The sales in the pavillion would already have begun. "Buy these girls! Buy these girls!" I heard, as I made my way between the platforms toward the pavilion. "Buy me, Master!" called a girl, with long dark hair, naked, lying on her side on one of the darkly varnished platforms, her body hail covered with chains bound about her.
"A tarsk bit to enter, Master," said a slaver's man at the entrance to the pavilion.
I handed him a tarsk bit from my pouch, and pushed through the canvas.
My nostrils flared, my blood moved now faster in my veins. There is something charged and exhilarating about a slave market, the color, the movement, the excitement of the crowds, the bidding, the intensity, the lovely women being sold.
"Four copper tarsks!" was a bid called from the floor.
The girl stood on the block, her right side to the bidders. Her hands were behind her head, and her body was arched back. Her left leg was behind her, her right leg, flexed, thrust forth.
"Six!" was another bid.
She then faced the bidders, half crouched, her hands at her head, throwing her hair forward over her face. She regarded them angrily, sullenly, through her hair. Yet there was in her eyes a sultry need recognized by Gorean buyers. Taken home, she would soon become a satisfactory, hot slave, piteous and eager at her master's feet. She was directed by the auctioneer, responding to his voice commands and the light, deft, guiding touches of his whip.
I moved through the crowds, to get somewhat closer to the block. The girl was sold for fifteen copper tarsks to a metal worker from Tor.
I looked about in the crowd.
The next girl was a willowy blond Earth girl. She was sent to the block in what are regarded as the odd undergarments of Earth females. Both the upper undergarment and the lower were white. Her hands were braceleted behind her and the auctioneer, his whip in his belt, controlled her by the hair. She was hysterical. Her brassiere was first removed, then the panties. The latter garment, by Goreans, is regarded as a peculiarly strange one. It, silken and brier, is obviously a slave's garment, but it is closed at the bottom. It would take a man an extra moment to rape such a slave.
She was sold for four copper tarsks. I did not see who bought her. I think it was a locksmith from Ti.
I bought a slice of rolled meat, filled with sauce, in a waxed paper, from a vendor.
It was then that I saw him. Our eyes met. He turned white. Immediately, flinging aside the food, I began to thrust through the crowd toward him. He turned and, squirming and thrusting, fought his way toward the side of the tent.
I knew him now. He was the fellow whose back I had seen in the restaurant, from a distance. I had not been able to place at that time his identity. He no longer now wore the brown and black common to professional sleen trainers. He wore, as I, merchant robes.
I did not speak, or call out to him. Rather I pursued him. He looked back once and then, thrusting men aside, fought his way to the tent's side.
I pursued him who had called himself Bertram of Lydius, he who had, in my house, set a sleen upon me.
I wanted his throat in my hands.
When I thrust through the cut side of the tent, where he had slashed it open, he was not in sight.
I cursed and struck my fist upon my thigh. He was gone.
Behind me, from the tent, I heard the calls and the bid-big. Another girl was on the block.
I looked out over the crowds. Thousands were at the fair of the Sardar.
My chances of finding one man in that crowd, and one who knew I searched for him, would be negligible. I looked angrily about. Behind me two men slipped into the tent, through the cut canvas. I no longer wished to attend the market. I turned away from the tent and, angrily, no clear destination in mind, mingled with the crowds. In time I found myself near the palisade ringing the Sardar mountains. I climbed one of the high platforms there. From these platforms one may look upon the Sardar. I stood alone on the platform, and gazed at the snow-capped mountains, glistening under the mingled light of the three white moons. From the platform, too, I could see the fair, with its lights and fires, and tents and shelters, and the amphitheater in the distance, where Scormus of Ar and gentle Centius of Cos would meet tomorrow on the opposite sides of a small board marked with red and yellow squares. The district of the fair covered several square pasangs. It was very beautiful at night.
I descended the stairs of the platform and turned my steps toward the public tent where I had, earlier in the morning, reserved a lodging for myself.
I lay thinking in the furs, my hands behind my head, looking up at the ceiling of the tent above me. There was little light in the tent, for it was late. It was difficult for me to sleep.
More than a thousand men slept in this great tent.
The ceiling of the tent above me billowed slightly, responsive to a gentle wind from the east.
There were small lamps hung here and there in the tent. They hung on tiny chains. These chains were suspended from metal projections on certain of the tent poles.
I turned to my side, to watch her approach.
She moved carefully through the furs.
She knelt beside me.
A string was knotted about her waist. Over this string, in the front, there was thrust a single, simple narrow rectangle of vulgar, white rep-cloth, some six inches in width, some twelve inches in length.
She wore on her throat a high, gold collar, with, in front, a large golden loop, some two inches in width. Threaded through this loop loose, was a golden chain. This chain terminated, at each end, with high, golden slave bracelets. When the girl stands her hands may fall naturally at her sides, each in its bracelet, each bracelet attached to the same chain, which passes through the collar loop.
It is a very beautiful way of chaining a girl.
"Master," she whispered.
"I remember you," I said. She had been the slave who had followed me earlier in the day, who had bitten at my sleeve near the puppet theater, whom I had saved from a beating by the guardsmen under the aegis of the officer of the fair's merchant staff. She had begged me to take pity on her needs. I had not done so, of course. She might have been under the discipline of deprivation. Too, there had seemed no point in perhaps doing her master dishonor. I did not even know him. I had told her, after I had had her kneel and kiss my feet, to run to her master, and crawl to him on her belly and beg his touch. "Yes, Master," she had said, and she had then leaped to her feet, frightened, and sped away.
"I did not know you were a slave in the public tents," I said to her.
"Yes, Master," she said, putting her head down. "I am a tent slave here."
"Why did you not tell me?" I asked.
"Is a girl to be permitted no pride?" she asked.
"No," I told her.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Would it have made any difference?" she asked.
"No," I said.
"I thought not," she said.
"When you ran to your master," I asked, "as I commanded you, and crawled to him on your belly and begged his touch, what did he do?"
"He kicked me from his feet, and gave me over to a servant for switching," she said.
"Excellent," I said.
She looked down.
"Doubtless, by now," I said, "you have been much pleasured in these furs."
"There are other tent slaves here," she said, "many more beautiful than I, and men come late to the furs, tired and drunk. It is hard for us to compete with the beauties, of the paga tents."
"I see," I said.
There were tears in her eyes. She reached forth her right hand, timidly, to touch my thigh. This caused the chain to slip a bit through the collar loop.
"Take pity on a slave, Master," she said.
I looked at her.
She backed away a bit and then, on her belly, crawled to me. She timidly pulled back the furs and pressed her lips to my thigh. Her lips were soft and wet. She looked up at me, tears in her eyes. "I crawl to my master on my belly," she said, "and beg for his touch."