Certainly it is hard for a woman to wear thumb cuffs and not understand her helplessness. Some masters favor them early in a girl's training, thinking that it hastens their progress. Whereas I have occasionally introduced a woman somewhat rudely into the realities of bondage, I generally prefer to ease then into it, giving them time to develop and gradually understand their new feelings and sensations, giving them time to accommodate themselves to their new life and destiny. Accordingly, thought I might put a girl into thumb cuffs for an Ahn or so, perhaps early in her training, perhaps in the process of informing her as to the nature of various bonds, their textures, and such, I generally do not use them. I think of them, like close chains, more as a punishment than a restraint. That she knows they exist, and could be put on her, by my will, like close chains, in itself has its salutary effect on her. And what seems to me generally sufficient.
The major point of the restraint is to restrain, not hurt. Indeed, pain can interfere with many of the diverse subsidiary values of restraints, physical and psychological. It can be distractive. Pain is a bit like the whip. The slave is subject to the whip, and truly subject to it, but this does now mean that she is necessarily whipped; that she could be whipped, and will be whipped, if she is not pleasing, is what is important, not that she need be whipped. Why should one beat a pleasing slave? To be sure, there are no bargains, contracts or arrangements in these matters, and the slave may be beaten whenever the master pleases, with or without a reason. She is, after all, a slave. Similarly, along these lines, to be perfectly honest, I have upon occasion used thumb cuffs on females, when it has seemed to me there was a point of doing so, or when it pleased me to do so.
"She was naked, hooded, and thonged, and on a leash, in the keeping of one or another free person," he said. "That sounds like a slave," I said.
"Yes, it does," he said.
We heard the small boats behind us, drawing up, near the pilings beneath the walkway.
"It is my supposition," he said, "that no female was impaled."
"That is an interesting supposition," I granted him.
"If it is true," he said, "Lady Claudia, whom I suspect is somewhere about, probably in the rags of Lady Publia, is still entitled to look forward to her impalement."
I saw that the woman in thumb cuffs was now on her knees on the landing, and that her head was pushed down to the stone. The cord from her nose ring was lying beside her head on the stone. She was then put to use. I saw her wrists lifting, her fingers, beside her confined thumbs, jerking, opening and closing. Then she was pulled to her feet by the cord on the nose ring and hurrying after her master.
"Do you not think so?" he asked.
"They are marshaling at the end of the walkway," I said.
I heard axes behind us, attacking the pilings of the walkway.
"Do you not think so?" he asked.
"You are certainly a zealous fellow," I said. "I have seldom encountered so single-minded a devotion to duty."
"Obviously, if you did not impale her," he said, "you did not wish her impaled, and you have done service to Ar's Station, whatever may be your own Home Stone. That is one reason I am beside you now, that I may guiltlessly evade, if possible, my very unpleasant duty, but clear duty, in that matter."
"I do not understand," I said. "I am sorry."
"But if we should survive," he said, "you understand that we must attempt to apprehend the prisoner and see that the sentence is carried out upon her, even if it means only weights on her ankles and a sharpened pole on a pier." "The Cosians!" I cried.
Then, with shield and sword, with the ringing of metal, with shouts, with cries of war, the six of us, I, Marsias, the grizzled fellow, and the three who had come originally to the cell, struck by charging Cosians, almost swept back, struggled to hold the walkway.
19 The Walkway
It was on the long walkway leading out to the piers that we fought. Behind us, some fifteen yards back, the walkway was afire.
Portions of it, hewn and chopped from the small boats, sank into the water. Most of these boats were of Ar's Station, those which had been out at the piers. Other boats trying to flank our position, for using their crossbows, were met and turned back by those of Ar's Station. Indeed, the walkway for a dozen yards, closer to the landing, was covered by these boars, until the camp commander sent his own crossbowmen out on the walkway, to keep them their distance. Fourteen times did the Cosians assault us. In the fifth assault Marsias was grievously wounded, and one other, one who had come originally to the cell. At that time the walkway was still intact, though flaming, behind us, and they could be withdrawn through the fire and smoke to the piers. Their places were taken, to my amazement, by other stout fellows of Ar's Station. Behind us it seemed men vied to join us. Then, in the seventh assault, two others of our original band, the other two who had come originally to the cell, were forced back, bleeding, unable to stand. They were lowered by fishermen into waiting small boats. From these two others climbed to the walkway, to take their place. Of the original band this left only myself and the grizzled fellow. Fins slid through the water circling the boats, and back and forth beneath the walkway, among the pilings. Sometimes, converging, they suddenly knifed toward a splash in the water, as one fellow or another lost his footing, or fell, bloodied, from the walkway. There were screams from the water and extended hands, and wild eyes. Then there would be churning froths, and blood swirling up, and reachings out, graspings with nothing to grasp, and then we would see bodies drawn under the water. Sometimes we could see them being drawn under the walkway, being taken into its shadows. Sometimes we could see, too, less easily, the long dark shapes, a yard or so beneath the water, conducting them, and the movements of the powerful, vertical tails. Often the fish fought for their prey, sometimes under the walkway itself. We could sometimes feel the movements of their bodies against the pilings beneath us. I saw one fellow of Ar's Station, standing in a small boat, scream with hatred and strike down at one of the shapes with a pike. I think he cut its back. I saw another fellow, a fellow of Cos, spend a quarrel on a fish that was scouting his boat. It descended rapidly, as though stung, the metal fins of the quarrel disappearing under the water with the dorsal fin.
In between the assaults we gasped for breath and crouched behind our shields, resting their rims on the walkway. To lift such a device for Ehn at a time, and receive blow after blow upon it, bearing up under them, in time makes the arm desperately tired and sore. It is little wonder warriors often train with weighted shields. In the early Ahn of battle a common cause of causalities, particularly with young warriors, is recklessness, and the failure to use the shield properly to protect oneself. In the late Ahn of a battle, however, an even more common cause of causalities, interestingly enough, is the simple inability to lift, control and maneuver the shield. There is a great temptation to lower it, to ease the pain of the screaming muscles. This compounds, of course, with arm weariness, the result of wielding the sword, and the slowing of reflexes and reaction time, resulting from general fatigue.
The same problems, of course, normally afflict one's enemy. When one understands these factors, and that battles often last several hours, and are sometimes renewed for two or three days, it is easier to understand certain things which might otherwise seem anomalous in this form of warfare, for example, the respites between assaults, the fluctuations of lines, the occasional, apparently incredible truces which can occur by mutual consent here and there in the pockets of a battle, men standing about, looking at one another, sometimes even conversing, and the great importance of the judicious distribution of, and application of, reserves.