Kamchak regarded Aphris of Turia.
"Why is a slave," he asked, "masquerading in the robes of a free woman?"
"Please, no, Tuchuk," she said. "Please, no!"
And in a moment the lovely Aphris of Tuna stood at the stake revealed to the eyes of her master.
She threw back her head and moaned, wrists still locked in the retaining rings.
She had not, as I had suspected, deigned to wear the shameful camisk beneath her robes of white and gold.
The Kassar wench, who had been bound across from her to the opposing stake, had now been freed by a judge and she strode to where Aphris was still confined.
"Well done, Tuchuk!" said the girl, saluting Kamchak.
Kamchak shrugged.
Then the girl, with vehemence, spat in the face of the lovely Aphris. "Slave girl!" hissed the girl. "Slave! Slave girl!"
She then turned and strode away, looking for warriors of the Kassars.
Kamchak laughed loudly.
"Punish her!" demanded Aphris.
Kamchak suddenly cuffed Aphris of Turia. Her head snapped sideways and there was a streak of blood at the corner of her mouth. The girl looked at him in sudden fear.
It might have been the first time she had ever been struck.
Kamchak had not hit her hard, but sharply enough to instruct her. "You will take what abuse any free person of the Wagon Peoples cares to inflict-upon you," he said.
"I see," said a voice, "you know how to handle slaves."
I turned to see, only a few feet away, on the shoulders of slaves standing on the bloodied sand, the open, bejewelled, cushioned palanquin of Saphrar of the Caste of Merchants.
Aphris blushed from head to toe, enfolded transparent in the crimson flag of her shame
Saphrar’s round, pinkish face was beaming with pleasure, though I would have thought this day a tragic one for him. The tiny red-lipped mouth was spread wide with benign satisfaction. I saw the tips of the two golden canines.
Aphris suddenly pulled at the retaining rings, trying to rush to him, now oblivious of the riches of her beauty revealed even to the slaves who carried his palanquin. To them, of course, she was now no more than they, save perhaps that her flesh would not be used to bear the poles of palanquins, to carry boxes nor dig in the earth, but would be appointed even more pleasing than theirs to a master. "Saphrar!" she cried. "Saphrar!"
Saphrar looked on the girl. He took from a silken pouch lying before him on the palanquin a small glass, with glass petal edges like a flower, mounted on a silver stem about which curled silver leaves. Through this he looked on her more closely.
"Aphris!" he cried, as though horrified, but yet smiling.
"Saphrar," she wept, "free me!"
"How unfortunate!" wailed Saphrar. I could still see the tips of the golden teeth.
Kamchak had his arm about my shoulder, chuckling.
"Aphris of Turia," he said, "has a surprise coming."
Aphris turned her head to Kamchak. "I am the richest woman in all Turia," she said. "Name your price!"
Kamchak looked at me. "Do you think five gold pieces would be too much?" he asked.
I was startled.
Aphris nearly choked. "Sleep," she wept. Then she turned to Saphrar. "Buy me!" she demanded. "If necessary, use all my resources, all! Free me!"
"But Aphris," Saphrar was purring, "I am in charge of your funds and to barter them and all your properties and goods for one slave would be a most unwise and absurd decision on my part, irresponsible even."
its own tasks, lighter and more suitable. doubtless
Aphris suddenly looked at him, dumbfounded.
"It is or was true that you were the richest woman in all Turia," Saphrar was saying, "but your riches are not yours I to manage but mine not, that is, until you would have reached your majority, some days from now I believe."
"I do not wish to remain a slave for even a day!" she cried.
"Is its over," his eyes rising, "that you would upon reaching your I majority transfer your entire fortunes to a Tuchuk, merely to obtain your freedom."
"Of course" she wept.
"How fortunate then," observed Saphrar, "that such a transaction is precluded by law."
"I don’t understand," said Aphris.
Kamchak squeezed my shoulder and rubbed his nose.
"Surely you are aware," said Saphrar, "that a slave cannot own property any more than a kaiila, a tharlarion or sleep."
"I am the richest woman in Turia!" she cried.
Saphrar reclined a bit more on his cushions. His little round pinkish face shone. He pursed his lips and then smiled.
He poked his head forward and said, very quickly, "You are a slaver" He then giggled.
Aphris of Turia threw- back her head and screamed.
"your wardrobes and jewels, your investments and assets, chattels and lands, became mine."
Aphris was weeping uncontrollably at the stake. Then she lifted her head to him, her eyes bright with tears. "I beg you, noble Saphrar," she wept, "I beg of you I beg of you to free me. Please! Please! Please!"
Saphrar smiled at her. He then turned to Kamchak, "What, Tuchuk, did you say her price was?"
"I have lowered it," said Kamchak. "I will let you have her for one copper tarn disk."
Saphrar smiled. "The price is too high," he said.
Aphris cried out in distress.
Saphrar then again lifted the tiny glass through which he had regarded her, and examined her with some care. Then he shrugged and gestured for his slaves to turn the palanquin.
"Saphrar" cried out the girl one last time.
"I do not speak to slaves," said he, and the merchant, on the palanquin, moved away toward the walls of distant Turia.
Aphris was looking after him, numbly, her eyes red, her cheeks stained with tears.
"It does not matter," said Kamchak soothingly to the girl.
"Even had Saphrar been a worthy man you would not now be free."
She turned her beautiful head to stare at him, blankly.
"No," said Kamchak, taking her hair and giving her head a friendly shake, "I would not have sold you for all the gold in Turia."
"But why?" she whispered.
"Do you recall," asked Kamchak, "one night two years ago when you spurned my gift and called me sleep?"
The girl nodded, her eyes frightened.
"It was on that night," said Kamchak, "that I vowed to make you my slave."
She dropped her head.
"And it is for that reason," said Kamchak, "that I would not sell you for all the gold of Turia."
She looked up, red-eyed.
"It was on that night, little Aphris," said Kamchak, "that I decided I wanted you, and would have you, slave."
The girl shuddered and dropped her head.
The laugh of Kamchak of the Tuchuks was loud.
He had waited long to laugh that laugh, waited long to see his fair enemy thus before him, thus bound and shamed, his, a slave.
In short order then Kamchak took the key over the head of Aphris of Turia and sprang open the retaining rings. He then led the numb, unresisting Turian maiden to his kaiila.
There, beside the paws of the animal, he made her kneel.
"Your name is Aphris of Turia," he said to her, giving her a name.
"My name is Aphris of Turia," she said, accepting her name at his hands.
"Submit," ordered Kamchak.
Trembling Aphris of Turia, kneeling, lowered her head and extended her arms, wrists crossed. Kamchak quickly and tightly thonged them together.
She lifted her head. "Am I to be bound across the saddle?" she asked numbly.
"No," said Kamchak, "there is no hurry."
"I don’t understand," said the girl.
Already Kamchak was placing a thong on her neck, the loose end of which he looped several times about the pommel of his saddle. "You will run alongside," he informed her.
She looked at him in disbelief.
Elizabeth Cardwell, unbound, had already taken her position on the other side of F~ teak’s kaiila, beside his right
It might have been the first time ship
Kamchak had not hit her hard, but ship
To be sure there might have been some doubt that the miserable wench thonged behind Kamchak’s kaiila could have been first stake. She was gasping and stumbling; her body glistened with perspiration; her legs were black with wet dust; her hair was tangled and thick with dust; her feet and ankles were bleeding; her calves were scratched and speckled with the red bites of fennels. When Kamchak reached his wagon, the poor girl, gasping for breath, legs trembling, fell exhausted to the grass, her entire body shaking with the ordeal of her run. I supposed that Aphris of Turia had done little in her life that was more strenuous than stepping in and out of a scented bath. Elizabeth Cardwell, on the other hand, I was pleased to see, ran well, breathing evenly, showing few signs of fatigue. She had, of course, in her time with the wagons, become used to this form of exercise. I had rather come to admire her. The life in the open air, the work, had apparently been good for her. She was trim, vital, buoyant. I wondered how many of the girls in her New York office could have run as she beside the stirrup of a Tuchuk warrior.
Kamchak leaped down from the saddle of the kaiila, puffing a bit.
"Here, here!" he cried cheerily, hauling the exhausted Aphris to her knees "There is work to be done!"
She looked up at him, the thong still on her neck, her wrists bound. Her eyes seemed dazed.
"There are bosk to be groomed," he informed her, "and their horns and hoofs must be polished there is fodder to be fetched and dung to be gathered the wagon must be wiped and the wheels greased and there is water to be brought from the stream some four pasangs. away and meat to hammer and cook for supper! hurry! hurry, Lazy Girl!"
Then he leaned back and laughed his Tuchuk laugh, slapping his thighs.
Elizabeth Cardwell was removing the thong from the girl’s neck and unbinding her wrists. "Come along," she said, kindly. "I will show you."
Aphris stood up, wobbling, still dazed. She turned her eyes on Elizabeth, whom she seemed to see then for the first time.
"Your accent," said Aphris, slowly. "You are barbarian." She said it with a kind of horror.
She turned in fury and followed Elizabeth Cardwell away.
After this Kamchak and I left the wagon and wandered about, stopping at one of the slave wagons for a bottle of Paga, which, while wandering about, we killed between us.
This year, as it turned out, the Wagon Peoples had done exceedingly well in the games of Love War a bit of news we picked up with the Paga and about seventy percent of the Turian maidens had been led slave from the stakes to which they had been manacled. In some years I knew the percentages were rather the other way about. It apparently made for zestful competition. We also heard that the wench Hereena, of the First Wagon, had been won by a Turian officer representing the house of Saphrar of the Merchants, to whom, for a fee, he presented her. I gathered that she would become another of his dancing girls. "A bit of perfume and silk will be good for that wench," stated Kamchak. It seemed strange to think of her, so wild and insolent, arrogant on the back of her kaiila, now a perfumed, silken slave of Turians. "She could use a bit of whip and steel, that wench," Kamchak muttered between swallows of Paga, pretty much draining the bottle. It was too bad, I thought, but at least I supposed there would be one fellows among the wagons, the young man Harold, he whom the girl had so abused, he who had not yet won the Courage Scar, who would be just as pleased as not that she, with all her contempt and spleen, was now delightfully salted away in bangles and bells behind the high, thick walls of a Turian’s pleasure garden.
Kamchak had circled around and we found ourselves back at the slave wagon.
We decided to wager to see who would get the second bottle of Paga.
"What about the flight of birds?" asked Kamchak.
"Agreed," I said, "but I have first choice."
"Very well," he said.
I knew, of course, that it was spring and, in this hemisphere, most birds, if there were any migrating, would be moving south. "South," I said.
"North," he said.
We then waited about a minute, and I saw several birds river gulls flying north.
"Those are Vosk gulls," said Kamchak, "In the spring, when the ice breaks in the Vosk, they fly north."
I fished some coins out of my pouch for the Paga.
"The first southern migrations of meadow kites," he said, "have already taken place. The migrations of the forest hurlit and the horned aim do not take place until later in the spring. This is the time that the Vosk gulls fly."
"Oh," I said.
Singing Tuchuk songs, we managed to make it back to the wagon.
Elizabeth had the meat roasted, though it was now considerably overdone.
"The meat is overdone," said Kamchak.
"They are both stinking drunk," said Aphris of Turia.
I looked at her. Both of them were beautiful. "No," I corrected her, "gloriously inebriated."
Kamchak was looking closely at the girls, leaning forward, squinting.
I blinked a few Ames.
"Is anything wrong?" asked Elizabeth Cardwell.
I noted that there was a large welt on the side of her face, that her hair was ripped up a bit and that there were five long scratches on the left side of her face.
"No," I said.
Aphris of Turia appeared in even worse shape. She had surely lost more than one handful of hair. There were teeth marks in her left arm and, if I was not mistaken, her right eye was ringed and discoloured.
"The meat is overdone," grumbled Kamchak. A master takes no interest in the squabbles of slaves, it being beneath him. He of course would not have approved had one of the girls been maimed, blinded or disfigured.
"Have the bosk been tended?" asked Kamchak.
"Yes," said Elizabeth firmly.
Kamchak looked at Aphris. "Have the bosk been tended?" he asked.
She looked up suddenly, her eyes bright with tears. She cast an angry look at Elizabeth. "Yes," she said, "they have been tended."
"Good," said Kamchak, "good." Then he pointed at the meat. "It is overdone," he said.
"You were hours late," said Elizabeth.
"Hours," repeated Aphris.
"It is overdone," said Kamchak.
"I shall roast fresh meat," said Elizabeth, getting up, and she did so. Aphris only sniffed.
When the meat was ready Kamchak ate his fill, and drank down, too, a flagon of bosk milk; I did the same, though the milk, at least for me, did not sit too well with the Paga of the afternoon.
Kamchak, as he often did, was sitting on what resembled a grey rock, rather squarish, except that the corners tended to be a bit rounded. When I had first seen this thing, heaped with other odds and ends in one corner of the wagon, some of the odds and ends being tankards of jewels and small, heavy chests filled with golden tarn disks, I had thought it merely a rock. Once, when rummaging through his things, Kamchak had kicked it across the rug for me to look at. I was surprised at the way it bounced on the rug and, when I picked it up, I was interested to see how light it was. It was clearly not a rock. It was rather leathery and had a rained surface. I was a bit reminded of some of the loose, tumbled rocks I had once glimpsed in certain abandoned portions of the place of Priest-Kings, far beneath the Sardar. Among such rocks it would not have been noticed.
"What do you make of it?" Kamchak asked.
"Interesting," I observed.
"Yes," said he, "I thought so." He held out his hands and I tossed the object back. "I have had it for some time," he said. "It was given to me by two travellers."
"Oh," I said.
When Kamchak had finished his freshly roasted meat and his flagon of bosk milk, he shook his head and rubbed his nose.
He looked at Miss Cardwell. "Tenchika and Dina are gone," said he. "You may sleep once more in the wagon."
Elizabeth cast a grateful look at him. I gathered that the ground under the wagon was hard.
"Thank you," she said.
"I thought he was your master," remarked Aphris.
"Master," added Elizabeth, with a withering look at Aphris, who smiled.
I now began to understand why there were often problems in a wagon with more than one girl. Still, Tenchika and Dina had not quarrelled very much. Perhaps this was because Tenchika’s heart was elsewhere, in the wagon of Albrecht of the Kassars.
"Who, may I ask," asked Aphris, "were Tenchika and Dina?"
"Slaves, Turian wenches," said Kamchak.
"They were sold," Elizabeth informed Aphris.
"Oh," said Aphris. Then she looked at Kamchak. "I do not suppose I shall be fortunate enough to be sold?"
"She would probably bring a high price," pointed out Elizabeth, hopefully.
"Higher than a barbarian surely," remarked Aphris.
"Do not fret, Little Aphris," said Kamchak, "when I am finished with you I shall if it pleases me put you on the block in the public slave wagon."
"I shall look forward to the day," she said.
"On the other hand," said Kamchak, "I may feed you to the kaiila."
At this the Turian maiden trembled slightly, and looked down.
"I doubt that you are good for much," Kamchak said, "but kaiila feed."
Aphris looked up angrily.
Elizabeth laughed and clapped her hands.
"You," said Kamchak, glaring at Elizabeth, "you stupid little barbarian you cannot even dance!"
Elizabeth looked down, confused, rather shamed. It was true, what Kamchak had said.
The voice of Aphris was timid and quiet. "I can’t either," she said.
"What!" howled Kamchak.
"No," cried Aphris, "I never learned!"
"Kaiila feed!" cried Kamchak.
"I’m sorry," said Aphris, now a bit irritated, "I just never planned on becoming a slave."
"You should have learned anyway," cried the disappointed Kamchak.
"Nonsense," said Aphris.
"It will cost money," grumbled Kamchak, "but you will learn, I will have you taught."
Aphris sniffed and looked away.
Elizabeth was looking at me. Then she turned to Kamchak. To my astonishment, she asked, "Could I, too, be taught?"
"Why?" he asked.
She looked down, blushing.
"She is only a barbarian," said Aphris, "All knees and elbows she could never learn."
"Hah!" laughed Kamchak. "The Little Barbarian does not wish to become second girl in the wagon!" He gave Elizabeth’s head a rough, affectionate shake. "You will fight for your place! Excellent!"
"She can be first girl if she wishes," sniffed Aphris. "I shall escape at the first opportunity and return to Turia."
"Beware of the herd sleep," said Kamchak.
Aphris turned white.
"If you attempt to leave the wagons at night they will sense you out and rip my pretty little slave girl in pieces."
"It is true," I warned Aphris of Turia.
"Nonetheless," said Aphris, "I will escape."
"But not tonight!" guffawed Kamchak.
"No," said Aphris acidly, "not tonight." Then she looked about herself, disdainfully at the interior of the wagon. Her gaze rested for a moment on the kaiila saddle which had been part of the spoils which Kamchak had acquired for Tenchika. In the saddle, in their sheaths, were seven quivas.
Aphris turned again to face Kamchak. "This slave," she said, indicating Elizabeth, "would not give me anything to eat."
"Kamchak must eat first, Slave," responded Elizabeth.
"Well," said Aphris, "he has eaten."
Kamchak then took a bit of meat that was left over from the fresh-roasted meat that Miss Cardwell had prepared. He held it out in his hand. "Eat," he said to Aphris, "but do not touch it with your hands."
Aphris looked at him in fury,- but then smiled. "Certainly," she said and the proud Aphris of Turia, kneeling, bent forward, to eat the meat held in the hand of her master.
Kamchak’s laugh was cut short when she sank her fine white teeth into his hand with a savage bite.
"Aiii!" he howled, jumping up and sticking his bleeding hand into his mouth, sucking the blood from the wound.
Elizabeth had leaped up and so had I.
Aphris had sprung to her feet and ran to the side of the wagon where there lay the kaiila saddle with its seven sheathed quivas. She jerked one of the quivas from its saddle sheath and stood with the blade facing us. She was bent over with rage.
Kamchak sat down again, still sucking his hand. I also sat down, and so, too, did Elizabeth Cardwell.
We left Aphris standing there, clutching the knife, breathing deeply.
"Sleep!" cried the girl. "I have a knife!"
Kamchak paid her no attention now but was looking at his hand. He seemed satisfied that the wound was not serious, and picked up the piece of meat which he had dropped, which he tossed to Elizabeth, who, in silence, ate it. He then pointed at the remains of the overdone roast, indicating that she might eat it.
"I have a knife!" cried Aphris in fury.
Kamchak was now picking his teeth with a fingernail.
"Bring wine," he said to Elizabeth, who, her mouth filled with meat; went and fetched a small skin of wine and a cup, which she filled for him. When Kamchak had drunk the cup of wine he looked again at Aphris. "For what you have done," he said, "it is common to call for one of the Clan of Torturers."
"I will kill myself first," cried Aphris, posing the quiva over her heart.
Kamchak shrugged.
The girl did not slay herself. "NO," she cried, "I will slay you."
"Much better," said Kamchak, nodding. "Much better."
"I have a knife!" cried out Aphris.
"Obviously," said Kamchak. He then got up and walked rather heavily over to one wall of the wagon and took a slave whip from the wall.
He faced Aphris of Turia.
"Sleep!" she wept. She threw back her hand with the knife to rush forward and thrust it into the heart of Kamchak but the coil of the whip lashed forth and I saw its stinging tip wrap four times about the wrist and forearm of the Turian girl who cried out in sudden pain and Kamchak had stepped to the side and with a motion of his hand had thrown her off balance and then by the whip dragged her rudely over the rug to his feet. There he stepped on her wrist and removed the knife from her open hand. He thrust it in his belt.
"Slay me!" wept the girl. "I will not be your slave!"
But Kamchak had hauled her to her feet and then flung her back to where she had stood before. Dazed, holding her right arm, on which could be seen four encircling blazes of scarlet, she regarded him. Kamchak then removed the quiva from his belt and hurled it across the room until it struck in one of the poles of the frame supporting the wagon hides, two inches in the wood, beside the throat of the girl.
"Take the quiva," said Kamchak.
The girl shook with fear.
"Take it," ordered Kamchak.
She did so.
"Now," he said, "replace it."
Trembling, she did so.
"Now approach me and eat," said Kamchak. Aphris of Turia did so, defeated, kneeling before him and turning her head delicately to take the meat from his hand. "Tomorrow," said Kamchak, "you will be permitted after I have eaten to feed yourself."
Suddenly Elizabeth Cardwell said, perhaps unwisely. "You are cruel"
Kamchak looked at her in surprise. "I am kind," he said.
"How is that?" I asked.
"I am permitting her to live," he said.
"I think," I said, "that you have won this night but I warn you that the girl from Turia will think again of the quiva and the heart of a Tuchuk warrior."
"Of course," smiled Kamchak, feeding Aphris, "she is superb."
The girl looked at him with wonder.
"For a Turian slave," he added. He fed her another piece of meat. "Tomorrow, Little Aphris," said he, "I will give you something to wear."
She looked at him gratefully.
"Bells and collar," said he.
Tears appeared in her eyes.
"Can I trust you?" he asked.
"No," she said.
"Bells and collar," said he. "But I shall wind them about with strings of diamonds that those who see will know that your master can well afford the goods you will do without."
"I hate you," she said.
"Excellent," said Kamchak. "Excellent."
When the girl had finished and Elizabeth had given her a dipper of water from the leather bucket that hung near the door, Aphris extended her wrists to Kamchak.
The Tuchuk looked puzzled.
"Surely," she said, "you will lock me in slave bracelets and chain me tonight?"
"But it is rather early," pointed out Kamchak.
The girl’s eyes showed a moment of fear but then she seemed resolved. "You have made me your slave," she said, "but I am still Aphris of Turia. You may, Tuchuk, slay Aphris of Turia if it pleases you, but know that she will never serve your pleasure never."
"Well," said the Tuchuk, "tonight I am pretty drunk."
"Never," said Aphris of Turia.
"I note," said Kamchak, "that you have never called me Master."
"I call no man Master," said the girl.
"I am tired tonight," said Kamchak, yawning. "I have had a hard day."
Aphris trembled in anger, her wrists still forward.
"I would retire," she said.
"Perhaps then," said Kamchak, "I should have sheets of crimson silk brought, and the furs of the mountain larl."
"As you wish," said the girl.
Kamchak clapped her on the shoulders. "Tonight," he said, "I will not chain you nor put you in the bracelets."
Aphris was clearly surprised. I saw her eyes furtively dart toward the kaiila saddle with its seven quivas.
"As Kamchak wishes," she said.
"Do you not recall," asked Kamchak, "banquet of Saphrar?"
"Of course," she said, warily.
"Do you not recall," asked Kamchak, "the affair of the tiny bottles of perfume and the smell of bosk dung how nobly you attempted to rid the banquet hall of that most unpleasant and distasteful odour?"
"Yes," said the girl, very slowly.
"Do you not recall," asked Kamchak, "what I then said to you what I said at that time?"
"Nor" cried the girl leaping up, but Kamchak had jumped toward her, scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder.
She squirmed and struggled on his shoulder, kicking and pounding on his back. "Sleep!" she cried. "Sleep! Sleen! Sleen!"
I followed Kamchak down the steps of the wagon and, blinking and still sensible of the effects of the Paga, gravely held open the large dung sack near the rear left wheel of the wagon. "No, Master!" the girl wept.
"You call no man Master," Kamchak was reminding her.
And then I saw the lovely Aphris of Turia pitched head first into the large, leather sack, screaming and sputtering, threshing Shout.
"Master!" she cried. "Master! Master!"
Sleepily I could see the sides of the sack bulging out wildly here and there as she squirmed about.
Kamchak then tied shut the end of the leather sack and wearily stood up. "I am tired," he said. "I have had a difficult and exhausting day."
I followed him into the wagon where, in a short time, we had both fallen asleep.