“I see,” I said.
“If the Aretai want war to the destruction of water they shall have it,” said
the merchant.
“I wish to leave before dawn,” said Hassan.
“Of course,” said the merchant. “What have we here?” he asked.
“One free woman, one slave.” He turned to two of his men. “Bring the pack kaiila
into my courtyard,” he said, “and display the goods.”
They hastened to obey him.
“Interesting, Hassan’ “ smiled the merchant, “that it should be the slave you
choose to carry before your saddle.”
Hassan shrugged.
“Her brand is fresh,” smiled the merchant.
“True,” said Hassan.
Doubtless you put the iron to her body yourself,” said the merchant.
“Yes,” said Hassan.
“It is an excellent job,” said the merchant. “You have a steady hand, and
firmness.”
The girl whimpered.
“I have branded many women,” said Hassan.
“And superbly,” said the merchant.
His hands, sure, exact, made a preliminary assessment of the curves of the slave
captive.
She moaned.
“Is she alive?” asked the merchant.
“Touch her, and see,” said Hassan.
The girl writhed before the saddle, twisting in her bonds, helpless. She cried
out, her eyes shut, her teeth clenched, her head flung, wild, from side to side.
“She is alive,” commented the merchant.
Girls are usually brought hot to the oasis. It is not difficult to ensure their
responsiveness, bound as they are. One begins approximately an Ahn before the
time of arrival.
The merchant then went to Tafa, the free woman. She, too, cried out, helpless,
twisting in the ropes that confined her fair limbs.
“Are you free?” asked the merchant.
“Yes, yes!” she wept.
“You leap in the ropes like a slave girl,” he told her. She moaned in protest.
Then, mercifully, he let her subside.
“Bring them in,” said he to Hassan, and his man. “We will put them on the circle
of assessment, and I will give you a price on them.”
The merchant then turned and entered his courtyard. Hassan, his man, I, and
others of his men, slowly, on kaiila, filed into the courtyard, following the
merchant.
Tafa was drawn weeping from the circle of assessment. Her left wrist was locked
in a slave bracelet and she was put, kneeling, against a wall; her left side
faced the wall; the opened bracelet, that not closed about her left wrist, was
snapped shut about a slave ring bolted in the wall, the, ring was approximately
at her left shoulder; her head was down, hair forward, she knelt there, weeping,
her left wrist fastened at her shoulder level to the wall.
“No!” cried Zina.
She was thrown unceremoniously, nude, to the circle of assessment. She crouched
there, tinder the torches, on the seven-foot scarlet marble circle, angry,
frightened.
She was quite beautiful, the slave girl. I wondered how another slave girl,
Vella, once Miss Elizabeth Cardwell of New York City, of Earth, who had betrayed
Priest-Kings, would look thrown nude upon such a circle.
When the whip snapped, a heavy whip in the hand of one of the merchant’s brawny
aides, the girl cried out, and her body reacted, in terror, as though struck.
But the leather, of course, had not touched her body. Its snap was only
admonitory. It would not touch her body unless the men were not pleased with
her.
“Stand!” said the merchant. “Head back! Hands behind head! Bend backwards!
Farther! Farther!” He turned to us. “Acceptable,” he said. Then to the girl he
issued orders, rapidly, harshly. I watched, with interest, as the girl, tears in
her eyes, responded to his swiftly issued, abrupt commands. For more than four
Ehn he put her through a swift, staccato regimen of movement, a set of slave
paces, assessment paces, designed to exhibit, vulnerably, decisively and
publicly, her beauty, in all of it major attitudes and positions. “Hands on
hips! Be insolent! Hands behind back! Hands crossed before you, as though bound!
Hands at throat, as though chained to collar, fingers before mouth! Fall to the
floor! Kneel! Head down! Head up! Bend backwards! Farther! Roll to the floor, on
your side, on your back, right leg high, now flexed, left leg high, now flexed,
to your side, right leg extended, palms on floor, left leg extended, palms on
floor! Appear angry! Appear frightened! Appear aroused! Smile!” He did this with
the same swift, expert objectivity, and clinical detachment, that a physician
might bring to a routine medical examination; this examination, of course, was a
beauty examination, assessing the desirability of a female slave. The whip
cracked again.
She cried out in misery, shuddering.
She looked up at him, in terror.
“Hassan?” asked the merchant.
“Very well,” said Hassan. He stepped to the edge of the circle.
“Crawl to his feet,” ordered the merchant.
The girl began to do so.
“On your belly,” said the merchant.
She did so. At his feet, unbidden, she pressed her lips to his slippers. “Keep
me, Hassan,” she begged.
“To my lips,” he said.
She crept to her feet and lifted her lips to his. He tasted her well.
“Keep me, Hassan!” she wept.
He threw her back, to the center of the marble circle. “What is she worth?”
asked Hassan of the merchant.
“I will give you a silver tarsk for her,” said he, “for she is only slave.”
“Hassan!” cried the girl.
“Done,” said Hassan, selling his slave.
“No, Hassan!” she cried.
“And two tarn disks of gold, of the mintage of Ar, for the free wench,” said the
merchant.
“Agreed,” said Hassan.
“Hassan!” cried the slave girl.
“Take this slave away,” said the merchant.
A slave bracelet was locked about the left wrist of Zina and she was dragged to
the wall, where she, on her knees, was put, facing the wall. The bracelet not
locked about her left wrist was then put through the slave ring and, this done,
her right wrist was locked in it, confining both her wrists at the ring, her
belly facing the wall. She looked over her right shoulder at Hassan. “Hassan!”
she cried.
Hassan took the moneys from the merchant. “In the next room,” said the merchant,
“we will deal for the other goods.”
“Yes,” said Hassan.
“Hassan!” cried the girl.
He left the room. He did not speak to the traitress. He was of the Tahari.
“More, Masters?” asked the girl, kneeling beside the low, tem-wood-inlaid table.
She wore a high, red-silk vest, swelling, fastened with a single hook;
diaphanous red-silk chalwar, low on her hips, gathered at the ankles; two golden
bangles on her left ankle; collar.
“No, Yiza, retire,” said the merchant.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
She lowered her eyes and, taking the tray with black wine and sugars, rose
gracefully to her feet, backed away, turned, and left the room.
herself, and instructed to prepare and serve black wine. This she had done. At
the interior corners of her eyes had been the signs of sleep: she had yawned
like a cat when kneeling to one side: her face, and her mouth, had revealed the
heavy, sweet lassitude of the beautiful woman, who is weary, when she had left.
Though she held herself erect, as an imbonded girl must, there had been a slow,
felicitous swing to her gait, graceful, languid, somnolent, subtly betraying the
weariness of her beauty, awakened and forced so early to serve. Her haunches
flowed beneath the silk, and then she had disappeared. I did not think it would
take her long to remove her clothing, draw her rep-cloth sheet about her and,
drawing her knees up, fall asleep on the straw of her cell, which, under pain of
death, she would shut behind her, locking it.
When she had left the room she hid used the runner at the side of the room,
Rooms in private dwellings, in the Tahari, if rich, usually are floored with
costly rugs. The rooms are seldom crossed directly, in order to prevent undue
wear on the rugs: long strips of ruglike material line the edges of the room;
these are commonly used in moving from room to room; children, servants, slaves,
women, commonly negotiate the rooms by keeping on the runners, near the walls.
Men commonly do also, if guests are not present.
“The breaking of a well,” said the merchant, “is an almost inconceivable
criminal act.”
Neither of us, Hassan, nor myself, responded to him. What he said was true.
Earlier, though it had not been our original intention, following our commercial
interaction, in which Hassan had exchanged his plunder, flesh and otherwise, for
gold, we had been conducted by the merchant to the well, shattered, perhaps
ruined. Under torches men bad labored, removing stone and sand in leather
buckets on long ropes. Hassan’s fists had clenched. We had then retired to the
merchant’s house for black wine. It was two Ahn before dawn.
The various prices and coins had totaled eleven tarn disks of Ar, and four of
Turia. To his nine men, apiece, he had thrown a tarn disk of Ar. The rest he
kept for himself. A gold tarn disk of Ar is more than many common laborers earn
in a year. Many low-caste Goreans have never held one in their hand. His men,
outside, waited, the reins of their kaiila in hand.
“And strangest of all,” said the merchant, leaning forward, looking at us
intently, “is the fact that the Aretai raiders were led by a woman!”
“A woman?” asked Hassan.
“Yes,” said the merchant.
“And the war messengers have already been sent?” asked Hassan.
“To all the oases of the Kavars and their vassal tribes,” said the merchant.
“Has there been talk of truce, of discussion?” asked Hassan.
“With those who have cost water?” asked the merchant. “Of course not!”
“And what word,” asked Hassan, “has been heard from Haroun, high pasha of the
Kavars?”
“Who knows where Haroun is?” asked the merchant, spreading his bands.
“And of his vizier, Baram, Sheik of Bezhad?”
“The war messengers have been sent,” said the merchant.
“I see,” said Hassan “
“The tribes gather, said the merchant. “The desert will flame.”
“I am weary,” said Hassan. “And I do not think it wise to be too publicly in Two
Scimitars by daylight.”
“Hasaad Pasha knows that raiders come to Two Scimitars,” smiled the merchant.
“It is useful to our economy. We are not on main trade routes.”
“He does not know officially,” said Hassan, “and I do not wish him to have to
dispatch a hundred soldiers to ride about in the desert searching for us, to
satisfy outraged citizens. I do not feel like a hard ride now, and doubtless,
too, neither do the soldiers. Besides, if we actually encountered one another,
it would be quite embarrassing to both parties. What would we do?”
“Ride past one another shouting wildly?” suggested the merchant.
“Perhaps,” smiled Hassan.
“You would probably have to kill one another,” said the merchant.
“I suppose so,” said Hassan.
“At night,” said the merchant, “you, and others, are always welcome in Two
Scimitars.”
“Welcomed by night, sought by day,” said Hassan. “I think that I shall never
understand honest men.”
“We are complicated,” admitted the merchant.
“I wish that the men of other oases were so complicated,” said Hassan. “In many
of them they would pay high to have my head on a lance.”
“We of Two Scimitars,” said the merchant, “cannot be held accountable for the
lack of sophistication in such simple rogues.”
“But to whom do you sell the goods I bring you?” asked Hassan.
“To such simple rogues,” smiled the merchant.
“They know?” asked Hassan.
“Of course,” said the merchant.
“I see,” said Hassan. “Well, it will soon be light, and I must be going.”
He rose to his feet, somewhat stiffly, for he had been sit cross-legged for some
time, and I joined him.
“May your water bags be never empty. May you always have water,” said the
merchant.
“May your water bags be never empty,” we rejoined. “May you always have water.”
Outside, shortly before dawn, when drops of moisture beaded on the rocks, Hassan
and I, and his men, put our left feet into the stirrup of our saddles and
mounted our swift beasts.
“Hassan,” said I.
“Yes,” said he.
“The merchant told us that six days ago Aretai from Nine Wells raided the oasis
of the Sand Sleen.”
“Yes,” said Hassan.
“Six days ago.” said I, “the soldiers at Nine Wells were in the vicinity of the
oasis, hunting for a fugitive, escaped from their prison, who had been sentenced
to the pits of Klima for an alleged attempt on the life of Suleiman Pasha.”
“Did he escape?” asked Hassan, smiling.
“It seems so,” I said.’
“That, too, is my intelligence,” said Hassan.
“If the soldiers of Nine Wells were at their oasis six days ago,” said I, “they
were not, too, at the oasis of the Sand Sleen. “
“No,” said Hassan.
“And it does not seem likely, said I. “That, last night, Aretai from Nine Wells
would be here.”
“It would be hard riding,” said Hassan. “And this seems an obscure oasis, far
from trade routes.”
“Where would they have disposed of loot from the oasis of the Sand Sleen?” I
asked.
“It might have been hidden in the desert,” suggested Hassan.
“Why Two Scimitars?” I asked. “It is a small oasis, not even Kavar.”
“I do not know,” said Hassan.
“Suleiman, Pasha at Nine Wells,” said 1, “lies in his palace in critical
condition. It seems an unusual time for his Aretai to rush raiding about the
countryside.”
“It would, indeed,” smiled Hassan.
“Yet the raiders wore the garments of Aretai, the saddle markings, shouted “For
Nine Wells and Suleiman!”
“You and I, too,” smiled Hassan, “might arrange such matters, and shout boldly.”
I said nothing.
“Odd,” said Hassan, “that they should shout ‘For Nine Wells and Suleiman!’
“Why?” I asked.
“The names of leaders,” said Hassan, “do not figure in the war cries of Aretai,
nor of most tribes. It is the tribe, which is significant, not the man, the
whole, not the part. The war Cry of the Aretai, as I am familiar with it, is
‘Aretai victorious!’
“Interesting,” I said. “Do the Kavars have a similar cry?”
“Yes.” said Hassan. “It is ‘Kavars supreme!’ “
“It seems reasonably clear, then,” said I, “that Aretai did not raid Two
Scimitars.”
“No,” said Hassan, “Aretai did not raid Two Scimitars.”
“How can you be sure?” I asked.
“A well was broken,” said Hassan. “The Aretai are sleen, but they must be
respected as foes. They are good fighters, good men of the desert. They would
not destroy a well. They are of the Tahari.”
“Who, then,” I asked, “raided the oasis of the Sand Sleen, the oasis of Two
Scimitars?”
“I do not know,” said Hassan. “I would like to know. I am curious.”
“I, too, am curious,” I said.
“If war erupts, fully, in the desert,” said Hassan, “the desert, for all
practical purposes, will he closed. Trade will be disrupted, armed men will
roam, strangers will be more suspect than normally. Few chances will be taken,
They will, presumably, be put to death.”
His remark did not much cheer me.
“Strange,” said Hassan, “that these matters should occur now.”
“Why strange now?” I asked.
“Doubtless it is only a coincidence,” said Hassan.
“I do not understand you,” I said.
“I was intending an expedition into the unexplored dune country,” said he.
“I, too, am a traveler,” I said.
“I thought so,” said he.
“What do you expect to find there?” I asked.
“What are you?” he asked.
“A lowly gem merchant,” I said.
“I saw you in Tor,” said be, “with the scimitar.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I saw you again, noting your progress, at a watering place on the route to Nine
Wells.”
“It was there,” said I, “that you, In nomad’s guise, so abused my blond-haired,
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