“Certainly,” I assured her.
She looked up at me. “I would have been the first chained,” she laughed. “I was the first girl taken from the line. I would have led the slave chain!”
“There would have been no chain,” I said. “One cannot march naked girls across the desert. You would have been chained and, individually, or in pairs, put across saddles.”
“Had there been a chain,” she said, “I would have led it.
“Yes,” I said. I lifted her to the saddle.
“And I am not the tallest,” she said. “I am not the tallest!”
“Do you grow insolent?” I asked.
“Of course not, Master,” she said. “But does it not mean I am the most beautiful?”
“Among tarsk,” I said, “even a she-sleen looks well.”
“Oh, Master!” she protested. I placed her in the kurdah. She knelt there. With my lance tip I retrieved her veil from the dust, and put it to the side of her left knee. “Repair it,” I said, “and don it. With it conceal your mouth, which is rather loud of late.”
“Yes, Master,” she said.
I turned to look at the dust from the east. I could see riders now. There were four hundred of them.
“Master,” said the girl.
“Yes,” I said.
“I know that I am beautiful,” she said.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
She knelt there, naked, in the kurdah, the veil by her knee. She straightened herself. She put her hands on her collar. She lifted her head, her chin, proudly. Her neck was delicate, aristocratic, a bit long, as she held it, white.
I saw the close-fitting, obdurate metal, inflexible, with its lock behind the back of the neck, encircling it. Her eyes were strikingly blue, and bright, lively; her hair, long, blond, streamed behind her.
“How do you know that you are beautiful?” I asked.
She shook her head a little, arranging her hair, and then looked at me, saucily, directly, her fingers on the metal at her throat. “Because I am collared,” she laughed.
With the tip of my scimitar I made ready to conceal her again within the kurdah.
The Aretai were nearing the caravan, a pasang or so away, sweeping down upon it.
Now, from the west, too, I could see some two hundred men riding in. Neither group, of course, would find Kavars in the caravan. The plan had been a good one, only the Kavars, apparently, had escaped.
“Is it not true, Master?” she said.
“It is true,” said I, “Slave Girl. Had men not found you beautiful they would have been quite content to leave you free. Only the most beautiful are thought worthy of the brand; only the most beautiful are found worthy of the collar.”
“But how miserable,” she moaned, “that I fell slave!”
“The more excruciatingly beautiful a woman is,” I said, “the more likely it is that she will be put in brand and collar.”
She looked at me.
“Any true man,” I said, “who sees such a woman wishes to own her.”
“On this world,” whispered Alyena, “they can!”
“On this world,” I said, “they do.”
“Poor women!” said Alyena.
I shrugged.
“Master,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“May Alyena, your obedient girl, your dutiful girl, be taught to dance?”
“You have not forgotten your young nomad, have you?” I asked.
She looked down, sullenly.
“To be sure,” I said, “it would be difficult to compete for him unless you could dance.”
“I do not even like him!” she cried. “He is a beast! He is a terrible person!
Did you not see how he abused me?”
“In his arms,” I laughed, “he would treat you only as a slave.”
“Terrible,” she wept.
To her indignation I felt her body. It was hot and wet. “Yes, pretty Alyena,” I said to her, “I will have you taught to dance, for in your belly is slave fire.”
“No!” she wept.
“Slave fire,” I said.
I then brushed down the curtain of the kurdah, as she cried out with rage, closing her within.
The Aretai, from the east, and west, lances down, scimitars high, with much dust, crying out, shouting, swept into the caravan. They did not find the Kavars, or the Ta’Kara.
Suleiman was a man of discrimination, and taste; he was also one of high intelligence.
He studied the stones.
It had been he who had organized the trap.
“Twenty-five weights of date bricks,” he said.
“Ninety,” I said.
“Your price is too high,” he said.
“Your price, in my opinion,” I said, “great pasha, is perhaps a bit low.”
“Where are the Kavars!” had cried Shakar, captain of the Aretai, when he had swept into the caravan, his kaiila rearing, his lieutenant, Hamid, behind him.
“They are gone,” I had told him.
Had the Kavars been caught in the trap there would have been a massacre.
Suleiman was a man to hold in respect.
The true worth of the stones, which I had had appraised carefully in Tor, against their best information as to the date yields, was between sixty and eighty weights in pressed date bricks. I was not interested, of course, in driving bargains, but in meeting Suleiman. I had been more than a month at the oasis. Only now had he consented to see me. Recently, too, had Ibn Saran, with a caravan, arrived at the oasis. Some twenty thousand people lived at the oasis, mostly small farmers, and craftsmen, and their families. It was one of the larger eases in the Tahari. It seemed important for me to see Suleiman. As a portion of my assumed identity, I wished to sell him stones. Moreover, with the dates purchased by these, I hoped to have a suitable disguise, as a merchant in date bricks, in moving eastward. I suspected that my being summoned to the presence of Suleiman was not unconnected with the arrival of Ibn Saran at the oasis. He had, I suspected, interceded in my behalf. For this I was surely grateful. He remembered me, of course, from the hall of Samos. Had I not seen Suleiman shortly I would have had to strike eastward myself. Without a guide this would have been incredibly dangerous. The men of the Tahari kill those who make maps of it. They know their own country, or their districts within it; they are not eager that others know it as well. Without a guide, who knew the locations of water, to enter the Tahari would be suicidal. I had offered good prices for guides. But none had volunteered. They protested fear of the imminent war, the dangers of being on the desert at such a time. I suspected, however, that they had been told not to offer me their services. One fellow had agreed, but, the next morning, without explanation, he had informed me that his mind was changed. It would be too dangerous, in such times, to venture into the desert.
Sometimes I had seen Hamid, the lieutenant of Shakar, captain of the Aretai, following me about. He still suspected, I supposed, that I was a Kavar spy but when Ibn Saran had arrived at the oasis, Suleiman had invited me to his presence. I wondered if he had been waiting for Ibn Saran. Ibn Saran, it seemed to me, exercised more influence at the oasis of Nine Wells than one might have expected of a mere merchant of salt. I had seen men withdrawing from the path of his kaiila, standing aside, lifting their hands to him.
Alyena, in dancing, sensed the power of Ibn Saran. It is not difficult for a female dancer, lightly clad, displaying her beauty, to detect where among those who watch her lies power. I am not sure precisely how this is done. Doubtless, to some extent, it has to do with richness of raiment. But even more, I suspect, it has to do with the way in which they hold their bodies, their assurance, their eyes, as they, as though owning her, observe her. A woman finds herself looked upon very differently by a man who has power and one who does not.
Instinctively, of course, to be looked upon by a man with power thrills a woman.
They desire, desperately, to please him. This is particularly true of a slave girl, whose femaleness is most shamelessly and brazenly bared. Ibn Saran, languid, observed the dancer. His face betrayed no emotion. He sipped his hot black wine.
Alyena threw herself to the floor before him, moving to the music. I supposed she saw in him her “rich man,” who would guarantee her a life in which she might be protected from the labors of the free woman of the Tahari, the pounding of grain with the heavy pestle, the weaving of cloth, the churning of milk in skin bags, the carrying of water, the herding of animals with sticks in the blistering heat. I saw her turn, and twist, and writhe, and move, and, on her belly, hold out her hand to him.