"Can you not hear it?" I asked.

She finished tying my sandals. As she knotted each, she kissed the know and then when fished with both, put her head to my feet in a graceful gesture of submission. Tying his sandals, and often thusly, is a small, homely service often performed by the slave girl for her Master. Then she looked up at me, puzzled.

"Now," I said, "cannot you hear it?"

"The conversation has stopped on the floor of the tavern, " she said frightened. "It is quiet there." "Listen," I said."I hear it!" she said. "What is it?"

"It is an alarm bar, I said. "It is coming from the wharves," I said."What does it mean?" she asked. I began to unbuckle the leather curtains of the alcove swiftly. "I do not know," I said."Where are you going," she asked."To the wharves," I said.

"Do not go!" she said. I threw back the curtains. I looked back at her. She knelt frightened on the furs the chain on her neck. "Do not go," she begged.I turned about and made my way rapidly through the tables. I heard her sob and jerk at the chain in frustration but if of course held her perfectly. The men among whom I strode had not risen to their feet. None met my eyes. None volunterred to accompany me. "Do not go," advised Tasdron. I did not answer him, but left the tavern and then, running, made my way toward the wharves.

22. What Occurred at the Wharves; What Occurred in the vicinity of the Tavern of Tasdron

"Stand back, lest you be hurt!" cried a man.

I was seized by two men, citizens, and dragged back into the encircling crowd. I was bleeding. My tunic was cut. The sword of the pirate, in a drunken swing, had grazed my chest. Other citizens, with ship poles, of the sort used on Gorean galleys in casting off and thrusting from the wharves, pressed back the crown. I felt the side of the pole against my belly. I was jostled by the crowd. The priate turned away, laughing.

"Where are the guardsmen of Port Cos?" I asked. "Where are the guardsmen of Ar's Station?" There were several guardsmen from each of these towns in Victoria. There was smoke in the air. Five warehouses and some ancillary buildings were afire.

"They maintain their posts," said a man grimly. "They protect their own headquarters."Victoria is not their concern," said a man bitterly.

I watched the pirates, perhaps some 50 or 60 of them, unchallenged, moving between the warehouses and the sharves, where two pirate galleys were moored. Some townfolk at swordpoint, were loading goods onto the galleys. Some of the pirates bore torches."The tribute will be paid by morning," said one of the men near me.

I saw several of the pirates with bottles of paga, swilling from them, as they strutted about, sometimes pausing to cu into a bale of goods or overturn a barrel kicking it open, permitting its contents to run out over the boards.The alarm bar continued to ring futilely. The pirates made no effort to stop the desperate fellow who meaninglessly continued to strike it.

"We outnumber them 50 to 1," I said. "Let me rush upon them. Let us stop them!" They are Masters in Victoria," said a man, "Do nothing rash."

I heard a woman scream and saw her, thrown over the shoulder of a laughing pirate, a brawny fellowk being carried to one of the galleys. "What will be done with her?" whispered a woman, near me, terrified. "If she is beautiful," said a man near us, "perhaps she will be kept to serve in the stronghold of Policrates. If she is not, perhaps her throat will be cut."The woman gasped, her hand at her veil.

The pirate threw the woman to his feet near the neareset galley and there stripped her and handed her to a comrade who stood on board the galley. He put her on the outside of the railing, facing outward, with thesmall of her back tightly against it, her arms hooked over it and behind it, as with the others. He then, with a length of binding fiber, running tight across her body, fastened her wrists together, as he had similarly those of the others. All were well displayed. too the exposition of captures in this way tends to discourage retaliatory missle fire from the scene of the pillaging.

The woman was comely, I did not think she would hae her throat cut. Lusty men have better uses to which to put such women. I did think, however, that they would soon, all the captures, be marked and put in collars.

"If I were you," said the man near the women in the crowd, "I would draw back in the crowd and hide. Then I would flee." "But I am free," she said. "So, too were they," said the man gesturing to the bound woman at the railing of the pirate galley.She shrank back suddenly frightened.

I saw Kilomense, some seventy yards away, directing his men and the enforced laborers, citizens of Victoria, loading the galleys.

"You there, female," called a pirate, his eyes roaming the crowd, "step forth!" The men holding the ship's pole, frightened, lowered it. "Step forth!" said the pirate.

The woman shook her headl prssing back against the men. "Unhood her, face-strip her!" ordered the pirate. "Protect me, save me, please," she begged.

Her hood was thrust back. Her veil was torn away. She was lovely. The price she would bring would be good. I wondered why such a woman would come to the wharves in a time of such danger. Surely she must have understood tha peril to which she would be exposing herself.

"Step forth Beauty," said the priate. Numbly she approached him. I made to move but two men restrained me. Swiftly before us all, in the light of the flames, was the woman stripped by the pirates blade. "Lie down," he said he.She hesitated and looked at him in anguish."Or do you wish to be slit like a larma?" he asked. His sword jabbed into the sweet roundness of her belly.Swiftly she knelt at his feet, her back on the harsh tarred boards.

The pirate looked at us and laughed. "here at my feet, supine, stripped is a free woman of Victoria. Do any of you dispute her with me?" Two men restrained me. No others moved.

"Kneel," he ordered the woman. She did so. "He then pressed the point of his blade against her fair thraot. Numbly, slowly lifting her arms, the blade between her arms, her fingers trembling, she tied the bondage knot in her own hair. She looked at him. "Please spare me Master," she said.

For a long moment or two the point of the blade remained at her throat, as the pirate considered the girl's plea. I saw his eyes roam her now-imbonded curves.He laughed.He thrust his blade back in its sheath. She almost fained with relief.

"On your feet!" he said. "Run to the nearest galley! Beg to be displayed there, as the loot you are!"

"Yes Master!" she cried and leaping up, fled toward the galley, a commanded slave.

"We do what we wish with Victoria," said the pirate, "do any of your gainsay me?" None spoke.He then laughed again, and turning about, went back toward the galleys.

I watched the new slave being bound at the railing with the others.

"I say she wanted the collar," said a man. "They they all do," said another.They did not know, of course, a woman such as Miss Beverly Henderson. She could not be a slave. But what, I asked myself, if she were, in her secret heart as Alison in Ar and Peggy in Victoria, both themselves surely slaves, had claimed a true slave? If she were she had made a great fool of me, in pretending to be free, in being often displesasing, in daring to sell Lota, in attempting to betray me to the guardsmen of Port Cos, in disparaging me in the tavern of Hibron. What if she were a slave? Could she be truly a slave? The very thought almost made me wish to cry out with fury and pleasure. If she were a slave, I would find this out. And then, somehow, against all obstacles, I would make her mine, mine own. I would own her, nor would I be gentle with the slave. She owed me much. Yes, I vowed, if she were a slave, I would have her in my collar! And she would soo then well know herself a slave. I would treat her, the desirable little slut, and slave, with a ruthlessness and a power that would become legendary in Victoria!