"May I speak?" asked the second gowned girl.
"Yes," he said.
"Are my legs-pretty?" she asked.
"Yes," he said.
"A girl is pleased," she said. She, too, like the others, stood straight.
"How shameless you are, all of you!" scolded she who was the third of the gowned girls in the line, the last in the line.
"And you?" inquired the man.
"I am a woman's slave," she said proudly. "I am above such things." She did not look at him. "I have dignity," she said.
"But a slave girl is not permitted dignity," he said. Then he said, "We will see your legs." He then, with his knife, shortened her gown, as he had those of the others, until its shreds, too, ragged and exciting, were high on her thighs. She stood before him, her legs, though those of a girl's maid, bared to his eyes.
"Excellent legs," he said.
She shuddered, but I did not think that she was entirely displeased with his appraisal. All women wish to be attractive to men. "I–I want to be a woman's slave," she said, I thought a bit uncertainly.
"Do you fear men so?" he asked.
She did not speak.
"What you want," he pointed out to her, "is not important." He regarded her. "Is it?" he asked.
"No, Master," she said.
He touched her about the throat and chin. "Have you never been curious about the touch of a man?" he asked.
"Come to me," said the first girl. "I will love you like you have never been loved before!"
"He is touching me!" cried the last girl.
"Wanton slave!" laughed the first.
The man then went to the first girl and took her in his arms. She cried out with pleasure and pressed herself to him, melting and yielding to his tunic and leather. He subjected her mouth and lips to a kiss which could have been only the prelude to fierce slave rape.
"I can kiss, too," cried the last girl. "Master! Please, Master!"
"No," moaned the first girl. "She is nothing. Stay with me. I am sensuous. You do not know what it is to have had a slave girl until you have had me!"
I heard a second wagon being driven from the camp. I thought it might be one of the produce wagons, but, as it later turned out, the treasure freight of the dowry wagon had been divided between two wagons, the produce in one discarded, to lighten the load and make driving swifter.
My master then re-entered the tent. "Rape her later," he said to the soldier who held the first girl in the coffle in his arms. Reluctantly the soldier put the moaning girl from him.
"Yes, Captain," grinned the soldier.
"When we are to be raped, and must serve you as slaves," begged the first girl, she who had been in his arms, "let me be the first to be raped, the first to serve you as a slave."
"You will not be forgotten, my beautiful little slut," he promised her.
"Thank you, Master, " she whispered.
"Do not forget Donna either," said the second girl.
"Nor Chanda," said the third.
"Nor Marla," said the fourth.
"Lehna is first," said the first girl.
The soldier regarded the fourth girl. Under his eyes she stood very straight in the coffle. The wrist ring was closed on her left wrist, inflexibly, fastening her with the other girls.
"Nor Marla?" he asked.
"Nor Marla," she said.
"Are you not a woman's slave?" he asked.
"Save me a place at your feet, Master," she said. "I am a man's slave."
My master walked about the coffled girls. Then he returned to his original place of stand. "Four beauties," said he, "a good catch. We shall have much pleasure with them, and then, should we choose to sell them, we will get a good price."
How right it struck me that he had said this of the beauties, and yet, in its way, how horrifying to me, an Earth girl. Why did these men not hide their dominance; why did they not pretend it did not exist; why did they not suppress it; why did they not thwart and repudiate the birthright of their nature; why did they not make themselves miserable; why did they not torture themselves and diligently cultivate weakness like the men of Earth, shortening their lives and praising themselves for the constriction and mutilation of their instincts? Were they not powerful enough to be manipulated, strong enough to be weak?
"Coffle her," said my master, looking at me.
I stiffened. Surely the coffle was not for me. I was his girl. I was not a new slave. I had served him well.
The soldier whistled, as though lie might have been summoning a pet sleen, and lifted an open wrist ring, the last ring on the chain. I ran angrily to the chain.
"We must make haste," said my master.
I felt my wrist taken, and the metal of the wrist ring snap shut upon it. I was coffled.
How angry I was to be chained with the new girls. I felt the chain hanging from my wrist, dangling from the wrist ring of the girl coffled before me. I was furious. I was well fastened. I could not escape.
My master looked down at me.
I lowered my eyes. I wore his chain.
He turned away from the coffle and, moving the slashed silk of the rear wall of the tent with his hand, brushing it to the right, not looking back, disappeared into the darkness.
"Marla was not kind to a poor slave when she was helpless," said Marla, the girl before me. "Maria is terribly sorry. Please forgive Maria."
"What?" I said.
"Marla is sorry, Mistress," she said. "Please forgive Marla." The girl was clearly frightened.
It seemed strange to me, that she had addressed me as Mistress, and her fear. Then I realized the legitimacy of her fear, that of a slave girl. She was the one who had called me "Dina," and who, when I had been bound, had kicked me. Now she was owned by my master, and she was a newer girl than I. She did not yet know the nature of the relationships in which she was now helplessly implicated, relationships which could be every bit as perilous and significant as the physical bond of steel on her wrist. Was I first girl? Was I over her? Did I have switch rights upon her body, as Eta had upon mine? Would I be cruel to her? Would I make her suffer? Would she have to please the masters incredibly, and constantly attend them, that they might perhaps be moved to shield her to some tiny extent from my vengeance? Too, she was coffled before me, and this put her much at my mercy. Chained as she was I might, if I chose, make the march a misery of unexpected blows and torments for her. Her fears, in the light of these considerations, were understandable.
"I forgive you," I told her.
Immediately the girl straightened herself insolently, and dismissed me from her awareness. She had, she assumed then, nothing to fear from me, and I might be contemptuously ignored. This irritated me. Doubtless she considered herself, and quite possibly correctly, my superior in beauty, and thus planned to soon stand higher in the relationships of bondage than I, a lesser girl. Having nothing to fear from me she would freely and opportunistically insinuate herself among the men. Slave girls compete for the attentions of masters. Each strives to be more pleasing to them than the other. The quality of a slave girl's life is commonly a direct function of her pleasingness to her master. Whether she Is a treasured love slave or an ignored pot-and-floor wench depends much upon her. Gorean men, unlike the men of Earth, do not bother much with girls that are not pleasing to them. Yet even such may find their utility, and indirectly serve masters, perhaps sweating in the public kitchens of the high cylinders, or laboring, neck-locked, at the looms in the cloth mills, or digging, chained with others, in the sul fields. It is a rare girl who, having tasted the mills or sul fields, does not beg her proprietor to be sold again on the open market, that she may attempt anew, and perhaps more successfully this time, to be pleasing to a man.