"Oars inboard," called Gudi, who acted as oar master.

Seamen hurled mooring lines to men on the wharf. These were looped about heavy mooring cleats. Coils of rope slung over the side cushioned the strakes of the ship, lest she grate herself on the boards of the wharf. Men gathered their gear. The gangplank was run from an opening in the starboard rail, swung open, to the wharf. The number of the wharf was eight.

I saw two slavers stop at the wharf, looking up at the slaves suspended from the rings. "If you want to sell them, bring them to the market of Kovu," called one of them, an ugly fellow, his right cheek disfigured by a long scar.

Shoka lifted his hand to them, acknowledging that he had heard them.

They then continued on their way.

Beautiful slave girls, clothed and unclothed, are not that rare on Gor. That the two girls had attracted the attention of passing slavers was high praise indeed for their unconcealed charms.

Two men from the desk of the nearest wharf praetor, he handling wharves six through ten, a scribe and a physician, boarded the ship. The scribe carried a folder with him. He would check the papers of Ulafi, the registration of the ship, the arrangements for wharfage and the nature of the cargo. The physician would check the health of the crew and slaves. Plague, some years ago, had broken out in Bazi, to the north, which port had then been closed by the merchants for two years. In some eighteen months it had burned itself out, moving south and eastward. Bazi had not yet recovered from the economic blow. Schendi's merchant council, I supposed, could not be blamed for wishing to exercise due caution that a similar calamity did not befall their own port.

The scribe, with Ulafi, went about his business. I, with the crew members, submitted to the examination of the physician. He did little more than look into our eyes and examine our forearms. But our eyes were not yellowed nor was there sign of the broken pustules in our flesh.

Two slave girls, white, barefoot, in ragged brown tunics, with golden rings in their ears, one chewing on a larma, came to stand on the wharf near the prow. "How ugly you are!" called up one of them to the girls at the rings.

"Have you ever been put at the prow?" called Sasi back to them, unhesitatingly.

They did not respond.

I saw the blond-haired barbarian, suspended at her ring, suddenly shudder with understanding. And then how proud she seemed, bound there, suddenly. She looked up at her bound wrists and the large ring. Her feet moved, rubbing slightly against one another; her ankles, crossed and bound, shifted in the small encircling rope loops which held them closely together. The line of her body, suspended as she was, was very beautiful. She looked over at Sasi, and Sasi smiled at her. Then, to my amazement, the blond girl, though her wrists must have hurt her, her weight drawing against them, smiled back at Sasi. Then she looked down with contempt at the ragged girls on the wharf.

"You are both homely, poor slaves!" called up one of the girls.

"You are homely, poor slaves, not we?" said Sasi. "We are at the prow!" She looked at them, angrily. "Were you ever at the prow?"

Again they did not answer.

Can your master not afford to give you a decent tunic?" asked Sasi. I smiled, for Sasi, herself, did not have a stitch to wear. I would have her improve her slave skills considerably before I would let her have so much as a rag. "I wager your master has you dance for male slaves!" cried Sasi.

The two girls cried out with rage and the one girl hurled the core of the larma at Sasi, stinging her on the lower right abdomen.

"Pierced-ear girls!" cried Saul.

The two girls suddenly looked at one another and, sobbing, turned and fled from the wharf.

Sasi looked back at me, well pleased with herself~ I had to admit she had handled the two girls well. I also recalled that she had, once, in the voyage, begged me to have her own ears pierced, that she might be then all the more helplessly and irrevocably a slave. I did not know If she had changed her mind on this issue, but it did not matter. I looked at her. Yes, rings would look well in her ears. I would, thus, have her ears pierced, or would do it myself. I also looked at the blond-haired girl. Her ears, too, I decided, would look well with rings in them. She would soon have pierced ears, set well with golden rings, should she come into my ownership.

The blond-haired girl looked at me, and then looked away. I was pleased. I could see how proud she was to have been found beautiful enough to be put at the prow of a Gorean ship. Perhaps for the first time she was beginning to sense how lovely she truly was.

How ignorant women are. Do they not know how beautiful they are? Do they not know how incredibly exciting they are to men? Do they not know how they are wanted, how fiercely they are desired. If only they could see themselves but once through a man's eyes, would they not be terrified to leave the house, lest they be stripped and put under the iron, and collared, by the first man who sees them? Perhaps it is well for women not to know how desirable they are. How they might fear men, if they but knew. I speak, of course, of the men of Gor and those of a Gorean nature.

And yet on Gor women who are put in collars do not long remain ignorant of their own beauty and its meaning. It is soon taught to them, for they are slaves. Perhaps it is only the slave girl, of all women, kneeling and owned, placed uncompromisingly at the mercy of men, who had some sense of her own desirability. What woman can begin to understand men, who has not been owned by one?

"Bring in the slaves," said the physician.

One seaman held Sasi's rope taut, above the deck ring. Another undid the bowline which fastened the rope to the ring. Shoka, with a hook on a pole, drew Sasi back to the rail. He put aside the pole, and, one hand about her waist, drew her to him, lifting her then over the rail. He placed her on her back on the deck, her ankles still bound, her wrists, still tied, back over her head.

The physician bent to examine her.

Shoka then retrieved the pole and extended it outward, to draw the blond-haired girl back to the rail.

She was very beautiful. Her eyes, briefly, met mine as Shoka lifted her over the rail. He placed her on her back, beside Sasi, her wrists and ankles, like those of Sasi, still tied. Her arms, like Sasi's, elbows bent, were back and over her head.

"Oh!" she cried, handled as a slave girl.

Curious, the physician touched her again. She whimpered. squirming. "She's a hot one," said the physician.

"Yes," said Ulafi.

The girl looked at the physician with horror, tears in her eyes. But he completed her examination, looking into her eyes, and examining the interior of her thighs, her belly, and the interior of her forearms, for marks.

Then the physician stood up. "They are clear," he said. "The ship is clear. All may disembark."

"Excellent," said Ulafi.

The scribe noted the physician's report in his papers and the physician, with a marking stick, initialed the entry.

"May I wish you good fortune in your business in Schendi," said Ulafi.

"Yes, thank you, Captain," I said. "My thanks to you, too, for a line voyage."

He nodded. "Thanks, too," said he, "for the use of your pretty little dark-haired slave for the prow."

"It is nothing," I said.

"I wish you well," said he.

"I wish you well," said I.

I bent to Sasi's bonds, and freed her. Then I took a pair of slave bracelets from my pouch and braceleted her hands behind her back. I would have to find lodging.

"Put that one," said Ulafi to a seaman, indicating the bound, blond-haired girl, "in sink and chain her to a ring on the wharf. We will not have her run away again, as she did in Port Kar."