Four-three-seven, of course, was the number written on the girl's left breast. As her number was 437 and there were only some one hundred or one hundred and fifty or so females in the chain, near the wall, I assumed there was probably one or more collection points elsewhere, perhaps nearer the Semnium, the Council Hall. On the other hand perhaps there were merely more females to come in. The numbers, it seemed, were prearranged numbers, and not merely numbers indicating the order of capture. The officer, for example already had had her number on his list, probably with her name. In this fashion, the girls being added to the chain as captured, this chain, or any others, might have diverse numbers upon it. I had gathered, for example, from what the officer had said, that the girl's mother, number 261 on the list, was somewhere in this very chain, which would have been unlikely if its prisoners were being added to it in a strict numerical sequence. A strict numerical order, if desired, of course, could always be set up later, at the leisure of the captors. In the meantime, it was the list that was crucial.
The officer looked down at the girl. "You may bring your head forward," he said. Gratefully, she did so.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"Euphrosyne, Lady of Torcadino", she sobbed.
He looked at her, reprovingly.
"Four-three-seven!" she said quickly.
"Anything else?" he asked.
"No," she said, shaking her head. "No!"
The soldier then pulled her to her feet by the hair and thrust her before him, toward the chain. In a moment she was on the chain, kneeling, her throat snugly enclosed in a side-loop of the same chain, it fastened shut on her by a padlock. "Do you expect to find all the women on your seizure lists?" I asked the officer.
"Most of them," he said. "Doubtless some will elude us, at least for a time." "Many," said Mincon, "will be apprehended at the gates. They will not know they were on the lists. They will then be stripped, bound, marked with their number and brought to a collection point."
"After tomorrow, too," said the officer, "unauthorized civilians will not be permitted within the walls. The penalty for the unauthorized male will be swift and honorable execution, that for the unauthorized female being fed to sleen, or, if she is comely enough, and zealous enough to please, perhaps bondage." "There is little point in trying to hide in the city," said Mincon. "Eventually all the houses will be searched. Too, when they are hungry enough they will creep out at night to seek food. They may then, sooner or later, with the aid of tracking sleen, be taken."
"I see," I said.
"With the nature of Torcadino," said the officer, "the walls, and our control of the city, it is highly unlikely, sooner or later, that we will have every one of the women on our list."
I nodded. The listed females, under the particular circumstances currently prevailing in Torcadino, had little chance of escape. To be sure, many were not yet female slaves. For most practical purposes, for the Gorean female slave, properly identified, branded and collared, there is no escape. If she escapes from one master, which is exceedingly unlikely, she will doubtless soon find herself in the chains of another, and one who is perhaps worse. Certainly the new master will know that she is an escaped slave and will be likely to treat her with great harshness and keep her under the strictest confinements. He will probably make certain, as well, that sleen have her scent. Too, the penalties for running away can be severe, in the second case generally involving being fed to sleen or being hamstrung, to be used perhaps thereafter as a begging slave. "What is to be done with these women?" I asked the officer.
"Most of them will be sold in lots to contractors," he said.
"Like much of the other loot?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. "The general contracts, for pickups of loot, projected quantities, and such, were let weeks ago."
"Of course," I said.
I noted one of the soldiers. He moved about, here and there within the chain lines, among the women. Occasionally he would put his whip before the lips of one of them. She would then kiss it.
"But some of these females are quite beautiful." I said.
"For example, 437 is extremely lovely."
"Her mother, 261, is also quite lovely." He said. "Certain of these women, of course, the better ones, like the more expensive loot, will not go to the contractors, but will be kept for distribution, the less beautiful ones to the troops, the more beautiful ones to the officers."
I nodded. These arrangements were typical.
"I have already made notations with respect to several of them," he said, indicating his papers, "including 437 and 261. In advance of course, when one enters them, if at all, only in the robes of concealment, one does not know which are the most beautiful."
"Such determinations now, of course," I said, "may be easily made." "Yes," he said.
I regarded the women. For the past weeks, they had been going about their business, ignorantly, naively, unsuspectingly, totally unaware of how they might be included as humble objects in the plans of masters. Doubtless they had given much attention to the matters of their day, to their various competitions, pursuits, vanities, occupations and concerns. All that time they did not know that already, in dried, indelible ink, their names were recorded on seizure lists. I observed them. They knelt, chained. On the upper portion of the left breast of each was number. It was the number which had followed their name on the seizure lists. That number was theirs. It had been theirs for weeks. But only now, to their horror, did they learn so, and find it literally inscribed on their bodies.
I saw the soldier hold the whip before 437. She bent forward and kissed it. "Come along," said Mincon. "We must go to the Semnium."
We then followed him, Hurtha and I, and Boabissia, the hempen leashes of Tula and Feiqa in the grasp of Hurtha.
14 The Semnium; The Outer Office
"These are new bodies, fresh bodies," I said.
"Of course," said Mincon.
We were at the foot of the low, broad steps of the Semnium, the hall of the high council, which building, it seemed, might now serve as the headquarters of the new masters of Torcadino. These steps extended before the building, for the entire length of its portico.
"Who are they?" I asked.
There were some two to three hundred new bodies hung now from tarred ropes along the Avenue of Adminius, in the vicinity of the Semnium.
"Collaborators, traitors, men who were of the party of Cos, betrayers of the alliance with Ar, and such," said Mincon.
"As those earlier were similarly adherents of Ar?" I asked.
"Perhaps," said Mincon.
"Some of those here," I said, regarding the dismal lines of bodies, dangling in the tarred halters, "are perhaps the same as those who had been active in bringing about the downfall of those who hung here formerly."
"Of course," said Mincon.
"The winds have shifted in Torcadino," I said.
"Yes," said Mincon.
"It seems your captain is in the pay of Ar." I said.
"Of that you may judge yourself," he said, "shortly."
"I?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
"I do not understand," I said.
"Follow me," he said. I then, and the others, followed him up the steps of the Semnium. I stopped once, at the entrance, to look back, at the bodies. I briefly recalled the girl at the chain, 437, and her mother, 261. Her mother, before her capture, I had gathered, had been important, having been the confirmation treasurer of one of Torcadino's commercial councils, the Spice Council. She had also, in her position, I had gathered, and doubtless by her influence and acts, supported the cause of Cos. This inclination, incidentally, is not all that uncommon among individuals whose fortunes tend to be intimately involved in such matters as importation and exportation, the location and exploitation of foreign markets, and, in general, the overseas trade, the Thassa and island trade. This is understandable. The navies of Tyros and Cos, for most practical purposes command the green waves of gleaming Thassa. They control many of the most familiar and practical trade corridors. Few coasts are free from their patrols. Few ports could scorn their blockades. 261, however, aside from all such considerations, was a citizeness of Torcadino, and Torcadino had been sworn to the cause of Ar. She had, it seemed, for whatever reason, presumably opportunism or greed, betrayed the pledge of her Home Stone. In the case of a man this can be a capital offense. She was not a man, however but a female. It was thus, doubtless, that she had not been placed on a proscription list, but only on a seizure list. It was her sex which had saved her. Had she been a man she would have been hung.