The two beauties were drawn by the hunter from the platform and they then stood, frightened, tied together by the neck, before it.
The third and fourth girl looked upon these proceedings with unfeigned terror. They knew they themselves could be as easily the objects of so casual a transaction, putting them in the total power of a buyer, their master.
The red hunter, with two short lengths of the leather rope, jerked the hands of the beauties behind them and, swiftly, expertly, fastened them together. The blond-haired girl winced. "Oh," said the dark-haired girl, suddenly. I saw the hunter had tied women before. They were totally helpless.
The red hunters are generally a kind, peaceable folk, except with animals. Two sorts of beasts are kept in domestication in the north; the first sort of beast is the snow sleen; the second is the white-skinned woman.
"Ho," said the red hunter, and strode from the platform. The two beasts he had purchased hurried after him.
"Theirs will be a hard slavery," I said to the slaver's man.
"They will learn to pull a sled under the whip," he said.
"Yes," I said. Such women were used as draft animals. But they would serve, too, as slave girls do, many other purposes.
"Wait until the red women get hold of them," laughed the slaver's man.
"They may kill them," I said.
"They have one 'chance for life," he said, "to obey with total perfection."
"But," I asked, "is that not every slave girl's one chance for life?"
"True," he said. Then he turned and looked at the third and fourth girl.
They looked at him with terror. Beside them, on the platform, were two pairs of opened, empty ankle loops, two pairs of opened, empty wrist cuffs, two opened, empty collars, and some chain, and two platform tunics, discarded.
"I think," I said, "that these two girls might now be moved back on the platform and have their hands chained before their bodies rather than behind."
"I think you are right," he said, chuckling. He climbed to the platform and moved the girls back. He then unlocked the left cuff of the first girl and then recuffed her, this time with her small hands before her body. He did the same with the second. In doing this he had discarded their platform tunics. He then rejoined me before the platform.
They now knelt back on the platform in normal display location, their hands chained before them. They looked at him.
The slaver's man, with the whip, gestured broadly, expansively, to the passing crowd. He grinned at the girls.
The fourth girl, who had once worn the denim pants and beige flannel shirt, extended her chained hands to the crowd. "Buy me, Masters!" she cried out. "Buy me for your lover and slave. I am beautiful. I will serve you well!" She called out in English, for she knew no Gorean, but there could be little misinterpretation of her intent or of the desperate. piteous nature of her entreaties. "Buy me! Buy me!" she begged.
"I am even more beautiful!" cried the other suddenly. "Buy me instead!"
I saw men gathering about them. The girls redoubled their piteous efforts to please. "Buy me, Master!" cried one. "Buy me, kind masters!" cried the other. They sought the eyes of men in the crowd. I could see they now, though they were barbarian, excited interest. Some men like a barbarian girl. And if a girl is not fully broken to the collar, one can always teach her. There is always the whip.
"How much do you want for them?" asked a man.
"They are not cheap," said the slaver's man.
I smiled to myself and left the area of the platform. They would soon be sold.
I pressed through the crowds.
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.