"We must move under the cover of darkness," said a lieutenant. "We must be at the merchant rendezvous before dawn."

"To your saddle, Lieutenant," grinned Rask of Treve.

The man grinned, and leapt to the ladder leading to the high saddle of the great beast.

I saw below that the great gate of the keep had been swung open. Tharlarion rushed through.

I was thrust into the hands of a soldier, who conducted me to one of the tarn baskets.

Borchoff, below in the courtyard, looked upward. Rask of Treve lifted his hand to him, in a salute of warriors. The gate had been opened. Borchoff and his men might make their way, though chained, to safety.

Then Rask of Treve looked about himself, making swift inspection of his men and tarns, and their burdens, riches and slave girls.

The soldier lifted me lightly from my feet and thrust me, feet first, through a hatchlike opening, with flat door, in the top of the tarn basket. He pushed my head down, thrusting me down between the other girls. I crouched down, wedged in. I could scarcely squirm. I looked up, seeing the flat door swung shut. In an instant he had tied it closed. I knelt. We could not stand upright. Eight of us were imprisoned in the basket. Our wrists were tied behind our backs. Silk, and gold, too, had been thrust in the basket. I looked about. Scarcely could we move. From the left ears of the other girls, as from mine, there dangled a silver leaf, a tag, which had been placed upon them by the men who had taken them.

"Ho!" cried Rask of Treve.

I thrust my head to the wall of the basket.

"Ho!" cried the men of Rask of Treve.

The man who had placed me in the basket, and then tied it shut, climbed swiftly to the saddle of his tarn; our trail lines, those attached to the basket in which we were confined, ran to the tarn's stirrups. When the tarn took to flight the basket, following it, would be lifted into the air. He awaited only the command of flight.

"Ho!" cried Rask of Treve. He drew back on the first strap of his tarn's harness.

"Ho!" cried his men.

Rask of Treve's tarn smote the air with its mighty wings. I was frightened. The span of those wings may have been thirty feet or more.

His tarn, screaming, departed the walls of the keep of Stones of Turmus. Those of his men followed him. Even in the shelter of the basket the torrent of air was frightening. If one had stood upon the parapet surely one would have been hurled in its blasts to the courtyard below.

There was a moment of slack and then the lines on the basket drew taut. Our tarnsman drew the basket over the courtyard and, gaining altitude there, then departed the walls of the keep, following the others. When the basket dropped from the parapet toward the courtyard we screamed, frightened, but then it swung below the tarn, and we felt ourselves being lifted high into the air, as though toward the moons of Gor itself.

I wondered how many slave girls, helpless and bound, a tiny silver leaf dangling from their ear, had been carried by the men of Treve in this basket, and how many more in the future would find themselves its captive.

I could see the keep of Stones of Turmus in flames, dropping away below us.

13

I Am Publicly Auctioned

The sheet was ripped from me. I cried out, startled.

"Ascend the block, Slave Girl," said the man.

"Yes, Master," I said. He prodded me with his whip.

I looked at the worn stairs of solid wood, leading in their spiral upward. I glanced down at the other girls, Sulda and Tupa among them, who sat huddled at the foot of the block, clutching their sheets about them. Sucha, and others, had already been sold.

"It cannot be happening to me," I said to myself. "They cannot be going to sell me."

I felt the whip push against my back. Slowly I began to ascend the wide, concave stairs, worn by the bare feet of countless slave girls before me.

There were twenty steps to the height of the block.

My hair was longer now, as it had not been cut on Gor, save to trim and shape it. It now fell below my shoulders, and swirled behind me, shaped into the "slave flame."

No longer did I wear the Turian collar; it had been roughly filed from my neck by a male slave, under the whip of his overseer. He had been struck once when he had let his finger touch the side of my neck. I do not know if he did it on purpose or not. No longer did I wear in my left ear the silver leaf, identifying me as a catch of Rask, a warrior and raider of the city of Treve. I had been sold before dawn at a slaver's camp on the outskirts of the city of Ar. I had been thrown naked to the slaver's feet. Swift, expert assessment had been done upon me. I cried out in misery. I brought Rask of Treve, my captor, fifteen copper tarsks. This was not bad for an Earth girl in the current market. This figure had been entered into accounts, on a ledger. On another ledger, one kept by one of Rask's men, this figure was also entered, with a sign following it, indicating him to whose private account the amount was to be credited, he who had taken me, Rask, the warrior of Treve. When the figure pertinent to my sale had been entered in the two ledgers the wire loop, from which dangled the silver leaf, had been cut from my ear. The silver leaf was then returned to him who kept the ledger for Rask of Treve, and he dropped the leaf, with others, into a nearby box. Humiliated, then, I was thrown to the slaver's chain, behind Sulda. A ring lock was placed through the Turian collar, which I wore at the time, and a link in the slaver's chain, and then snapped shut, securing me on the chain by the collar, with the others. The chain was heavy. Tupa was then added to the chain after me. She brought her captor only twelve copper tarsks.

"Hurry, Slave Girl," called the man at the foot of the stairs. I hesitated. About my neck I wore a light chain, locked; From it depended an oval disk. On this disk was a number, my lot number, or sales number. Sucha, who could read, told me it was 128. She had been 124. We were being sold in the auction house of Publius, on Ar's Street of Brands. It is a minor auction house, usually handling lesser, cheaper slaves, usually females, in greater volumes; it lacks the prestige of such houses as that of Claudius and the Curulean; nonetheless, it is not unfrequented and it has a reputation as a place in which, not unoften, bargains may be obtained.

I heard the step of the man on the stairs behind me. I turned about, stricken.

"I am naked," I said. Did he not understand I was of Earth? I had been sold before, but not like this. I was of Earth! Surely they could not truly be going to display me publicly and sell me at auction! I had been sold before, but privately. The thought of my beauty being exposed so publicly, so brazenly, to large numbers of men, buyers, nauseated me. I looked to the height of the block. I thought I might die.

The room was an amphitheater; it was lit by torchlight. I had earlier been exposed in the exhibition cages, that prospective buyers might scan the merchandise at close hand, forming their suppositions as to its value, that their bids later, if they cared to make them, might be shrewd and realistic. In the exhibition cages we were forced to obey the commands of the men outside the cages, moving in certain ways, and such, but they were not permitted to touch us. We were told to smile much in the cages, and be beautiful. I shared my cage with twenty girls, each of us with a chain and disk on our throats. Outside the cage, posted, were our lot numbers, or sales numbers, corresponding with the disk numbers, and a listing of certain of our features, primarily measurements.

I heard the man hurrying up the steps behind me.

I had spent eight days in the slave pens, waiting the night of the sale. I had been examined medically, in detail, and had had administered to me, while I lay bound, helplessly, a series of painful shots, the purpose of which I did not understand. They were called the stabilization serums. We were also kept under harsh discipline, close confinement and given slave training.