In such areas there are usually, at the rear of the sales area, some small, curtained dressing areas. These are not provided to protect the modesty of the slave for, strictly, the slave girl is not permitted modesty but rather to permit her to change unseen and then emerge to be beheld, fully changed, all at once, by her master. The moving aside of the curtain and the stepping forth of the slave in the new ensemble, then, is primarily for the purpose of achieving this effect, that of presenting herself dramatically before the master. She may then turn and move before him, modeling the new ensemble, assuming poses, being put through slave paces in it, whatever he chooses, as he is master. He may then send her back into the curtained area again and again, to try out new outfits. I would suppose that this business of the sudden presentation of the slave before the master, as he may never have seen her before, and the suspense and revelation, and delight, involved, tends to increase sales. The fellow was ahead of me tearing garments from pegs and dragging down ropes of clothes, trampling them underfoot, much to the consternation of the merchant. I saw a girl flee out from behind the counter but she was a brunet and presumably the merchant's, probably used as a model, useful for fellows who did not have their own slave along, or perhaps wished to surprise her by flinging her a new outfit when he returned home, one which she must then wear before him.
I was a few yards from him when he strode to the back of the sales area and, one by one, began to fling back the curtains there. In the fourth place, out of five such places, there was a terrified, crouching girl.
"I have her!" be cried elatedly.
She cowered.
He raised his blade to strike.
"Hold!" I cried.
He turned about, the blade lifted. Ina screamed. She was naked, as she had discarded her slave tunic. This was intelligent on her part, as it would make it easier for her to blend in with most of the other slaves in the camp, such for the most part being kept stripped. He assessed my distance and made his judgment. He turned back to Ina, to cut down at her. But she, taking advantage of this moment of distraction, had crawled behind the side curtain of the next booth. He tore that curtain away. She was gone! He then advanced, slashing, through the curtains, after her. Then he fell, tangled in the curtains. "No!" he cried, looking up at me. There had been nothing wrong with his assessment of my distance, my speed and the time he had. He had miscounted on Ina, however, who had sped from him. Too, he had not counted on losing time moving between the booths. Too, he had not counted on falling. I drove the blade into him.
"Here! Over here!" I heard a man cry.
"Hurry!" I heard another, farther off, cry.
"What of my curtains? What of my shop!" wailed the merchant.
I ducked under a rope of tiny rep-cloth slave tunics, of various solid colors, and was again outside in the main aisles. I then, and two or three other fellows, they keeping their distance, all of us moving purposefully, and as rapidly as was practical, began to examine the cages, the kennels, the fair prisoners of the numerous stakes and posts, of the slave bars, and the chains in our immediate vicinity. Ina must surely be within a few yards of us.
I looked at one woman after another, and some looked out at me, frightened, from behind the bars of their cages and kennels, others shrinking back against their posts and stakes, or cowering with their sisters on their neck chains. I then strode quickly to a slave bar, a rounded, metal bar, about six inches above the surface of the dirt, inserted through, supported by and locked within, at each end, two low, trunklike posts. Girls may be attached to this sort of bar, often anchored in concrete or bolted to a wooden floor, in various fashions. Most of its current prisoners lay close to it, their wrists shackled about it. I reached a given female there before two other fellows. I kicked her in the side with the side of my foot. "Stay with me," I told her.
"Don't kill me!" she wept.
"Then stay with me," I said.
"I am collared, I am branded, I am only a slave!" she said. "Why do they want to kill me?"
"Get up!" I said.
"There she is," said a fellow a few yards away.
"Yes," said one of the closer fellows.
"Octantius is in the camp now," said another, "with the others."
"Splendid!" said a fellow.
"Just keep in contact," said a fellow.
"Let us charge together!" said another.
"Wait," said a fellow.
"There is no hurry," said another.
The word must have spread about rather quickly, because there were now some ten or twelve fellows about, some I had not seen before.
"Why do they want to kill me?" asked Ina.
"My speculation," I said, "is that Ar demands accountability for the disaster in the delta. I suspect that your fellow conspirators have selected you, and perhaps some others, to be identified and repudiated, as having duped others, and so on. In this way the more powerful conspirators may satisfy Ar's call for accounting and at the same time direct attention away from themselves. On the other hand, your more powerful fellows, I suppose, would not wish to risk the results of your testimony being taken in court."
"But I am only a slave," she said.
"But one who perhaps knows too much for her own good," I said.
"I could promise not to speak!" she said.
"You would speak," I said.
She looked at me, frightened.
"As you know," I said, "the testimony of slaves is taken under torture."
"Give her to us, and we will let you go," said a fellow.
I regarded them.
"Let us take her now," said one of them, "and share the reward only among ourselves!"
"Yes!" said another.
The eager fellow, perhaps too agreeable to the suggestion of the first, rushed forward. I kicked him back, off the sword, and whirled to face the second fellow who stopped, slipped to one knee, and scrambled back. I had no time to cut at him, he helpless there, as I whirled back in time to warn a third fellow away from Ina, who was crouching behind me.
"Give her to us," said one of the fellows, "and we will share the reward with you!"
"We will give you ten pieces of gold, tarn disks of Ar," proposed another, "full weight!"
"That is more than she would bring on the block," said another.
I glanced down at Ina. Yes, I thought, that would be considerably more than she would bring on the block.
"Accept the offer," said the fellow who had proposed the ten pieces of gold.
"Stay back," I warned him.
"Octantius will be here soon," said another, looking back. "The reward will then be too much divided."
"Deal with us," said another.
"Octantius will have bowmen with him," said another. "Resistance will then be useless."
"Deal with us," repeated the former fellow.
"Stay back," I said.
"There is nothing to be gained," wept Ina "Give me to them!"
I lashed back at her with the back of my hand, and struck her to the dirt aisle. "You were not given permission to speak, slave girl," I said.
"Yes, Master!" she cried joyfully. "Forgive me, Master!"
"Come along," I said.
Ina, creeping at my side, I, moving through the aisle, looking about me, moved between the hunters, who fell back, on both sides, to let me pass. But then, as soon as I had passed them, they fell in behind me, and about me, as closely as they dared. I would move toward one or another, and that fellow would give way, but the cloud, like a pack of sleen scouting a larl, waiting for it to tire, or make a mistake, stayed with us.
"Where are you going?" asked one of them.
I did not respond to him.
I was moving in the direction in which the one fellow had looked back, when he had feared Octantius, with his men, might too soon arrive, thereby minimizing the shares in the projected reward.