"It is a fight!" called someone, excitedly.
Again the fellow in the palanquin indicated me, bemused, with the glass on the pearled wand.
Again the large draft slave lunged toward me. Twice more, brutally, he struck me, as I stumbled backward, and then I had seized him, holding him, trying to clear my head, trying not to let him gain again the leverage to strike such telling blows. I heard him grunt. My arms were tightening on him. I began to bend him backwards. There was blood on his body then, mine, and on my tunic. "No," he grunted. Suddenly I saw he was frightened. Further I pressed him backward. Then, suddenly, terrified, I realized what I might do to him.
"Stop!" called the man with the whip.
I let the draft slave fall. His back had not been broken. I knew nothing of fighting, but I had discovered, it frightening me, that there was in me, somehow, strength which I had not understood. I recalled lifting the bench in the cell in the House of Andronicus. The exercises and the physical trainings to which I had been subjected there I had, not really thinking about it, kept up.
"Are you a fighting slave?" asked someone.
"No," I said
The man with the whip looked to the man in the palanquin. "Interesting," said the man in the palanquin.
"Is it enough?" asked the man with the whip.
"Yes," said the man in the palanquin. I suddenly realized that he did not wish to risk a slave.
The man in the palanquin lifted the glass on the pearled wand and, again, the draft slaves took their places. The man with the whip joined other servants beside the palanquin. In a moment the two palanquins, with their respective retinues, were taking their respective departures. I stood, bloody, unsteadily, in the street.
The crowd dissipated.
Suddenly, angrily, I ran after the departing palanquin, that behind which the exquisite, dark-haired girl, she to whom I had been earlier speaking, was one of the chained, displayed beauties. I slipped, unnoticed by the man in the palanquin and his servants, behind the blond-haired girl, she who had told me she had once been free, who was the last in the right-hand coffle, that lovely string of chained women.
My hand closed on the back of the blond girl's neck.
She gasped, startled.
"Who is your master?" I asked.
"We are not permitted to speak in coffle," she said. "Oh!" she said. My hand had tightened on her neck.
"Who is your master?" I asked, walking behind her.
"Oneander of Ar," she said, "of the merchants. He does business in Vonda."
I did not release her neck.
"You are not a silk slave," she said, in pain, held.
"Oneander of Ar?" I asked.
"Yes," she said.
"Yes, what?" I asked. My grip tightened.
"Yes-Master!" she said. I released her, and she stumbled ahead, following in her place. She looked back, frightened. Then she again set her eyes ahead. She was not an Earth girl, of course. She was only a Gorean girl, and a slave, a woman fit to be done with as men please.
I walked to the side of the street, looking after the palanquin. with its attached coffles.
I knew I should return to the shop of Philebus. If my mistress emerged from the shop and I was not there, she would not be pleased. But, on an impulse. I followed, for a time, behind it and on its left, the double coffle.
Doubtless I attracted some attention, for I was bleeding and, as I discovered, the silk tunic I wore had been soiled from the street and torn at the left sleeve; too, it was stained with my blood; but no one said anything to me. Perhaps they were wary of one who looked as though he might be distraught, or dangerous.
I followed the double coffle on its left, for it was on the left side of her body that the exquisite, dark-haired girl's short, loose silk had been hitched up, baring her branded thigh to the hip. I observed her in the coffle, neck-chained, her small wrists, above the rounded flesh of her palms and below the sweet, rounded flesh of her small forearms, locked in the steel of slave bracelets. She was surely the most exciting, and desirable and beautiful woman I had ever seen. Earlier I had been almost stunned with the sight of her beauty.
I smiled to myself.
I now knew who owned her, Oneander of Ar, a merchant who apparently did business in Vonda. It would have been in Vonda, I supposed, that he had purchased her. It seemed a shame that he apparently kept her primarily as a display item. Perhaps, upon occasion, he used her, and the other girls, or had them thrown to his men. I wondered if she would make a good love slave. I supposed not, for she was of Earth. It was difficult to imagine her kneeling before a man, helplessly aroused, weeping, begging to be raped.
I drifted about, to the right side of the coffle lines, and stopped, watching the lines, chained behind the palanquin, making their way down the street.
I saw the blond-haired girl, the last one in the right-hand coffle line, turn about, in her chain and collar. She was curious, apparently, to see if I still followed. She smiled. I grinned at her. I had made her use the word `Master' to me. Then she looked ahead again. But her body moved, suddenly, as that of a slave girl. I smiled. She might once have been free but now, clearly, she was only a slave. She was aroused. When she returned to the house of her master I had little doubt but what she would kneel to the nearest keeper and beg to be used, perhaps to be given for an Ahn, hooded, to the male slave of his choice.
I stood on the stones of the avenue of the Central Cylinder. I looked after the palanquin, with its twin chains of enslaved beauties.
I considered, again, the small, exquisite, dark-haired girl. I had never expected to see her again. Then I had done so. What a transformation had been wrought in her. I had been almost overcome by her beauty. I could not drive it from my mind.
I reminded myself, interestingly, that Earth women were imported to Gor doubtless precisely to be love slaves. I wondered if Gorean men knew something interesting about the women of Earth that the men of Earth did not know.
The palanquin, with its chained girls, had now disappeared down the street.
The dark-haired girl on Earth, of course, had been extremely beautiful, but her beauty then, considerable though it might have been, could not even have begun to bear comparison with what it now was. I stood upon the street, recollecting her with astonishment. I would never have dreamed she could have become so delicately and incredibly beautiful. It seemed almost incomprehensible to me. It was the first time, of course, I had seen Beverly Henderson, of Earth, as a slave girl.
Then I turned about, to hurry back to the shop of Philebus.
"Jason! Jason!" cried the Lady Florence, angrily. "Where have you been?"
I quickly knelt before her, head down.
"Down the street, Mistress," I said.
"Look at yourself!" she cried. "You have been fighting!"
I glanced quickly at the silk slave fastened by the neck to the slave ring on the other side of the girl at the nearer ring. He grinned at me. I realized he must have told Lady Florence all that had occurred.
"I cannot leave you alone for a moment!" said the Lady Florence. "You have kept me waiting! I cannot turn my back for an instant but you are in trouble. Do you not know I have been finished shopping for a quarter of an Ahn!"
"No, Mistress," I said.
"He ran away," said the male silk slave.
"No," I said. "I was just down the street."
"Did you rape this poor slave?" demanded the Lady Florence, angrily gesturing to the leashed girl at the ring.
"Forgive us, Mistress," begged the girl, who was kneeling and trembling. She put her head down as far as she could, given the leash and collar.
"I took her," I admitted.
"Took her!" cried the Lady Florence.
"She was thirsty," I said. "She wanted water. I made her pay for it with her use."
"Beast!" said the Lady Florence.
"Yes, Mistress," I said.
"Your tunic is torn," she said. "You are bloody. Are you hurt?"
"No, Mistress," I said
She spun to face the girl at the ring, who trembled. "You sold your use for a drink of water?" she asked.
"Yes, Mistress," said the girl.