"You will then be sought," said the peasant.

Counting the time it would take to fix the torch in the earth and for her heart to beat two hundred times, I conjectured that we would have a lead on our pursuers of some three minutes. I looked at the girl. Her lips were slightly parted. This angered me. She was excited by the hand of my master's man on her flesh. She backed slightly against him. Her heart would now be beating more rapidly. She was, after all, a girl in bondage, like us. Why did they not take a hundred beats of the heart of a standing bosk? Her sexual excitement at the proximity of my master's man might, I now noted, considerably diminish our lead. I decided to count now on a lead of little more than two minutes. Moreover, she was to be his for the night, once he had counted upon her body, using her beating heart as the clock of the evening's sport. It was no wonder that she was excited. This did not seem to me to be fair. But I did not complain. The men decide what is fair or unfair, and will, in any case, do precisely as they please. It is the girl's part to abide by their decision. The men decide; the girl submits. One must be master, one slave.

Eta was to my far right, on the line. Then came Maria, and Donna. I stood on the dirt line between Donna and, to my left, Slave Beads. To her left was Chanda, and on the far left, was Lehna.

"I do not want to be run for peasant boys," said Slave Beads. "I was once free."

"I, too, was once free," I told her.

"You are slave now," said Slave Beads.

"So, too, are you," I snapped.

"Does Slave Beads wish to be switched again?" called Lehna.

"No, Mistress," said Slave Beads, hastily. Slave Beads feared Lehna. For most practical purposes, she had been put in the charge of Lehna almost from the first moments of her capture. She was commonly chained before Lehna in the coffle, and it was under Lehna's supervision that she commonly performed her tasks.

After the capture of the Lady Sabina we had returned to the secret cache camp, to which my master had originally brought me, his barbarian girl. At the cache camp, the first night of our arrival, the Lady Sabina had been stripped and thrown on her back, head down, on the inclining, white-barked tree trunk, to which she had then been, as I had been before her, helplessly roped. When the iron had been pulled from her burned, marked flesh she had been rendered, as was the intention of my master, and those in Ar, politically valueless. She was then only a slave. She was unroped and thrown, a bond girl, to the feet of my master.

"We must name you," he said. «Sabina-Sabina-» said he, as though musing on the thought. "Ah," had he then said, "it seems that you, in your former name, carried already, an excellent slave name."

"Oh, no, no, Master!" she wept.

"Your former name," said he, "was clever. It appears to be the name of a free woman, and yet, within it, in disguise, which we now penetrate, it concealed secretly your true name. Very clever, Slave, but now you are discovered and you will openly wear your true name, that which will perfectly fit you and which I now, in the decree of the master, make yours."

"Please, Master!" she wept.

"You are Bina," said he.

She put her head in her hands, and wept. The expression 'Bina' in Gorean means slave beads.

"Put Slave Beads in a Sirik," said my master. Swiftly my master's new girl was locked in the light, gleaming Sirik. The collar clasped her throat; a chain dangled from the collar; her small wrists were locked in the slave bracelets fixed on the dangling chain, and the dangling chain, itself, looped down to a short chain and pair of ankle rings, to which it was gracefully fastened at a sliding ring. The ankle rings were then closed about the lovely ankles of Slave Beads, and locked. She was helpless in Sirik. The confinement became her. She was beautiful. I had never worn Sirik.

She knelt before my master, naked, in Sirik. She looked up at him. Her thigh, freshly branded, bore the common slave mark of Gor, the initial letter, in cursive script, of the Gorean expression 'Kajira, which means Slave Girl. She trembled. She was now no different from thousands of other girls who shared her condition, that of total bondage.

"Greetings, Slave Beads," said my master.

"Greetings, Master," she said, responding to her name, as she must.

My master looked down at her, and smiled. She looked up at him, trembling. He was her master.

"Perhaps you remember, Slave Beads," said my master, "that, on an evening, some days ago, a free woman harshly and at length punished a slave girl."

"You know?" she asked.

"We observed, in scouting the camp," said he. He looked down at the kneeling girl, locked in the Sirik. "The beating was well done," said he.

"Thank you, Master," she whispered.

"The crime of the slave girl, as I recall," said my master, "was to desire the touch of a man."

Lehna stood to one side. She stood straight, as an exciting slave girl.

"Yes, Master," said Slave Beads.

"The free woman," said my master, "was doubtless well within her rights to beat the girl."

"Yes, Master!" said Slave Beads.

"But that free woman," said my master, "has since that time herself fallen slave. Indeed, she is now in this camp."

"Yes, Master," said Slave Beads.

"The slave girl whom she beat is, too, in this camp," said my master.

"Yes, Master," said Slave Beads. She trembled in the Sirik.

"Do you yourself desire the touch of a man?" asked my master.

"Oh, no! No, Master!" cried Slave Beads.

"Ah," said my master, "it seems that in this camp we have a slave girl, too, who is guilty of a crime."

"Who, Master?" asked Slave Beads.

"You," said he.

"Not I!" she cried.

"You," said he.

"What is my crime?" she asked.

"Not to desire the touch of a man," said he.

She looked at him, aghast.

"You see," said he, "in this camp it is a crime for a girl not to desire a man's touch." My master turned to one of his men. "Bring Lehna a switch," he said. He turned again to Slave Beads. "You will be well punished for your crime, Slave Girl," said he.

"I am ready, Master," said Lehna.

"Do not forget this beating," said my master. "You are to desire men. Further, it will be well for you to learn what it is to be a beaten slave girl. What you did to Lehna she will now do to you. Perhaps you will then have a richer understanding of what it was, truly, that you did to her. Perhaps you will regret that you were not a kinder mistress."

"She will regret it, Master," promised Lehna, licking her lips.

"I will now leave you to the tender mercies of Lehna," said my master. "Let us hope that, in the future, your masters and mistresses will be kinder to you than was the Lady Sabina of Fortress of Saphronicus to her slaves."

"Do not leave me with her, Master!" cried Slave Beads. "She will kill me! She will kill me!"

"It is not impossible," said my master. He turned to leave, then turned. again to face the kneeling, terrified Slave Beads. "It is my hope, too," said he, "that this beating will prove a useful initiation for you, given your antecedents and nature, into the condition of slavery." He looked at her, sternly. "Yes, Master," she said, looking up at him. "After your beating," he said, "you will be asked again if you desire the touch of men. I trust, then, your answer will be affirmative. If it is not, you will be again beaten, and again, throughout the night."

"My answer will be affirmative, Master," whispered Slave Beads.

My master then turned away from her, and so, too, did we all, leaving her with Lehna.

Later my master took Slave Beads by the hair. "Do you now desire the touch of men?" he asked. "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, Master," she wept.

She was then released from the Sirik. "Go to the men," said my master.