“Hurry on, red!” cried another slave, two rows below me.
She had permission to speak, to cheer for her master’s favorite! I felt like pulling her to the ground by her hair, but I would not dare to do so. I knew it would be I who would soon be weeping, and pleading for mercy! It would not be another, but I, I knew, who would soon be the cringing, beaten slave. This was clear to me, even from my former world. I had sensed this ever since the party on my former world, when I had been disgracefully camisked and forced to serve, in a locked leather collar, and had found myself tearfully, stung again and again, helplessly groveling under the switch of the imperious Nora. It takes but one such experience to realize that one is a slave. I still, after all these months, dreaded and feared Nora, terribly. She was Mistress and I was slave. She had taught me that.
As you know, as in the tarn races, there are various factions, the blue, the yellow, the orange, the red, and so on.
Many Goreans take their allegiance to a given faction with great seriousness. This may continue for generations in families. There are sometimes riots between the adherents of these factions.
Orange won the race.
I sat down, on the tier. Many filed down the tiers, to place new bets. Hundreds clutched programs, which listed the mounts, and their riders.
The last race, just witnessed, was one of quadrupedalian tharlarion. These are bred for endurance and speed, but, even so, they are ponderous beasts, and no match for the more typical racing tharlarion, which is lighter and bipedalian. It is also carnivorous and more aggressive. In the race they commonly have their jaws bound shut. There have been several cases in which such beasts, before a race, or in the stable or exercise yards, have attacked their competitors, even their handlers. They are occasionally used for scouting or communication. Some hunt wild tarsk with lances from their saddles.
“Orange won,” said he in whose charge I was.
“Yes, Master,” I said.
There were five in our party at the stadium, the Lady Bina; Astrinax, who was our jobber; a man named Lykos, hired, I think, for his sword; he in whose keeping I was; and myself. I remembered the man, Astrinax, from Ar, as it was he who had arranged my sale to the gambling house. He had been hired in Ar by the Lady Bina to facilitate our journey, buying tharlarion and wagons, hiring teamsters, putting in supplies, arranging the stages of our journey, and such. Clearly such matters could not have been well handled by the Lady Bina, Lord Grendel, or myself.
I was pleased to have been permitted to come to the stadium. It would have been easy enough to have left me in the wagon, in the fenced-in wagon lot, shackled to the central bar.
I looked about myself. As I, the other slaves I noted in the audience were tunicked, and some more scantily than I. One, I saw, who regarded me disdainfully, and tossed her head proudly, was even camisked. How proud her master must have been of her, the arrogant brute, to so display her. And how smug, and how vain, she was, how proud of her beauty, to be so displayed, camisked.
“I am going below, to bet anew,” said he in whose care I was.
“Yes, Master,” I said.
I felt my left ankle gripped, and, a moment later, it was shackled to the iron ring anchored in the cement under my seat.
He then departed, to seek the betting tables beneath the stadium tiers. The Lady Bina, Astrinax, and Lykos accompanied him.
I sat on the tier, alone, moved my ankle a little, and pulled a little at the bracelets. Had my hands been free, I would have better adjusted the tunic at my left shoulder.
I was an unattended slave. I was apprehensive. I realized what that might mean. Such a slave might be accosted, even fondled, with impunity. Still, there were many about.
We had arrived in Venna early this morning.
Apparently the small collation I had prepared for the Metal Worker yesterday evening had proved satisfactory. In any event, after he had eaten for a bit, I kneeling back, he signed me to all fours, a simple gesture, and indicated that I might approach, beside the small fire. Then, from time to time, as he fed, he held out tidbits to me, and I fed, too, delicately, from his hand. Afterwards he permitted me to lie by his side, “bound by the master’s will,” I crossing my shackled ankles, and holding my hands behind my back, my left wrist held in my right hand.
He said, “Speak.”
“Surely Master is not interested in hearing a slave speak,” I said.
“Speak,” said he.
“Of what shall I speak?” I said.
He then told me to speak, as I would, telling him about my former world, my former life, my capture, my training, my sales, my owners, even my thoughts and feelings.
I fear much that was foolish gushed forth from me, but words had tumbled forth, seemingly endlessly, for Ahn, even amidst grateful tears.
“What have you done to me?” I said, at last, lying in the dirt beside him, by the reduced embers of the fire, looking up at him from my side, bound by his will.
“Is it not clear?” he asked.
“Master?” I said.
“I have stripped you,” he said.
“I see,” I said.
“It is time to put you on the common chain,” he said. “You are unbound.”
I struggled to my feet, and he then conducted me, his right hand on my left upper arm, to the common chain, on which several girls were already placed. He sat me by the chain, removed the shackle from my right ankle, looped it about the chain, and fastened it on me again, thus tethering me to the common chain. In this camp it was strung not between two trees, but between two heavy posts, to which it was bolted, the posts some twenty paces apart.
“So, Master,” I said, “the slave is stripped.”
“There are many ways to strip a slave,” he said.
“I understand,” I said.
“Ordering her to disrobe, or tearing away her tunic, are but two,” he said.
“I understand,” I said.
“To be sure,” he said, “that is pleasant.”
“Doubtless,” I said.
After I had confessed so much of myself to him, so revealed who was in my collar, I had almost hoped I would hear the issuance of a disrobing order, or that his hands, at my neckline, would have torn away my tunic.
But he had conducted me to the girl chain.
“It is all of the slave which is owned,” he said.
“That is understood by the slave,” I said.
“The slave’s every thought,” he said, “even her subtlest, least feeling, is owned by the master.”