"No," she pleaded. "Please, no! ' "No!" she cried, and then hung, helpless and sobbing in the ropes.
I saw that the stripped slave was beautiful.
"Three tarsks," said a man.
"Three five," said another. This was a bid of three silver tarsks and fiftycopper tarsks. There are one hundred copper tarsks to one silver tarsk inKailiauk. The ratio is ten to one in certain other cities and towns. Thesmallest Gorean coin is usually a tarsk bit, usually valued from a quarter to atenth of a tarsk. Gorean coinage tends to vary from community to community.
Certain coins, such as the silver tarsk of Tharna and the golden tarn of Ar,tend, to some extent, to standardize what otherwise might be a mercantile chaos.
This same standardization, in the region of the Tamber Gulf and south, along theshore of Thassa, tends to be effected by the golden tam of Port Kar. Coinmerchants often have recourse to scales. This is sensible considering suchthings as the occasional debasings of coinages, usually unannounced by thecommunities in question, and the frequent practice of splitting and shavingcoins. It is, for example, not unusual for a Gorean coin pouch to contain partsof coins as well as whole coins. Business is often conducted by notes andletters of credit. Paper currency, however, in itself, is unknown.
"Four!" called out another man.
"Five!" cried out another.
"But, Gentlemen," called the auctioneer, turning the girl on the rope, turningher left thigh to the crowd, "restrain your bids! Can you not see that she hasnot yet even been branded?"
"Mark her! Mark her!" called more than one man.
On the height of the central block I saw two attendants sliding out a brandingrack. Another, its handles wrapped in heavy cloth, carried out a cylindrical,glowing brazier, from which protruded the handles of two irons. He placed thisnear the branding rack. At the same time the auctioneer freed the ankles of thegirl from the ropes. He then freed the end of her wrist rope from its ring andthe rope, sliding through the overhead ring, loosened. As it did so theattendant to whom the auctioneer had earlier addressed himself, now returned,supported the girl. I did not think she could stand. When the rope permitted itbe lifted her in his arms. Her weight was nothing for him. The auctioneer thenjerked the remainder of the rope through the overhead ring. The attendant thencarried the girl, the rope trailing beside him, to the height of the centralblock. There, with the help of another fellow, he lowered her into the heavyrack, and spun shut the sturdy vises on her left and right thighs. She had beencarried to the rack naked, her wrists bound before her. She winced, unable tomove her thighs, dismayed doubtless at the perfect tightness with, which theywere held. Her wrists were then freed of the rope and taken behind her wherethey were fastened to a sturdy metal pole, a portion of the rack, by danglingslave bracelets.
The fellow who had carried in the brazier now drew forth, holding it with twogloves, an iron. It was white hot.
The girl regarded it, wild-eyed.
"No!" she cried. "Are you beasts and barbarians? What do you think I am? Do youthink I am an animal! Do you think I am a slave!
The iron was leveled. It approached the circular aperture in the vise, throughwhich, deeply into her fair thigh, it would be thrust, and held, burning andhissing, until its work was done, until the girl was marked, and well, as slavemeat.
"You are bluffing!" she cried. "You cannot be serious!
She then learned that the intention of the iron with respect to her body wasquite real.
The vises were spun loose. Her hands were freed of the restraining slavebracelets, only then to be tied with a cord behind her. Dismayed and sobbing shewas freed of the rack and put on her knees, head down, at the auctioneer's feet.
The rack and the brazier, the iron returned to it, were removed from the centralblock. The girl then, naked and kneeling, her hands bound behind her, at theauctioneer's feet, lifted her head and looked wildly out at the crowd. She hadbeen branded.
"She does not know what has happened to her," said Ginger.
"She knows," said Evelyn.
"But she does not yet fully understand it," said Ginger.
"No," said Evelyn.
"But she will soon understand it, and fully," said Ginger, "even so stupid aslave."
"Yes," said Evelyn.
The auctioneer then removed the long, supple kaiila quirt from his belt. Twicehe struck the girl across the back. She cried out in pain. Her education had nowcommenced. No time, now, would be lost in teaching her her condition. He draggedher to her feet by the hair and bent her backwards, displaying the bow of herbeauty to the crowd.
"I have a bid of five tarsks on this slut," he called. "Do I bear more? Do Ihear more?"
"Is she trained?" called a man.
"Train her yourself," called the auctioneer, "to your own pleasures." It wasunderstood, of course, that these barbarians were not trained. They had not yetbeen taught, as far as I could tell, even the proper modes of kneeling before amaster.
"Five five!" called a man.
"Good! Good!" called the auctioneer, displaying the slave. "Do I hear more?"
"Can she speak Gorean?" called a man. I smiled. It was clearly understood thatthese barbarian slaves could not speak Gorean.
"Train her like a sleen or a kaiila, on her hands and knees," said theauctioneer. "She will soon learn what is required of her."
"Pose her!" called a man.
"In what way, Noble Sir?" inquired the auctioneer, obligingly. He then,following the instructions of the fellow, sat the girl down, near the front ofthe central block, her left leg under her, her right leg extended and flexed,her right side facing the fellow, her shoulders back, her head turned sharply tolook at him. In this way the curves of her right leg, and the lines of herfigure, are pleasantly displayed.
"Imagine her in your collar!" challenged the auctioneer.
"Kneel her!" called a man.
The auctioneer then knelt the girl near the front of the central block. Sheknelt back on her heels. Her knees were widely spread. Her back was straight,her head high.
"Five seven!" called a man.
"Five seven!" repeated the auctioneer.
"Get her on her feet, so we can see her legs!" called a man.
"Belly her!" called another.
"Make her walk!" called a man.
"Kneel her, with her head to the ground!" called another.
"Put her through slave paces!" called another.
I looked to the, side. One of the fellows there was the short, muscular fellowwho wore the low, broad-brimmed hat. I recalled he had purchased at least fouror five of the girls from the side blocks. They had been excellent females, inmy opinion, but they had not seemed to be, at least on the whole, the choicestmerchandise available to him, and for similar costs. It was almost as though hewere purchasing them for some purpose other than that for which slave girls arecommonly purchased. I did not, now, understand his apparent interest in thered-haired slave now being vended. She, surely, was the sort of woman that wouldbe purchased, at least usually, to fulfill one of the more common purposes ofslave girls.
"Men are beasts," said Ginger.
"Yes," said Evelyn.
There was the sound of a quirt lashing flesh. The red-haired girl cried out inpain.
"She does not even know what they want her to do," said Ginger.
"She is a stupid slave," said Evelyn.
"She will learn," said Ginger.
"We all learn," said Evelyn.
I had noted, during the course of the evening, that more than one of theattendants about, and the auctioneer, too, had noted the presence of the twotavern girls in the crowd. They had not taken any action, however, to ejectthem. I found this of interest. Perhaps they thought them to be with me and thatI, so to speak, was answerable for them. Again I was puzzled as to why theywould be clinging about me. As I had not volunteered to accompany one or theother of them back to her master's tavern they should have attempted, after abit, to apply their beauty and enslaved wiles to the enticement of a more likelyprospect. It was surely not their business to be standing about observing slavesales. Even now, perhaps, their masters had taken slave whips down from thewalls, curious as to their absence.