“Pleasing, as women?” asked the man with the rifle.
“Yes, yes!” cried several.
“But you are free women!” said the man with the rifle.
Several of the women had fallen to their knees in the sand. Did they not realize that that was undignified, and might sully or injure their garments?
“Yes, yes,” cried several of the women. “We beg to be pleasing, as women, as women!”
“Remove your garments, every stitch,” called the man with the rifle from the box of the hostess. “Then, go to all fours, and, in line, crawl slowly to the exit portal from the arena. There, one by one, you will be collared, and chained.”
“Good,” said Gundlicht, after a bit, looking over the railing. “They are block naked,” he said.
“We have clothing!” cried one of the neck-roped slaves down to the sand.
“Lash her,” said the man with the rifle. “She did not request permission to speak.”
“It will be done,” said a man.
The slave who had called out, loudly, derisively, to the women below, so triumphantly, moaned in dismay. She had not requested permission to speak. She would be lashed.
“We shall proceed as planned?” asked Gundlicht.
“Yes,” said the man with a rifle. “We will take them downriver, through the delta, in a covered barge. Then, as we have arranged, they will be distributed, and sold.”
At this point the fellow whom the man with the rifle had sent for the two collars had returned to the tiers.
“Collar them,” said the man with the rifle.
“Hold still,” said the man.
“Yes, Master,” whispered the former Lady Delia.
There was a click and the new slave was collared. She put her head down.
“Hold still,” said the man, again.
“Yes, Master,” said Cornhair. She closed her eyes, briefly. She felt the metal being placed about her neck, and adjusted. She waited. Then she heard the click, and she, too, was collared. She opened her eyes, on all fours, her neck once again encircled with the badge of bondage.
“I am now, again, in a collar,” she thought. “I am pleased. How can I be pleased? I am collared. Why do I not mind this?”
“You are Delia,” said the man with the rifle to the former Lady Delia.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“How fitting it is,” Cornhair thought to herself, “that we are collared. We are so different from free women. Who could mistake a girl in a collar? It is so clear, what she is. I would not want to be mistaken for a free woman, for I am not a free woman. I am so different. I am a slave.”
“What is your name?” the man with the rifle asked the former Lady Delia.
“‘Delia’, Master,” she said.
“Strange,” thought Cornhair to herself, “I welcome the collar. I am happy that I have been put in it. I am choiceless. I want it that way. What has become of me? I am a slave. I know that now.”
She heard the snap of the silken canopy over her head. Part of the arena was now in the shade.
“I love it that men are strong, and will do with me, as they will,” she thought. “I do not mind being sold. I hope to have a good Master. But I will have whatever Master buys me. I am a slave.”
One of the men was now leading the string of tunicked, neck-roped slaves down from the tiers.
She was not sure they would be mixed with the new slaves. Perhaps they would be sold in Telnar. That was apparently not to be the case with the new slaves.
“What will be done with me,” wondered Cornhair. “I will be given away, or sold.”
It occurred to her quite naturally now that she would be given away or sold. She had stood on a slave shelf, bared, with a placard on her neck. She had been exhibited, stripped, on a sales block, displayed as goods. There was now no doubt that she might be given away or sold. She now understood herself, wholly and deeply, as what she was, a slave. Her hopes and fears were now those of a slave. Her consciousness was now the consciousness of a slave
She now wished to be a slave, and to belong, and obey, and serve.
“I am a slave,” she thought. “It is what I am. It is what I want to be. Let others have their freedom. I have experienced that. Now I want to be owned, to belong. I want to be handled, dominated, exploited, and ravished. I want to be vulnerable and helpless. I want a Master. I need a Master.”
“May I speak, Master?” asked the slave, Delia, of the man with the rifle.
“Yes,” he said.
“What is to be done with us, with myself, and those who were with me?”
“For the most part,” he said, “you will be scattered amongst a hundred markets on a hundred worlds.”
“I have gathered you are not a boat man, not a river man, not even a river pirate,” she said.
“No,” he said.
“The names ‘Gundlicht’ and ‘Hendrix’,” she said, “are not Telnarian names.”
“No,” he said.
“May I inquire as to the nature of my Master?” she asked.
“I am Alemanni,” he said, “or, as you will have it, of the Aatii.”
“No!” she cried.
“It is so, pretty animal,” he said.
“A barbarian owns me!” she cried in misery. “I am the property of a barbarian!”
“Amongst the Alemanni,” he said, “my tribe was the Drisriaks. I was high amongst them. I broke away, to form a new tribe, the Ortungen. We fared badly, muchly struck down by the forces of Abrogastes.”
“Abrogastes,” she said, “the great barbarian lord whose fleets and armies attack and plunder worlds, which threaten the empire itself, Abrogastes, he called the Far-Grasper? His very name is scarcely dared spoken in Telnar!”
“He is my father,” said the man with the rifle. “I am Ortog, his son, no longer in his favor.”
“Woe,” she wept, “I am not only fallen into the hands of a barbarian, but into the hands of the son of the dreaded Abrogastes himself.”
“As a woman of the empire,” he said, “it makes little difference as to what barbarian you might fall. We all know what to do with women of the empire.”
“Please sell me, Master,” she said. “Please sell me soon, to someone of civilization.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “But barbarians enjoy owning women of the empire, particularly former high women. They look well in rags, or less, tending pigs, and such.”
“Have mercy,” she pleaded, on all fours, head down, collared.
“I may keep you,” he said.
“Please, do not, Master,” she begged.
“Who, slave,” asked Ortog, “was second to you, when you were free?”
“Lady Virginia Serena,” said Delia, “of the lesser Serenii, of Telnar.”
“Then I may keep both of you,” he said, “that you may compete for my favor.”
“Have mercy, Master,” she said.
“It is pleasant to own slaves,” he said. “Who do you think would be my favorite, amongst you two?”
“Doubtless we would both try to be pleasing to our Master.”
“The whip will see to it,” he said. “And then, later, when you are aroused, aroused as slaves, the whip of your needs.”
“Surely not!” she said.
“It will be pleasant, to see you naked on your belly, begging for a caress.”
“How could such a thing be?” she said.
“Wait until you are longer in a collar,” he said.
She put her head down, trembling.
“Why is it,” she whispered, “that one who was once high amongst the Drisriaks, a captain or chieftain, even a king perhaps, stooped to raid a small compound on the Turning Serpent?”
“Even a man of great wealth,” he said, “may pick up a coin found on the street, and I am not of great wealth. The Ortungen have fallen far. I have men to feed, and ships to fuel. Remnants of scattered followers are to be regathered. The banner of the Ortungen must be once more unfurled.”
“And gold is needed,” said Delia.
“Of course,” he said, “and even copper, and silver.”
“I see,” she said.
“But the costless acquisition of one hundred and fifty two slaves, Telnarian slaves,” he said, “young and lovely slaves, formerly of significant station, is scarcely a negligible coin to be picked up on the street. I am paid to acquire them and, once they are acquired, I may distribute and sell them as I please.”