Yet I was angry. She now ignored me. Her victory had been cheaply won.

Suddenly, angrily, I kicked her.

She cried out, startled. I stood straight, as though I had done nothing. The soldier with the coffle, who was gathering jewelry into a scarf from various coffers in the tent, pretended that he had not noticed my action. Masters do not much interfere in the squabbles of slaves. Let them impose their own internal order among themselves. On the other hand, they would not approve if one slave injured or marked, or reduced in value, another. That would be serious, and not to be tolerated.

The girl before me now no longer stood proudly and sensually. She was now only a frightened, chained girl, at my mercy. She was coffled before me.

"On the other hand," I said to her, "I may not forgive you either."

"Marla begs forgiveness, Mistress," she whispered.

"I may forgive you and I may not," I said.

"Yes, Mistress," said the girl. She trembled. The chain shook on her wrist. I was pleased. Too, if she feared me, perhaps I could, for a time, frighten her away from my master. She was a lovely female, Marla, and I had little doubt she would be incredibly delicious in the arms of a man. I suppose that I was jealous of her.

The soldier in charge of the coffle slung the scarf, loaded with jewelry from the coffers in the tent, over his shoulder. He grinned at me. I looked down, and smiled.

"We must make haste, Slaves," said he. We readied ourselves. I looked at him. He was not regarding me.

He was Gorean, and a man. It was not that he had dared to be a man. It was rather that he simply was a man.

"Attend me, Coffle," said he, "for bondage march." He held his hand, the visible signal of preparation, poised over his thigh.

We tensed.

But, strangely, though of Earth, I did not object to a world in which men, like larls, were healthy. I wanted them that way, rich and glorious in their power. I sensed, perhaps, my complementarity to them. Only in a world where there were true men could there be true women.

I felt the steel on my wrist, with its chain.

He struck his right thigh with his open hand, suddenly, sharply. We moved out, slave girls, on the left foot, that the pace of the march be uniform.

We were owned.

As I passed the soldier, who stood behind, to follow the coffle, to guard it, I felt weak. I tried to brush my left shoulder against him, but he, with his hand, roughly thrust me to the side. He did not then desire my touch. I and the others must wait, to see if he would permit us to touch him later.

Tears sprang to my eyes. I had wanted to touch him, and had not been permitted to do so. It was his will, the will of the man, which determined matters.

"Har-ta," said he. "Faster." Lehna, who was first girl on the chain, hastened.

Suddenly I was terrified. My will literally meant nothing. Anything might be done to me. The guard had not permitted me to do so much as brush against him. If I could not even placate a man sexually, I was completely without power. Even my attempt to please a man was dependent upon his permission that I should attempt to do so.

I shuddered.

I, hurrying, looked up into the black, starlit Gorean night. I trembled. I, though a girl of Earth, was chained in coffle under three barbaric moons.

"Har-ta," said the soldier.

Again Lehna hastened.

In moments we were leaving the camp, wading the stream.

I felt the cold water about my ankles, and then calves; then I felt it over my knees; then I felt it swirling at my thighs; we lifted the chain to hold it out of the water.

"Har-ta," said the soldier, he in whose charge we were.

Again we hurried. One does not daily under the command of a Gorean master.

I felt the pebbles and stones of the bank beneath my feet. The chain pulled forward on my wrist. I looked up at the wild moons.

I was a slave girl.

"Har-ta!" I heard. "Har-ta!"

The chain pulled forward again.

I, hurrying, stumbled behind the others.

I did not know into what bondage I was being led. I knew only that it would be absolute.

My master extended his cup to me, and I, kneeling, filled it with Sul paga. I pressed my lips to the cup, and handed it to him. My eyes smarted. I almost felt drunk from the fumes.

I withdrew.

Sul paga is, when distilled, though the Sul itself is yellow, as clear as water. The Sul is a tuberous root of the Sul plant; it is a Gorean staple. The still, with its tanks and pipes, lay within the village, that of Tabuk's Ford, in which Thurnus, our host, was caste leader.

"Excellent," said my master, sipping the Sul paga. He could have been commenting only on the potency of the drink, for Sul paga is almost tasteless. One does not guzzle Sul paga. Last night one of the men had held my head back and forced me to swallow a mouthful. In moments things had gone black, and I had fallen unconscious. I had awakened only this morning, ill, miserable, with a splitting headache, chained with the other girls.

"Wine, Slave Girl," said Maria, holding her cup to me.

Angrily I put down the Sul paga and fetched the flask of the Ka-la-na of Ar, and filled her cup. She did not look at me, nor thank me, for I was a slave. Was she not, too, a slave? I saw her, in the shreds of her white gown, cuddling with her wine in my master's arms. She had risen swiftly in favor among the masters, displacing even Eta as favorite girl. I had feared, even from the beginning, that she would become excessively popular. My master was, apparently, much taken with her. I hated her. Eta, too, did not regard her with unusual affection.

Marla looked at me, and smiled. "You are a pretty slave," she said.

"Thank you, Mistress," I said, restraining myself. Since she had become first girl in the camp we were all constrained to serve her and address her as Mistress. Even though she was given no jewelry or fine raiment, she was high slave in the camp.

It had been five weeks since the strike on the camp of the Lady Sabina.

Much of this time we had been engaged in a long overland journey.

"Give me of drink," said Thurnus to me.

"Yes, Master," I said. I took the flask of Ka-la-na to him.

Thurnus was a shaggy haired fellow, with yellow hair, big, broad-shouldered, large-handed, clearly in his bones and body of the peasants. He was caste leader in Tabuk's Ford. Tabuk's Ford was a large village, containing some forty families; it was ringed with a palisade, and stood like a hub in the midst of its fields, long, narrow, widening strips, which radiated from it like the spokes in a wheel. Thurnus tilled four of these strips. Tabuk's Ford receives its name from the fact that field Tabuk were once accustomed, in their annual migrations, to ford the Verl tributary of the Vosk in its vicinity. The Verl flows northwestward into the Vosk. We had crossed the Vosk, on barges, two weeks ago. The field Tabuk now make their crossing some twenty pasangs northwest of Tabuk's Ford, but the village, founded in the area of the original crossing keeps the first name of the locale. Tabnk's Ford is a rich village, but it is best known not for its agricultural bounty, a function of its dark, fertile fields in the southern basin of the Verl, but for its sleen breeding. Thurnus, of the Peasants, of Tabuk's Ford, was one of the best known of the sleen breeders of Gor.

Thurnus looked at me, and grinned. "I said, 'Give me of drink, small beauty," he said. He emphasized the word 'drink.

"Forgive me, Master," I said, and, swiftly, turned to put back the Ka-la-na, and fetch the potent Sul paga. As I turned, hurrying, suddenly, frightening me, I realized the Ta-Teera had scarcely concealed me. This frightened me for I had become much aware, in the last few weeks, of the capacity of my beauty to excite men. Eta had told me that I was becoming more beautiful. I did not see how this could be. Yet, apparently, for no reason I clearly understood, I was becoming more provocative and stimulating to men. I suspect this. had to do with the gradual loss of layers of constriction and inhibition in my movements and attitudes, and expressions, the sluffing off of modes of impersonality and rigidity in which I had been conditioned since girlhood on Earth. I now related to men in a much more spontaneous and intensely personal way than once I would have dreamed possible. I now saw them as unique, exciting masters, each different and incredibly individual, who might, for a word or gesture, have me; how could I not regard them differently from a free woman; and, too, doubtless, they saw me in a similarly immediate and intensely personal fashion, not as an object shielded, by prejudice and law, and fear and pride, from them, even to touch whom could be a crime, but rather as a slave girl, vulnerable, exposed, at their mercy, unique in her exact helplessness and individuality, the same in some respects as all other bond girls and yet interestingly and profoundly different, too, from all the others. I shared the condition of slavery with other bond wenches, but each of us, of course, as masters know, in the depths and complexity of us, is a surprisingly and uniquely different individual, a latent prize for the chain, an astonishment fascinating to learn and subdue. I suspect the changes in me, at least in part, had to do with two things, the gradual stripping from me of negativistic Earth conditionings and, on the positive side, the Gorean acculturations to which I, a bond girl, was being exposed. I was learning my slavery. Oddly enough, in learning my slavery, I was experiencing an incredible sense of psychological freedom and liberation. I was liberated from political and economic roles of male impersonation and freed to be myself, a woman. The major difference in me, perhaps, however, was not behavioral, social or cultural, but biological. The cultural arrangements, as such arrangements should or may, liberated rather suppressed, constricted or thwarted my inner nature. My inner nature, thus, was permitted to open its petals to the rain and sunlight of a clean, honest, glorious world. I was becoming true to myself. I think that is it. In becoming true to myself, too, I was becoming happy. And, as Eta once told me, it is hard for a woman to be happy and not to be beautiful.