"Because you, yourself, are a slave," I said.

"Perhaps," she wept. "I do not know."

Within the hood, I smiled. Slaves, as is well known, are on the whole far more loving and compassionate than free women. That is probably because they are so much more female then the free woman.

"We must hang her on the spear," I said, jocularly. Suddenly Lady Claudia flung her body across that of the slave, as though she would protect her from me. It was a touching gesture, I thought. To be sure, it was a little silly. I could fling her a dozen feet away at my will, or, if I wished, with a judicious blow, little more than a quick tap on the diaphragm, have her instantly on her back helpless, gasping for breath. If necessary, I could bind her, or, if I wished, in an instant, strike her senseless.

"You would protect her, wouldn't you?" I asked.

"Yes!" she wept.

"She is perhaps your worst enemy," I reminded her.

"It does not matter," she wept.

"You have incredibly deep feelings and emotions," I said. "You would make a superb slave."

She looked up at me, puzzled. Her veil was wet with tears.

"Well, we had better hang this slave on the spear," I said, removing my sword belt.

"You have been joking," she said, suddenly. "You never intended to put her on the spear!"

"She is going to hang on the spear all right," I said. I then removed the sword from the sheath and thrust the sheath up, between the slave's back and the ropes, and then forced the point of the spear up, high, into the sheath. This did not do the sheath any good, distending it, but then it was not one, I reminded myself, for which I had had to put out my own tarsks. I then buckled the sword belt, making a new hole in the belt with my knife, tightly about the slender waist of the slave, up a bit, so it, too, was hidden behind the thickly coiled ropes. The spear's point was now entered into the sheath, the sheath held in place behind the slave by her ropes, and the slave's body held against the sheath and spear by the rope and belt. She could not slip down the spear because of the spear's insertion in the sheath. In this way, when the spear was placed in the mount, it would appear, I hoped, that the slave had been mounted on the spear. To see that this was not so, I thought one would probably have to be rather close. There is not much blood, incidentally, with the sort of impalement which, I had gathered, they had intended for the prisoner, as the spear itself, in such an impalement, packs the wound.

"You are sparing her!" breathed Lady Claudia. "Of late," I said, "she has been concerned to be pleasing." The former Lady Publia shuddered, realizing what might as easily have been her fate.

I then lifted the spear up and inserted it, down, into its mount.

We heard some cheers from down on the wall, a handful presumably greeting the appearance of the impaling spear, seemingly burdened. Most of the fellows, though, I suspected, had other things on their mind. Behind the slowly approaching towers, partly in their cover, advanced hundreds of men. the towers themselves were now little more than seventy-five yards from the wall. They had now aligned themselves, and the dropping of the bridges, when the towers were in position, would be simultaneous. Surely men should be drawn up from below to help defend the wall. The smaller probes, now, those of the scattered grapnels and single-pole ladders, had ceased. There were dozens of supporting grapnel and ladder crews, however, now approaching between the towers.

"Wriggle," I commanded the new slave, bound on the spear. "Wriggles well, and deliciously, or I shall set you on the spear properly!"

She then wriggled, and writhed, helplessly.

"Could you really put her on the spear?" asked Lady Claudia, softly. "Certainly," I said. It was true.

We heard laughter from down on the wall, and, I think, even from Cosians below the wall. They, too, had little respect for traitresses.

Lady Claudia shuddered.

"Not too much," I cautioned the new slave, "mostly at first, then less. Then hold yourself tense, trying not to move."

The new slave, hung in the ropes, moaned her acquiescence.

"What is wrong?" I asked Lady Claudia.

"It could have been I, truly impaled," she said.

"But it is not," I said.

"The ram pounds the gate," she said.

We could feel the vibrations, even here.

"Let us leave," I said to Lady Claudia.

"There is no safety," she said.

Down on the lower walkway we looked back to the battlements over the gate. It did look as though the former Lady Publia were on the spear.

The towers were now but thirty yards away. There was no way their discharge, their rushing, armed effluxes could be stayed by the men here.

"If she is rescued," said Lady Claudia, looking back at the lovely, nude figure, seemingly mounted upon the impaling spear, "doubtless she will deny she is a slave."

"But even so," I said, "she would still be a slave, and would know it in her heart."

"Yes," said Lady Claudia.

The slave cannot free herself. She can be freed only by an owner. The condition of slavery does not require the collar, or the brand, or an anklet, bracelet or ring, or any such overt sign of bondage. Such things, as symbolic as they are, as profoundly meaningful as they are, and as useful as they are for marking properties, identifying masters, and such, are not necessary to slavery. They are, in effect, though their affixing can legally effect imbondment, ultimately, in themselves, tokens of bondage, and are not to be confused with the reality itself. The uncollared slave is not then a free woman but only a slave who is not then in a collar. Similarly a slave is still a slave even if her brand could be made to magically disappear or, if she has been a made a slave in some other way, if she had not yet been branded. Indeed, some masters, somewhat foolishly, I think, dally in the branding of their slaves. Indeed, some, perhaps the most foolish, do not brand them at all. Such girls, however, when they come into the keeping of new masters, usually discover that that oversight is promptly remedied.

"The slave who lies about her slavery," I said, "is not thereby the less a slave. It is only that she is then a lying slave."

"I have heard that bondage is difficult to conceal," said Lady Claudia. "That is particularly so," I said, "if one has been a slave for a time. It can be given away in many ways, by the movements of the body, by certain timidities, and deferences, dispositions to kneel, slips of the tongue, and such. Slavers, and others, it is well known, can often pick out a slave from among women all clad in the Robes of Concealment, by simply having her walk, or speak, or by looking in her eyes. She is then disrobed, the brand revealed, and given over for punishment."

She looked up at me.

"I spoke of legal bondage, of course," I said. "Perhaps you meant natural bondage, that of the woman who is by nature a slave?"

She looked down.

"That," I said, "is independent of the proprieties of legal bondage, of course." "Yes," she whispered.

"To be sure," I said, "that condition of the natural slave, like that of the legal slave, can be difficult to conceal, particularly under certain stimulus conditions. It need not remain, however, simply a guilty secret locked in the heart of a frustrated, unfulfilled free woman, not yet in the keeping of her master. It can be shown by such things as her profound psychological dispositions to selflessly serve and love, her desire for, and response to, male domination, her understandings of chains and the whip, the quickening, deepening and intensification of her sexuality under conditions of bondage, her happiness and fulfillment when she finds herself placed in her proper relationship to the male, her joy in fulfilling her biological role, her joy in obedience, submission and love, her elation in knowing herself owned and mastered, subdued and conquered, a condition manifested in acts as disparate, and yet strangely akin, as the tying of her master's sandals and slave writhings in the furs, being forced to thrash helplessly in the orgasmic ecstasies he chooses to impose upon her."