“Such as Otto, King of the Otungs?” said Otto.
“Yes,” said Julian.
“Look before you,” said Otto. “See white snow. It covers blackened stone. Where there stood a mighty edifice now reposes a bleak summit. The wind here is cold and the clouds bright. A hawk soars overhead.”
“I am sorry, dear Ottonius,” said Julian.
“Do you think the empire can be conquered so easily?” said Otto.
“Not easily conquered,” said Julian, “but easily seized.”
And then the two men turned their mounts to the backtrail, leading down, far below, to the Plains of Barrionuevo, or the Flats of Tung, leaving behind them the ruins of a great house, the festung of Sim Giadini.
17
Cornhair fought the close-fitting metal circlets on her wrists, pulling against the three short links that fastened them together.
“Free me!” she cried. “I do not belong here! It is a mistake! I am a free woman! Clothe me!”
Her hands were braceleted before her so that she, as the others, could reach into the gruel bowl to feed herself, when it was available.
Her hands, now, were clenched on the coffle chain before her, at her neck. The chain ran from the coffle collar to the back ring of the collar of the girl before her, rather as, from the back ring of her own coffle collar, the chain ran back to the front ring on the girl’s collar who followed her. Her position in the coffle, which consisted of forty girls, was rather toward the center, as the coffle was arranged in terms of height, the tallest girls first.
“I am a free woman!” she cried.
But her thigh, as we noted earlier, bore the small, lovely, delicate slave rose.
To be sure, she wore no personal collar, and certainly not the clumsy chain collar of the Heruls, with the bulky, attached slave bell, obviously suggested by the cattle bell, or herd bell, by means of which Heruls were occasionally wont to mark out particular beasts, as of one kind or another. The bell might also, upon occasion, obviously, assist in locating the animal, following it, keeping track of it, and so on. Too, in the case of certain animals, the bell, as would a normal collar, serves to keep the animal in mind of what it is, and only is, an owned animal. She had been placed, as the reader might recall, in a market collar outside the Herul camp. And while White Ankles had been knelt, bound, delightedly at the knee of the wagon driver, the dealer, Cornhair had endured the trip to Venitzia, bound and foot, prone or supine, or on her side, as she might turn, on the rough planks of the wagon bed. Things were not much better at the overnight camps, for there Cornhair had been freed of her ropes but had been close-shackled, and put about gathering grass for bedding for the dealer and White Ankles, drawing water from a nearby stream, and bringing in wood for the supper fire, and, later, the watch fire. White Ankles cooked the food, and was permitted to feed as soon as the dealer had taken the first bite. How privileged she was, though yet in a mere market collar, like Cornhair. Had she won the heart of the dealer? Surely his hands were often on her. Did she dare hope he would lock his private collar, his personal collar, on her neck? But Cornhair must wait until the dealer and White Ankles had finished, and then, when she herself had finished, she must attend to the simple pots, bowls, and utensils, after which she must prepare the bedding for the dealer and White Ankles, after which her shackles were removed and she was chained by the left ankle to a tree. Hearing the gasping, delighted cries of White Ankles, thrashing about in the blankets with the dealer, did not further render her more fond of White Ankles, not that she had been that fond of her ever, even in the Herul camp. As White Ankles had not been bound, Cornhair wondered why she had not run away. Did a stronger chain than one of iron fasten her heart to the dealer’s foot? Early in the night, Cornhair was certain that, should she herself be freed of bonds, she would have run away. But then, sometime in the middle of the night, seeing a pair of bright, baleful eyes, bright in the darkness, just beyond the watch fire, she revised her view. At Venitzia Cornhair was sold, having been placed on a table and assessed. To her astonishment, and chagrin, she had brought only fifteen darins. She had then been placed in a house collar, and put in a storeroom with other girls. White Ankles, she noted, was kept by the dealer. She looked well at his feet. Cornhair, feigning congeniality, a ruse she had thought it wise to adopt following her unfortunate experiences with other girls in the Herul camp, was soon apprised of an abundance of information. Most particularly, she learned that she, with several others, was to be freighted to Point North, which is in the vicinity of the city of Lisle, on Inez IV. She was owned by a company known as Bondage Flowers, which had assets on several worlds. Many companies dealing with a particular form of merchandise used the expression “Flowers” in their company name, for example, “Hermione’s Flowers,” “Love Flowers,” “Pleasure Flowers,” “Flowers of Gathrol,” “Desire’s Flowers,” and “Flowers of the Six Yellow Stars,” and so on. To be sure, most companies dealing with goods of the sort in question took pains to eschew allusions so common and obvious, such as “Sendex’s” and “The House of Worlds.” The “House of Worlds,” for example, licensed on more than a hundred worlds, processes tens of thousands of girls, of diverse species, annually, indexing the year to the orbit of Telnaria. Its hunters and slavers, with their purchase coins, and ropes and cages, are familiar on a thousand worlds within and outside the empire. In the wake of war, harvestings are particularly plentiful. Many young females who might otherwise have been summarily slain are now kept for sale. It might be noted that Bondage Flowers was neither the smallest nor the largest, neither the least known nor the best known, neither the cheapest nor the dearest, of such enterprises. Its reputation, with respect to resources, quality of merchandise, and volume of business, would have placed it, we suppose, a bit above the center in most rankings pertinent to such matters. In the days awaiting her shipment, Cornhair, discreetly to be sure, learned much from the banter and idle chatter of her uninhibited sisters, particularly when sitting at the margin of one group or another of young slaves hanging on the words of one perhaps no older than themselves, but one whose neck was no stranger to the collar. Many a time she thought to withdraw in indignation, even to flee away in dismay, scandalized, given the nature of such alarming discourses, but she, perhaps with misgivings, but with rapt fascination, as well, could not be moved from her place. She learned a thousand little things, secrets of the collar, of hair, cosmetics, and perfumes, of the turning of a hip, the extension of a foot, the draping of a tunic, of prostrations, beggings, tiny gestures, movements, smiles, timidities, boldnesses, of caresses of small hands, of lips, tongue, body, and hair, of the bathing of men and the combing of their hair, of dressing them and tying their sandals, of licking their thighs and whimpering, of how to move in chains and a hundred other things, of how to please a Master in a thousand modalities, and how, perforce, submitted and will-less, choiceless and grateful, to open oneself, yielding and enraptured, to a thousand ecstasies a thousand times beyond those a free woman could know, and which a free woman could only dare to suspect. Could it be true, Cornhair wondered, that there could be such a life, one so real, one of being owned, one of submission, service, and love. “No, no, no!” thought Cornhair, her fingers on the band at her throat. “It cannot be!” she thought. “It cannot be!”
“Someone is coming!” said a girl.
Cornhair remembered, only too vividly, the dealer’s account of the alleged downfall of the Larial Calasalii, but surely he had lied, if only to discomfit her. She did recall, from long ago, from a conversation with a high official, one Iaachus, the Arbiter of Protocol in the Imperial Court, that all might not be well with her family. She had heard, for example, of the burning of the piers at Governor’s Landing, the loss of the cargo contract between Archus and Miton, and such things, but such reverses, or lapses, would be negligible to the wealth of one of the greatest of houses in the empire, surely nothing like the loss of a war, the seizure of assets, its outlawing, and such. “No,” thought Cornhair, “it cannot be true! And even if there were something to it, much must remain!”