I was furious with the posture, so proud and sensual, of the girl before me. I wondered why I had forgiven her. It had seemed the natural thing to do. I had done it, unthinkingly. It was not irrational, of course. For example, she was beautiful, and any dominance which I might have over her might be temporary, and then our relationship might be reversed. What if she much pleased my master one night and he gave her switch rights over me? Also, on another march, it might be I who would be coffled before her, and at her mercy.
Yet I was angry. She now ignored me. Her victory had been cheaply won.
Suddenly, angrily, I kicked her.
She cried out, startled. I stood straight, as though I had done nothing. The soldier with the coffle, who was gathering jewelry into a scarf from various coffers in the tent, pretended that he had not noticed my action. Masters do not much interfere in the squabbles of slaves. Let them impose their own internal order among themselves. On the other hand, they would not approve if one slave injured or marked, or reduced in value, another. That would be serious, and not to be tolerated.
The girl before me now no longer stood proudly and sensually. She was now only a frightened, chained girl, at my mercy. She was coffled before me.
"On the other hand," I said to her, "I may not forgive you either."
"Marla begs forgiveness, Mistress," she whispered.
"I may forgive you and I may not," I said.
"Yes, Mistress," said the girl. She trembled. The chain shook on her wrist. I was pleased. Too, if she feared me, perhaps I could, for a time, frighten her away from my master. She was a lovely female, Marla, and I had little doubt she would be incredibly delicious in the arms of a man. I suppose that I was jealous of her.
The soldier in charge of the coffle slung the scarf, loaded with jewelry from the coffers in the tent, over his shoulder. He grinned at me. I looked down, and smiled.
"We must make haste, Slaves," said he. We readied ourselves. I looked at him. He was not regarding me.
He was Gorean, and a man. It was not that he had dared to be a man. It was rather that he simply was a man.
"Attend me, Coffle," said he, "for bondage march." He held his hand, the visible signal of preparation, poised over his thigh.
We tensed.
But, strangely, though of Earth, I did not object to a world in which men, like larls, were healthy. I wanted them that way, rich and glorious in their power. I sensed, perhaps, my complementarity to them. Only in a world where there were true men could there be true women.
I felt the steel on my wrist, with its chain.
He struck his right thigh with his open hand, suddenly, sharply. We moved out, slave girls, on the left foot, that the pace of the march be uniform.
We were owned.
As I passed the soldier, who stood behind, to follow the coffle, to guard it, I felt weak. I tried to brush my left shoulder against him, but he, with his hand, roughly thrust me to the side. He did not then desire my touch. I and the others must wait, to see if he would permit us to touch him later.
Tears sprang to my eyes. I had wanted to touch him, and had not been permitted to do so. It was his will, the will of the man, which determined matters.
"Har-ta," said he. "Faster." Lehna, who was first girl on the chain, hastened.
Suddenly I was terrified. My will literally meant nothing. Anything might be done to me. The guard had not permitted me to do so much as brush against him. If I could not even placate a man sexually, I was completely without power. Even my attempt to please a man was dependent upon his permission that I should attempt to do so.
I shuddered.
I, hurrying, looked up into the black, starlit Gorean night. I trembled. I, though a girl of Earth, was chained in coffle under three barbaric moons.
"Har-ta," said the soldier.
Again Lehna hastened.
In moments we were leaving the camp, wading the stream.
I felt the cold water about my ankles, and then calves; then I felt it over my knees; then I felt it swirling at my thighs; we lifted the chain to hold it out of the water.
"Har-ta," said the soldier, he in whose charge we were.
Again we hurried. One does not daily under the command of a Gorean master.
I felt the pebbles and stones of the bank beneath my feet. The chain pulled forward on my wrist. I looked up at the wild moons.
I was a slave girl.
"Har-ta!" I heard. "Har-ta!"
The chain pulled forward again.
I, hurrying, stumbled behind the others.
I did not know into what bondage I was being led. I knew only that it would be absolute.
6
Tabuk's Ford
My master extended his cup to me, and I, kneeling, filled it with Sul paga. I pressed my lips to the cup, and handed it to him. My eyes smarted. I almost felt drunk from the fumes.
I withdrew.
Sul paga is, when distilled, though the Sul itself is yellow, as clear as water. The Sul is a tuberous root of the Sul plant; it is a Gorean staple. The still, with its tanks and pipes, lay within the village, that of Tabuk's Ford, in which Thurnus, our host, was caste leader.
"Excellent," said my master, sipping the Sul paga. He could have been commenting only on the potency of the drink, for Sul paga is almost tasteless. One does not guzzle Sul paga. Last night one of the men had held my head back and forced me to swallow a mouthful. In moments things had gone black, and I had fallen unconscious. I had awakened only this morning, ill, miserable, with a splitting headache, chained with the other girls.
"Wine, Slave Girl," said Maria, holding her cup to me.
Angrily I put down the Sul paga and fetched the flask of the Ka-la-na of Ar, and filled her cup. She did not look at me, nor thank me, for I was a slave. Was she not, too, a slave? I saw her, in the shreds of her white gown, cuddling with her wine in my master's arms. She had risen swiftly in favor among the masters, displacing even Eta as favorite girl. I had feared, even from the beginning, that she would become excessively popular. My master was, apparently, much taken with her. I hated her. Eta, too, did not regard her with unusual affection.
Marla looked at me, and smiled. "You are a pretty slave," she said.
"Thank you, Mistress," I said, restraining myself. Since she had become first girl in the camp we were all constrained to serve her and address her as Mistress. Even though she was given no jewelry or fine raiment, she was high slave in the camp.
It had been five weeks since the strike on the camp of the Lady Sabina.
Much of this time we had been engaged in a long overland journey.
"Give me of drink," said Thurnus to me.
"Yes, Master," I said. I took the flask of Ka-la-na to him.
Thurnus was a shaggy haired fellow, with yellow hair, big, broad-shouldered, large-handed, clearly in his bones and body of the peasants. He was caste leader in Tabuk's Ford. Tabuk's Ford was a large village, containing some forty families; it was ringed with a palisade, and stood like a hub in the midst of its fields, long, narrow, widening strips, which radiated from it like the spokes in a wheel. Thurnus tilled four of these strips. Tabuk's Ford receives its name from the fact that field Tabuk were once accustomed, in their annual migrations, to ford the Verl tributary of the Vosk in its vicinity. The Verl flows northwestward into the Vosk. We had crossed the Vosk, on barges, two weeks ago. The field Tabuk now make their crossing some twenty pasangs northwest of Tabuk's Ford, but the village, founded in the area of the original crossing keeps the first name of the locale. Tabnk's Ford is a rich village, but it is best known not for its agricultural bounty, a function of its dark, fertile fields in the southern basin of the Verl, but for its sleen breeding. Thurnus, of the Peasants, of Tabuk's Ford, was one of the best known of the sleen breeders of Gor.