Prize of Gor

Chapter 20 COFFLED

Ellen, choking in the dust raised by the clawed feet of restless saddle tharlarion, stirring, grunting, snorting, coming and going, seemingly all about her, miserable in the heat, shutting her eyes against the dust and glare, the sun burning on her back, weeping, the tears mixing with the grit of dust, was forced to her knees, and then to all fours. She heard the rustle of chain behind her and then, in an instant, a heavy metal collar was clasped about her neck and locked. A chain dangled from its back ring, its posterior ring, that at the back of her neck, to a girl behind her, and another chain ran from her collar’s throat ring, or anterior ring, to the back ring, or posterior ring, of the next collar, which, a moment later, was closed about the lovely, slim neck of the slave before her, and so on, toward the beginning of the coffle.

“Stand, sluts!” she heard, and the crack of a whip.

Ellen struggled to her feet, with a rattle of chain. She felt the draw, the tension, the pull of the chain on the collar, before her and behind her. How hot the sun was! There was so much dust! It was hard to breathe, for the dust. She had her eyes half shut against the glare.

She felt miserable, and dizzy. Things swirled about her. Tharlarion rushed past. Men shouted. She heard the creak of wagon wheels. She feared she might be ill, that she might faint.

She grasped the chain before her, with both hands. How small and delicate seemed her fingers on the heavy, merciless links. How well they keep slaves, she thought.

“Put your hands at your sides, slave girl,” said a voice. “Keep your eyes straight ahead, stand gracefully.”

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen. The voice seemed not unfamiliar. It seemed she must have heard it somewhere, and recently.

She felt the coil of a whip beneath her chin, lifting it. It was then removed. She, of course, kept her head raised.

“I thought you would look well in coffle,” said the voice.

“Thank you, Master,” whispered Ellen. She dared not turn her head.

“You are perhaps a bit young, and a bit slender,” said he, “but you are nonetheless exquisitely formed. I have no doubt you will bring a good price. Figures such as yours sell well. I think you are intelligent, for a slave. You have a beautiful face, exquisitely sensitive and feminine, though smudged now, and excellent hair, long and flowing, though desperately now it needs washing, yes, excellent hair, long, fine, flowing, soft hair.” As he said this he was examining her hair. “You have a good throat,” he said, appraisingly, “good shoulders, stand straighter, yes, lovely breasts, a narrow waist, a nice belly, wide hips, a sweet love cradle, nice flanks, a pretty ass. I wonder —”

“Oh!” cried Ellen.

“Yes,” he said, satisfied, “you should bring a good price.”

The sun was hot.

“Perhaps I shall bid on you myself,” he said.

Ellen was confused, and miserable. She had been brought into the camp last night.

“Your former masters were fools,” said the voice. “They sought to outwit Cos. But the eyes and ears of Cos are everywhere.”

“Yes, Master,” whispered Ellen.

“Perhaps you are curious to know the fate of your companions?” he said.

“Yes, Master!” said Ellen, quickly.

“Curiosity is not becoming in a slave girl,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she said, sobbing.

“Lower your head,” he said.

She stood then in the dust and heat, her head bowed.

He was rather near her, and rather before her.

There was a pounding of claws on the earth and a saddle tharlarion, with a hurried, leaping gait, hurtled by.

She could hear, somewhere behind her, the grunting of a ponderous draft tharlarion, presumably being harnessed, or backed into its traces. To her left, yards away, tent pegs jerked from the earth, poles lifted and lowered, colorful, striped canvas seemed to collapse in upon itself, to be gathered and rolled, and tied. She heard a rattle of pans somewhere behind her.

The sun was hot upon her.

She hoped she would not faint in the heat.

“You may look upon me, slave girl,” said the voice.

Ellen lifted her head. He who stood near her she had seen before, in the loft. He was the Cosian subcaptain who had demanded documentation of Portus Canio, the subcaptain whose men had searched the loft, he who had confiscated her in the name of Cos, wiring the tag to her collar.

“Do you recognize me, slave girl?” he asked.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

It was he who had speculated that she would look well, chained by the neck, being marched in a slave coffle.

He then turned away.

What was the fate of Portus Canio, Fel Doron and Tersius Major, she wondered.

Were they safe?

Men were cursing somewhere.

One she took to be the camp marshal passed her. He carried a list. She had seen him approaching, moving along the lines, stopping to confer with officers and drovers. It is the function of the camp marshal to choose sites, lay out the camps, and, when ready to move, to order the components in the march, arranging wagons, cavalry, stock, guards, scouts, and such. His arrangements, of course, may be overruled, or revised, by the camp commander, the highest officer with the march.

Several female slaves, indeed, a very large number, Ellen amongst them, had been arranged and “necklaced.” Not all the female slaves in the camp were in the coffle, of course. Those not in the coffle were presumably camp slaves, associated with the camp, properties of the Cosian military, or perhaps, in some cases, of officers. The presence of such women in the camp is a great convenience to the soldiers, as one might imagine, for they are useful in various ways, performing a variety of tasks, such as cooking, cleaning, laundering, and sewing, and, naturally, more delicate, subtle, pleasurable slave tasks, such as “serving wine,” and such. These slaves were tunicked much as common slaves, briefly, and in a variety of colors, though, at the left hip, low, near the hem of the tunic, on the side, rather in the back, there was a small, vertical, rectangular, gray patch, which color is often used for the tunics of state slaves. They looked upon the slaves in the coffle with contempt. As far as Ellen knew all slaves not commonly associated with the march, except some high slaves, the latter in barred slave wagons, were in the coffle. Ellen had no clear idea how many women were in the coffle. Usually about ten slaves are on a single, given chain, but chains are linked together, by padlocks and posterior rings, and such. Ellen estimated that there were between two hundred and fifty and three hundred women in her coffle. She knew that coffles of over a thousand women were not unknown. Ellen was rather toward the head of the coffle, perhaps some twenty or thirty women from its beginning. Curious, she determined that the coffle was not arranged in order of height, as are many smaller coffles. In a marching coffle she knew that the most beautiful were often put at the beginning, and the least attractive put at the end. Sometimes girls strove for a better coffle position, passionately trying to improve their attractiveness. In a sales coffle two policies tend to predominate: sometimes the most beautiful are saved for the end, which has led to the saying “rich enough to buy from the end of the chain,” or, more often, the girls are mixed on the chain with various sales strategies in mind, for example, mixing skin colors, facial types and such for aesthetic purposes, putting a moderately attractive girl between two less attractive girls to improve, by contrast, the chance of marketing the moderately attractive girl, and so on. Sometimes the positions are determined randomly, by lot. Buyers tend to approve of this arrangement, for one can then suppose that one has had the best buy, regardless of the girl’s position on the chain. To be sure, what all these approaches seem to overlook, though it is probably understood well enough by all, is that much which is very personal, even “chemical,” so to speak, is involved in these matters. A slave who is nothing to one man may be exactly the slave that another man must have at any price, and a stunning beauty, perhaps a flower from a defeated Ubar’s pleasure garden, perhaps even his preferred slave, these women vended in a war camp, might not appeal to a given common soldier, and such.

Ellen wondered if the coffle had been ordered in terms of beauty, at least as some men saw these things. If so, she was surely prized. This both flattered her, and frightened her. But then, again, the coffle might have been arranged in no particular order, or in an order in which beauty, or estimates of beauty, were irrelevant, an order of acquisition, or an order based on the night’s chaining, or such.

Too, she was certainly not in one of the barred slave wagons. She was a far cry from a high slave. She was only a youngish barbarian. Yet she was rather near the beginning of the coffle.

I am miserable. I am hot. I can scarcely breathe for the dust, thought Ellen. She looked toward the sun with closed eyes, and the insides of her eyelids were a warm, radiant red. She put her head down, and it seemed as though there was blackness about the edges of her vision. I must not faint, she thought. They would beat me. I must struggle to remain conscious. Why will they not let us sit down, or lie down? They have commanded us to rise. I fear the whip. They have made us rise. Soon I fear we must march. I will try to march well. I do not want to be struck with the whip.

Four soldiers on tharlarion thundered by. Dirt and gravel flew up from the animals’ passage, pelting, stinging the startled, chained girls, who shrank back, whimpering, and a rising, thick, floating cloud of dust, bright in the hot sun, lingered and swelled behind, enveloping the line. Ellen and the others, pelted, stinging, choking, half-blinded, turned their heads away from it, covering their eyes.

Then the dust settled, and Ellen felt it on her face, on her eye lashes, her breasts and body. Her hair, she knew, would be filthy with it.

She could feel the dust on her lips, as though in cracks there. She ran her tongue over it, and her tongue felt dirty. Her mouth felt dry, and dirty. Her head ached, from the glare of the sun. Her eyes smarted, from the brightness, and glare. Putting down her head, she tried to wipe her eyes, to free them, and her eyelids, of the dirt and dust, and powdered grit, which clung about them, and was lodged within them. The material was scratchy. Sweat, too, ran into her eyes. Her eyes smarted and stung. It was hard to see.

They have had us stand, she thought. I hope they do not whip us. Surely we must soon move.

And so she stood there, her feet in the hot, thick dust, chained with the others. She felt sick. She was miserable. I must not faint, she thought. Heat seemed to envelop her. It was like invisible fire. The sun boiled. She put her hands on the chain before her neck, running from her anterior collar ring to the posterior collar ring of the slave before her. The chain felt hot to her small fingers. The collar, of iron, some half of an inch in thickness, was close about her throat. It, too, felt hot. The light collar of Portus, the common collar, typical of Gorean slave collars, had been removed last night, and the tag that had been wired to it. The only collar she now wore was that which fastened her in the coffle. On her thigh, of course, was her brand. Even without the master’s collar, the brand would clearly mark her slave. The collar marks the girl as slave and commonly identifies the master. Too, it is generally visible. The brand marks her as slave, but is a generic emblem of bondage independent of a particular master. It would normally be covered by a slave tunic. She heard shouts along the line. Are they going to move us now, she asked herself. She heard an approaching tharlarion, from behind her, on her right. She closed her eyes, and tried not to breathe. It passed, rapidly. Once again the air burned with a choking, agitated smoke of grit and dust. Ellen then gasped for breath, and coughed, and wiped her face. There was the sound of the blow of a whip from somewhere behind her, and the cry of a girl in pain. A bit later she was aware of a man near her. She kept her eyes ahead. She straightened her body.

Then he had gone forward. He carried a whip.

She was naked, of course, as were the others.

She recalled that the officer of Cos, in the loft, had speculated that she would look well, a chain on her neck, marched in a coffle.

And now she stood here, somewhere, days from Ar, passive, obedient, as she and the others must be, awaiting the order to march.

She put her head down, under the merciless sun, in the dust and heat.

There was a chain on her neck.

She was coffled.

****

It will be recalled that Portus and his party left Ar under the cover of darkness. When morning came, the first day, they had landed, taken shelter in a grove of ka-la-na, and made their first camp. Clearly this was to be a concealed camp, and Portus had forbidden the lighting of fires. When the tarns in the progress of Tersius Major had come to the ground, Fel Doron, already landed, came to the last of the seven baskets, and lifted Ellen from the basket. She could have climbed from, or scrambled from, the basket, of course, but she had not been given permission to leave it. Too, slave girls are expected to be aware of what men want of them, expect of them, and demand of them, of their beauty, their image, and its suitable movements and demeanors. They are not expected to act like inert, unawakened, sexless tomboys. That is the last thing they are. And it is difficult to leave such a basket in a tunic without presenting yourself as a spread slave. The baskets in which free women travel have gates, through which they may proceed with suitable modesty, with due elegance. Ellen’s basket was a cargo basket, and a deep one. When she had been placed on the grass before Fel Doron, she knelt before him, put her head down, and kissed his feet, an act of deference appropriate for a slave. She was then set about small tasks in the camp. She was forbidden to leave the ka-la-na thicket. During the day the men, concealed among the trees, took turns watching the skies. She herself, when her chores were done, gathering grass for bedding, spreading blankets, preparing food and serving it to the men, and such, was chained by an ankle to a tree. Portus, within the thicket, with a crossbow, stalked and slew a small tabuk. Its meat was fed to the tarns. Ellen, awakening in the afternoon, about the twelfth Ahn, noted that Tersius Major was not in his place. It was his turn on watch. At nightfall the tarn train again took to the skies, Ellen once more in her conveyance. Ellen was much more content, and pleased, with her journey the second night, as many of her fears had been dispelled. They were, it seemed, now flying over a district in which there were many lakes. The moons were reflected in the waters. It took several Ehn to traverse some of these waters. Once, the second night, Ellen was frightened, but fascinated, because an Ahn or so after departure there was a great shadow in the sky near her, and, looking up, she saw the gigantic figure of a wild tarn wheeling away; it had approached silently. Ellen looked down at the countryside, interspersed as it was with waterways, pools, ponds and lakes. Before dawn the tarn train once more landed, this time amongst a cluster of small hills, covered with needle trees, evergreen trees, and took its shelter in a narrow ravine. This time, when her chores were done, Ellen, to her chagrin, was put in a belly chain with attached bracelets. In this device, if the slave’s hands are braceleted before her, the free ends of the device are closed and locked behind her, at the small of her back. If the slave’s hands are braceleted behind her, the free ends of the device are closed and locked before her, at her waist. She was back-braceleted. She was also gagged. That day, too, as might be expected, her left ankle bore as before its encircling metal impediment, by means of which, with its attached chain, she was secured to a small tree.

Ellen tried to stay awake, to listen to the men. Given the narrowness of the sheltering ravine, and its various physical limitations, boulders and such, they were only a few yard away. But, even so, they spoke softly, and she could not hear what they said. Their demeanor seemed earnest, their tones urgent. She did make out the word ‘rendezvous’, from which word she gathered that Portus, and perhaps unknown allies, would soon meet, to prosecute some plan or another. What part she might play in their plan, or plans, she had not been informed. She recalled the saying that curiosity was not becoming in a slave girl, a saying which had always seemed ironic to her, because, to the best of her knowledge, amongst such eager, bright, lively creatures, an avid curiosity was endemic. If you were a chained slave, often deliberately kept in ignorance, would you not be zealous to be apprised of the least tidbit of news, for example, that you were to be transported, sold or mated?

Why have they gagged me, wondered Ellen. Perhaps they are now in an area which they regard as sensitive, an area in which they would not care to risk the bleating of a verr, the cry of a slave.

She shuddered.

She had great difficulty in sleeping for a time, but, late in the afternoon, in the warmth, the sunlight descending gently, lazily, amongst the trees, she fell asleep. She awakened once, hearing Portus inquire of Tersius Major where he had been, and, drowsily, heard his reply, that he had gone for water. She then slept again until she felt someone turning her to her back and undoing the belly chain. It was Portus. She tried to squirm a little, to bring her tunic down from her waist, to which location it had crept in her sleep. Then she lay still, looking up at her master, over the gag. He smiled at her, in the half darkness, and put his hand gently on her. She whimpered once, and then whimpered once, again. She lifted her body to him, begging. “No, little slave girl,” he said, gently, and turned her to her stomach, freeing her hands of the bracelets. He then removed her gag. She knelt before him, taking care that her knees were piteously, beggingly, spread. “No,” he said, gently. “Help the others to pack.” She then rose, reluctantly, and went to assist the others. In her bondage, of course, slave fires had been lit in her belly. She was no longer the creature she had been on Earth. She now needed sex, and desperately, and at frequent, recurrent intervals, rather as she needed food and drink. Men had done this to her, liberating her natural sexual needs, which must then blossom, inflicting upon her their enflaming, inexorable demands. And, of course, as she was dependent on the master for her food and drink, so, too, she was dependent upon him for the satisfaction, as he might please, if he might please, of her sexual needs, the profound sexual needs of a slave.

Then, again, they were aflight, again over a district muchly watered.

She tried to despise herself for her weakness, for her behavior before Portus Canio. How terrible you are, she castigated herself. But she realized that she now was, that she had now become, despite whatever she might wish, despite what she might desire, or consider proper, a needful slave. She understood then how some of the girls in her training could moan and scratch at their kennels, and hold out their hands through the bars to a passing guard, for a mere touch. She understood then how a chained slave could scream her needs to the moons of Gor. She recalled the naked slave she had seen on the roof in Ar. Oh, she thought softly to herself, I think she is indeed well mastered.

She gritted her teeth, and clutched the wicker of the basket, holding to it in desperation.

Remember, she said to herself, you must be dignified. You must be above sex. It is for the low, and the vulgar, the unenlightened, those whose thinking has not yet been corrected. If any concession had to be made to such vulgar insistencies, it must be as limited, and despised, as possible. Sex must be kept in its place, which was a small place. It was to be regarded as, at best, only a small and unimportant part of life. Then she laughed, bitterly. What a fool I was, she thought. What a blind, naive, stupid fool!

Remember, you are a college professor, she thought. You have a Ph.D.! Again she laughed, in the whistling wind, speeding through the night. That is all behind me now, she thought. Now I am only a collared slut, an aroused, needful, begging slave! Masters, have mercy on me! I will try to please you, Masters! Take pity on a needful slave!

Then, suddenly, her attention was directed ahead. It seemed that there was, incredibly, a light in the third basket, that of Tersius Major, a sheltered lantern, swinging. Then it was gone. She looked about and saw, or thought she saw, a tiny point of light in the distance, some hundreds of feet above the ground, perhaps hundreds of yards away, to the right. Then it, too, was gone. Perhaps it was a star, she thought, now obscured by clouds. She kept her eyes on that part of the sky. It was dark, but she was not sure there were clouds there. Certainly there had been no doubt about the lantern in the third basket. Tersius Major must have been signaling Portus Canio and Fel Doron, she supposed. But they might not see, as they were ahead. Perhaps he did not wish to call out. She herself had been gagged at their last camp. How then could he signal them? Then, to her amazement, she sensed that something was very different in the tarn train, and realized, with a start, that the line connecting the tarn and basket of Tersius Major and the following tarns and baskets was free, perhaps cut. It hung below the fourth tarn. The fourth tarn, and the others, behind it, then began to veer off to one side. Tersius Major, on his tarn, was now moving rapidly to the right. The two lead tarns and baskets, those of Portus Canio and Fel Doron, continued on their way, apparently unaware that Tersius Major had left the train, and that his trailing tarns had been, in effect, loosed.

What is going on, cried Ellen to herself, clutching the sides of the basket.

The tarn and basket of Tersius Major was streaming to the right. The train in which her basket formed a part departed, too, from the line of flight, also bending to the right, but then, in a few Ihn, it turned back and began to circle about. The tarns and baskets of Portus Canio and Fel Doron continued on their way.

Why, Ellen wondered, had Tersius Major broken the line. Was this an elected point? Was this prearranged with Portus Canio and Fel Doron? They seemed to be continuing directly on. There seemed to have been signals exchanged, or at least a signal given by Tersius Major. Had that signal been intended for Portus Canio and Fel Doron, or for others? Others, surely. Indeed, perhaps Portus Canio and Fel Doron were aware of the signal, it forming a part of their plans. This must then be the rendezvous? It seemed there had been a responding signal, far off. Or one of perhaps several points of rendezvous? Would Fel Doron be the next to leave the train? But why would Tersius Major have freed the tarns and baskets in his winged retinue? That seemed to make no sense. Were they loosed to be retrieved by allies?

As these thoughts raced through Ellen’s head she noted, approaching from her present left, what would have been the right before her tarns had begun, leaderless, to veer about, and circle, a storm of wings, perhaps as many as thirty tarns. She knew these were not wild tarns, because of the orderly approach, the measured, three-dimensional spacing of the birds. She caught, in less than an Ehn, a glimpse of saddles and shields, of lances, of helmets. “Tarnsmen,” she gasped. These were no irregulars, or guerrillas, no motley assemblage of defiant, desperate, courageous patriots. These were surely no allies of Portus Canio and his tarnsters. These were professional soldiers, uniformed, organized, disciplined, well-armed.

Two tarnsmen of the flighted squad wheeled from their formation, and began to approach the loose, leaderless line of six tarns, which had been the fourth through the ninth tarns in the original train, the fourth through the seventh with baskets, Ellen in the last basket, that carried by the seventh tarn, and the eighth and ninth without baskets.

Ellen crouched down in the basket, and pulled the blanket about her, concealing herself as well as she could, crouching below the side, covered with the dark blanket, and peered out through the wicker.

One of the tarnsman, aflight, was within fifty feet of her. She saw the insignia on the shield, but made nothing of it. It was not the sign of Cos, familiar to her from Ar. Mercenaries, she thought. Not brigands, but mercenaries! But who could hire mercenaries, she asked herself. Cos, she thought, Cos!

There was no sign of Tersius Major.

Moving in the basket, facing forward, peering again through the wicker, she saw the first tarnsman who had approached the train swoop beneath it, beat his way forward, and then seize the long rope dangling better than a hundred feet from the harness of the first tarn, that which had been the fourth in the original train. He wound this rope about the pommel of his saddle and brought his bird to the lead. Slowly the train fell into line behind him. Turning about, Ellen saw the second tarnsman was now following the last tarn, and was some fifty to seventy yards behind it. The first tarnsman turned the train westward. In that direction would lie Thassa, the sea, and perhaps the port of Brundisium.

She crouched down in the basket, and grasped the metal tag wired to her collar. Do I belong to Cos, she asked herself. What will be done with me?

Is there an escape for me, she wondered, wildly.

No, she thought, wildly. There is no escape for me. I am a Gorean slave girl. I am collared. I am branded. I have only a tunic. Even my beauty might give me away, it seeming to be a beauty appropriately that of a slave, and little things, too, about how I move, things I am not even aware of. And there is nowhere to go, nowhere to run. This culture understands, and respects, slavery. They recognize it as natural and rationally grounded. Its validity is recognized, and accepted. It is not questioned. What would be questioned would be the right of one such as I to be free. That is what would be regarded as unnatural and absurd. Here on Gor slavery is an explicitly institutionalized, culturally sanctioned recognition of certain forms of biological differentiation, and constitutes an acceptance of, and an endorsement of, certain biological proprieties. The master has the right of command, and will exercise it; and the slave has the duty of unquestioned, absolute, instant obedience.

I love my collar, but should I not seek to return to my rightful Master? Might he not search for me?

And so Ellen resolved to attempt to elude her unwitting captors. She knew that she had no hope of escaping her bondage on this world; that was not possible. Too, she did not wish to do so, having come to understand that whatever might be the case with other women, she herself belonged in the collar; the collar was her fulfillment, her dream and meaning. She belonged at the feet of a master, serving, loving and obedient. This Gor had taught her, and the lesson had been well learned. On the other hand, she was not eager to fall into the hands of strangers, to whom she would be no more than a loose verr or strayed kaiila.

When they land, thought Ellen, I will try to slip away. Then it occurred to her that they might well land after dawn, in the full daylight, and in some camp, where she would be instantly discovered. She clutched the blanket about her, angrily, crouching in her tiny tunic in the swaying basket. What hope could there be for her? What hope could there be for any Gorean slave girl?

“Away!” she heard. “Away!

Quickly she peered through the wicker.

Following, some fifty yards or so to the back, and right, and some yards above, was a great shadow.

The following tarnsman had been he who had cried out.

There was no mistaking the nature of that shadow, the breadth of wingspan, the wicked beak, the crest. It was a tarn, a wild tarn.

It has been following us, thought Ellen. It is the same tarn I saw last night! It is not clear, of course, that her surmise was correct. But it surely seemed the same bird, or one muchly similar.

“Away!” cried the tarnsman, brandishing his lance.

Ellen saw the legs of the wild tarn suddenly appear, extended forward and down, talons opened.

“Go away! Be off!” cried the tarnsman.

The most common prey of the wild tarn is the small single-horned, usually yellow-pelted, gazellelike creature called the tabuk. On the other hand, it is ready to prey upon, and sample, a variety of game. Too, it is not above raiding domesticated, as well as wild, herds of tarsk, verr or hurt, that the bounding hurt, valued for its wool. It can also, of course, be dangerous to human beings.

It is hungry, thought Ellen. But it is not likely to attack its own kind, tarns. What then? Or perhaps it is territorial, and resents the intrusion of these new birds into its hunting area. If it is the same tarn I saw last night, thought Ellen, it is probably hungry. But surely it would not attack its own kind, not our tarns. What then?

The tarn suddenly uttered a weird screaming sound and swooped downward, its talons open, grasping, toward the following tarnsman who, turning in the saddle, angrily, thrust up at it with his lance, and withdrew the lance from the feathers dark with blood. The attacking bird wheeled away.

“Begone!” cried the tarnsman.

“It is coming again!” cried the leading tarnsman who had freed the rope from his pommel, swung about, and set an arrow to a small saddle bow, used for clearing the saddle, firing to either side.

Once again the train of tarns was unled, the lead line free, dangling, uncontrolled in the sky.

This time the tarn, fiercely, perhaps in rage, in pain, hurled itself downward on the following tarnsman. The lance pierced its body, appearing through its back. But the bird, the lance like a straw in its mighty bulk, struck the tarnsman and the other bird, grasping and biting. The tarnsman’s shield was ripped from his arm and went flying into the darkness below. The bird had its talons on the man but could not pull him free, because of the safety strap. He cried out in fury, trying to fend away the beak. The two birds wheeled, and spun in the air, falling, climbing, screaming, falling. The tarnsman’s bird, doubtless a war tarn, scenting blood and battle, almost on its back on the sky, ripped upward with its talons at its wild brother. The lead tarnsman loosed, as he could, arrow after arrow into the body of the attacking bird, and then, drawing his sword, for he carried no lance, tried to close with it, to strike it somehow, across the back of the neck, in that tumbling tangle of rage and hunger. The other tarns, strung together, but not controlled, struck about, erratically. Different birds beat their way, confused, frightened, in different directions, and were then jerked up short, and lines began to twist, and the birds to scream. Feathers drifted toward the ground. Ellen’s basket swung wildly on its ropes, and she clung to the wicker with all her strength. The lines of the train of tarns were then tangled, and the train began to falter, screaming, struggling, impeded, toward the ground. One bird’s wing was tangled in a loop of the line. Another scratched and tore at one of the baskets which was near it. Another tarn, wheeling about, struck Ellen’s basket and she was nearly thrown from it. One side of the basket was ripped open. The basket began to jerk in flight, and then it was held by only three ropes, as one of the anchoring ropes slipped loose, off the torn wicker. There was ground below, and then there was water, and then ground, seeming to swing about and turn, and then water, again. The tangle of tarns were then thrashing about in the water, wing strokes pounding about, raising great, dark, leaping sheets of water. The tarn then, to whose harness Ellen’s ruined basket was insecurely fastened, began to strike out, perhaps crazed with fear, for tarns abhor water, biting, at the line, at the other tarns, at the basket, perhaps in its fear, or madness, or to rid itself of perceived obstructions or impediments. Ellen cowered back, as pieces of the basket were torn away, flung out into the water, the wicked, bright eyes of the bird near her, not a yard away, the beak slashing at the wicker. When the bird turned away, to strike at another bird, Ellen, wildly, thrust the last rope free, and found herself in the water, the basket free of the harness, clinging to the remains of the basket, little more now than two sides and a flooring. The water was dark and cold. Ellen did not know how to swim. She clung to the basket, terrified. She could hardly breathe or see, for the darkness, the thrashing shapes, the splashing water.

****

“March!” came the command, a command accompanied by the crack of a whip, sudden and sharp. Ellen heard tiny cries of fear and dismay, from both before and behind her. She was then aware that she, herself, had so cried out, softly, inadvertently, involuntarily, unable to help herself. That sound, you see, the fierce, sudden crack of the whip, is not unknown to slave girls. We understand its meaning well.

The long coffle then began to move.

It was a large coffle, of perhaps some two hundred and fifty to three hundred girls, each stripped, each chained by the neck.

Ellen was toward the beginning of the chain, surely amongst the first twenty or thirty on the chain.

She did not know what had become of her party. She did not know where she was being marched.

The march was a large one, and contained a great deal more than the coffle. There was a long train of wagons, some drawn by bosk and others by tharlarion. There were some cage wagons, perhaps carrying high slaves or women of political importance. The slaves could be seen, stripped, behind the bars. Were they high slaves that must have been humiliating for them. But then high slaves are, when all is said and done, slaves, no more or less slave than the lowliest kettle-and-mat girl. On the other cage wagons, silken curtains were drawn, within the bars. To be sure, those within, perhaps robed free women, might put out their small hands, lightly, and feel the bars on the other side of the silk. They, too, were incarcerated, as much as a stripped slave. Sometimes captured free women are given only a light, single, sliplike garment to wear. This makes them uneasy. Many soldiers, infantry, and tharlarion cavalry, accompanied the march. There may have been as many as three companies with the march, two of infantry and one of tharlarion cavalry. Independently, there were many mounted guards with the march. It was from these, presumably, that scouts and outriders were drawn. On the other hand most of these guards, mounted, tended to flank the march, distancing themselves some yards apart, on each side. They and the girls were forbidden to communicate, save that commands might be issued, whips used, and such.

****

“It is a slave girl,” said a young male voice.

Ellen stirred, awakening, on her stomach, lying in the mud, half in the water, amongst the reeds, clinging still to the wreckage of her basket.

There were two of them, standing in the water, one on each side of her. She did not look up, but hooked her fingers tightly in the remnants of the wicker.

“Let us see her,” she heard.

Her fingers were then loosened from the wicker. It was then thrust away, back into the water. Her fingers dug into the mud of the shore, the water lapping softly about her. She then felt herself being turned about and put to her back.

“A pretty little vulo,” said one.

“Neck-ringed and all,” said the other, approvingly.

She lay on the mud then, on the sloping surface, descending to the water, her head down and back, toward the water. There were two of them, lads.

“Let us use her,” she heard.

She felt her tunic thrust up. “No,” she whimpered. She felt her ankles being grasped, and spread, widely. “No, Masters, please, no,” she said.

Last night, when Ellen had been in the water, unable to swim, fearing for her life amidst the maddened, frightened, thrashing tarns, she had clung desperately to the wicker. Free of the harness it was forced away from the birds by their very struggles, their movements creating rolling swells of water, swirling into the darkness. Too, Ellen, as she could, squirmed and paddled her float away from the turbulence. As it was dark she had no idea what might be the closest shore. She could crawl only half upon the wicker without forcing it beneath the water. After a few minutes one of the tarns, that which had been fourth in the original line, and had been the leader of the six tarns once the line had been loosed or cut, lifted itself, wings beating, a few feet from the water, only to be dragged back down by the line linking it to his fellows. But his action had begun an alignment, a pull in a particular direction. The tarn behind him tried to beat its way forward, too, and this urged the first to make another attempt. The third tarn, whose wing had been entangled in the line, turned by the motion of the second tarn had had the wing freed, the loop drawn forward and away, not without the loss of several feathers. Then, one by one, the six tarns, as though recalling the order of the train, began, following one another, screaming, to plunge and beat their way behind the first tarn. The first then lifted itself from the water, furiously beating its soaked wings, plunging down, striking the water, then sweeping up again, the wet feathers scarcely sustaining its flight. This progress was imitated by the others. Then, after a hundred yards, the train left the water, clearing it at first by only feet, the shreds of baskets dangling below two of them, splashing, dragging in the water, but then, bit by bit, climbing, they were aflight.

Ellen was then alone, in the darkness, in the cold water.

She began to move the wicker, as she could, in the direction the tarns had gone. That must be, she supposed, the nearest shore. The tarn is not an aquatic species, and resists being flown out of the sight of land.

Something brushed her leg, under the water, and Ellen screamed, and tried to scramble upon the wicker, but she only forced it under the water. Then she began to struggle to follow the tarns. In the distance she could see a sloping darkness, that seemed to be a hill, and she made toward that.

About dawn she reached the shore and lost consciousness amongst the reeds.

She felt her ankles held widely apart. “No, Masters, please, no,” she had said.

Her ankles were released, and she quickly moved back, away, literally into the water, drew her legs together, smoothed down her tunic, and half sat, half knelt, the palms of her hands partly supporting her body, frightened, regarding the two young men, little more than boys, who had found her.

Though she was not a runaway, she had the fear of a caught slave.

“She is pretty,” said one of the boys.

“She is filthy,” said the other.

“Let us take her back to the village and chain her with the village slaves,” said the first.

“I am already owned!” said Ellen, quickly. “I am not a runaway. My master is Portus Canio, of Ar. We were in flight. There was an accident.”

“We found you,” insisted the first lad.

“Thank you for finding me,” said Ellen. “I seek news of my master, and his party, that I may be returned to him.”

“Let us not take her back to the village,” said the first. “Let us keep her for ourselves.”

“Surely I am too old for you, youthful Masters,” said Ellen, quickly.

“You are not much older than we,” said one of the lads.

Ellen supposed that that was true, but two or three years, in a female, made quite a difference. These were young males, little more than youngsters, who could scarcely grow beards, whereas she, perhaps no more than two or three years older, as she now was, was prime block material.

“It would be hard to keep her just for ourselves, as our secret,” said the first lad. “We could keep her in the forest, chained to a tree, or in our hideout cave, but sooner or later someone would suspect, or find her. If we take her back to the village, they will take her away from us.”

“Then we must sell her,” said the second. “And keep the money for ourselves.”

“Please, Masters,” said Ellen. “Help me find my master. Return me to him. Doubtless he will reward you.”

“And where is your master?” asked the second.

“I do not know,” said Ellen.

“You are a runaway,” said the first.

“No!” cried Ellen.

“Be grateful if we do not hamstring you,” said the second.

Ellen regarded him with horror.

“You are a slave girl, are you not?” asked the first.

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen.

“Should you not be kneeling,” asked the first, “as you are before free men?”

Quickly Ellen knelt. She kept her knees closely together. She did not wish to be used by boys. Yet she knew that either of them could easily overcome her lesser, her slight, female’s strength. They would not know that she was not a tower slave.

But the older of the two lads splashed toward her and, with the back of his hand, lashed out and struck her across the mouth, causing her to half rise, stumble, and then fall back, some feet, to her side, in the deeper water.

“You are too pretty for that sort of slave,” he snarled. “I have been to the fairs. I have seen them dancing in the booths, I have seen them on their leashes. Do you think I do not know a slut slave when I see her?”

Quickly Ellen recovered her balance, turned, and knelt before them in the water, muchly where she had fallen, her knees widely spread.

The water there, say, some three or four yards from shore, was some eight to ten inches deep. It moved about her and between her thighs. It felt chilly and gritty. Under the water she felt the mud, slippery and cold, beneath her toes and knees. A breeze came over the water. It moved her hair just a little, she felt it on her arm, and it rustled beyond her, through the reeds.

She did not wish to be again struck.

Her cheek still stung.

Had they a switch or whip she did not doubt but what they would use it on her.

She was, after all, a slave.

She was miserable, and felt helpless.

She was sure she could not placate them, or appeal to them, or use her vulnerability and beauty to protect herself, as she might have with a fully grown male.

They were boys.

What did they know of men and the women in their collars?

The older lad motioned that she should come closer, and then cautioned her to approach no more closely.

The water now, where she knelt, was no more than two or three inches in depth.

She could now feel, in the mud, sand, and pebbles, beneath her knees.

She was perhaps four or five feet from shore.

“Pull up your tunic,” said the first lad, angrily. “On your back. Split your legs!”

“Please, no, Masters!” said Ellen.

She then went to her back in the muddy water. She felt it cold, in her hair. Her head was down, given the slope of the shore.

“She is filthy,” said the youngest of the lads.

“I like to see them spread like that,” said the older lad.

“Please, do not use me, Masters,” begged Ellen, supine, obedient, in the shallow water, it lapping about her. “I am not yours! You do not have my master’s permission! You do not own me!”

“No one will know,” said the second lad.

“The condition of my body will betray your use of me,” cried Ellen.

“You can always be drowned in the lake,” said the second lad.

“Then you will have no money for me!” cried Ellen.

The two lads looked at one another and grinned, and Ellen, the naive, gullible butt of their rude humor, their rustic joke, reddened.

“What a stupid slave you are,” said the second lad.

Ellen moaned. She, indeed, felt foolish and stupid. As though Gorean males, of whatever age, would waste so lovely and useful a property as a female slave! Better to have her a thousand times, and then, when one tired of her, give her to another.

One of the lads then, the older, wading toward her, touched her, and she drew back, quickly.

The slave girl cannot control her sensitivities.

She is helpless.

She belongs to men.

He touched her again, and she twisted suddenly about, and turned her head wildly to the side. She felt muddy water in her mouth.

“See?” said the older lad to the younger.

“I see,” said the younger lad.

“Keep your hands on your tunic,” said the older lad. And Ellen clutched the hems of the tunic tightly, the tunic up, about her waist.

He touched her again, and she cried out, softly, unwillingly, uncontrollably.

“See?” said the older lad to the younger.

“Yes,” said the younger again, interested.

“Oh!” cried Ellen.

“This is a good slave,” said the older lad.

“Yes,” said the younger.

“See,” said the older, “she is ready.”

“No!” cried Ellen.

“Good,” said the younger.

“Please do not use me, Masters!” Ellen begged.

The older of the two lads grinned.

“Sell me for coins!” said Ellen.

“Why should we not have coins and your use?” inquired the older lad.

“Please, no, Masters!” cried Ellen.

“Are you a virgin slave?” asked the younger.

“Think carefully before you respond,” said the older.

“No, Masters,” said Ellen. “I am not a virgin slave.”

“That can be told from the way you move, slave,” said the older lad. “No virgin slave moves like that, or not until later.”

The older lad now knelt beside her, in the shallow water. His right hand was then on her left leg, above the knee.

The younger lad, standing in the water, was near him.

“I think we will enjoy you, pretty slut,” said the older lad.

“Yes,” said the younger.

“Beware!” cried Ellen, suddenly. “I belong to Cos! I am a property of the empire of Cos!”

The two lads exchanged sudden glances, clearly of concern.

“Yes,” cried Ellen. “Yes! Yes! Beware, Masters! I belong to Cos!”

“Liar,” said the first lad.

“See my collar, the tag!” cried Ellen.

“You said you belonged to some fellow of Ar,” said the older lad.

“Ar is far away,” said the second.

“I did, but I have been confiscated. Beware, young Masters, I am now the property of Cos!”

“You can read,” said the younger to the older.

“A little,” said the older. He turned the collar tag and looked at it.

“What does it say?” asked the younger.

“Something —’in the name of Cos’,” said the older.

“‘Confiscated’,” said Ellen.

“Can you read?” asked the older lad.

“No,” admitted Ellen.

“How do you know it says that?” he asked.

“I heard it read,” said Ellen.

“We do not want the village burned,” said the younger of the two.

“Get a rope from the boat,” said the older lad. He then, angrily, his hand in her hair, drew the slave to her feet, and conducted her, bent over, her head at his right hip, in leading position, onto the shore. There he knelt her, in the sand, facing away from him. Then he said to her, “On your belly, slave girl, and cross your wrists behind you.”

The slave obeyed instantly, unquestioningly, as slaves must.

She heard the younger lad now splashing through the reeds. In a short time he returned and her hands were bound behind her back. The rope was long enough to serve as well as a leash, and, moments after she had been ordered to her feet, some yard or so of it, rising from her confined wrists, had been looped and knotted about her throat, its free end then, some five feet or so in length, serving as a leash. Ellen knew that sometimes even desiderated slaves, before a submission ceremony, were put on a simple camp rope and led about, that they would better understand their condition and status, that of a domestic animal, but in her case the rope was not symbolic in nature, but effected a simple utility, constituting a device for keeping and controlling a girl. Ellen, bound, was led on her leash, stumbling, wading, through the reeds. A bit later she was placed in a small, flat-bottomed boat, on her belly, under a tarpaulin. In the boat were two wide, shallow, wooden buckets, each half filled with wet, glistening leeches, taken from the water, often from the stems of water plants, such as rence.

Before being put on her belly in the boat, Ellen’s face, she on her knees, was almost thrust into these two buckets, one after the other, filled with twisting, inching, churning leeches, that she might see them. She shrank back, as she could, in terror.

These creatures are utilized in some manner by the caste of physicians, not for indiscriminate bleeding as once on Earth, but for certain allied chemical and decoagulant purposes. Such creatures may also be used, of course, for less benign purposes, for torture, the extraction of information, punishment and, in the extreme, executions. The “leech death” is not a pleasant one. These creatures are not to be confused with the leech plant, which supplements its photosynthetic activities with striking, snakelike, at passing objects. It has paired, curved, hollow, fanglike thorns, associated with a pulsating, podlike bladder. The leech plant can draw a considerable amount of blood in a short time. They tend to grow in thick patches. There is not a great deal of danger from such plants provided one can remove oneself from their vicinity. They are not poisonous. Sometimes one literally uproots the plant in one’s escape, so tenacious is the clasp of the thorns. It is different, of course, if one loses one’s footing amongst them, or is thrown, naked, bound, amongst them. They are normally cleared away from areas of human habitation, from the sides of roads and such.

Ellen was then put to her belly in the bottom of the boat, hands tied behind her, the rope on her neck, under the tarpaulin.

“You are not to utter a sound,” said the older lad, “not the least sound, or we will put you on your back, and put a stick between your teeth and tie it there, so that you cannot close your teeth, and then bind leeches in your mouth.”

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen, terrified.

“There is a Cosian retinue some ten pasangs to the west,” said the older lad, working the back oar. “Their foragers came to the village yesterday, from the west. We will intercept the retinue, or find its camp. With a lantern we can follow the tracks of the verr they took. We will hide her until dusk in the forest, in our cave. We will both return to the village. Toward dusk we will take a wagon, pick her up, and take her to the camp. We can be back before morning, and no one will know, and we will have coins.”

Ellen, under the tarpaulin, remained absolutely silent.

And things had proceeded, in large part, as the young man had speculated.

Once, out on the lake, they had apparently been hailed by another boat, doubtless from their village, which must be close. “Did you make a good catch?” called a voice, that of a man, from across the water.

“Yes,” called back the older lad. “We have made a good catch!”

Ellen, under the tarpaulin, remained absolutely silent.

The boat was rowed, or maneuvered, with its back oar, to a different point on the shore, and, when the area had been sufficiently reconnoitered by the two lads, she was lifted from the boat, and led into the trees. She was taken to a small cave, and was thrust within. Some light filtered in through the opening. The leash rope was then removed from her throat and taken down to her ankles, which were crossed, and bound. With another piece of rope she was trussed further, several loops put about her legs, above the knees, some loops about her belly, holding her bound hands more closely behind her, and various loops about her arms and upper body. She was well aware, as she had been as long ago as her training, that her body, that of a female, lent itself beautifully to the trussings of captors, because of the flare of her hips, the narrowness of her waist, and the swelling delights of her bosom, ropes, for example, going nicely, tightly, above her bosom and under her armpits, and beneath her bosom and about her waist. It seemed a body that might have been designed for bonds. She wondered, idly, if such bodies might have been selected for, so different from those of most primate females, in dozens of millennia of prehuman, and, later, Paleolithic tribal warfare, in which females, as well as hunting grounds, would be the spoils of war. In such small things, and others far more profound, but connected with ownership, capture, work, servitude, love and breeding, she thought, were women evolved, evolved to serve and please men. It is not so strange then, she thought, that women desire masters, that they long to love and serve, to give themselves to the master, that in their hearts they want and seek masters. Those who did not were perhaps discarded, or left unmated. On the other hand, those females who knelt, even with a braided leather rope on their neck, and found their fulfillment in submission, servitude and love, in belonging to the stronger, to victors, to masters, would be those treasured, those sought, those bought and sold, those mated, those replicating their genes. I have been bred to be as I am, she thought, from the prairies, the forests, the caves, I and my sisters.

The boys then left Ellen sitting up, trussed in the cave. Brush was drawn across the entrance, concealing the opening. There was, however, some light in the cave, filtering through the brush at the entrance. The ropes were scratchy, but she would not move much. She squirmed, just a little, testing them. They were tight and well done. Gorean boys, she knew, especially boys in the villages, were taught to tie slaves. It was something they were supposed to know. They would use the village slaves for practice, the bonds inspected, and approved, or revised, by their fathers, or other older males. Though she was a young woman and they were little more than boys, they had tied her well. She knew herself helpless. They are males, she thought, males, by nature our rightful masters.

As she sat, or lay, in the cave, trussed, awaiting as she must the return of her young captors, she was restless, uneasy, uncomfortable, needful. The touches of the older of the two young men had been deft. She whimpered, angrily. She was furious with her slave needs, but, too, was desperate to placate them, to obtain the ecstatic relief to be obtained from their alleviation. Bonds, too, she knew, increased female arousal. Their function, apart from their obvious practical aspects, such as security and control, was symbolic and psychological, having to do with their relationship to the dominance/submission ratios of organic life. Too, appropriate binding and chaining, she knew, increased both the frequency of, and the intensity of, female orgasms. As a slave girl she was in no doubt about this. Surely she had bucked, and wept, and squirmed, and begged, often enough in bonds. And so, in time, she rolled, and thrashed, and moaned, on the dusty floor of the cave, until, red-eyed, weary, she lay there quietly, save for an occasional small, pathetic, protestive movement, one seeming to arise from somewhere deep within her, from somewhere within her deprived, needful, tortured, begging slave belly. “You are worthless,” she said to herself. “You have a slave belly.” “Of course, you have a slave belly,” she said in response to herself, angrily. “What do you expect, little fool? You are a slave!”

It grew darker and darker in the cave.

Toward nightfall the two boys returned. “Masters!” said Ellen, piteously. Despite their youth, and her reluctance, and her pride, she was prepared to beg for their touch. “Be silent, slave girl,” said the older lad. “Remember the leeches.” “Yes, Master,” whispered Ellen. “You are going to be put in a sack,” said the older lad. She lifted her belly a little to them, and whimpered. “Bring the sack,” said the older lad to the younger. Ellen lifted herself again, in her bonds, and whimpered. “Do you think we wish to risk the village?” asked the older lad. “There are village slaves, many prettier than you, whom we can use.” Ellen, in her slave’s vanity, wondered if that could be true, not that there might not be slaves in the village, available to the lads, but that they might be prettier than she. Perhaps, she thought. She wondered if any of her sisters of Earth, brought as she to Gor to serve masters, served in villages, as lovely domestic beasts of peasants.

She thought of the aristocratic, clever, beautiful, formerly rich woman “Evelyn,” whom she had served at the supper of Mirus. Doubtless she was now in a collar, now, too, no more than a branded chattel. Ellen wondered if she would be in a peasant village. She did not think so. She thought, rather, that she would be surely kept, at least for a time, by “Jeffrey,” he whom she had also served at that supper. She could imagine her at his feet, at the foot of his couch on the love furs, attached to the slave ring there, naked, cringing, not knowing if she was to be whipped or caressed, as a slave, taking the whip cast before her in her small hands and, looking up, trying to read the mood of her master, fearfully, tenderly, hopefully licking and kissing it.

Ellen was then, bound as she was, eased, feet first, into a long, burlaplike sa-tarna sack, which was tied shut over her head. She could see to some extent through the loosely woven cloth. She was then lifted up and carried from the cave, and, some yards later, placed in the back of a wagon and covered with straw. Shortly thereafter, with a creak of wheels, the wagon moved, being drawn, judging from the sounds, by a small, draft tharlarion. Through the sack and the straw, she could detect the light of a lantern. Occasionally the wagon stopped and one of the lads would climb down from the wagon box. “This way,” she would hear. Then the lad would either lead the way, it seemed, with the lantern, or, in a bit, the wagon already again in motion, resume his position on the box.

****

Toward noon, the coffle was halted, with the general halt of the march. Thankfully Ellen, and her sisters in bondage, knelt. They must kneel, knees spread, turned to the right, hands on their thighs, heads down.

Ellen had feared she could not go another step. Her feet were sore. Her body ached. She was hot. She was covered with dust.

She envied the slaves in the slave wagons.

As Ellen knelt, turned to the right, the chains from her collar extended to the left and right, rather than before and behind. This is a common feeding and watering position for a coffle.

“Lift your head,” she heard, a female voice. “Open your mouth, keep your hands on your thighs.”

Ellen, looking up, found herself before one of the Cosian camp slaves, this one a ravishing blonde, in a brief yellow tunic, with its small vertical, rectangular gray patch, in the vicinity of the left hip, that discreet emblem indicative of state ownership. Most state slaves in the cities, Ellen had heard, wore gray tunics. This made it easy, at a glance, to distinguish between state slaves and privately owned slaves. This distinction might occasionally prove to be of more than simply proprietary or identificatory relevance, for example, if one wished, in short order, to commandeer state slaves, to round them up and transport them, exchange them for goods or prisoners, and so on. Accordingly, for various reasons, a uniform color, or such, for state slaves, would doubtless be institutionally judicious. In any event, it seems to be the common practice. The color gray was probably chosen because it seems unpretentious, conservative, subdued, and sober, a color thus fitting for a girl who is a mere slave of the state, one lacking a private master whose collar she might wear and at whose slave ring she might kneel, and will fit in nicely enough with almost any coloration of eyes, hair, and skin color. Another theory as to the usual choice of gray for state slaves is that it is a sop cast to the sensibilities of free women, who, resenting the usual effects of female slaves on free men, wished the state to limit or reduce the attractiveness of its slaves. On the other hand, this stratagem, if stratagem it is, is almost universally acknowledged as being inefficacious. A beautiful woman in a slave tunic, whatever its color, is a beautiful woman in a slave tunic. The state slaves with the march wore, as noted, a variety of tunics, and their status was marked out simply by the small, rectangular gray patches. Ellen doubted that there were many free women with the march, who might object to this latitude accorded the state’s collar girls, saving perhaps those who might be behind the drawn curtains in the cage wagons.

Ellen did not care to be kneeling before a woman, though, of course, often enough, she would kneel before a free woman. But this was a slave. To be sure, she was doubtless a higher slave than Ellen. She was not, for example, in a coffle. But she did not even have a talmit, the cloth headband which occasionally serves as a symbol of rank or authority amongst slaves, sometimes in pleasure gardens, usually in camps or rural areas. A cloth strap ran over the blonde’s right shoulder, to which was attached, near the left hip, but rather before her, a cloth sack, which apparently contained some form of sizable biscuits. One of these objects was thrust in Ellen’s mouth. It was large, hard and dry. It filled her mouth. “Head down, chew,” she was told. The blonde then moved to the next slave, she on Ellen’s right. “Lift your head. Open your mouth. Keep your hands on your thighs,” she heard. “Head down, chew.” Ellen, head down, not permitted to use her hands, dealt with the object as well she could, it filling her mouth, her mouth dry. She tried to tear it with her teeth. She must keep her hands on her thighs. She must not drop it. She must not lose it. She tried to swallow some of it. She began to choke. Then, her mouth still filled, she gasped and caught her breath. She engorged more of the substance, and then more of it. Some girls behind the first slave, she with the biscuits, came a second slave, with a bucket and dipper. Ellen, desperately, half choking, tried to chew and force down the last of the biscuit. It would not do to miss the water. “Lift your head, open your mouth, keep your hands on your thighs,” she heard. She looked up. The slave with the bucket and dipper had a yellow tunic, as well, with its gray patch near the hem, on the left, but she was a sleek brunet. Ellen had little doubt but what the camp slaves had been chosen for a diversity of properties, many of which had little to do with those of a simple work slave. Indeed, the girl with the bucket and dipper was a slight girl, and it would be difficult for her to manage the heavy bucket, especially when it was full, and in the heat. She seemed, rather, the sort of woman who might, in bells and diaphanous pleasure silk, serve wine in a captain’s tent. A few feet behind her was a guard, with a whip. Ellen felt the metal rim of the dipper put to her lips and she gratefully drank. Too quickly was the dipper withdrawn. “Please, Mistress, more!” begged Ellen. “You have drunk to the mark,” said the slave. “What is going on here?” asked the fellow with the whip, moving toward them. “She asked for more,” explained the girl with the bucket and dipper. “Proceed,” said the guard to the slave, and she moved to the next girl, she on Ellen’s right. He shook out the coils of his whip. “Please, no, Master!” begged Ellen. Then she groveled in the dust, weeping, curling up, drawing up her knees, trying to cover her head and face, as she was whipped. Then he continued on his way, following the slave with the water. Ellen lay in the dust, on the chain, sobbing. “Kneel,” she heard a voice say, a female voice. Ellen looked up, from her side, and saw a slave, a long-haired blonde, in a brief beige tunic, with the gray patch. She had long legs. Too, she had a talmit. Too, she carried a switch. Ellen cried out, wincing, struck twice with the switch, and scrambled up to her knees. “Split those knees, pleasure slave,” she was told. “Yes, Mistress,” said Ellen. When the talmited slave had gone Ellen lifted her head and looked after her. She might have a talmit and a switch, thought Ellen, but she, too, I can tell, is a pleasure slave. Are we not all pleasure slaves? “You may be a terror to us, and strict with us, and an authority amongst us, you with your switch, we who are coffled slave meat,” thought Ellen, “but in a man’s tent, in the shadow of his whip, you, too, female, will kneel, tremble, whimper and beg to serve!”

Last night Ellen had been brought to the camp. The two lads from the lake, stopped by sentries, had made known their business. In the light of the lantern the straw had been parted and the sack undone, and thrust down, at first just enough to view the tag on Ellen’s collar, but then, as the interest of the sentries was apparently aroused, to her waist. “Pretty,” said the first sentry. “Yes,” said the second. “And she is goods of Cos, all right,” said the first sentry. “How do you know?” asked the second. Ellen speculated that they might be considering taking her from the boys. She did not doubt but what that could be done. “It is clear, there,” said the first sentry, indicating the metal tag wired to Ellen’s collar, that bearing the confiscation notice. “Oh,” said the second. The first, at least, it seemed, could read. To be sure, he had not seemed too pleased with what he had read. Among sentries it is common to have at least one on duty, or an officer of the guard in the vicinity, who can read, someone who can interpret letters, passes, and such, if need be. Most sentries, of course, are looking for a password, or watchword. These are changed frequently, at least once daily. “Take her forward,” said the first sentry, “and ask for the tent of the slave marshal.” “We want coins for her,” said the older of the two lads, boldly. “See the slave marshal,” said the sentry. The sack was then again drawn up, over Ellen’s head, and tied shut.

A bit later Ellen felt herself lifted from the wagon and the straw, and placed on the ground, on her stomach. Through the burlap, lifting her head with difficulty, she could see the light of two torches, apparently one elevated on each side of the entrance to a large tent. She was rather close to the torch stand on the right, as one would face the tent. Thus the sack lay in the full light of that torch. The wagon was to one side, the tharlarion shuffling about. She lay there, in the burlaplike sack, bound, awaiting the pleasure of men. Somewhat later then she heard the boys return, apparently with another individual. “Let us see her,” she heard. The sack was undone, and she was drawn from it. “Untie her,” she heard. “Stand,” she was told. The older of the two boys steadied her for, for a moment, it was hard for her to stand. “She is filthy,” she heard. A hand, that of he whom she took to be the slave marshal, the officer in charge of slaves in the camp, a large, bearded man, lifted and held, briefly, the tag on the collar. “See, she is the property of Cos,” said the older boy. She then felt the tag released. It dropped back, against her body. “We caught her by the lake,” said the younger lad.

“I am not a runaway,” whispered Ellen, frightened. She could barely speak before this man, so large and fierce he seemed. She did not wish to be beaten, or hamstrung, or fed to sleen. “We were aflight. There was an accident.”

“And doubtless you were being hurried to our camp,” said the man.

Ellen was silent.

She became aware then that in the vicinity of the tent, where she could see behind it, and to its sides, there were many whitenesses in the darkness, whitenesses receding, seeming to become smaller, into the darkness. She could make out, dimly, to the left, in the half light, the figure of a woman, risen to all fours, a chain on her neck, looking at them. She was naked. There must have been, she estimated, behind the tent and about it, some acres of slaves, chains of them, the chains doubtless secured in some fashion, perhaps fastened to heavy stakes driven deeply into the ground.

Ellen drew back in fear, as she saw a hook knife flash in the man’s hand.

“Steady,” said the man’s voice, soothingly. “We are just going to see what you’ve got.”

The hook knife half cut, half tore, through the tunic, soiled, stiff with dirt, and the tunic, parted, fell to the ground.

“We want coins for her,” said the older lad. “We did not keep her. We brought her back.”

“You would have considered keeping the property of Cos?” asked the man.

“Not we, of course,” said the older, hastily. “But some might have.”

“Some less grateful to their beloved benefactors, some less loyal to the empire?” suggested the man.

“Yes,” said the older boy.

“That would be theft,” said the man.

“We brought her back,” pointed out the older lad.

“She is a young, cheap slave, and, if I am not mistaken, a barbarian,” said the man. “But be assured, in any event, that you have the gratitude of the empire of Cos.”

“And everyone knows the generosity of Cos,” said the older lad.

“You want a reward?” asked the man. “For merely doing your duty?”

The lads were silent.

The visage of the slave marshal, for that is who it was, was severe.

“Serving Cos is reward enough,” said the older lad.

“Wait a moment, lads,” said the man. “There may be others, less honest, less noble, less loyal than yourselves to the empire, and we would not wish them to be dissuaded from returning properties such as this to their rightful owners.”

“Master?” said the older lad, hopefully.

“Girl,” said the man.

“Master?” said Ellen, frightened.

“Have you had your slave wine?” he asked.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“Go about the tent, on the left,” he said. “There you will find a trestle. Bend over it, and wait.”

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen, miserably.

“Have you made use of the slave?” asked the man of the boys, severely.

“No, Master,” said the older.

“No, Master!” said the younger, quickly.

“She is the property of Cos,” the older one reminded the man.

“I will find some coins for you, in the tent,” said the slave marshal. “In the meantime, accept the gratitude of Cos, and enjoy the hospitality of Cos.”

“Long live Cos!” said the older lad.

“Long live Cos!” said the younger.

“You will find thongs at the trestle,” said the slave marshal. “Tie her left wrist to her left ankle, the right wrist to the right ankle.”

Later the slave marshal came himself to stand beside the trestle. Ellen was weeping, bent over, wrists tied to ankles, helpless, embarrassed, well secured.

“Portus Canio, of Ar, was your master,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she said. It is not easy, as you may understand, to conduct a conversation, particularly one in which one retains any dignity, when one is fastened thusly. He would have read her collar, she supposed, when he examined the Cosian tag wired to the collar. Ellen wondered if he had heard the name of Portus Canio, of Ar, before. It did not seem unfamiliar to him.

“What is wrong, little vulo?” he asked.

“Nothing, Master,” she wept.

“You may speak,” he said.

“You gave me to boys, Master!” she wept. “You gave me to boys!”

“Do you object?” he asked.

“No, Master!” she said, quickly.

“They seem like nice lads,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she said. “But am I not a little old for them? Would I not be consigned more suitably to men, Master? Am I not more for men, Master?”

“You are for whomsoever masters decide,” he said. “But it is true that you are for men. You are the sort of woman who obviously and appropriately belongs to men.”

“Yes, Master!” she said. “But I was not satisfied.”

“Who cares if a slave is satisfied,” he said.

“They were so quick with me, Master!”

“I shall be even quicker,” he said.

“Master?” she asked.

“We do not want you contented as yet,” he said. “I think it will be better if you sweat a little, and, for a few days, heat your chains. In a day or two I suspect you will scream for a man. You have the look of such a slave.”

“Please, Master, have mercy,” begged Ellen.

“Surely you would wish to be sent to the block desperate for a master. Would you not then perform better, more piteously, more needfully?”

Ellen moaned.

“I will send for one of the metal workers tonight,” he said, “and we will get this collar and tag off your neck. Then, afterward, we will see that you are chained. And, in the morning, when we leave, I will put you in the coffle.”

“In the coffle, Master?” wept Ellen, in horror.

She then felt his hands on her body, holding her.

“Oh!” she cried, suddenly. “Oh!”

He was indeed quick with her. She held to her ankles in misery.

When he turned away she called after him, “Master, may I speak?”

“What is it?” he asked.

“Were the boys rewarded for bringing me here?” she asked.

“The young men were compensated,” he said.

“May I ask to what extent, Master?”

“You wish a clue as to your value, do you not, collar slut?” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she said.

“Cos,” he said, “is noted for her liberality, her unparalleled generosity.”

“Yes, Master,” said Ellen.

“Five copper tarsks each,” said he.

“Thank you, Master!” said Ellen.

“You are all vain she-urts,” he said, turning away.

“Yes, Master!” said Ellen, delightedly.

That would be in most cities something like one hundred tarsk-bits altogether. It would be something like fifty tarsk-bits for each lad. Presumably they would not have so many coins at one time until they were responsible for their own fields, and the sale of their own crops. This was, we may remember, the price for which Mirus had allegedly sold her to Targo. It was not much, but it was surely something, and Targo, a professional slaver, had paid it, and so, doubtless, had hoped to make a profit on her, perhaps of as much as five tarsks. She did not know what Portus had paid for her. Several times she had been tempted, when he had seemed in a good mood, to crawl to him on her belly, take his ankles in her small hands, kiss his feet, and beg to know. But she had not dared to do so. Portus was not a patient man. Too, she knew that curiosity was supposedly unbecoming in a slave girl. She did not wish to be beaten. But she was curious, of course, intensely curious, just the same. She had no doubt that she had grown in her bondage, in her beauty, her walk, her responsiveness, even her skill in various domesticities thought suitable for a female slave. For example, she could now make tiny, fine, straight, measured stitches. To be sure, her experiences in the streets of Ar did not suggest that men would be likely to bid upon her with their eyes intent upon her skills as a cook or seamstress. Indeed, she had been obviously taken in the streets of Ar as merely another lovely, briefly tunicked Gorean slave girl, as no more than another Gorean slave girl, and then she thought, this thought muchly pleasing her, that there was nothing unfitting or surprising about that, for that was what she now was, only another Gorean slave girl! She was muchly pleased with the compensation accorded the boys, and she doubted, truly, that those of Cos were any more generous than those of any other city when it came to such matters. A reward of ten copper tarsks for her seemed considerable. Obviously the slave marshal regarded her as acceptable collar meat, perhaps even excellent collar meat! There, take that, again, Selius Arconious, she thought. She did not expect, however, to ever bring as much as a silver tarsk. It would be exciting to be bid upon, she thought. How few women are put upon a block and sold for what men find them to be actually worth!

Do free women think they are so lofty and precious? Let them be put stripped on a sales block and see what they would bring! Let them then get some idea as to what they are truly worth!

Thus, few women, she thought, have any sense of what they are actually worth, as a female. What would be their monetary value, on a slave block? To be sure, it is hard to know about such things, as so many variables affect a price. If the market is glutted a beauty may go for tarsk-bits, and if women are scarce a pot girl might bring a silver tarsk. And some men, determined at all costs to bring a particular woman to their slave ring, may bid prices incomprehensible to others.

Still there is something to be said for what a woman goes for, what men will pay for her.

In a few minutes a fellow in the black and gray of the metal workers appeared and removed her collar, with the attached tag. He then made use of her, briefly, and then freed her from the trestle. She was then, held bent over, in common leading position, her head at his hip, taken back about the tent and chained for the night.

After their feeding and watering the girls were permitted to lie in the dust and rest. The coffle would not move for an Ahn. Bosk and tharlarion were to be fed, watered, and rested. Soldiers were taking their midday meal. Some drovers lay in the shade beneath their wagons. Ellen’s body still burned from the lashing, and the two strokes of the slave’s switch. As she lay there she realized that her lashing, and her switching, had been well deserved. She should not have asked for more water, and she should have come to position more quickly after her whipping. What a stupid slave she was! Still she was angry with the woman. It is one thing to be whipped by a man, who is a master, and another to be struck by a woman, and one who, like oneself, is a mere slave! Would I not bring a higher price than she, wondered Ellen. Am I not near the head of the coffle?

As she lay there, her arms over her head, to protect it from the sun as well as she could, she became aware of a whispering in the coffle, proceeding toward her. It is forbidden to speak in the coffle, of course, but if no masters are about, or their representatives, such as switch slaves, it is certainly not unknown. The whispering seemed to be eager, and lively.

“Slave,” she heard, from the girl who preceded her in the coffle.

Ellen rose up, to all fours, looking anxiously about.

The other girl, too, looked about, then she crawled toward Ellen and addressed her in a soft, confidential, pleased whisper. “In three days,” said the girl, “there will be a festival camp, near Brundisium. Cos has been again successful. A plot has been foiled. Conspirators have been taken. Victory to Cos! There will be feasting. Slaves will serve. Slaves will be sold, and danced! Tell others!”

Ellen’s heart sank. She feared that this intelligence boded ill for Ar, and perhaps for Portus and his fellows.

“Tell others!” insisted the girl before her, looking about.

Ellen turned about and whispered these tidings to the girl who would be behind her in the coffle. That girl then, delightedly, a redhead, turned about, and passed the message on.

Then, profoundly disturbed by this news of some victory by Cos, though its nature seemed uncertain, Ellen lay again down in the dust to seize what rest she might. Too soon, for her desires, though perhaps not now for those of her enchained sisters in bondage, the order to rise was received, emphasized by the snapping of a slave whip. Ellen could see that the coffle now was in higher spirits. If the guards noted that, they did not inquire as to the reason, and, indeed, perhaps they were well aware of the reason. Perhaps it was they, under orders or not, who had dropped this information near the coffle, in conversation, knowing that it would, at the first opportunity, course like wildfire along the chain. Sometimes we think we are clever. But then, not unoften, it seems that it is the masters who have been most clever. It makes one feel vulnerable. But then one is no more than a slave.

“I do not want to go to Cos or Tyros,” whispered the girl behind her. “I want to be sold before Brundisium. I will perform well! Do you think I will get a rich master?”

“Yes,” said Ellen, “you are very beautiful.”

“You, too, are very beautiful,” said the girl.

Very beautiful?

This startled Ellen, for she had not really thought of herself along these lines, or at least not often, or at least to that extent. Beautiful, perhaps. Surely her vanity suggested that. Had she not seen herself in mirrors? But very beautiful — and by Gorean standards?

Surely she could not have so changed, from the shelf of Targo in Ar.

Perhaps she was “ten-tarsks beautiful,” but more?

Perhaps!

Could she hope then, ever, to bring as much as a silver tarsk?

She was convinced, of course, that she was a valuable, attractive slave. She had no doubt about that. She was not unaware of how men had looked upon her, for example, in the streets of Ar. Yes, then thought Ellen, I think I am beautiful! Perhaps even very beautiful!

To be sure, that was for men to decide.

I am near the front of the coffle, she reminded herself.

And the camp slaves have treated me with cruelty. At least it seems so to me. Could they resent me, perhaps for my beauty? Might they be jealous of me?

Could I have changed so much, from the shelf of Targo?

But beauty was for the men to decide. It was they who carried the whips and chains. It was they who did the bidding, the collaring, the branding, the buying and selling, the raiding and netting and roping, the capturing and herding, the mastering.

“What of you?” asked the girl. “Will you perform well?”

“I do not know,” said Ellen.

“You will, slave,” laughed the girl softly behind her. “It will be seen to by the masters!”

“Are you a hot slave?” asked the girl behind her.

“I do not know,” said Ellen.

“If you are not,” she said, “do not worry. You will be trained under the hands of the masters. They will teach you to squirm and beg. They will put slave fire in your belly!”

“Perhaps,” said Ellen, trying to speak indifferently, even coldly, even skeptically. She saw no point in informing her thoughtful, solicitous sister in bondage that she, Ellen, despite her youth, was no stranger to slave fire, that the flames of the owned, dominated, mastered woman already raged frequently, irresistibly, in her belly, that she hungered for touches, for caresses, for embraces, which were being denied her. Men had indeed taught her to squirm and beg. But they had not created her sexual needs, nor her sexual nature. Not these men, at least, though her nature might have been shaped, through startling complementarities, and interactions with men, in the course of evolution, through countless millennia of capturing, buying and selling, bartering, domination and mastery. They had merely summoned it forth, imperiously, even against her will, merely commanded it, merely liberated it. Only in bondage is the sexual nature of the human female totally freed. In her enslavement she finds her freedom. This is the paradox of the collar.

The order to march was then received.

Standards were lifted, and flashed in the sun.

Drovers called out to their animals, whips cracked, wagons creaked. There was the tread of the soldiers, the grunting, and scampering about, coming and going, scattering dust, of saddle tharlarion.

The coffle, too, with its sound of chain, marched.

The march had been underway for something like two Ahn. Saddle tharlarion, as has been noted, were familiar components of the march and camp. These, not unoften, ran the length of the march, relaying orders, carrying messages and such. Too, of course, there were mounted officers, and others, civilians, and such, who rode with the march, rather than walked, or had places in the wagons. A pair of men approached, and halted their tharlarion some yards ahead of Ellen’s position, and, turning the beasts, which were restless, were engaged in conversation. As Ellen, on the chain, marching with the others, approached them, they relatively fixed at the side of the march, she was startled, terribly shaken. She was certain that she recognized the two riders, neither of whom were concerned with the progressing coffle. One was the subcaptain, the Cosian officer, who had been in the loft of Portus Canio, whose men had ransacked it, indeed, he who had wired the tag to her collar, and who had spoken to her earlier. The other man, in colorful riding robes, laughing, jesting with him, she also recognized. It was Tersius Major.

Quickly, as she approached them, miserable, on the chain, covered with dust, she put her head down and brought her hair before her face, to conceal her features. And thus she passed them, unnoticed, no more than another slave in the coffle.

As she passed them she heard laughter. Then the laughter was behind her. When she turned about she saw that the two tharlarion had continued on their way, toward the rear of the column.

Somewhere she heard the crack of a whip.

Quickly she turned her head forward again, and continued on her way.