Explorers Of Gor

7
The Market Of Uchafu

There are many fine slave markets in Schendi, in particular, those of Ushanga, Mkufu, Utajiri, Dhahabu, Fedha, Marashi, Hariri, Kovu and Ngoma. The market of Uchafu, on the other hand, is not numbered among these.

One can pick up pot girls and low women there. It was thus appropriate, I suppose, that the blond-haired barbarian, ignorant and untrained, scarcely able to speak Gorean, little more than raw collar meat, should have been taken there. She would attract little attention.

"May I be of assistance to Master?" asked Uchafu, hobbling toward me, supporting himself on a knobbed stick.

"Perhaps, later," I said. "I am browsing now."

"Browse as you will, Master," said Uchafu. "You will find that we have here the finest slaves in all Schendi." He had lost several teeth and was blind in one eye. His robe was filthy, and stained with food and blood. A long knife, unsheathed, was thrust into his sash.

"Why is that girl blindfolded?" I asked, indicating a girl, kneeling with other girls, chained, under a low, palm-thatched platform.

"Why to keep her quiet, Master," said Uchafu.

I nodded. It is a device often used by slavers.

Uchafu then hobbled away.

"Buy me, Master," said a girl near me. I glanced at her, and then passed by, moving down the row.

It was muddy in the market, for it had rained yesterday afternoon and evening, after our arrival in Schendi. The air was steamy. One could smell the vegetation and jungles behind the port. Uchafu's market was back of the merchant wharves, nearer the harbor mouth. It was on a canal, called the Fish canal, leading back from the harbor. It is adjacent, on the south, to a large market where river fish are peddled for consumption in Schendi. These are brought literally through the harbor by canoes, moving among the larger ships, from the fishing villages of the Nyoka and then delivered via the canal to the market. There are also a number of small shops in the vicinity. The official name of the canal is the Tangawizi canal, or Ginger canal, but it is generally called, because of the market, the Fish canal.

"Buy me, Master," said another girl, as I passed her. She was brown-skinned and sweet-legged.

There were only, by my conjecture, at the time I was in the market of Uchafu, some two hundred and fifty girls there. Uchafu was not at his full stock at that time. He handled most of his own business but was assisted by four younger men, one of whom was his brother. In spite of the fact that he was not at full inventory he crowded his girls, leaving several of the small, open-sided, palm-thatched shelter, those about the outer wall, a low, boarded wall, empty.

Most of the girls were black, as would be expected from the area, but there were some ten or fifteen white girls there, and some two girls apparently of oriental or mixed extraction.

"Master," said a red-haired girl, reaching forth her hand, timidly, not daring to touch me.

I looked at her.

Fearfully she drew hack her hand.

I moved farther down the row. Two black girls shrank back. I gathered they were new to their collars.

I then shifted my attention to another of the small shelters. They are some twenty feet long and five feet deep, and four feet high. Two heavy posts are sunk deeply into the ground at each end of each shelter. A chain runs between these posts. Each girl, on her left ankle, wean an ankle ring, with a loop of chain and a lock. By means of the loop of chain and lock she is attached to the central chain. Some of the girls also wore slave bracelets or other devices, fastening their hands before or behind their bodies. One girl, lying on her shoulder in the mud, was cruelly trussed, hand and foot, with binding fiber. Perhaps she had not been fully pleasing.

I crouched down beside a thick-ankled blond girl. I pulled her to me by the hair, and turned her head to one side. I examined her collar. The legend had once read 'I am the girl of Kikombe'. The name 'Kikombe' now, however, for the most part, with a set of rough, zigzag lines, had been scratched out, and the name 'Uchafu', with a sharp tool, had been added. I smiled. Uchafu even used second-hand collars. The Kurii were clever. Surely one would not search for a valuable girl in such a market.

"Do you like her?" asked Uchafu, who had come up near to me again. He had kept a close eye on me. "I had her from Kikombe honestly," he said.

"I do not doubt it," I said. I gathered he thought mo possibly an agent tracing smuggled slaves.

It had not been for no reason that I had seemed to express interest in the thick-ankled blond.

"Do you like white girls?" asked Uchafu.

"Yes," I said.

"They make superb slaves," said Uchafu.

"Yes," I said.

"This one is a beauty," he said, indicating the girl whose collar I had just examined.

"Have you others?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

"Have you others with hair of this sort? I asked.

"Yes," he said. But he looked at me, suddenly, warily.

I looked about, over the shelter near us to those at the far wall, which were empty. "You have empty shelters over there," I said. "Why do you put so many girls together? Would it not be better to space them farther apart, for purposes of display?"

"It is easier to feed and clean them this way," he said. There is less area to be covered."

"I see," I said.

"Besides," he said, "later in the month I am expecting deliveries and I will then need that space."

There were weeds and grass growing about the interior perimeter of the low board fence encircling the market. The fence was some four feet high. A small wooden hut, with a roof thatched with palm leaves, at one corner of the compound, served as house and office for Uchafu and, I suspect, dormitory for his assistants.

"You seem to have no male slaves," I observed.

"They are now scarce in Schendi," he said. "Bila Huruma, Ubar of Lake Ushindi, uses them for work on his great canal."

"He intends to join Lakes Ushindi and Ngao, I have heard," I said.

"It is a mad project," said Uchafu, "but what can one expect of the barbarians of the interior?"

"It would open the Ua river to the sea," I said.

"If it were successful," said Uchafu. "But it will never be accomplished. Thousands of men have already died. They perish in the heat, they die in the sun, they are killed by hostile tribes, they are destroyed by insects, they are eaten by tharlarion. It is a mad and hopeless venture, costly in money and wasteful in human life."

"It must be difficult to obtain so many male slaves," I said.

"Most who work on the canal are not slaves," said Uchafu. "Many are debtors or criminals. Many are simply common men, impressed into service, victims of work levies imposed on the villages. Indeed, only this year Bila Huruma has demanded quotas of men from Schendi herself."

"These have, of course, been refused," I said.

"We have strengthened our defenses," said Uchafu, "reinforcing the palisaded walls which shield Schendi from the interior, but we must not delude ourselves. Those walls were built to keep back animals and bands of brigands, not an army of thousands of men. We are not an armed city, not a fortress, not a land power. We do not even have a navy. We are only a merchant port."

"You have, of course, nonetheless refused the request of Bila Huruma for men," I said.

"If he wishes," said Uchafu, "he could enter and burn Schendi."

"Barbarians from the interior?" I asked.

"Bila Huruma has an army at his command, organized, trained, disciplined, effective," said Uchafu. "He manages a Ubarate, with districts and governors, with courts and spies and messengers."

"I did not know anything of this breadth and power existed in the south," I said.

"It is a great Ubarate," said Uchafu, "but it is little known for it is of the interior."

I said nothing.

"Schendi," said he, "is like a flower at the feet of a kailiauk."

"You have then acceded to his request for men?" I said.

"Yes," said Uchafu.

"I am sorry," I said.

Uchafu shrugged. "But do not concern yourself with our troubles," he said, "for you are not of Schendi." He then turned about. "Have you seen the red-headed girl?" he asked. "She is very nice."

"Yes," I said, "I have seen her." I looked about. "There is a blond-haired girl over there," I said, indicating the girl in the blindfold, kneeling chained, crowded together with other girls, under one of the small, thatched roofs, on its poles. She was dirty. Her knees were in the mud. Her left ankle, like that of the other girls, was fastened in an ankle ring. She, like the others, was, by the loop of chain and lock, run through the chain ring on the ankle ring, attached to the central chain of her shelter, that strung between the two heavy posts, one at each end of the shelter. She, like the others, was naked. Her small hands, her wrists secured in slave bracelets, by means of a locked chain snug at her waist, were held at her belly. She could not, then, reach the blindfold. It was of black cloth. It covered most of the upper part of her head.

"Let me show you these two," said Uchafu, leading me away from the girl in the blindfold. She was the only one blindfolded in the market. Uchafu had told me, earlier, that it was to keep her quiet.

"What of these?" asked Uchafu.

Yesterday, after I had left the blond-haired barbarian at the wharf, I had taken lodging at the Cove of Schendi, a rooming house in the vicinity of wharf ten which caters to foreign sailors. The rooms were small but adequate, with a mattress, spread upon the floor a sea chest at one side of the room; a low table; a tharlarion oil lamp; a bowl and pitcher of water; and, at the foot of the mattress, a stout slave ring. I threw my sea bag beside the sea chest, braceleted Sasi's hands before her body about the ring, left the room, locked the door, dropped the key in my pouch and made my way downstairs, to return inconspicuously to the vicinity of wharf eight, where the Palms of Schendi was disembarking her cargo. I did not have long to wait. Uchafu himself had soon appeared and, meeting with Ulafi, completed the brief transaction which purchased him the blond-haired barbarian. Shoka removed the shipping collar of the Palms of Schendi from her neck. Uchafu then snapped his own collar on her. Shoka then freed her wrists of the wrist rings of the sirik and Uchafu locked a waist chain on her and then, about this chain, running the linkage of the bracelets behind it, braceleted her hands at her belly. Uchafu then, with the black cloth, blindfolded her, and snapped a lock leash about her collar. Shoka then removed the sink collar from her, and the ankle rings, freeing her of the silk. He gathered up the sink and he took, too, unlocking it, the chain and padlock which had held her, by the silk, at the wharf ring. He then returned to the Palms of Schendi. Uchafu, by the leash, pulled the braceleted, blindfolded girl to her feet, and pulled her after him, leading her from the wharf. I had followed them. Uchafu, as it turned out, had not taken a direct route to his market. I think the girl, even if she had known the streets of Schendi, would have been utterly confused as to her direction or whereabouts.

"These are nice," said Uchafu, indicating a pair of white blonds. "These are sisters," he said, "from Asperiche. You may buy them together, or separately, as you please."

The blond-haired barbarian, as she knelt frightened, in the mud, with the other girls, still wore her blindfold, that which Uchafu had placed on her at wharf eight. She would have no idea of where she was. Uchafu undoubtedly, because of the prices involved, understood that she was of some importance. On the other hand, I do not think he understood the nature of that importance. Ulafi, I was sure, had not either. There was no blood that I could see on the interior of the barbarian's thighs. Ulafi, too, I recalled, had not used her nor thrown her to his crew. This tended to confirm in my mind that they did not understand the nature of her importance. Perhaps a rich man, an eccentric of some sort, desired her. Perhaps he would not be pleased, or would not pay, if she were not delivered to him white silk. I smiled to myself. If Ulafi or Uchafu truly understood the nature of the girl's importance, that it had nothing to do with her being red silk or white silk, she would doubtless, by now, have been richly and abundantly raped. More than a hundred times by now, I expected, had they but known, she would have thrashed and squirmed, gasping, held, in the arms of strong men, her slave beauty the helpless, lascivious wine on which mighty masters would slake the thirsts of their lust.

"What do you think of them?" Inquired Uchafu, indicating the two blond-haired sisters from Asperiche.

Both were blue-eyed. They crouched in the mud, chained, beneath the palm-thatched roof of the tiny shelter.

"What can you do?" I asked them.

They looked at one another, frightened. One whimpered. Uchafu angrily raised the heavy, knobbed stick he carried.

"Whatever Master desires," said one of the girls.

"Whatever Master desires," said the other girl, quickly.

"What of that one over there?" I asked, casually, indicating the blond-haired barbarian in a shelter some feet away, diagonally to my left.

"These are beauties," said Uchafu, indicating the two sisters, the blonds from Asperiche. "Buy one or both," he said.

But I had begun to walk toward the blond-haired barbarian. Uchafu hurried along behind me, and seized my sleeve, stopping me.

"No," he said, "not her."

"Why?" I asked, as though puzzled.

"She has already been sold," he said.

"How much did you get?" I asked.

"Fifteen copper tarsks," he said. He had put the price a bit high for this girl and this market. That was, I supposed, to discourage me. I recalled she had had an honest bid on her once at the market of Vart, once Publius Quintus of Ar, in Port Kar, a bid from the tavern keeper, Procopius, of forty copper tarsks. She had received this bid, of course, only after her unusual heat, for a new slave, had been made clear.

"I will give you sixteen," I told him.

Uchafu looked annoyed. I did not permit myself to smile. I knew that he had not yet sold the girl, for she was still on his chain. He was waiting for his buyer. Further, I knew, from Ulafi, he would have paid two tarsks, of silver, for her. He would doubtless receive three or four silver tarsks from the awaited buyer. But then he smiled and shrugged. "Oh, misery, for a poor merchant," said he. "I could have received sixteen for her and sold her for fifteen. Misery! But I cannot now renege upon my word, sadly enough, for I am a merchant of well-known integrity. Much as I would love to sell her to you for sixteen tarsks I must let her go to a previous buyer for fifteen. Such is occasionally the sad lot of one who has made the difficult choice, and will abide by it, of dealing straightforwardly and honestly with all men, whomsoever they may be."

"I had not realized that integrity could be such a handicap," I said.

"Ah, yes," he moaned.

"But perhaps your reputation as a noble and honest merchant will yet in the long run redound to your profit as well as your honor."

"Let us hope so," he said.

"You are one of the most honest slavers I have ever met," I said.

"My thanks, Master," breathed he, bowing low.

"I wish you well," said I.

"I wish you well," said he.

I then left his market. I think then he realized that I had not bought a girl.

"We will have more in at the end of the week!" he called. "Come again!"

I waved to him, from the other side of the low board fence.