I brushed back the hood of the burnoose. It was hot. There is an almost constant hot wind in the Tahari.
“I feared, when first I saw you,” said the girl, measuring the tea, from a tiny tin box, “that you had come to carry me off. But, I suppose, had that been Your intention, you would have already done so.” She had, in the tent, removed the tan jacket of kaiila hair, with hood. As she bent down, her breasts hung lovely against the cheap rep-cloth of the blue and-yellow-printed blouse.
“Perhaps not,” I said.
Her hand shook, slightly, on the metal box of tea. Her eyes clouded.
“You are worked hard here?” I asked.
“Oh, yes!” she laughed. “From morning to dark I am worked. I must gather brush and kaiila dung and make fires; I must cook the stews and porridges, and clean the pans and the bowls; I must shake out the mats and sweep the sand in the tents; I must rub the garments and polish the boots and leather; I must do the mending and sewing; I weave; I make ropes; I bead leather; I pound grain; I tend the kaiila; twice daily I milk the she-kaiila; I do many things: I am, much worked.” Her eyes sparkled. “I do the work here of ten women,” she said. “I am the only female in camp. All unpleasant, light, trivial work devolves upon me.
Men will not do it. It is an insult to their strength.” She looked up. “You, yourself,” she said, “have made me make your tea.”
“Is it ready?” I asked. I looked at the tiny copper kettle on the small stand. A tiny kaiila-dung fire burned under it. A small, heavy, curved glass was nearby, on a flat box, which would hold some two ounces of the tea. Bazi tea is drunk in tiny glasses, usually three at a time, carefully measured. She did not make herself tea, of course.
Casually I glanced at the horizon. The dust was nearer now. On a pole, beside the entrance of the tent, hung a water bag.
“And at night,” I asked the girl, “you are permitted to rest from your labors?”
She was still stained from sweat, from pounding the grain outside the tent.
“My diurnal labors,” she laughed, “may be those of a free women, but do not forget what I am.”
I regarded her.
“I am a slave girl!” she laughed.
“In the night,” I said, “you remove your slippers, and put on silk and bells.”
“If permitted,” she smiled. “Often I serve nude.” She laughed. “It is at night that I truly labor! Oh, the things he has made me do, things I would never have dreamed of!”
“Are you happy?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Do the other riders share you?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “I am normally the only girl in camp.
“From time to time there are others?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” she said. “Free women, slave girls, are taken from caravans. What happens to them?”
“They are taken to oases, to be sold,” she said. “My labors as a slave,” she confided, “are not limited to the nights. He uses me often. Sometimes, when his need is on him, he calls me in, sweaty, from work, and makes me serve him.
Sometimes he merely throws my skirt over my head and hurls me to the mats, taking me swiftly, then ordering me to resume my work outside.”
“Are you often whipped?” I asked.
She turned about pulled up her blouse, showing me her back. “No,” she said.
There were few marks on her back, though I saw the traces of a beating or two.
There was scarring. The soft, pliant, broad-bladed five-strap lash had been used. It is the common instrument, if not the switch, used on girls. It is a valuable tool. It punishes with a terrible efficiency, and does not leave the girl permanently marked.
“I was punished twice,” she said, “once, early in the tents, when I dared to be insolent, a second time when I was clumsy.” She smiled. “I have not been insolent nor clumsy since,” she said. She lifted the kettle from the fire and, care fully, poured me a tiny glass of tea.
I took the glass. “Is your master brutal?” I asked.
“No,” she said, “he is not brutal, but he is severe.”
“Harsh?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “I would say he is harsh”
“But not brutal?”
“No,” she said.
“Your relation to him?”
“Slave.”
“His relation to you?”
“Master.”
“Discipline?” I asked.
She smiled. “I am kept under the strictest of discipline,” she said.
“But you are seldom whipped?”
“Almost never,” she said. “But I know that he is fully capable, as he has demonstrated, of whipping me. Should I not be pleasing, I know that I, as a slave girl, will be lashed.”
“You live under the threat of the whip?”
“Yes,” she said. “And the threat is not empty.” She looked at me. “He is strong enough to get what he wants out of me. He knows it. And I have learned it. He is strong enough, if I do not please him, to lash me.”
“How do you find this?” I asked.
“Meaningful,” she said, “- and thrilling!”
“You seem to enjoy being dominated by a male,” I said.
“I am a woman,” she said. She looked down. “I have discovered feelings I never knew I had,” she said. She looked up. “I have discovered, in the arms of a strong, uncompromising man, how fantastic, how deep and glorious is my female sexuality.”
“You do not speak as a woman of Earth,” I observed.
“I am a Gorean slave girl,” she said, kneeling straight, touching her earrings.
“It seems to me,” said I. “you care for your master.”
“If not restrained by his command,” she said, boldly. “I would lick the dust from his boots!”
Suddenly she looked about. She, too, now, saw the dust. She recognized the raiders were returning. Her eyes, suddenly, were frightened.
“You must flee!” she said. “They may kill you if they find you here!”
“I have not finished my tea.” I said.
“Is it-is it,” she said, standing, uncertainly, “your intention to do harm to my master?”
“I have business with him.” I said, simply.
She backed away. I set the tea down on the sand, between two mats, beside me. I did not think it would spill. She took another step backward. I reached to the side, to pick up a length of chain which lay there, one of several, doubtless ready for securing slaves, anticipated perhaps as prizes from the afternoon’s caravan raid. Alyena turned, and, with a cry, fled from the tent, toward the dust. The length of chain, hurled from my hand, bola-like, caught her about the ankles, whipping about, and she, in a flurry of skirt and blond hair, sprawled, hands outstretched, to the dust. In an instant I was on her, kneeling across her back, my left hand across her mouth, pulling her head up, painfully, and back. I then put my right hand swiftly over her mouth, before she could cry out, and, my left hand in her hair, pulled her to her feet and dragged her back into the tent. I looked about, and found some materials at hand, which I kicked together into a pile on the mats. I then put her on her back on the mats, and, kneeling across her body, transferring my left hand from her mouth, I thrust a scarf, wadded, jeep into her mouth, then fastened it there with several turns of sash, using the extra length of the sash, tying it, to blindfold her. I then threw her on her stomach. With a length of strap I tied her hands behind her back, and, with another scarf, crossed and bound her ankles. I then threw her to the back of the tent, on the right side, which is that side of the nomad’s tent reserved for the possessions of men.
I then went and stood near the entrance of the tent. My kaiila was tethered in the rear.
First over the rise, on his kaiila, with the two girls tethered, stumbling, exhausted, feet bleeding, to the pommel, was the leader. Instantly he saw me and was alert. He cried out to his men. They deployed, circling. I saw the scimitar, lifted, in the hand of the leader.
Unlooping, swiftly, with his left hand, the tethers of the prisoners from his pommel, he threw the straps to one of his men. Behind them I could see the captured pack kaiila. There were nine men, not including the leader. The leader’s kaiila reared. I saw it was his intention, not dismounting, to ride the kaiila against and through the tent, it striking against the beast’s forequarters. It would be ripped from its pegs, the frame shattered, but he, leaning down from the saddle, would have his stroke.