I soon became aware that this must be a lane leading to the chains.
Other girls, soon, here aid there, entered it, before and behind me, and between me and those who had been directly before me.
"And what of the resistance you -intended to offer?" one girl was asking another.
"It was crushed," said the other. "He did not choose to accept it. Then he made me serve him well."
"It is the fifth time you have served in his tent since we left Argentum," said the first girl.
"Yes," said the second. "think he likes you," said the first girl. "Perhaps," said the other.
"Do you think he will buy you?" asked the first girl.
"it matters not to me," said the other. "I do not care, one way or the other." "There are stains on your face as though you bad been crying," said the girl. "And it does not seem to me that you have been beaten."
"Oh?" asked the other.
"You pretentious tarsk sow," laughed the first girl, "you were begging him to buy youl"
"What if I was!" said the other, tossing her bead.
"And when did you beg this?" asked the girl.
"After my resistance bad been crushed, and he made me serve him without compromise as a slave," said the other, and again this morning, before we parted."
"You seem pleased enough now," observed the girl.
"Tassy," said the other, "he is going to make an offer for me!"
"That is marvelous, Yitza!" said the first girl.
"But will Myron let me go?" asked the second girl.
"I do not know," said the first. "Such matters are between the men." The second girl moaned.
"Look at it this way," said the first girl. "If we did not wear collars we would not even know the touch of such men as Rutilius. Too, if we were not slaves and sent to their tents, we would not even know what to do. We would be only ignorant free women."
"How I sometimes pity free womenl" laughed the second girl. "They are so stupidl"
"But fear them, Yitza," said the first girl, "for they are free and you are enslaved."
"Of course," said the second girl, shuddering.
"And remember that they hate you," said the first.
"I know," said the second.
A man stepped out, into the center of the lane. I stopped, frightened. But his attention was on another.
"Yeela," said lie.
A girl, addressed by a free man, fell to her knees before him.
"I have paid fee for you," he said.
"it is early, Master," she laughed. "Would you lie to a poor slave?" "Perhaps," lie said.
"If you have not, know that you will be charged," she laughed. "I am not for freel"
But then he had crouched down and taken her in his arms. She was thrown beneath him, grasping at him, to the dirt. Frightened, I took my way about them. I tried to hide among other girls. I hoped that no man would decide to pull me out from among them.
"What is for breakfast?" I heard one girl asking another.
"I have heard," said the other girl, who was a shorter one, "that each of us will have five berries put in our gruel this morning."
"Good," said the first.
Alp "If no bad reports are received on any of us," added the second.
"I was pleasing," said the first.
"So, too, was I," averred the second.
"If Jasmine is not fully pleasing again," said the first girl, "I think I will pull her hair out."
"And so, too, will the rest of the chaint" laughed the second girl, the shorter one.
Jasmine, I suspected, would soon learn to be pleasing. Certainly it would be in her best interests to be so. She would probably have to spend at least a portion of every day within the reach of her chain sisters. Doubtless soon she would be begging them for counsels in sensuality, for tricks and techniques, that she might improve herself and become less inadequate as a slave.
"He took away my clothes," one girl was telling another, "but then he did not so much as touch me. He made me serve him, rather, in small and menial ways. I must cook Sullage for him. Then I must launder and iron a tunic. Then I must dust his goods and clean and tidy his tent. Then I was made to sew, and then clean and polish his leather."
"And how did you feel," asked the girl to whom she was speaking, "performing these small tasks for him, suitable for a slave?"
"Gradually, serving him helplessly, then lovingly in these fashions, I became more and more aroused," she said. "Then, finally, after the polishing of the feather, I could stand it no longer. I threw myself to my belly before him, juicing like a larma."
"Did he then content you?" asked the other girl.
"Yes," said the girl, "though the brute made me squirm a little first." How well that master had understood sex, and the sexuality of the female, I thought. He apparently understood something of the pervasiveness and totality of female sexuality. They had been, in their way, having sex together for hours, before he even touched her. Well had he understood the woman, and her needs and desires to be pleasing, and to submit and serve in many ways. It was the total woman, in her wholeness, which he, to her joy, had chosen to dominate.
How terrible, I thought, to be a slave!
"Would you like to be sent again to his tent?" asked the other girl. "Yes," said the girl. "Yesl Oh, yesl"
What a meaningless slut she wasl How pleased I was that I was not a slave! "You, Slave!" called a voice.
I stopped in my tracks. I put my fists before my mouth, in terror, but, too, to hide my neck.
"Not you, you!" said the voice.
I quickly hurried on, trembling. It seemed that any moment I must be discovered. "I must see him again," the girl in front of me was saying.
"Why?" asked the other.
"I think he is my love master," she breathed.
"It is more likely that you are his love slave," laughed the other.
"He must call for me again!" said the girl.
"You are, of course, entitled to hope that," said the other, "when you lie alone, chained in your place."
"He must!" she wept.
"Perhaps he will have you summoned again to his tent," said the second girl. "I must see him again!" she said.
"That will be decided by masters," said the second girl. How horrifying to be a slave, I thought. How pleased I was that I was not a slave.
Swiftly, then, seeing more men waiting further down the lane, sonic with loops of chain in their hands, I slipped to the side between the tents. I could see women lining up down there, too, being put in wrist or throat coffle, each one doubtless reporting in, and in the proper position, to the appropriate slave master.
I skirted a large cooking area. I could smell freshly baked bread, and the cooking of eggs and meat.
I made my way among tents, every sense alert, sometimes crawling on my hands and knees.
It was still quite dark. Here and there, there were morning fires. The moons were down.
I cried out in misery. A sleen, snarling, leapt toward me, but was stopped by its chain.
I continued on my way, treading narrow valleys between mountains of sacks, narrow aisles separating cliffs of boxes.
"Where are you going, little lady?" called a fellow from above me.
He was standing on boxes, carrying a box. I had not even seen him.
"The chains," he said, "are behind you and to your right."
Swiftly I sped away, in the general direction he had indicated. Then, when I was confident I was out of his sight, I resumed, as nearly as I could, given the bundles, the boxes and crates, my original direction.
Then I found myself in a blind alley, a place where the passage was closed by a sheer wall of boxes, several feet over my head. I hurried back and tried another passage. It, too, to my misery, was blocked. Then I suddenly realized I had lost my direction. Between the boxes, at places, darknesses in the darkness, there were narrow cracks. I did not know which ere passages and which were mere places where several boxes had been removed. I struck with my fists at the wall of boxes.