One of the women in the tiny circle, throwing her head about, seemed mad with fear. She rose up, suddenly, staggering. “Do not leave the circle or you die!” snarled a fellow. She knelt down then, sobbing. She was soon sold.
“Huta! Huta!” called men.
“Abrogastes!” called others, pressing for his attention.
“This is not happening to me!” cried a woman in the small circle, but, in moments, she was on her belly, and her new master, kneeling across her body, was binding her hands behind her back. When he stood she turned, on her side, bound, and looked up at him, and then swiftly pressed her lips to his boot.
Another woman was put in the circle.
“Put your hands behind the back of your head, and bend backward,” she was told by the fellow at the circle. “Now put your hands on your hips, and flex your knees!”
Wonderingly, frightened, the woman did so.
“Now, move!” said the man at the circle.
“Surely not, Master!” cried the woman.
“Now!” he said.
“Oh!” she cried.
“There,” said the man, “now you have moved as a slave before men. I do not think you will ever forget this moment.”
“No, Master!” she said, flushed, wonderingly, knowing she could never again, after that movement, be anything other than what she now was, a slave.
“Slut! Slut!” cried one of the women in the larger circle.
“Yes, yes,” wept the woman in the smaller circle. “I am a slut! I am a slave. I cannot now be anything different.”
“I, too, am a slave!” cried one of the women in the larger circle.
“I, too!” said others.
“Take me next!” cried one. “I would be won!”
“I am hot!” wept the woman in the smaller circle.
“Yes, yes, I, too!” said another woman in the larger circle.
Many held out their hands to be the next to be permitted to the smaller circle, but the one selected was she who had cried out, “Slut! Slut!”
“You will have nothing from me!” she cried, as she was dragged, standing, to the circle. “I will be inert!”
“The whip,” said a man, putting out his hand, into which the implement was promptly placed.
“No, Master!” she said. “Please, no!”
“Shall our little critic be lashed?” inquired the fellow, of the tables.
“Let her perform!” called a man.
“Interest them,” said the man with the whip.
“Please, no!” she wept.
The whip snapped.
The men laughed as the distraught beauty attempted to interest them.
“Is that the best you can do?” inquired the man with the whip. Again the whip cracked.
“More,” said the man with the whip.
There was laughter.
“It seems the next stroke must be upon your body,” said the fellow with the whip.
“No, no, Master!” she wept.
He held her left arm with his left hand, and was behind her.
“Aii!” she suddenly cried.
There was, again, laughter, but this laughter was one not only of amusement, but one also of genuine interest.
Gently, but surely, and unexpectedly, had the whip, coiled, touched her.
The proud woman was now no more than a humbled, scarlet mass of shame in his hand.
“It seems your body betrays your mouth,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“Lying is not permitted to a slave girl,” he said.
“No, Master,” she said.
“Do you think, truly, you are different from other slaves?” he asked.
“No, Master,” she said.
“Do you think you will be an inert slave?” he asked.
“No, Master!” she said. “Please, Master, let me be won swiftly!’’
“Inertness is not permitted in a slave,” he said.
“No, Master!” she said.
She was soon won.
Swiftly, eagerly, she crawled to her new master.
Another woman, one eager to be won, was brought to the circle.
“Hold, Abrogastes!” called Farrix, of the Borkons, who had risen to his feet.
The woman in the circle shrank down, tiny.
The dice stopped rattling.
Abrogastes turned toward Farrix, for Farrix was on his feet, and a chieftain.
“Let the pellets be cast,” said Farrix, grimly.
“Beware, father,” whispered Ingeld.
Abrogastes gave no sign he had heard the warning of Ingeld, Ingeld, who kept his thoughts muchly to himself.
Huta, lying in the dirt before the dais, trembled, sensing suddenly that her fate might cease to depend on such simple matters as guilt or justice, or her desirability or lack of desirability as a female slave, but on other matters, subtle political matters, on rankings, on contests of will, on maneuverings for power.
“Of course,” said Abrogastes, affably.
She knew that Abrogastes despised and hated her, for her role in the business of the Ortungs, but she also suspected that he, the thought both alarming and stirring her, found her not without interest as a slave. Surely more than once she had detected in his eyes, or thought she had, keen desire, even fierce desire, as for a slave to be uncompromisingly mastered and ravished. She had no hope of winning his love, that hope of almost every slave girl, to win the love of her master, but hoped that she might, if only by years of an abject slave’s service and devotion, win perhaps at least some particle of a begrudging sufferance.
“How will Abrogastes, lord of the Drisriaks, cast his pellet?” inquired Farrix.
“Sacrifice her, father,” whispered Ingeld.
“How will Farrix cast his pellet?” inquired Abrogastes.
“She is not worth the collar!” said another Borkon.
“But she is not without interest,” said another Borkon, evenly.
The hand of Farrix went to his dagger, but he withdrew it, and it was almost as though he had not moved.
“The matter is trivial, and it had escaped my mind,” said Abrogastes.
He nodded to the clerk.
“Let the pellets be cast!” called the clerk.
Huta was pulled to her knees, and turned to face the scales, that she might witness the deciding of her fate.
“Death to her!” cried a man.
“Life!” cried another.
The feasters then, the women in the circle forgotten, even she in the smaller circle, waiting, small, kneeling there, to be won, began to leave the tables and file, one by one, to the table of pellets, and then each, to cries of acclamation, or anger, or derision, cast their pellets, those small, leaden counters, into the pan of their choice.
Huta could scarcely kneel.
“Straighten your body, head up,” said the fellow who had positioned her. “Place your hands, wrists crossed, as though they were bound, at the small of your back.”
She tried to comply.
Pellets struck into the pans.
The pan of death began to descend even more.
“See she who was once the proud Huta!” laughed a man.
“See the slave,” said another.
“She trembles,” said another.
“She cannot even hold herself upon her knees,” laughed another.
“Tie her wrists behind her back,” said Abrogastes.
“Blindfold her,” said Abrogastes.
“Put her on a double leash,” said Abrogastes.
These things were done, that she might better hold her position, and then she knelt much as she had, save that now her small wrists, in reality, were fastened behind her back, her eyes were now bandaged, with a folded scarf, and on her neck were two leashes, the straps, short and taut, extending from the two leash collars on her neck to the fists of her keepers, one on each side. The residual lengths of the straps were muchly coiled, the higher coils wrapped about their fists.
Huta moaned.
The pellets, unseen by her now, continued to strike into the pans.