"Do not fear," I said. "I know you are truly a slave. I learned it in your kiss, when you were shackled at the wall at the Crooked Tarn. I think that perhaps, in the same kiss, you learned it."
The men laughed. She sneaked a glance at the tall fellow, and then, hastily, put down her head. He smiled.
"Lady Elene, of Tyros, your friend, whom you remember from the Crooked Tarn, and the coffle," I said, "is even now in a slave collar. " It had been put on her within moments of her sale.
Klio looked back at me.
"In her performance," I said, "the slave, unrestrained, emerged quickly and in moments the woman discovered that it was she. It pleased the men abundantly. It brought a good price. It is now collared."
Klio sobbed.
"Frankly," I said, "I had not expected you to be inferior to her." She looked at me, angrily.
"But perhaps the women of Tyros," I said, "are superior to those of Cos?" "I think not," said a man, rather angrily.
There was laughter from the others. I supposed he must be Cosian, natively. "But then," I said, "it is said, I have heard, that those of Port Kar prize Cosians as slaves."
"Show us what a Cosian can do," said a man.
"Thus," I said, "it seems that it is not, really, that the women of Tyros are superior to the women of Cos, but merely that, in your particular case, you are inferior to the Lady Elene.
She looked at me, again, angrily.
"But that is only to be expected, upon occasion, I suppose," I said, "that some woman of Tyros would be superior to some woman of Cos. Too, it is no disgrace to be inferior to the Lady Elene, who is quite attractive and, in time, might even make a dancer."
"I am not inferior to Elene," she said, angrily.
The men laughed at her vehemence.
She looked at the tall fellow.
I quickly then, that she would feel the authoritative signal of the leash and collar rings while she was looking at the tall fellow, shook the leash. "Ah!" said a fellow.
I was quite pleased then with Klio.
My expectation, I then felt, that she would prove to be the most exciting and desirable of the two, was borne out. That was why I had saved her for last, of course, for use in the trench closest to Ar's Station. To be sure, I might have been somewhat prejudiced, for I remembered Klio's lovely dark hair, and I tend to be partial to brunets. Who, eventually, would prove to be the best slave I did not know. Let such women compete desperately with one another, and with other slaves, each striving to be the best.
One of the men cried out with pleasure.
That had been an excellent leash move, to be sure. Klio displayed herself brilliantly on the leash. Such things seem very natural for a woman. perhaps they are, to some extent, like slave dance, instinctive, the biological template, or genetic dispositions for them, having been selected for thousands of years ago, the most pleasing of captive women, perhaps, those squirming best on their tethers, or in their bonds, tending to be utilized for sexual conquest. Perhaps, however, they are associated, in their way, with something even deeper, something clearly selected for, the biological need of a woman to belong, to be approved of and to love.
"Superb!" said a fellow.
I wondered if Klio, sensing these deep, dark, wonderful, frightening things within her, the rightfulness of the destiny of submission to men for her, and such, had not, perhaps in the privacy of her own chambers, before her mirror, put the leash on herself. Perhaps she had then, there, before the mirror, in the privacy of her own quarters, moved similarly. It is not unusual for women to do this sort of thing, alone, often in bonds and chains, expressing plaintively therein their longing for a master.
"Superb! Superb!"
Klio, I recalled, had chosen a dangerous way of life, one which she must surely have realized, on one level or another, might lead to the collar.
"'Klio'," I said to the men, "might be an excellent name for a slave, do you not think so?"
"Yes!" said more than one.
Klio flushed with pleasure. Somehow it seemed she became even more sinuous, more sensuous, then.
I saw that she was paying a bit too much attention to the tall fellow.
"On your belly," I said to Klio. "There, that fellow," I said, indicating a grizzled sapper to one side, his tools near him, "address yourself to him, about the feet and legs." He grinned.
"No!" said the tall fellow.
I had thought this move on my part might bring him into action.
Klio stopped, and turned, from her knees, to regard him.
"I will buy her!" he said.
"She is not cheap," I said. It seemed to me I might as well get what I could for Klio. I fear I must admit occasionally to a streak of opportunistic greediness. "A silver tarsk!" he cried.
"Done!" I said. I had not really expected anything like that. Klio, redeemed through Ephialtes, had only cost me thirty copper tarsks. Perhaps I should have held out for more, seeing the eagerness of the fellow, but, after all, I was taken by surprise by the splendid offer, and even opportunistic greediness has its limits, particularly when surprised.
"On all fours," I said to Klio.
Immediately she went to all fours.
"A silver tarsk," I said.
It was placed in my palm and I put it in my pouch. I then removed my leash and collar from her neck. I had not even returned the leash and collar to my pouch before I heard a decisive click and a small cry from Klio. She looked up, collared, a slave, at her master.
"She dances the leash dance well, does she not?" I asked.
"I will improve her in it," said he, grimly.
Klio quickly bend her head, unbidden, to his feet, and kissed them.
"Share her," said a fellow.
"Let her dance again," said another, "not in the leash."
"Proffer her to the arms of each of us," said another, "in turn." "She is mine," said the fellow.
"We are your comrade in arms," said another.
"True!" said another.
"Have no fear," said the tall fellow. "I will share the slave, and my good fortune, with you, but do not forget that in the end it is I alone to whom she belongs, that it is mine alone whose slave she is."
The men had crowded about Klio now, and I could hardly see her among them. Even the fellow from the low wooden platform, which gave him a vantage over the top of the trench, had joined them.
I backed away, unnoticed, toward the nearest sapling trench. In a moment I had then turned and was making my way rapidly toward the walls. In places the sapping trench was covered with planking, which might protect workers, or soldiers in their advance. In an Ehn or so I had come to its end, some twenty yards or so from the wall. Boulders lay about there, probably rolled from the height of the wall. Some were lodged at the trench, having crushed in the timber cover. The trench had not been taken around these obstacles. My heart was beating rapidly. I emerged from the trench, and waving a piece of white cloth, which on Gor is a truce cloth, as it is on Earth, climbed, slipping up, up the rather steep incline toward the base of the walls.
"Ho!" I said. "Do not fire! I am a friend. I have come here at great risk! I have a message for Aemilianus from Gnieus Lelius, Regent of Ar! Admit me!" There was silence from the height of the wall.
There were no posterns here, and the great gate was hundreds of yards away. Too, in such a time, it would surely not be open for one man.
I waved the white cloth vigorously.
That such a cloth may be used upon Gor as a truce cloth may have a direct historical connection with the similar device on Earth. Certainly many Gorean institutions and practices would seem to have Earth origins. On the other hand, in relationship to the Earth device may be merely a coincidental one, a white cloth, in effect, a blank flag, seeming to be a reasonably natural device to signify neutrality. Blank standards, too, or, more commonly, standards draped with white cloth, sometimes serve similar purposes. There are other devices, too, pertinent to such matters, particularly in formal contexts, such as the symbolic laying aside of arms, but I was certainly not, in this context, about to lay aside any arms.