"Stand," I said, "back a bit, where I can see you, straightly, with your hands on the sides of your legs, as you did before."
I then rose up and went to her, and looked at her, walking about her. Then I stood again before her.
I put my hands on her upper arms. "Look at me," I said. She lifted her head. "You are hard, and petty, and nasty," I said.
She looked up at me, angrily.
"But you are pretty," I said.
She did not respond.
"Yes," I said. "You will do."
"Do?" she said.
"Yes," I said.
"I do not understand," she said.
"Do not tire me," I said. I then flung her back, behind where we had stood, to the straw, and put her to my purposes.
13 Food
"My hair," she said, "is grown our more now."
"Yes," I said, rubbing the brush of it near my thigh, where her head rested. "I want my hair to grow out," she said.
I did not respond.
Chloe looked up at me, from where she lay, beside my thigh. "You have made me soft, and female," she said. "You would have it so, and have had it so. Now I can be no other than that, nor do I desire to be other than that."
"Kiss me," I said.
She did so, softly, obediently, much as might have a slave.
I had given her, for my purposes, the name "Chloe'. Technically, of course, as she was still a free woman, she was still Lady Claudia of Ar's Station. She had, however, however deceitfully, several days ago upon the wall, lowering her message in the basket, declared for Cos. Accordingly I had given her a Cosian name. It was a lovely name. She responded well to it, psychologically, socially and sexually. Further, she understood the propriety of its having been put on her.
Five days ago the walls of Ar's Station had been breached. Cosians were now within the city. The defenders, sometimes fighting street by street, and building to building, and those who could reach it, had now withdrawn to the citadel, bringing with them what belongings and supplies they could. In the citadel now hungry and miserable, besides he defenders, were crowded hundreds of women and children. Ar's Station was in flames. Smoke drifted even to our cell.
"What was that?" cried Chloe, leaping up.
I, too, leaped up.
There had been a rumbling crash from somewhere outside the citadel.
"I am not sure," I said.
Later that afternoon there were several more such crashes, all on the land side of the citadel.
"There is another," said Chloe, toward dusk.
"It is Cosians," I said. "They are clearing the ground outside the citadel, destroying the buildings, that they may bring their engines within range." We heard, from somewhere outside, the long, wild scream of a woman, perhaps from among the buildings, outside the wall.
Chloe looked up at me.
"She has been caught," I said.
It had had a sudden wild ring about it, as though she might suddenly, to her dismay, have felt ropes settle about her body, and draw tight.
"I, too, was caught," said Chloe. "And then, later, you too, caught me. I do not mind having been caught by you. I am pleased to have been caught by you." I pulled her up beside me, and kissed her. She snuggled into my arms, frightened.
"The slaves are out there, somewhere, aren't they?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"With their cages, and chains, and wagons," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"For hundreds of pasangs about," she said, "Women will be cheap for months." "Perhaps," I said.
"I envy them their chains," she said, "especially with what I have learned in your arms."
I put my hand gently on her head. She was still a free woman, and in the keeping of those she had betrayed. Well might she envy those whose fate would be merely a brand, a collar and the absolute helplessness and submission of Gorean bondage.
"Many of those captured," I said, "might be shipped to the islands, Cos, Tyros, Tabor, Asperiche and so on. If that is the case, they might not depress the market as much as you feared."
"You are kind," she said.
"Do you wish to be beaten?" I asked.
"No," she said quickly.
"And many, most, I suspect, of those women of Ar's Station who had not managed to flee earlier, at the approach of Cos, or somehow escape the city, are in the citadel."
"There must be hardly room to move in the citadel," she said. "Our quarters are doubtless among the most luxurious," I said.
"Why do they not take us outside and chain us to a post?" she asked. "Perhaps that the people do not tear us to pieces," I said.
She shuddered. The cell door, now, it seemed, so stoutly locked, might be serving as much to protect us as confine us. On the other hand, perhaps most of the people outside did not even know why we were here. If they did, perhaps they would have been at the door, trying to force it open.
"The Cosians must not bring their catapults into action, at this range," she said.
"Why not?" I asked.
"The people," she said. "The crowding. It would be terrible."
"I see," I said.
"Surely they would not do so," she said.
"I would conjecture that the engines will be in place by morning," I said. "But they will not use them!" she said.
"I would expect them to do so," I said, "with stones, and oil, and javelins." "There must be little food in the citadel now," she said.
Our rations, small though they were, had been halved. We were both weak. "Why do they bother feeding us?" she asked.
"I do not know," I said. I had some idea as to why they were probably feeding her, at least. I did not, however, want to speak to her of this. The observation panel in the door slid back. I saw the head of our warder rise up, behind the slot, as she stepped up, onto her platform. She still had the white, scarflike turban and veil. "Prisoners, forward," she said. "Kneel." We obeyed. It was toward dusk. It was not time to be fed.
"You, Claudia, slave girl," she said. "Knell behind him and to his left." A slave girl, in heeling her master, commonly follows on the left. That she follows indicates that she is subservient, that he is master and she slave; that she follows on the left is a cultural matter probably indexed to the fact that most Goreans are right-handed. Her presence on the left, thus, is not likely to interfere with his draw or the movements of his sword arm.
"You are pretty, slave girl," snarled the warder to Lady Claudia. "How natural you look there!"
"Yes!" said Lady Claudia to her. "I am a slave girl! He has taught me that I am a slave girl! I know it now!"
"Slave! Slave!" snarled the warder.
Lady Claudia, of course, was not a slave, not a legal slave, at any rate. She was still, legally, a free woman. I had seen no point in imbonding her. Similarly, I had ordered her not to submit herself to me, of her own free will, even when she had begged to do so. In either case, she could have been taken from me easily enough by force, and then freed, to be made again legally susceptible to whatever punishment they wished to visit upon her. To be sure, they might, if they wished, make her a slave themselves, or let her be a slave, either by my action or her own, and then, if she were a slave, do anything they wished with her.