Free Marauders of Gor by John Norman Page B

cried a man, the burgher in black satin, whose chain of office Forkbeard had torn from his neck.
                "One hundred pieces of gold," said Forkbeard to him observing the girl.
                She stiffened.
                "Yes," cried the man.   "Yes!"
                "Five nights from this night," said Ivar Forkbeard, "on the skerry of Einar by the rune-stone of the Torvaldsmark."
                I had heard of this stone.   It is taken by many to mark the border between Torvaldsland and the south.   Many of those of Torvaldsland, however, take its borders to be much farther extended than the Torvalds regard Torvaldsmark. Indeed, some of their ships beach, as the took their country, and their steel, with them.
                "Yes!" said the man. "I will bring the money to that place."
                "Go to the bond-maid circle," said Ivar Forkbeard to the large girl, "but do not enter it."
                "Yes," she said, hurrying to its edge.
                "The wall of the temple will not last much longer, " said one of the men of the Forkbeard.
                Forkbeard looked then at the younger, blond, more slender girl, she with her hair now loose, the snood of scarlet.   She looked up at him, boldly.   "My father is   poorer than Aelgifu's," she said, "but forme, too, there will be a ransom."
                She looked at him with horror.   In the crowd I heard a man and a woman cry out with misery.
                "Go to the circle and enter it," said Ivar Forkbeard to the girl.
                She held up her head.   "No," she said.   "I am free.   Never will I consent to be a bond-maid.   I shall first choose death!"
                "Very well," laughed the Forkbeard.   "Kneel."
                Startled, she did so, uncertainly.
                "Put your head down," he said, "throw your hair forward, exposing your neck."
                She did so.
                He lifted the great ax.
                Suddenly she cried out and thrust her head to his boot.  
                She held his ankl.e.
                Have mery on a bond-maid!" she wept.
                Ivar Forkbeard laughed and reached down and pulled her up by the arm, his great fist closed about her arm within the white woolen blouse, and thrust her stumbling well within the circle.
                "The wall will soon fall," said one of the me.
                I could see the fire creeping now, too, to the roof.
                "Bond-maids," ordered Ivar Forkbeard harshly, strip"!
                Crying out the girls removed their garments.   I saw that the   weeping, slender blond-hair girl was incredibly beautiful.
                Her legs and belly, and breasts, were marvelous.   And her face, too, was beautiful, sensitive and intelligent.   I envied the Forkbeard his catch.
                "Fetter them," said Ivar Forkbeard.
                " I hear the townfolk gathering," said one of the men at the door.
                Two of the men of Torvaldsland had, from their left shoulder to their right hip, that their right arms be less I impeded, a chain formed of slave bracelets; each pair of bracelets locked at each end about one of the bracelets of another pair, the whole thus forming a circle.   Now they removed this chain of bracelets, and, one by one, removed the pairs, closing them about the small wrists, behind their backs, of the female captives, now bond-maids.   These bracelets were of the sort used to hold women in the north.   The are less ornate and finely tooled than those available in the south.   But they are satisfactory for their purpose.   They consist of curve, hinged bands of black iron, three quarters of an inch in width and a quarter inch in thickness.   On