Chapter 3
The Fair Of En’kara

“Make way! Make way!” laughed the brawny young fellow. He had a naked girl over his shoulder, bound hand and foot. He had won her in Girl Catch, in a contest to decide a trade dispute between two small cities, Ven and Rarn, the former a river port on the Vosk, the second noted for its copper mining, lying southeast of Tharna. In the contest a hundred young men of each city, and a hundred young women, the most beautiful in each city, participate. The object of the game is to secure the women of the enemy. Weapons are not permitted. The contest takes place in an area outside the perimeters of the great fair, for in it slaves are made. The area is enclosed by a low wooden wall, and spectators observe. When a male is forced beyond the wail he is removed from the competition and may not, upon pain of death, reenter the area for the duration of the contest. When a girl is taken she is bound hand and foot and thrown to a girl pit, of which there are two, one in each city’s end of the “field.” These pits are circular, marked off with a small wooden fence, sand-bottomed, and sunk some two feet below the surface of the “field.” If she cannot free herself she counts as a catch. The object of the male is to remove his opponents from the field and capture the girls of the other city. The object of the girl, of course, is to elude capture.

“Make way!” he called. “Make way!” I, with others in the crowd, stepped aside.

Both the young men and women wear tunics in this sport. The tunics of the young women are cut briefly, to better reveal their charms. The young man wears binding fiber about his left wrist, with which to secure prizes. The young women, who are free, if the rules permit, as they sometimes do not, commonly wear masks, that their modesty be less grievously compromised by the brevity of their costume. Should the girl be caught, however, her mask is removed. The tunics of the girls are not removed, however, except those of the girls of the losing city, when the match has ended and the winner decided. The win is determined when the young men of one city, or those left on the field, have secured the full hundred of the women of the “enemy.” A woman once bound and thrown to the girl pit, incidentally, may not be fetched forth by the young men of her city, except at the end of the match, and on the condition that they have proved victorious. The captured women of the victorious city at the conclusion of the contest are of course released; they are robed and honored; the girls of the losing city, of course, are simply stripped and made slaves. This may seem a cruel sport but some regard it as superior to a war; surely it is cleaner and there is less loss of life; this method of settling disputes, incidentally, is not used if it is felt that honor is somehow involved in the disagreement. Honor is important to Goreans, in a way that those of Earth might find hard to understand; for example, those of Earth find it natural that men should go to war over matters of gold and riches, but not honor; the Gorean, contrariwise, is more willing to submit matters of honor to the adjudication of steel than he is matters of riches and gold; there is a simple explanation for this; honor is more important to him. Strangely the girls of the cities are eager to participate in this sport. Doubtless each believes her standard will be victorious and she will return in honor to her city.

The young man brushed past me. The girl’s hair was still bound, knotted, on her head; it had not yet even been loosened, as that of a slave girl. Looped about her neck, locked, was a slender, common, gray-steel slave collar. He had wired a tag to it, that she might be identified as his. She had been of Ram, probably of high caste, given the quality of her beauty. She would now be slave in the river port of Ven. The man appeared to be a young bargeman. Her lips were delicate and beautiful. They would kiss him well.

I watched him press on through the crowds, toward the looming palisade which ringed the Sardar mountains, black and snow-capped, behind it.

The numbers in the game are set at a hundred young men and a hundred young women, in order that there be a young woman for each winning male.

This was the first year, incidentally, in which masks had been permitted to the young women in some of these contests. The masks, however, had been brief and feminine. They concealed little and did little more than to excite the men and stimulate them to the beauty’s pursuit, culminating in her rude assault, capture and unmasking. Still I suspected the innovation, next year, would be dropped. It is easier to gamble on the taking of given girls, and how long they will be at large, if their beauty is better visible to the bettors.

I looked after the young man. He was going to the palisade. There he would climb one of the platforms and, putting the girl on her knees, her ankles and wrists crossed and bound, at his feet, facing the Sardar, he would unbind her hair. Then he would lift her in his arms, hair unbound, before the mountains of the Sardar, rejoicing, and giving thanks to Priest-Kings that she was now his.

“Where are the merchant tables,” I asked a fellow from Torvaldsland, with braided blond hair and shaggy jacket, eating on a roast hock of tarsk, “where the odds on the Kaissa matches are being given?”

“I do not know,” he said. ‘They play Kaissa only in the North.”

“My Thanks, fellow,” said I. It was true that the Kaissa of the north differed in some respects from tournament Kaissa in the south. The games, however, were quite similar. Indeed, Kaissa was played variously on the planet. For example, several years ago Kaissa was played somewhat differently in Ar than it was now. Most Gorean cities now, at least in the south, had accepted a standard tournament Kaissa, agreed upon by the high council of the caste of players. Sometimes the changes were little more than semantic. For example, a piece which once in Ar had been called the “City” was now identified officially as the “Home Stone” even in Ar. Indeed, some players in Ar had always called it the Home Stone. More seriously there were now no “Spear Slaves” in common Kaissa, as there once had been, though there were distinctions among “Spearmen.” It had been argued that slaves had no right upon the Kaissa board. One might note also, in passing, that slaves are not permitted to play Kaissa. It is for free individuals. In most cities it is regarded, incidentally, as a criminal offense to enslave one of the caste of players. A similar decree, in most cities, stands against the enslavement of one who is of the caste of musicians.

The man of Torvaldsland bit a large chunk from his hock of roast tarsk. “Where are the slave markets?” he asked.

“There are many,” I said. Indeed, one might buy slaves here and there, publicly and privately, at many places in the Fair of En’Kara, one of the four great annual fairs at the Sardar. It is not permitted to fight, or kill, or enslave within the perimeters of the fairs, but there is no prohibition against the buying and selling of merchandise within those precincts; indeed, one of the main functions of the fairs, if not their main function, was to facilitate the buying and selling of goods; the slave, of course, is goods. The fairs, too, however, have many other functions. For example, they serve as a scene of caste conventions, and as loci for the sharing of discoveries and research. It is here, for example, that physicians, and builders and artisans may meet and exchange ideas and techniques. It is here that Merchant Law is drafted and stabilized. it is here that songs are performed, and song dramas. Poets and musicians, and jugglers and magicians, vie for the attention of the crowds. Here one finds peddlers and great merchants. Some sell trinkets and others the notes of cities. It is here that the Gorean language tends to become standardized. These fairs constitute truce grounds. Men of warring cities may meet here without fear. Political negotiation and intrigue are rampant, too, generally secretly so, at the fairs. Peace and war, and arrangements and treaties, are not unoften determined in a pavilion within the precincts of the fairs. “The nearest,” I told the fellow from Torvaldsland, pointing down a corridor between pavilions and booths, “lies some quarter of a pasang in that direction, beyond the booths of the rug merchants. The largest, on the other hand, the platforms of slave exhibition and the great sales pavilion, lie to your left, two pasangs away, beyond the smithies and the chain shops.”

“You speak clearly for one of the south,” he said. He thrust the hock of roast tarsk to me. I took it and, holding it with both hands, cut at it with my teeth. I tore away a good piece of meat. I had not had food since the morning, when I arrived at the fair.

“My thanks,” I said.

“I am Oleg,” he said.

“I have been called Jarl Red Hair in the north.” I said.

“Jarl!” he cried. “Forgive me, I did not know!”

“The meat is good,” I said. I handed it back to him. It was true that in the north, by the word of Sevin Blue Tooth, I had stood upon the shields as Jarl.

“I fought with you,” he said, “at the camp of the beasts. I saw you once near the tents of Thorgard of Scagnar.”

“It was a good fight,” I said.

“It was,” said he, smacking his lips.

“Is the north quiet?” I asked. “Is there Kur activity in Torvaldsland?”

“No,” said he, “no more than an occasional stray. The north is quiet.”

“Good,” I said. The Kurii were not active in Torvaldsland. They had been driven from that bleak, rocky land by the mighty men of the high-roofed halls.

He grinned at me.

“Good hunting,” said I, “in the slave markets.”

“Yes, Jarl,” said he, grinning, lifting the hock of roast tarsk. He turned toward the nearest market. In a few moments he hurled the bone of the tarsk from him, wiping his hands on the sides of his jacket. Over his shoulder hung the great ax of Torvaldsland.

It had rained in the night, and the streets of the fair were muddy.

The Sardar fairs are organized, regulated and administered by the Merchant Caste.

I heard a girl screaming, being lashed. She was on her knees, to one side, between two tents; she was chained at a short stake, about which she had wrapped her arms, holding it for support. The side of her cheek was against the stake. The prohibition against violence at the Sardar, of course, does not extend to slaves. They may there, as elsewhere, be lashed, or tortured or slain, as it should please the master. They are slaves.

I turned down one of the muddy streets, making my way between booths featuring the wares of pottery and weavers. It seemed to me that if I could find the fair’s street of coins, that the makers of odds might well have set their tables there. It was, at any rate, a sensible thought.

“Where is the street of coins?” I asked a fellow, in the tunic of the tarnkeepers.

“Of which city?” he asked.

“My thanks,” I said, and continued on. The fairs are large, covering several square pasangs.

I turned another corner.

“Buy the silver of Tharna,” called a man. “Buy the finest silver on all Gor.”

He was behind a counter at a booth. At his belt, as did the men of Tharna, he wore two yellow cords, each about eighteen inches long. At the back of the booth, kneeling, small, her back low, her head and hair down to the mud, naked, collared, was a woman.

I stepped to one side to make way for a procession of initiates, who, with a ringing of bells, and shaking of bowls on chains, containing burning incense, passed me on their way to the palisade. An initiate in the lead carried a standard on which was mounted the sign of the Priest-Kings, a golden circle, that which has no beginning or end, the symbol of eternity, the symbol of Priest-Kings.

They were white-robed and chanting, and shaven-headed. The caste of initiates is rich on Gor.

I glanced to the kneeling woman in the booth of the man from Tharna. She had not dared so much as to raise her head. She had not been given permission. There are few free women in Tharna. One of the most harsh and cruel slaveries on Gor, it is said, is that of the slave girls of Tharna.

“Where are odds made on the Kaissa matches,” I asked the fellow from Tharna.

“I do not know,” he said.

“My thanks,” I said, and turned away. The woman remained kneeling as she had been placed.

I hoped the fellow from Torvaldsland would be able to buy a good piece of meat at the market.

“Where are odds made on the Kaissa matches?” I asked a small fellow, in the garb of the leather workers. He wore the colors of Tabor on his cap.

“I would ask you that,” he said.

“Do you favor Scormus of Ar?” I inquired.

“Assuredly,” he said.

I nodded. I decided it would be best to search for a merchant who was on the fair’s staff, or find one of their booths or praetor stations, where such information might be found.

I stepped again to one side. Down the corridor between tents, now those of the carvers of semiprecious stones, came four men, in the swirling garb of the Tahari. They were veiled. The first led a stately sand kaiila on which a closed, fringed, silken kurdah was mounted. Their hands were at their scimitar hilts. I did not know if the kurdah contained a free woman of high state or perhaps a prized female slave, naked and bejeweled, to be exhibited in a secret tent and privately sold.

I saw two men of the Wagon Peoples pass by, and, not a yard from them, evincing no concern, a fellow in the flowing robes of Turia. The fairs were truce ground.

Some six young people, in white garments, passed me. They would stand before the palisade, paying the homage of their presence to the mysterious denizens of the Sardar, the mysterious Priest-Kings, rulers of Gor. Each young person of Gor is expected, before their twenty-fifth birthday, to make the pilgrimage to the Sardar, to honor the Priest-Kings. These caravans come from all over known Gor. Most arrive safely. Some are preyed upon by bandits and slavers. More than one beauty who thought to have stood upon the platforms by the palisade, lifting laurel wreaths and in white robes singing the glories of the Priest-Kings, has found herself instead looking upon the snow-capped peaks of the Sardar from the slave platforms, stripped and heavily chained.

Colorful birds screamed to one side, on their perches. They were being sold by merchants of Schendi, who had them from the rain forests of the interior. They were black-visaged and wore colorful garments.

There were many slave girls in the crowd, barefoot, heeling their masters.

Schendi, incidentally, is the home port of the league of black slavers. Certain positions and platforms at the fairs are usually reserved for the black slavers, where they may market their catches, beauties of all races.

I stopped to watch a puppet show. In it a fellow and his free companion bickered and struck one another with clubs.

Two peasants walked by, in their rough tunics, knee-length, of the white wool of the Hurt. They carried staves and grain sacks. Behind them came another of their caste, leading two milk verr which he had purchased.

I returned my attention to the puppet show. Now upon its tiny stage was being enacted the story of the Ubar and the Peasant. Each, wearied by his labors, decides to change his place with the other. Naturally this does not prove fruitful for either individual. The Ubar discovers he cannot tax the bosk and the Peasant discovers his grain cannot grow on the stones of the city streets. Each cannot stop being himself, each cannot be the other. In the end, of course, the Ubar returns gratefully to his throne and the peasant, to his relief, manages to return to the fields in time for the spring planting. The fields sing, rejoicing, upon his return. Goreans are fond of such stories. Their castes are precious to them.

A slave girl in the crowd edged toward me, and looked up at me. She was alone.

I saw a short fellow in they street crowd. He was passing by. He was squat and broad, powerful, apparently very strong. Though the weather was cool in the early spring he was stripped to the waist. He wore trousers of fur, and fur boots, which came to the knee. His skin was dark, reddish like copper; his hair was bluish black, roughly cropped; his eyes bore the epicanthic fold. About his shoulder he had slung some coils of braided rope, fashioned from twisted sleen hide, and, in his hand, he carried a sack and a bundle of tied furs; at his back was a quiver containing arrows, and a short bow of sinew-bound, layered horn.

Such men are seldom seen on Gor. They are the natives of the polar basin.

The herd of Tancred had not appeared in the north. I wondered if he knew this.

I had arranged with Samos to have a ship of supplies sped northward.

Then he was gone, lost in the crowd.

The slave girl put her head down. I felt her timidly biting at my sleeve.

She lifted her eyes to mine. Her eyes were dark, moist, pleading.

Slave girls often need the caress of men.

“I followed you,” she said, “in the crowds.”

“I know,” I said. I had known this, for I was of the warriors.

“I find you very attractive, Master,” she whispered.

She held my arm, closely, looking up at me. Her breasts, sweet, pendant, white, were lovely in the loose rep-cloth of her tunic.

“Please, Master,” she whispered.

“Are you on an errand for your master?” I asked.

“No, Master,” she said. “I am not needed until supper.”

I looked away from her.

Her hands, small and piteous, grasped my arm. “Please, Master,” she said.

I looked down into her eyes.

There were tears in them.

“Please, Master,” she said, “take pity on me. Take pity on the miserable needs of a girl.”

“You are not mine,” I told her. “You are a pretty little thing, but I do not own you.”

“Please,” she said.

“Your master,” I said, “if he chooses, will satisfy your needs. If he does not, he will not.” For all I knew she might be under the discipline of deprivation. If that were so, I had no wish to impair the effectiveness of her master’s control over her. Besides I did not know him. I did not wish to do him dishonor, whoever he might be.

“Does your master know you are begging in the streets?” I asked.

“No,” she said, frightened.

“Then,” said I, “perhaps I should have your hands tied and write that upon your body.”

“Oh, no!” she cried.

“Is this girl bothering you?” asked a merchant, one whose head bore the talmit of the fair’s staff. Behind him were two guardsmen, with whips.

“No,” I said. Then I said, “Where are the tables for the gambling on Kaissa?”

‘They have been arranged but this morning,” he said. ‘They may be found in the vicinity of the public tents near the amphitheater.”

“My thanks, Officer,” said I ‘The lines are long,” he said. “I wish you well,” I said.

“I wish you well,” he said. They left.

“Thank you, Master,” said the girl. At a word from me, she would have been lashed.

“Kneel and kiss my feet,” I said.

She did so.

She then looked up.

“Run now to your master,” I said. “Crawl to him on your belly, and beg his touch.”

“Yes, Master,” she said. She leaped to her feet, frightened, and sped away.

I watched her disappear in the crowds.

I laughed. What a meaningless, lovely, delicious little slave she was. How helpless she was in her needs.

Another slave girl in the crowd smiled at me. I grinned at her, and turned away.

It is pleasant to live on a world where there are female slaves. I would choose to live on no other sort of world.

Before I left, the fair I would inspect the major market, that beyond the smithies and chain shops, where the most numerous exhibition platforms were erected, near the great sales pavillion of blue and yellow silk, the colors of the slavers.

If I found girls who pleased me I could arrange for their transportation to Port Kar. The shipment and delivery of slaves is cheap.

I turned down the street of the dealers in artifacts and curios. I was making my way toward the public tents in the vicinity of the amphitheater. It was there that the tables for the odds on the Kaissa matches might be found.

In traversing the street I saw the fellow from the polar basin, he stripped to the waist, with fur trousers and boots. He was dealing with a large fellow, corpulent and gross, who managed one of the booths. There was a thin scribe present as well behind the counter. The fellow in the furs, the rope coiled over his shoulder, apparently spoke little Gorean. He was taking objects from the fur sack he had carried with him. The large fellow behind the booth’s counter was examining them. The objects would not stand on the counter, for ‘they were rounded, as are shapes in nature. They were intended to be kept in a pouch and, from time to time, taken forth and examined. All details must be perfect, from every perspective, as in nature. Some collectors file such objects that they may be more easily displayed on a shelf or in a case. The native of the polar basin, on the other hand, holds them when he looks at them, and they have his attention as he does so. He is fond of them. He has made them. There were carvings of sea sleen, and fish, and whales, and birds, and other creatures, large and small, of the north.

Other objects, too, other carvings, were in the bag. The carvings were of soft bluish stone and ivory, and bone.

I continued on my way.

In a few minutes I had come to the area of the public tents, and there was there no difficulty in determining where the Kaissa lines were to be found. There were dozens of tables, and the lines were long at each.

I would stay in one of the public tents tonight. For five copper tarsks one may rent furs and a place in the tent. It is expensive, but it is, after all, En’Kara and the time of the fair. In such tents it is not unusual for peasants to lie crowded, side by side, with captains and merchants. During En’Kara, at the Fair, many of the distinctions among men and castes are forgotten.

Unfortunately meals are not served in the tents. For the price it seems one should banquet. This lack, however, is supplied by numerous public kitchens and tables. These are scattered throughout the district of the fair. Also there are vendors.

I took my place at the end of one of the long lines, that which I conjectured to be the shortest.

There are some compensations in the public tents, however. One may have paga and wines there. These are served by slave girls, whose comforts and uses are also included within the price of the lodging.

“Soup!’ Soup!” called a man.

“Soup!” I called, raising my hand. I purchased from him, for a copper tarsk, a bowl of soup, thick with shreds of hot bosk and porous chunks of boiled sul.

“Whom do you favor in the great match?” I asked.

“Scormus of Ar,” said he.

I nodded. I handed him back the soup bowl. I feared the odds would be too high on Scormus. Yet I would wager him the winner. I was not pleased, however, that I might have to bet a golden tarn to win a silver tarsk.

I could see on hills, on either side of the amphitheater, a golden tent pitched. One of these was for Scormus of Ar, the other, on the other side of the great amphitheater, was for Centius of Cos.

“Have they drawn yet for yellow?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

Normally much betting would wait until it was known which player had yellow, which determines the first move, and the first move, of course, determining the opening.

But already the betting was heavy.

I speculated on the effect which the draw for yellow might have on the odds in the match. If Centius drew yellow, I reasoned, the odds favoring Scormus might be reduced a bit, but probably not much; if Scormus, on the other hand, drew yellow, the odds might rise so in his favor as to preclude a rational wager. Few people would accept a bet of even twenty to one under such circumstances. Already I suspected I would have to wager at least ten to one to bet on Scormus, who would be champion. I noted a fellow from Cos a few men ahead of me in the line. “On whom do you wager?’ I asked him. “On Centius of Cos,” he said, belligerently. I smiled to myself. We would see. We would see. I wondered if his patriotism would last all the way to the betting table. Often, incidentally, the first move in a match is decided by one player’s guessing in which hand the other holds a Spearman, one of the pieces of the game. In this match, however, a yellow Spearman and a red Spearman were to be placed in a helmet, covered with a scarlet cloth. Scormus of Ar and Centius of Cos would reach into the helmet and each draw forth one Spearman. He who held the yellow Spearman had the first move.

I was now some twenty men from the table.

“Look,” called a man.

Two parties of men, one party from each of the tents, began to make their way toward the amphitheater. Somewhere in those parties were Scormus of Ar and Centius of Cos. The chief officer of the caste of players, with representatives of both Cos and Ar, would be waiting for them on the stone stage of the amphitheater, with the helmet.

I breathed more easily. I was confident now I would have my bet placed before the draw. If Scormus should draw yellow, and I were to place my bet after this fact was generally known, I would stand to win almost nothing, even should I wager a good deal.

“Hurry!” called a man. “Hurry!”

The two parties of men had now, from opposite sides, entered the amphitheater.

“A silver tarsk on Scormus of Ar,” said the man from Cos, who stood now at the table.

“They will be raising the standard of Ar or Cos any moment!” cried a man.

In moments I was two men from the table. Then there was only one man before me. “Next,” called the odds merchant.

I stood before the table.

“Fourteen to one favoring the champion of Ar,” he said.

“Fourteen hundred tans of gold,” said I, “on Ar’s champion.”

“Who are you?” asked the odds merchant. “Are you mad?’

“I am Bosk,” I said, “of Port Kar.”

“Done,” said he, “Captain!”

I signed his sheet with the sign of the bosk.

“Look!” cried a man. “Look!”

Above the amphitheater, on its rim, a man lifted the standard of Ar.

I stepped aside. There was much shouting. Men of Ar in the crowd embraced one another. Then, beside he who bore the standard of Ar, there stood one in the garb of the players, the red and yellow checkered robe, and the checkered cap, with the board and pieces slung over his shoulder, like a warrior’s accouterments. He lifted his hand. “It is Scormus!” they cried. “It is Scormus!” The ysrnng man then lifted the standard of Ar himself.

Men of Ar wept. Then the young man returned the standard to him who had first carried it to the amphitheater’s rim and withdrew from sight.

There was much cheering.

Next,” said the odds merchant.

The next man then stood before the table.

“Thirty-six to one, favoring the champion of Ar,” he said.

The man groaned.

I grinned, and left the vicinity of the tables. I would have preferred to have had better odds, but I had managed to place my bet before they had more than doubled against poor Centius of Cos. I stood now to win a hundred golden tans. I was in a good mood.

I turned my steps toward the main market. I would look at the goods on the long wooden platforms. Perhaps I would buy a girl for the night and sell her in the morning.

In a few minutes I saw the silken summit of the gigantic sales pavilion, its pennons fluttering, its blue and yellow silk billowing in the wind.

I saw male slaves thrusting a cart filled with quarry stones. It left deep tracks in the rain-softened earth.

I smelled verr, closed in shallow pens, more than a pasang away. The air was clear and sparkling.

I came to the great sales pavilion, but it was now roped off and quiet. There was much activity, and bustle, however, among the platforms. Here and there slaves were being thrown food.

I mingled with the crowds among the platforms. There are hundreds of such platforms, long, raised about a foot from the ground, far more than one could easily examine in a day’s browsing. They are rented to individual slavers, who, reserving them before the fairs, would rent one or more, or several, depending on their riches and the numbers of their stock. Small signs fixed on the platforms identify the flesh merchant, such as ‘These are the girls of Sorb of Turia’ or ‘These slaves are owned by Tenalion of Ar’.

I penetrated more deeply among the platforms. A girl, kneeling and naked, heavily chained, extended her hands to me. “Buy me, Master!” she begged. Then I had passed her and she was behind me. I saw two girls standing, back to back, the left wrist of each chained to the right wrist of the other. “Handsome master, consider me!” cried a girl as I passed her. Most of the girls knelt or sat on the platforms. All were secured in some fashion.

“Scandalous,” said a free woman, to another free woman, who was passing near me.

“Yes,” said the other free woman.

“Candies! Candies!” called a hawker of sweets near me in the crowd. “Candies of Ar!”

“Buy this candy of Ar, Master!” laughed a chained girl to me. I roughly fondled her head, and she seized my wrist suddenly in her chained hands and desperately began to press kisses upon it. “Please,” she wept. “Please!” “No,” I said. I pulled my wrist away and continued on. She sobbed, and knelt back in her chains.

“I will make you a superb love slave,” called another girl to me. I did not respond to her.

On a rounded wooden block a naked slave girl knelt, her wrists braceleted behind her. Her head was back. One of the physicians was cleaning her teeth.

By another platform a slaver’s man was moving along the platform. He carried a large, handled copper tureen filled with a watery soup. The slaver’s beauties, chained together by the neck, knelt at the edge of the platform. Each dipped her cupped hands twice into the tureen, and lifted them, drinking and feeding, to her mouth. They then licked and sucked their fingers and wiped their hands on their bodies.

Sales take place at night in the pavillion, from a sawdust-strewn block, under the light of torches, but girls may also be sold directly from the platforms. Indeed, many girls are sold from the platforms. Given the number of girls at the fair, and the fact that new ones are constantly being brought to the platforms, it is impractical to hope to market them all from the block. It is just not feasible. At the end of every fair there are always some hundreds of girls left unsold. These are usually sold in groups at wholesale prices In sales restricted to professional slavers, who will transport them to other markets, to dispose of them there.

“Do you think you could make me kneel to you?” asked a girl sitting on a platform, with chained neck and ankles, her knees drawn up, chewing on a larma fruit. She smiled at me, over the fruit, Then she turned white. “Forgive me, Master!” she cried. She had seen my eyes. She knelt before me on the boards, trembling, her head down. Would she be permitted to live? The fruit lay discarded beside her. I took the fruit and bit into it. I watched her for a time, and then I said, “Lift your head.” She did so. I threw the fruit back to her, and she, fearfully, caught it. She held it In her bands, looking at me. “Finish it,” I said, “and then, for an Ahn, lie on your belly.” “Yes, Master,” she said.

I looked up, beyond the crowds and platforms. From where I stood I could see the great palisade, and the black, snow-capped mountains of the Sardar.

I moved on, pushing past a man who was examining the legs of a slave girl, feeling them. He was considering her purchase.

“Where are the new slaves?” asked one man of another.

“They are on the western platforms,” said the respondent. Those platforms are commonly used for processing and organization. Girls are not often sold from them. They wait there, usually, when they are brought in, before they are conducted to their proper platforms, those on which they will be displayed, those having been rented in advance by their masters.

Since I had time to spare I took my way to the western platforms. If something good might be found there perhaps I could find on which platform she was to be vended, and might then arrange to be at that platform when she arrived. As soon as the locks snap shut on a girl’s chain at the platform she is available to be bid upon. Perhaps I would find something good.

I was soon at the western platforms.

It is easy to tell among girls which are familiar with their condition and which are not. Once a girl truly understands that she is a slave, and that there is no escape for her, once she understands it truly, emotionally, categorically, intellectually, physiologically, totally, deeply, profoundly, in every cell in her beautiful body, a fantastic transformation occurs in her. She then knows she is truly a slave. She then becomes wild, and free, and sexual, and cares not that he might be scorned by the free either for her miserable condition or helpless appetites; she knows she will be what she must; she has no choice; she is slave. Women, in their heart, long to submit; this is necessary for the slave girl; she must submit or die; submitted, she is thrilled to the core; she lives then for love and service, bound to the will of her master. The joy of the slave girl may seem incomprehensible to the free but it is a reality.

I heard the lamentations of girls in chains.

It must be clearly understood that the life of the slave girl, of course, can often be far from joyful.

After all, she is slave. Her wills mean nothing.

She can be bought and sold.

She is subject to the whip, and torture and even death should the master please.

She does not know who will buy her.

Her condition is objectively degrading.

Often she must labor with perfection to please a harsh master to whom she is nothing.

The glory of the slave girl is that she is a slave; and the misery of the slave girl is that she is a slave.

But all in all chains are right for a woman. They belong in them.

I looked at some of the new platforms. I could easily detect girls who were fresh to the collar. They were clumsy and tight, not yet liberated and free, not yet women.

Even as I walked about the new platforms wagons, drawn by draft tharlarion, waited to unload their lovely wares. The markets of the Sardar fairs are large and important ones in the Gorean economy. Most of the wagons were common slave wagons, with a parallel bar running down the center of the wagon box, about which the ankles of the girls were chained; others, however, were flat wagons fixed with an iron framework; two lines of girls kneel back to hack on such a wagon, their ankles and necks locked into the framework; on the flat wagons I saw the wrists of the beauties were braceleted behind them.

I inspected more of the new platforms.

It is painful for a girl to be locked in the framework of a flat wagon but, of course, she is well displayed enroute.

On some of the new platforms the women were still clothed or partly clothed.

I was about to leave the area of the western platforms when I saw something which interested me, a set of four girl.

I walked casually over to the vicinity of the platform, standing back somewhat.

Three were dark-haired and one was blond. The wrists of each were chained; the ankles, too, of each were chained. Their wrists were separated by some six inches of chain, their ankles by about a foot of chain.

They were kneeling.

They wore collars, fastened together by a chain.

What I found interesting about these girls was that they wore Earth raiment.

The girl on the end, blond, wore very brief denim shorts, faded and blue. They were low on her belly, revealing her navel and tattered about the hems. They had round metal snaps. She wore a blue, workman’s shirt, the tails of which were tied under her breasts, to display her midriff. She was tanned, and blue eyed. Her blond hair was loose and there were tiny rings in her ears. The next girl, dark-haired, lovely, wore black, feminine slacks; these were apparently of some synthetic Earth material; the left leg of the slacks was torn from the knee downward; she also wore what had probably been a soft, red, turtle-necked pull-over; it, too, was rather feminine; perhaps that is why it had been half torn from her; her right breast was exposed; when I looked at her she looked down, frightened, and with one chained hand drew a shred of the pull-over before her, to conceal herself; I smiled; how meaningless was the gesture; did she not know where she was; she was on Gor; she was on the platform; she, too, wore ornaments in her ear lobes, tiny jewellike disks, very small; the next two girls, too, were both dark-haired, and dark-eyed, and were attired, save for the colors of their shirts, identically; both wore blue trousers of denim; both wore flannel shirts, one a plaid flannel and the other a beige flannel; both wore small earrings of gold. I thought, of course, of the girl in the house of Samos and the raiment she had worn, which had been burned in her presence. She and the last two girls would have been extremely similarly attired; they all wore, or had worn, the male-imitation uniform which I gathered must be popular among such girls, girls apparently striving to copy a masculinity which hormonally and anatomically would be forever denied to them; better to be an imitation man they seemed to reason than to dare to be what they were, women; it seemed to me permissible that a woman should he a woman, but I suppose the matter is more complex than this simplicity would suggest; I wondered if such girls feared the promptings of their sex, the stirrings in them of a biology antedating the caves; but perhaps male imitation was only an unconscious step, a scarcely understood phase, ingredient to the possibly inexorable unfolding dynamics of a machine culture, a step or phase leading to what would be the proper fulfillment of the needs of the machine, sexless, tranquil, utilizable units, suitable components, functionality and neuterism triumphant. The machine and the animal must, I suspect, forever be at war, or until one conquers. On Gor slaves know to whom they belong.

I looked at the girls on the platform. How little they would understand a biological world. And yet each wore adornments in her ears, which required the literal piercing of her ears, the softness of her beauty yielding therein to the emblematic spike of penetration. On Gor only slave girls have pierced ears. On Gor these girls, with pierced ears, could be only slaves. Yet how feminine was this, that they had had their ears pierced, they, though girls of Earth. Gorean free women often envied slave girls their pierced ears, though this would seldom be admitted. How barbaric that an ear should be pierced that it may wear an adornment selected by a master. Their ears had been pierced. I admired this small, almost meaningless symbol of their femininity, this small, pathetic gesture protesting to the machine and the lies that they were really women; too, I recalled the undergarments of such girls; they, too, protested the cause of their beauty in the alien country of the machine. From the lineaments of the garments they wore I did not think, however, that their masters had permitted them their customary undergarments. Certainly the dark-haired girl in the torn red pull-over had no longer been permitted her brassiere. It is common to permit a Gorean slave girl only one layer of clothing, if any. That they had been permitted to retain for the time what they now wore rather than, say, brassiere and panties, or nothing, was doubtless due only to the whim of the slaver who owned them.

“I wish to speak to someone,” said the girl on the end, addressing a slaver’s man who was passing them. He stopped, surprised that she had dared to speak.

“Send someone to me who is in authority who speaks English,” she demanded.

He cuffed her. “Be silent,” he said to her, in Gorean. The girl had been struck back in her chains. She seemed utterly startled. Her eyes were wide. She put her fingers to her mouth. There was blood there.

“He hit me,” she said. “He hit me.”

The girls looked about themselves, frightened. The girl in the brief shorts, the blond on the other end, knelt back, making herself small.

“He hit me,” said the girl who had been struck. There was a strange, frightened look in her eye. She looked after the man, and then looked again to the other girls.

“Yes,” whispered the girl in the torn red pull-over, shrinking back in her chains.

The girl who had been struck again looked after the fellow who had cuffed her. There was a look in her eyes which was akin to awe. Then again they looked at one another, frightened. I gathered they had never seen a girl cuffed before. It might be done, they realized, to any one of them.

The girl in denim shorts, whom I would have originally thought would have been the least frightened of her native sexuality, looked at the others. “What if they make us kiss them?” she asked. “What will we do?”

“Kiss them,” said the girl in the torn red pull-over.

“Do you think they will want anything like that?” asked the dark-haired girl in the plaid flannel shirt.

“Who knows what they will want,” said the girl in the pull-over.

“We have rights!” said the blond girl in the shorts.

“Do we?” asked the girl in the red pull-over. She seemed the most feminine of all.

The girls were silent for a time. Then one spoke, the girl in the shorts. “What sort of prisoners are we?” she asked.

“Let us hope,” said the girl in the red pull-over, “that we are just prisoners.”

“I do not understand,” said the girl in the shorts. “What else might we be?”

“Can you not guess?” asked the girl in the red pull-over.

“No,” said the blond girl, in the brief shorts, frightened.

“Perhaps we are slaves,” said the girl in the red pull-over.

“Don’t joke,” said the blond girl, aghast.

The girl in the red pull-over shrugged and looked away.

“Please don’t joke,” whispered the blond girl. The girl in the red pull-over did not respond to her.

I considered the slaves. The fact that the blond had worn shorts and had tied her shirt as she had made it clear to me that she was willing to display her body. From this I would have originally thought that she might have been the least frightened of her sexuality. I now understood that she, in spite of her attire, deeply feared her native drives. Indeed, perhaps she had dressed as she did to try to convince herself, and others, that she did not fear them. Her behavior, however, made manifest the nature of her terror. Doubtless she had sensed in her dreams, and in inadvertent moments, what men might do to her. But that she had displayed her body as she did, even in compensation for her fears, which she would scarcely admit to herself, indicated the strength of the drives against which she fought. She had dressed her body as a challenge to men, though she feared them. Her mode of dress suggested powerful drives, which might, by a master, be well exploited. It was interesting to note that the garb of both the blond and the girl in the red pull-over were variations of the uniform of male imitation; the blond wore the uniform. except that she altered it to brazenly display that it was she, actually a female, and an attractive one, who wore it. The garb of the dark-haired girl, the black slacks of some synthetic material and the soft, red pull-over, was also a variation from the conformist raiment of the two girls on the end. She wore pants, of course, for slacks are a form of pants, and her garments, in general, were body-concealing; these features they had in common with the male-imitation garb of the two girls on the end; on the other hand the slacks were not as body concealing as they might have been for they were cut, actually, subtly, in such a way as to betray her figure; the soft pull-over, too, would leave no doubt as to her femininity, particularly now that her masters had removed her brassiere from her. The slacks, I conjectured, were custom tailored. She had probably been rich. She was now a slave. The blond girl, I would have conjectured, would have been from the middle class. She, too, now, was a slave. Both girls were now identical, only slaves. The fact that the dark-haired girl had worn the garments she did suggested that she had felt, for some time, her femininity, though doubtless it had never been adequately exploited on Earth. She would have lived in unfulfilled frustration. Her garments, in their own way, like those of the blond girl, suggested that she, too, had deep feminine drives. She seemed more honestly to recognize them than the blond girl. I did not know which of them would have the deepest, richest sexuality. Both, I conjectured, would be prizes. I had little doubt the dark-haired girl would come most quickly to lick her chains. The other two girls, I felt, were far behind their chain sisters. They were still, in effect, almost imitation boys. It might take months for them to suddenly, in the throes of the female slave orgasm, become true women.

Another slaver’s man walked past them. They shrank back.

I wondered if these girls had been in the same shipment as the girl I had met in the house of Samos. I supposed at one time each, unconscious, had worn locked on her left ankle the steel identification anklet of the Kur slaver. They wore now, as it was easy to see, only rounded ankle rings. Their feet were all bare, of course. Slavers do not put chains or bonds over stockings; similarly, if wrists are to be chained or bound, gloves would be removed; bonds are not placed over clothing. Gorean slave girls, incidentally, almost always go barefoot; it is a rare girl, and a high girl, who is permitted sandals. I looked again at the four girls. Earth-girl slaves, thanks to the raids of Kur slavers, are not as rare on Gor as they used to be. Earth girls are thought to make superb slaves. Gorean men will pay for them. Earth-girl names, incidentally, are thought of on Gor as slave names. Even many slave girls of Gorean origin wear them. That Earth-girl names are thought of on Gor as slave names is an indication of the regard in which Gorean men hold Earth girls. They are thought to be natural slaves. I believe, incidentally, that this hypothesis is true. She is not herself until she wears a collar and kneels at the feet of a master.

I turned away from the girls, for I had become hungry. I would eat at one of the public restaurants set up in the district of the fair.

I had considered buying the two girls on the end, those on the chain’s left, as I faced it, the blond and the dark-haired girl in the red pull-over, but I decided against it. They were not yet broken in, and I felt my men might kill them. Both girls I felt had an amazing potentiality, even beyond that of most Earth girls, for being superb slaves. It would be unfortunate if this potentiality were to be rudely terminated while they thrashed, bound, in the canals under the teeth of urts.

I glanced back once at the four girls, kneeling closely together, chained, on the platform. The collars they wore seemed somewhat incongruous with their upper garments, the blue workman’s shirt of the blond girl, the soft pull-over of the dark-haired girl, the flannel shirts of the two dark-haired girls on the end, but, still, somehow, they seemed correct, and even beautiful, on their throats. Their wrists, in the two-inch-high, steel cuffs, were small and lovely. Their feet, in the confining ankle loops, were small and beautiful. I was pleased. Their chains looked well on them. This is a way of telling what girls are true slaves. But do chains not look well on any woman? But is not any woman a true slave? I commended the taste and judgment of the Kur slavers. Such girls, yielded, would nestle well in a man’s arms. I saw two slaver’s men advancing toward them. The first carried a knife, the second, over his arm, carried some brief, white, platform tunics.

I swilled down the last of the Cal-da. I had not had it since Tharna.

In the restaurant where I had eaten there were some two hundred tables, under tenting.

I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and rose to my feet.

There were many at the tables who were singing the songs of Ar.

“I am looking forward to the game,” had said Centius of Cos to Scormus of Ar.

“I shall destroy you,” had said Scormus of Ar.

I wondered what thoughts occupied these giants of Kaissa on the eve of their confrontation. Scormus, it was said, walked the tiers of the amphitheater, alone, restlessly, eagerly, like a pacing, hungry beast. Centius of Cos, in his tent, it was said, seemed unconcerned with the match. He was lost in his thoughts, studying a position which had once occurred a generation ago in a match between the minor masters Ossius of Tabor, exiled from Teletus, and Philemon of Aspericht, not even of the players, but only a cloth worker. The game had not been important. The position, however, for some reason, was thought by Centius of Cos to be intriguing. Few masters shared his enthusiasm. It had occurred on the twenty-fourth move of red, played by Philemon, Physician to Physician Six, generally regarded as a flawed response to Ossius’ Ubar to Ubara’s Scribe Five. Something in the position had suggested to Centius of Cos a possible perfection, but it had never materialized. “Here, I think,” had said Centius of Cos, “the hand of Philemon, unknown to himself, once came close to touching the sleeve of Kaissa.”

I saw a fellow several tables away, his back to me, leave the tenting. Something vaguely bothered me about him. I could not place it. I did not see his face. I did not think he had seen me.

I left the tenting. One pays before the meal, and carries a disk, a voucher, to the table. The meal itself is brought to his place, marked on an identical disk, by a slave girl. One surrenders the disk to her and she places the meal before you. The girl wears a leather apron and an iron belt. If one wants her one must pay more.

Outside the tent I again mingled in the crowds. There was nothing pressing until tomorrow’s forenoon when the match would begin.

The singing of the men of Ar was now behind me.

A slaver’s man, pounding on a bar with a metal rod, called that the sales in the pavillion would begin within the Ahn.

“Rent her! Rent her!” called a man, moving through the crowds. Before him, thrust ahead of him on a control stick, her wrists braceleted behind her, was a naked slave girl. There is a chain loop at the end of the control stick, which is about two feet in length. The loop goes about her neck and, by means of a trigger, may be tightened or slightly loosened. The girl may be signaled by means of the chain. I saw her neck and head move, jerking under the chain. She knelt quickly before me and began to bite at my tunic. “Only a quarter tarsk!” called the man. I brushed her aside. At the other end of the control stick there is a leather loop. This goes about the right wrist of the master. Behind me I heard the girl cry out in pain and struggle to her feet. “You worthless slut,” said the man to her. And then he again was calling out, “Rent her! Rent her, kind masters!”

Some jugglers, to one side, were exhibiting their astonishing talents with colored plates and torches.

I passed some booths where rep-cloth was being sold in bolts. Peasant women were haggling with the vendors.

In another area boiled meat hung on ropes. Insects swarmed about it.

I wanted to watch the sales, or some of them, this evening. I wished to pick up some girl flesh for my men..

But there seemed little point in arriving before they had begun. Indeed, there is not much point, usually, in coming early to a sale. Merchants usually exhibit their best merchandise only later in the evening.

The thought of the fellow whom I had seen in the restaurant briefly troubled me. Then I dismissed it.

I made my way toward the platforms.

I saw the fellow from the polar basin again, him with the fur trousers and boots, and the rope and short bow. I recalled he had sold carvings to a dealer in curios earlier in the day.

I was curious to see the Earth girls again. When I had last seen them two slaver’s men had been approaching them, one with a knife and the other with some brief, white, platform tunics. I was curious to see what they would look like in clothing which would make clear their femininity rather than conceal or deny it.

“Where are the platforms of Tenalion of Ar?” I asked a man. They had been his property.

The fellow pointed to the two hundreds.

“My thanks, Sir,” said I. Tenalion is a well-known slaver.

Most girls on the platforms are exhibited naked in their chains. Some, on the other hand, are attired, usually briefly and in platform tunics, which may be opened. It is thought that sometimes a clothed girl is more intriguing to a buyer. When he comes forward and asks to see the girl, and the tunic is opened, he is, of course, already there and interested. The slaver or the slaver’s man, then, can talk with him, discussing, praising and pointing out the values of the commodity. This would not be easy if the fellow had merely glanced upon the wares and passed by. Girls are seldom, if ever, of course, sold clothed: It is said that only a fool would buy a clothed woman. That is certainly true. Would you buy a girl you had not had a chance to examine in detail?

In the two hundreds Tenalion’s platforms were numbered from two hundred and forty through two hundred and eighty, inclusive.

How pleased I was to see the slaves. It was now clear they were beauties. But many of the slaves of Tenalion were beautiful.

They still wore neck collars and were chained together. But now the neck collars were fantastically beautiful on them. No longer did they now wear their distracting, meaningless Earth raiment, but Gorean platform tunics. The tunics were white, with deep, plunging necklines, well revealing and setting off the collars, completely sleeveless, and terribly brief. They knelt. There was about a yard of chain between the collars, fastening them in a four-girl coffle.

“I hardly dare move,” said the blond girl. She knelt, as the others did, with her knees pressed closely together.

Their wrists were now in steel cuffs behind their backs. No longer would they be able to conceal themselves if their tunics were opened.

“Nor I,” said the girl on the end. “What is being done with us?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said the third girl. “I don’t know!”

A man walked by, slowly, appraising them.

They shrank back.

Their ankles were confined in loose, steel ankle loops, but they could not slip them. A common chain ran though rings on the loops. No longer were their ankles confined with a foot of chain between them. Their ankles, now, for the chain running through the loop-rings was long, could be moved as closely together or as widely apart as they, or their masters, might wish. There were round, pierced metal balls at each end of the ankle chain, to prevent its slipping through the rings entirely. One such ball was to the right of the blond’s right ankle and the other was to the left of the left ankle of the last girl on the chain. This ankle-chain arrangement, permitting much plasticity of movement, makes it easier to display a girl.

“We have rights!” whispered the blond girl.

“Do you think so?” asked the dark-haired girl, who had worn the black slacks and the soft, torn red pull-over.

“Yes!” said the blond girl.

“Look at their eyes,” said the dark-haired girl.

The blond girl shrank back in the chains.

“Do you still think we have rights?” asked the dark-haired girl.

The blond was silent.

“Do you think a woman could have rights with such men?” asked the dark-haired girl. “Do you think we are still on Earth?” she asked.

“What has become of us?” asked the girl on the end.

“Is it not obvious?” asked the dark-haired girl. Her face was narrow, but delicate and very beautiful. Her figure was slight. but exquisite. Her hair was short, and very dark. She had lovely legs, marvelously revealed by the brevity of the platform tunic. I thought her the most beautiful of all. I also thought her the most intelligent The next most valuable meat in the coffle was, in my opinion, the blond, who was sweetly slung and exciting.

“No!” said the girl on the end. “No! It is not obvious!”

The slender dark-haired girl shrugged, and, with a rustle of chain, turned away.

Then all the girls suddenly shrank back, frightened, for another fellow was passing by, slowly, examining them.

“I do not wish to be dressed like this,” said the third girl on the chain.

“Be pleased,” said the first girl on the chain, the blond, “that they have given you anything to wear.”

Within sight of them, on other platforms, there were numerous, naked chained beauties.

“You will note, of course,” said the dark-haired girl, second on the chain, who had worn the torn, pull-over, “the nature of the garments in which we have been placed.”

The left side of the brief tunic overlapped the right side of the tunic. It was held in place by a light, white cord, which passed through two loops and was loosely knotted at the right hip. If the cord were jerked loose the garment would fall open and could be. easily brushed aside, to fall back, loose, behind them, on their cuffed, chained wrists.

“What about it?” asked the girl at the end of the chain, belligerently.

“Do you think it would be difficult to open?” asked the dark-haired girl.

“They wouldn’t dare!” said the blond girl.

The dark-haired girl did not respond to her.

“You think you are so clever because you are rich!” hissed the blond.

“Do you think any of us have anything now?” demanded the dark-haired girl, angrily. “Do you think we own even the chains we wear?”

“I do not understand what you are saying!” said the girl, angrily, at the end of the line.

The dark-haired girl did not respond to her.

“What sort of place is this!” cried out the girl on the end. She jerked her cuffed wrists futilely. She could bring one of them to a position behind her left hip or her right hip, but could not bring either before her body.

“Struggle if you will,” said the dark-haired girl. “It is not the intention of the men that you escape.” She smiled. “Therefore you will not escape.” The dark-haired girl looked out, over the crowds. “Besides, where would you escape to?” she asked. ‘There is nowhere to escape to,” she said.

“I hate you!” said the girl who had struggled. The dark-haired girl shrugged.

Two more men walked by, casually casting a glance upon the confined goods.

The girls were silent, and knelt back, small.

The men saw nothing of interest in them. There were many beauties on display.

“I cannot stand the way they look at us,” said the blond.

“What does it mean?” asked the third girl on the chain.

“Masters!” called a girl, in Gorean, some yards down the platform, accosting the two men who were passing. She knelt on one knee, and flexed and extended her other leg, beautifully, touching the boards of the platform with her toes. She lifted her body and thrust forth her lovely breasts to them. “Masters,” she whimpered, “take me home with you!”

“Do you beg to be purchased?” asked one of the men.

“Yes, Master!” she said.

“Slave,” said he, scornfully.

“Yes, Master!” she said.

“Do you find her of interest?” asked the first man, he who had questioned her, to his fellow.

“Stand, Slave,” said the second man.

She stood before them, beautifully, almost nude in the platform tunic.

A slaver’s man, seeing their interest, came to where they stood.

“Would you care to see the pretty little slut?” he asked.

The four Earth girls, though they could not speak Gorean, watched, horrified, the enactment of a common Gorean episode, the attempt on the part of a slave to interest masters in her purchase.

The blond girl gasped and shrank back when the slaver’s man, joining the girl on the platform, jerked loose the cord at her right hip and, with two hands, standing behind the girl, held back the tunic, well displaying her to the gaze of the inquirers.

They could not, of course follow the conversation, but it was clearly one of appraisal, and of commerce.

Then the Earth girls, with the exception of the dark-haired girl, who watched, fascinated, eyes shining, turned their eyes away, shuddering. One of the men had joined the slaver’s man and the girl on the platform. The girl cried out, startled, being ruthlessly appraised. Then she writhed on the platform, obedient to the touch of the masters.

“Look!” said the dark-haired girl.

The other three girls then looked too, in horror and fascination.

They saw the beauty being swiftly put through slave paces.

Then they saw her sold. There was a clear exchange of money. The girl was released from her chains and braceleted by one of the men. She was put in a collar and leash and led from the platform. Behind then was left only the discarded chains and a discarded, crumpled tunic. The girl was gone.

“Do you still ask what manner of place this is?” asked the dark-haired girl bitterly of the girl at the chain’s end.

That girl, dark-haired, too, shook her head with horror. “It cannot be,” she whispered.

The dark-haired girl, who had worn the pull-over, turned angrily to the blond, at the other end of the chain. “Do you still think,” she asked, “they will not ‘dare’ to look at your precious body?”

The blond shrank back, terrified in the chains.

“Do you truly think now,” pressed the dark-haired girl, furiously, “that you have rights, you foolish little thing? Do you think before such men you would have rights? These are not men of Earth!”

The blond girl looked at her with horror.

“These men will have their way with women,” she said. “Can you not see it in their eyes? They will have what they want from women.” And she laughed bitterly, “And we are women,” she said.

“This place then-“ stammered the girl at the end of the chain.

“Yes,” said the dark-haired girl. Then she looked at the blond. “Do you still think,” she asked, “that we are merely some sort of prisoners?”

“No, no,” wept the blond girl.

“This is a slave market,” said the dark-haired girl, “and we are slaves.”

The blond girl moaned and threw her head back. The third and fourth girl began to sob.

“Accept it, my dear,” said the dark-haired girl, “our reality is now transformed.”

They looked at her.

“We are now slave girls on a strange world.”

“No,” whispered the girl on the end.

“I am for sale,” said the dark-haired girl, “and so, too, are you, and the rest of us.”

“Yes,” whispered the blond, suddenly shuddering, “I-I am for sale.”

“As are the rest of us,” said the dark-haired girl.

The girls then subsided, and were quiet.

After a time the dark-haired girl spoke. “I wonder,” she said, “what it will be like, being a slave girl.”

“I cannot even think of it,” said the blond-haired girl.

“I wonder what it will be like, being owned by a man,” mused the dark-haired girl.

“Perhaps a woman will buy us,” said the girl on the end.

The blond girl, and the dark-haired girl, looked at her, apprehensively.

“We would have less to fear from a woman,” said the girl on the end.

“Do you want to be owned by a woman?” asked the dark-haired girl.

“No,” said the girl on the end.

“Nor would I,” said the third girl.

“Nor would I,” said the dark-haired girl.

“-Nor would I,” said the blond.

“That is interesting, is it not?” asked the dark-haired girl, thoughtfully. She looked out at the crowd. “Have you ever seen such men?” she asked. “I had never dreamed such men could exist.”

“No,” whispered the blond girl.

“Do you not find them disturbing?” asked the dark-haired girl.

“Wicked girl!” cried the girl on the end.

“I will tell you something,” said the dark-haired girl. “They make me feel warm inside, and hot and wet.”

“Wicked girl! Wicked girl!” cried the girl on the end.

“I have never felt feelings like this before,” said the dark-haired girl. “I do not know what I would do if one of them touched me.”

“Feminine! Feminine!” scolded the girl on the end, who had worn the beige flannel shirt.

The dark-haired girl in the brief platform tunic, who had worn the red pull-over, knelt back. “Yes,” she said, “feminine.”

“If they so much as touch me, I’ll scream,” said the blond.

But there seemed little chance of this for there appeared to be much more choice merchandise for sale upon those long, darkly varnished, slatted platforms. I had stood back in the crowd, interested to hear them speak. But now I would move on. It was nearly time to go to the pavillion. I did see in the crowd, some platforms away, the fellow from the polar basin. He was looking at women. The rawhide rope was looped about his shoulder.

“Look,” I heard a fellow say, “it is Tabron of Ar.”

I turned about. A tarnsman, in the scarlet leather of his war rights, tall, was moving through the crowd. He casually stopped before the four girls.

The blond shrank back as his eyes examined her in the collar, chains and platform tunic.

He looked upon the dark-haired girl. To my surprise and pleasure I saw her kneel very straight and lift her body before him. Then he looked past her to the other two, girls and continued on his way. She knelt back in her chains.

“I saw you!” said the girl on the end, who had worn the beige flannel shirt.

“He was very handsome,” said the dark-haired girl. “-And I am a slave.”

“He didn’t buy you,” sneered the third girl, who had worn the plaid flannel shirt, “you rich tart!”

“He didn’t buy you either,” retorted the dark-haired girl, “you low-class idiot.”

I smiled. They were both only slaves.

“I am more beautiful than you,” said the third girl.

I was pleased to see that the third girl seemed now much more sensitive to her femaleness than earlier. Perhaps she would not take as long as I had thought to discover her womanhood. Gorean males, I conjectured, might teach it to her quickly. She would look lovely, I thought, crawling to her master, his sandals in her teeth.

“If we must discuss that sordid sort of thing,” said the girl on the end, who had worn the beige flannel shirt, “I am the most beautiful of us four.”

“I am,” said the dark-haired girl, angrily, indignantly.

“No,” said the blond. “I am surely the most beautiful!”

“You do not even want a man to touch you,” said the dark-haired girl.

“No,” said the blond. “But I am still the most beautiful.”

The dark-haired girl looked out over the crowd. “They will decide who is most beautiful,” she said.

“They?” asked the blond.

“The masters,” said the dark-haired girl.

“Masters?” stammered the blond.

“Yes,” said the dark-haired girl, “the masters, those men out there, those who will buy us, our masters, they will decide who is most beautiful.”

The girls knelt back in their chains. They knelt back easily, on their heels.

“Oh!” cried the blond girL

A stout fellow, in the garb of the tarn keepers, smelling of the tarn cots, stood looking at her. She pulled back, and shook her head, “No.” Her eyes were frightened.

The stout fellow looked about, and caught the eye of one of the slaver’s men who, seeing him, made his way through the crowds to his side.

“These are new slaves?” asked the tarn keeper.

“Fresh to the collar,” said the slaver’s man.

“I need a wench,” said the man, “one who will cost me little, one to keep in the cots by day, to shovel the excrement of tarns, one to keep in my hut by night, as a pot-and-mat girl.”

“These four wenches,” said the slaver’s man, expansively, indicating the small coffle, “are comely candidates for such a post.” He stepped upon the platform, and crouched upon its surface. “Consider this one,” he said, indicating the blond, who was first upon the chain.

He reached to her tunic.

“Don’t touch me,” she cried, drawing back.

“A barbarian,” said the tam keeper.

“Yes,” said the slaver’s man.

“And the others?” asked the tarn keeper.

“They are all barbarian, Master,” said the slaver’s man.

The dark-haired girl, seeing the tam keeper’s eyes upon her, shrank back.

The tarn keeper turned and walked away. The girls looked at one another, frightened, and knelt back. They seemed relieved. This relief, however, was surely premature. Another slaver’s man joined his colleague at the platform. “We will never sell these,” said the first. “They are raw girls, untrained, inept, clumsy, meaningless sluts. They do not even speak Gorean.”

“Tenalion has no intention of putting them on the main block in the pavilion,” said the second. He had a five-bladed slave whip at his belt.

“It would be a waste of block time,” said the first. “Who would want girls this worthless and ignorant?” he asked. “We shall surely have to transport them back to Ar.”

“Who of Ar would want them?” asked the second man grinning.

“We will have to take them back to Ar,” said the first man.

“We could sell them for sleen feed here,” said the second.

“That is true,” granted the first.

“Attend to the forty through forty-five platforms,” said the second man, who seemed to have greater authority than the first. “I shall stay in this vicinity for the time.”

The other man nodded, and turned away.

The second slaver’s man regarded the four girls, who did not meet his eyes. He wore blue and yellow, a tunic. He wore studded leather wristlets. At his belt hung the whip. The girls now seemed apprehensive. I did not blame them. One in whose charge they were now stood near them. I saw them look at his whip, but there was no real comprehension of it in their eyes. They did not yet understand the whip, or what it might do to them. I gathered they had never been whipped.

“The bids have begun in the pavilion,” I heard.

“Move forward,” said the slaver’s man to the girls, in Gorean. They did not understand his words, but his gesture was clear. Frightened, they, on their knees, crept forward to the edge of the platform. They were now quite near the crowd. Before they had been back about a yard or so on the platform. When a girl is back somewhat it is easier to see her. On the other hand, the proximity of female flesh to the buyer can in itself, of course, be a powerful inducement to her purchase. What man, truly close to a beautiful female, can fail to feel her in his blood, and want to own her?

The slaver, I conjectured, knew his business.

The girls looked at one another, terrified. They were now close to the men.

“Please, don’t!” begged the blond girl. A man in the crowd, passing her, had put his hand on her thigh.

The slaver’s man looked at her, angrily. She looked at him, tears in her eyes. Did he not know what the beast, in passing, had done? He looked away.

What did it matter that someone had touched, even intimately caressed, a woman who was only a slave?

She tried to creep back, but the slaver’s man, seeing this, irritably removed his whip from his belt and, with its coils, indicated the place on the platform where her knees must be. They were placed in such a way as to be a quarter of an inch over the edge of the platform. The other girls, too, made certain their knees were perfectly aligned. The robes of passing men then brushed their knees.

“I would look at this one,” said a leather worker, who stopped before the blond, first on the chain.

She shrank back.

“She is a beauty, isn’t she?” smiled the slaver. “Open her tunic. See what she has to offer you,” he invited.

The leather worker reached toward the girl, but she scrambled back. “Don’t touch me!” she cried. The dark-haired girl cried out with pain, dragged by her collar back, too. She fell twisted, on her side, in the chain.

“I’ll scream,” warned the blond girl.

The leather worker was quite puzzled. “I do not think I am interested,” he said. “Too, this one is a barbarian. She is not broken to the collar.”

“Break her to your collar,” said the slaver’s man.

“I do not want to take the time to break a girl in,” he said.

“Wait, kind sir,” said the slaver. “Wait! See what delights would await you.”

The man hesitated.

“Prodicus!” called the slaver’s man.

In a moment the first slaver’s man, who had gone to supervise the forty through forty-five platforms, those in the two hundreds, joined his colleague.

The second slaver’s man, who carried the whip, which he now uncoiled, unnoticed, I am sure, by the girls, indicated the blond with his head.

The fellow called to the platform scrambled onto it and swiftly knelt the blond before the slaver’s man with the whip and the leather worker. The fellow on the platform then jerked loose the knot at the blond’s right hip, which held the wrap-around tunic closed. “No!” she screamed. He jerked it back, away from her, exposing her. She was very beautiful. It lay behind her, over her chained wrists. He kicked her knees apart. Then he crouched behind her, holding her by the upper arms. She struggled, twisting, on her knees. She began to scream miserably, her head back. She pressed her knees closely together. The slaver’s man with the whip angrily leaped to the platform. He kicked her knees open again. She was sobbing and screaming. Men about laughed. “See, Master?” asked the slaver’s man with the whip, but the leather worker had gone. The slaver’s man glared down, in fury, at the chained blond. Another man in the crowd reached to take the ankle of the dark-haired girl in his hand and she, with a rattle of chain, jerked it away. She looked at him, terrified. “They are all barbarians,” said a man, “all of them.” Puzzled by the reactions of the blond and the dark-haired girl other men in the crowd reached out to touch the last two girls on the chain. One held with his two hands the thighs of the third girl, who had worn the plaid flannel shirt. She screamed in the collar. Another man took the fourth girl, who had worn the beige flannel shirt, under the arms, and pulled her to him. She fought to pull her lips back, that they might not touch his. She struggled in his arms. She screamed. He thrust her back on her side on the platform, and left her. The man who had held the thighs of the third girl, too, released her. There was much laughter in the crowd. She scrambled back in her chains, sobbing. The slaver’s man was furious. He looked from one girl to the other, to the stripped, chained blond, to the cowering dark-haired girl, her neck cut by the collar, from its movement, to the third girl, sobbing and looking up at him, to the fourth girl, lying on her side, her legs drawn up, crying. He gestured to his colleague. This man went to the second girl and jerked back her tunic, and to the third and jerked back her tunic, and to the fourth and jerked back her tunic. Then they lay in their chains, exposed at his feet. Then he put them under the whip.

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 pressed 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 master 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.

I drew her right hand away from her body, until the slave bracelet on her left wrist was against the golden collar loop. I then doubled the chain and formed from it a slip loop, which I dropped over her head. I jerked it tight. Her wrists now, both, were held at the collar loop. She looked up at me, frightened. I put her on her back, in the cradle of my left arm. She moved her small wrists in the cuffs; she tried to move her hands; they were held, confined, at the golden loop. I then pulled away the rectangle of rep-cloth she wore and wadded it and thrust it in her mouth. She looked at me, frightened. Then I began to touch her.