"Thank you, Master," I said.
"You are now, however, I think," he said, "becoming a bit too well known in Argentum."
"As master say," I said. I had no idea, of course, as to whether or not such a thing was true. I did suppose I had been seen about the streets, here and there. This may have raised suspicions.
"Too," he said, "there have been inquiries."
I looked at him, apprehensively.
"Sometimes," he said, "I think a lure girl should be less beautiful, less striking, perhaps, than you. you are perhaps the sort who is too easily remembered."
I said nothing.
"Accordingly," he said, "I think it is now time to dispose of you." "Master?" I asked, frightened.
"Do not fear," he said, smiling. "I have no intention of losing my investment in you."
"Then Master will sell me?" I begged.
"You have already been sold," he said.
I looked at him, astonished.
"I have received for you five silver tarsks, and one tarsk bit," he smiled. "I paid five silver tarsks for you, as you may recall. Thus I have made a profit on you."
"Yes, Master," I said.
"hood her," he said.
One of his men then put a gag in my mouth, attached to a slave hood, fastened it in place, and then pulled the hood down over my head, and buckled it shut about my neck. I felt a collar put about my neck and locked. The collar I had originally worn then, that of Tyrrhenius of Argentum, was removed from my neck. I then knelt there, gagged and hooded, my hands bound behind me. I was trembling.
"Take her to her new master," he said.
23 The Work Camp
"Look!" cried a fellow, elatedly. "look!"
"The fifth slut!" cried another. "Look!"
"It is she!" cried another. "Look!"
"Do you know her?" asked another fellow.
"We know here well," said another fellow, with grim satisfaction.
I half stumbled in the chains. My feet hurt on the hot gravel. The sun was hot on my bare arms and legs. I could take only short steps for my ankles were shackled, the run of chain between them only some eight to ten inches. Iron, too, adorned my wrists. I wore manacles. With expert blows, on an anvil, these had been hammered shut, leaving only a fine line where the edges met. The manacles were joined by some seven or eight inches of chain. Another chain, some three feet in length, ran from the center of an ankle chain to the center of the chain joining the wrist rings. Standing upright, then, I could not lift my hands, even to feed myself. I was also in neck coffle, the fifth girl in the coffle. A chain ran from a ring on the back of the collar of the chain ran from the ring on the back of my collar to the ring on the front of the collar of the girl who followed me. Thusly we were fastened together.
"It is she," announced another fellow.
"Move, kajirae," said a fellow with a whip.
"Yes," said another man.
I looked about myself, wildly, in terror.
I heard the snap of the whip and, together, we hurried forward, within the fence, toward the square tent, the overseer" s tent, on a rise in the distance. The fellows along our route, sweating, half-stripped, in their ankle chains, paused in their labors, resting on their implements, to watch us pass.
"It is you, is it not," asked the girl before me, whispering over her shoulder, "to whom these beasts refer?"
"I fear so," I moaned.
"How is it they know you?" asked the girl behind me.
"From Argentum," I said.
"Woe is us," said the girl before me. "These brutes are criminals, murderers, cutthroats, brigands, dangerous men, held in penal servitude. We shall be fortunate if we are not killed!"
"The guards must protect us," said the third girl.
"But how can we garner such shelter?" wept the second girl.
"If you had been a slave longer, you would know the answer to that question," said the third girl.
The second girl moaned. She was naA?ve. Her brand had not been on her long. We were female work slaves. Such are used among the chains largely for carrying water. Other purposes, too, as might be expected, may be found for them. "I am afraid," said the second girl.
"Look!" cried a man, as we passed. "She! It is she, I am sure of it!" "Yes!" said another. "You are right! I, too, am sure of it!"
I shuddered. "Not all of these men are criminals," I said to the second girl. "How is that?" asked the girl behind me.
"Some are honest fellows," I said, "caught, impressed into labor." "Such things are not done," said the girl before me.
"You are mistaken," I told her.
"There are many ways," said the girl behind me. "Some times lure girls are used." Then she said, "Perhaps Tuka knows about that."
I was silent.
"You are very pretty, Tuka," said the girl behind me.
I was silent.
"You are probably pretty enough to be a lure girl," she added.
I was silent.
"I would not wish to be a lure girl who came within their reach," she remarked. "I might be torn to pieces. It would doubtless be far worse, of course, if I were the actual girl who had been involved in their capture."
I shuddered.
"What is wrong, Tuka?" she asked.
"Nothing," I said.
"I suppose that these fellows out here, with the digging, the labor and the whip, have little to live for," she remarked, "except perhaps vengeance." I trembled in the chains.
"Do not be frightened, Tuka," she said. "You have nothing to fear, for you were surely never a lure girl."
Over the fence, in the distance, I could see the walls of a city. I had been told it was Venna. I had been told this by the girl who was now first on the chain. She had seen it once, long ago, when she had been a rich, spoiled, beautiful free woman, in her robes of concealment, from her palanquin. Then she had fallen to slavers. She was no longer spoiled or rich. No longer did she wear ornate robes of concealment. She wore now only the same sleeveless, brief, clinging work tunic as we. To be sure, she was doubtless much more exciting and beautiful now than she had been when she was free. This sort of thing would not be merely a matter of the brand and collar, of course, significant though they might be, but of the entire radiant transformation of her womanhood as it blossomed in bondage, she now in her place in nature.
"Master!" I called to the guard. "Master, may I speak?"
"What do you want?" he asked, walking beside me now, coiling the whip. "Is that Venna?" I asked.
"Yes," said he.
I was confused.
"I have been sold to a chain of Ionicus," I said.
"Yes?" he said.
When I had learned, days ago, outside Argentum, that I had been sold to a chain of Ionicus, I had almost collapsed in fear. "Which chain, Masters?" I had begged. "Which chain? Please, Masters, which chain?" But my importunities had earned me then only a cuffing. It had not been until they were loading me, and four of the other girls, each of us tied within a tall, narrow leather sack, our heads exposed, the sack locked shut beneath our chins, into the cargo net, to be slung beneath a draft tarn, that I found out my specific information pertinent to my fate. "Whither are we bound, Master?" I had asked of the fellow who would fly the lead tarn, the others in a roped coffle behind him. "To the loading docks of Aristodemus," he had said, "outside the defense perimeter of Venna." "Thank you, Master!" I had cried, elated. Venna is a small, lovely city, largely a resort city, north of Ar, on the Viktel Aria. It is know for its tharlarion races. It is also a common locale, it and its vicinity, for villas of the rich, usually from Ar. I had feared that we might be bound for Torcadino, a city currently under siege by Cosians, and their allies, where, employed in the siegeworks, digging investing trenches, raising earth walls, and such, labored the "black chain of Ionicus," that chain for which I had aided in the «enlistment» or «recruitment» of several of its members. Two days ago we had arrived at the "docks of Aristodemus." Tarn traffic, because of the conditions of war, and alarms of war, was currently extremely restricted in the vicinity of Venna, as I took it, it also was in the vicinity of Ar. The point of this was apparently to render aerial reconnaissance more difficult and to subject the environing skies to at least partial control. An unauthorized flight into the area, particularly a day flight, would thus be easier to detect. Tarnsmen, too, frequently aflight, conducted patrols. Measures of this sort not only improve the probabilities of detecting raiders. Or other invaders of airspace, spies, for example, but also, of course, facilitate the deployment of defensive forces. Raiders afoot, of course, move much more slowly, and may find themselves at the mercy of the skies. At the "docks of Aristodemus" we were put in work tunics. We were also put in the chains we now wore, with the exception of the coffle chain. We were then put in slave wagons, with other girls, who had apparently been awaiting our arrival, to be taken to the work camp. In these wagons our chained ankles were threaded about the central bar, which was then locked in place. In this way we are kept in the wagon until masters might be pleased to release us. Once within the wire of the work camp we were taken from the wagon, one by one, and put in coffle. We were now making our way through the camp to the tent of the overseer, near which, for his convenience, would be our pens.