coppery-skinned fellow, pointing to the blond and the dark-haired girl, freshly whipped, crying in their chains.
"Yes?" asked the slaver's man.
"Cheap?" asked the man, a red hunter from the bleak countries north even of Ax Glacier.
"These two?" asked the slaver's man.
The hunter nodded.
The slaver's man knelt the two stripped girls before the hunter.
They looked at him with fear.
He was a man. They had felt the whip.
"Yes cheap. Very cheap," said the slaver's man. "Do you have money?"
The hunter pulled a pelt from the bundle of furs he carried. It was snowy white, and thick, the winter fur of a two-stomached snow larl. It almost seemed to glisten. The slaver's man appreciated its value. Such a pelt could sell in Ar for half a silver tarsk. He took the pelt and examined it. The snow larl hunts in the sun. The food in the second stomach can be held almost indefinitely. It is filled in the fall and must last the larl through the winter night, which lasts months, the number of months depending on the latitude of his individual territory. It is not a large animal. It is about ten inches high and, weighs between eight and twelve pounds. It is mammalian, and has four legs. It eats bird's eggs and preys on the leem, a small arctic rodent, some five to ten ounces in weight, which hibernates during the winter.
"Not enough," said the slaver's man. The hunter grunted. He had guessed this. I did not think the slaver's man was out to defraud the hunter. For one thing, the fellow, this far south, probably had some conception of the values of the furs. For another thing the hunters of the north, though a generally kind, peaceable folk, except with animals, think little of killing. They are inured to it. As hunters they live with blood and death.
The hunter drew forth from the bundle of furs two tiny pelts of the leem. These were brown, the summer coats of the animals.
"Look," said the slaver's man, gesturing at the two girls, the blond and the dark-haired girl. "Two beauties!"
The hunter drew forth two more pelts of the leem.
"Not enough," said the slaver's man.
The hunter grunted and bent down, retying the bundle of furs. He picked up the bundle and began to leave.
"Wait! laughed the slaver's man. "They are yours!"
The girls reacted. "We have been sold," whispered the dark-haired girl. I recalled she had worn soft, black, custom-fitted feminine slacks, a soft, delicious, turtle-necked, red pull-over. It had been a beautiful top and had doubtless been quite expensive. I recalled that she had been rich. She was now the naked slave girl of a red hunter.
The slaver's man put the pelts in a pouch which hung from his belt.
With his right hand he pulled the head of the blond girl down, until it was at her knees. He did the same with the head of the dark-haired girl. They knelt as they had been placed. They had felt the whip.
The slaver then went behind them and freed their ankles from the steel ankle loops. He then unlocked the two-inch-high steel cuffs which had held the hands of the girls behind them. Their platform tunics, loose, he then let fall to the boards of the platform. The hunter, meanwhile, with a knife, bad cut a length from the rope of twisted sleen hide which he wore over his shoulder. He fastened the two girls together by the neck. The slaver then unlocked the slaves' throat collars and tossed them, with the chain, to the platform.
The two beauties were drawn by the hunter from the platform and they then stood, frightened, tied together by the neck, before it.
The third and fourth girl looked upon these proceedings with unfeigned terror. They knew they themselves could be as easily the objects of so casual a transaction, putting them in the total power of a buyer, their master.
The red hunter, with two short lengths of the leather rope, jerked the hands of the beauties behind them and, swiftly, expertly, fastened them together. The blond-haired girl winced. "Oh," said the dark-haired girl, suddenly. I saw the hunter had tied women before. They were totally helpless.
The red hunters are generally a kind, peaceable folk, except with animals. Two sorts of beasts are kept in domestication in the north; the first sort of beast is the snow sleen; the second is the white-skinned woman.
"Ho," said the red hunter, and strode from the platform. The two beasts he had purchased hurried after him.
"Theirs will be a hard slavery," I said to the slaver's man.
"They will learn to pull a sled under the whip," he said.
"Yes," I said. Such women were used as draft animals. But they would serve, too, as slave girls do, many other purposes.
"Wait until the red women get hold of them," laughed the slaver's man.
"They may kill them," I said.
"They have one `chance for life," he said, "to obey with total perfection."
"But," I asked, "is that not every slave girl's one chance for life?"
"True," he said. Then he turned and looked at the third and fourth girl.
They looked at him with terror. Beside them, on the platform, were two pairs of opened, empty ankle loops, two pairs of opened, empty wrist cuffs, two opened, empty collars, and some chain, and two platform tunics, discarded.
"I think," I said, "that these two girls might now be moved back on the platform and have their hands chained before their bodies rather than behind."
"I think you are right," he said, chuckling. He climbed to the platform and moved the girls back. He then unlocked the left cuff of the first girl and then recuffed her, this time with her small hands before her body. He did the same with the second. In doing this he had discarded their platform tunics. He then rejoined me before the platform.
They now knelt back on the platform in normal display location, their hands chained before them. They looked at him.
The slaver's man, with the whip, gestured broadly, expansively, to the passing crowd. He grinned at the girls.
The fourth girl, who had once worn the denim pants and beige flannel shirt, extended her chained hands to the crowd. "Buy me, Masters!" she cried out. "Buy me for your lover and slave. I am beautiful. I will serve you well!" She called out in English, for she knew no Gorean, but there could be little misinterpretation of her intent or of the desperate. piteous nature of her entreaties. "Buy me! Buy me!" she begged.
"I am even more beautiful!" cried the other suddenly. "Buy me instead!"
I saw men gathering about them. The girls redoubled their piteous efforts to please. "Buy me, Master!" cried one. "Buy me, kind masters!" cried the other. They sought the eyes of men in the crowd. I could see they now, though they were barbarian, excited interest. Some men like a barbarian girl. And if a girl is not fully broken to the collar, one can always teach her. There is always the whip.
"How much do you want for them?" asked a man.
"They are not cheap," said the slaver's man.
I smiled to myself and left the area of the platform. They would soon be sold.
I pre
ssed through the crowds.
The sales in the pavillion would already have begun. "Buy these girls! Buy these girls!" I heard, as I made my way between the platforms toward the pavilion. "Buy me, Master!" called a girl, with long dark hair, naked, lying on her side on one of the darkly varnished platforms, her body hail covered with chains bound about her.
"A tarsk bit to enter, Master," said a slaver's man at the entrance to the pavilion.
I handed him a tarsk bit from my pouch, and pushed through the canvas.
My nostrils flared, my blood moved now faster in my veins. There is something charged and exhilarating about a slave market, the color, the movement, the excitement of the crowds, the bidding, the intensity, the lovely women being sold.
"Four copper tarsks!" was a bid called from the floor.
The girl stood on the block, her right side to the bidders. Her hands were behind her head, and her body was arched back. Her left leg was behind her, her right leg, flexed, thrust forth.
"Six!" was another bid.
She then faced the bidders, half crouched, her hands at her head, throwing her hair forward over her face. She regarded them angrily, sullenly, through her hair. Yet there was in her eyes a sultry need recognized by Gorean buyers. Taken home, she would soon become a satisfactory, hot slave, piteous and eager at her master's feet. She was directed by the auctioneer, responding to his voice commands and the light, deft, guiding touches of his whip.
I moved through the crowds, to get somewhat closer to the block. The girl was sold for fifteen copper tarsks to a metal worker from Tor.
I looked about in the crowd.
The next girl was a willowy blond Earth girl. She was sent to the block in what are regarded as the odd undergarments of Earth females. Both the upper undergarment and the lower were white. Her hands were braceleted behind her and the auctioneer, his whip in his belt, controlled her by the hair. She was hysterical. Her brassiere was first removed, then the panties. The latter garment, by Goreans, is regarded as a peculiarly strange one. It, silken and brier, is obviously a slave's garment, but it is closed at the bottom. It would take a man an extra moment to rape such a slave.
She was sold for four copper tarsks. I did not see who bought her. I think it was a locksmith from Ti.
I bought a slice of rolled meat, filled with sauce, in a waxed paper, from a vendor.
It was then that I saw him. Our eyes met. He turned white. Immediately, flinging aside the food, I began to thrust through the crowd toward him. He turned and, squirming and thrusting, fought his way toward the side of the tent.
I knew him now. He was the fellow whose back I had seen in the restaurant, from a distance. I had not been able to place at that time his identity. He no longer now wore the brown and black common to professional sleen trainers. He wore, as I, merchant robes.
I did not speak, or call out to him. Rather I pursued him. He looked back once and then, thrusting men aside, fought his way to the tent's side.
I pursued him who had called himself Bertram of Lydius, he who had, in my house, set a sleen upon me.
I wanted his throat in my hands.
When I thrust through the cut side of the tent, where he had slashed it open, he was not in sight.
I cursed and struck my fist upon my thigh. He was gone.
Behind me, from the tent, I heard the calls and the bid-big. Another girl was on the block.
I looked out over the crowds. Thousands were at the fair of the Sardar.
My chances of finding one man in that crowd, and one who knew I searched for him, would be negligible. I looked angrily about. Behind me two men slipped into the tent, through the cut canvas. I no longer wished to attend the market. I turned away from the tent and, angrily, no clear destination in mind, mingled with the crowds. In time I found myself near the palisade ringing the Sardar mountains. I climbed one of the high platforms there. From these platforms one may look upon the Sardar. I stood alone on the platform, and gazed at the snow-capped mountains, glistening under the mingled light of the three white moons. From the platform, too, I could see the fair, with its lights and fires, and tents and shelters, and the amphitheater in the distance, where Scormus of Ar and gentle Centius of Cos would meet tomorrow on the opposite sides of a small board marked with red and yellow squares. The district of the fair covered several square pasangs. It was very beautiful at night.
I descended the stairs of the platform and turned my steps toward the public tent where I had, earlier in the morning, reserved a lodging for myself.
I lay thinking in the furs, my hands behind my head, looking up at the ceiling of the tent above me. There was little light in the tent, for it was late. It was difficult for me to sleep.
More than a thousand men slept in this great tent.
The ceiling of the tent above me billowed slightly, responsive to a gentle wind from the east.
There were small lamps hung here and there in the tent. They hung on tiny chains. These chains were suspended from metal projections on certain of the tent poles.
I turned to my side, to watch her approach.
She moved carefully through the furs.
She knelt beside me.
A string was knotted about her waist. Over this string, in the front, there was thrust a single, simple narrow rectangle of vulgar, white rep-cloth, some six inches in width, some twelve inches in length.
She wore on her throat a high, gold collar, with, in front, a large golden loop, some two inches in width. Threaded through this loop loose, was a golden chain. This chain terminated, at each end, with high, golden slave bracelets. When the girl stands her hands may fall naturally at her sides, each in its bracelet, each bracelet attached to the same chain, which passes through the collar loop.
It is a very beautiful way of chaining a girl.
"Master," she whispered.
"I remember you," I said. She had been the slave who had followed me earlier in the day, who had bitten at my sleeve near the puppet theater, whom I had saved from a beating by the guardsmen under the aegis of the officer of the fair's merchant staff. She had begged me to take pity on her needs. I had not done so, of course. She might have been under the discipline of deprivation. Too, there had seemed no point in perhaps doing her master dishonor. I did not even know him. I had told her, after I had had her kneel and kiss my feet, to run to her master, and crawl to him on her belly and beg his touch. "Yes, Master," she had said, and she had then leaped to her feet, frightened, and sped away.
"I did not know you were a slave in the public tents," I said to her.
"Yes, Master," she said, putting her head down. "I am a tent slave here."
"Why did you not tell me?" I asked.
"Is a girl to be permitted no pride?" she asked.
"No," I told her.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Would it have made any difference?" she asked.
"No," I said.
"I thought not," she said.
"When you ran to your master," I asked, "as I commanded you, and crawled to him on your belly and begged his touch, what did he do?"
"He kicked me from his feet, and gave me over to a servant for switching," she said.
"Excellent," I said.
She looked down.
"Doubtless, by now," I said, "you have been much pleasured in these furs."
"There are other tent slaves here," she said, "many more beautiful than I, and men come late to the furs, tired and drunk. It is hard for us to compete with the beauties, of the paga tents."
"I see," I said.
There were tears in her eyes. She reached forth her right hand, timidly, to touch my thigh. This caused the chain to slip a bit through the collar loop.
"Take pity on a slave, Master," she said.
I looked at her.
She backed away a bit and then, on her belly, crawled to me. She timidly pulled back the furs and pressed her lips to my thigh. Her lips were soft and wet. She looked up at me, tears in her eyes. "I crawl to my m
aster on my belly," she said, "and beg for his touch."
I smiled.
I, a guest in the tent, now stood to her, of course, as master. Such girls come with the price of the lodging.
"Please, Master," she wept, "take pity on me. Take pity on the miserable needs of a girl."
I threw off the furs, and motioned her to my arms. She crept into them, sobbing.
"You are kind, Master," she said.
"Do you think so?" I asked.
She looked at me, frightened.
John Norman - Gor 12 Page 10
