“Get me out of this sack!” cried Lady Temesne.
Her accent did seem different from that of many of the other girls, Ellen thought.
The tarnsman then, to the gratification of Lady Temesne, opened the sack, and she began to crawl hurriedly from it, but her gratification was short-lived, as he took her by the hair, when her feet were still tangled in the mesh, and pressed her down on her stomach on the roof, and then knelt across her body. “What are you doing?” she cried. “Put your hands behind you,” he told her. “Now.” Weakly she put her small hands behind her. He pulled them together and, in a moment, they had been encircled with binding fiber, and were lashed together. She cried out, softly, in protest, as she was gagged. She whimpered in misery, as she was blindfolded. He then drew her from the net, crossed her ankles, bound them together, and looked down upon her. There was no denying that she was a lovely catch. He then thrust her back in the net, her knees pulled up under her chin, and tied the net shut, close about her. He then fastened the net on short ropes close to the belly of the tarn. It would then be less obvious.
He then returned to watching the sky.
“Laura,” whispered Ellen.
“Yes,” said Laura.
“He is waiting for tarnsmen to leave the city?”
“Yes,” said Laura.
“What of Nelsa?” asked Ellen.
“Do not concern yourself about her,” said Laura. “She is merely a captured slave.”
“Will they hurt her?” asked Ellen.
“I do not think so,” said Laura. “Probably no more than to occasionally remind her that she is a slave and, of course, to see to it that she is perfect in her service.”
“But the whip dance?”
“True, that will hurt her,” said Laura, “but it will teach her, too, who her masters are.”
Ellen shuddered.
“Is Treve a city?” Ellen asked.
“Yes,” said Laura. “And little love is lost between those of Treve and this city.”
“What is the name of this city?” asked Ellen.
“You do not know?”
“No.”
“Ar,” said Laura.
At that moment several flights of tarnsmen, dozens in each flight, swept overhead.
The tarnsman raised his hand, saluting the flights as they passed.
“He is magnificent!” breathed Laura, in awe. “He will well know how to keep a woman!”
He was now ready to ascend the rope ladder to the saddle, several feet above the surface of the roof. That ladder is then pulled up and tied to the saddle. There are normally two or four rings fastened at the sides of a tarnsman’s saddle, one or two on each side.
“Master!” called Laura suddenly.
He turned to look upon her.
“May I speak?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“May I rise?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
She quickly ran to him and, as slaves gasped, she knelt before him, bending over, her head down between her arms, which were lifted, the wrists crossed.
“How dare you submit yourself as a free woman?” he asked.
“Forgive me, Master!” wept Laura, lowering herself humbly to her belly before him, and pressing her lips to his bootlike sandals. She looked up, tears in her eyes. “Perhaps Master would care to capture a worthless slave?”
The occupant of the net, tied close to the belly of the tarn, squirmed, whimpering, angrily.
“She wants to be the only one,” whispered a girl to Ellen.
The tarnsman crouched down beside Laura and, with a length of binding fiber, crossed her wrists and bound them together before her body. He then, similarly, crossed her ankles, and bound them, as well. He then carried her to the saddle, over his shoulder, and laid her gently on her back, across the saddle, on the large plain surface before the pommel, perhaps a surface prepared for just such a purpose. It was then but a moment’s work to fasten her bound wrists to the forward ring on the left, and her bound ankles to the forward ring on the right. In this fashion she was bound before him, belly up, stretched over the saddle. He then considered her for a moment, and then took a knife from his belt.
Slaves gasped, thrilled.
Laura’s gown, in a moment, cut from her, cast aside, had fluttered to the roof.
“I am yours, Master!” said Laura.
“You tell me nothing I do not know, slave,” he said.
He then freed the rolled blanket from behind the saddle, opened it, and threw it over the slave, concealing her.
The tunicked, collared free woman, bound in the net, gagged and blindfolded, squirmed and whimpered.
“I suspect,” whispered the girl to Ellen’s right, “our noble little tunic-wearer will be sold in Brundisium.”
“Perhaps he will keep them both,” said another girl.
“Perhaps,” said another.
“She does have pretty legs,” said another.
“The tunic displays them well,” said another.
“Surely,” said another.
The tarn then smote the air, leapt from the roof, soared for a moment, and then, wings beating, rose higher, leveled in its flight, and then streaked from the city, in a direction other than that taken by those in pursuit of the Trevean raiders.
“We may now rise,” said one of the girls, watching the tarn disappear in the distance.
Ellen stood up, uncertainly.
“They take women,” she said, in awe. “They bind us. They steal us. They carry us off. They think nothing of this. They make us theirs. They make us slaves. They use us as they please. We are nothing to them. They buy and sell us. They do as they wish with us!”
“They are men,” said one of the girls.
“I fear you,” she whispered to herself, “beautiful world on which I am a slave.”
“The hatch is now open!” called one of the girls.
“We must clean up things and get back to work,” said another.
Nelsa was gone. Laura, too, was gone. Tonight Nelsa might be performing the whip dance for masters. Ellen did not know what the whip dance was but she was not displeased that it, whatever it was, might be required of Nelsa. She did not think that Nelsa would be a bother or a nuisance to her new masters. The whip takes that out of a woman. She did not know what Laura’s fate might be. Whatever it was, it was in the hands of the tarnsman from Brundisium.
“Have you no work to do, slave girl?” inquired one of the girls.
“Forgive me, Mistress,” said Ellen, and drew toward her, across the roof, under a line, her large basket, and then reached into it for another damp garment, to shake out, smooth and hang.
“There are many more baskets below,” said a slave.
Ellen, with the wooden pins, hung a garment on the line. It was a male’s work tunic. It was large. Ellen wondered what its wearer might look like, and what he might be like, and what it would be like to be owned by him.
“Man!” called a girl.
Instantly the slaves fell to their knees and assumed first obeisance position.
“Is Ellen, who is the slave of Mirus, here?” asked the man.
Ellen was too frightened to respond.
“Who is first girl?” asked the man.
“We have lost two slaves, to tarnsmen, Master,” said blond-haired, blue-eyed Ina. “We could not return to the interior of the cylinder. The hatch had been secured from within. Nelsa and Laura, slaves of the house. Of those upon the roof, Laura was first girl.”
“Last week, our lads took eight from Treve, three of whom were free,” said the man.
“Glory to Ar!” said Ina.
“Glory to Ar!” said several of the others.
“All three were put up for sale yesterday,” he said.
“Excellent, Master,” said Ina.